1d500 Backstories to Inflict on your Characters

This post brought to you by a whiskey so cheap it doesn't even have a website, and root beer.

Normally, you might start a D&D group in a tavern or a prison or a convent. You might connect characters by a lifepath system or a few shared events. Instead, consider rolling on the table below several times for each character before race, class, stats, etc. are determined. The results are life events, things that just happened, or reasons to go adventuring. The effect on your players will probably be a dismayed "WAT", but so it goes.

Side Note: Consider rolling once or twice on this table, then on Bastionland's Failed Careers table.

Alternatively, these events could be inflicted by a Splitter.

Alternatively, use these for NPCs the PCs have encountered. It might explain why they are so weird.

Side Note: entries on this table were taken from The Toast's "How To Tell If You Are In A Novel" series. Normally I try very hard to ensure everything on a table is consistent within a given genre. I didn't bother here. Adapt as needed.

You could use this table as a really dull party game by having people guess which author contributed each entry. I wouldn't bother.

Face Sketches, Thomas Wievegg

1d500 Backstories and Events Stolen from The Toast

1d500	Backstory Inflicted
1	You spy on people through keyholes and get exactly what you deserve.
2	You have been rejected on your wedding night.
3	You get made fun of sometimes. It’s hurtful, and you’d do almost anything to teach your tormentors a lesson. Almost.
4	You have committed several murders, yet somehow you are also the sanest and most sympathetic person you know.
5	You have earned the personal ire of a Witch-king. This ends poorly for you, and everyone in your country.
6	Your love has been soiled, and the object symbolizing it tainted, quite tainted!
7	Everyone is relieved to learn that your boyfriend is not secretly your brother. He’s not even your cousin. Whew.
8	You are a woman who has been described as any of the following: spirited, willful, indifferent, aloof, or outdoorsy.
9	You are an unusually supportive roommate with a knack for springing surprise kisses at the worst possible moment.
10	You flippantly rejected the romantic proposal of a nice man who had done a lot for you.
11	You are beginning to suspect—oh, but it is impossible to believe!—that your twin is not dead at all!
12	Your name alliterates with your father’s, your brothers’, and all your immediate male relatives’.
13	You find that you are never too busy to tell complete strangers about your all-consuming plans for revenge.
14	You have left many men crying.
15	Your best friend is decades older than you and mildly forlorn.
16	Right now you’re busy getting dressed for a party to which you were pointedly not invited.
17	You are the last survivor of your people.
18	Your pure and radiant beauty is the worst thing that has ever happened to you.
19	Everyone in the neighborhood, including your mother, has ranked you and your sisters in order of hotness.
20	Your only friend is a prostitute with a terrible wracking cough, and you have never had anything to eat even once.
21	A woman who is not your mother treats you like her own daughter. Your actual mother is dead or ridiculous.
22	Occasionally you and your romantic interest go dance in a field with some villagers.
23	Your closest companion is a pet lamb named Miranda that you bring with you to church and to bed.
24	You are in love with an earnest, loyal young man who adores you, so you’ve decided to marry a dissolute cad.
25	You can tell magical creatures apart by their distinctive speech patterns.
26	You can assign fearsome properties to even the most mundane objects.
27	You are frequently and hilariously confused by homophones.
28	The most prominent pieces of furniture in your home are a fainting couch and a large vase of half dead ferns.
29	An adventure has gone poorly and you and your siblings are once again stuck underground.
30	The leading cause of death in your country is dragons. The second leading cause of death is ennui.
31	You hate everyone, except for one woman you are incredibly attracted to. She hates you.
32	You and your siblings have again endangered the family baby.
33	You befriend a band of charming and loyal pirates.
34	Every time you see an unfamiliar place—particularly a dark, dank one—you feel the need to explore it.
35	You’re just drunk enough to tell the truth, and she’s just drunk enough to like it.
36	You have a secret, potentially scandalous alter-ego, such as authoress of smutty literature or highwayman.
37	It does not surprise you when animals can talk. It surprises you when they have something sensible to say.
38	The sight of gigantic bugs stealing children barely turns your head these days.
39	You once tried to have sex with a panther.
40	You are a wizard and practice magic. Even tourists who do not speak your language know how this will end: badly for you.
41	Your ancestors are all somewhat more alive than usual.
42	You once did a kind thing. Someone knows, but will never reveal it.
43	You love the girl too much to marry her. Ironical, no?
44	You and your husband are having separate affairs and it’s very pragmatic.
45	There are three men in your life: one true love, one tempting but rakish acquaintance, and a third distant possibility.
