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Some people really lost their poo poo over not being able to play a male D&D Paladin in Reign, despite the fact that D&D Paladins are not A Thing in Reign at all.
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Aug 3, 2017 18:16
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Halloween Jack posted:Some people really lost their poo poo over not being able to play a male D&D Paladin in Reign, despite the fact that D&D Paladins are not A Thing in Reign at all. Are D&D Paladins really A Thing in any setting other than D&D and Pathfinder? Since it's not just Knight in Shining Armor but Knight in Shining Armors with a List of Arbitrary Restrictions No Other Class Has and rear end in a top hat DMs use to Screw over Players
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Aug 3, 2017 18:38
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Kavak posted:I always thought the "No female Astartes" thing could be explained by some part of the Super Marining process requiring a Y chromosome to attach to. That is in fact the canon explanation. Space Marines are also somewhat literally half-baked, the whole program was launched into the Warp when the research program was only half-finished.
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Aug 3, 2017 18:40
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It wasn't really launched voluntarily. And that only happened to Primarchs, the rest of the project continued without them. I'd pine for a Reunification of Terra game, but nobody would want to play the losers.
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Aug 3, 2017 18:43
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why, people play the various Imperium factions all the time
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Aug 3, 2017 18:59
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Mors Rattus posted:why, people play the
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Aug 3, 2017 19:27
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Didn't at some point someone tell the emperor he hosed up by not letting half the population be considered for marineship? For some reason that brought me around to the concept more; I guess because it's a "Look if we could fix it we would JEEZ"
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Aug 3, 2017 19:35
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There might be interesting questions to be asked about the gender identity of nine-foot tall post-human monster people. Like, what does it mean to be any gender as an Astartes. Never mind the English language's shaky relationship with non-gendered pronouns (not just 'they', but also identifiers like "Brother"). Of course, I suspect it's equally likely that the new Doctors' Who will prompt GW to announce that Marines can now be whoever they want to be. VVV: English Grogs ZorajitZorajit fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 19:59
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Or they'll just ignore it because GW is run by and for grogs.
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Aug 3, 2017 20:00
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To me, it really just raises the question as to whether or you'd be better off just burning the whole thing to the ground and rebuilding it from scratch rather than trying to drag Warhammer into something resembling modern, egalitarian sensibilities. Either way, Games Workshop might just be literally the worst company in the industry, so I wouldn't expect much out of them or even trust them with the notion.
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Aug 3, 2017 20:23
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"Eight foot tall acid-spitting killing machine who can chew through metal, survive the loss of multiple limbs and even place itself into suspended animation for centuries" sounds more like a Tyranid than a human and yet people say female space marines "aren't realistic." It's like people flipping out over the idea of a brown hobbit. I once tried to play in a Deathwatch game and the GM really didn't want female space marines for reasons similar to JcDent but he was willing to allow me to be an attached Sister. The only thing was to make a Sister you had to use Dark Heresy rules and then spend like 10,000 XP or something to try and make a near-equivalent. This meant I was running a Sister Celestia (or something, I really don't recall the title) who should have been running a monastery or leading a battle force alongside run-of-the-mill marines and I was underpowered despite the aforementioned 10K XP. Some of that might have been my building choices but I tried to go for effective-seeming power combinations--ultimately DH stuff just doesn't scale well to Deathwatch and I don't recommend ever trying to do it. The 40K universe has some shreds of good ideas in it that twenty some years of fanboys-turned-writers have worked hard to ruin, and now the Space Marines have the Batman problem where they have to be "on" all the time and can't deviate from "archetypal" character.
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Aug 3, 2017 20:23
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Alien Rope Burn posted:To me, it really just raises the question as to whether or you'd be better off just burning the whole thing to the ground and rebuilding it from scratch rather than trying to drag Warhammer into something resembling modern, egalitarian sensibilities. Well, the general idea in the fluff up to this point has been that the Imperium totally is utterly gender-blind except in a few specific cases like the Marines and Sisters and there totally are billions of women in the Imperial Guard it's just coincidence that you hardly ever see women models or playing important roles in the story. The current 40k derail in this thread has been the growing response from some parts of the fanbase and would-be fanbase that yeah that's bullshit.
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Aug 3, 2017 20:46
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occamsnailfile posted:"Eight foot tall acid-spitting killing machine who can chew through metal, survive the loss of multiple limbs and even place itself into suspended animation for centuries" sounds more like a Tyranid than a human and yet people say female space marines "aren't realistic." It's like people flipping out over the idea of a brown hobbit. I would ask, where would you have come down on if the GM had addressed this like: "You can absolutely be a female Space Marine. But a woman who becomes a Space Marine is an eight foot tall, acid-spitting killing machine, unlikely to have any secondary sexual dimorphism beyond being named 'Susan'." and/or "Your character will be addressed as 'Brother' because 'Brother' is the honorific applied to a Space Marine." I get the latter case potentially runs up to the line on misgendering folks. Personally, I think the setting would justify it, but its not really my place.
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Aug 3, 2017 20:55
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Alien Rope Burn posted:To me, it really just raises the question as to whether or you'd be better off just burning the whole thing to the ground and rebuilding it from scratch rather than trying to drag Warhammer into something resembling modern, egalitarian sensibilities. Not 40k, not really. It's better to just make your own weird technofeudal post post post apocalyptic space opera. E: Which is actually what most fans alteady do without realizing it since 40k is mostly empty stretches of 'fill in whatevs' punctuated by terrible official fluff. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 22:10
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I have a long-running dream of running a game where the Imperium is quietly removed (humans are still around, just no overarching government), along with Chaos and the Dark Eldar. Just a bunch of Tau starting a colony world and dealing with weirdo humans, orks, eldar, necrons and so on. Nids can stay because they look cool. Space Wolves are allowed in on probation for being silly.
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Aug 3, 2017 22:15
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ZorajitZorajit posted:There might be interesting questions to be asked about the gender identity of nine-foot tall post-human monster people. Like, what does it mean to be any gender as an Astartes. Never mind the English language's shaky relationship with non-gendered pronouns (not just 'they', but also identifiers like "Brother"). Space Marines are two Sontarans in a trenchcoat.
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Aug 3, 2017 22:17
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Mors Rattus posted:I have a long-running dream of running a game where the Imperium is quietly removed (humans are still around, just no overarching government), along with Chaos and the Dark Eldar. Just a bunch of Tau starting a colony world and dealing with weirdo humans, orks, eldar, necrons and so on. Nothing could be easier: Tau find a warp gate to far beyond the light of the astronomican.
