The character you play in the game is called your 'persona'. You have three such personae on your account, and you can play them as differently as you please. All that is frowned upon is using one persona to collect treasure for another persona to score for, a process known as 'looby-looing' for reasons too arcane to discuss here!

Your persona has several attributes, as follows. The first two are chosen by you when you first start off a new persona:

• name
• sex
• strength
• dexterity
• stamina
• magic
• points

Initially, your strength, dexterity and stamina will total 150. On average, female personae start with a strength 10 less and a dexterity and stamina 5 more than do male personae, but otherwise there is no difference between the sexes. Your points are 0 to start with, but go up as you collect treasure, as explained later. When your points total passes certain threshholds, you go up a 'level', and your strength, dexterity and stamina are incremented by 10 points until they reach 100. Although strength and dexterity are normally otherwise static, your stamina drops as you accumulate injuries, and you need to sleep or quit for a while to recover it.

Magic also starts off at 0, and remains there until you perform a certain dangerous act, that of touching an object called the 'touchstone'. This has a fair chance of wiping out your persona, but the risk reduces as your level increases. It is guaranteed to kill novices! If you touch it and survive, your magic will be set to the same as your maximum stamina, and you can then cast spells (about which more later).