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Hordes Mk. II Primal Lord Tyrant Hexeris is a master mortitheurge, wielding the power of life and death. The living, he believes, are just machines with thresholds for injury and pain. He tends to leave people who speak to him feeling tainted and violated, as he can see their immortal spirits. He was born to House Kurshon of Halaak, training with the Cataphract elites. However, he was also encouraged by his house's leader, Dominar Lokoda, to study mortitheurgy. When Vinter Raelthrone came to the capital, Lokoda joined him rather than risk weakening his house. Eight years later, though, he made the mistake of plotting against Raelthorne. As Morghoul rooted out treachery, Lokoda sealed his house. Hexeris offered Morghoul entrance to House Kurshon in exchange for rank under Raelthorne. House Kurshon was undone entirely, and Hexeris has never felt asny guilt over this pragmatic betrayal. He has risen to become one of the most dangerous tyrants in the Army of the Western Reaches. His soldiers are perfectly disciplined, knowing their master would kill them instantly if it helped him to do so. He enjoys facing the trollkin, whose resilience he finds very, very fascinating. He secretly dabbles in the art of the extollers to advance his ambitions, and he has implanted a sacral stone on his chest, bearing the soul of his great grandfather, the mortitheurge Javekk Kurshon. Hexeris can speak with this spirit, which teaches him powers never before combined in a single user. Archdomina Makeda is wary of Hexeris, but he doesn't mind - his works are beyond her comprehension. He was one of the first to doubt Vinter's claim to being Reborn, and he revels in having been vindicated. Makeda has entrusted him to supervise the western defenses of the skorne, but that might be taken as proof that she doesn't trust him at her side. His gimmick is enslaving and debuffing his enemies, and his feat lets him take control of anyone he kills briefly.  Archdomina Makeda commands the Army of the Western Reaches and is the finest general of the Skorne Empire. The success of the invasion rests only on her shoulders, and when the Conqueror made the choice to stay at his Stormlands fortress, he sent her west to lead his armies. During the First Unification, she defended the lands of House Balaash against Vinter Raelthorne. Three times, she led her army against him, tearing open is ranks, and at last she led one final charge. The two faced each other in abttle, fighting for hours. It was the strongest foe Vinter had ever faced, and she had never seen an enemy able to withstand her. At last, she was disarmed, her beasts slain. She awaited death, but Vinter turned away, saying that on another day, he would have lost. He offered her the chance to serve. She spent a few years rebuilding her house, and then stayed in Halaak to coordinate when he went to attack Corvis. When the betrayers sought to assassinate her and take over Halaak, she fought them off and sealed her gates, enduring impossible odds until Vinter returned. Makeda strictly obeys the hoksune code, and her ancestors' souls empower her army, which she plans to unleash on the humans. She is driven by boundless ambition, and her every step expands the Skorne Empire. Her gimmick is buffing her allies, and her feat keeps her forces going, allowing them to keep fighting despite fatal wounds.  Master Tormentor Morghoul is a paingiver who knews well how to fight. He drives his beasts on, bringing out their great strengths and killing with his bladed gauntlets while evading enemy blows. He is exceptionally fast and knows all the ways to cause pain and death in the body. After building his reputation as a paingiver for hire, he was enlisted by House Vokuul in Halaak, hunting for plotters against the domina by torture. At the end, he forced his domina to choose a new heir but got her absolute obedience in her house. The Vokuul joined the defense against Vinter Raelthorne, but Morghoul did not, choosing to end his service when ordered to fight. Instead, he sold his services to the Reborn. He stayed at the capital when Raelthorne went west, uncovering the plot to overthrow him. He became the Walking Death of Halaak, moving about unseen and torturing people to gain information. NEarly a hundred died to his campaign. When the Conqueror returned, Morghoul went to him and revealed all he'd learned, including the locations of every secret passage and poorly guarded part of Halaak. This allowed for a very bloody and swift Second Unification, in which Morghoul assassinated the largest house leaders. A month long festival of pain followed for the traders, and silence was enforced on pain of death in the capital, so only Morghoul's symphony of screams could be heard. He has now been tasked with watching for treacery in Makeda's army, and he loves his work. His gimmick is pain, to allies and enemies, and his feat causes such agony that it severs the warlock/warbeast connection briefly.  Few can with stand the gaze of the Basilisk Drake, one of the most dangerous creatures of the badlands. When the male of the species focuses its eyes on a foe, it unleashes a wave of shimmering power that makes the air act as if it were liquid. This wave of entropy causes terrible pain in the living, ripping skin and muscle from bone and roasting them. It can grind stone to dust and melt iron, and fundamentally what it does is sever the connections that keep matter together. Taming basilisk, however, is a costly and dangerous job that usually kills many beast handlers. Still, there was never doubt the skorne would find a way to weaponzie them. Captured young and trained properly, drakes are receptive to command reasonable predictable. They unleash their gaze only on command, though the paingivers have attached hooks tothe sides of the mouth to control them if necessary. Handlers have discovered that basilisk females fight even more fiercly in the presence, so they are often paired. The basilisk's gaze has made it notorious in eastern Immoren, but its jaws are no less dangerous. ITs claws are exclusively used for burrowing, as it prefers to live underground in the evening and emerge to sun itself by day. They are actually very cute when torpid, but deadly nonetheless. Their animus allows movement after attacking.  For centuries, the skorne only used the Basilisk Krea for breeding, not battle, but unleashing the female's true potential has been a triumph for the beast handlers. They found that they could sew the eyes shut to heighten the krea's other senses. A blinded krea pushed to rage builds up a critical threshold of energy around her body. This is not the same as the disruptive blast, however - rather, it slows those nearby, paralyzing them and halting projectiles. Kreas are violent-tempered and prone to lashing out, especially in the years after they give birth. Handlers suspect that their power is used in the wild to protect their young. However, they have become a favored skorne warbeast whatever the case, especially alongside the drakes. Their animus gives a measure of that paralytic power to others.  A Cyclops Savage is one of a brutish and primitive carnivore species of eastern Immoren that exists to hunt and kill. The skorne of centuries past were amazed that such dim creatures could be so sophisticated in battle, eventually tracing the skill to their ability to sense the future. Then they enslaved the cyclopes. They are captured as youths, then trained and conditioned to obey orders. They don't need much encouragment to fight or kill, as they are innately bloodthirsty - so much so, in fact, that they must be sedated with narcotics between battles. They are strong enough to kill with one blow, and in the wild usually use improvised clubs. Skorne handlers give them mastercrafted blades. Extensive experimentation over centuries has refined the strategic sections of the cyclopes' brains, amplifying their instincts and cruelty. Their limited sense of the future gives them amazing inuition, and their complex and sensitive eye is unusually perceptive, spotting ways to evade blows or defenses. Their animus grants that vision to their allies.  The skorne have used Titan Cannoneers for two centuries. Their four arms are particularly dexterous and good at operating the cannons. They are trained and conditioned ofr it, but their limited intellect is generally strained by the job and requires warlock supervision to do it consistently. In a fenzy, they'll revert to their instinct to just ram into things and tear them apart. Skorne warrior codes, the costs and the training time make titan cannoneers rather rare, used only by the wealthiest as siege weapons. Only in the last few decades have fortresses been built that can withstand these creatures, and under the Conqueror, all titan cannoneers were forced to join Makeda's army. Their animus weakens the enemies around them.  The Titan Gladiator is a wall of muscle, a four-armed bipedal elephant of a race that has been the favored warbeast of the skorne for millenia. They have the stamina to take any punishment and the strength to destroy most things. Their nervous systems are very well understood, and the handlers use barbed hooks at sensitive spots to goad them into rampages. Their armored body is their great weapon, using their huge weight to smash enemies around and pulverize them, at which point they can be pinned by the bladed war gauntlets. Titans prefer herds, where they occasionally get attacked by hungry predators. These hunters rarely come out well in the clashes, usually tonr to bits. Titans are normally docile unless threatened, but the skorne have encouraged their violent tendencies via cruel and painful torments. Their animus makes things really good at running around. Next time: SKORNE SKORNE SKORNE SKORNE
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Jul 2, 2015 20:34
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Strange Matter posted:So is it accurate to say that Adepts don't really have much of a place in the Cosmic scheme of things? It seems like the Cosmic game requires a degree of perspective that their obsessions cloud them from. Nah. Adepts haven't ever been presented as having any problems grokking the whole Statosphere thing, although they probably have very idiosyncratic views on how it works. They can't directly influence the Clergy or ascend, unless they're also an avatar, but anyone angling for the ascension is going to need some help, and even godwalkers don't have as much raw occult muscle as a good adept. Also, keep in mind that adepts gain their power through mundane actions. An adept at the cosmic level is going to have more influence, knowledge, and resources, which translates to more charges, not to mention their presumably higher Magick skill. Halloween Jack posted:I got the impression that the Freak is a deliberate sendup of WoD characters like Penny Dreadful and Sascha Vykos. The Freak/Chris Indrick is sort of interesting, because the fiction from its perspective makes it pretty clear that Freak as a legend is much larger than the Freak as a person. Its super-powerful (although not as much as you might think) and extremely crazy, but it chats about celebrities, has random one night stands, puts its neck out to help a guy's sick sister, and comes really, really close to dying at least once. The core book even sneakily suggests a good way to go about offing the Freak if you wanted to. Strange Matter posted:Is the Stratosphere gamable like that? Can an Avatar fake it till he makes it all the way into the Clergy? Yeah. Precisely zero belief is required to be an avatar or ascend, you just have to mold your life to follow the Archetype. I think the book compares it to being an actor.
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Jul 2, 2015 20:34
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Strange Matter posted:Is the Stratosphere gamable like that? Can an Avatar fake it till he makes it all the way into the Clergy? You can also become a godwalker by accident by just doing you. Christine Jorgensen became the MH godwalker that way. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Jul 2, 2015 |
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Jul 2, 2015 20:44
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That's fantastic. It's actually sort of a refreshing take on cosmic horror that its true nature is not, infact, simply beyond the limits of human comprehension. There's a whole dimension of uneasiness surrounding the fact that the laws of reality don't really care at all about who is more deserving of reward or punishment-- the universe is a massive game with definite winners and losers, and just knowing what the rules are gives some people a decidedly unfair advantage. It really fits well with the whole "You did this" theme that it has going for it.
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Jul 2, 2015 20:53
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I wouldn't even call it cosmic horror. If anything, it's the exact opposite. Fully anthropic horror.
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Jul 2, 2015 20:56
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Yeah, Unknown Armies makes no bones about the fact that the Statosphere just is, there's no higher power or divine plan, and if you can make your way to the top however it goes, whether through accident or ruthless fakery, then congratulations. The whole Avatar and ascension thing is strongly inspired by Tim Powers' Last Call where various people are involved in a mystical power struggle to become the Fisher King, and you see a lot of the same concepts there as well...people going through the motions and abiding by taboos in a fully conscious attempt to groom themselves or others as the winning candidate rather than some sort of devout faithlike belief, and going through the motions properly is more or less all that's required.
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Jul 2, 2015 21:05
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Hordes Mk. II Primal Where other titans rush in, the Titan Sentry is an unmoving wall on which enemies break. With their spears and halberds, they can take pretty much anything and retaliate nastily. Expert beast handlers select only the largest and most intelligent titans to be sentries. They are not innate warriors and do not use tools easily, but the skorne are persuasive. They are trained to use their weapons well, though few ever really near the skill of professional soldiers. Their strength, however, does not require that. Their intensive conditioning also encourages them to fixate on the largest perceived threat around them and eradicate it utterly before moving on. When a sentry picks a target, all distractions fade away.  Cataphract Arcuarii are encased in thick lacquered armor, trained to handle the massive armor and picked for esceptional strength and endurance. They wield giant hooked harpoons that make good spears in close quarters and can be fired to impale and drag in foes. Tey act in concert to bring down even the mightiest prey and often work alongside beast handlers to capture wild titans. Not all skorne can aspire to be Cataphracts, as they take only the tallest, bulkiest, strongest and most enduring. Not every great house has many of them, as they are quite expensive to equip, but they are the greatest warriors of their generation. Their philosophy is about self-reliance and capability. The arcus was the great harpoon of Vuxoris, the creatore hoksune, and the madern variant of the weapon is essentially a very powerful but small crossbow firing a chained blade.  Catapract Cetrati use long polearms and interlocking shields in battle, embodying the skorne discipline and tenacity. They lock into formation and take down anyone that gets nearby with the war spears. For skorne, combat has intrinsic meaning, and the discipline required to join the Cetrati is welcomed as a worthy transformation. They spend years training to master formation fighting, to act as a seamless machine and more capable unit. They are descended from a millenia-old tradition, and many of the most exalted ancestors were Cetrati. The weight of their weapons and armor is immense, overlapping armor plate that would be too heavy for most to move in. Only the strongest skorne can join the caste, between that and their immense halberds and shields.  Paingiver Beast Handlers learn the anatomy of both skorne and warbeasts. They can bring forth immense effort fro mthe beasts in their charge, enraging them to rampage with increible strength. Their main job is to oversee the beasts, but they are dangerous in their own right, using their barbed whips to target arteries and tendons beneath even the thickest armor. The job of conditioning warbeasts is very dangerous, and requires lashes, pain-hooks, needles, blades and all kinds of drugs. The more experienced paingivers oversee other eager cadets, and must know both the temperament and physical limits of the beasts they work, to achieve best results for their effort. They can fool warbeasts into believing they're whole despite their injuries, and while some beasts do not survive being pushed that far, it's worth it if it means victory. They follow a good laid down by the first paingiver, Morkaash. Modern paingivers are obsessed with improving nad perfecting their art, forgoing house loyalties in favor of focusing purely on their skills, which are beyond petty politics. Even among the Western Army, the beast handlers do not fraternize with other castes. They wear distinctive masks to portray faceless resolve.  The Praetorian Swordsmen follow an ancient tradition of dual-sword combat. They are the backbone of all house armies as well as the Army of the Western REaches. They drill endlessly and observe the hoksune warrior code at all times. Only after victory in ceremonial combat can a warrior claim the rank of Praetorian, and failure means death or a lesser caste. EVen after becoming Praetorians, their only hope for glory is to fight well and survive. There is no early return for the wounded or rest for the weary. Tyrants keep them fighting as long as their flesh holds their bones together, and they are eager to capture slaves and territory to prove their worthiness for promotion. When Victor Raelthorne moved to the Abyssal Fortress, he ordered the dominars to send him their finest swordsmen. Those who passed muster were welcomed to the fortress and Makeda's army, while the rest were returned to their houses in shame. Even the least of Makeda's Praetorians are the greatest of their houses and proud of their skill. They are accustomed to linking honor with house, and have transferred that pride to their cohorts, with the various cohorts competing for spoils and glory.  the Venator Reivers are relatively new. Skorne tactics once focused exclusively on closing with the foe for melee, and the earliest skorne ranged weapons were large, clumsy things meant more for walls or warbeasts. That's changed over the last century, as skorne wepaons were refined and the tyrants learned the value of a combined-arms approach. Vinter Raelthorne appreciated this and ecnouraged the recruitment and training of many Venators. The lowest ranks are the amigers, led by a dakar and organized in taberna, small groups that share a tent. They learn both how to use their reivers and also swordplay. These weapons are heavy and powered by gas, taking a great deal of finesse to use. Venators are below Praetorians in rank by hoksune rules, but have begun to earn more respect in battle with their needle-firing guns. They shoot bursts of flesh-rending, razor-sharp projectiles that can rip just about anything apart. The sound they make is unlike any western gun, a sort of metallic buzzing caused by its unique design. Reivers use cylinders of explosive gas to proepl the needles out of a spinning cone, and are slightly less complex to reload than most guns, so long as prepared cones are on hand. Reading the cones is intricate work that can't be done in battle, so venators carry several canisters of gas and several cones, each of which is loaded with hundreds of needles.  The essence of worthy skorne ancestors is placed in special stones, which are then sometimes fused into Ancestral Guardians. They watch over their houses most of the time, but some are used on the battlefield, where they offer immortality to any skorne alongside them. They can embrace fallen warriors and gather their essence, using it as fuel to move with great speed and strength. They are guided by the spirits of ancient heroes and fueled by the energy of the freshly dead, unleashing a flurry of skilled attacks. Each is a unique creation animated by a specific ancestor. They are expensive, but Vinter Raelthorne chose to deploy them with his invading army, which has increased the loyalty and resolve of the skorne. After all, their presence is a sign of ancestral favor. In addition to the central sacral stone in the head, numerous obsidian stones decorate the torso and limbs, attracting and crystallizing the essence of any skorne who dies nearby. These spirits gain honor in death and become revered companions to the exalted. They rank below full exalation, but it is a rare chance for a soldier to preserve their essence from the Void. Sacral stones are very tough to break, and when the guardians carrying them fall in battle, they are recovered and returned home to honor their houses. Next time: Join the Blight!