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Aug 3, 2017 22:19
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Nothing could be easier: Tau find a warp gate to far beyond the light of the astronomican. Well the trick is twofold: 1. find a system to run it in that isn't 40k 2. find players for it that aren't 40k but still care about Tau Starfleet Adventures
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Aug 3, 2017 22:24
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I've been toying with the idea of using Nemesis (ORE) because it's 1. Got that sweet sanity system (helplessness, violence, the unnatural, self) 2. Free. I figured that corruption could be represented by marking sanity dots that cannot be removed. It even corresponds to the four gods of Chaos. By popular demand fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 22:27
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Why not just treat female Space Marines like female Bretonnian Knights? Sure, they're around, but they're so armoured to the gills no one can tell the difference(no, they don't have giant breasts that require special armour to contain), and since everyone calls them Battle Brothers out of tradition, most people don't realize some of them aren't men. And the female space marines have the exact same interests as the male space marines: Killing xenos and heretics, so that's not a giveaway either. And ordinary civilians and Guardsmen rarely get a chance to learn a Space Marine's name, so they're not gonna figure out that one of them is called Susan instead of Bob. The Marines themselves? They don't give a poo poo, as long as someone's devout and killing the right enemies competently, they couldn't care less if you're male, female or some unusual alternative coughed up by being raised in a toxic hive world undercity. So because all the physical alterations and the "society" surrounding the marines essentially annihilates all differences between the two genders in that particular setting, no one's ever really noticed.
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Aug 3, 2017 22:35
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Honestly, the specifics of killing poo poo always seems like a background element to the drama and soap opera of the 40k universe in all the fiction. It seems like a relationship-focused game would be much better, and smooth out the ridiculous assumed power differentials despite the fact that you're supposed to think Guardsman Marbo is a bad-rear end even when he's standing next to $Combat_god-mutant#12341.occamsnailfile posted:"Eight foot tall acid-spitting killing machine who can chew through metal, survive the loss of multiple limbs and even place itself into suspended animation for centuries" sounds more like a Tyranid than a human and yet people say female space marines "aren't realistic." It's like people flipping out over the idea of a brown hobbit. Yeah, the sidebar in Deathwatch suggests 14k XP and the Ascension supplement to make a Dark Heresy character "roughly equivalent" to a Rank 1 Deathwatch marine. Which is ridiculous, because no amount of standard advances are going to give you space marine mutations and an Astartes heavy bolter. An Ascension character who spends almost a third of their total XP on characteristic advances to cap out a single characteristic score is going to be barely ahead of an "equivalent" well-specialized starting marine. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 22:51
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A Deathwatch Psyker could probably match okay with a team of non-Librarians, but even then that'd be a stretch.
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Aug 3, 2017 22:57
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occamsnailfile posted:"Eight foot tall acid-spitting killing machine who can chew through metal, survive the loss of multiple limbs and even place itself into suspended animation for centuries" sounds more like a Tyranid than a human and yet people say female space marines "aren't realistic." It's like people flipping out over the idea of a brown hobbit. The fun part of Brown hobbit freakouts is that the hobbits literally described as the 'fairest' have a name that literally means "Brown skin": The Fallohides This is Fallow, the color:  These are the palest hobbits, and they don't pass the paper bag test. But nope, because culturally they were super-white middle class English in the books, gotta be depicted as such. unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 23:19
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Warhammer Fantasy: Knights of the Grail Lyonesse: In Which poo poo Gets Crusader Kings Bretonnians are honorable, honest, and forthright to a ridiculous degree, according to Bretonnians. Even Brets will admit there's just something wrong with the people of Lyonesse, though. Lyonesse is a big dukedom in the northwest, with a rocky coast riddled with habitable small islands. Northern Lyonesse is the original domain of Duke Thierulf, the most loyal and honest of Giles' companions during his great campaign of unification. It's full of good aquifers and hidden caves, which make great sites for fortifications (since they can defend their source of fresh water) and are marked by earthworks and larger fortifications built on top of those ancient earthworks. The southern half of the duchy is full of small rivers and lakes, providing good fishing and more good sources of fresh, clean water. The lakes are sometimes infested with a weird kind of amphibious beastman, Lakemen (imaginative), whose favorite food besides adventurers is other beastmen. Like the things crawling out of the Black Chasm, they tend to be froglike, but they show significant Chaos mutation, even more than normal Beastmen. People blame the weird nature of Lyons on the excellent sites for self-contained villages and fortifications. Lyons are treacherous, paranoid fief-builders who see courtly treachery as a normal and honest extension of lancing a man on the field of battle or in tournament. Plots, fabricated claims to justify internal wars, campaigns of slander, accusations of treason, and all kinds of exotic assassination attempts are common, but because of the fantastic fortifications, it's very hard to actually finish a line off without them managing to get an heir back to the family fort and dig in to plot revenge. Being Bretonnian knights, it's a matter of honor to pay evil with evil, and so that heir's revenge may dip into the same sort of perfidy and treachery that destroyed his (or her, what's one more thing to be lying about) family. Worse, because the Lords and knights recruit the peasantry into their schemes and wage economic wars on one another, peasant villages and families have picked up the same habit of rivalry and backbiting! Even worse, Lords reasoning that an honorless peasant makes a better assassin than a noble (who would obviously have qualms against such dastardly actions that might slow them down in their execution!) means there are more peasants who know how to quietly kill a noble than anywhere else in Bretonnia. They don't seem to realize why that might present a danger, or something that could be a dangerous export. Still, lots of work for Adventurers regardless of social class, right? Many adventuring Lyons are people who have decided to get the hell out in order to duck their various feud obligations instead of their feudal ones. Southern Lyonesse also used to be Northern Mousillon. When Duke Merovich did his thing and lost a war with the rest of Bretonnia after fairly winning a duel with a man who slandered him in his own house on the eve of victory (and you know, drinking the king's blood, which was probably excessive) Lyonesse was the main benefactor in territory gained. The lake-strewn lands of Southern Lyonesse were once the 'good' parts of Mousillon, but the Southern nobles still dislike being yolked to the Northern Lyons rather than being their own, new Duchy or being given control of all of Mousillon. The only thing that can consistently unite the Lyons is Northern Lyons trying to get control of Southern Lyonesse, or Southern Lyons resisting it. Duke Adalhard of Lyonesse is a simple man. He likes feasting, drinking, and killing monsters. He has a large army of knights who also like these things, and like not being bothered by the idiot feuds of his feudal underlings. Whenever those feuds get to interrupting his killing, feasting, and drinking, his army descends on the prime perpetrators and convinces them why this was a bad idea. If the King gets annoyed by Lyons exporting treachery or trouble, or the Damsels show up to point out another underling has fallen to Chaos, Vampires, or Whatever in their quest for Crusader Kings justice, his army descends on the prime perpetrators and convinces them this was a bad idea, because this also means an interruption in his feasting and hunting. Interruptions have slowed since he instituted this policy, allowing him to focus on the feasting, drinking, and killing monsters he enjoys best. He might employ PCs to make sure something doesn't rise to the level of interruption. When he is forced to intervene, he usually destroys both sides without care for who was in the right, because things shouldn't have gotten to that point. Lyonesse also contains a very weird place: Sigmarsheim. A young Knight Errant of Lyonesse traveled extensively in the Empire about 50 years ago, made a lot of friends, and brought them back to grant them land to live on in his newly acquired fief. He also granted them an unusual degree of autonomy for Bretonnian peasants, as copied from Imperial town charters, and allowed them to build a shrine of Sigmar. He was permitted this because he had promised as much, and as it was happening on his fief and his lands, with his peasants, he was free to do as he wished. The people of Sigmarsheim often travel to the Empire to take spouses and trade, and Reikspiel is just as common as Bretonnian in Sigmarsheim. In local custom, they tell gullible villagers about how the fae lifted their town up from Reikland and carried it to Lyonesse. As an extra aside, while this isn't from this book, Rapense d'Lyonesse is still canon. She was about 300 years back, but at one point the feuding in Lyonesse got bad enough to invite a full Chaos Incursion and none of the nobles could contain it. A young woman named Rapense thought herself called by the Lady to rise up and save the duchy (and Bretonnia) from itself, and was granted leave to do so and to be a knight by the King. She was eventually made Duchess after saving the duchy, in contravention to all normal Bretonnian tradition. So if you want an exception to point to, that definitely happened once and could definitely happen again since there's precedent and that one time the Lady did nothing to stop it, though I do not think she was ever granted the Grail. Next Time: Montfort, and its smoldering, sexy duke.
