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The Hunt Begins – An Unwritten RPG Adventure

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“Simple. This was supposed to be simple,” Jacob thought, as he panted, near exhaustion. It had been, of course, but one-way traps were like that. Easy to walk into, hard to leave. Sue had set it off, of course. She always had to touch something.  No, don’t think about Sue. She was gone. Survive now, think later.
A door slid open behind him as he rested. Because with the D’ni it was always about thinking. When you stopped thinking, you died…
 
Meanwhile, in the Deep City, a small community of people slowly grows as “The Called” arrive at the Cleft near Carlsbad, California. As the populace grows, a dark thought becomes an obsession, and with it the will to recreate a violation of the D’ni way of life. The rebirth of the Hunter’s cult.

Scene:

An acquaintance of the party’s named Claudia Jones uncovers evidence, using survey information, indicating the possibility of a concealed chamber in a mausoleum under a D’ni noble’s house. The house is located in an unexplored section of the city across the glowing lake. Careful excavation reveals a puzzle room of colored light on a bas relief depicting playing children. She calls the players in to investigate with the promise of an undiscovered D’ni chamber. Aspects are marked using brackets such as this: [aspect].
 Claudia Jones (FP: 3)

Aspects:

  1. [Reluctant Anthropologist]
  2. [Agoraphobic]
  3. [Writer, Savant]
  4. [Reader, Influencer]
  5. [Strategic Thinker]

Skills: Great – Research, Good – Surveying, Good – Experiment, Fair – Deceit

The Search: Buried Secrets

On a small island where the wealthiest D’ni once lived, with large manor homes towering over the glowing waters of the lake, Claudia has made a discovery: an entry in a log detailing a request by a wealthy citizen to move the link to the Age of Gilder to a more protected area as the Fall began. There is a family name that she has cross-referenced to a manor home location using new survey information. Most of these homes are in ruins after all this time. This area has the least “reclamation” work done to it due to its distance from the new arrivals. Most of those who come out here are bottom-feeding looters looking to pick over bones long ago stripped clean. The majority of the new arrivals spend their time rebuilding more urban locations among the residences.  The area is located far away from the comfort of the group and shrouded in cold mists which rise from the lake in streamers of phantom blue and green light. The area feels [Foreboding] and [Damp].
Discovery of the lost passage can be achieved in several ways. Some of these are easier than others.
  1. Dig – Athletics vs. Great – each failure adds an additional one hour of backbreaking labor to the three hours required effort and gives the party the scene aspect [Exhausted] for the next scene.
  2. Survey vs. Average – create the advantage aspect [Precise Coordinates] which can be free-tagged to help with the Athletics or Intrusion rolls.
  3. Intrusion vs. Good – locate an entryway that is easier to reach, possibly by knocking out a weakened wall section.

The passage is dark and dust streams from the opening driven by the release of long held dead air. The breeze smells of old dust, rot and the sweet smell of books. Inside, a distant red glow flickers, inviting the intrepid to explore further within.

The Buried Chamber of Gildis:

The remains of a richly decorated hall lit by (red flickering fire marbles.?) The door is strong, hard stone and unlike the ruins surrounding it, shows no signs of age. A puzzle door is how ancient D’ni kept out the unwanted visitors. They are also how they tested and amused each other. The secret of entry was a bond shared between friends or a debt owed between rivals. The party has no such help and therefore must find the secret of the door themselves.

The Door is dark gray the same color as a stormy sky in winter. In a circle are 12 carved symbols that glow, burning white, when touched. All of the symbols must be touched in a particular order until the last. If the sequence is correct then the door slides silently open, if not then the light quietly fades.

(479,001,600 possible combinations, but D’ni never did anything random. Look for the hidden meaning.)

The buried chamber puzzle uses the deduction rules for its solution (Unwritten pg.136).
  1. Frame: How does the ancient vault open?
  2. Establish the participants
  3. Round 1-roll vs a difficulty of good
  4. Round 2 -roll vs result from round 1.
  5. Round 3-roll vs result from round 2.
  6. The Reveal.

The Reveal:

The door slides open to reveal an ornate chamber. Red flickering light from cracked fire marbles illuminates a book stand. The book stand resembles a small child holding a large open book over its head. It’s features straining to show the reader something, an expression of rapturous joy on its face. The book’s flickering linking panel displays a children’s playground. The discovery of a private book this far from the main paths of the Deep City is a important discovery by itself. The discovery of the lost world of Gilder has far reaching implications…

Gilder:

Theme – [Lost Childhood]
Aspects – [Long Forgotten Tragedy],[Buried Guilt and Hidden Crimes]
Written by an unknown genius of the art as a fun and safe place for children to vacation, much like Disneyland. Gilder emphasized education, puzzle solving, and exploration in a safe natural environment. It was staffed by natives, the caretakers, tasked with the care of the children. Now it is silent and scattered with bundles of rag and bone from the ancient dead. large and small, no one escaped their fate. There were no dangers in Gilder. In many ways, it was written to be boringly safe from the beginning. During the fall many families sought to hide their children here,away from harm. The bodies here didn’t die of the plague something attacked them and scattered their bones. An Age is marked using brackets and bold as [Gilder].

When the hunters came…

The fall was a turbulent time. Many fringe groups saw it as an opportunity to rise up. One such group were called, “The Hunters. ” They trained and worshiped in the park. the fall was interpreted as the realization of  prophecy . Their end time myth was enacted in Gilder.
The myth spoke of the great dying of the prey. From the dying would rise an apex predator. Who would rule as cities were devoured in a return to the natural order. The Hunters came through the book of Haldis with trained packs of Avian beasts. The Pack hunters found native in the Haldis jungles. Each hunter commanded a war pack of many, many dozens. The caretaker natives, most of whom were educators, were no match for the quickly expanding packs. Though they tried, most were slaughtered. A few caretakers escaped into the neighboring cities and a defense was rallied to contain the packs within the park. To this day the caretakers leave tokens and symbolic gifts around the walls of the park to atone for their failure to protect the children of the gods.
The pack rampage for weeks, but with little real effect. The hunters had failed to account for the plague, believing themselves immune. Several of their victims had been carriers. When the hunters died, the war packs turned on each other to eat or were slain by caretakers when they attempted to leave the park.

Areas of interest:

The zoo: filled with exotic animals from little-known ages, these beasts starved to death or kill each other.

The aquarium: once beautiful with examples of brightly colored fish and rare aquatic animals. It is now a brackish puddle more akin to a soup.

The library: exhibit books, dozens of linking books to small ages fitted with observation domes to allow visitors to watch creatures in their natural habitats. One book is central and ringed by the most bodies of adult size yet seen. Here is the stand for the linking book to Haldis (missing).

Locating the hidden Book to Haldis.

The book was taken from its shelf and hidden by a dying caretaker trapping the hunters. The Deep City return book is also missing.
Description: the corpses of six hunters and twice as many defenders, probably natives, lie here.
Notice:
Adequate= Scattered bones of victims and an unfamiliar species of huge avian
Fair= Area of intense combat at the book of [Haldis]
Good= Non humanoid bones in debris. A species of Ax beak. A pack hunting avian long extinct in the age of Earth.
Great= A smashed neck piece. A Hunter’s torque with strange gems. One shattered torque neck piece lies here where a custodian got lucky and smashed it before being torn apart by something large and beaked.
 Investigation:
Adequate = Evidence of cannibalization
Fair= Hunter bodies and smashed equipment, book stands and camping equipment.
Good= Evidence of plague in victims and hunters. Signs that the avian packs were abandoned to die here.
Great= Reconstruct the attack. Attack began at the book of [Haldis] and ends when the plague infects the hunters. The aftermath is the pack tearing itself apart.  Locked in the park with nothing left to eat it’s social structure collapsed into chaos. There are definite signs of the native caretakers killing stranglers after the D’ni are all dead.
Deduction:
  1. Frame- where is the linking books?
  2. Establish participants
  3. Round 1-roll vs a difficulty of fair
  4. Round 2 -roll vs result from round 1
  5. Round 3-roll vs result from round 2
  6. Reveal

The aviary: a large wrought-iron birdcage. Silent now, the ground is littered with little bones.

The park: square miles of park, now overgrown. Paths lead into and out of the village. A lake is located near the center of the park and fed by the river. The native flora and fauna have spent the centuries reclaiming the park. There is evidence of offerings being left at the wall as though the native people were trying to placate an angry God for some great failure.

The Draw bridge:  has 2 modes, 1 obvious and 1 hidden.

  1. A set of sliding crystals when set to a pattern reveals a linking book back to the library
    1. Frame: How does the Pattern “L” work?
    2. Establish the participants
    3. Round 1-roll vs a difficulty of good
    4. Round 2 -roll vs result from round 1.
    5. Round 3-roll vs result from round 2.
    6. The Reveal. A linking book back to the Deep City
  2. the sliding crystals can be set to a pattern found in the dark temple in Haldis (Pattern “H”). This lowers the drawbridge revealing a hidden nook under the bridge. A decoy book that looks like a book to [Gilder]. The small statue of a child holding a book up. But, this child isn’t in rapture its face is twisted with vicious glee and has small horns hidden in its hair. {Notice] vs good to detect. This links to the dark temple in a room without windows or doors, the Alter room

Haldis:

Theme – [Harsh Lessons in Caretaking]
Aspects – [Cannibal Cults],[Testing the  Fit]
Written for the genius of the Art that created [Gilder]. An apprentice was given the task of creating a reasonably “friendly” kid’s camp. A place of discovery and life lessons. Intended to give young adult D’ni a sense of responsibility and respect for the Ages they would be visiting as they entered D’ni culture and took their places as adults. Unfortunately, the apprentice was not of sound mind and a species of avian pack hunters was purposely included in the design. At first there were few issues, the D’ni lived apart from the avians. The inadvertent discovery of an ancient temple not found in the original text changed the relationship of the groups. The temple was in the deepest forest, deep in pack hunter territory. The pack hunter’s strange reverence for the temple and those who had lived there fueled the rebirt of a cannibal cult as D’ni with suspect goals moved in and began to assume the role of a lost priesthood.
The cult began indoctrinating like minded young D’ni and waited in the shadows preying on lone victims until the omens were right. The Fall started marking both the cults prophesied rise to power and their inevitable fall.