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Jul 2, 2015 21:23
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Xelkelvos posted:Kensai - Pick a melee weapon. Any melee weapon. It's now part of the user's Regalia. Upon purchase, the user picks either Brawl or Weaponry as the associated skill for using the weapon. Its initial stats are Damage 1, Initiative 0, Strength 0, and a Size of 1 - 4. For anyone else other than the user the Initiative penalty and the Minimum strength required to use it is 3+Inner Light. The weapon can do either Bashing or Lethal damage and can be switched with a Transformation action. Invocations may be used as a bonus to either the attack roll or the damage, but not both in a turn and the max that can be added on top of bonuses from Upgrades is 5 Couldn't they just call it Weaponmaster or something? Why go for "sword saint" if it can be any melee weapon? Green Intern posted:I've always had a soft spot for that troll design. The giant chins/throatpouches are really distinct. I generally hate giant chins on stuff like dragons (just makes them look silly IMO), but I think it works with these cartoonish yet badass trolls. Green Intern posted:I am sick and tired of Donatello-supremacy in my turtle-rpg systems. Let the dumb Raphaels have some fun now and then! Raphael is underpowered in TMNT. Super Console  Finally a cover that is kinda sorta below my artistic skills. I hope I don't have to prove this now. (The rest of the art in this book is all stickmen, a few Deviantart pencil drawings, and strips from the Adventurers! webcomic. Now talk about variety.) Intro and Game Engine Super Console (aka Console 2nd edition) is a roleplaying game by Valent Games, who seem so specialize in silly little "pay what you want" RPGs. It is heavily based on JRPGs from the 16-bit and PSOne-era (aka primarily Final Fantasy), with varying levels of genre emulation we will get to shortly. After a little shout-out to the Returners RPG (man, I feel old), we get into the usual "What's a roleplaying/console RPG" shebang before going into the glossary. To summarize:The game uses 1d10s (usually for percentile rolls), the GM is called CPU, PCs are Main Characters or MCs, the in-game currency is ISB (Intergame Standard Bucks, which is already way more creative than the source material), and any number above 9,999 is a dirty lie (though that doesn't actually come up here in Super Conolse as much as it did in the first edition). Before a campaign of Super Console can get started, the players and the CPU need to settle on which Style and Genre to pick from, which has an influence on rules and available characters. Both Styles and Genres aren't actually covered in-depth until later, but I'll just do it here as that makes more sense. Though I may get back to the Genres to cover any rule changes. The main two Styles are Console and Mixed, with Console leaning much closer to its source material (with abstract combat involving front and back rows, as well as save points), and with Mixed having a more realistic combat system and item selection. The two other Styles are Silly (Console with the silly console tropes ramped up to 11) and Brutal (Mixed on meatgrinder mode). Genre is pretty much what kind of typical JRPG era the campaing is set, with the choices being The Timeless Time (super mystic stuff), Ancient Times (cavemen), The Golden Age (less super mystic stuff), Ice Age (cavemen on ice), Medieval Era (knights and stuff), Magitech Era (Eberron), Post-Magitech Era (cyberpunk) and Space Age (lazors). Think Chrono Trigger with some Final Fantasy 6, 7 and Star Ocean / Phantasy Star spliced into the timeline. Basic Character Info Characters in Super Console are created in one of two ways: They can be either Classed characters who just pick a typical FF class/job, or a Tasked character who uses a more freeform system like skill trees or not-Materia. Primary Attributes in this game are Strength (pretty much like in D&D), Speed (for initiative and ranged attacks), Vitality (for HP), Intelligence (magic resistance), Spirit (status resistance), Magic (MP and spell power) and Luck (evading and sneaking). Secondary Attributes are the ones actually used in combat etc., and they're pretty strange in that they all involve averaging the Primary Attribute they're based on with the character's Level. Evasion for example is the average of Luck and Level. Damage and Defense also use equipment bonuses in the averaging process. The odd man out is Critical Percentage which is always 5% unless modified by a weapon or class ability. Speaking of Level, that one goes up to 99 like in the video games. Campaigns are however supposed to only go to around 75, with class abilities gained at Level 80 and up being purposely designed to be broken, as poo poo gets pretty bonkers in most JRPGs at that point. Finally, there's your Health, Mana and XP Bar. These actually don't have any absolute values, but rather always go up to 100% (more on that in a minute). The Game Engine The main two kinds of action resolution involve Contested Actions (arm-wrestling or trying to run away from someone) and Resisted Actions (being attacked), which are a bit different compared to say D&D because they always involve the resisting character trying to dodge/resist/etc. (so there aren't actually any attack rolls, only evade rolls) The former is a simple 1d100 + Attribute affair, while the other one involves a Skill Chart showing the chance to resist based on the difference in abilities (like Attack Skill and Evasion for a normal attack). The chance of success is pretty slim unless your resisting ability is clearly better than the attacker's, with roughly equalish numbers being at 15%. Then again dodging is pretty rare in JRPGs unless you powergame, so that's on purpose. For anything affecting your Health, Mana and XP Bar, there's the Bar Chart, showing just how many of your 100% you gain or lose. This again is based on ability difference, with the default being 25%. Note that there aren't actually percentage calculations involved, you just add or subtract. For example, if an Ogre with a Damage of 50 hits a squishy wizard with a Defense of 28, that's a difference of +22, which the chart tells us is a change of 60%, making the wizard's Health bar drop by 60 points. A much much sturdier warior with say 62 Defense would only lose 15%. Any multipliers like critical hits only affect the percentage number, not the attribute. This system is also used for Spellcasting (with the difference between the caster's Magic Skill and the spell's cost determining how much the Mana Bar drops) and healing (basically calculated as anti-damage). So if the above Ogre's attack was a group healing spell, the wizard would gain 60%, but the warrior only 15. The XP Bar is increased in the same way, using the monster's average level and the character's own. Once you hit 100%, you drop back down to 0 and gain a level. This means there's an average of 4 combat encounters per level, which is quite fast (then again, you can go to 99...) Patience To streamline the genre emulation, the MCs have a shared pool of Patience that resets with every session. These are essentially spent to hit the fast-forward button, allowing the group to instantly solve a puzzle or grind for a level-up. Also let's you skip non-boss battles, or restart fights by reloading your save. Combat In a Silly or Console campaign, combatants are divided in front and back row (cutting melee damage in half vs targets not on an adjacent row), and enemies can just pop into existance for a surprise battle. There's a 10% chance for either side to catch the other by surprise. Combat in this game revolves around a timer, with every character having to wait a certain amount of ticks before they can act again. This Recovery Time is based around the character's Initiative (average of speed and level). This makes this about the only non-relative thing in combat. Action-wise, Super Console has all the usualy JRPG-stuff: Attack (with the attacked one trying to dodge and suffering from a critical hit if he rolls too high), Defend (+10 to all defensive stats), Run (contested Speed check to get away), Maneuver (switch row), and Use Item or Class Ability. Mixed and Brutal campaigns have a more narrative positioning system, with some added options like disarming or grappling (aka "Pile On"). Having the Health Bar reach 0 or below usually just means getting KOed in most campaigns. Silly and Console campaigns recover everything after one good night's sleep, whereas Mixed and Brutal campaigns can take days outside of using healing items and spells. Status Effects In short: If it exists in Final Fantasy, it is here. They either end immediately after combat, or persist until healed by an item or being shrugged off (a roll to resist with a cumulative bonus for each attempt). Optional Rules The first batch of optional rules deal with large MC groups. They all revolve around an active and an inactive party, with various options to switch out characters and/or let the inactive characters participate as some kind of oldschool summon spell via Team Assist (which involves an active character to give up his action to denote two inactive ones, with the exact effect depending on the classes invovled). The most interesting option here is probably the Double Party Battle System, where the active party can only use offensive action while the inactive can only do defensive and curative stuff. Limit Breaks can be included with the Rage Bar, which goes up as a character takes damage and can trigger effects like auto-hit, a free action, buffs or the ability to use the next class ability you would gain. The exact effect is either set in stone for all or different for everyone, and it either goes off everytime the Bar reaches 100%, or can be stored and used at-will. Other optional rules include Accuracy Systems (aka damage modifiers from party game activities) and Changing Recovery Time (aka "let's emulate Grandia"). Next Time: The classes, as well as time to make an example character. I'm thinking of a brooding emo with a zipper fetish and a pretentious name, like "Nimbus Zippioso Kupoire".
