Phoenix Cluster Poll 2 -- Refinement

 So, last months poll for the new Poll-Driven setting element, the Phoenix Cluster, is finished. All Backers can read the results here:

• SubscribeStar
• Patreon

Of course, the point of this is to be a series of polls. And, as always, once a poll is done, I'm often left with as many questions as answers, but we've at least narrowed down the nature of the Phoenix Cluster. In this month's poll, we'll fine tune some specifics of the broader setting, including:

• Where exactly the Phoenix Cluster is located and with what systems does it have a special relationship
• What unusual astronomical features it has
• What are some of the governments that make up the Phoenix Confederacy?
• What is the nature of the Westerly Clans?
• What the current situation of the tumultuous religions of the constellation is?
• What sort of aliens can you find in the cluster?
• Who were the ancient aliens that once occupied this region of space?
• When did the extra-galactic aliens finally arrive at the Cluster?
• When did particular major events happen?
• Who is the Disruptive Heretic and what made her so Disruptive?

$5+ ("Companion") backers can vote on the poll here:

• SubscribeStar
• Patreon

Patreon Poll: The Phoenix Cluster -- Part I

 

Are there plans to add parts of the Galactic Fringe to the Atlas, or otherwise add areas of Westerly influence to the setting? I know to some extent it's supposed to be "fill in the blank" But I think the setting struggles somewhat with a lack of properly Westerly settings, outside of the asteroid belts (which is a different type of Westerly)

-- Mavrick

EDIT: Quick aside, but speaking of polls, if you're a backer, we have the monthly Release the Balloon People on Patreon and Subscribestar. Vote on what you'd like to see added to the wiki!

The Westerly are an interesting ethnicity in Psi-Wars, and one that I'd like to revisit in more detail as I explore their culture, but they pose a bit of a problem in exploring.  In a lot of ways, they fit the "Barbarian" niche of the setting, not in the sense that they are primitive, but that much of history was written not by powerful men ensconced in towers with legions of scribes writing their every deed, but often by "hard men of the desert," great waves of resilient, "uncivilized" men who hard learned to survive in the shatterzones beyond imperial reach.  A lot of history fades from view as we move beyond the gates of the cities that civilization so loved, but that doesn't mean the people beyond those gates didn't matter.  They mattered a lot.

The Westerly exist on the low end of the political power spectrum. They are the tribesman of desert worlds, the crochety miners in asteroid belts, and the religious pilgrims of remote worlds on the edges of civilization.  They don't seek to rule, and they don't create heroic conquerors with amazing psychic powers or technological prowess to whom paeans will be sung for centuries to come.  The result, though, is that just as they fade from the view of history, they fade from your view.  If you read this blog, or frequent the wiki or the discord, you can likely name at least one Maradonian Great House, and probably several; you can likely name at least one major Shinjurai world, and perhaps even discuss some of the features of their royal family.  But you probably can't name any Westerly tribe, or a miner clan of Grist, or even a single name of a major Westerly figure.

I had intended to flesh them out more as I got to the specifics of planets, as that's where they tend to "live," not writing their name in the stars, but in the soil of the worlds they inhabit.  But I might never really get to any of these worlds.  I mean, it's been years, and I've barely detailed a few worlds.  So far, I've mostly succeeded at painting broad pictures of the galaxy.  Perhaps I need to paint a broad picture of the Westerly, or give them a place where there culture is so obviously dominant that we can afford to discuss the broader strokes of Westerly culture in a way that makes it easier to discuss the Westerly more broadly.

But such a place already exists!  It's the Phoenix Cluster.  I had always envisioned at least three major regions in the Galactic Fringe, beyond the edges of the galaxy: the Draco Super-Constellation (the home of the draconic Mug), some place from which the Scourge staged their invasion and in which they can still be found, and the Phoenix Cluster.  I originally imagined the Phoenix Cluster as beyond the Glorian Rim, with the world of Exile as a "bridging point" between it and the Rogue Stars. I pictured them as a stand-in for Space America in a WW2 metaphor, where the Alliance was Space Europe and Cybernetic Union as Space Russia. They even showed up as a mention in the Fourth Templar Chapter poll (which was a bit of a disaster).  But if there was ever a part of the galaxy dominated by the Westerly, it would be that one.