Areas of interest:

The Forest Glen: A beautiful place of tall grass and bright sun. Several stout stone buildings here provide shelter and comfort for the visitor. They are called “the barracks.”

The Lake: A bright blue fresh water lake. Small to medium sized fish can be seen swimming in it. A dock and a floating raft are provided for boaters and swimmers. No boats can be seen. The lake connects to the river.

The River: A slow moving river enters the lake on the opposite side. Down the river a days journey is the Forbidden Temple. Up river is another glen used for picnicking and camping. There are many simple camp sites visible both in the Glen and along the rivers edge.

The Forbidden Temple: Built by the original inhabitants of the Age, a race of human type that developed a taste for their neighbors. Early in their history they domesticated a large flightless avian predator and through selective breeding made them cunning and hungry for human flesh. These people easily dominated the region for hundreds of years, but over-hunting eventually turned them against each other. A priest class rose and through decree and divine inspiration devoured an entire generation of their own elders. With no guiding wisdom remaining the various factions decided the fault must lie with the other factions and so they too must be devoured. Before long, they are all killed and eaten leaving only a powerful species of pack predator with a hunger for human flesh. As a people, they vanish from history. A legacy is left behind in detailed temple art that describes the glory and power of the cult , but very little of its mistakes. The Pack training are shown in detail and the temples darkness calls to those of like mind. A D’ni centered version of the cult is born among the more decadent minded.. For decades, these D’ni hunters occupy and practice the rituals of the Devoured. At first, they limit their predation to the natives of the ages. Leaving trapped linking books around other ages and then hunting the unfortunates who find their way to Haldis. As they spiral into depravity, they build a secret linking trap into Gilder in the form of an elaborate Draw bridge puzzle. The D’ni clever enough to solve it will be the hunter’s greatest of prey.

Deduction: 5 orb puzzle in an old cannibal temple leads to a linking book back to [Gilder]
  1. Frame- how do I activate the orbs (Pattern “H”)
  2. Establish participants
  3. Round 1-roll vs superb = fact: orb colors correspond to ceiling mosaic.
    1. Success at a cost(SAC)= minor consequence
  4. Round 2 -roll vs result from round 1= fact: 5 panels match orb colors as they change.
    1. SAC:Player must hold exterior door closed as pack bird tries to get in.
  5. Round 3-roll vs result from round2=fact: panels accept the orbs and unlock door
    1. SAC:trapped in temple as a siren calls more birds. New challenge = mount orbs while restraining birds.

The Stones that Sing.

The hunters success is tied to a set of special crystals from another age. (The age of Stonesong (Unwritten Pg. 199): Research vs. good)
The stones resonate in tune with specific sounds, amplifying, altering,  and channeling the vibrations. These sounds were used to train the packs using ultra and infra sound.

Game terms:

Song topaz: allows performance(new skill) rolls to create advantages using sound.
  1. sonic blast – create advantage ,aspect [stunned]
  2. Infrasound- +2 provoke
Appearance: torque necklace with inset colored gems clear to bronze.

Scene: Avian Attack!

Research teams follow the players after they report their findings to Claudia. Claudia and several others begin an investigation of gilder. Use this to relay any info the players missed. It is during the debriefing that the chaos begins.
Challenge: contain the pack.
Information: the following aspects are in play. [undisciplined][panicked crowd]
Task1: attract predators away from researchers
Task2: protect panicking researchers
Task3: cage/ corral uncontrollable predators
This scene is about maintaining control of [Gilder]. All non panicking researchers have used relto books to escape. Those remaining have forgotten them, or lost them. Keep these people safe. A lone dark figure collects torques leaving damaged ones. Pack hunters run around and past this figure as though it is one of them. Attempts to confront the figure are menaced by pack hunters. If the players found a torque and turned it over to Claudia it was stolen in the deep city.
Scene cleanup/aftermath:
Depending on the outcome of the pack attack on gilder.
Options:
  1. Armed volunteers are brought to protect researchers.
  2. Full retreat to deep city with any loose books or equipment.
  3. Occupation , a permanent fort is created in the library. Open books to various research pods throughout th3 tree of possibilities. Researchers keep relto books on hand at all times.
  4. The gilder book in haldis is blocked behind wrought iron or removed.
Discoveries:
  1. All non broken torques have been stolen by unknown parties.
  2. Pack birds in attack were all young and inexperienced.
  3. The dark figure was wearing traditional dni h7nting garb. But no goggles, a bird mask instead.

scene: Rise of the Cannibals

chapter aspects: [Hidden cult],[Insidious presence]

A hidden cult has been preying on explorers and  restoration crews for weeks. What once seemed simple predation and accidents have taken a darker meaning. The Cult has decided to act on the discovery of gilder. Anyone could secretly be a cultist. The resident population of the deep city is tearing itself apart with paranoia. The New Seed was quick to attempt to capitalize on the situation until it is publicly discovered that they have been infiltrated by cultists. The discovery of several popular high profile victims results in a wave of Anti-New Seed sentiment. This backlash drives the New Seed membership into hiding among the ages. This is all according to the hunters’ plan.

Scene: New Seed runners

A very violent group of vigilantes begins rounding up suspected New Seed members on the grounds that they could be the killers. The vigilantes are planning to hold a trial followed by a down home hanging. Surprisingly, Claudia has overcome her agoraphobia enough to speak publicly against the New Seed. This further fans the conflict’s flames. A second camp of residents forms to support the New Seed. This group petitions the deep city’s most influential members, the players, for support. They ask them to step in before violence erupts.

events:

  1. Petitioners approach the party in an attempt to get them to stop the vigilantes. So far, no one has been killed, but they believe it is only a matter of time.
  2. A group of New Seed converts have been trapped in an old Deep City ghetto.
  3. The vigilantes are actively trying to flush them out. They are led by Claudia. Who has the best working knowledge of the deep city.
  4. The undecided inhabitants are watching to see who comes out on top before they pick a side.

Scene : The petition

New Seed supporters led by:

Simon Applegate (fp:2)

Aspects:

  1. [voice of reason, High School history teacher]
  2. [Inexperienced Negotiator]
  3. [How is this not exactly like High School]
  4. [Too old for this…]
  5. [Disciplinarian]

Skill:

Great – Empathy, Good – Will, Good – Experiment, Fair – Research

Petitioner mob (5 groups of 4)

5 x [],[],[],[] Skill: Rumble – Adequate

After the party’s actions in Gilder, most people living in the deep city have the opinion that they discovered Gilder and that makes the discovery of the cannibal cult their responsibility.  This belief also exempts them from being members of the cannibal cult and makes them the most apparently trustworthy public figures. They are member’s of a very tiny group of trusted folk.

Data points for the petitioners:

  1. The newest victims were all New Seed members in long standing. Simon new some of them personally.
  2. The discovery of trhe bodies was made by persons unkown and revealed initially to only anti- newseed factions.
  3. There has been no proper inquiry.
  4. Simon and several others are convinced that the murders were staged.
  5. Simon wants the party to investigate as impartial agents of the community. He believes this will work for both sides as Claudia is a friend of the party’s

Scene: – In the Ghetto

Vigilantes led by

Dorian Crowell (fp:2)

Aspects:

  1. [Vigilant hunter of evil]
  2. [Not a reasonable person]
  3. [Claudia is my guide]
  4. [Revenge for Ramon]
  5. [n/a]

Skill: Great – Provoke , Good – research , Good – Deceit , Fair – empathy

Vigilante mobs (5 groups of 5)

5 x [],[],[],[],[] Skill: Riot – Adequate

Dorian personally knew some of the victims. He was a staunch supporter of the New Seed until his very close personal friend , Ramon was eaten. Now his grief has taken on a form of murderous righteousness. A very bad combination of traits complemented by his ability to manipulate people.

Data Points for vigilantes:

  1. This is none of the party’s business. He’s only cleaning up the mess they and their explorer friends created.
  2. He feels the people in the ghetto stronghold may have personally snacked on Ramon and this sickens him.
  3. Claudia personally investigated this group and they were all in or near the part of the deep city where Ramon died. <she says>
  4. His group is bigger then theirs.

Scene: The Unaligned

  1. Keep track of unused or permanent aspects created in these confrontations. These can be applied to convincing a group of undecided watchers to join one side or the other.
  2. After the confrontations word will spread . The actions of the undecided will be based on these aspects and outcomes.
  3. Use a group roll to decide the final outcome of the se scenes. Players may use social skills to influence the outcome further.
  4. Pick a player or roll for them. The roll is a contest for control of the undecided.
  5. Roll versus Good with no skill modifiers. Use fate points or free tags on preexisting aspects.

Outcomes:

Success – creates a session aspect  [Friendly populace]

Failure – creates an aspect [Hostile Populace]

[Friendly populace]

Invoke – locate a handy person who can help out.

Compel – Responsibility for the population

[Hostile populace]

Invoke – For distractions or create advantages with provoke

Compel – Angry mob complete with pitch forks and torches

 

Chapter: New Seed Panspermia

Chapter Aspect [Panic of the ages],[New seed pariahs], [Hidden Cultists]

Scene: The Festering Quiet

The quiet is broken by the sounds of panic linking arrivals. Wounded and fleeing refugees arrive in the dozens from “relto” havens. Refugees quickly spread word of hunter packs striking at a number of New Seed encampments throughout the ages at strong holds they thought secure. Divisions and arguments flair up as , again, two sides form. One group wants to organize and attack the hunters. The other wants to leave the New Seed to their fate.

Dorian begins fanning the flames using provoke  to create barriers to action.

aspects: [What have they done for us?], [They are murdering cannibals]

(If Dorian was taken out in an earlier exchange his replacement is a stubborn old woman called “Dar”. Dar has the same skills as Dorian.)

Claudia will tag her aspect [reluctant anthropologist] to increase the barrier by +2

[Hostile populace] would add an additional +2

[Friendly populace] would reduce the difficulty by 2

Outcomes:

The hunters hunted: A popular uprising organizes to drive off the hunters from a entrenched New Seed encampment of New Avalon. Players can create scene aspects (1/each) to prepare to break the hunter’s siege on New Avalon.

Or,

Dorian’s Last stand: Dorian has convinced the populace to sit idle. The players may act independently or join in barricading the Deep City for a prolonged siege.

Dorian and Claudia seal access to the surface by disabling the old lift in the Shaft. A series of explosions seal the well known access routes to the surface cutting off the Deep City.