46	You are offered a place at university but you don’t show up because you are too ashamed of your boots.
47	At least half of the people you know are mad. If you are not yet mad yourself, you are probably well on your way.
48	You are wan. So very wan.
49	Your past always comes back to haunt you. Also, maybe, a ghost.
50	There’s a man in the bed next to you, but at least he’s dead, so you don’t have to worry about making small talk.
51	There are but two forms of criminal justice in your town: capital punishment, or a public scolding from the Duke.
52	A foreign king takes you into his service, but does not take you seriously.
53	You are a younger brother who stands to inherit nothing.
54	You long to go on an adventure, but only so long as the adventure is not in any way uncomfortable or inconvenient.
55	You and your twenty or so best friends all want to marry the same man. This causes you no problems whatsoever.
56	A girl you have only just met tells you a secret, and you despise her for it.
57	You are a man. Complicated historical forces have forced you into a marginalized life, possibly one of inadvertent crime.
58	You have developed a tortured, nihilistic philosophy all your own over the course of your years at sea. It is terrible.
59	A man proposes to you, then to another, lesser woman when you politely spurn him. This delights you to no end.
60	Three and a half hours seems like a totally reasonable time to tell a story.
61	All you can think about is how goddamn insufferable your presence must be for other people.
62	You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
63	You greatly enjoyed spending time in the city with your aunt, who was of dubious morality.
64	You feel the need to prove something.
65	Your parents are alive, and are preventing you from getting married. You are heartbroken.
66	The man you might be divorced from comes back, and you go to bed with him. It’s hot until it’s not, so you kick him out.
67	You are a woman, and no good to anybody.
68	Your mysterious boyfriend proves to you that you can trust him by taking on your appearance.
69	Life is but a series of increasingly dramatic decisions made in the rain.
70	Your hair is parted in the middle and braided in a childish style that belies your wickedness.
71	All of your happiest childhood memories include your mother convulsively crying.
72	You are beginning to suspect that your twin is posing as you about town and exchanging love-tokens with your betrothed.
73	You went to a place once. Decades later, you return under very different circumstances.
74	You have no real friends, only rivals masquerading as friends who want to steal your lover.
75	You have always hated her laugh, high and reedy and boisterous and throbbing with panic.
76	Your parents were really hoping for a son instead of a daughter, which is why they named you Brucey.
77	You are in love with a beautiful woman with white hands. She cries all the time.
78	You are a man. If you’re a woman, you are the love interest of the man, and you are dead.
79	You are somehow renowned for your prowess in battle.
80	You may live in a ridiculous world full of lies, but you hold fast to the important lies of fairness, mercy, and human dignity.
81	You are geographically separated from your spouse, so you may as well sit in a hole until you can be together again.
82	Ever since you returned from the North, you take enormous pride in being both unmarried and ugly.
83	You never tell anyone anything.
84	You have tried to kill yourself, and you have been stymied in the attempt.
85	You’re wearing an expensive coat that your wife paid for. You hate her for it.
86	You are so over your new husband.
87	You are the disappointing son of a cold-hearted woman with thick arms.
88	Your father and mother have died at least once in the last year.
89	All the animals you know are underfed, black, and vaguely eldritch. They all hate you.
90	You have in your possession an envelope of negatives that, if made public, could ruin the rising career of a young starlet.
91	You have never danced, not even once, not even in your dreams.
92	You lost a hand while escaping from the realm of the Enemy.
93	You have been gut-punched within the last 24 hours. You still feel it in your teeth.
94	There was a traumatic event in your childhood involving beach caves.
95	You successfully defend yourself against accusations of having slept with your lord’s wife.
96	You receive word that an old friend is coming to visit. You suspect it’s out of spite, and sneeze voluptuously.
97	For the first time in your life, you’re not rich and it feels utterly exotic.
98	There are 14 women in your life you call “auntie” and you’re not sure if any of them is actually your Aunt.
99	You speak slightly more kindly to people below your station than is strictly necessary.
100	You’ve just been hit in the face. You wake up alone, in the dark. It was a lousy party anyhow; you were ready to leave.
101	You have sinned, and sinned greatly in the eyes of the world, out of a most desperate love.
102	No one understands your suffering. It is unclear whether you are in need of a lord or the Lord.
103	You have an incredible amount of homoerotic tension with a beautiful  knight.
104	You join the priesthood to get over your ex, and end up having sex with her in a church.
105	You buy the rumour that your best friend is able to prevent pregnancy through sheer force of will.
106	You have interrupted a game of wist to introduce the players to your ward.
107	You spy on a charming and beautiful lady in her bedchamber. She coughs. You take this as a sign of her devotion to you.