Why haven't I gotten to it? Well, I wanted to detail the rest of the galaxy first, but that seems to be taking too long and I'm getting caught up in details as I seem to not heed my own advice against getting bogged down in details when there's broader work that hasn't been done yet. So why not detail it now?

And while I'm detailing it, why not do it together? In a lot of ways, the Fringe is the place for players to stick massive chunks of the setting in if they want.  If you want your own space empire, or an ancient and fractured kingdom that's slowly dying, with little relation to the rest of the galaxy, the Fringe is the place to do it.  So if there was ever a place for audience input, it's out on the edges of the galaxy, where we're more free to play.  I also feel like I've not had many polls lately, and I could probably milk it for a few months, because you can't do a single poll on an entire region.  But that would be great, because we could explore lots of elements of setting building, and have an entire section of the setting that was poll driven and that addressed this lack of the Westerly, and introduced a rather important political playing piece as well.

So, this will be a multi-part set of polls, with the first today. I'll try to do the rest monthly, as we revisit previous poll entries to get more clarity, or expand on parts of the setting.  The most likely result of this will be simple entries on the Galactic Atlas, but we'll see how complicated it gets. The link should appear in your applicable backer site.

Backer Poll: The Fourth Mithanna

 Yes, even more polls.  You guys seem to like them (though if you need a break let me know) and with the Natives of Kronos (the Menhiri) poll finished and their templates and racial information making good progress, I thought it was a good time to clear the way for another poll I've had on the back of my mind: the Fourth Mithna.

I never really expected the Ranathim aristocracy to be such a hit.  I created three because that seemed like "enough."  But given the positive reaction I got, and the fact that people seem interested in creating their own, I created this poll to offer suggestions and insights into how might go about making your own.

This poll is, like most other polls, open to Companions ($5+) on both Subscribestar and Patreon.  As usual, I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for supporting Psi-Wars.

• The Subscriber Link
• The Patreon Link

The Natives of Kronos: Poll Results (and one last poll)

 

Over the last week, my Companions got to vote on what the natives of Kronos would be like.  They've made their voices heard, and the results are available for all Fellow Travelers ($3+) Patrons. I've also written several variant templates based on the poll results, and I'd like your opinion on which direction to go in, so there's one last poll for Fellow Travelers as well as Companions.

As always, thanks for your support, and be sure to leave comments here or in the Discord channel!

• Subscriber Link
• Patron Link

Backer Poll: the Natives of Kronos

Long ago, the Eldoth conquered  the natives of Kronos and burned out their homeworld to create the  despair, death and tragedy necessary to fuel an installation of their  Deep Engine.  The world of Kronos became the center of their operations  in the galactic center, and the rest of the galaxy moved on.

But what were the inhabitants  of Kronos like? Were they dreadful and strange creatures, mysterious and  aloof that none missed? Or were they beloved sages or scholars whose  destruction shook the faith of the rest of the galaxy?  What legacy did  they leave? Why do we care what they were like today? Do tourists gawk  at their monuments? Do archaeologists seek to piece together their  secrets? Do the modern citizens of Kronos cower from their ghosts?

Our next playtest will probably take place on Kronos, in the galactic core.  I've created a poll where you, my dear Companions, can decide what the inhabitants of Kronos were like, and even if some still exist!  The poll is a Google Forms poll, and you can find the link on your appropriate backer site:

• Subscribestar Poll
• Patreon Poll

Thanks as always for backing me, and please, enjoy!

Cultural Familiarity in Psi-Wars

So, I've been struggling a bit with Cultural Familiarity in the established world of Psi-Wars. I've touched on this topic before in Iteration 5, but that iteration was for general topics.  It was for you, dear reader, creating your own setting. Now that I have actual names and cultures (Maradonians, the Shinjurai, the Westerly, Lithian culture, the Keleni), we need to decide which of these have Cultural Familiarity penalties and which don't. Is the difference between the Shinjurai and the Westerly like the difference between an American and a Frenchman, or the difference between an American and the Chinese?