Scene: Siege

 Claudia Jones (FP: 3) – Cannibal Leader

Aspects:

  1. [Cannibal Anthropologist]
  2. [Xenophobic]
  3. [Writer, Savant]
  4. [Reader, Converter]
  5. [Strategic Thinker]

Skill: Great – Research, Good – Surveying, Good – Experiment, Fair – Deceit

Dorian Crowell (fp:2) – Cannibal Beast Handler

Aspects:

  1. [Vigilant hunter of prey]
  2. [Not a reasonable person]
  3. [Claudia is my guide]
  4. [Revenge on the Called]
  5. [Cult Beast Handler]

Skill: Great – Provoke , Good – research , Good – Deceit , Fair – empathy

Where the siege takes place is dependant on the successes or failures of the players. The actual events are unchanged.

  1. Ambush – Hunter packs link into positions behind the players. Using linking books previously written to these positions.  (notice vs great, Investigate vs good: They have a skilled writer.)
  2. Challenge 1 – Rally the defenders (Dangerous action)
    1. Drive off Isolated predators
    2. Barricade overrun sections
    3. Organize an offense
  3. Challenge 2 -Betrayal! Two dark figures join the hunters as leadership. Dorian and Claudia, dressed in traditional D’ni hunting garb of red and black begin stalking the battlefield gathering and directing packs dispersed in Challenge 1 Dorian is using the stolen sonic necklace to stun isolated pockets of defenders to allow packs to overwhelm them.
    1. Neutralized the sonic effects of the necklace
    2. Separate Dorian and Claudia from the packs.
    3. Capture Dorian and Claudia: They will be resisting by creating counter advantages

Scene: Aftermath

Fires burn out of control and the cries of the wounded fill the night. Smoke reduced visibility as isolated members of the broken packs run full speed trying desperately to escape.

Aspects: [Smokey Haze],[High speed pack hunter crashes]

Tasks:

  1. Fires to fight: Athletics (or anything else a player thinks up) vs good
  2. wounded to great: Medicine vs
  3. treat any wounded players (if any): Medicine

Scene: Clean up

The survivors will call a gathering to determine the fates of the hunters and in particular the fates of Dorian and Claudia.

Dorian will describe his becoming a cannibal and joining the cult after watching his love being devoured.

Claudia will reveal that she has been a cult member since her arrival to the Deep City. She read certain rare records describing the cults history and became infected with the idea of predation. She admits to carefully guiding explorers into dangerous trapped areas and then devouring these unfortunates. When she discovered the location to the book of Gilder, she knew it contained the last link to [Haldis]. She had planned to explore it after the players had been killed. When they failed to die, She was forced to “overcome” her agoraphobia to move her plans along. She stole the Control Torques.

Fallout from this adventure:

  1. New Seed camps are everywhere. Without their prophet new leaders are rising from their ranks. Some want only the best but others are charlatans out to improve their personal standing.
  2. A law enforcement task force is discussed. Does it grow built around the players?
  3. Hunter packs without guidance become an ongoing issue throughout the ages.
  4. Diplomatic problems are being caused by rogue hunters who have returned to preying on native populations.
  5. The next episode, The King in Night…..

 

I hope you enjoyed this. It was originally intended to be a four hour session in a duo I had with my wife. We are huge fans of Cyan and the Unwritten rpg .

If you find my typos , have questions or requests for clarification leave them in the comments, please. I’ll get to them eventually.

And Thanks for reading this.

The Lodger

 

 

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Unwritten the RPG

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Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of Myst and Beyond

Ancient_glyphs.jpg

Glyphs on black tablet

Unwritten, the long-awaited RPG based on the popular computer game by Cyan Inc., is the product of a November 2015 Kickstarter campaign that raised nearly $36,000. It was produced with the cooperation of Cyan and includes data from the Uru MMO. The url is here: Unwritten

The Book:

I have the PDF version. The PDF is well put together with art from the Myst game as well as from other sources. An abridged version of the history of the Myst games is included to ground a GM in the game’s universe. This material is drawn from the novels and from the canon of Myst itself. The basics are: a splinter group from an ancient species of humanity from a parallel dimension with a unique understanding of dimensional physics goes into hiding beneath New Mexico. There they continue to build and refine their core cultural values. They are a society based on puzzles and plenty, and fueled by access to the multiverse via a specialized knowledge of “the Art of Writing.” This civilization flourished and then died in an act of petty tyranny at the beginning of the 19th century. Years later their caverns are rediscovered by their inheritors, modern humanity.

The System:

The system is Fate Core with some minor system tweaks. The attack actions and stress bars have been removed to de-emphasize violence because combat wasn’t the focus of the Myst games. Puzzles and discovery are the primary obstacles of Myst, and to facilitate them some interesting mechanics have been added. In particular, I found the deduction and journey mechanics most interesting. Journey mechanics are used at character milestones to represent the “off screen” work the players have been pursuing. Things like “Writing” new ages or discovering rare tech are handled using journey rules. Deduction mechanics provide setting course corrections usable by GMs to create player-established facts in the game setting. This mechanic personalizes the scenario or scene based on player character skills.

I’ve included some example Ages below. Feel free to include them in your game if you desire. I created these for a longer campaign I ran for my wife.

Example Ages:

Gilder: The Children’s Age

Aspects: [Lost Childhood], [Long Forgotten Tragedy], [Buried Guilt and Hidden Crimes]

Written as a fun and safe place for D’ni children to vacation, much like Disneyland. Gilder emphasized education, puzzle solving, and exploration, the hallmarks of D’ni culture. It was staffed by natives tasked with care of the children. Now, it is silent. The scattered remains of the ancient dead, large and small, litter the park. There were no dangers in Gilder. Gilder was written to be boringly safe from the beginning. There were friendly natives and few predators. During the Fall, many families sought to hide their children here away from harm. The majority of dead here didn’t die of the plague. They were massacred in the Hunters’ attack.

Areas of interest:

The Zoo: once filled with exotic animals from little-known Ages, these beasts have starved to death or killed each other.

The Aquarium: once beautiful with examples of brightly colored fish and rare aquatic animals. It is now a brackish, evil-smelling puddle more akin to soup.

The Library: exhibit books, dozens of linking books to small Ages fitted with observation domes to allow visitors to watch creatures in their natural habitats. One book is central and ringed by the most adult bodies yet seen. Here stands the Book of Haldis.

The Aviary: a large wrought iron bird cage. Silent now, the floor is littered with little bones.

The Park: square miles of park, now overgrown. Paths lead into and out of the village. A lake, located near the center of the park, is connected to a river. The native flora and fauna have reclaimed the park.

History:

Then there came the Hunters…

The Fall was a turbulent time. Many D’ni fringe groups saw it as a time to rise up. One such group was called the “Hunters.” They trained and worshiped in the park in secret. They interpreted the Fall as the realization of a prophecy. Their end time myth was enacted in Gilder.

The prophecy spoke of a great dying of the prey, from which would rise an apex predator. This predator would rule as cities were devoured by a return to nature once all foreign influences were expunged.

They attacked through the Book of Haldis with trained packs of war beasts found native in the Haldis jungles. Each hunter commanded a war pack of many dozens. The caretaker natives, most of whom were educators, were no match for the quickly expanding packs. Though they tried bravely, they were slaughtered. A few managed to escape to neighboring cities and a defense was rallied to contain the packs within the walls of the park.

The packs rampaged for weeks, but with little real effect. The Hunters had failed to account for the plague, believing themselves immune. Several of their victims had been carriers. When the Hunters died, the war packs turned on each other. Those that weren’t killed and eaten by their fellows were slain by vigilant caretakers guarding the walls. The natives of the current day still leave ritual offerings along the park’s exterior wall as if to placate angry gods for the failures of their ancestors.

 

Haldis: The Age of Hard Lessons

Aspects: [Harsh Lessons in Caretaking], [Cannibal Cult], [Testing The Fit]

This Age was written for the creator of Gilder. An apprentice was given the task of creating a “reasonably” forgiving environment for older children in which to learn and bond, a place of discovery and life lessons. It was intended to teach young D’ni respect for the Ages they would be visiting as they entered D’ni culture and took their place within the Ages to which they were assigned.

Unfortunately, the apprentice was not of sound mind. A species of cunning pack predator was included, and soon after, several ancient temples from an extinct native population were discovered. At first there were only minor issues between D’ni visitors and the wild packs. The inadvertent discovery of an old temple frequented by the packs fueled the rebirth of an ancient native cannibal cult. No records exist documenting how this happened. The cult recruited like-minded individuals from the D’ni youth camping in the settled areas. The cult waited for decades, claiming the occasional victim, until the moment was right. The Fall started and abruptly ended their rise to power.

Areas of interest:

The Forest Glen: a beautiful place of tall grass and bright sun. Several stout stone buildings provide shelter and comfort for the visitor. The buildings have the D’ni word for “barracks” carved into them. There are no bodies from the Fall here.

The Lake: a bright blue freshwater lake. Small to medium-sized silver fish can be seen swimming in it. A dock and a floating raft are provided for boaters and swimmers. No boats can be seen. The lake connects to the river.

The River: A slow-moving river enters the lake and leaves on the opposite side. Down the river a day’s journey is the Temple. Up river is another glen used for picnicking and camping. Many prepared campsites of stone are overgrown but still usable.

The Temple: built by the original inhabitants, a race of human type that developed a taste for their neighbors. Early in their history they domesticated a large flightless avian predator and through selective breeding made them cunning and hungry for human flesh. These people easily dominated the region for hundreds of years, but over-hunting turned them on one another. A priest class rose and through divine decree devoured an entire generation of their own elders. With no guiding wisdom the remaining factions turned on each other. Before long there were only a few survivors left. They died when the large packs could no longer be controlled. As a people they vanished into history. The temple somehow calls to unstable D’ni and a new cult rises in the ruins of the old. The temple is occupied for decades before the Fall. Initially the newly reborn cult quietly brings in book world native people for ritual feasts celebrating D’ni superiority. But, before long they begin culling the “weak” from their own people using a carefully designed trap.