108	You love to talk of nothing. It is the only thing you know anything about.
109	You have kept a secret from your daughter that explains her entire life. She dies.
110	You recently remodeled something.
111	You speak in dialect when you want to connect with your childhood friends, but every word sounds false.
112	To you the air here always smells sweet, like honeysuckle and impurity.
113	You were exceedingly clever once, but unfortunately none of your friends noticed.
114	You have murdered a magical dog for the crime of making you happy.
115	After careful consideration, you have decided not to become a Dark Lord.
116	Despite having less sexual experience than a house fern, you fall into throes of ecstasy at your first encounter.
117	You are young, though you find yourself growing up very quickly.
118	You are forced to leave your home and journey in search of something, you know not what.
119	The Devil seems like a perfectly reasonable person to ask for advice.
120	You are about to break your marriage vows for someone you know to be unworthy of you.
121	You never walk. You trudge, lumber, plod, or slog, but you never walk.
122	Every time you see your neighbors, the encounters decrease in friendliness and increase in dark foreboding.
123	Your only quirk is your pierced ears, which you allowed yourself to get after you got engaged.
124	You know your best friend has stopped caring for you, indeed if she ever did.
125	A strange man comes to you and asks you to find a sheep, or a woman calls and asks for ten minutes of your time.
126	The most genuinely charming male of your acquaintance is actually a woman.
127	Your mother is younger than you, or at least appears to be so?
128	Your life is a daily reminder that success and survival belong to the deeply unpleasant.
129	You have been pronounced a social success by the greatest bitch in Paris.
130	Your martyrdom doesn’t go as planned.
131	You’re a woman of about thirty years of age who is still beautiful.
132	You’ve been sitting in this tavern for hours hoping no one notices your clothes are covered in blood.
133	Somebody you have never met has been nursing a grudge against you for years.
134	Your younger neighbor is drunk and advising you to marry for money.
135	A woman in an absurd hat is being an absolute bitch to you; there is nothing you can do about it.
136	You have lost track of your twin again.
137	Conveniently, your ex-lover looks enough like his sister that you can transfer your flirtations to her.
138	Your only relief is that your father and mother never lived long enough to see you fall so short of your early promise.
139	You have a terrible secret. The man you love has an even more terrible secret.
140	A mountain is out to get you.
141	Your fondest family memories involve the moors, and the faintest sense of dread.
142	You wed your husband alongside four other women and their beloveds in a modest quintuple wedding.
143	Your friends are fighting for liberty and likely to die.
144	At least once each day you stop in a stairwell to clutch the banister and cry out, “My god, how loathsome it all is!”
145	You see little blue men. You haven’t been drinking. They are happy to change that for you.
146	You are having an affair with a married man. His sister knows, and hates you.
147	Your friend picks up the handkerchief that your lady has dropped. You demand retribution for this act of betrayal.
148	Everything in your life hinges on a legal trick.
149	Your fate was determined by a nursemaid with an unaccountably grand flair for the dramatic.
150	Someone you have just met is dying for absolutely no reason.
151	You are a beautiful young woman with flashing eyes about to send your lover a terrible letter.
152	Everyone looks at you in judgment and scorn.
153	You allow your daughter to become educated, and this causes great trouble for everybody.
154	You have been careless with something priceless—your heart.
155	You are an older woman with not just a past, but several.
156	You once fulfilled an ancient prophecy and overturned gender expectations at the same time.
157	If anyone hates you, it’s only because you’re so beautiful. And you can’t help it if you’re beautiful.
158	You have a friend who is your complete opposite. If you are quiet and insightful, they are bold and brash.
159	You are polite to the point of idiocy; your brother is boorish to the point of brutality.
160	A grizzled old priest tunnels into your jail cell and spends eight years teaching you the finer points of political philosophy.
161	You have just swept someone a magnificent, yet insolent, leg.
162	If you are an adult, you’re most likely a phony, and your intelligence cannot compare to that of your younger peers.
163	No matter how bad things get, you can always rely on the fact that no one you know will ever offer to help you.
164	There’s a woman you’d like to sleep with, so you decide to tell her an off-putting story about murder, castration, or bestiality.
165	Your best friend is a notorious flirt and not as pretty as you.
166	Your father's character flaws lead to you becoming betrothed to a man you’ve never met.
167	Your nephew is emasculatingly thin, and probably a murderer.
168	It isn’t possible to love and to part, though you wish that it was.
169	There is a secret in your family, that if you were to find it out, the shock would kill you.
170	You discover that you have been flirting with your own brother and think, eh. I could do worse.
171	Much of your time is spent writing long, abusive letters to people you love from places you hate.
172	You have a pet that has, at least once, turned into a human being.
173	You are a woman and at the age of fifteen, the consciousness of your beauty bursts upon you in a sudden instant.
174	Once, you had some illusions about the world, but now they are lost.
175	A man once taught you how to love by beating you gently with his calloused hands. Now he is dead.
176	Your wardrobe is made entirely out of silk, especially your shoes.
177	You are over 75 and you hate every person you’ve ever met, or else you’re 14 and you’ve just seen something horrible.