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Jul 2, 2015 21:51
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Hordes Mk. II Primal This history is presented both by Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight, and the dragon Everblight itself, which can speak directly through him. When Thagrosh was transformed, agony consumed him, but he heard the voice of Everblight. Now, he is never alone, and his god lives within him. Once, his mind was slow and thick, crude clay for his master to shape. The touch of Everblight remade him, granting him genius, language skills, even knowledge of the secret tongue Tkra, spoken first by Toruk. His flesh still twists with the blight of his master. Searching Everblight's memories is like fishing in a bottless well. While the dragon is as a god to mortals, he is not the mightiest of dragons. However, his mind expanded beyond even that of Toruk, and what he lacked in size and raw power he made up for in cunning. At the core of every dragon is an athanc, the pure essence of its being. The skin and bone is just a convenience, not a requirement. While the athanc endures, the dragon can't be destroyed. When dragons clash, the victim consumes the loser's athanc. It is not a thirst for power, but a desire to become whole. The unique nature of dragons is derived fro mthe athanc, a crystal so perfect that even its division only replicates its infinite complexity in smaller forms. It bears no similarity to any life on Caen, but is uniquely self-aware and alive. Each piece can unlock immense growth. The athanc was the first sentient entity on Caen, assuming the name Toruk in a language he divised long before clothing himself in flesh. The generative properties of the athanc may have seeded all life. Dragons do not need food, nor water, nor even air. But perhaps the athanc desired not to be alone, while knowing no lesser creature could comprehend it or stimulate its mind. Perhaps that is why Toruk divided his essence to create other dragons. This decision is puzzling, even to Thagrosh and Everblight. The Dragonfather surely knew the mutable power of the athanc, that even the smallest fragment was supremely potent. Perhaps he sought to understand his own nature and test its limits. Perhaps, in his arrogance, he believed his spawn would instinctively obey him, as the creatures of Everblight's blood obey the Legion. Regardless, the fragments grew rapidly to become dragons, each more potent and willful than Toruk anticipated. They sprang from his essence, but owed him no loyalty. They rebelled. Everblight chose not to participate in this battle, lingering at the fringes that he might learn Toruk's strength and that of his siblings. Each of them was too inherently selfish to defeat Toruk. Unlike them, Everblight was made of the purest part of Toruk's athanc, the perfection of which allowed him to hide his presence in ways the others could not. Toruk destroyed many lesser dragons and the rest fled. In the centuries that followed, Toruk would chase them and annihilate them, reuniting their athancs with his own. Everblight was not content to hide, though he was advantaged over his siblings in concealment and ability to restrain his blight. Other dragons inevitably despoiled the lands about them, but Everblight can consciously choose how his blight manifests. His siblings were lazy, content to use their bodies and never taking the time or effort to understand their power, but Everblight learned to extend his consciousness into the world, seeing without eyes and hearing without ears. He can enter the dreams of men and incubate his thoughts in them. Everblight settled in the lands of Morrdh, the first great human kingdom. The lords of that land had potent rune magic and necromancy, which Everblight found fascinating. He allied with Morrdh using his intermediary pawns, continuing to master his blight and study the knowledge of Morrdh. Eventually, his blight began to take hold in the schism between Morrdh and the gods of humanity, and after centuries of study, he achieved a subtle dominance over them, but it was not unnoticed. Everblight admits to two mistakes in his life. The first was one of the few times he ever felt the emotion humans know as fear, for he had gotten too blatant in his manipulations. Toruk is a patient, persistent hunter, and he recognized the blight of Everblight among the Morrdh, threatening them through his vassals and convincing the uncorrupted lords to break their alliance. Everblight's agents revealed Toruk's arrival in time, and Everblight focused on escape. It was the first time he ever feared for his life, for Toruk could obliterate his athanc. He was terribly wounded, but fled to the lair of his sibling, Nektor, who foght Toruk and was consumed, causing the Dragonfather to give up his pursuit for a time. Everblight rested for centuries, recovering from his wounds. Toruk, meanwhile, reclaimed the athanc of Gaulvang. Everblight chose, due to his injuries, not to participate when Blighterghast gathered the surviving dragons to drive Toruk from the mainland. Instead, he watched. The other dragons interpreted Toruk's retreat to the Scharde Islands as defeat, but Everblight knew it was a scheme. So was Cryx created. Blighterghast was the only dragon foolish enough to hold vigil on the islands, settling into the Wyrmwall Mountains to do so, while the others found lairs far from Toruk, withdrawing from the world to slumber and heal. By the time Everblight recovered, Toruk was busy training his lich lords and consolidating his island empire. Everblight moved north of Aeryth Dawnguard in the distraction, finding a lair in the Skybridge Mountains. He watched as the living gods of Ios departed, proving it a fertile land to corrupt and control. IT would be easy to hide his blight in the verdant forests, so far from Cryx. He began to extend his power into their secrets, trying to find a way to penetrate mortal shells with his blight. The elves remained ignorant that in their dreams, they were aiding him. The gateway to more direct interference was opened with the Rivening, asthe elves lost contact with their gods. The priests went mad, and their madness was music to Everblight, who borrowed beneath the city of Issyrah, linking into the abandoned fane of Ayisla, one of their goddesses. The Iosans of Issyrah suffered the worst of the Rivening thanks to his dream whispers, and none dared enter the 'cursed' fane. Everblight lured the elves in to test the power of his blight on them. The soulless proved the best subjects, as their bodies were but shells without essence. The elves were compelled to take pilgrimages into the caverns, calling Everblight Ethrunbal, their god, and it is by that name the elves know him still. Only Scyrah's worshippers were protected, and Everblight discovered that was because she had in fact returned to Ios, hiding in Shyrr. It was unfortunate, but he could continue if he was cautious. The fact that she was weak and sick might prove useful - she might be devoured and replaced as the living god of Ios. It would have worked, had one of the blighted minions not wandered forth and attacked the people of Issyrah, causing them to spring into action. Soldiers descended into the caverns, ready for war. At first, Everblight let his Scythean creations fight them, but his anger at them grew, and he chose to fill his caverns with his breath, melting their flesh and obliterating them. However, they only became enraged, sending more and more soldiers. Everblight admits to madness, leaping from the fan to erupt upon the city. It was a mistake, but glorious carnage. It had been long since he could unleash the rage of Toruk, which burns in the blood of all dragons. It was beautiful, indulgent, and he could not stop himself. Unfortunately, the elves had numbers, and even insects can be problems in number. They gathered wizards and myrmidons, sacrificing themselves to maim Everblight's wings. He was too drunk on power to see their plan, and he was undone, collapsing on the ruins. His athanc was torn loose and he was defeated. Thus was Everblight imprisoned. He could not be destroyed, but his athanc was locked in a warded vessel. His awareness remained, able to see beyond his prison, and he watched the elves closely, seeing the prophecy that he must be placed at the 'top of the world.' Such vague assertions are a weakness of mortals interpreting the divine, and Everblight saw a possibility for distortion, if he waited. The elves initially hide him on Mount Shyleth Breen, where he raged impotently for years. After the dragon-rage faded, he began to think clearly. His power was reduced, but his mind was not, though his range of awareness was. He projected a sense of doom on the ruling council of Shyrr. It took decades, but time is meaningless to a dragon. At last, the Iosans began to reexamine their closeness to the athanc and debate about the nature of the prophecy. Due to the parnoia Everblight caused, they sent heroes to take the athanc northwest, to the Shard Spires. Everblight tried tro corrupt the elven heroes, but it was not easy. He killed them, one by one, with hazards around them, but the last of them succeeded in his task. The dragon felt the urge to give up and slumber, but fought it. As a raw athanc, he was intelligent but in danger of entering a trance, allowing time to pass too quickly. That would have been surrender. Some dragons fall prey to this sleep even in flesh, and that is why they are so slow to act. Everblight's mind was a raging tempest compared to theirs, however, and he refused to give up his ambitions after one defeat. He fought to retain his consciousness, and became aware of the Nyss tribes near his resting place. They shared blood and god with the Iosans, frozen and dormant. Everblight realized he could use his earlier research on them if he could just reach them, and for decades he turned his attention to studying them and planning. To break out of his prison, he needed a congruence of events, most notably the proximity of a weak mind that would let him make contact through the wards. Thagrosh does not mind that the ogrun he once was met that need, for his life was without meaning. Everblight sent whispers into Thagrosh's mind, compelling him to climb the peaks and retrieve the vessel, breaking the seals on it. Everbliht, however, chose not to reform as a dragon, regardless of how much he wanted his former glory. Instead, he forced Thagrosh to take the athanc and drive it into his chest, connecting them tangibly. He warped the clay of the ogrun's mind, rebuilding Thagrosh entirely to suit his needs, flooding his body and transforming it. However, he knew the inferior shell of an ogrun could not contain his entire being for long. It elevated Thagrosh, but was a refined poison he could not endure long. Everblight had to act quickly. Thagrosh became the avatar of the dragon-god, obeying his will and recovering the ancient weapons made in the time of Morrdh, most notably the blade Rapture, made for Everblight's champion. It is a potent weapon agianst dragons, but had been forgotten for many, many years. Still, Everblight's blood was in it, and he could sense its location in the Nyschatha Mountains when his athanc passed near it. Thagrosh became its first wielder in two thousand years. With the blade, Everblight could divide his essence without spawning new dragons - a power unique to him, due to his centuries of mastery over his nature. Not even Toruk realizes Everblight can do this, or that his blood can generated blighted monsters to fight for him, mirroring his old draconic body. Each shard of athanc also imbues the power to command blight-magic as sorcery. As a mortal, Thagrosh was too weak despite these gifts, and the loss of Everblight's body had still reduced his strength. However, he knew the location of a dragon in the mountains, and if they were sensed before they had gained enough power, it would eat them easily. That is one reason Everblight chose not to fully reform, for it would leave him vulnerable. First, they needed the Nyss. A great gift came when the sorceress Vayl Hallyr joined them of their own free will, for she desired power and immortality by magic. She had reached the limit of what she could do herself, but knew that EVerblight could raise her further. She also had knowledge of her people that Thagrosh did not. Once Vayl received her athanc and joined the mind of Everblight, events were simple. They new where the NYss tribes were, the weaknesses of their leaders, their politics were laid bare. Defenses opened to them, and Everblight laired his blood and essence into their wells, that Thagrosh might awaken them. As with the Morrdh, he used his ability to control his blight to his advantage, and with Vayl's assistance, many Nyss were corrupted without a single weapon. Once the blight took them, they were Everblight's utterly. By the time the NYss elders noticed, it was far too late. When open war came, the minions of Everblight were enhanced and ready, transforming those who surrendered and slaughtering those who did not. The only fortress that could stand against them was the Fane of Nyssor, guarded by the Aeryn tribe. Everblight's taint could not touch that sacred place, thanks to Nyssor, and they escaped underground as others sacrificed their lives to guard them. It is annoying that Nyssor escaped, but it is temporary. Few NYss without the blight survive now, and they are broken. Everblight will consume their god in time. The elven blood of the Nyss reacted well to Everblight's blessing. It suits their nature and exalts them. Ogrun have also been brought into the fold, and nothing can stop the blight army's advance, not even the foolish blackclads that stand in the way. They have never defeated even one dragon! Dividing his essence has amplified the power of Everblight's blight by magnitudes, and he will soon create a domain rivalling that of Toruk's sixteen centuries of work. The Legion of Everblight wasted no time in finding dragons to add to Everblight's strength, particularly when word came of the resting palce of Pyromalfic, leaked by one of Toruk's subordinates as part of some scheme. Everblight is convinced that the pawn didn't think he could react so quickly, not understanding how he could function without a dragon body and trying to verify his identity. However, Everblight did not need flesh to feast. The Legion went to the Castle of the Keyes, where Pyromalfic hid, annihilating all in their path. Pyromalfic, weakend by time, rose to battle but fell quickly. The largest part of Everblight's athanc, stored in Thagrosh, devoured the mind and essence of the dragon, who will be but the first of many. While the Legion bows to Thagrosh, his form is meaningless. Mortal flesh, even so refined, cannot contain and express his power. Some day, Everblight will reclaim his full and terrible form, bit not now. Until then, his mind will be dispersed among his generals, spreading like fire across the world. No matter what the distance, they can communicate with ease, and by the smallest effort, Everblight can see through their eyes and those of all he has chosen to blight. No other dragon knows what he does, many in one and one in many. There are benefits to having your own body, to be sure, but Everblight has always favored intellect over brawn, and in that regard he does not mind his current form. His foes cannot ever confront or defeat him, for he is in many places at once, and he is now a god surpassing Toruk in every way. His tide engulfs his enemies and takes their strength. What his blight touches, he controls. There are no limits to what he can do or how he can grow. By freeing his mind from flesh, the Nyss have shown him how to conquer the world, and they will be rewarded by being brought into Everblight's dominion and sweeping the land as a cleansing wind. Everblight will devour the gods, Toruk and, eventually, the world. Next time: I speak for the Legion
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Jul 2, 2015 23:02
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jfc Mors do you even sleep?
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Jul 2, 2015 23:10
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oriongates posted:But that's exactly what produced the settings biggest boogeyman: The Freak. Thankfully, s/he's not interested in Ascending...to the relief of everyone. IIRC, The Freak and the current Mystic Hermaphrodite are aware of each other (that's one of the perks of being a godwalker, I think) and both sides are cool with the existing arrangement. The Freak gets to run amok here on the physical plane and the MH doesn't have to be watching hisherits back for a dagger. Yet another reason why The Freak is the most dangerous person on Earth, they don't have a divine being constantly trying to mess with their poo poo unlike most godwalkers.
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Jul 2, 2015 23:11
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Tulul posted:jfc Mors do you even sleep? Yes. Summarizing is really easy for me for some reason, and I enjoy doing it. Plus, I am currently only employed part-time at a college library. Guess how much I have to do in the summer between looking for fulltime work.