The Exit Book: a linking book with an elaborately gem-decorated stand. Located in the forest glen, passage to the book is blocked by a clever drawbridge designed to prevent pack predators from using the book. A D’ni puzzle must be solved to lower the bridge and reveal the book. An arrangement of crystals locks the bridge in place. Arrange them into a pattern found in the placement of the barracks, and a drawbridge lowers, revealing a linking book. This book returns the user to Gilder. Arrange the crystals into a pattern found in the temple (a semblance of a pack hunter) and the drawbridge lowers, but a decoy book is revealed. This book takes the user to a small dimly lit room without windows or doors, where red crystals light another linking book that looks identical to the book to Gilder. This book sends the user to a holding cell beneath the Temple from which no one has returned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diaspora: Platoon Combat

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Greetings from the sunset world.

Long time no chat. But worry not, development continues carefully, protected by layers of secrecy so deep and black in nature that, dear reader, for your own safety I cannot reveal anything. But having said that, against my better judgment, I reveal the elite mobile infantry unit: Incursion Unit November – Jandras’ Junkers.

Created for a nasty urban insurgency, the Gray Wolf ‘R’ series war strider was intended for drop into occupied zones, where its technological superiority and high mobility could be used for lightning strikes against enemy concentrations while avoiding roads and improvised explosives. November Unit has since gone rogue and now sells their services to the highest bidder.

4 squad members: Jer, Miki, Zendra, Vim; 1 fp each

Gray Wolf strider Series R

Mobile MEK Platform

Mobile Infantry Unit

4ap Lasers

1 right arm neural linked chain gun

1 left arm combat chain saw

Morale 2: OO

Move 4

T2

Skills: Direct fire 4, H-to-H 1, Movement(3)4, Veteran 2

Stunts: Cavalry-light (+1 movement), Agile, Scout

Aspect: Neural Linked Chain gun, Out-of-ammo

Leader: Jandras, 2 fp

Gray Wolf strider Series R1

Mobile MEK Platform – Leader1

Mobile Infantry Unit

4ap Lasers

1 right arm neural linked chain gun

1 left arm shoulder mount AA missile rack

Leader unit – 2 actions

Morale 2+2: OOOO

Move 4

T2

Skills: Direct fire 4, Anti-aircraft 1, Movement(3)4, Veteran 2

Stunts: Cavalry-light (+1 movement), Agile, Scout, Logistics Genius

Aspect: Neural Linked Chain gun, Agility Turbines, Out-of-ammo

As mercenaries they are forced to rely on their employers to provide battlefield support for signals warfare and retooling. Several times this “help” has fallen though. Jandras has earned a reputation for getting his troops through the roughest of scrapes. His current squad are ruthless slackers who despite their extreme laziness in camp are a by-the-book band of fanatical vets in the field. They are dedicated to closing a contract neatly and efficiently, so they can return to their boozing and carousing.

Spirit of the Century: Episode 8

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So a little hiatus, now over. It appears that there won’t be a Dresden files or Legends of Anglerre in the near term. So to fill some space while I work on this little issue.

Behold issue 8. In this episode:

MM = Michael Mason
UJ=Union Jane
CN=Commander North (NPC)

MM had a ship built (which he named Red Rose). The engineer (who made and sold the ship to MM) is Captain North. His pilot and constant compaion is Ticonderoga Rex (“Ty,” a 220-lb giant beaver, because why not?). MM was accompanied in the ship by the Avian princess Avcoria, who’s in love with him. UJ has bonded with the worm ship, & her passengers included Jessie, Joe Longshanks & Noh Avcor (the Avian captain of the guard). In flying the ship, some bio-appendage-thingy inserted itself into UJ’s back. (It eventually disconnected, but it was fairly gross.) CN explained to MM how he found Ty frozen in a block of ice in the Yukon & how they fought & couldn’t defeat each other so they decided to be allies. MM who now is a gunmaker, gunfighter, head of a gun company & has his own handmade pistol called the Ebony Flame, which is partly made of an alien material found in a meteorite & was especially good for slaying demons. Which MM had recently discovered that he was actually a hereditary demon slayer. (This player would eventually adopt every comic book character as he saw their movies. batman and Ironman had just come out, i think) was very interested in CN’s fusion gun, but alas, one has to be a Mad Scientist to use & make it. (Because when toying with fusion one must be MAD!).
At the start of adventure the party was heading to Stratospheria, the homeworld of the serpent people, a set of amber spheres. [note: Stratospheria is inside Hearthspace, along with Ava (the avian planet). Hearthspace is a giant sphere with air inside it.) Noh, who was trusted by the serpent people, was there to advise. He said that we had to talk to the serpent king about Dr Jin’s attack from Episode 7. We flew over to Stratospheria, but we weren’t allowed to land. The Serpent People didn’t want a worm ship near them. Instead they sent out 3 people (one was called the Emissary, another was the king’s daughter Envidris & her bodyguard Tephyria [OOC: sister of the glorious Tephys!]) on dragon creatures to meet with us. We docked our ships & met them in the Red Rose. They said we came at a bad time because the king was sick. We weren’t convincing them of our good intentions until UJ asked if they’d heard of Dr J, at which Envidris looked amused and the other two were taken aback. We told them we were after Dr J, and they eventually decided to let us meet the king. They allowed only MM, UJ, Avcoria & Noh to go. Noh apparently remained with the king [see below]. (They forgot about him after they headed off for the catacombs,) [also see below]. We rode off on dragonback & got attacked by razorwings like the ones in Episode 7. Eventually one retreated & the rest were killed. MM noticed during the fight that there was a little floating orb thing with a demonic aura that seemed to have something to do with the razorwings. He shot at it; eventually it went away (super guns do not compensate for poor dice rolls.). There were a lot of warriors protecting the king, but it seemed that there were also a lot missing; there were spaces in their ranks. The king was a small, old, hurt serpent guy in a bed. He told us Jin attacked him and his guards, and stole his scepter, which is the only key to Stratospheria’s catacombs. UJ asked if he’d be all right. He said he was going to be reborn in a new body (earlier Noh mentioned that death isn’t the same for serpent people as for humans & Avians.) The king dispatched Envidris and the royal huntsman Telys (who had a cool black-horned bow) to accompany us to the catacombs. Telys had been there before, but people avoided the place as a rule. We flew over on dragons. Telys knew of a secret entrance to the sphere containing the catacombs, which also housed a prison. The dragons had a perch outside the entrance. We entered a jungle that was silent except for ambient animal sounds. The prisoners were regressed serpent people who had mentally and physically devolved into wild reptoids. We had to look out for them, because they were dangerous and hunted in packs. We walked for a long time without incident, then MM detected a humanoid figure following us in the trees. Telys was worried because the prisoners normally fought in packs andif we were going to be attacked, we should have been attacked by then. MM shot at him, missed, then the creature ran and MM shot at him again and knocked him over. He turned out to be a prisoner, an 8-ft-tall heavily armored (as opposed to finely scaled like the normal serpent people) serpent guy. It turned out that this guy was intelligent and could understand us. MM convinced him to tell us what he was up to. He said (in crude English) that he was following us because he saw that we were going towards the catacombs and he wanted to kill us because “two moons ago” a guy matching Jin’s description and some minions attacked him and his pack mates killing them.  He wanted revenge. MM convinced him to help us, and he came along. UJ introduced herself and asked his name, which translated as something like “Stalker Who Kills Big Things”-So we decided to call him Stalker for short. Telys said he seemed to be un-regressing. We pressed on and eventually found the site of the battle Stalker referred to. There were 2 cairns where he had buried his packmates. It had been a 3-on-3 fight and only S & J had survived, so we surmised that S was a bad-ass, and we were glad to have him on our side. T healed his gunshot injury. Stalker called the catacombs a “bad place.” We entered and the place was heavily furnished with serpent people bones. MM expressed surprise, and T explained that because of the fact that the serpent people have a ritual that transfers their consciousnesses into new, vat-grown bodies, they didn’t place an immense significance on remains, since technically serpent people don’t die. In rare circumstances it’s possible for one of them to die (for example, Sethys, a statue of whom J had stolen in the last adventure.) We had to go down a steep stairway with no railing that had some steps that we found out would unexpectedly retract out from under you. (I love that old trick.) We managed not to fall, but at the bottom we found the corpses of those who apparently had fallen. There were regressed lizardman corpses, but there were also (at least) the fresh corpse of a regular lizard guy & 6 corpses that looked exactly like Jin. MM said he was “dumbfounded” by that last part. Eventually E revealed that she had a map, so we could follow her. (Isn’t that convenient? Suckers.) MM noticed that she was noting fresh carve marks on the walls. It was as if someone put them there to guide her, but I didn’t get it. MM got suspicious and wanted to see the map. She wouldn’t let him, but eventually handed it over. While we were looking at it we got attacked by 8 or so couch-sized bladed-limbed insects who hacked UJ good because only MM noticed beforehand that they were coming (off the ceiling, I believe.) After a nasty fight where it was discovered that the creatures could produce at will a blinding glow so intense that it could make you see your bones thru your skin, we killed them all. Oh yeah, near/at the beginning it turned out that E had summoned the creatures, and MM shot her and nearly took off one of her legs. At the end of the fight she was trying to get away. MM threatened her, getting her to stop and tell what she was up to. She said she was a clone of the actual Envidris, who was being held captive by J, & that she was a servant of his and meant to lead us to him. She mentioned that if she failed, J would “turn her off.” MM managed to convince her that she didn’t have to be “turned off” & that she could live a free life if she helped us (lucky luck roll that.). She agreed. She told us a word in Chinese (an approximation of which sounded kind of like a surprised cat & cracked MM up) that would get the insects to stop attacking. She said she’d wait for us in the main chamber; if we succeeded she’d come with us and if we failed she’d detonate bombs in the tunnels to trap J. We entered the place where Jin was working. He had a black octagonal object in one hand and was standing near a mummy (presumably Sethys.) He had with him some avian people, some reptile people,some of the big insects and 40 more duplicates of himself. Also the real E was there, inside a cage that was hanging by a chain over a noxious-smelling pit. She looked sick from the fumes. The chain’s other end was attached to a huge dinosaur that was straining to hold it up. Jin tried to get us to join him, saying he needed good lieutenants and we could rule parts of Earth with him, although we’d owe him allegiance. He also threatened to kill the princess if we didn’t comply. After MM said he’d be crazy to turn that down, he did, and shot the octagon out of J’s hand, causing Jin to scramble for it. His minions headed for us. MM managed to grab the octagon (which was the Fist of the Heavens that had belonged to Sethys.) Jin pulled out a chainsaw and said he’d cut the chain of the princess’ cage if MM didn’t give him the Fist (Spirit of the Century for the win! I wish I could convey the look of disbelief on MM’s face when Jin whiped out his chainsaw). UJ had Stalker throw her at Jin, and she knocked J over. MM then threw the Fist into the pit. Stunningly, J jumped in after it. Turned out he had a sort of jetpack with wings. MM shot one of the wings off, causing J to fall and get melted or something, leaving only bones. But not before Jin pulled out a device, pointed it at MM and clicked a button on it (this turned out to be bombs to destroy the catacombs; see below). The dinosaur was thoroughly spooked, but UJ managed to calm it down (with Survival skill roll of ++++) She climbed on it and shimmied along the chain to see how to open the cage, since about now some dull explosions started sounding and we thought it would be a good idea to leave. The cage door was secured with a bent bar of metal. MM had the idea for UJ to make the cage swing away from the pit so he could shoot the chain. He did it, but I rolled really badly & UJ ended up (somehow, I don’t remember exactly) dangling inside the pit while holding on to the remains of the chain that were still secured to the dinosaur. The dinosaur bolted, pulling her out. She used the word to stop the insects, and they stopped their attack. (Which was really funny because they had completly forgotten they could call off some of the beasts until that moment.) The clones thought it would be best to leave, I think after MM Rapported them into joining us, or at least into not caring about killing us anymore. Everyone except for maybe the insects escaped the blowing up of the catacombs. Oh yes, I forgot that all through the adventure MM had bottomless champagne that Avcoria was helping him drink and serve (he had the Aspect “Never spills his drink”) He had earlier caused I think the Emissary to regard us more favorably by giving him champagne. UJ had an entire bottle and more; at one point saying, “If I’m going to die, I might as well die drunk.” T said something like “I guess we’re not going to be burying people there anymore.” Back at the king’s residence, the king had acquired his new, young body. Stalker got robes and was accepted into normal serpent people society, because he was unregressing back to being civilized, so to speak. The king banished the clone Envidris to live with the avians, saying he already had one daughter who was trouble. The Jin clones decided to accept MM’s offer of having them work for him as gunsmiths (Hahaha Sucker.), on account of they’d only been alive for a month & needed time to “grow.” , MM married Avcoria and agreed to foster the young prince. (Ever had a player so smitten with an NPC that he married them? Until now, me neither.) Captain Noh, Ty, Jessie & Joe were okay while they’d had to stay in the ship[s], although Captain Noh was disappointed to miss the fighting.