Reminder: Backer Poll on the Fourth Bounty Hunter Lodge

Whenever I introduce a new faction, I like to run a Backer poll on it too. Once the poll is done, I'll cobble together the results, and turn them into a faction that is present in the setting.  Previous polls have resulted in:

• House Tan-Shai
• The Traders
• The current depiction of House Alexus
• The Emperor and his organization
• Domen Khemet and Domen Tarvagant, the competing Death Cults of the Divine Masks religion

Now we have a poll on the Bounty Hunter Lodge.

Of course, my real purpose with these polls isn't to come together and create a particular, cohesive faction. Instead, the intent is to inspire you, to show you some of the things I think about when creating these groups, and to get you to think about creating your own.  Thus, even if you don't want to vote, it might be worth reading over the ideas, just to create your own faction.

The current leaders in the polling are:

• They are located in the Sylvan Spiral
• They primary hunt Communion users (they are "anti-Templars")
• They hunt for money, and only for money
• They are trained experts in Neurolash weaponry
• They are secretive (you don't contact them, they contact you)
• In addition to Bounty Hunters, they make heavy use of Spies
• Unsurprisingly, most of the Galaxy has never heard of these guys.

But there's a lot more nuance than that in the polling results and the comments, and your own vote could change that too. The poll is open to $5+ Backers. If you're such a backer, remember to vote!

• The Patreon Link
• The SubscribeStar Link

Patreon Poll: Trader Tech 2

Continuing from the poll earlier this week, I have a new set of polls for Trader Tech.  These cover the elements of their military technology that lie outside of the individual.  This includes:

• Trader Military Land Vehicles (do they even bother?)
• Trader Military Spacecraft
• What makes Trader Hyperspace Technology unique
• Trader Military Robots

This poll is open to all Patreons of the Companion ($5+) tier.  As usual, please leave a comment as to how you see their doctrine working or what nuance you'd like to add.  I definitely take comments into account.

I know I've not yet released the more detailed robot rules, but hopefully you'll have a sense of what you can do with robots and how they might serve the Traders militarily.  You guys seem very interested in giving the Traders robots, so I hope that particular poll will be useful to you even without worked examples of robots from other cultures.

Patreon Poll: Trader Tech

Back in the tail end of Iteration 5, as we worked on Alien Races, I invited my patrons (Companions and better) to vote on a new alien race. This resulted in the Traders, a race of clever and highly inventive space-wanderers with their own technological infrastructure.

Originally, I had given them that infrastructure, but with a focus on building all our military technology from scratch, I felt it time to revisit Traders as an exercise in building our own military doctrines and tech.  As with all these polls, the point is to get you thinking about what makes a military doctrine interesting, and what you need to make one happen.  Thus, while this will result in a new set of technology for our Traders, I hope it inspires you, dear Patron, to consider making your own military technology (as I know a few of you are working on races or factions that could benefit from it).

For the first round, we'll focus on personal technology and broad outlines of doctrine.

• Trader Tech: Military Doctrines, where we ponder if the Traders would even fight and why and against who and what sort of obstacles they might overcome and what sort of goals they might focus on.
• Trader Tech: Unique Technologies: Once we know how they fight, we might ponder with what they fight.  Not every faction needs unique technologies, but Traders will certainly have some, and we do need to consider what makes a factions blasters and vehicles unique and distinctive from everything else in the galaxy. What makes Trader Tech Trader Tech?
• Trader Tech: Ground Doctrines: When building personal weapons and armor, for whom are Traders building them?  What sort of roles do they envision using their weapons? How do Traders fight their wars, when it comes to the individual Trader as part of a larger army?
• Trader Tech: Personal Weaponry: Rather than do line-by-line considerations of specific weapons, let's first consider the broader approaches Traders might take to their weaponry: who do they build them for and with what ultimate aims in mind? If we combine these with the previous polls, we should have a pretty good idea of what sort of blasters they build.
• Trader Tech: Personal Armor: Traders famously wear "skinsuits," tight, form fitting vacuum suits that keep them alive in case of a breach and protect them from germs and infection from outsiders.  Do they augment them with additional defenses and, if so, what sorts of defenses?