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Jul 2, 2015 23:13
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Hordes Mk. II Primal Lylyth, Herald of Everblight, was once a hunter and archer of the Voassyr tribe of Nyss. She was a champion, and her stern father had high expectations. She trained day and night, but things changed for her shard after the death of a human trapper made the local human town violent. Khadoran woodsmen ambushed a pair of Voassyr hunters and tore them to bits. One of them was Lylyth's father. It was her who discovered the carnage, and she snapped, stalking and killing the woodsmen over a week, then attacking the town, killing anyone she caught outside. She returned to her shard and roused them to vengeance, declaring a blood hunt on the humans of the mountain. The rest of the tribe distanced themselves fro mthe shard, offering them no aid as they attacked village after village. Thagrosh found them shortly after he was transformed, watching them fight a savage band of humans called the Vindol. Both sides were slaughtered, leaving Lylyth the last one, mortally woudned. Thagrosh offered to save her and give her power. She agreed, weak and tired, and received a shard of Everblight's athanc. It was an excruciating transformation, but it gave way to acceptance. The blight poured through her. She realized she did not need her eyes to see, that the athanc would see for her, and indeed she now goes masked so her eyes see no light, as that feels wrong. She has learned what it means to be the Herald of EVerblight, stalking her master's foes before the army, striking in enemy territory. Where she goes, blight and bodies fall. Her gimmick is debuffs and curses, and her feat allows her to control her army directly, boosting their attacks.  Thagrosh Hellborne will forever be remembered as the abomination that unleashed the Legion of Everblight, as Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight. The blight nearly destroyed the Nyss and now marches for the lands of men, with him at its head. Even before his transformation, Thagrosh had a hard life. Khadoran brigands enslaved his village, and he spent his formative years in darkness and backbreaking labor, watching others die. His rage eventually led him to kill a slave keeper and escape. Fevered whispers and nightmare visions led him to the tallest mountain in the north. Barely conscious of his actions, he climbed the peak with bloody fingers and broken nails, finding the sealed athanc of Everblight. He mutilated himself with a skinning knife to accept the dragon's blessing, driving the athanc into his own heart. It transformed him into a vessel for the dragon's presence, turning him into an abomination that was no longer ogrun, twisting his body and blood. His mind expanded massively, and now he and the dragon-god seem to mix together. He has gained potent sorcery from Everblight, and speaks with the dragon's voice and will. He serves Everblight's schemes, corrupting the Nyss and awakening them to their destiny as Everblight's chosen people. He makes servants for his master by embedding athanc shards into warlocks who serve the dragon's will, terrorizing Caen like no other. His gimmick? He is big and loving terrifying, he can channel Legion animus very easily, he can make other allies big and terrifying, and he can blow poo poo to hell. Plus, with his feat, he can revive destroyed warbeasts.  The destruction of the Nyss can be laid at the feet of Vayl Hallyr, now Vayl, Disciple of Everblight. She gave the Prophet the start of his army by corrupting thousands of her people. Unlike most, her body has changed little with the blight. Some say it's because she was already a monster. She manipulated the Fane of Nyssor before her corruption, learning the sacred Aeric language and feigning piety to gain access to their library, but mocking and blaspheming against them when she was offered membership in the clergy. She was banned from holy ground. She organized the Hallyr tribe into an army to claim territory, vanishing anyone who spoke against her. Her attacks on other shards and NYss shrines led her tribe to be edlacred outlaw, but no one was able to unseat her. EVen her followers thought her insane, but few would speak against her for fear of punishment. She enhanced her gift of divination with a sphere of crystal spiked with blades, able to leech heat out of the air itself. By peering into it, she foresaw the coming of Everblight. She could have warned the Nyss, but chose to join him for power instead, embracing her transformation in full. Her betrayal let Thagrosh assimilate the Nyss with amazing speed by poisoning the water supply. By the time Thagrosh arrived, Vayl had prepared patterns of blight energy keyed to his words. When the Nyss realized the threat, she fought htem with her magic. Despite her best efforts, though, Nyssor and his high priests escaped. She continues to be secretly haunted by that failure, as Nyssor sometimes appears in her dreams to condemn her. She is obsessed now with destroying the god, to escape the final piece of guilt that still lurks in some corner of her heart. Her gimmic is ice and beast control. Her feat lets her move her allies quickly across the field.  The Legion has lesser warbeasts - creatures weak by most standards, but easy to create and more numerous than normal warbeasts. The Harrier is one such, called forth from the dragon's blood. They resemble the ravenous shredders, but lack their overpowering hunger. Instead, they fly ahead of the army, terrorizing from above. Their value is in speed and maneuverability, testing the flanks of the foe. Like all dragonspawn, they have no soul despite their bestial intellect, and only mimic life. Their sole purpose is to serve Everblight's warlocks. They are patient and dedicated, sustaining themselves for long periods in the air without being tired. They have no eyes, but are immensely accurate regardless, thanks to their keen senses. They can find a living creature from any distance, as if guided by an unseen hand. In ancient times, Everblight used them as scouts to find lairs. Now, they are just another weapon. Their animus grants others the same accuracy they enjoy.  The Shredder is the smallest and simplest of EVerblight's spawn. They are driven by a ravenous hunger, latching onto and devourin any foe they see. They grow to full size very quickly, their appetites driving them to add to their mass by consuming whatever flesh they find. Their metabolism goes into overdrive on maturity; the more they eat, the more active they get. They are naturally prone to cannibalism in moments of frenzy, but that can usually be controlled, and they fight well in packs. They are, like all dragonspawn, blind. Their heads are almost all mouth. They make up for it with hyperaware senses, especially scent and an ability to register changes in air pressure by sound and air movement. They recognized blighted energies innately and are in awe of their master's athanc, so they will never harm any of EVerblight's warlocks, no matter how enraged they become. Their animus gives a minor boost to defenses.  The Teraph dates back to Morrdh, when Everblight needed guardians for his lair. The teraphim burrowed through the earth, waiting to attack intruders and serving as assassins for Everblight Morrdh allies. They are serpentine, six-legged dragonspawn with poison-barbed tails. While underground, they accumulate a mass of sulfurous and acidic fluids in their gullets that erupt in a geyser of black flame and ash on exposure to air. They can also tear things apart with their teeth, using their claws only to burrow and move. Their sense of smell is good enough to locate any living thin in a hundred yards, and underground they can sense the vibrations of footsteps. The teraphim are essential to Legion defenses, strategically placed like living mines. Their animus allows things to attack those who come too close.  The Carnivean is designed to slaughter. They were rarely used in the ancient days, even in Morrdh. Their rearmost four limbs allow a steady stance and rapid movement despite their immense size. The much larger upper limbs end in huge claws and have flesh-tearing spine ridges, as does most of the carnivean's body, along with armored cales. If ordered, it can undergo a mutagenesis to erupt spines from its body, deflecting attacks and impaling foes. They can also vomit forth naphtha to melt flesh and ignite nerves, rather like dragonfire. Their animus grants their spiny growths to allies, as well.  The Scythean is Everblight's most brutal and simplistic spawn, and his favorite guardian and executioner. It destroys all who oppose his will, tearing foes apart with an insane fury. In the past, scytheans were last used in the tunnels under Issyrah to fight the Iosans. They are deadly in tight spaces, needing no light to spot their victims, and they seem to enjoy slaughter, which often entertains the blighted Nyss. Their animus grants their preternatural viciousness to their allies, helping tear through defenses. Next time: Blight angels.
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Jul 2, 2015 23:41
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Hordes Mk. II Primal Everblight uses the Seraph as a messenger of death. The seraphim are an embodiment of his deadly elegance, and he is glad to be able to create them again. They are deceptively slender, flying with powerful wings that stream blighted energy in a distorted contrail. They use that energy to warp distance around themselves, manipulating those caught in their slipstream to move them around. Their tails are viciously barbed, able to pierce steel and dripping poison. Seraphim sense their environment by detecting motion. They avoid melee if possible, preferring to belch incinerating miasmas of blight ash from a distance. It sears and melts flesh before disintegrating it, and they are able to make long strafing runs with it to take out entire formations. Their animus allows others to give others the same warping slipstream.  The Blighted Nyss Archers are an example of the easy corruption Everblight had among the Nyss, their anatomy refined to reflect his will. They are now eager accomplices to his schemes, and the Voassyr and Raefyll hunting tribes have been altered to be superior archers. They unleash hails of arrows on the enemy ranks before others sweep in, and they can launch more arrows than should be possible. Archery has always been vital to the Nyss elves, for both war and survival. Now, the hunters are assassins, murdering with cold precision. Most of their culture and psyche have beens tripped away utterly, leaving only the most brutal and merciless qualities of the old Nyss. They delight in slaughter, but they do still take pride in their skill and craftsmanship. Each archer customizes their composite recurve bow to their strength and height exactly, making them out of carved bone or polished wood laminated over bone using animal glues. Their bowstrings are tendons and are exceptionally strong.  The Blighted Nyss Striders are scouts sent ahead of the Legion to spy and assassinate snetries. Their transformation has reduced them to bitterness, but enhanced their killer instinct and talent for murder. They sadistically kill animals and unarmed innocents they meet, enjoying the deaths because that is one of the few emotions they retain. They have slaughtered entire villages, just to satisfy their hunger for death. The blight has twisted their legs, deforming and lengthening them, reshaping the joints. The bones of their feet fused, their nails hardening into claws. This allows them to run at full speed across solid ice, deal with underburhs and logs and even vault streams. They silently and instinctively approach from stealth, striking from blind spots. Enemies fleeing the Legion are quickly overtaken by the striders, who toy with their prey before making the kill. They do retain one vestige of their old livs: after each slaughter, they ritually dip a single raven's feather in the blood of each kill, wearing a cloak made of these feathers to remind them of their role in the many deaths of the Legion's passing.  The Blighted Nyss Swordsmen were the first hint many Nyss had that their doom was coming, watching their own attack with long claymores. All the fat has been trimmed from these Nyss, their flash barbed, and their emotions have been utterly wiped away, that they might ignore begging for mercy. They are brutal and precise, butchering anyone they are turned against - Khadoran, Nyss or trollkin, it doesn't matter. The only thing they retain is a close tie to their swords, the traditionally sacred weapons of the Nyss. In battle, they are in perfect union with their claymores, without fear of death. They do not even wear armor. They feel no rage or cruelty - just an empty, serene calm. They revere their blades more than their lives, collecting the weapons of the fallen after battle. They consider their claymores to embody their essence, refusing to abandon any of them. Their only satisfaction in life, in fact, is knowing their swords will outlast them. Between battles, they can often be found staring at their blades, as if recapturing a faint memory of their old lives.  The Spawning Vessel is guarded by cowled acolyths, who prowl the battlefield collecting corpses to fling into their cauldron of charnel. They simmer, then the cauldron bubbles and births dragonspawn, creating lesser warbeasts to serve the army. The vessels are wrought iron, made by the ogrun slaves of the Legion and inscribed with profane runes in the tongue of dragons, to give them the essence of unchecked growth. Their power is awakened by dragon blood, allowing them to create dragonspawn, mixing pure draconic essence with the flesh and blood of the dead. The acolyths are all blighted Nyss females bound by oath to perform the ritual;s and sacrifices needed to ensure the spawn continue to be made, embodying the proliferation of hte Legion. The battlefields they serve at are eerie - covered in blood and trackmarks, but no bodies at all.  The Blighted Ogrun Warmongers have been deformed and augmented at the same time. They are twisted for slaughter, constantly envisoning mad hallucinations at all times. They cannot sleep, and often chant to themselves or stare obsessively at things no others can see, their faces twisted by anger. Only battle brings them release. They feel no sense of self-preservation and feel no pain. They stink of death constantly. Everblight has, now that he's conquered the Nyss, been focusing on the outlying ogrun tribes. Thagrosh knows where the enclaves are, having been born among them, and feels neither mercy nor malcie towards them. The warmongers both respect and fear him, and their leaders claim they are his apostles. The Nyss are cool towards the ogrun, barely tolerating them and avoiding them for their habit of murdering anything they see, friend or foe. Too many Nyss have stayed too close only to be chopped to bits by their war cleavers.  The Forsaken are warped beyond recognition by the dragon's touch, and their very presence is inimical to life. They feed on battle misery and can mimic their master's aura to generate a mantle of blight that overwhelms the living just by proximity. They are as sacred to the Legion as they are horrifying. They can feel moments of lucidity, but it's rare, and they are all insane, perhaps due to the awareness of the conflict between what they are and what they once were. After all, they lack the blind resolve gifted to the other Nyss, who were more subtly blighted. In their saner moments, they remember the destruction of their race and see themselves responsible. No method guides the creation of forsaken, but they seem to be created more frequently within the aura of blight surrounding warlocks and their athancs. Each is a unique aberration born of one overwhelming mment in battle, a fluke blight eruption. Even the most fanatical of Everblight's minions fears being twisted into a forsaken. Many display draconic features, such as vestigial wings, thick scales, claws and serpentine tails. Next time: Minions!
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Jul 3, 2015 00:05
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Do they ever explain why every Everblight warlock save big Thag himself is female? Is Everblight just a pervert?
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Jul 3, 2015 00:51
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Cryx has a similar thing going on where all but one of the guys are iron liches while the ladies are relatively normal. There is a second male legion warlock but he's a homunculus. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that either dragons are perverts or that the authors are uncomfortable with making really grotesque women, but still want to have women in all factions. Probably a similar reason to why we've seen a grad total of two female trolls in the entire line.
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Jul 3, 2015 02:15
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Terrible Opinions posted:Cryx has a similar thing going on where all but one of the guys are iron liches while the ladies are relatively normal. There is a second male legion warlock but he's a homunculus. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that either dragons are perverts or that the authors are uncomfortable with making really grotesque women, but still want to have women in all factions. Probably a similar reason to why we've seen a grad total of two female trolls in the entire line. There's a lady Iron Lich, at least. Mortenebra is super crazy looking. I keep hoping we get a new one of her since her backstory as a renegade Convergence priestess is out now.
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Jul 3, 2015 02:17
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 That armor. Those pauldrons.
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Jul 3, 2015 02:41
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I think the art director just likes hot blue chicks in black armor. Hordes Mk. II Primal  The Minions entry is written by Professor Viktor Pendrake, a Cygnaran scout. He has been watching for hirelings in the species of the Bloodstone Marches. They're not really the same as human mercenaries, but they are similar. However, there are key differences. Mercenaries have codes of conduct since before the Orgoth came, and while they don't all honor them, the system of character is well established. No such safeguards exist to ensure the fair treatment of hirelings. Some groups, like the trollkin, will make reasonable bargains with the farrow or bog trogs, while the blackclads will sometimes bargain and sometimes coerce. Sometimes, the more marginal species will risk alliance for a better future. But then you have the skorne, who function on slave labor. They will not bargain - they just enslave anyone that seems useful. Their arrival has changed how several groups act, as has the rise of the draconic blight in the north. That army also uses slaves, even more disposably than the skorne do. The most affected species by this are the farrow, the gatormen and several gobber species, including the swamp gobbers. There will be others. They are not inferior, despite being unrefined, and there are humans among these creatures too, seeking coin in the battles of the non-human armies.  Farrow Brigands are relatively common in eastern Cygnar, southern Llael and the Marches. The cany be found among the Circle Orboros, the Legion of Everblight, the Skorne and the Trollbloods. They are half-man, half-pig creatures despised by human communities, who often spread rumors of their piggish habits and origins. It doesn't help that many farrow prey on remote villages, lumber camps and merchants. However, they are tenacious, tough warriors that, when given rifles, are as good as many soldiers. Several large tribes have come down from the Dragonspines to profit from the chaos of the Second Thornwood War, seizing lost weapons caches in the chaos. The farrow have ties to the trollkin kriels and the Circle, as their religion strongly resembles the Dhunian faith, and shamans can find common ground, bartering for service with food, powder or protection. The Legion and the skorne have noticed their use, and have been known to enslave them as cannon fodder.  Swamp gobbers are a clever, hardy race in the bogs and marshes, and Swamp Gobber Bellows Crews can be found among the Circle, Legion, Skorne and Trollbloods. They are most numerous in the Thornwood and Widower's Wood, and are notable for producing brewed liquids that they can combine to produce dense fog, which they have used in an ingenious fog-spreading contraption that makes it hard to see anything more than a few feet away. Gobbers are about half the size of a human and have chameleon-like skin that changes color to blend with their surroundings. Most are quite intelligent and have a knack for invention and alchemy, but swamp gobbers lack the sophistication of their urban peers. Recent warfare has encouraged them to seek food or weapons for their services. Their prices are reasonable, and both the trollkin and druids have hired them. However, it's put them in harm's way, and some of their tribes are captured by the skorne and Legion. The bellows crews prefer not to fight if possible, instead using their fog to protect allies.  Alton Ashley is both mercenary and minion, willing to work for Cygnar, Khador, the Protectorate of Menoth, the Circle Orboros or the Trollbloods. He is a rugged man, an exceptional hunter and braggart who is thrilled by the dangers and prizes of war. Wealth isn't his real motivator - he likes it, and he charges heavily, but the thrill of hunting the most dangerous creatures in Caen is what really drives him. He seeks out danger, and loves the excitement of the hunt more than anything. His accent marks him as Cygnaran, but he's been all over, tracking Blighterghast's spawn in the Wyrmwalls, evading dire trolls in the gnarls, hunting frost drakes in Khador. The only place he's seen with any regularity is the saloon Sanity's Bastion in the town of Ternom Crag, east of Cygnar. He has a reputation for obnoxious boisterousness, and he has few friends, but is respected by many for his skills, despite having little formal training. His immense rifle, Bucking Jenny, has a huge barrel designed to pierce even the thickest hides, and it's bipod-mounted for better aim from the underbrush. Ashley is also proficient with a sword, if needed. However, it his knowledge that makes him deadly - he's faced more dangerous creatures than most Nyss rangers see in a century, knowing their habits, strengths and weak spots. He knows where to shoot to deflate a dire troll's lung, and not many living things can take more than a few rounds from his rifle. Somehow, he always manages to get out of whatever scrape he's in, with more stories to tell.  The Totem Hunter is not from Immoren, but a continent across the ocean called Zu. Most have never been there, and little is known about the hunter's culture, beliefs or native language. All that's known is that it loves to hunt, and will work for the Circle, Legion, Skorne or Trollbloods equally. It values the kill over all else, keeping trophy totems from its most formidable foes, performing sacred rituals to capture part of each kill's essence. It is strengthened by its totems, and is rarely seen by its victims until the moment it kills. Its cry can paralyze men with terror, and it impales victims on a wicked spear. It haunts the battles of Immoren like a carrion crow, cloaking itself in shadow and darkness. There are many prizes, now, and it has no other agendas, so it cares not for whom it helps or hunts. It approaches commanders before engagements, choosing those it finds worthy by some unknown criteria. It will make some gesture, then vanish. All that means is that the hunter will spare the soldiers of its chosen leader. In the fight, it will focus on the enemy's beasts or dangerous combatants, then it will slip away afterwards, seeking no payment beyond its totems. It has honed its skills obsessively and wields many items of power. It can leap immense distances and hide in any cover. Trying to track it after battles has always failed. Few creatures in Immoren are as graceful, deadly or terrifying. The End. So, now we have all the factions available to us. Trollbloods, Skorne, Legion of Everblight, Circle Orboros, Cygnar, Khador, Protectorate of Menoth, Cryx, Convergence of Cyriss, Mercenaries or Minions?