178	You will believe literally anything written in a letter.
179	A disrespectful maiden becomes your only friend after you kill the man who killed her first boyfriend.
180	You suspect your twin is lost at sea.
181	Your sister is homely and it pleases you.
182	If you ever take to living as you play piano, it will be very exciting indeed.
183	The word that best applies to you is scrappy; never, not once, have you given up on someone or something without a fight.
184	You like to wear a red hunting hat, but you tend to remove it around people you know.
185	You have two first names with an absolute maximum of four syllables.
186	People always make fun of your hair.
187	Your feelings about peasants are warm, passionate, and a little condescending.
188	There is a 50% chance you are married because someone’s father died.
189	A beautiful and shallow woman that you hate is your best friend for reasons you cannot explain.
190	An old-timer has given you advice; you did not take it.
191	You could be cast as a tree nymph in a play about Greek mythology.
192	A number of better-established people went way out of their way to help you. You did not show appropriate gratitude.
193	You’re always starting things that you can’t seem to finish.
194	You have a favorite cow.
195	You are a victim of erotolepsy and have been ensnared in a marriage not of your choosing by a manipulative scoundrel.
196	A shocking marriage of convenience takes place within your social circle.
197	You’ve often laughed out of indifference, contempt, or spite, but not once out of joy.
198	You have had bottles of wine opened with a sword for him more than three times.
199	You are amazed to discover your long-lost brother in an unruly mob, but he does not want you to recognize him.
200	Your deepest secret is already known by the one person you are most invested in keeping it from.
201	You are blind in one eye. Just to be safe, you have killed everyone.
202	Your patience is wearing thinner than your mustache.
203	If only someone would die, you’d get everything you’ve ever wanted.
204	You’re having an affair and it’s terrible.
205	Everyone you hate understands you perfectly.
206	If you had to pick your greatest skill, it would probably be lying.
207	Most of your problems have probably been caused by prideful boasting or Vikings.
208	It’s not that wouldn’t murder your wife—it’s just that you wouldn’t bludgeon her with a statue.
209	You keep a photo on your mantel that proves your guilt in a capital crime.
210	You are crippled by gambling debts, but that hasn’t stopped you from spending every penny you have buying brandy.
211	Someone is describing a horrific injury in immense detail, and you are delighted.
212	You fell down the stairs, dramatically.
213	You are either ruddy, stout, or flint-eyed.
214	The further south you go, the more firmly the North becomes fixed in your heart.
215	You long to escape to the seaside.
216	You feel you must prove your worth by stabbing something terrifying.
217	You remain chaste throughout a series of tribulations and are rewarded with a husband whom you have never met.
218	A man confuses your expression in the middle of an argument for that of an expression of love. Later, you marry him.
219	You are indifferent to the murder you’ve just committed.
220	You’ve run out of wine.
221	You could not succeed in seducing your maid if your life depended on it.
222	You have literally run off with a goat.
223	You tend to dismiss odd noises, prophetic ramblings of mad men, and the death of small animals en masse with a shrug.
224	You’ve become so worried about The Great Schism that you’ve developed brain fever.
225	The adults in your life keep information about you, your family, and your current circumstances a secret from you.
226	You have nothing more than a passing interest in the paranormal. And why would you?
227	You had a best friend once. Now they are your greatest rival.
228	You are the beautiful only daughter of an invalid.
229	You have big dreams, but no skills to speak of.
230	You are an incorrigible womanize. You are squandering your sizeable inheritance on loose women and card tables.
231	You have a dream vision. There is absolutely no symbolism involved.
232	You are an unusually helpful lady-in-waiting. Your gaze lingers for no appreciable reason.
233	You are blackmailing a powerful but shady man.
234	You chew at your lip to show you are full of thought or lust.
235	Your father is absolutely terrible with money. No one has ever told him this.
236	You tend to ramble and have a habit of painstakingly describing everything and everyone around you.
237	No matter how many life-threatening situations you find yourself thrust into, you refuse to change your behavior.
238	A wizard has roped you into a quest because one of your ancestors invented golf.
239	You have forsworn your life of piracy for an unreciprocated romantic friendship with a tender lord.
240	You went to the beach once and now you can’t stop thinking about the Sea.
241	The current feud in which you are embroiled seems likely to be resolved by prodding a blindfolded horse off a cliff.
242	There is lace at your throat and wrists and disdain in your eyes and heart.
243	You love a prostitute with your whole heart but you respect her too much to touch her, talk to her, or learn her name.