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Aug 3, 2017 23:40
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Hello, everyone. I spent the last few weeks experiencing the delight of moving homes in near-tropical conditions followed by a week without internet connection due to new account troubles. But now I’m back and have sweet, sweet internet again. Lets continue on with Children of the Horned Rat. We are on to chapter 3, Skaven Society. This chapter covers Skaven behavior, including language, religion, customs, and governance. I’m gonna be breaking this up into smaller bits, starting with the basics of typical Skaven behavior. WFRP: Children of the Horned Rat Skaven Temperament The first and only rule for an individual Skaven is to look out for Number One. A Skaven cares for himself first, last, and always. Life, individual freedom, and higher ideals have little place in Skaven society. Quoted on the first page is a retelling of the common tale of two Skaven brothers in the woods and are attacked by a minotaur. They both flee, naturally. One says they don’t think they can outrun the monster. The other Skaven states he doesn’t need to outrun the minotaur, just the other Skaven. And then trips up his brother. This selfishness often translates to cowardice. But it can also lead to manic courage. Any Skaven, when cornered, will eagerly fight to the last with a bloodthirsty fury few would expect. And when in large numbers and properly motivated (typically threats), they can fight with the same zeal on the battlefield. When the situation is less dire, Skaven feel all their fellow Skaven are potential rivals. Leaders are envied for their power while the leaders see upstarts in all their underlings. This paranoia is just as likely to be completely made up as it is to be based in reality. To a Skaven, no motive can ever be truly pure and meaning can be read into the actions of any of their fellows, building up suspicion reminiscent of modern office politics that have been flavored by stabbing and cannibalism. This leads to one of the more infamous of Skaven character traits, the blame game. No Skaven can ever publicly accept culpability for anything that has gone wrong as that would invite punishment from superiors and backstabbing from rivals. The shifting of blame tends to be a popular spectator sport, with the actual merits of the case having no bearing on the feelings of the accused, the Skaven blame is trying to be heaped upon instead, or the superior that is to judge the matter. It’s all up to how a Skaven can spin it and fan the flames of suspicion in the desired direction. This has become such a huge part of Skaven culture that most Skaven honestly believe in their own spin and that all failures must be due to someone else. A Skaven that can’t shift blame won’t last long. One that can will gain that most precious of commodities, status and authority in the Skaven hierarchy and the ability to claim even more credit, abuse more underlings, and accrue more food and other comforts. But more power and more status leads to ever more numbers of powerful and ambitious underlings. Skaven never know peace. All they value, their lives and their status, can vanish in an instant from any number of sources. And they don’t care about any other Skaven’s life or status. I’ve attached below an audio-visual aide for understanding Skaven psychology and how it interacts when it is multiple Skaven working together. You’ll need to make some word substitutions. Replace ‘mouse’ with ‘Skaven’, replace ‘cheese’ with ‘warpstone’, replace ‘shaman’ with ‘Grey Seer’, and replace ‘anvil’ with ‘rat.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJReZRji7tg As a result of the above, the most important enemy to a Skaven is, of course, other Skaven. They have to deal with them the most, they are probably actively trying to undermine each other, and of course there is the belief that as the destined master race of the world, of course Skaven enemies are by far the most important enemies. They of course regard all other races as their enemies, but Skaven are the most important. In regards to other species, Skaven consider these their foes in descending order of importance: Elves: Skaven do not like elves and have consistently failed in their attempts to establish warrens beneath their lands via a combination of geography, elven magick and martial prowess, and a lack of appetite among the Skaven to really work at it. The Skaven tend to put elves in ‘handle later’ pile. A skaven’s natural advantage of hyperactive speed and senses is modestly surpassed by the elves and they tend to have their stuff together, too, so it’s not a matchup they enjoy. Humans: Being numerous, spread across the world, and fairly well organized (and less prone to exploding into civil war), humans are the top priority for Skaven warlords and grey seers. While quite powerful, humans are also easy to corrupt with treasures and intrigue, not to mention how easy the ‘Skaven Do Not Exist’ doctrine makes it for Skaven to operate and conceal their plans. Still, human nations are the thing Skaven are most cautious in dealing with and prefer to hide from until they are ready to strike. Undead humans also fall into this category. Dwarfs: Skaven tend to dismiss dwarfs as a problem they’ve already solved. While dangerous in person, Skaven Warlords regard dwarfs as a whole as a non-threat to their plans and that they have secured their Under Empire from any peer competitors. Halflings: Absolutely useless and forgettable. Not even that good for eating. Everything Else: Skaven are happy to forge one-sided alliances with greenskins and Chaos, promptly breaking any deals when they feel like it. Greenskins in particular make excellent pawns to Skaven leaders. Other races are seen as potential tools to exploit.
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Aug 4, 2017 00:11
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It seems fundamentally unwise to regard dwarfs as 'solved' while there are still dwarfs killing rats and dispensin' grudgins.
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Aug 4, 2017 01:03
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I can kind of understand it. The dwarves are very dangerous...if they're present. But they have never successfully retaken a Skaven-controlled dwarfhold.
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Aug 4, 2017 01:54
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Fundamentally unwise? The Skaven? No, say it ain't so!
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Aug 4, 2017 02:01
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ZorajitZorajit posted:I would ask, where would you have come down on if the GM had addressed this like: "You can absolutely be a female Space Marine. But a woman who becomes a Space Marine is an eight foot tall, acid-spitting killing machine, unlikely to have any secondary sexual dimorphism beyond being named 'Susan'." and/or "Your character will be addressed as 'Brother' because 'Brother' is the honorific applied to a Space Marine." This is more or less how I would play a female space marine in general because it's how space marines are often presented. "Battle Brother" would be fine even, sadly Battle Sister doesn't have alliteration going for it. I can't speak for all players of course, and I wasn't bent out of shape over the game itself--I actually like the Sisters and so playing one wasn't an unpleasant thing, except that the rules didn't support mixing them well.