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Jul 3, 2015 02:45
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Green Intern posted:
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Jul 3, 2015 03:13
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Halloween Jack posted:Honestly this is what keeps me off Warmachine. Every bit of art for it seems like they wanted to take all the most over-the-top designs from Warhammer and make that the whole art direction. There isn't a single score of skulls on them 
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Jul 3, 2015 03:13
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Cyriss. Let's add the other expansion army before going in deep on any of the core forces.
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Jul 3, 2015 03:16
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Halloween Jack posted:Honestly this is what keeps me off Warmachine. Every bit of art for it seems like they wanted to take all the most over-the-top designs from Warhammer and make that the whole art direction. To be honest, I am fine with the gooftastic armor designs, since even the tamest fashion disasters in this game are still exactly that. Sometimes it just kind of smacks you right in the face, though. Thinking about how anyone would move in the megapauldron armor is a futile exercise, and should always be handwaved away. This is a setting with Infinite Dragon Soul Generators, as seen with Everblight, so the weirdness threshold is pretty high. I do really like that each faction has it's own take on the gods and magic, and they're all right to a certain degree (except Ios).
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Jul 3, 2015 04:22
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Scrolling down was a fun double-take of "is that a lovingly-detailed erection?"  Doresh posted:
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Jul 3, 2015 04:37
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Strange Matter posted:That's fantastic. It's actually sort of a refreshing take on cosmic horror that its true nature is not, infact, simply beyond the limits of human comprehension. There's a whole dimension of uneasiness surrounding the fact that the laws of reality don't really care at all about who is more deserving of reward or punishment-- the universe is a massive game with definite winners and losers, and just knowing what the rules are gives some people a decidedly unfair advantage. It really fits well with the whole "You did this" theme that it has going for it. yeah, pretty much all the "cosmic" level game is about "faking it" until you're in a position to change things. There will be more details in the next segment, but it's ultimately all about using the current path to power to change the status quo once you're in a position to. For instance, Dermott Arkane is the most powerful Avatar of the messenger, and thus has to follow the Messenger's taboo (cannot deny the truth) and much of his powers revolve around truth...but Arkane himself does not believe that the truth is important. He is trying to drag the Messenger, kicking and screaming, into the modern era of interpretive media and public opinion (his personal take is called the Heisenberg Messenger). To him, there is no truth, no certainty. If he succeeds he will become the new Messenger and he'll warp the Messenger archetype to fit his personal view of it. The Messenger taboo would change and many of the Avatar channels are likely to change as well. But until then, he's got to stick with it and make sure he doesn't violate the current archetype while at the same time he's working to undermine it.
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Jul 3, 2015 05:10
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AmiYumi posted:If the system can handle it, go full-meta; make a Hyperdimension Neptunia character. I don't think they've done anything with the 3DO or the Atari Jaguar yet? Will try. She'd probably be a Tasked Character. And one of the more recent games feature an absurdly powerful evil CPU called Blue Heart / Rei Whatshername from the destroyed land of Tari. No idea what Atari console she's supposed to be, though. I'd personally make one based on the CD-I.
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Jul 3, 2015 06:02
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Doresh posted:And one of the more recent games feature an absurdly powerful evil CPU called Blue Heart / Rei Whatshername from the destroyed land of Tari. No idea what Atari console she's supposed to be, though. *combo of laziness and poo poo taste; the disc was already in the BD player when I sat down Doresh posted:I'd personally make one based on the CD-I. 
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Jul 3, 2015 07:14
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MonsieurChoc posted:I got my copy of my friend's rpg, so I'll do a review now to try and sell people on it. Warning in advance: this isn't going to be a very objective review. I'm going to try and give an accurate idea of the game, but I love it and that's most likely going to bleed through. The original game is also in french, so I'm going to have to translate myself. I'll do my best, but I'm not a professional translator, so please bear with me. Anyway, without further ado, This is pretty cool to hear about and I'm looking forwards to reading more about it. It's always neat to see what indie games are like in the rest of the world and it's clear that this is a big labor of love. How popular is it in France?
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Jul 3, 2015 07:26
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Spiderfist Island posted:This is pretty cool to hear about and I'm looking forwards to reading more about it. It's always neat to see what indie games are like in the rest of the world and it's clear that this is a big labor of love. How popular is it in France? It's from Quebec, and literally just come out so... not at all. Yet. Crossing fingers here, I guess.
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Jul 3, 2015 07:36
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Halloween Jack posted:Honestly this is what keeps me off Warmachine. Every bit of art for it seems like they wanted to take all the most over-the-top designs from Warhammer and make that the whole art direction. To be honest all I saw when reading the Skorne parts were Dark Elves/Eldar turned to 11.
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Jul 3, 2015 14:42
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Forces of Warmachine: Convergence of Cyriss The Convergence of Cyriss, worshippers of the Maiden of Gears, have lived among the human peoples of Immoren for centuries, studying the universe. They've been tolerated as a strange cult of mathematicians and engineers, but in hidden facilities they were advancing an agenda. They built immense machines to complete the Great Work, transforming Caen so they could bring about the manifestation of Cyriss. As they enter the Phase of Alignment, they must now make war on the other powers to gain control of sites of geomantic power. They have abandoned bodies of flesh for clockwork vessels, immune to pain of doubt and with unflinching resolve. The clockwork form is their afterlife on Caen, and so they fear no death. The Nine Harmonies of Cyriss prohibit the 'false minds' of warjacks, so their warcasters wield complex vectors in battle, imposing machines that act solely as extensions of their will. Their forces are highly specialized and designed to synergize with each other, acting in concert. Their vectors are much more customized to their warcasters than warjacks are, because they actually draw on the warcaster's stats, acting very differently for different casters.  The history is presented by Enumerator Giovastus, the Prime Archivist of the Temple of the Incomplete Axiom. Cyriss was a goddess only recognized in 283 AR, but she was always existed as the embodiment of universal principles. She waited to reveal herself until people were ready, for her enigmas required a certain understanding of engineering, math and astronomy. However, when matter first came into being, Cyriss was there to weight it, to measure the energy released by motion and to enforce the laws governing that process. The acts of creation by the primal gods could only proceed according to the cosmological laws central to her. As civilization began to emerge, she played an invisible but vital role in granting insights to certain brilliant minds, whom the Convergence refer to as nescient savants. Through them, the plans of Cyriss become clear. They worshiped other deities, often, and at least two became divine themselves. Cyriss did not want their worship - she just wanted to guide them towards higher thought. One of the first nescient savants was the priest-king Cinot, who revealed the Gifts of Menoth at Ichtier. Though they were attributed to Menoth, in truth they arose from Cinot's own mind, and Cyriss' hand is evident in the greatest revelations, such as the knowledge of cultivating grain. Even the impulse that led Belcor to join the sage-priest Geth in exodus to spread their civilization served Cyriss. Priest-King Golivant is credited with building Calacia, but its walls were designed by Kielamandes, whom the Menites have forgotten. He was a leader in developing math, formal logic, astronomy and architecture, unquestionably guided by Cyriss. His walls endured even to the modern era, and he was the first to chart the celestial bodies and their seasonal cycles. He died tragically as a result of using Menoth in his stories to illustrate logical paradoxes, and was burned alive by the priesthood. The Menites have long opposed discovery and invention, restraining new ideas because of their strict adherence only to the True Law rather than science. The greatest ancient savants were the Twins, Morrow and Thamar. Their ascension was part of Cyriss' plan to shape human thought, and evidence of her influence can be found in the Enkheiridion, particularly in diagrams with hidden ciphers used by both Twins. Morrow was a natural philosopher and skilled mathematicians, while Thamar was an astronomer and student of linguistics in addition to her metaphysical pursuits. Both rejected established order, seeking answers by experience and reason. Their teachings did much to break the conceptual monopoly of the Menites, and many of their students and servants were also nescient savants, like Angellia, Corben, Nivara and Sambert. In their wake, many thinkers guided by Cyriss rose to prominence in the Thousand Cities Era. Among them were Glasneagh of Ceryl, known for the Sieve of Glasneagh, which is an algorithm for isolating prime numbers, and Tolonia of Gaspia, who advanced trigonometry as a field of study and invented modern numerical notation, as well as the Cloutsdown Enumerators, a group of Thurian mathematicians who defined the laws of velocity and acceleration by their study of kinematics. The Clockwork Renaissance was an era of mechanistic progress, in which countless clockwork devices were made to solve technical challenges of all kinds. The sextant and telescopic lenses emerged, allowing improved navigation and the further study of astronomy. Most of the significant inventors of the period were subtly inspired by Cyriss, including the Umbrean apothecary Voldu Grova, who instituted a system to categorize alchemical compoounds, the Mercirean Janus Gilder, who invented the printing press, and Drago Salvoro, who invented the steam engine in 783 BR. Its true significance would not become known for a thousand years, but its design contained a seed of perfection. Sadly, the observatories raised before the coming of the Orgoth would be destroyed in the dark age that followed. The era of tyranny during the Orgoth Occupation was more than a time of oppression - it threatened to stifle advancement and thought. Cyriss played an indirect but powerful role in the Rebellion, inspiring Sebastien Kerwin, the father of arcanists and modern alchemy. Kerwin's works have many hidden ciphers and sacred numbers of Cyriss, and her influence can be seen in analyzing his writings, particularly The Essence of Divine Magic, Principia Arcana Magus and Synthesis. These suggest that Kerwin was on the verge of recognizing Cyriss, and might have succeeded, had he not died. He applies scientific methodology to his study, understanding the relationship between runic formulae and mathematical equations. He and his peers brought human understanding closer to awakening in a few short decades than all the past combined. They demonstrated that though magic could bend certain natural laws of energy and matter, it obeyed its own laws, which could be codified. This was the birth of arcane science and mechanikal thought. Kerwin died against the Orgoth, but his legacy lives on in the Order of the Golden Crucible and the Fraternal Order of Wizardry. After the Rebellion can the final nescient savants before the discovery of Cyriss. These included the inventor of clockwork automata, Maximillian Nevin, and his student, Elias Decklin, who solved Nivara's puzzles and made the first cerebral matrix. It emulated a living mind, providing a motive impulse to the colossals. Bastion Rathleath improved on the disease, creating the first modern cortex and the modern steamjack in 241 AR. Both generations of the device have inherent flaws related to trying to create intelligence, but they revolutionized industry and warefare. However, soon the Fraternal ORder of Wizardry became entirely focused on cortex production to the detriment of other research. Some few cabals, however, continued to advance the sciences, and one individual among them would soon make the greatest discovery of the era. Astronomy saw a resurgence after the Corvis Treaties, and the finest astronomer in the Fraternal Order of Wizardry was Aldophous Aghamore of Orven, who revolutionzed optics, initially to make viewing apparatuses for steamjacks. Most paid little attention to his astronomical pursuits. He was the first to apply principles of alchemy and mechanika to astronomy, making augmented telescopes with which to view the celestial bodies beyond Caen. He applied alchemical glazes to the optics that filtered light, as well as devloping precise mechanisms to orient and focus large telescopes. Through this, he was able to make unprecedented observations. It was with one of these devices that, in 283 AR, he noticed a previously unknown celestial object, which he theorized to be a distant planet on a highly elliptical orbit around the sun, naming it the Dark Wanderer. His findings were initially dismissed, because the object was all but invisible without his techniques, but in time, others did confirm its existence. Meanwhile, he began to experience dreams and visions. Through these, he became convinced the planet was named Cyriss, a name shared by a divine being speaking in his dreams. Those he told feared him mad, and his reputation suffered. He was made a pariah. The discovery of a new divinity and new conception of the universe was not easily comprehended, but it would prove to be true, the first sign of awakening. Humanity had reached the vital point in scientific and arcane development, the point where they could become aware of the hidden goddess, whose plans and goals are too vast for mortal minds. OVer the years, the others who had witnessed the Dark Wanderer experienced similar dreams. Aghamore and these others who heard the whispers began to meet, and from those meetings arose the Cult of Cyriss, initially drawn largely from esoteric cabals of the Fraternal Order of Wizardry, including those seeking to reconcile mathematic principles with arcane formulae. Many had reputations as outsiders to the order, and a widely held believe among them was that the steamjack cortex, and by extension the foundation of the Order's wealth and influence, was a fundamentally flawed mechanism, too reliant on chaotic arcane interactions. The traits that had alienated them from others were valued in the new faith, which revered reason and the scientific method. Interest in Cyriss quickly grew among abstract mathematicians, engineers and astronomers, and the papers of the astronomers drew in some aristocrats. The idea of a divinity governing fundamental laws became popular among the scholars of Cygnar, and then other nations. By 290 AR, the first major gathering of the cult was held. In this secret meeting, many of the tenets of the faith were established and the earliest priests were elected. Aghamore was key to the endeavor, and was among the priess named. After much discussion, three tiers of priesthood were established: optifex, enumerators and fluxions. The optifex, the most numerous, were laborers and craftsmen as well as priests. You could remain at that level indefinitely, for promotion would mean not only mastery but a demonstrated ability to lead and instruct. The next level, the enumerators, would oversee daily tasks and works of the faith. The fluxions would lead the temples, few in number and trusted to safeguard the higher mysteries. Secrecy and discretion were paramount, as few would understand their worship. The first priority was to understand their goddess better. Unfortunately, Aghamore proved too fragile a mind, and in 298 AR he isolated himself, becoming increasingly erratic. He became obsessed with buiilding a machine of immense size and complexity. He died in 303 AR, having fallen into the gears of his unfinished apparatus. PEople were shocked to see he'd covered his walls with fragmentary notations, formulae and incomprehensible writings. It would later be found that they were not the nonsense they appeared at first. From the beginning, the temples of Cyriss have been places of worship but also places of experimentation. The goddess wants devotion by scientific exploration. Challenging yourself through abstract science is an act of prayer, as is advancing math, astronomy or engineering. Very quickly, the cult exceeded former engineering limits, and the role of forge master was created, to be the most accomplished engineer and inventor of each temple. In 311 AR, the priests collaborated to write Principles of Geomantic Energy, which would be a foundational text unlocking a great power source for the temple-workshops. It had been found that arcane energies flow beneath Caen's surface, collecting in invisible channels tied to significant geographical features. It proved difficult to harness, but drew lots of study. Energy accumulators were built on sites of strong flows, though at first they had little practical application besides powering lighting. The use of them remained limited until the invention of the astronometric nexus in 326, immense tower-like machines that focused the energy via internal alignments based on celestial conjunctions. Close analysis of Aghamore's writings and work provided key information in developing them, suggesting that he himself had been trying to harness these energies. Once a tower is aligned, the influx of energies magnifies exponentially.  