244	You stand at the extreme verge of gentility.
245	In this random and absurd world, your only consolations are sex, philosophy, and puns.
246	You have shed aliases like the layers of an onion.
247	Shadows make you anxious, and you avoid them just in case they are concealing someone who means you ill.
248	Someone is crushing your spirit. You try as hard as you can not to inconvenience them while they do it.
249	You are a beautiful, demure widow.
250	For the last several years, you have been pretending to be blind and/or deaf in order to cause pain to a woman in your life.
251	You are ridiculously talented at one very specific thing.
252	You change your name and grow some facial hair– you are now unrecognizable to all your old friends and acquaintances.
253	The magistrate’s daughter is promised to another. You despair.
254	You once did a terrible thing. Someone knows, but will not reveal it.
255	Your enemy has made a miniature wood-carving of you being sodomized and nobody asks him why.
256	You were weak once, long ago, in a land where the sun shone. Now everyone you know is dead.
257	You are a woman and a young man declares his interest in you by staring at you in a public place. You find this charming.
258	Chances are good that you were poor, abandoned, or suffered a devastating loss in your childhood. Maybe all three.
259	You self-identify as a henchman.
260	All of your pets seem to hate you.
261	Someone trusted you to post a letter that may or may not contain high treason.
262	If only there were some way – some hope – if only someday you might forget!
263	You had to learn the hard way not to follow the lights in the marsh.
264	You come from great wealth, but it doesn’t help the ennui.
265	You have one friend; he is thirty years old and does business with your father and you are going to marry him someday.
266	You are supposed to be some sort of Asian, you think, and this fact makes everyone just a little bit uncomfortable.
267	You are being pursued by a bear.
268	You created a mythology around your family that was three parts exaggeration and one part straight up lies.
269	Someone you know has died in a tragic and semi-ironic manner that was so very appropriate to their personality.
270	The people of your house are dead and you are living a desperate existence as an outlaw.
271	Woe betide anyone who tries to fuck with your ponies.
272	Your married girlfriend gave you a dead bird as a token of her neverending love for you. You carry it with you always.
273	You are the beloved of many shepherdesses.
274	You deliver both insults and speeches exclusively in tight alliterative verse.
275	God’s grace descended upon you once, in the form of an gigantic, murderous war eagle.
276	The ladies who had once closed their ranks to you on suspicion of your base birth now rush to celebrate you.
277	You are poor now. So very poor.
278	No one at this decadent court suspects you of being what you really are – sincere.
279	Someone disagreeable tries to persuade you to join a game of cards.
280	You have escaped disaster, and things have for the most part ended well, and yet you cannot shake a sense of dread.
281	You’re kind of a paranoiac in reverse — you suspect people are plotting to make you happy.
282	You plan to treat the injuries with nothing but a rag soaked in vinegar and water.
283	Your mother has taken a false name and hidden herself from you. You will never question or complain about this decision.
284	You are indentured to a temperamental sorcerer.
285	You have between two and four  siblings with whom you get into jolly and/or dreadful scrapes. They all love eating buns.
