Eric Seablade

Eric Seablade was the name of one of the default characters in one of my first computer role playing games. That game was Tunnels of Doom for the TI-994A. The default characters were all named for the color of their sprite. Eric was blue and was the warrior character. The game was really fun, and perhaps a little ahead of its time. Today you might call it a rogue-like with a 4 person adventuring party and turn based combat.

At any rate the character name stuck with me for some reason and I used it a lot as my BBS handle back in the days of dial up modems and wildcat BBSs. These were strange pre-internet days and the first time you could kind of reach out with your computer and talk/play with others. I don’t use a handle much these days but at the time I though it was pretty cool.

Foremost however its one of the names I use fairly often in roleplaying games and is thus one of my goto characters. Unlike many of them however I don’t exactly have a personality of backstory for Seablade, instead he’s more an ingenue type character, the stand in hero. Due to the name I often give him some kind of pirate background, a guy who sort of got out on the wrong track but has had a redemptive moment.

The first time I used it for a D&D character poor Seablade died in his second outing. Not only died but had his soul permanently removed by of all things a piece of statuary he touched. (Saving throw failed!) From there I invented an afterlife for him where he was bound to serve a lord of hell as a sort of immortal paladin; a good guy working for the bad guys against other bad guys. He’s shown up as an NPC from time to time but I never actually played that version of him in a game.

Most recently I decided to play Assassins Creed: Black Flag and since its a pirate game I trotted him out when prompted for a character name. It turns out you don’t have much choice but to be a vicious and greedy pirate so I’m not sure he’s in character with the name as I see it, but its a fine pirate name none the less.