The mechaniks and engineers of Cyriss soon learned how to transform the energy into useful operation of various devices. It was essentially limitless, and spurred great invention, allowing the creation of new, immense and complex machinery. By 330 AR, experiments on transforming energy led to breakthroughs, including advances in voltaic and electrostatic charging, allowing the early cult to move away from coal to power engines. Locations where geomantic flows converged became the preferred sites for the most advanced temple workshops, and huge accumulators and generators built in the temples provided energy that could be broadcast to power machine guardians and workers, such as vectors and servitors. The engineers found ways to store the energy in reserves, useful for machines that had to be built away from facilities. During this era, there were debates about how advancements should be propagated and controlled. All agreed that all temples should benefit, but found it prudent to limit familiarity with the new techniques only to the faithful, implementing the Rubric of MYsteries in 320 AR to formalize a hierarchy of secrets. Lore of the goddess would be kept from outsiders, revealed incrementally only to those ready for it. Certain works could be compartmentalized so junior members could access portions as needed without having to understand the greater whole. Next time: The Cipher Engine
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Jul 3, 2015 15:10
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Forces of Warmachine: Convergence of Cyriss One of the most important early temples was the Foundry of Enumeration in the Wyrmwall Mountains. It was the site of much pioneering research, and the home of a project to create devices able to automate mathematical operations. These calculating machines were originally made as a devotional act, exploring the sacred fusion of math and engineering. Soon, applications were found for them, for even the simplest were useful in controlling servitors, semi-autonomous machines made to be tools and weapons. Larger computational components weighing multiple tons could perform more complex tasks, working on abstract exercises as well as deriving exacting measurements. They were fed instructions on brass cards punched with holes expressing a new mathematical language. Technology similar to the printing press allowed the output of machines to be preserved, gernerally as lengthy numeric strings. Because these machines could function indefinitely, they were given complex formulae to solve, including those that would give extremely long number sequences. Analysis of the output became the sacred task of a specialized group of priests. The largest and most complex calculating machines were always at the Foundry of Enumeration, where they were regularly improved and redesigned. By 330 AR, the greatest of them occupied several chambers and took dozens of priests to maintain. A problem arose when careful study of its output showed unprecedented errors amid very long series of numbers. Attempts to correct these failed. In 333 AR, a priest named Helicratus applied a new algorithm, discovering an underlying pattern. He determined that they were not mistakes, but an encrypted message. The best minds were set to breaking the code, partially succeeding in 334. The ciphers were messaged from Cyriss herself, and the machine that made them became known as the Cipher Engine, a vital relic of the faith for being the primry conduit of the goddess' communications. From this point, it was used exclusively to generate long strings from complex formulae, with its output sent to dozens of temples to assist in interpretation. The first major direct was translated by Helicratus in 335. The goddess told the priesthood to abandon flesh and become one with machines. The ranking clergy initiated the Anima Corpus Procedure, a prject to transfer a soul into the body of a machine. It would be exceptionally difficult to do, and many decades passed before progress came. The heads of the project were Fluxion Helicratus and Forge Master Lucidia, one of the eldest and most respected engineers. They were aided by dozens of the brightest minds in Immoren, most notably the astronomer Ghil Lucant, who had earned fame in 356 for discovering the planet closest to the sun, subsequently named for him. Disagreements betwene Helicratus and Lucidia divided the foundry in 360 AR, and Lucidia was eventually cast from the cult. She returned three years later, just as Helicratus became the first to be trasnferred into a clockwork vessel. It should have been a triumph, but Lucidia, informed by spies, compromised the temple defenses and slaughtered most within. Mortally injured, Lucant successfully transferred his own soul to a vessel and escaped. The cult had to abandon the foundry, salvaging only the Cipher Engine and knowledge of soul transference. Before the Foundry's destruction, Lucant had deciphered a series of connected encrypted messages. They described a machine spanning all of Caen, drawing on the geomantic energy of the entire world by a vast lattice of conduits between hundreds of temples. Once it was made, Caen would be suitable for the manifestation of the goddess, who would inhabit the world machine ash er vessel. This was the Great Work, the completion of which would require centuries of effort. Awed by the mandate, Lucant immediately reassembled the Cipher Engine to organize the cult towards it. The inner circles of each temple had previously had no oversight, but Lucant foresaw a strict hierarchy being required for the project. In 370 AR, he met with all ranking priests, using both his old standing and his existence as a clockwork priest as proof of the goddess' guidance. The scope of the Great Work was shown, and a leadership was defined. Lucant was the first ion father, the head of the faith now known as the Convergence of Cyriss. He passed down the tenets that would become the Nine Harmonics at the core of the faith, several of which were refinements of Aghamore's earlier precepts. Not all joined the Convergence. Some rejected Lucant's vision and were denied access to higher mysteries. Most who remained outside, however, were members of small sects entirely ignorant of the higher mysteries. The Convergence was always the inner circle, those awakened to perform the will of Cyriss. Many were not ready for an active role, serving only as scholars. Worship of Cyriss brought them inspiration, but they would not forsake their old loyalties and devote themselves to Convergence. They would not transcend. Agents were set to observe any extraordinary minds among them, that no discovery would escape attention and to spot promising recruits. Before the Work could truly begin, those who joined the convergence had to fulfill the first directive: become one with the machine. Lucant know it was not meant for him alone. The process of transformation into a clockwork vessel was shared only with the highest priests. In those early days it was not easy - an essence chmaber took a long time and a lot of resources to make, with absolute precision needed. By 382 AR, refinements were made to the process that simplified the manufacture of essence chambers. The priests began to include others as candidates, fabricating clockwork soldiers, allowing them to become superlative and theoritcally immortal warriors. Later imprvements allowed souls to be recovered more quickly and cheaply, allowing the faithful to be preserved even in the event of sudden death. They found there were benefits to leaving a soul to develop and mature in a living body, so standards were imposed to prevent premature transfer. Preists, especially, were encouraged to experience as much mortal lifespan as possible, with exceptions for the sufficiently spiritually advanced. In 390 AR, Lucant stepped down as iron father, having determined that the faith would stagnate if guided by the same leader too long. Every nine years, a new leader would be chosen by the fluxions. An individual could serve repeatedly but not consecutively, and an iron mother or father that wanted to resign before nine years could. Lucant remained quite important due to his special insight into the Cipher Engine, and he was given the honorific of Divinity Architect for his role. In 410 AR, thje Constellation was created, a device able to house multiple essence chambers and allow rapid communciation between them. It was prompted by clockwork priests who wished to experience a pure mental state removed from physicality, and was built to resemble a vast orrery, with the ssence chambers in arcs of interlocking orbits. It soon held the Convergence's best minds, and the first permanent transfer was Fluxion Ambro Pascar, the most gifted mathematician of his era, who invented a true calculus of infinitesimals and revolutionzed mathematical physics. Most who joined the Constellation did it temporarily, returning after weeks, months or years. Others, however, were permanent. By 440, the Constellation was a vita advisory body, and when not being consulted it focused on analyzing matters of scientific or technical import and coordinated deciphering th output of the Cipher Engine. OVer the past two centuries, it has been redesigned sixteen times to expand and improve its architecture. It would be almost a century after Lucant's revelation that the tools were made to create an infrastructure for the Great Work. The scope was beyond any mortal lifespan, requiring the tireless efforts of the machine-preserved. All would have to contribute to making a global machine able to house the consciousness of the Clockwork Goddess. The ranking leaders worked to relaize this vision, expanding the temple network across remote and hidden locations. The fluxions divided labor between many temples, with secrecy maintained at all levels and only necessary information passed down. Expanding the network from 440 to 500 AR had countless challenges, each overcome by superior techonology, patience and planning. The leadership avoided major confrontations with the various kingdoms and groups around the ground they wanted, though it was occasionally necessary to fight over particularly important sites. New hidden outposts were made and new astronometric nexues created along convergence points to the pattern plotted by the divinity architect. Many locations, they found, were held by competing groups. The mouths of major rivers were vital and often had heavily populated cities. Rather than fight, they opted to make workshops and temples hidden below these cities, and Caspia, Ohk, Berck and Five Fingers became key to the network, each using significant machinery to tap the vital energies, creating the Great Conjunction to magnify the delta energy. As early as 460 AR, though, they discovered they were not alone in seeking these cites. Subterranean locations were often infested with the hostile cephalyx, incomprehensible and formidable foes with their own twisted science and power. They could enslave weaker minds and used surgically altered soldiers to fight for them, and they became the Convergence's worst foes. The Circle ORboros were also an adversary, as they used their sacred sites of towering stone to harness Caen's energy for their own purposes. More than any other rival, they know how to harness geomantic energy, and several times, the Convergence has had to revise their understanding of the Circle, whose methods are disturbingly similar, though reliant on formulaic ritual and natural constructs. Some priests have theorized that the early blackclads must have received inspiration from Cyriss but misinterpreted it due to primitive beliefs. Hundreds of secret wars have been waged against them over the years. The last major group aware of the energy is the arcanists of Ios, and from 500-520, attempts were made to penetrate Iosan borders to make secret complexes, but every time they were intercepted and destroyed. The push was postponed, but will likely be resumed soon, and already there have been battles with the Iosans. Western Immoren in general, however, is quite small compared to the entirety of Caen. Given the difficulties on but one continent, the dream of a world machine seemed distant, but soon, that perspective would change. Just before the Thornwood War, the Llaelese mathematician Lorite Donaes joined the Convergence after breakthroughs in the study of complex numbers, which combine real and imaginary numbers. She adapted readly and soon gave great insight into fluid dynamics and electromagnetism. In 421, after work with the Constellation, she created a system of signal analysis to audit energy flows in the network. Its goal was to improve efficiency of energy gathering, but in the process, a great discovery was made. Tiny fluctuations at the peripheray suggested sympahtetic networks beyond the MEredius. It was realized that the Great Work must exist on other continents, working in parallel. It is hypothesized that since civilization has grown on many sores, Cyriss must guide remarkable minds in all places, and other populations must have received her revelations. There has been no direct communication with these groups, but energy fluctuations could be used to transmit coded messages. The Constellation decreed that no contact be made yet - it was enough to know that they were not alone. The modern age has given many nescient savants in the Iron Kingdoms, advancing science even without awareness of Cyriss. Simonyev Blaustavya was one of the greatest, a Khadoran engineer and inventor who modernized the Khadoran Army. Perhaps the most prominent current savant is Sebastian Nemo of Cygnar, whose revolutionary ideas have transformed the Cygnaran military. Convergence agents cautiously approached both Nemo and Blaustavya, but they proved unreceptive. Instead, they strengthened the Convergencve's foes. It became clear that the priorities of the temple needed to change. Father Lucant and the Constellation had been watching the celestial signs and ciphers, while agents observed the Iron Kingdoms. Analysis of all that prompted Lucant to declare that they were on the cusp of the Phase of Alignment. Secrecy had done all it could, but now, the Great Work would need them to risk deploying their arsenal to seize contested sites and secure them long enough to force their energy flows into alignment. It was time for war.  Additional temples were still made, but their job was shifted to military research. Forge masters built fighting vessels, vectors and weapons, and senior designers began to create many clockwork vessels designed for battle. As early as 604 AR it became a concern that the power nexus under Caspia might be detected by the Cygnarans. Ranking leadership discreetly contacted Cygnar's government as a calculated risk to ensure uninterrupted work, speaking through intermediaries with Sebastian Nemo to negotiate a mutually beneficial exchange with King Leto of Cygnar. The priesthood offered to help solve challenges in experimental technology in return for permission to worship Cyriss and build a temple, which was erected at a site chosen to obscure the facilities beneath. The known temple would be staffed only by the periphery of the faith, but the hidden facilities continued to operate beneath. Similar efforts were made in Korsk, with the Rigevnya Complex in Khador being subverted to install a dozen hidden foundries under the city. Similar facilities exist in other cities in Khador, Ord and Cygnar as well as in Merywyn and Laedry, along with compolexes in wilderness regions and many weapons stockpiles. In 606 AR, the Constellation elevated the ambitious priestress Directrix to be iron mother, and Lucant declared that she would lead the beginning of the Phase of Alignment. The last two years have been preparing for a conjunction of celestial spheres beginning in 609, which has been found to be the ideal time to unleash military might. The next few years are crucial, with success relying on precise operations, accurate calculating and intelligent leaders. The alignment nodes will reshape the energies of Caen, transforming Immoren into the machine of the Clockwork Goddess. Next time: The Machines of Heaven
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Jul 3, 2015 15:48
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With all the text you're writing here, is there actually anything non-mechanical from the books you're not conveying?