286	You have an encyclopedic knowledge of the local seabirds because they are your only companions.
287	You don’t know where this sidekick came from, but you suppose you’ll keep them around.
288	You are being chided by a magical bird.
289	Important events in your life are always preceded by a storm, or at least a stiff wind.
290	You don’t have gout but could probably get it in a week if you wanted to.
291	You don’t get lucky a lot, although people are constantly hugging you from behind.
292	At least one of your front teeth is missing, and you think you look marvelous.
293	You have an enemy who claims to love you. You are competent at embroidering, but not accomplished.
294	You are a young woman who’s not shy about displaying her intellectual gifts or her perky breasts.
295	You have committed many wasteful murders to cover your tracks.
296	You are a blonde who is neither icy nor languid, which makes you unclassifiable.
297	You say something arch yet generous about another woman both younger and richer than you.
298	You have a habit of painstakingly describing the outfits of everyone around you.
299	She’s dead now, of course. Isn’t she? Isn’t she?
300	You have a maiden aunt who despairs of you. You have a gaggle of sisters of marriageable age and they are all silly.
301	You are abroad. The landscape speaks to you in a way that none of the people do.
302	Everyone agrees that your best friend is a wicked, but remarkable woman. Only you know just how wicked.
303	You are young, yet you know one thing, if you know anything: dragons are dicks.
304	You have hastily married someone you know to be unworthy of you.
305	You brought your sword and chainmail shirt to a swimming contest. They came in handy.
306	You are caught in a storm and contract a violent head-cold.
307	Your father is only capable of showing his love for you through fiery murder-suicide attempts.
308	Nothing has ever happened to you except one thing, decades ago.
309	You are a skeptic, and there is literally no justification for this.
310	You have strong opinions about rainscald.
311	Your survival hinges on the arrangement of poorly-maintained paths through a remote swamp.
312	Your boyish charm and feminine hips have attracted the attention of a wealthy woman and/or a homosexual criminal.
313	The love of your life has never once told you the truth, either about his intentions or his identity.
314	You are a lady novelist who travels by yourself.
315	Your childhood best friend is an emotionally unstable liar.
316	You are enduring secondhand heartbreak, which is the best kind of heartbreak.
317	You have been betrayed by a base chamberlain.
318	A wealthy and influential harridan disapproves of you and makes sure everyone within earshot knows it.
319	You’re a shriveled up old maid and you are evil.
320	Everyone in the world except for you is sexually repressed. This is the root cause of at least half of your problems.
321	You feel an unnameable, shameful aversion to your mother, whose limping gait you are afraid you will come to adopt.
322	An older woman pines for you.
323	Someone you know has fallen ill. Not melodramatically ill, just interestingly so.
324	Your husband has violated the strict moral code around which you have organized your life.
325	You’re only seventeen, but the right side of your head is covered in millions of little gray hairs.
326	Everybody in town knows more about your family history than you do.
327	You are a successful playwright in the prime of his life. Naturally, women love it when you mansplain to them.
328	You would seriously never kiss anyone if not for your clumsiness/bad luck/generally poor sense of direction.
329	You strike a bargain with an impossibly malevolent spider demon. This ends poorly for you.
330	Your father is hilariously witty, but prone to frightening rages.
331	You think nothing of contracting inheritable life debts with villains.
332	Though history may deem you a nobody, you are acquainted with everybody who’s anybody.
333	Gentlemen are always falling prey to the irresistible way in which you arrange your skirts.
334	You can no longer delight in any of life’s joys, not even whores.
335	You are a pagan, and this is very sad.
336	You are slightly less posh than the family you married into.
337	It is easy for you to sympathize at a distance.
338	She wanted you to love her more than you loved that first drink in the morning and so she had to go.
339	You walk home with a man you have only known for six months from church and catch a cold as a result of your moral laxity.
340	You are a political man engaged in a rather complicated relationship with your much older mentor.
341	You will never escape your childhood.
342	Your name is Derace, Orfamay, Moose, or Rusty, but you’ve asked to please be called Steelgrave.
343	Your “Pre-Pubescent Boy” disguise is having the unnerving effect of attracting many ladies.
344	You’ve been standing in the snow for hours now, just waiting to say something really cutting to a bureaucrat.
345	The only thing you really know about life is that, no matter the meaning of the next, love is the meaning of this one.
346	Your exhaustive knowledge of whimsical riddles has saved your life on multiple occasions.
347	You are not an orphan, but have just said that you are to a man who is altogether too interested in this fact.
348	In a dirty business, you have kept your hands clean. Almost.
349	You’d murder your father without blinking an eye, but you’re moved to tears by the sight of a peasant boy kicking a horse.
350	All the ingenues at court are simply wild about you. You could not be more indifferent. Also, your name is Hugh.
351	Everyone you have ever loved, been related to, or looked at flirtatiously during the summer parliament has died in a feud.
352	You have one dream, and it is very small, and everyone around you wants to crush it.
353	What man will ever marry you now that you’ve cast your virtue away on the transitory caresses of a rake?
354	You comb your hair publicly.
355	Your mother and father are both alive, but you keep thinking of them in the past tense.
356	You’re having an affair and your husband throws a dead bird at you, bloodying your breasts, to let you know that he knows.
357	You are either a virgin or a sad and lovely widow whose husband was lost at sea. You are spirited, but still passing ladylike.
358	In your youth, you had one bosom friend. You devote the better part of your adult life to making him miserable.
359	An improbable plot device leads to you sharing a bed with a rogue.
360	Your wife and your mistress have either never met, or they are best friends.
361	You are a human being that has, at least once, turned into a pet.
362	Groups of children unnerve you in a way you cannot define.
363	You find the sun disappointing and the moon insipid. When you were young, the world was lit only by the stars.
364	Your mother is ever so slightly insane.
365	You have managed to convince your husband you were not cheating on him by showing him a bathtub.
366	You think you have had a revelation. In reality, you have gotten yourself in a muddle, and later it makes you miserable.