The Dresden Files

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Hello Lodgers,

August is here and it’s record-breaking cool here. I took a slight break to read up on The Dresden Files by Evil Hat Productions.

Technically this isn’t a review. Oh, I could go on and on about the books and their appearance. (Gorgeous.) Or, I could mention the price. (Reasonable but ouch.) The layout is clean and so on. But, I imagine that these things have been noted numerous times elsewhere.

Instead I will travel into uncharted waters: experiments in system and exploration of the outer range of what can be. Some of which, hopefully, will be of interest to those looking for inspiration.

The rules lay out some “templates” for characterization, all of which are taken from the series of books from which the game takes its name.

It is implicit in the text that these templates are guidelines. While these templates do speed up character creation, the section on powers and stunts is clearly filled with abilities not intended for use with many of these templates. Many are intended for the creation of unique character types, both player and non-player.

Here is where I come in. What follows is a series of PCs and NPCs for use in my campaign. I freely admit that I departed from the world building slightly.

Welcome to the Labrador Coast http://www.tarabryan.com/lamour/index.html, http://www.ourlabrador.ca/member.php?id=46

A complex political landscape of both mortal and supernatural influences. The Labrador Coast is largely a collection of small fishing villages connected by waterways, and plied by aging barges and water taxis piloted by French-speaking descendants of the native Mikmaq peoples and the European fishermen.

L’Anse Amour

Centuries ago the first humans came to a small cove and buried a child. Something old resides there. Old even then, it made a pact with these travelers: peace and protection in exchange for their cooperation in some ancient, little understood, task. Thus was the first of the Mad Blades created to act as a supernatural sheriff. That Which Sleeps empowered its agent with a blade of whispering madness as their symbol of office.

There is a price to take up the Mad Blade. Those who drowned in the cove are given The Choice. They may take up the Blade and live, or pass on to their final reward. But those who take up the Blade are Its servants and they are doomed. There will be no reward for them, no promised afterlife. They will remain and sleep with the creature at the bottom of the cove. Forever their souls will be kept in a crude stone urn and their voices will be added to the mad whispers of the blade until the Mikmaq Armageddon is achieved at the end of the world and all things.

The current Mad Blade: Mike Sontag

High Concept: Wielder of the Mad Blade

Trouble: Doomed and he knows it

Phase 1 : Born oceangoing trailer trash

Phase 2 : Gambling is in my blood. My blood is on the floor?

Phase 3 : Bargains – Time to stop treading water

Mike made a terrible mistake. An illegal offshore gambling operation decides to write off his debt by drowning him and making off with his sister. That Which Sleeps offers him The Choice.

Phase 4 : Tunnel duelist

Trouble with rebel Boglins at the Gnomish Collective results in Mike dueling a Boglin work boss.

Phase 5 : No time for rules

As the representative of That Which Sleeps, Mike must negotiate a peace between the Eagle people and a human settlement. Mike is forced to break the peace when he discovers a black court vampire destabilizing the area, while his new friend Drale, Prince of Thunder, struggles to hold back his people from a murderous rampage.

Stunts:

Marked by Power (-1)

The Shadowed Gladius (+1)

Cloak of Shadow (-1)

Inhuman Strength (-2)

Supernatural Recovery (-4)

The Catch: Bright Sunlight (+3)

Refresh 4 remain from 8

There are several power players in the area. All of them are delicately balanced against each other. Each of them plays some mysterious part in That Which Sleeps’ plans. Of particular interest to the conspiracy theorist is the large number of rare werecreatures to be found living around the lake of That Which Sleeps.

These are the groups:

  1. Thunder’s Aerie – The descendants of were eagles. Once each generation, a prince is born with the powers of the Thunderbird. This youth is then raised to lead the band’s war parties. All day-to-day decisions are made by a council of elders.
  2. Spider Clan – Were wolf spiders, arguably the most powerful of factions. They are also the least organized. A coalition of family heads (male and female) leads the clan. Spider Clan places great importance on the safety and well-being of their mortal neighbors. Next to the Lich, they are the most active in hunting vampire threats.
  3. Abbey of St. Valentine – A Christian-based cult. The abbey takes in young women on a volunteer basis, usually from poor families. These girls must be extraordinary young women to be accepted. They then spend a year of toil for the abbey before they are inducted into the inner mysteries of the order. The ritual involves the ingestion of a very rare honey. At that point the young woman becomes a worker for the queen of the colony. The Queen is a particularly powerful were wasp. When the colony has grown large enough, the queen will choose her most promising worker and make a queen of her before sending her out into the world to start a new colony elsewhere.
  4. Gnome Collective – A freehold of gnome misfits from the isle of Jamaica. They call the tunnels beneath several human towns home. They run the Gnome Bazaar. The Gnome Militias protect their territories from the influences of Summer and Winter as well as anything that would prey on the human populace. There is a strange connection between the Gnome Collective and the Erl King in the form of Militia Hunter teams.
  5. The Lich – On the furthermost north island is a large, comfortably appointed mansion. The creatures within pose as eclectic scholars entertaining visitors from around the world with discussions of philosophy. These are the undying servants of the Lich, a wizard of ancient origin. The Lich is a freehold lord and thus governed by the accords. The White council takes a dim view of this creature but has more pressing matters to deal with. Perhaps one day, they will send a team to destroy it, but currently it is far too useful as an ally. It has a terrifying hatred of vampires. It has sent aid to several beleaguered warden teams in the form of mage hunters, a form of undead it creates from volunteers who have taken up “The Debt.”

Example characters:

Drale, Were Eagle Prince

High Concept: Were Eagle, Prince of Storms

Trouble: Noblesse Oblige

Phase 1 : The young rain caller

Phase 2 : Run! Logger scum!

Phase 3 : Thunder Bird Descendant

Drale learns to lead his people and to dislike loggers.

Phase 4 : Mike story: Storm’s Unquenchable Fury

Rescuing a swimmer leads to a fight on an oceangoing casino.

Phase 5 : Haley’s story: Why did it have to be underground?

Drale learns he has an inherited fear of being underground as he assists Haley in rescuing some children from smugglers.

Stunts:

Beast Change (-1) Really Big Eagle

Human Form (+1)

Claws (-1)

Wings (-1)

Modular Abilities (-4) (choose one at a time: Huge, Diminutive, Breathe Lightning, Inhuman Strength, Toughness, or Recovery)

Echoes of the Beast (-1) (Vision)

Refresh 1 remain from 8

Human                                                                                Bird

Superb: Presence, Might                                                   Superb: Fists, Athletics

Great: Alertness, Discipline                                         Great: Alertness, Weapons

Good: Endurance, Athletics                                         Good: Might, Discipline

Fair: Fists, Stealth                                                              Fair: Presence, Stealth

Average: Weapons, Intimidation                                Average: Endurance, Intimidation

Spider Clan Hunter (Were Spider Master Hunter)

High Concept: Were Wolf Spider, Clan Hunter

Trouble: Strange Family

Phase 1 : Back Woods Scholar

Phase 2 : 1st to College

Phase 3 : Feuding with the Queen Bee

Phase 4 : Night Stalker for the Eagle Prince

Phase 5 : Tunnel Homes

Stunts:

Beast Change (-1) Huge Wolf Spider

Human Form (+1)

Fangs (-2) [Poisoned]

Spider Climb (-1)

Supernatural Toughness (-4)

Catch (Obsidian Weapons) (+3 Common, research)

Refresh 3 remain from 8

Human                                                    Spider

Superb: Survival, Stealth                Superb: Fists, Endurance

Great: Alertness, Guns                     Great: Alertness, Athletics

Good: Intimidation, Fists                Good: Intimidation, Stealth

Fair: Athletics, Discipline                Fair: Discipline, Survival

Average: Driving, Endurance        Average: Driving, Guns

The Abbess (Were Wasp)

