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I've been looking all over the place to actually get a straight answer about this setting, but it's incredibly hard to find anything online about how it all actually works. As far as I can tell, barely any of it is digitised, and what is available is old copies of the Trough zine, which is of questionable canonicity. Hopefully there's some goon veterans of the old CHIRPS days who have read more than the core books and can actually give me some loreposts and stories. I've got 3 main questions: 1. I get that the J'krazzi Archfiends are actually ancient aliens and their dark magic is actually advanced technology, including cyberwear destroying your SOUL stat. What I don't get is that there's also actually Hell where bad people go when they die? I can't find any relationship 2. If Conasimus is from the Barbaristani Lava-Wastes, How is he able to cast high-level conjurations? I get that he's David Elm's pet character but that restriction is explicitly unavoidable to all Barbaristani characters. 3. In the Elastic Pits of Phylbrtte adventure, the Orlock Conjurers are all afraid of the return of the Puzkat'yorni, with all sorts of foreshadowing. I couldn't find anything about this anywhere else, not even in the later d20 supplements where they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Did whatever that is pop up, or was it a victim of studio politics?
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Feb 8, 2019 22:25
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Wrestlepig posted:I've been looking all over the place to actually get a straight answer about this setting, but it's incredibly hard to find anything online about how it all actually works. As far as I can tell, barely any of it is digitised, and what is available is old copies of the Trough zine, which is of questionable canonicity. Hopefully there's some goon veterans of the old CHIRPS days who have read more than the core books and can actually give me some loreposts and stories. It later turned out that there is also an actual J'krazzy hell where insufficiently evil J'krazzy go, or some bullshit like that, and then during the lovely d20 era, the two hells collided, and it was a gigantic clusterfuck.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:33
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Wrestlepig posted:2. If Conasimus is from the Barbaristani Lava-Wastes, How is he able to cast high-level conjurations? I get that he's David Elm's pet character but that restriction is explicitly unavoidable to all Barbaristani characters. Oh hey, I know the answer to this one. You've got to look at his stats in anything published after 1997, when they retconned this problem away. It's a divine boon from the Metal God, Apthatch, received after The War of the Sapphire Crimelords happened. They literally had to write this one in or declare the entire event null and void because nobody wanted to call Elm out on his bullshit during the actual game. If Conasimus hadn't been able to cast Muster VII, then the Crimson Sapphires wouldn't have fallen to the Guild of Wonders, and hoo boy can you imagine how that would impact the rise of Petrus?
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Feb 8, 2019 22:37
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Wrestlepig posted:I've got 3 main questions: I remember an old RPGNet thread about how apparently this was supposed to lead into a big cosmic war arc, but I can't really get into details right now. I'll try to remember to post something later when I get home from work. quote:3. In the Elastic Pits of Phylbrtte adventure, the Orlock Conjurers are all afraid of the return of the Puzkat'yorni, with all sorts of foreshadowing. I couldn't find anything about this anywhere else, not even in the later d20 supplements where they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Did whatever that is pop up, or was it a victim of studio politics?
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Feb 8, 2019 22:39
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Evil Mastermind posted:I remember an old RPGNet thread about how apparently this was supposed to lead into a big cosmic war arc, but I can't really get into details right now. I'll try to remember to post something later when I get home from work. This couldn't possibly have been worse than When Hells Collide, so I kinda wish we'd got it.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:42
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I don't know anything official on the Archfiends, but on the Conasimus thing, its because he's undertaken the Second Journey, which let him live his entire life over from birth with the knowledge of a previous life. His restrictions seem like they're lifted but that's because he's not using Barbaristani magic, he's using Endeavorian spirit conjuring. I don't think they ever printed actual rules for the Second Journey, but the way I understand it is that before Elm started writing adventures himself, Conasimus was literally Elm's personal character that he used in games. The GM told him "you can use this dryad's wish to boost any number on your character sheet by one" and Elm chose to boost Conasmius's Circle Rank of 14 not to 15, but to 24, because he said "one is a number." This brought him way over the level cap, so the GM just threw up his hands and said, fine you can have ten levels in whatever you want I GUESS. The Second Journey was just how the GM explained it away. Fuego Fish posted:Oh hey, I know the answer to this one. You've got to look at his stats in anything published after 1997, when they retconned this problem away. It's a divine boon from the Metal God, Apthatch, received after The War of the Sapphire Crimelords happened. They literally had to write this one in or declare the entire event null and void because nobody wanted to call Elm out on his bullshit during the actual game. If Conasimus hadn't been able to cast Muster VII, then the Crimson Sapphires wouldn't have fallen to the Guild of Wonders, and hoo boy can you imagine how that would impact the rise of Petrus? Holy poo poo it all makes sense now, this whole event was the GM struggling to find ways to fit Elm's nonsense into his game after he shattered the advancement system. Because in the adventures before this, he's still Circle 14, and then all of a sudden he has all these conjurations and boons? Old school politicking was ridiculous. EscortMission fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Feb 8, 2019 |