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Jul 3, 2015 16:22
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Uuuuh...well, I'm summarizing, so there's probably fine details lost. I mean, my posts tend to condense between five and twenty pages or more down to a few posts. E: Also I skip large sections of non-expository fiction. Forces of Warmachine: Convergence of Cyriss  The Convergence is one of the most unusual but terrifyingly effective armies in Immoren. Those face them may not notice the distinction, but they see themselves as much more than an army. They are the inner circle of the youngest faith, a self-contained and self-governing secret society with a distinct culture as well as goals the rquire them to be a large and technologicxally advanced military. They have no borders and only limited geographic holds scattered across western Immoren but mostly within the Iron Kongdoms. Most of their members spend their lives in one of over eighty hidden temples, some in major cities or twons and some in the wilderness. Nearly all of them are underground entirely or substantially, making them hard to find and easy to defend. They were built on sites of geomantic significance, giving access to mystical energies as a vital power source. They are more than that, though, as the goal of the Convergence is to allow Cyriss to manifest on Caen. To do that require control over the world's geomantic energy via a vast network, and the temples contain specialized machinery to be nodes in that network. Together, the network and energy are seen as a single, incomplete machine that will be finished only when it connects all of Caen. There is one perfectly harmonic pattern to which it must conform, and reaching that is referred to as the Great Work, a sequence of construction that's been going on for nearly 250 years. In addition to building the temples, the geomantic flow must also be realigned, which means taking new territories in exposed locations to build machinery there. Until the end of 608, the Convergence acted in secret, avoiding hostility and violence when possible except agains the Circle Orboros and cephalyx. The year 609 is the beginning of the Phase of Alignment, a time of more open conflict. The machinery must be made, activated and protected long enough to correct misaligned flow. Once realignment is complete, the machines can be abandoned for other sites. Since many key locations are occupied or settled, this means open war. The Convergence may be widely scattered, but it has a simple hierarchy. Membership belongs to dozens of self-sufficient temples, but has two basic tiers of leadership: one in each temple and the other coordinating them for shared work. The Convergence is cell-based and most members do not have detailed awareness of their peers in other temples. Until now, most spent their lives in a single temple, maybe getting reallocated after becoming a clockwork vessel. Moving into a more active phase has needed greater coordination, but that hasn't affected those not involved in the military, so most junior members remain unaware of the big picture. The priesthood are the most significant leadership group at all levels, both in temples and between them. Most priests perform highly skilled technical work and research on top of that, requiring them to remain in the temples, so they rarely join military missions. The few that accompany strike forces are technicians and field commanders. The three broad ranks of priest, in descending order, are the fluxions, enumerators and optifex. Fluxions are the only rank with regular contact with other temples, as part of their job is to coordinate action. Information is compartmentalized even among priests. Other the fluxions in charge, the highest ranking person at a temple is the forge master, who maintains the machines and armory. The highest-ranking leaders can communicate across long distances by making barely perceptible fluctuations in the geomantic flows between temples, allowing for transmission of even complex information given sufficient time, but messages are usually kept focused on allocation of resources, military coordination or delivery of other crucial information. The central headquarters of the Convergence is the Temple of the Prime Harmonic in the northern Wyrwmalls, a site of critical importance due to housing the Cipher Engine and Constellation. The Cipher Engine is an immense machanikal calculating machine housed in multiple chambers of the Temple of the Prime Harmonic. It is attended by dozens of dedicated priests who continually ask it to solve extremely difficult math problems via brass plates punched with patterned holes. The Cipher Engine translates those as instructions and numbers, working to find solutions and outputting them with mechanisms similar to a large printing press. It is one of the most sacred artifacts and plays a central role in the Great Work, as its output is believed to be the primary means of Cyriss' communication. She is an enigmatic goddess who does not give simple answers, preferring her followers to challenge themselves to decipher her will. Her messages are buried in the output and never easily found or translated. Amid long numeric strings are inexplicable irregularities that, when compiled and sequences, create complex coded messages. The sheer volume of output means they get made faster than they can be analyzed, a job which is distributed among temples and is considered sacred. The volume of successful translations is small, but have led to the most important directives of the Convergence. The majority of the Nine Harmonics have their root in expressions of the Cipher Engine, and it was also responsble for starting research into the Anima Corpus Precodure, which resulted in clockwork vessels and the Great Work. The Constellation is a machine housing the collective consciousness of hundreds of faithful souls. This intelligence serves as an advisory board and tool of analysis. IT was built to house various essence chamberso f those who decided to seek purer communion with the machine state. Removed from the physical world, they are purely cerberal, able to communicate internally using encoded mathematical language conveyed by conduits between essence chambers. They have an enunaciation apparatus by which they can communicate with others, as well. Their exact membership changes periodically, with new members added and others leaving to resume physical existence in clockwork vessels. Some enter temporarily, some permanently. Because the membership are removed from all stimuli, they have greater mental clarity for abstract problems. With the combined minds of so many thinkers available, it is the most powerful analytic body in the Convergence, and is even looked to select leadership when an iron mother or father's nine-year cycle ends. A list of fluxions compiled by Lucant is given to the Constellation, which then selects the new leader thought to have the best qualities to advance the Great Work. The Iron Mother is the voice of leadership, responsible for coordinating the entire Convergence from the Temple of the Prime Harmonic, where she can be in regular contact with the Constellation. She communicates with the fluxions of the Convergence and often travels between temples to inspect their projects. When the Convergence launches major military actions she may lead them personally. The first to hold the position was Father Lucant, but he stepped down after 20 years and imposed a rule that the office could be held only for nine consecutive years at a time. This prevented stagnation. the current iron mother is Directrix, chosen in 606 AR. She has vast authority over the Convergence, both as leader of the priests and supreme military commander. She rarely intervenes with temples, focusing on coordinating between them and managing assets. She determines the faith's priorities and decides when the Convergence must send out strike forces. Sidebar on the Nine Harmonics. They are the core of the Convergence's guiding principles, simple yet broad. Every action is meant to be in accordance with them. The First Harmonic: Precision is the opening theorem in the proof of perfection. Perfection takes constant exertion towardds efficient and measured existence, and precision should be applied as much to daily habits as labor. Absolute precision is achievable only by continuous diminishing of margin of error. The Second Harmonic: Mathematics is the only true language. It is the language of infinity, and all that exists and does not exist can be described mathematically. A process or thought cannot be without a formula to describe it. The Third Harmonic: The power of understanding transcends the inexplicable. Nothing is actually inexplicable if confronted with proper analysis. Complete understanding is possible by continuously diminishing ignorance. Strive to increase knowledge and preserve learning. The Fourth Harmonic: Magic obeys scientific principles and does not require mysticism. Magic is a complex interaction of matter and energy mediated by will. It can be understood, codified and controlled. There is always a way to integrate it with engineering. The Fifth Harmonic: The goddess of perfection will manifest to inhabit the vessel thereof. Cyriss can achieve harmonic sympathy with any sufficiently potent and perfect machine. Harnessing geomantic energy in a globally balanced astronometric matrix will complete the prime harmonic and compel her manifestation. The Sixth Harmonic: Clockwork perfection requires an absence of entropy. All acts of harmonic construction and engineering increase order and reduce entropy. Life multiplies entropy, so nothing living can be truly perfect. The Seventh Harmonic: Souls are elments in the divine equation. Only the soul is autonomous, an aspect of a divine equation of consciousness. It bridges divinity and mortality, and is capable of either infinite refinement by pure thought or utter debasement by wallowing in corrupt flesh. The Eighth Harmonic: False shadows of consciousness mock the divine equation. The creation of a soulless machine that mimics true intellect is a mockery. Machines do not make decisions, and an unpredictable machine is flawed. The Ninth Harmonic: To awaken a soul one must seek harmony with the goddess. The teachings of Cyriss are not for all, and only a select few will be awakened. Do not reveal the secrets of Cyriss to the unprepared. Those on the cusp will be awakened where higher thought flourishes. Back to the Divinity Architect, a unique office held by Father Lucant, who was the first to transfer a soul to a clockwork vessel and founder of the Convergence. He was made divinity architect by stepping down as the first iron father in 390 AR. In some ways, this is a wholly honorary office, as it has very limited authority. Most importantly, he reviews decoded messages and coordinates efforts of the Great Work. He has tremendous influence as the primary spiritual advisor and longterm strategic planner, however. The fluxions need not obey him, but generally listen to his advice, so long as it doesn't contradict the iron mother. Most respect Lucant as the spiritual head of the faith and a sort of oracle, for no other has his skill at deciphering the words of Cyriss. The Convergence considers itself the true faith of Cyriss, referring to themselves as the awakened, living by the Nine Harmonics. There are many peripheral worshipers of Cyriss who are ignorant of the greater mysteries and live in ordinary society. There is line between them and the Convergence. They may revere the goddess, but they are blinded by their misplaced loyalties. The Convergence finds them valuable, still, as a bridge to the outside world. Their most important role is as a pool of potential recruits, and most awakened were once members of peripheral sects. They are most numerous and succesful in areas of intellectual study or machine work, especially among alchemists, arcanists, astronomers, engineers, mathematicians, mechaniks and metallurgists. The Convergence periodically surveys them for new recruits, sending hidden clues and messages in scholarly works to guide them to make contact. Most who seek the Convergence are mature adults with success in their fields, but younger petitioners do occasionally show up, and latent warcasters are often brought in young. Becoming a member of the Convergence is a permanent commitment and often means abandoning your old life, for they can't risk secrets getting out. New recruits are extensively indoctrinated in remote temples, and not permitted to leave. In some cases, there are accomodations for immediate family, particularly if a spouse is part of a peripheral cult. If a couple with children are indoctrinated, so are their kids. Every effort is made to integrate them into the Convergence. Those who lack devotion or are not trustworthy will be cast out or even humanely killed. The process of becoming an awakened member reveals the candidate's skills and atalents, which determine their role. New members with the right qualities might become priests, the most desirable career, but they must be able to control arcane energies to help make, design or repair machines. Some priests are less focused on that than others, and arcane talent alone is not all that's needed. Most lay members are technicians, unless they have other specific titles. All are expected to help maintain, repair or operate temple machinery. The highly skilled go on to become respected engineers, and a number of senior engineers are more focused on pure math or research. Some few become temple guardians, usually those competent but not exceptional in technical fields or who are more temperamentally suited for it. Occasionally, guardians will be children of cult members who don't distinguish themselves otherwise. They are trained in weapons and protect the temples. When not patrolling, they do other work, like labor and upkeep. They are distinct from the temple soldiers who are all in clockwork vessels, and the guardians never fight outside the temples. Most become clockwork soldiers when they give up mortality. All awakened aspire towards clockwork vessels, and nearly all can expect to achieve that sate...eventually. Only those deemed mentally unfit are exluded, and they are rare in the faith, though sometimes there are member swho are brilliant but mentally unstable or overly attached to physicality. For others, the priesthood insists it's better for the soul to live as long as possible before transformation, with exceptions only for the especially spiritual clear and mature. The Convergence knows how to preserve the souls of unexpected deaths, transferring them to essence chambers. This is a holy and profound transformation, the afterife of the cult, and a sort of immortality. For two centuries, the Convergence has been collecting its members' souls this way, and as a result, their numbers continuously grow rather than shrinking over time. In most temples, the clockworks outnumber the living. They work as soldiers on top of their normal duties. It takes time to become accustomed to their state, and military training accelerates familiarity while also being useful. The entire clockwork population is a battle-ready militia, and all vessels have formidable capabilities, using advance weapons as well as being immune to pain and resistant to total destruction. The Convergence hjas a wide variety of clockwork vessels prepared. Most stay in the same chassis for years until accustomed to being machines, but after this they become more comfortable swapping vessels. IT's common for members to use one chassis for temple work and another for soldiering. Over the decades, a soldier might learn many chassis, but one is usually preferred. To identify themselves to one another, each clockwork will createa small abstract pattern etched onto the visible part of their frames. Clockwork priests and warcasters often create their own custom vessels, which is often spiritually satisfying to them. Soldiers generally have more regimented vessels to better integrate into units. A new battlefield chassis is a rare development, requiring proof that it augments the Convergence in a new way. The clockwork angels are the most recent new form. The Convergence has no standing army, assemblign strike forces as needed. Some longstanding forces and garrisons exist, but they're a small percentage of the Convergence military. Strike forces usually include a core of veterans preferred by specific warcasters or senior priests, joined by other units as required. Very important jobs take larger forces, collected from multiple temples, and those require the iron mother's consent, with details left up to a fluxion directorate of the temples involved. The enumerators serving those fluxions handle logistics and serve as senior officers. Before the Phase of Alignment, such large forces were rare, but it's expected they'll be seen more often now. The priesthood ensures these missions get enough soldiers, vectors, servitors and other specialized assets. Soldiers are efficiently organized as units overseen by prefect,s who report to priests. In any given standing garrison or strike force, the most experienced veteran of each unit type, called the first prefect, will have special administrative duties. So, what is a vector? It's what they use instead of warjacks. They are built using arcane science, physics and math. They are uch smoother and more carefully made than most warjacks but no less brutal. However, rather than a cortex, they use an interface node. Interface nodes do not suffer damage that is dealt to cortexes, such as by shock fields, and are immune to cortex domination, as they are directly tied to the warcaster's mind. Vectors draw skill from the warcasters directly, and also function as a sort of supply chain, extending the warcaster's reach to other vectors nearby. They become inert when their controller is killed, but can be reactivated by other warcasters as long as the interface node remains intact. Next time: Warcasters of the Convergence Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 16:38