High Concept: Were Wasp Queen

Trouble: Territorial Matriarchy

Phase 1 : Abbey Obligations

Phase 2 : Pact with That Which Sleeps

Phase 3 : Drone Shortage

Phase 4 : Cold War with Were Spiders

Phase 5 : Ethereal European Beauty

Stunts:

Beast Change (-1) Giant Wasp

Human Form (+1)

Claws (-1) (Stinger)

Wings (-1)

Addictive Saliva (Honey) (-1)

Inhuman Speed (-2)

Channeling [Kinetics] (-2)

Refresh 1 remain from 8

Human                                                             Wasp

Superb: Discipline, Resources                Superb: Fists, Alertness

Great: Deceit, Alertness                           Great: Athletics, Discipline

Good: Lore, Presence                              Good: Endurance, Presence

Fair: Empathy, Endurance                    Fair: Empathy, Lore

Afer-Zuul (Undead Mage Hunter)

High Concept: Undead Mage Hunter

Trouble: Beholden to the Lich

Phase 1 : Beautiful Dead

Phase 2 : Runic Tattoos

Phase 3 : Merciless Hunter

Phase 4 : Soft Spot for the Young

Phase 5 : Secret Lives

Stunts:

Living Dead (-1)

Flesh Mask (-1)

Supernatural Toughness (-4)

Physical Immunity (magic) (-8)

Catch (+8) Fire, research

Refresh 2 remain from 8

Superb: Stealth, Guns

Great: Athletics, Alertness

Good: Conviction, Weapons

Fair: Intimidation, Discipline

Average: Lore, Investigation

There is a web of treaty and pact woven between these groups which keeps open conflict to a minimum. This is in each group’s best interest even if they may not realize this. Open conflict brings in the Mad Blade and their patron That Which Sleeps. None of the factions wants to be the one that forces the awakening. So conflict simmers in a supernatural cold war for the time being.

All of the characters are fit for player use in a campaign with an 8 refresh.

Places of note:

L’Anse Amour – A quiet and tranquil place where something old and powerful dreams, and in dreaming shapes the world.

The Gnome Bazaar – The ultimate destination of all that is lost or forgotten. Features of the bazaar include the animated skeleton of a North American mastodon, the hanging fuselage of a WWII vintage P-38, and a translucent blue obelisk made of unmelting ice. All are welcome here provided they abide by the rules. The bazaar is accorded neutral ground.

Thanks for visiting. I’ll try to be more punctual with my next installment.

Legends of Anglerre arrived this month. Who’s up for some dungeon stuff Fate style?

The Lodger

Deluge Development Part 2

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Hello,

I’ll be talking about Deluge again today.

My topic is “Route Creation.” Diaspora calls them “clusters” but that doesn’t make sense in the context of survivor villages.

A route is the local area familiar to your players: a series of villages and obstacles that will be known to them as part of the local geography. I’m using part of the Star Blazers Adventures sections on group-oriented adventure creation for the village stats.

  1. Start with a blank sheet of paper.
  2. GM picks the number of villages to be created. I think one village per player should be plenty, but more doesn’t really seem to cause too many challenges. My example has 4 villages.
  3. GM starts by placing a Major terrain feature/target area on the map. This is the driving factor for the area and can be almost anything: Mountain, Mines, Ruins, etc. This feature gets one aspect all its own. This  major feature dominates the area. It is often visible for miles even in the heaviest rains.
  4. Player 1 to the left names a village and rolls its 3 stats.

Stat 1: Tech level – Tech level indicates the available manufacturing level of the village. Roll 4df.  Any roll between +4 and -1 is treated as a -1. The other values are self explanatory.

Stat 2: Size level – Size indicates the current population. (4df Roll)

Home -4
Hamlet -3 -2
Village -1 1
Town 2 3
City 4

Stat 3: Wealth – The current wealth of a village. Mostly measured in what it can barter with. Usually trade goods or expertise. This is a simple number.

Choose 2 aspects to personalize the population. Local problems, relationships, or advantages are all good ideas.

  1. GM places a terrain feature next to the previous village. This has a single aspect and represents a point of interest or difficulty on the path to the next village.
  2. Rinse and repeat for each village.

This is the basic “Route” characters will travel and trade on. This forms the basis of a common shared background between them. The GM places a third aspect on each of the villages. This aspect represents the villages’ interaction and relationships with each other or their most significant terrain feature. Once that is done, technically, character generation or play can begin if characters were generated previously.

However, the villages could be made to provide a mechanical advantage in addition to their aspects. Star Blazers Adventures provides a set of stats for towns. This would allow characters inside a town to access that town’s skills for their own use; possibly even a companion bonus as if the town were a character itself.

Village Stat Block:

Structure stress: = Scale (City=5, Town=4,Village=3, Hamlet=2, Home= 1) This is the structure and infrastructure of a town. When reduced to zero the town has been destroyed.

Morale stress: = Scale (City=5, Town=4,Village=3, Hamlet=2, Home= 1) This is the populace. When reduced to zero the village has been abandoned.

Consequences: Per skill effected (Average(+1) = 1 mild, Decent (+2) = 1 mild, 1 moderate and Good (+3) = 1 mild, 1 moderate, and 1 Severe) A city takes damage differently then a character. Each of its skills can be used to absorb structure or morale stresses. A skill that has taken all of its available consequences can no longer be used and represents the loss of some critical industries. Additionally, the new consequences can now be tagged for effect to further grind the town down unto its destruction. These consequences also provide a mechanism for recovery after the attack. Treat these as wounds to be treated by any appropriate player or town skills.

Aspects: 3 (the aspects previously chosen)

Skills: Scale 1 = 0 pts, Scale 2 = 2 pts, Scale 3 = 7 pts, Scale 4 = 16 pts, Scale 5 = 20 pts

3 skill categories = General, Offensive, Defensive

General skills: Scouts (advanced warning and detection/area knowledge), Repairs, Salvage (recovery of old tech/archeology; requires warehousing/1 level), Docks/Barracks(Barracks house troops (see offense skills). Barracks can deploy one unit per exchange per skill level), Manufacturing, Mining (requires warehousing/1 level), Warehousing (Guest housing/animal farming/storage – one skill level for each skill which requires warehousing), Systems (required at Scales 4 and 5. Systems covers items not specifically mentioned; such as medical, libraries, messengers, bureaucracy, etc.)

Offensive skills: Melee Combat (fighting inside the village), Ranged Combat (fighting outside the village), Information War (including sabotage), Troop Facilities(1 squad/platoon of 10 troops per skill level)

Defensive skills: Walls(select only once), Hardened Structure (select only once; add Structure stress point equal to the skill and reduce attack damage on the walls by 1 pt per skill level), Concealment (select only once; some habitations are hidden to avoid attack all together). Walls and Hardened Structure cannot be greater then +3 skill level.

This is some major untested systems tinkering by me. But the main idea is to provide some mechanical advantages for players to encourage village building. Players in good standing with a village may substitute one of the village’s skills for one of their own as long as that substitution is supported by narrative, once per scene. Thus, a trader in need of goods to trade who has the support of a village (they’ve helped out there before) can roll on the village’s manufacturing to produce some goods (to a certain level/ quality) or to place an aspect, via a maneuver, on a load of goods to be tagged later (such as a load of weapons with the aspect: Hidden Flaw). Since players are starting out fresh, the GM probably won’t need the village stats immediately. But, as players assist their chosen homes by moving goods or improving facilities, villages will gradually grow and develop in new ways. Perhaps after each session, players and GMs should discuss what they see as having improved in their home village and a new skill can be added to the bottom of the pyramid.

Also, village skills can add +1 to assist player skill rolls and players can add +1 to the village’s rolls as long as the skills are appropriately similar in nature.

Example Route:

I created a sample route to illustrate how this could work.

GM-placed prime area

  1. Mount Garth [Aspect: Crumbling Basalt]: Mount Garth is all that remains of a once great mountain. Pounded into submission by the rains, the basalt columns lie in great stacks like blackened bones. They are visible from most clearings and dominate the skyline where the jungle allows.
  2. Garthville [Aspects:Made of Stone, Too Big, Lawless] {Stats: T-3,S+1,W-1}:  Garthville is in decline. It was once a bustling community of stone masons. Now its population has dwindled to a few grizzled miners. It is comprised of large stone buildings of which only the centermost are still occupied. The city has the air of a graveyard, silent and sepulchral, until the living areas are found, where a drunken revel to rival Odin’s hall is always raging. Miners only stop drinking when their chits dry up. They then return to the mountain to rake at its bones until they have enough carts of stone to trade with merchants for more drinking chits.
  3. Terrain feature: The Garth Road [Aspect: Stone Road]: Built by the early denizens of Garthville before it was realized how valuable their stone was. It is now constantly patrolled and maintained. It is far too valuable to dismantle as it provides a nearly rainproof connection to the next town.
  4. Tractorville [Aspects: Pig Farm, Methane Plant, Gas Tractor] {Stats: T-1, S-2, W-1}:  Tractorville sprung up at the end of the stone road when a group of mechanics recovered an aging tractor frame and adapted it to a methane engine. As the only working tractor in the area, it is used to transport stone to nearby areas.
  5. Terrain feature: Bright Jungle [Aspect: Strange Plants]: The jungle around Garth Mountain is not a normal place. The return of the jungle to this part of the world awoke strange seeds in the bones of the mountain.
  6. Black Patch [Aspects: Jungle Garden, Unhealthy Dirt, Trade Powerhouse] {Stats: T-1, S+1, W+2}: Deep in the bright jungle is a patch of black earth on which nothing will grow. The perfect place for a village. Black Patch is a wealthy trade haven. This village uses the strange plants and fungi of the bright jungle to make a living, which currently means trading fermented goods for stone building materials.
  7. Terrain feature: Apache Preserve [Aspect: Constantly Watched]: This patch of jungle is frequented by a tribe of intelligent bears. They are currently not hostile to humans. But never doubt, you are constantly watched.
  8. Savage End [Aspects: River Port, NeoSioux Outpost,Tribe  Bears] {Stats: T-1, S+2, W-1}: Savage End overlooks the massive and dangerous Savage river on which NeoSioux steam vessels ply their trade. Savage End is part of the NeoSioux civilization. There is a garrison of their troops here and some of those troops are bears. Trade here is largely in storage facilities holding goods destined for other places.