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Aug 4, 2017 02:09
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I would love to play a Fantasy game where you're a crack team of Imperial adventurers sent on a quest to help suppress the Skaven problem by turning an unstoppable superweapon against them. That superweapon being the Orcs and that quest being starting a grassroots movement to convince the Orcs that the Skaven are incredibly delicious.
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Aug 4, 2017 02:17
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 The Great Modron March Part 7: How low can you go? When we last left our heroes, they had found another crazy dickhead wizard trying to Frankenstein modrons and humans. The poor little things are heading into the Chaos side of the ring now, and that’s where poo poo starts to get incredibly real. In fact, as this adventure begins, they’re heading into Limbo. This is the plane of pure chaos and, as such, is utterly antithetical to modron minds. The creatures of the Lower Planes might be more dangerous, but nowhere are the modrons more out of their element than here. Limbo is known for the terrifying Chaos Beasts and the bewildering Slaadi, but there are more inhabitants. The Githzerai make their home here and they’re the kind of cutters one can actually talk to without feeling like his brains are sliding out of his ears. Haeronomil is a githzerai official from Shra’kt’lor, one of their most important towns, and he’s come to talk to his fellow githzerai Karan of Sigil with a problem (yes, that Karan-- Factol Karan of the Xaositects, the Sigil inhabitant that a githzerai from Limbo probably feels most at home with). What he wants might seem surprising to someone who doesn’t know how the githzerai think. See, he’s hoping to get the modrons through Limbo as safely and quickly as possible and on their way. The problem with modrons is that they can’t handle the chaos of Limbo. They get lost and they get stuck. This taints the pure, beautiful chaos, creating little pockets of hateful order. The githzerai don’t want to murder the modrons or marshal the creatures of Limbo against them-- they just want the things gone, the sooner the better. That’s where the PCs come in. They’ll guide the modrons through the chaotic soup and get them on to the next step of their journey. I haven’t been including these, but this adventure is for 4-6 characters of 5-8th level. Limbo is no joke. It’s a dangerous place even for the prepared. You can’t predict what’ll happen there; all you can try to do is be ready for what comes. It’s pretty easy to hook the PCs into this. The Xaositects are looking to hire for a big job, chant goes, and they’re offering serious cash. If the PCs agree, they’re brought to a tavern in the Hive called Quake’s Place where Karan (who is visibly struggling to make sense) awaits them with Haeronimil. Haeronimil explains the problem. His people and the Xaositects can’t do anything to guide the modrons. Even if they could stand the things, they won’t follow such obviously chaotic individuals. They’ll pay 500gp each for the PCs’ trouble, but they’ll have to earn it. See, the deal with Limbo is that it’s made of pure, unrefined matter that hasn’t coalesced into anything as orderly as “land” or “an element.” By concentrating, individuals can impose their will on this raw stuff of creation. It won’t last forever, but you can make anything from a flat path to a whole city just by thinking about it, based on your intelligence. Here, have a chart.  PCs should do some research if they’re not already familiar with this technique. It’ll be necessary to get the modrons through. Getting to Limbo is pretty easy. The Xaositects will open a portal between the legs of a statue that leads to a branch of Yggdrasil between Ysgard and Limbo. The PCs arrive in front of the March, which has briefly paused right outside Limbo. Up ahead, they can see the swirling chaos. They can see other volunteers escorting their groups into the maelstrom-- a group the size of the March needs many guides. The githzerai give the PCs directions: they’re to travel to the nearest of Limbo’s whirlpools, which act as massive conduits, about 15 hours away. This one spits them out in a region called The Immeasurable, and from there is a 26 hour trek to the portal to Xaos, Limbo’s gate-town. Having arrived, the PCs can’t just set off right away. They have to convince the hierarch modrons that they’d make good guides. The modrons know that guides are a good idea, but they’re not happy about it, and they aren’t inclined to trust just anyone-- especially someone they meet on the Chaos side of the Great Ring. Appeals to emotion are going to fall on deaf ears, but praise of the beauty of logic and order, explanations of the party’s precise strengths, and especially a display of chaos shaping (from the chart above) should be useful. Modrons can’t chaos shape at all and it impresses them. Once the PCs have proved their worth they are given a passel o’ modrons (200 per PC, all drones of various ranks) and sent on their way. It might take the work of a few PCs at once to escort a group this size unless they’ve got some seriously brainy people. When chaos-shaping you cannot do anything else: cast spells, use proficiencies, make attacks, nothing but walk. When you rest someone else has to pick up the slack. This requires your full attention, so you’re not available to defend-- which is trouble, because Limbo is dangerous. It contains all kinds of hostiles, particularly Chaos Beasts, which are very nasty; they can look like anything at all (they are pure chaos, after all), and while they do almost no damage, their touch can destabilize your form, at which point you’re lucky not to dissolve into Limbo soup. Getting involved in combat forces Intelligence checks to keep the path stable, and if it starts to fall apart, you start to lose modrons. They don’t dissolve or anything, but they can’t shape chaos and they can’t move through it, so they get stuck-- isolated, helpless pockets of order in Limbo’s beautiful chaos. Also a hazard of Limbo-- miniflux. Small, untended objects have a way of changing into something else-- a pile of coins becomes a turtle shell, then a bunch of glass eyes, then a coil of rope braided from angel hair, then a Nalfeshnee’s claw, then maybe swallow eggs. If you want to use a trivial item you have, test Wisdom; on a failure, it has turned into something else. Maybe it’s just blue now. Maybe it’s the same, but weighs 50 times as much. Who knows! That’s the fun of Limbo. As you travel, you are beset with questions by the higher-ranking (and thus vocal) modrons. “How is it possible that chaos can control a whole plane?” “Why has order not taken hold?” “Is there an order we cannot see?” “Where are the gears?” “What rank are you?” The modrons are curious and want to learn, even about their hated enemy, but they won’t reveal anything about the March, its purpose, what they’ve seen so far or anything. The PCs will have to rest at some point, which bothers the modrons (who REALLY don’t want to stop, especially not here!) but logic might let you steal a few hours rest. You won’t get much sleep, I’d bet, and shaping chaos is impossible while asleep so someone has to stay up. Eventually, red slaadi (the froglike natives of Limbo) will get fed up with the invading modrons and attack, and while you don’t HAVE to guard them, the slaad don’t discrimination between modrons and guides. Once you’ve dispatched your own slaadi, you can help the modrons fight theirs, but they won’t pose a serious threat to the March-- there are just too many modrons. After fighting off the reds, an hour later a bunch of blue slaad (much tougher) attack, but this time the modrons are better prepared and help defend their guides. Eventually you make it to the whirlpool. This is an extra-violent, extra-chaotic part of Limbo, an uncontrollable, un-shape-able maelstrom. Not only is it VERY hard to stabilize terrain around here, but the modrons will flatly refuse to go in. If they had dreams, this would be a nightmare to the modrons: a node of concentrated chaos. If you can convince them to the enter (perhaps by demonstrating that it’s safe) you’ll be shunted to an extra-unstable area of Limbo called the Immeasurable. You must test Int at -1 to shape chaos here, since it’s so unstable. At this point, though, the Githyanki attack. Githyanki live in the Astral and hate, hate, hate the Limbo-dwelling Githzerai (their cousins). They therefore dispatch assassins to kill the modron guides, thus stranding