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Forces of Warmachine: Convergence of Cyriss Warcasters are exceptionally important to the Convergence, due to their rejection of the false intellect of conventional warjacks. Their vectors can operate only under the command of a warcaster, unlike wrjacks, which can function under lesser 'jack marshals. Often those who manifest this talent are drawn towards Cyriss, which means the Convergence has more warcaster proportionally than their numbers would suggest. Those who can control vectors remain rare, however, and highly values. The standing armies can openly recruit, but the Convergence has to hope to find them in the faithful. They screen extensively for warcaster talent, and optifex specializing in arcane detection are assigned to observe periphery cults for potentials. They focus on indoctrinating this gifted individuals before sending them to the inner circle. Most importantly, these recruits must prove their devotion. PEriodically, the optifex also look for converts among the larger population, avoiding those who have already joined a military but focusing on the ones who have not yet made a commitment or discovered their aiblities. They spare nothing in training, which lasts quite a while. Recruits study the Nine Harmonics and vector command, mastering the interface node. Those with devotion are encouraged to become clergy and may rise to leadership, while others become soldiers or engineeers. Regardless of their functions in a temple, though, they have operaiton control on military missions, answering only to senior priests. Warcasters always begin as flesh and blood, but evnetually get machine transcendence, usually after mortal injury in battle. Fortunately, warcaster talent survives these transfers, and even can lead to finer control afterwards. It's possible that freedom from a mortal body allows for increased clarity of thought and sympathy with the interface node. True or not, by the time a warcaster gets a clockwork vessel they've probably had years learning to control vectors and are well prepared for their new form. They adapt quickly and can easily function within heavily modified or less anthropomorphic vessels, often adding limbs or integrated weapons.   Aurora, Numen of Aerogenesis, is blazing a new path as a visionary inventor and warrior. She flies at the vanguard of hte Convergence, striking from above. She has no life outside her faith, daughter of the woman who would become Directrix and raised from birth within the Convergence. Her mother assumed a clockwork vessle when she was only three, but it changed little. She had no peers among the children, befriending the priests who taught her. She had an early and intuitive grasp of engineering and voltaic fields, and she masters vector control shortly after manifesting her talent at age nine. Directrix has shown no hesitation in risking her daughter on the battlefield, though Axis was sent along to ensure her safe return. By 16, Aurora was testing her power alongside Axis, whoe straightforward goals and unpredictable tactics contrasted well with her efficient precision. She analyzed all aspects of the battles, taking notes for days afterwards and planning potential improvements to weapons and armor. She was particularly fascinated by the arcane displacement field, and in examining the modifications Syntherion made to negate the mass of heavy vectors, she became obsessed with true flight. She was 20 when she made her groundbreaking field generator, miniaturized but able to emit strong pulses of controlled kinetic energy. Within a year, she designed the clockwork angel chassis as well as her own warcaster armor, developing more than a new prototype but changing the way the armies fought war. Accompanied by her personal guard, she flies into battle, continually seeking to prove she is ready to transcend her own flesh. Her gimmick is flight and movement as well as buffing her allies. Her feat allows her units to move even more easily.  No one has embraced the coming war like Axis, the Harmonic Enforcer. He loves crushing the foes of Cyriss almost as much as he loves Cyriss. He was formerly from a radical Cyriss sect, but his violent actions endangered the Convergence with too much attention. Directrix, still alive at the time, was sent to exterminate the cult, but she spared Axis, seeing in him a useful weapon. He saw her as chosen of his goddess and gladly worked as her enforcer. His loyalty has only deepened, along with the troubles plaguing his fractured mind. He's not really sane, prone to incoherent thought and violent impulsed, driven by visions of formulas across everything he sees. His wild zeal is unnerving to others, and he sometimes lapses, mid-sentence, into recitation of the Nine Harmonics. He often requires reminders to eat, bathe or even get out of the potent battle armor he wears for days at a time. His peers think his mind has broken under his gifts. He has always been proud of his physique, and now fears death, as age is taking its tool and he knows his imperfect mind may keep him out of a clockwork vessel. To deny these thoughts, he focuses on destroying whatever he is sent against, finding satisfaction in the one service he does better than anyone. His gimmick is violent melee activity. Really, really violent. His feat allows him to drain the speed and strength of his foes to boost those of his allies. (Also, his giant war hammers are named Action and Reaction.)  0Iron Mother Directrix is never seen without her Exponent Servitors. She leads the Convergence with brilliance, certainty and unshakable conviction, but she's quite young for such a job. What set her apart was her passion and ability to appeal to her soldiers either by logic or emotion. She is well suited to leadership, and was chosen by the Constellation. Her rise is a result both of her ability and design. She was born under the name Viana and raised in Ceryl by parents in a peripheral Cyriss sect that had always been good for recruitment. They cultivated intellectual inquiry in her and encouraged her towards academia, but she was frustrated by the limits of that path. She studied clues in Cyrissist writings that led her to the inner circle, whom she demanded initiate her, refusing to squander her gifts as a simple cog. They were impressed, taking her in at the unprecedented age of 16. She left her family behind easilyand focused on studying the Convergence's teachings, impressed by the Nine Harmonics and joining the clergy. She discovered her warcaster ability and favored the role of battle-priestess, learning operational command by 20 and directing vectors against the blackclads and others quickly. Some believed her too eager for battle, that her desire for violence was a human failing. She wouldn't be the first to have difficulty distancing herself from emotion. However, assessments revaeled only an intense focus on advancing the Great Work by eliminating enemies. All of her actions were part of a careful plan to prepare herself for leadership. She had no desire for a specialist role or as a simple military leader, and she began to question if her human state was hindering her advancement. She considered the decades of life advised before transfer to a clockwork body, and decided that the benefits to her soul were overshadowed by the opportunity costs. Desperate to keep her momentum, shet about proving herself ready for transcendence. She had shown intelligence beyond her years, and now aspired to become integral to the religious hierarchy while showing her inner maturity. She worked to learn every role and all of the networks between temples, catching Lucant's personal attention. Over the next decade, she led many strike forces and took over several fringe groups for the Convergence as well as capturing key nexuses. It was by her decision that Axis was brought in, making him a formidable weapon. Increasingly, the ranking clergy saw her deep understanding, and the moment she was made enumerator there was talk of making her fluxion once she transcended the flesh. She looked forward to that day, but wanted a child first, less out of maternal instinct and more to amplify her presence in the hierarchy. She saw that offspring might help her lead and serve as an extension of her influence, so she engineered a pregnancy, carefully planning everything to ensure her child would be as potent as possible, the perfect awakened soul. Her management of Aurora's childhood was just as controlled to cultivate those gifts. Once htat was done, she petitioned to surrender her flesh when Aurora was three, using all of her political skill and intellect to pass the tests required. She was transferred into a clockwork vessel at the age of 30. She took then ame Directrix and was made a fluxion quickly, where she was placed in charge of the Foundry of Repudiation, a vital vector assembly workshop. In the following decades, she continued to lead armies and exploit her relationship with the fluxions to understand the Convergence armories better, assembling data for a detailed critique of hte Great Work. Her battles had convinced her that they were ready for the Phase of Alignment much earlier than predicted. However, not all was as she'd expected. As Aurora became an adult, she and her mother were increasingly at odds, as Aurora refused to focus on priesthood politics and planned to become a clockwork vessel as soon as possible, over her mother's objections. She was aware of the hypocrisy, but had realized that she was dissatisfied with her own lack of physicality, not wanting her child to feel the same regrets and weaknesses that she hid. She focused on amking a new form for herself, carefully choosing to evoke the form of the goddess and terrify her foes while inspiring her allies. In 605 AR, she presented her criticism to the Constellaton and Lucant, and within a year was named iron mother, recognized as right in leading the way. Her strategy accounts for all nexuses on the continent, and she's anticipated how to deal with heavy enemy resistance. Now, she leads the entire military might of Cyriss, treating each battle as an equation to solve. Every parto f the army has a role, and while she doesn't want to, she will sacrifice her troops as needed to hasten the arrival of Cyriss. Her gimmick is debuffing foes and providing mass tactical benefits to allies, and her feat allows her to raise her otherwise unimpressive accuracy (and thus that of her vectors) for a turn. Her exponent servitors helpfully weaken foes for her.  Father Lucant, Divinity Architect has served Cyriss for 250 years as a prophet and bastion. His presence is awe-inspiring for those in clockwork vessels, for he was the one who brought that theory to reality. He was the one to initiate the Great Work. In life, he was a mathematical prodigy and astronomer, drawing him easily in to the cult of Cyriss. He worked at the Cygnaran Royal Observatory and discovered the planet Cyriss there, seeing his faith vindicated in the orbits of the planets. It drew the attention of the inner circle, who initiated him into higher secrets, granting him answers he'd always wanted. His destiny was changed forever when he went to the Foundry of Enumeration, learning to contro lvectors as a warcaster as well as showing talent in analyzing the output of the Cipher Engine. He was at the center of the events that destroyed the Foundry, surviving only because he was able to transfer his soul into a vessel. This lifted a veil from his eyes, making the ouput of the Engine clear to him. He realiuzed that Caen must be turned into a machine to manifest the goddess, and he dedicated himself to that as the first iron father and later the divinity architect. Over the centuries, Lucant has continued to study the messages of Cyriss to advise the Convergence, and recently he has found it is time for the Phase of Alignment, when the Convergence must got o war. It was not a lightly made decision, of course, but Lucant knows the time for doubt is over, and he willingly leads armies into battle himself to show it. Those who follow him know they receive orders from greatness, and it is believed that he will be there when the Manifestation is, at last, complete. His gimmick is hurling around magnetism and antimagic, and his feat allows for a major defensive boost and improves repairs.  Forge Master Syntherion is the chief creator of the forges, seeing fractal perfection in the relationship of parts to whole. Each machine is a communion with Cyriss. He is perhaps closer to total synergy with the machine than any other. His life before his transformation was a very, very long time ago, and he has long surrendered most of his human emotions. He is always processing, as remote as the Constellation's members, focusing on pure math and engineering epplications. He is such that he can lose himself for days on end without noticing time passing. He goes where he is needed, tasked to improve temple machinery and lead Convergence forces. He claims key territories with his army, efficiently clearing out opposition and rapdily constructing transformative machinery to realign geomantic energy. Once done, he moves on. Even the most difficult battle is, to him, a mere distraction. Even among his fellows, his understanding of engineering is near sublime. He harmonizes with machines flawlessly, and his technical ability is so far advanced that few outside the sect can even understand his innovations, and he can reproduce and evne improve on new technology after only a glance. Even to his peers, his thoughts are alien. He brings the same efficient approach to war as his workshop, with no room for emotion, pity or mercy. He works to quickly eliminate all opposition, and as he has no patience for variables he relies heavily on vectors, whose actions he controls masterfully. The clockwork soldiers who help him know he has no patience for error and will destroy those who fail him. His gimmcik is buffing vectors, and his feat allows them utilize all of their weapons at once freely. So, what are vectors? They are superficially similar to warjacks, but have no false sentience. In the Convergence, only a soul has the right to will. Soon after Cyriss was discovered, her followers began to work on a new type of warjack, free of the flaws they saw in cortexes. They isolated the mechanism allowing a warcaster to mentally control the cortex, seperating it from the decision-making regions that were always unpredictable. They redeveloped it into the interface node. When a warcaster attunes to a vector, it is infused with the warcaster's own skill and experience, so they tend to be even more exacting in the makeup of their vector battlegroups than warjack-using casters. The node also allows for better coordination between vectors, but because they lack any information processing ability, they can't operate without direct attention, limiting their use in smaller engagements, when the sect must rely on soldiers and servitors. Vectors are highly mobile platforms, using displacement field generators to partially negate their weight. Those with legs maneuver easily, using the field to stay erect and stable, but recent breakthroughs have allowed other vectors to hover instead of walk, taking slightly more power for even more freedom of movement. Most vector weapons utilize disposable machine ammunition, the construction of which is seen as a prayer to Cyriss. Most are made in the largest temples, though a few smaller ones can make a handful of chassis and weapons.  Next time: Vector
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Jul 3, 2015 17:28
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MonsieurChoc posted:It's from Quebec, and literally just come out so... not at all. Yet. Crossing fingers here, I guess. Oh! Sorry, I don't know why I had it in my head that it was French rather than Quebecois. I wish them the best of luck!
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Jul 3, 2015 18:09
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oriongates posted:Unknown Armies, part 17: Cosmic Gaming Doesn't the book mention in passing how Che Guevara managed to replace Robin Hood as the embodiment of the Rebel, and that the latter now spends his days oppressing tribes in Burma? 
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Jul 3, 2015 18:19
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Are there any sample ex-Avatars in the book? I always thought that would be a cool character for a Cosmic game.
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Jul 3, 2015 18:24
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Kellsterik posted:Are there any sample ex-Avatars in the book? I always thought that would be a cool character for a Cosmic game.
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Jul 3, 2015 18:29
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FMguru posted:The guy who runs and funds The New Inquisition seems to be a failed Avatar. He's not so much a failed Avatar as a failed new Archetype - the Inquisition books mentions that he believed that the Naked Goddess's ascension blocked his own; that if she had not ascended as The Woman Everyone Can Have But You, he would have done so as The Man Who Succeeded Where You Could Have.
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Jul 3, 2015 18:42
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