367	You thought you were the cat in this particular game; in fact you have always been the mouse.
368	You are driven by a single, indiscernible desire.
369	You are a man. You have soft hands, and you went to college, and you are useless.
370	You dream of a contemplative life in a monastery.
371	You sleep feverishly or not at all.
372	Your headstrong offspring refuses to obey you. You despair.
373	No fewer than five different shamans have uttered prophecies about each member of your complicated love polygon.
374	You are relieved when your husband announces he is leaving you, but this relief is too inconsequential to speak of.
375	You have made out with a handkerchief belonging to an old man.
376	You can only fall in love at the command of a dying deer.
377	You’ve seen a ghost once or twice, but neither time were you particularly impressed.
378	An elderly woman, known for her second-sight, gives you specific instructions to avoid being murdered.
379	You’re having an affair and it’s wonderful.
380	You have become exceedingly ashamed of what your conduct has been.
381	The only thing flashing more violently than the diamond pin on your lavender greatcoat are your eyes!
382	You have been left alone to face social consequences despite your intrinsic goodness.
383	You don’t believe her story or her money, but you believe those legs.
384	You attempt to befriend someone slightly above or slightly below your social station and are soundly punished for it.
385	You’ve met an aristocrat who is about to change everything for you.
386	You have no legs and your name is alliterative.
387	There’s a woman in the room that you trust about as far as you’d trust a snake. But like all snakes, she can be charmed.
388	A fever has led you to believe you are married to your cousin, who may or may not be trying to poison you.
389	Your hat is tilted at a particular angle that suggests both your fastidiousness and duplicity.
390	To your deep shame and embarrassment, you — in your youth — played the viola.
391	A grove of trees reminds you of the woman you love.
392	Something dreadful happened at the rest stop.
393	Olives and wax: you never go anywhere without ’em.
394	You are a powerful but shady man being blackmailed.
395	If someone upsets you during a meal, you slide silently to the floor and remain under the table.
396	You speak in cryptic sentence fragments whenever the need arises.
397	You go wandering somewhere very cold, and almost freeze to death, but are saved by the arrival of a crew of explorers.
398	You have always wanted to meet elves, and when you finally do, they are intolerably silly.
399	Your greatest joy is exchanging barbs with the Steward.
400	You are a horribly disfigured man with a vendetta against society.
401	You spend hours ranting about how the fairer sex cannot be trusted, yet you have never been faithful to anyone.
402	So you met your soul mate at age ten, who doesn’t?
403	You never fall in love. Do you have any idea how rare this is?
404	There is scandalous gossip about you. All of it is true.
405	Your entire family is stunningly average, aside from one eccentric relative who’s always up to something kooky.
406	You paid dearly for your laceratingly funny insult to a powerful man.
407	A Dark Lord fancies your jewelry.
408	You spent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of a hen’s expression when it lays an egg.
409	A charming man attempts to flirt with you. This is terrible.
410	You are very happy, but there is a fearful trembling in the ground and in your heart.
411	You are incredibly good at describing any room you are currently in.  You do not know how to describe emotions.
412	The highest compliment you can pay a woman is to not sleep with her.
413	Your mother was a fairy, or dead, or had a magic ring, or French, or a lion some of the time, or something.
414	You can’t shake your inherent distrust of inanimate objects. You have your reasons.
415	You have enraged a family of wizards, who like to stand on your roof and sing all night.
416	Shrill violins do not bother you.
417	You have angered a tree. This ends poorly for you.
418	Your gaze is like the driving rain: hard and unyielding, chilly and bitter, and probably liable to cause consumption.
419	You have a very muted reaction to losing your limbs.
420	Your younger sibling is a real thorn in your side, but secretly, you value them above all else.
421	You and your cousins once beat a man to death over a piece of driftwood.
422	Your greatest wish is to someday see the ocean or have a pair of shoes you can call your very own.
423	You never kiss the women you trust, and vice versa.
424	You twirl your mustache disdainfully, enchanted by your own wit.
425	A chance meeting with a noble stranger has destabilized your conception of the world.
426	You make a terrible decision, fueled by the effects of alcohol, that casts an unremitting pall over the rest of your days.
427	You are probably not over the age of twenty-five. You may even be under ten.
428	One of your children is crushed to death by a humongous helmet on the day of their wedding.
429	You have to talk some sense into this violent, impoverished stranger you met on a footbridge.
430	You are being driven slowly but inexorably mad by a society determined to crush your spirit while smiling blandly.
431	You don’t have any bad qualities at all, unlike some people.
432	Is it just you, or is your young ward suddenly looking irresistible?
433	A woman of ill repute has hidden herself in the rooms of a noted dandy. You have never heard of anything so shocking.
434	You have never known one or both of your parents, but through a series of mishaps, at least one of them reappears.
435	You’re loudly criticizing a dangerous man, and he respects you for it.
436	You have perfectly floppy hair.
437	Your celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervor had are thrown away on your milksop of a husband.
438	You regularly attend dinner parties where each guest tells one carefully crafted and eerily perfect short story.
439	It is as old as the hills! Old, older, oldest! It is as old as the hills, and it has turned its eyes upon you!
440	You realize that you have mistakenly agreed to marry a man who reminds you of a windowless drawing room.
441	You are in love with your cousin.
442	You dislike washing yourself, and dogs, and noise.
443	Yours is a still and terrible fury that cannot possibly be tamed.
444	You never bleed; the only time you did, the blood that fell from your wound arranged into the shape of your wife’s face.