the modrons in Limbo and annoying/undermining the Githzerai. Yours is a Githyanki woman named Torrenth, who spies on the PCs to determine the most inopportune time to strike. Before attacking, she casts a special version of Monster Summoning II which summons 2d4 chaos imps, creatures that infest your gear and make it start randomly mutating and shapeshifting. Good luck driving them out! Seriously, it requires magic. Torrenth will try her damndest to kill the lead chaos-shaper, figuring that’ll stop the modrons regrouping after the attack. She won’t fight to the death, but she’ll inflict as much harm as she can before fleeing. Once she’s been dealt with, you can make it to the guidon, a stable monolith attached to the gate that’s meant to be a beacon to travelers. The happy modrons will escape Limbo through the gate, tramp through the gate-town of Xaos, and be on their way. This is a nasty episode for the modrons, who suffer more casualties than at any point prior. And it’s just heating up for them. From here on out, the modrons are in the Lower Planes, the nastiest part of the multiverse. They’ll need heroes again. Our PCs should be on decent terms with the Xaositects and githzerai for helping them out of a jam, and they might be contacted as part of a warband seeking revenge on the githyanki for their meddling. Next time: Judge not, lest ye be Modron’d
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Aug 4, 2017 02:18
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occamsnailfile posted:This is more or less how I would play a female space marine in general because it's how space marines are often presented. "Battle Brother" would be fine even, sadly Battle Sister doesn't have alliteration going for it. I can't speak for all players of course, and I wasn't bent out of shape over the game itself--I actually like the Sisters and so playing one wasn't an unpleasant thing, except that the rules didn't support mixing them well. Sortie Sister?
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Aug 4, 2017 02:26
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senrath posted:Sortie Sister?
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Aug 4, 2017 02:44
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I thought githzerai were socially Lawful because unwavering focus and discipline are the only way to keep their chaos-shaped cities from disintegrating?
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Aug 4, 2017 02:54
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The Lone Badger posted:I thought githzerai were socially Lawful because unwavering focus and discipline are the only way to keep their chaos-shaped cities from disintegrating? Right. They see Limbo as a giant test.
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Aug 4, 2017 03:05
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One of the core things that makes Skaven more fun to fight than a lot of Warhams 'vast horde of assholes' enemy groups is that Skaven very, very definitely give a poo poo about dying and will actively try to avoid it, up to and including scampering off screaming "COBRA, RETREEEEEEAAAAT!" so that PCs don't have to kill like 80 rat jerks in one fight. This also makes having named rat enemies who constantly try to get away from the party to recur pretty easy.
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Aug 4, 2017 03:30
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Skaven also have a lot of very distinctive weapons that are just excellent set pieces/plot devices, because they tend towards mad science, so they're great for just having ridiculous, over the top stuff. Better, you can always fudge with them if the players are having bad luck because their stuff is all ridiculously break-prone, with their most reliable tech being only "almost" safe.
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Aug 4, 2017 05:41
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 Rifts World Book 15: Spirit West, Part 16: "It is known that at least one faction of Nunnehi (along with the Chiang-ku dragons) once advised and tutored the ancient Atlanteans and helped them unravel the secrets of magic and dimensional travel — the result of which ultimately led to the destruction of Atlantis and the rapid loss of magic on ancient Earth."  Cross-dimensional cultural appropriation. Nunnehi So these look like greys or aliens carved out of wood - as opposed to mythology, where they just look like Cherokee, only more vaguely mysterious. They're about the only non-spirits that call the Spirit Realm home, but nobody knows why the gods put up with them. They're partial to Earth, but nobody knows why. They're particularly fond of North America and Native Americans, but nobody knows why that is, either. Basically they're supposed to be big "M" Mysterious so there's a lot of flat statements with no explanation... you know, like many other sections of the book, but this time it's deliberate. So they seemingly randomly show up to give advice and help before then wandering away, while others have worked as patrons to different clans or tribes. They foresaw the destruction of the indigenous peoples of America, which is why they spirited many of them away as detailed earlier. Their relationship with the Native American spirits and gods is supposed to be a big secret, but even some of those gods are like "seriously, why do they get to sleep on our proverbial couch?" Also, the Nunnehi didn't ask the gods to kidnap a bunch of people and keep them hidden away for centuries. And they helped Atlantis develop magic, retroactively! Also they have a special territory in the Spirit Realm only gods and godlings can enter without permission. It's hinted they're preparing for some great danger admist a swarm of question marks. The Nunnehi, of course, aren't saying. They're a big black hole of self-congratulatory mysterious nonsense that would make a Chiang-Ku dragon sneeze. No, you can't play one. They're brilliant and strong and have thousands of MDC, have ridiculous amounts of magic power on par with gods, can teleport, enter people's dreams, have all sensitive psionic powers and some healing powers, can sense supernatural evil, can "see into people's souls", and get a choice of about ten different magical specialities (generally top-tier or all-encompassing in their speciality). Curiously, they can't access Shaman magic but can make lesser and major fetishes, somehow. Also they're vulnerable to fire due to being scarecrows, and dragon breath does double damage to them for some reason... but with thousands of MDC, vulnerabilities tend towards the academic.  Breaux spirit art that actually looks spirit-ish? Whoa. Ondi Thunderbirds The Great Spirits So, these are supposed to be lesser Thunderbirds compared to the big god Thunderbird. They're giant 20'+ tall eagles made out of golden lightning and are supposed to be some of the most feared and sacred spirits. Most are dispatched by the god or summoned by shamans, but some are apparently evil!... this is not elaborated on. Unlike other spirits, they can interact with the world while in energy form, but still have all the immunities that provides. So, they have MDC on par with dragon hatchlings, see "all spectrums of light", regenerate rapidly, take half damage from non-magical energy (convenient, because that's one of the only ways to hurt them), can turn into lightning to either go MACH 4 or to strike somebody. They have a few light and fire spells, empathy, and sensitive and physical psychic powers. For some reason, they're vulnerable to iron because they need some weakness other than magic and hey! Iron! Why not? Why give them a weakness that relates to their mythology or theme! That would be too obvious.  "Yes, motherfucker, I have a light." Greater Elemental Spirits Um, these are like Greater Elementals, but they're... Spirits? Warlocks can't summon them unless they're Native Americans. Unlike Elementals, they can take on animal form that isn't obviously magical... or take on the form of Native Americans. Do you know how sick I am of typing "Native American"? Well, you can guess, I'm sure. It notes that Warlocks can't summon these unless they're  Native American , though they'll be friendly with Warlocks just like the lesser ones. They're basically just bigger versions of the lesser elemental spirits, with 1000+ MDC and access to more spells and powers. You know the drill, and if you don't, you don't necessarily need to. Well, back to Breaux photo-referencing an animal, calling it a spirit. Totem Spirits Greater Animal Spirits So, these are the animals spirits that actually grant totem powers and who taught the original fetish (magic) to humans. We are - in a copy-paste from the Lesser Animal Spirit entry - told that there are hundreds of totem spirits of the same animals. So there are basically tens of thousands of these things, by extrapolation. Not sure that's intentional, but we'll roll with it. Each one easily has over 20,000 MDC (more than most gods, and once again, there are tens of thousands of them) and can summon their lesser versions, get a bunch of psionic powers, some basic spells and shamanistic spells, and... that's most of what they get. Because of their hilariously low damage values, if Moose and Squirrel get into a fight, it'll take hours upon hours of combat time for them to resolve their fight (given they regenerate) and thousands of combat rounds. To be fair, their MDC values are probably just a big middle finger to any PC that thinks they can box with (Bear) god.  Meanwhile, Perez draws poo poo that actually looks spookynatural. Greater Tree Spirits Rifts World Book 15: Spirit West posted:Tree spirits will come when summoned with the proper spell or when called upon by the gods, but they are more likely to appear when the woodland they have adopted as their home is threatened. They may also secretly or subtly intervene to protect a favored animal, lost adventurers, children and the mentally handicapped. Good to know, I suppose. So, they protect the forests, and often take on humanoid form to entreat people to leave the forest alone! And when people don't, they'll use their magic to sabotage logging attempts and the like, or try and start rumors about the woods being haunted. (I must have missed the Scooby-Doo episode where it all turned out to be a Native American tree spirit.) However, they'll eventually give up and move to another forest if people are persistent enough. I guess they're not terribly dedicated to their work. They only really put in effort to stop supernatural evil in their forest, though usually only in an indirect fashion. I mean, sure, they have thousands of MDC, but humanity has to make its own way or something. Sounds like a big fat lazy excuse if I ever heard one! So these are the bigger versions of plant spirits, with around 5,000 MDC, various sensory powers, psionic powers, low-level Earth Warlock spells, all Shaman plant spells, and they can make fetishes. Not too much to add here. I wonder what happens if one of these meets a Millennium Tree?  Next: What, no, not more spirits, what would be silly, I mean, you couldn't possibly be sick of these things, could you...? Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Aug 4, 2017 08:47
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 INTRODUCTION Or "The Story of O"h God drat It Heads up: there is a lot of weird and gross sex stuff in here. Drug abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, nonconsensual situations, Nazi imagery and torture are all parts of this. There is just…a lot here. So again, blanket CONTENT WARNING in regards to inappropriate sexual content and abuse and Magical Realm nonsense. If this makes you uncomfortable, by all means, don’t read this. Pretty much every installation of Lords of the Dream Cages’ updates will have something objectionable and questionable beyond the baseline of AAH’s shenanigans. I will be putting Bad Stuff under spoiler tags. And I'm not making things up that go under those tags, these are legit things the writers put in this book. How We Got Here There are a lot of small groups of people scraping by in the Gehenna after Perdition. This is the story of four of them: Blangis, Levec, Curval and Durcet. The four of them managed to meet up and work together to stay one step ahead of the gangs and the Demons, eventually managing to find a recreation complex to hole up in. For those who don’t remember, rec complexes are basically a functioning cross between an upscale mall and a good YMCA. This one in particular was home to an arcade, a theater, gymnasium, cinema, Olympic swimming pool and a library. They managed to spruce the place up pretty good by fortifying the entrances and restoring the power and settled into a life of comfort, safe from the Demons and roving bands of convicts. And, I mean, it’s a comfortable and complacent existence. This changes when they find a book on file down in the library. Blangis, the leader, ends up becoming obsessed with this book on the computer and that book happens to be The 120 Days of Sodom. He shows this to the others one by one and this all plants the seeds of a very stupid idea that Blangis spearheads: make the story real. For starters, they use the virtual reality chambers in the rec complex and get the power going to them again. The point of the simulators was allow the prisoners in a complex to experience things they can’t anymore if they behave well, things like being in a forest or swimming or lying on a sunny hill or skiing. With a little modification to the controls of the simulators, Blangis basically figured out they could be used for porn (despite the signs attached for everything that says “DON’T ABUSE THE SIMULATORS”). Using this knowledge and abusing the simulators, the foursome started creating their own little Magical Realms where they used and abused the artificial humanoids inside. This didn’t last. The four of them started kidnapping people and used them both as prey for the simulators or breaking them emotionally and psychologically to become their accomplices. Their targets were generally the lost, the weak, the isolated, slowly picking off anyone who came across the rec complex and indoctrinating the more attractive victims into working with them. However, their reign of terror is going to come to an end because they bit off way more than they could chew with the latest batch of victims.  Before we get into the new members of G-Unit, let's take a minute to learn more about our antagonists. Our contestants tonight on Abandon All Hope all hail from Terra, all come from different walks of life and all have their own kinks and bugaboos but together they make up THE LORDS OF THE DREAM CAGES! Come on down, contestant #1! Side note: all of their character art is how they appear to look in the Dream Cages. You'll see what they look like proper later. #5542402, PERCY BLANGIS Percy Blangis traces his bloodline back to Prussian aristocracy and that's a major point of pride of his, so much so that he has leveraged it in the past to get into certain jobs. The last job he held was working with a weapons manufacturer from Europe that made guns for the Last War. When he was out of work, he joined a group of like-minded rich people called the Knights of the Old Order who violently disagreed with the New Regime. This culminated in Blangis personally designing chemical weapons that were used to attack the UN building in Paris in 2640, the effects of which killed over a hundred thousand people. The Knights were eventually brought to heel and all of them were arrested (well the ones who didn't take the "honorable way out" and killed themselves) including Blangis. His official charge is "crimes against humanity". Blangis is in his 50s with silver hair and silver eyes and actively cultivates an air of stern diplomacy. He's fit, he's charming, he's handsome, he possesses energies and tastes of men half his age, he's an emotional abuser and an awful human being. He glosses over what he does by maintaining the persona of a kind aristocrat who keeps his interests on the down-low. Blangis prides himself on being a gentleman, on being able to provide goods and luxuries and on being a kind host despite none of that being true. Blangis' sexual interests will be covered when his particular Dream Cage comes up.   #6101347, DR. FRANCO LEVEC Levec comes from a strict family and was coddled as a child due to illness. He grew up to love strict categorization, from family traditions to the bugs he'd collect to put behind glass with pins. His parents bordered on the smothering, stunting his social growth and refusing to let him engage in things that interested him. They were even controlling what he studied when he went away to college: psychology, picked because he was a bright man but also because his grandfather had worked on New Regime psychological programs and this was a point of pride for the family. And Levec was a good psychologist; his inability to connect to people lead to him being able to emotionally detach from cases and treat the patient with a cold rationality and his inner desires to control made him work hard. Then he started using his position to get his control rocks off, turning his tenure as a medical director of psychology at a university mental hospital in Prague into his own personal playground. He began coercing not coworkers but patients into sleeping with him, their number ultimately being in the dozens, using his authority to cover up times when this was not consensual. And ultimately someone blew the whistle and Levec was arrested. His house was raided and police walked out with a mountain of hardcore BDSM porn and dozens of fetish uniforms and erotic paraphernalia he would use. Levec is not a man who lasts long in jail and pre-Perdition life was mostly just about keeping his head down and waiting until the Warden sent him to a new block because his current cellmates wanted to kill him. This only made things worse and he was labeled as a coward and made a higher target, resulting in him getting stabbed and nearly dying. This is how he met Percy Blangis. The man who tried to kill him was an enemy of Blangis and Blangis ultimately decided to poison the man's rations to deal with him. Levec's gratitude lead to an intense, honest devotion to Blangis and a friendship that culminated in them escaping Perdition together. Levec is a slight, unassuming man, the kind the neighbors would describe as such a nice guy and how nobody could have seen this coming. His major fetish is hardcore sadomasochism and humiliation. Victims selected by him are stripped, humiliated, dehumanized and systematically broken into compliant toys. He is, at the very least, bisexual and general prefers beautiful "partners". The one he enjoys the most are placed in fetish uniforms of his own design, combining Nazi fetishism with BDSM regalia.   #9900121, RIGHT HONORABLE ALDO CURVAL Curval is the oldest of the Lords and also the most reclusive. There's not much known about his life but there's plenty known about his old job: Superior Court Judge for the PTM. Curval ended up abusing his power to have political rivals locked up but eventually got bored with it. Then he started getting innocent defendants sentenced to death and became convinced he could get away with it. This was his downfall and he was arrested, stripped of his title and imprisoned. However, Curval is the most politically connected of the Lords and a lot of people in the PTM owed him favors. He was given maximum Trustee status and isolated from general population, basically given white-collar living conditions and a slap on the wrist. He was even given a role in the colonial government should they land somewhere habitable; his title of Judge would restored to become the lynchpin of the colonial government's judicial system. Perdition kind of put an end to that. The Warden was distracted with other problems and the Custodians were either destroyed or rerouted elsewhere. Plenty of prisoners from the general population wanted to get their hands on a Trustee or to get revenge on someone from the system and Curval was reduced to hiding for his own safety. But then he meant Blangis, a man who promised to keep him safe if Curval used his Trustee access to get them supplies and through locked doors. It was Curval's access who got them access to the rec complex to begin with and the ability to reroute power and utilities.  But Curval has receded into the background of the group and that's because he's hardcore addicted to virtual reality simulators. Blangis has enabled Curval's desire to have the power over life and death and his kinks are less sexual in nature and more violent. Blangis got him to try killing the artificial attendants of the simulators, and when he found he enjoyed that Blangis pushed him into murder with the argument of "you haven't truly lived until you've done this". He's been addicted to murder ever since and thrown himself head-first into the simulations where he hunts and kills people and artificials at all hours of the day, only removing himself from the simulation when he has to.   #8990532, MADDALENA DURCET Fun fact: I based Soapbox a bit on Durcet and cut out a lot of this. Really I guess I just based her on the idea of Durcet. Anywho. Durcet is a smart and beautiful woman who was a writer and feminist activist in the outer world. A champion of feminism and a fierce fighter for smashing gender roles, she was front and center in the movement and wrote numerous books on the topic. "Her only failing" (ugh) was the fact that she was infertile, something she attempted to compensate for and satisfy her desire to have children by adopting orphans from Third World countries. Around the time she adopted her tenth child some information got out about the Durcet household and...well. It was revealed that she was a brutal disciplinarian, keeping them in line via physical abuse and sexual humiliation by making the children remain naked or strip in front of each other and relieve their waste in front of each other or other things I presume would be worse than that (the game just puts down an "etc." after that). Her ultimate charges were child molestation, child abuse, torture and wrongful imprisonment. Durcet did her best to remain anonymous behind bars, cutting her hair and staying out of group activities. She generally kept to herself and cultivated the air of being religious, focusing on isolation and prayer. But then Perdition happened...and one of the cellmates she escaped with was a member of the Furies who managed to figure out who she was. Knowing that she'd be dead meat on her own, she cut the woman's throat in desperation and clung to the rest of the group until they were scattered by a Corruptor's gaze. She fled the group and traveled alone, fully expecting death but finding Blangis, Curval and Levec instead. She was taken to the rec complex and that's where Blangis began to work on breaking Durcet down and exploiting her guilty psyche to create someone just as depraved as him but who truly believed they were repentant. The Dream Cages have unlocked her true desires and created a paradise for her, a place where she can shamefully indulge in her kinks and sexual frustration. Unfortunately, those kinks are a heavy lust for pedophilia, child murder and hardcore torture. Unlike Levec who prefers to break pride and the mind and Curval who relishes the hunt and the kill, Durcet loves slow-burn pain and has a fascination with spilling blood.   MINOR CHARACTERS The Lords are in charge and everyone else is their lesser, preferring a life of servitude and slavery instead of being thrown in a cage to be assaulted or killed. They cook, they clean, they entertain, they service the Lords sexually. The minor characters fall into one of three categories. Older Servants are prisoners who are (glad to be) too old for the Lords' sexual tastes and instead work as helpers, running the show and the logistics. It's not an ideal situation but they're glad they have security under the Lords and they'll warn them and raise alarms if things are going wrong. They generally won't fight unless they're pushed to a breaking point.  Accomplices were given a choice of service or death and were generally only offered this choice because of their looks. Blangis gets into their heads and works on wearing them down until they'll do nothing but comply. Some of them go along with it only for their own service, some of them appear servile but are looking for the right moment to escape, some are mad enough to love their new position and want nothing more than to please the Lords. Either way, they're prisoners who generally didn't have it in themselves to fight and they're not hard to deal with if need be.  Artificials are created by the simulators to fill roles: bartender, memories of family members, someone to lean on and talk to. They're as real as real can be thanks to their programming giving them the ability to react realistically, to love, to trust, to fear, to be scared. Now they're mostly used as NPCs within simulations, acting as servants or sex slaves or fodder or prey when they're not being used for their (mostly) intended purpose of providing atmosphere. They can't leave the simulators without deteriorating but they're definitely capable of acting within them, even killing if they're programmed to.  