Spirit of the Century: Episode 7

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Hello and welcome,

My apologies for the extremely slow update interval. I’ve recently aquired the .pdf versions of Evil Hat’s Dresden Files and Cubicle 7’s Legends of Anglerre. I’ve been reading them and making notes. Unfortunately, it is a little too early to do a proper review as they are both yet to arrive in print form. I like to have a finished product in hand to do a review. I still need to set up an actual play scenario for them as well. Busy, busy. So here is another installment from my favorite player. More new character action here!

UJ = Union Jane

M = Michael Mason

BJ = Bob Jumper

A new character, Michael Mason, a “billionaire playboy” and leader of Mason Industries, joins the ever-shrinking group. He has a wrist blade Weapon of Destiny, and a secret lair. M ended up getting kidnapped from one of his mansions by Dr. Jin, who was disguised as a handyman. (I needed to get him caught up to the other player.) He ended up on the X-5 (Bob Jumper’s plane. No Bob in this game, so I filled in some gaps with NPCs), which Jin was escaping in the last game. Jin flew to a mirrored area in space (giant mirror in space , literally), with UJ, Captain Bob Jumper (NPC now), the semi-clockwork lady (the last surviving “demon” of Jin’s; M named her Jessie), and Joe Longshanks (the last Californian bear shaman) in pursuit inside the alien spacecraft (Hunter had somehow disappeared, and the alien ship looks like a long golden skinny tube). The X-5 appeared to crash into a copy of itself, but that was just it going through the mirror substance. The Alien ship followed, but BJ ended up being knocked out of his chair and unconscious for the rest of the game (because his player didn’t show up). Inside the mirrored area were three orb objects (which were later explained to us to produce water, air and sunlight) and two asteroid-like things, one of which had a waterfall, which was the thing we landed on. UJ fortunately managed to land the ship. M broke free of his bonds, but only in time for Jin to leave the ship (he ran into what turned out to be a customs building and disappeared) and cause it to produce a deadly ice field thing that killed some bird-winged guys who were approaching. Our ships ended up getting surrounded by bird people (who looked human except they had bird wings, and they talked in bird noises). They were accompanied by some robot things. M came out to try to talk to them, except that he didn’t know how, and he got a bunch of crossbows pointed at him. UJ sneaked out of the alien ship and behind some of the bird people. Luckily the man in charge spoke English (a guy named Noh Ahcorian, captain of the guard). He accused M of killing a prince (one of the frozen guys) and UJ of being an agent of “the worm.” We got taken to their king. He had us tell our stories while putting our hands on an “orb of truth,” which exonerated us. “The worm” was the worm that Jessie was controlling in the last adventure (now dead). The bird people (“Avians”) believed they were from Earth but were stolen by the worm and brought here (the king told us a lot of stuff about his people’s history and this asteroid; his name was Ahv). There were other species on this asteroid, including “Digs” (don’t remember what they looked like, except I think they were short) and serpent people (Tephys’ people, an ancient race who ruled the Earth in its pre-human dawn and may or may not have created the human race). M asked if the bird people had any artifacts, anything Jin might be after. Ahv mentioned powerful weapons which were in a vault that would only open if the mirror barrier had been breached. So we went to check on the vault, only to find that Jin was there, in an Avian-like outfit only with metallic wings, holding a statue. There were dead Avians all over the floor. Jin blew into a weird whistle and the sky darkened with a bunch of small black flying biting things called razor-wings, and then he flew off. Okay, I’m missing something here, because I remember we looked at the contents of the vault and UJ borrowed a set of metal balls attached to a belt or strap (which she never used), and we weren’t being attacked then. Also the king wondered why Jin would steal the statue, because it wasn’t a powerful artifact or anything. It was a gift from the serpent king; an heirloom or something. (She has forgotten that it was she who pursued Dr. Jin. She tracked him through the castle to the highest tower, dramatically smashing every obstacle he threw in her path without regard to her own health. Jin was forced to unleash his little pets on innocents to get her to stop pursuing him. M had to pull her back into the tower one-handed as she had failed in her attempt to leap from the tower and drag Dr. Jin down with her own body weight. Good dramatic stuff. It’s strange what players remember later.)  Anyway, the king said we had to go activate a defensive perimeter device, which was in a tower near our ships. So we tried, but we had to get through a courtyard, a narrow hallway and another courtyard, all the while being attacked by the razor-wings, which were actually pretty nasty. (Num num num, player characters can be so delicious.) M made it to the tower, but a clockwork-like snake guy was there, so he had to take care of that. Unfortunately, it turned out that the switch to activate the defenses had been pulled off, and M took a bit trying to fix it (he ended up using his sword on it). Eventually, UJ killed all her razor-wings and tried to head for the tower, but Princess Ahvcoria, who still blamed us for her brother’s death, had started shooting at her with a crossbow. The Princess was attacked by another clockworkish snake dude. UJ killed him. M helped Ahvcoria up, and he rolled so well that she became overwhelmed by his charm. The king knighted us for saving the Avians. UJ and M went back to Earth temporarily to check M’s immense arcane library for clues about the statue Jin stole. It was a statue of a serpent god, carved by a powerful ruler/artist. It had something to do with an extremely powerful weapon called the Hammer, which the serpent people had sworn to never use. The Library also had some ancient tablets that recorded a serpent man paying a lot of money for a rare substance that was later crafted into a hammer. Also in the library, we found a picture of a serpent guy (the ruler/artist, I think) with a hexagonal black object floating above one hand, which might have been made out of the rare substance. Oh yes, while on Earth, UJ checked BJ into a hospital and stashed the X-5. Oh, and UJ got to take over the alien ship, because M was rich enough to buy his own. She also tried to return the metal ball weapons, but the king said they belonged to an ancient warrior and insisted that she keep them.

That’s all for now. I’m working to advance my Diaspora conversion to Deluge. I’ll keep you posted.

Deluge Development Part 1

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Greetings from the Internet’s secret back alley,

Earlier I promised to share some of the development I did for my Deluge campaign. So here’s a couple of things I’m using for my campaign.

I’ll be using Diaspora for characters and base system with a little bit of Star Blazers Adventures for survivor village statistics.

Diaspora is a hard science sort of game, so some of the skills don’t apply to a survival game. I removed the skills Energy Weapons, MicroG, Culture/Tech, and stripped the [space] trapping off Navigation, Gunnery, and Engineering. I added the skills Scuba and Ballistic Weapons (Bows, Crossbows, Slings).

This simple skill conversion covers all my requirements for the story I want to weave. The Profession skill acts as a catchall for player desires.

Character Generation Phases are an important part of Diaspora. They are no less so for my Deluge game.

Characters: 10 aspects, 3 stunts and everyone starts with 5 Fate points.

Phase 1: Growing up – You grew up in the hot wet ruins of Deluge. What did you learn?

Phase 2: Starting out – Village life. It takes a village to raise a child in the future. What was yours like? Choose a motivation as one of your two aspects.

Phase 3: Close encounter of the third kind – No one knows what they are. But, at some point everyone sees one. What did your glimpse teach you?

Phase 4: Disaster – It rains everyday. Some days are worse. What was your bad day?

Phase 5: Here and now – Why are you here? What are you doing? Choose a duty as one of your two aspects.

Note on the “Have a Thing” stunt: that advanced piece of equipment you wanted? It’s ancient tech from before the rain. That makes it T0 at the highest level (T-1 is normal for PCs, lower is always available). Usually these things are special versions of existing equipment. This stunt can now include modified ammo types or special loads because ammo is becoming increasingly scarce. When your special ammo is gone, though, it’s gone. Time to pick a new stunt.

Deluge has a sanity check; Diaspora doesn’t. But Fate has a way of simulating this.

Sanity composure hits: terrifying things such as:

  1. The first time you get hit in a fight
  2. The first time a bear talks to you
  3. The first and every time you see an angel

These all cause Composure damage. The first damage rule is from Diaspora and I won’t be changing that. The other two (and anything else your Gm (I) wants) will call for the player to make a flat 4df roll to resist, modified by your Resolve.

Here’s my table:

  1. Talking bear: Sanity check = +1
  2. Seeing a giant octopus or intelligent squid: Sanity check = +2
  3. Alien angel creature: Sanity check = +3

Example: Billy Bob has ducked into a dark cave to avoid a cannibal raiding party. He should have checked better before entering. A deep gruff voice growls, “Who goes there?” Billy turns to find himself looking down the gaping maw of a massive shotgun held one-handed by the paw of a 10-foot tall grizzly. The GM calls for a flat roll of 4df. Billy rolls a -1. His Resolve is +2 and because it is greater then the bear’s +1 rating, it adds an additional +1 to his roll, making it a +0. Billy is about to take a 1-point hit to his Composure when the GM offers him a Fate point saying, “This is a creepy cave.” If Billy accepts the Fate point, he takes a 3-point hit to Composure. He may need to buy off this damage with a Consequence such as “I wet mah pants, dang.” He can also deny the compel at the cost of a Fate point he may need later. He’ll still take the one Composure if he does, though.

Villages are going to have a stat block, but I haven’t finished thinking about it yet. I’m thinking that the random tables will be providing some of the aspects that villages will be using. Possibly more on this later.

Diaspora recommends the use of imagery as a tool for delivering story points, so here are mine. I chose three to start with.

  1. An ancient stadium half-flooded with black sea water and wrapped in jungle creepers. A crowd screams for blood as twelve convicts are led to two oar-driven whale boats and armed with wicked harpoons. A ripple in the black water betrays the presence of something huge, intelligent, and many-armed as it races towards the boats. Jetting around the various floating debris and artificial islands dotting the arena, it closes in on its meal.
  2. An insane bear named Charlie standing many times the height of the humans it guides. Its thick fur scarred in ritual patterns. Its voice wrinkled by time and alien knowledge. It rambles and stares at its surroundings, seeing nothing and yet something more. A failed experiment given new and terrible potential.
  3. In the heat of the jungle, bacteria and fungus grow in infinite number. The old ways are gone forever. Those who embraced the ancient before the fall carried the future in their dreams of steam and independence. A village viewed from above is lit in brilliant blue-white arc lights. Freshly hand-wound generators turned by methane made in industrial anaerobic digesters. Anachronism made modern by a new order of brass and cog.

Weapons and equipment:

Anything could be justified with a stunt.