445	A close relative was horribly disfigured in a hunting accident. Everyone agrees she had it coming.
446	You are being horrible to a blood relative. They drop dead.
447	You discover you have a half-brother. You resent him for being stronger and healthier.
448	Your husband was completely unsatisfactory.
449	You have been recently aghast.
450	You are a mother and, in a moment of despair, exclaim that you would die for your child. Society takes you up on the offer.
451	The bees are buzzing in the garden, and something small and magical is rather indignant with you.
452	A member of the aristocracy once condescended to give you some advice.
453	You are plotting a “bed trick” with your waiting gentlewoman.
454	You drink to forget. You’re so successful at it, you no longer remember what it is you wanted to forget in the first place.
455	You have started a bloody multi-generational feud by stealing cheese.
456	You have a mystical connection with nature that makes your horrible, undeserved death all the more tragic.
457	Everything has been resolved in the bleakest way possible. Your only hope is that you will take this secret to the grave.
458	You loved the house more than you ever loved him. You know that now, at the last.
459	Literally ten hundred men are in love with you, so fresh and unused to the cynical methods of court.
460	As a child, you found yourself in a near constant state of existential threat, often caused by your parents’ party guests.
461	You are adept at recognizing handwriting.
462	You have a love/hate relationship with a grotesquely malformed creature that you are repulsed by, but also pity.
463	You are arranged to be married to someone sickly.
464	An army captain has insulted you and so you will drink yourself to death to have revenge on him.
465	You are a brilliant and high-spirited woman, and therefore you are doomed to a tragically early death.
466	You have just been walking in the rain, and everyone who raised you is dead, and you are glad.
467	You begin all adventures by donning your “going-out things.”
468	Someone puts your most embarrassing secret into their novel as a fictional event. You are angry, but can never tell why.
469	You enjoy composing cruel poems to make your sisters cry.
470	A sweet, poor girl is desperately in love with you, and you neither appreciate nor deserve her.
471	You could be cast as a background character in an Agatha Christie adaptation.
472	You draw horrifying shipwrecks and lightning-ruined oak trees in your spare time.
473	Your friends are a terrible influence.
474	Orcs are chasing you, but this does not bother you nearly as much as the inadequate breakfast you had earlier today.
475	Incriminating letters never seem to be right where you left them.
476	It is easier for you to be attracted to people when their class is indistinguishable.
477	A murder happens somewhere in your social circle. You carry on, more or less as you always have.
478	You watch helplessly as your little sister falls into the arms of a wicked man.
479	Your personal style can best be described as “librarian up to no good.”
480	You give off an air of mysteriousness that men find enviable and women find irresistible.
481	Literally the only “hiding place” that ever occurs to you is under the master’s bed.
482	What appears to be politeness and common decency is fueled by lust.
483	A simple misunderstanding in the afternoon leads to three untimely deaths in the evening.
484	A dragon has ruined your life.
485	Seriously you are obsessed with buns, they play a very big role in your life.
486	You've discovered an old document. Most likely a journal, but possibly a map or letters written by a dead family member.
487	You’re sad all the time, for no reason (the reason is later revealed to be Secret Gayness).
488	All the women you know have died in childbirth. All the children you know are orphans. You are an orphan.
489	You have trust issues, but not the kind where you don’t trust anyone; instead, you trust everyone, and way too easily.
490	An aging beauty of nearly thirty has pronounced you an original.
491	Your grandson wants to live his own life and it is ALL YOUR FAULT.
492	You explain metaphors at great length, yet your listeners still do not quite grasp them.
493	You are either brusque and indifferent or overly affectionate to dogs.
494	You appear extremely agitated.
495	As the house burns down around you, your elderly father reflects that fostering his enemy’s son was probably a mistake.
496	You are cold, and you are going to die. You find this faintly interesting.
497	The love of your life is either your childhood sweetheart or a man you met fifteen seconds ago.
498	As an infant, you were very nearly whisked away down a gutter while sitting in an umbrella during a rainstorm.
499	You are a woman with graying hair and you still have a sex drive, though you’d never call it that.
500	Your enemy is dead in the dust at your feet. Now you are finally free to respect him.

Side Note: It's nice working with source material that has a sensible gender ratio. Trying to find events in the Byzantium series with women in them who weren't named Eudoxia or Theodora took a while. Trying to find women in the Historia Francorum who weren't murderous crones or pious saints was a challenge.