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Feb 8, 2019 22:43
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Fuego Fish posted:and hoo boy can you imagine how that would impact the rise of Petrus? I wish it impacted the Petrus arc, it was ridiculous how everyone trusted them despite the constant backstabbing and betrayals. I guess the writers were really into Mafia Honor, but they never actually did any crimes.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:43
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NinjaDebugger posted:This couldn't possibly have been worse than When Hells Collide, so I kinda wish we'd got it. Sort of like Hell on Earth by way of Jack Kirby. But good. e: or that stupid Brave New World twist.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:48
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EscortMission posted:I don't know anything official on the Archfiends, but on the Conasimus thing, its because he's undertaken the Second Journey, which let him live his entire life over from birth with the knowledge of a previous life. His restrictions seem like they're lifted but that's because he's not using Barbaristani magic, he's using Endeavorian spirit conjuring. I thought the endeavorians were strange but that makes them come off a lot better. An evil underground empire of black-skinned elves who were really into vore and unbirthing their men seemed like Elm was just inserting his fetishes but I guess it was actually a narrative choice.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:49
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Wrestlepig posted:I wish it impacted the Petrus arc, it was ridiculous how everyone trusted them despite the constant backstabbing and betrayals. I guess the writers were really into Mafia Honor, but they never actually did any crimes. Oh yeah for sure Petrus was legitimately the worst villain because of all that, but it would have been even worse if the stranglehold of the Sapphire Crimelords over the Panopticon Ocean hadn't been broken. Like... imagine if Petrus was being implicitly trusted by Princess Teeba all the time, you might as well have hurled your dice into the loving void every time you came across a druid corsair.
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Feb 8, 2019 22:50
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Wrestlepig posted:1. I get that the J'krazzi Archfiends are actually ancient aliens and their dark magic is actually advanced technology, including cyberwear destroying your SOUL stat. What I don't get is that there's also actually Hell where bad people go when they die? I can't find any relationship Evil Mastermind posted:Technically there isn't. This book came out during the height of the satanic panic, and Tom Hixim's wife (who was also the company's lawyer) insisted they change the J'Krazzi from demons to aliens and dark magic to tech in order to appease people. So you have it backwards. It was magic and demons originally, then they were totally tech & aliens the whole time, no, really you guys. The relationship that exists is an antagonistic one, and most of the published information on it comes from the late-era adventure series NinjaDebugger alludes to, "A Crisis on Two Hells". But the dirty not-so-secret is that the antagonism between the J'krazzi Archfiends and the Lords of Hell came from the antagonism between Elizabeth Moore (credited as T. H. Moore in basically every Koltrotha RPG publication) who had editorial control over the RPG line, and Magus Jason Phillips (credited as just Jason Phillips until he changed his name in the late 90s) who had editorial control over the fiction publications, including a lot of pull in the unofficial zines. Moore and Hixim had created an alien mythology for adventures to specifically avoid religious depictions of hell (for fear of being branded "satanic"). Phillips had some stories he really wanted to publish that involved the afterlife, and had some slightly more esoteric motivations that he only discussed years later. So on the RPG side, the J'krazzi were doing all the hellish stuff, with no mention of Actual Hell. On the fiction side, demons existed and hell existed and the J'krazzi were mentioned, but not often. Phillips, as it turns out, is a believer in actual hell and actual magic, and for this reason quietly axed or altered a lot of depictions of magic in the works that passed through his hands. You might find this weird for someone who was the one pushing for the inclusion of Hell in RPG-adjacent materials, but he thought that setting demons as the antagonists was good practice for resisting demons in real life. So in the end, the J'krazzi-Hell weirdness was the product of two different segments of the company doing things for what they thought were good reasons, neither of which had authority over or even much willingness to talk to the other. The crossover adventure only became possible after a few IP handoffs.
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Feb 8, 2019 23:04
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Just got a copy of Demiurges and Divinities, pretty neat. That said 1. I’ve never seen an rpg book that explicitly endorses the occult and says all the spells work ‘in the realm of flesh’. Must be Phillips getting the reins again 2. I know these books are never that unique, but you just change the S in Aslan to Z it’s still a breach of copyright. As far as I can tell it’s the same Lion Jesus from the books, from a ‘closeted realm of beauty and wonder, he shepherded children from adventure to the afterlife, aside from a presumptuous woman who resisted his divinity, as often occurs’ 3. This whole book has serious issues with women. There’s three good goddesses in it, of nursing, prostitution and ‘washing one’s long locks in a river’. The only evil goddess is Ezthamoore, dark crone goddess of ruination, sabotage and censorship. There’s a mythic hermaphrodite for queer representation at least, not bad for the era
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Feb 9, 2019 00:08
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