Ugh. Well that was all depressing. Let's meet our contestants on the other side of the equation: the newcomers to G-Unit. Ice Queen was already introduced last time around and, admittedly, she didn't really have much going on when it came to Daniel's wack-rear end mental prison. She has, however, flourished under the tutelage of Soapbox, Doc and Beth, learning how to improve her ability to fight and hold her own in addition to using her wits to help figure out places to strike. She's also worked on honing her defense intimidation to project a greater air of menace that says "do not start something because I'll sure as hell finish it". Because of her increased competence, the founders of G-Unit have put Ice Queen in charge of the other recruits and their current mission to explore nearby blocks for goods and resources. Let's meet her allies.  #3269576, "PEACEMAKER" CONVICTION: DISSIDENT TIME SERVED: 14 YEARS GOAL: REDEMPTION  Sgt. Chen "Peacemaker" Locke served during the Last War in what was once Kiev. Bombarded by chemical weapons and neutron bombs, Kiev was a desolate wasteland of decaying buildings and refugees fleeing the combat zones. Her platoon's duty was to round up as many as they could to bring to safer environments and deliver medical aid and many times they had to put themselves between the innocent and their enemies. She has a lot of bad memories of the war, a lot of bad memories of mowing down ravenous cannibals so crazed by hunger they saw her men as MREs and of fighting rebels with heavy artillery. So when the war ended and she was stripped of all honors despite the people she at least tried to save, Chen was livid and hell-bent on payback by getting her name at least cleared. Didn't particularly work out for her and she's got the prison time to prove it. Since then, she's mellowed out some but still wrestles with her own demons. Ultimately Perdition isn't anything she's hasn't seen before, painfully familiar with the desperation and the hunger. Falling in with someone like Beth just gives her another shot at saving people who need it. Chen hasn't gone soft in the slightest since she was imprisoned, using all the time in the world to keep herself fit and trim. She's pushing 45 but still built like a tank with a mind like a homing missile and she's got more military experience and tactics to add to the group's survival. #4242881, "BAD HABIT" CONVICTION: VICE OFFENDER TIME SERVED: 8 YEARS GOAL: ESCAPE  Terica "Bad Habit" Haught was born into squalor in the ruins of cities destroyed by radiation and warfare. Sticking to the outskirts of society lead her to pick up an eclectic set of skills focused on surviving to live another day, manipulating folks with her body to get the goods and services under the banner of the PTM. Her life as a prostitute wasn't particularly exciting, but her ability to be ensure payment by being discrete and delivering quality service got her some reliable clients in good positions. Unfortunately, one bad session lead to her client going to the hospital and her pleading her case to the court. The charges were prostitution (guilty, no pleading out of that) and attempted murder (not guilty, he had just tried to warm himself up with a belt when it was supposed to be a guided, monitored thing), ultimately beating the rap for the latter but not the former. On the Gehenna, she simply faded into the background of sex workers imprisoned by the PTM and made a comfortable life for herself. But now everything is different and wrong and Terica's skills are useful once more at keeping her alive. Terica does a little bit of everything...not very well, but she does a little bit of everything. Thems the breaks when you roll low. But Tama sees something in her, so why not keep her around? More hands to pick through the salvage are always appreciated. She got her nickname from her ability to keep on coming back like a bad habit and now that she's amongst people willing to watch her back if she'll watch them, you bet your rear end Bad Habit will live to fight another day. #4445658, "JACKPOT" CONVICTION: ANARCHIST TIME SERVED: 9 YEARS GOAL: SURVIVAL  Alicia "Jackpot" Wynne was raised to break horses and raise hell like her forefathers before her. The child of anti-PTM revolutionaries who learned to lower their voices and keep the fight alive in secret, Alicia's education was supplemented with a lessons on radical politics and how to resist. However, not all of the lessons took and what was taught might not have been the most comprehensive course. Her parents were pretty disappointed when she started holding up stores and even more disappointed when the sweet words of her new friends lead to her robbing banks and offices. Ultimately a sting operation brought the crew down and Alicia was thrown behind bars where she quickly proved that the system doesn't work for everyone. Most surprisingly was that despite her outspoken hatred of the PTM, of prison and of society was that she ended up being made a Trustee of the highest standing. But hey, sometimes things accidentally get misfiled and sometimes you know someone on the outside who can guarantee those papers get jostled. They were unable to change anything by the time she ended up on the Gehenna and Alicia set about trying to make herself the coolest Trustee around. Her penchant for looting high-access areas and selling the goods and letting prisoners in where they shouldn't lead to her getting kicked around a lot until she found herself running for her life from a horde of angry Demons. She is glad she found Pincushion, though; he may not be the most coherent guy she's met, but he's one of the few not trying to use her for her status and hey, why not team up with his friends? Her big selling point is her ability to access high level goods and places because I abused the fact that you can buy off one requirement by paying 50 BP. Needing Trustee 2 counts as one requirement as far as I can tell. She's also very handy in a scrap to boot. #6838569, "BUZZKILL" CONVICTION: VICE OFFENDER TIME SERVED: 7 YEARS GOAL: ESCAPE  Ren "Buzzkill" Rackham had a stable, cushy job at a government pharmaceutical and research lab. The pay was good, the hours were decent and they had plenty of stimulating work coming up with new compounds and drugs. So they did what was asked of them, administered shots and pills and took the results as they came. However, Ren was far from the only researcher in the lab and there was a problem of covering up results and lying about side effects to push contracts. When an experimental psychotropic drug caused a mass of patient deaths and was still under consideration as a therapeutic drug for prisoners, Ren decided to stand up for what they believed in and became a whistleblower, leaking documents to the media and doing what they could to minimize their own profile in the leaks. This was mostly because Ren may have been innocent in the fraud...but not their own little side business of taking experimental formulae that didn't make the cut home and padding their pockets with some sales of illicit goods. When the lab went under, the PTM made sure that Ren went with it. Terrified of something bad happening to them due to government involvement, Ren was privately surprised that their knowledge of chemistry was prized by inmates. Same job, different environment. Doc is absolutely pleased as punch to have an assistant like Ren, someone who can whip up the compounds she needs to keep the unit running. Ren's big asset is their ability to craft drugs and compounds, but they've got just enough know-how and smarts to hold their own in a fight to boot. You don't last long in prison without picking up some new tricks. Who will survive and who will come out on top? If you really don't know the answer to that, you're going to be pretty surprised by how this all shakes out. But, I have a little exercise for y'all directly related to this new module and I'll need some feedback from the thread. Out of Buzzkill, Bad Habit, Ice Queen, Peacemaker and Jackpot, who falls into which category (totally accepting multiple entries per category because there's five of them):
Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 4, 2017 09:51
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Hostile V posted:#6101347, DR. FRANCO LEVEC Well, we're going places now. Hostile V posted:Who will survive and who will come out on top? If you really don't know the answer to that, you're going to be pretty surprised by how this all shakes out. But, I have a little exercise for y'all directly related to this new module and I'll need some feedback from the thread. Out of Buzzkill, Bad Habit, Ice Queen, Peacemaker and Jackpot, who falls into which category (totally accepting multiple entries per category because there's five of them):
Mainly I just want the pedophile to square off with the ex-military destroyer.
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Aug 4, 2017 10:41
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