Question about the serving wench and lifepath requirements

Hello everyone.

In Burning Wheel - Gold Edition, on page 167, the Serving Wench lifepath has the following entry for traits:
Traits: 2 pts: Choose 1st trait: Extremely Bitter, Ugly, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Buxom”

What is the relevance of the “Choose 1st trait” part? My initial thought was that it meant you had to pick Extremely Bitter, but since picking the first listed trait is standard for lifepaths, I’m wondering if it means something else?

Secondly, I’ve got a question about lifepath requirements and traits during character creation. On page 83, under Requirements, the book states:
“Sometimes you’ll have to be of a certain age, or have a particular trait. You must meet the requirements before you take the path”

Can I make a character whose lifepath’s is Born Noble, and then pick Lord as my second lifepath, with the intention of eventually spending one of my trait points on buying the Your Lordship trait? Or do I have to start out Born Noble, then go into a lifepath that has a free trait point, that I can then spend on your Your Lordship, and THEN head into lord?

Thanks in advance for your help.

I believe it means you can choose any of those as your required trait.

if I don’t have the prerequisites for a LP, I don’t take it until I do. I’m reasonably certain that that is the purpose of the design, but I know some players do opt for your second alternative.

Thanks for the reply noclue.

Until I’ve got a reason to think differently, I’ll be going by your suggestion there. It makes sense to me, that would be point of what was written.

On the lifepath thing, I’m not entirely sure. I think, for now, I’ll rule that any lifepath trait requirements may be filled with points from anywhere in the character’s lifepaths, as long as she winds up with all her required traits taken at the end of character burning.

You don’t spend trait points until after you’ve picked your lifepaths (BWG pg. 89). So I think it has to be the second way. The first way would only make sense if you picked a lifepath, assigned the traits, picked another lifepath, assigned those traits… But that isn’t how traits are assigned.

That was what I worked with for my assumption initially. The problem I had was in the wording of the lifepath requirements, as mentioned in the first post, that seemed to imply that you had to meet the requirements to be able to take the lifepath.

So what I was thinking was you could not, for instance, go born noble -> lord, because you had no way of fulfilling the requirements for lord (knight or your lordship trait), before your character stepped onto said lifepath.

But as you correctly observe, you spend traits after chosing lifepaths, so I just failed to grasp the elegance of it.

Yeah, it is the second way.
However, for things like the Lord lifepath, I question the validity of teaching an eight year old all the things a Lord gets to learn before he is taught to read or write, but that’s the way we burn them.
And it’s the final character that matters to the game you play in, more so than how you burned them.