The state of the art varies by village from late Stone Age (T-4) to later industrial (T-1). The players’ starting tech will be decided by their home village. The average is crossbow, iron spear or sword, and leather armor. The typical vehicle is a cart and ox affair. In more elaborately supplied areas, the occasional cart and elephant will be seen.

Description: The Sundown World

The sunset world has passed into darkness and storm. The fall did not come as anticipated. Another intelligence has chosen our world for its home. As H. G. Wells once wrote, “Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.” They came unbidden and unnoticed and in the blink of an eye, our world fell to eternal storm. The rain became our master. One hundred and fifty years later a new human stalks the jungles. A hardier breed resistant to disease and wound. Lean and hungry, these new children stalk the ruins of the old world, searching for their heritage and building their new world on the bones of the sunset world.

Malfeasance Range: Contest Rules and Sundry

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Hello my Lodgers,

To begin, VSCA games has released Deluge, a systemless pdf-only experiment under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share Alike license.

“One hundred years ago it began to rain and never stopped.“

The document is 34 pages and covers the Deluge setting in a toolbox fashion. It is intended that the purchaser use the contents to “Delugify” their home town. Details and resources for how this works are included. I hope to detail this and provide some transparency for my design decisions in an upcoming entry.

The setting includes aliens, talking bears, killer squids and five character “classes,” all laid out with the idea that a GM will be splicing their favorite system to the setting. Personally, I like what I saw.

That’s about all I’m going to give away. I have another plan in mind for Deluge. The license (and VSCA permission) allows me to distribute it as long as I don’t make money off it. With that in mind, I will now announce the beginning of the Diaspora Weapons Testing Ground – Malfeasance Range. Here’s how it will work. Buy a copy of Diaspora, or if you’re still holding out (why? Don’t make me come over there), go to the system reference documents and create a unique weapon using the rules provided.

The rules:
1.Weapon must be original design. No grabbing stuff from the book. I own that as well and I’ll know. 😉
2.The Range’s format must be followed (see below). I insist on this because a weapon is more then the sum of its stats. Players don’t remember their first +1 sword. But they do remember the blackened steel blade and the hilt wrapped intricately with the hide of a shadow wolf: the +1 sword named Wolves’ Bane.
3.I’ll choose the winner. Actually my team will but I’ll be taking the blame.
4.Contest ends when I have ten entries. So speed counts in this instance.

The Format: (example)
Title: Grandpa’s Modified Mining Laser (T1)
Stats: Harm-0 Pen-1 Min Range-0 Max Range-1 Stunt:Civilian (4 Bp total)
Description: A large laser pistol modified from its original industrial purpose. Blunt-nosed, the barrel is cut away at the sides to reveal the focusing lens, which shines a translucent blue when not in use and brilliant red when being fired. The weapon is powered by a cable-fed belt pack. The underside of the barrel is decorated in tribal fashion by three fetishes: an Iron ship signifying home, a small white figure signifying easy targets, and an Iron hand signifying the Iron handshake.
History: Conflict among the tribes of the Triskadar Belt revolves around resources. One such battle occurred between the Iron Tribe and Copper Tribe. An Iron frigate/miner had been ambushed by three Copper vessels near a contested asteroid field. The Iron frigate, badly damaged, fled into the field and exploded. The Copper vessels, believing the threat had passed, tethered and prepared to recover their salvage and begin mining. They were taken completely by surprise by eleven Iron Tribe warriors disguised as debris. The attackers used breaching charges on the command cabin of the tethering vessel. What followed was a vicious corridor to corridor skirmish that would be remembered in legend. While the Iron warriors killed the retreating crew, their best hacker used the tethering controls to vent atmosphere and sabotage the other vessels. The helpless crews desperately struggled to disengage their tethers. Thus was the term “Iron handshake“ coined for the tactic they used that day.

The winner will receive a copy of Deluge for their personal use.

Please post you entries in the comments section for all to see.
I look forward to your entries.

Side note: While playing Diaspora, play the song “A Glorious Dawn” by Carl Sagan and Symphony of Science. I thought it captured the feeling of the farmer in the first pages of the book.

Spirit of the Century: Episode 6

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This entry continues the previous battles against the evil Dr. Jin. His plans seem to involve randomly setting the city on fire. But wait! That’s not it at all! This has all been a giant charade to get his hands on Bob’s prototype aircraft. The horror!

Note carefully that the Hunter character has been modified, again. Very soon he will be replaced by another. SOTC lets this happen without fanfare or GM involvement. Very nice.

B = Bob Jumper

H = The Hunter

UJ = Union Jane

O’Houlihan gives Bob a Colt .45, which belonged to his grandfather. He said something like, “You’ll need it hanging around with these two.” B, H and UJ were in the mayor’s office, again. The mayor was upset about all the fires in the city, and now homeless people had started disappearing. So there was to be an investigation. Don’t remember where exactly the next scene was; think it was “Remembrance Park” (place with statues commemorating victims of the Petrifying Wind, from previous games) near the beach and sewer entry tunnel. UJ found a shop steward who said his brother-in-law had fallen on hard times and become homeless, and recently the guy had appeared hysterically going on about how he’d seen “devils.” But the steward said his brother-in-law was a drunkard and implied that he might also be (somewhat) crazy, so “he’s not a credible witness.” The brother-in-law was a Chinese man named Lao. Somehow B, H and UJ found Lao in a bar with this big nautically-tattooed guy behind the counter spit-cleaning a glass (actual spit: only the best for my players.) All the patrons hunched themselves over their drinks. H asked if he knew where Lao was. He said he didn’t know, so H tried to intimidate him. He said, “I might know…run, Lao!” and a fifty-something guy ran for the door. They chased him and caught up with him, but only B could win his confidence (oh yes, H has Linguistics now, so he can speak Lao’s language). Lao said he thought we were leg breakers. He said he owed money to a tong and so had ran. They asked him about the devils he had seen. He said he wasn’t drunk enough to talk about that, so they had to go to another bar, which he said was better than the first. Over at least one bottle of something cheap and nasty, he talked about the devils. He said they came out of the sewers, and there seemed to be a lot of them. Don’t remember if he could describe them or not. They convinced him with more alcohol to tell whereabouts he saw them. He also said his friend Blake had gone missing, and he’d appreciate being told if he was found; said “He’s good for some rum.” Turned out that it was the exact place where the urchin kid had seen the creatures. Now, though, there was phosphorescent slime in the tunnel. They went in and eventually found the place where UJ fought the tiger guy last game. Although now there was a new, large hole with claw marks. These appeared to have been made by a large burrowing beast. B determined that the marks were too big to have been a tiger.  They entered the hole. Eventually they heard chanting and as they approached, they saw a man with white hair and a rattle doing the chanting, in front of a door with symbols on it. Also there were some frog creatures with tentacles instead of heads, who were trying to keep him from chanting. Okay, I don’t remember the sequence of the following frog thing-related events (up until the huge room with the UFO–see below), but here’s what I do remember. Eventually, the frogs were all killed except one, which escaped by squeezing into a small crack in the wall. H broke part of the wall down with his new Brickbreaker stunt. Somewhere along the line the chanter guy introduced himself as Joe Longshanks, local shaman. He said that the things were the Children of the Worm, and that (occasionally) at night they would steal some or a few of his people, and then magical wards (like the one he’d been working on) would be placed to drive them back/keep them away, but somehow they’d gotten past the wards, and because it’s always dark in the sewers, they were more bold about attacking people. He thought some new thing was stirring them up somehow. H managed to kill the escaping creature, but not before it made a piping noise. This turned out to be a call for help from more frog creatures, who eventually turned into about thirty creatures who split up to attack each one of the party. (One group attacked B and Joe together, and Joe gave B a Companion bonus). One of the creatures was bigger than the others so H attacked that one. It was a long and Fate Point-diminishing fight, but the frog things were all killed. Joe led the way onward deeper into the tunnels. On the way saw alienesque murals depicting worm history. The murals gradually got cruder the deeper they went. Arrived at these two big doors with marble carvings of strange guard-like creatures. It was locked, but they managed to figure out the mechanism and open the doors. Inside was an immense, bigger-than-a-coliseum-size room with pools with glowing fish. There was a UFO sitting inside. Also there was a woman who turned out to have a mechanical body. She was next to a giant worm. The worm seemed weak. She gestured, and a guy who looked like the fire samurai from the first game concerning Dr. Jin appeared. This guy, however, could change his arms into various weapons. He turned them into blades, and attacked. B, like a blur, ran for and entered the UFO. At this point Joe sort of disappeared, on account of we all forgot about him (but the GM says he actually was still there, but sneaking around or something). The woman was able to touch the worm and cause it to summon frog things. The frog things went to help the samurai guy, who, it was somehow revealed, was called Unkillable (U). H attacked U. UJ attacked U’s frog minions. UJ eventually started doing a block to keep the minions off H. B was able to figure out that the UFO had a weapon, and how to use it, and he fired it at the woman, but she managed to get the worm to summon more frogs to shield her. H began attacking U’s armor. Eventually B lasered all of the frogs protecting the woman, so she compelled the giant worm to throw itself against the UFO, which caused it to die. She entered the UFO. When the worm died, the remaining frogs left. UJ started helping H bash U’s armor. U was extremely tough. It took the longest time just to make a hole in the armor; most of the armor-attacking part of the fight only managed to dent it. The woman surrendered to B in exchange for her life. She said she was called the Unblinking Eye (UE) (she had one glowing eye). B fired the laser at U. UJ and H managed to get out of the way, but there was a big old shock wave and UJ was thrown into some sewage and had to struggle onto a dry surface and get helped up by H. H went to see what had happened to U. There was nothing left of him but one foot. H and UJ entered the UFO, and B figured out how to fly it out of the room through a hole. It turned out that UE & U were the last of Dr. Jin’s seven demons, although she was now free of his control (something about how she’d been a pawn, and he told her that if she survived, she would be freed). (Ha ha ha, such trusting players.) She had been acting as a sort of administrator for him. She said that he did all this to distract some heroes while he went to steal a prototype aircraft called the X-5, which as related in the last game, is B’s plane. So B flew to the X-5’s airfield, but it was taking off with a yellow glow. Jin had modified it somehow. B chased it very high into the atmosphere, or maybe it was the beginning of outer space, because these meteor things began trying to hit the UFO. UE said, “Master, he wants this.” (That is, he meant to lure the UFO/the party up here.) B was able to evade the meteor things, but Jin managed to escape.

Now things start to get weird.