This will be part 1 of a multi-part series, and it's available to all Companion ($5+) Patrons.  Don't forget to leave a comment about how you see the Traders fighting.  I definitely make use of what Patrons talk about and try to integrate that feedback into the final results.

Patreon Post: October General Topics

Every month, I offer my patrons (any Patron, $1+) a chance to vote on what single general topic post I write for the month.  If you're a patron (or would like to join us to vote), go here.  Thanks, as always, for being a Patron.

The topics for the month:

Modular Robots Revised: I had some rather contentious feedback about my opinions on how compatible the old robots design system is with 4e.  Back when I made Modular Robots, I concluded that there's not much compatibility between the two, because the 3e model bases ST, the force that the robot can exert, on the amount of energy it has available and its ability to express that via drivetrains and arm motors, and the 4e relationship between a system's mass and its ST.  Someone pointed out that, in fact, the 4e robots have variant mass amounts, suggesting that SJGames themselves didn't see this hard relationship, so I went to check to see if those masses lined up with the values that would pop out of GURPS Robots from 3e and interesting things popped out.

This might be a bit of a rabbit hole to go down, though not as much of one as Vehicles (in part because Vehicles does a lot of the heavy lifting for us), but how interested would you be in seeing a more detailed robot design system, and this more detailed system serving as the basis for my Psi-Wars robots?

Review of Template Toolkit 2: Races: When SJGames said they were closing down Pyramid to better focus on books, I took a "wait and see" attitude to the whole affair, but it feels like we're getting a lot more works than we did back then!  This is the next in the toolkit series and directly pertinent to Psi-Wars, thanks to all of its races.

Review of Monster Hunters: Power-Ups 1: When I offered the above review last month, I got a lot of comments on how people would rather I reviewed this book, so here ya go, a chance to vote for this option instead.

A Review of Fantastic Dungeon Grappling: I backed Douglas Cole's recent backstarter, not for the product itself, but because I wanted a copy of Dragon Heresy and Fantastic Dungeon Grappling.  This might also turn into a review of Technical Grappling, as they're cousins.

What is Magic, really?: This perennial topic often works me up into a rant, which ends up half-written somewhere on my blog.  There was a lot of interest in my Cabal material; we should set that aside for now (it looks like it would take more work to clean up than just a quick couple of days), but I could discuss some of my findings in my research into the occult and put it up for you. 

Look, talk about Martial Arts some more: My Martial Arts as Power-Ups series was very well-received.  I could further discuss trademark moves as a basis for styles, or create a mini-martial arts framework for a hypothetical setting.

Slave Armies: As part of my continuing exploration of historical topics from which to steal ideas, I did some homework on the historical concept of the "slave army," such as the mamluks. I could certainly write a patreon special on the topic.

Old Blog-Rant Dustoffs: Myth of the Fantasy Heartbreaker and Why Your Fantasy Game Sucks: I often get a moment of inspiration, write furiously for about an hour, find myself written into a corner or think better of it, hit save and walk away, only to forget about it.  I've been going over some of my old drafts and these jumped out at me.  They depart a bit from the sci-fi themes my blog has been going for (I promise not to go fantasy on you guys), but if you'd be interested in seeing me talk about where Fantasy settings often seem to go wrong, and why you should totally go ahead and release your fantasy setting anyway, vote here!

Wildcard: General Psi-Wars setting topics: So, you like what I write and you don't want to tell me how to do my job, but you kinda miss talking about Psi-Wars setting material.  If you'd like me to focus on that direction, vote here (Chances are, if you vote on this, you'll get a detailed cultural discussion of the Umbral Rim, the Satemo code, and a Lithian dictionary, given my current mood)

Patreon Poll - July Topics

It's that time of the month again: patrons get to vote on what topic they'd like me to explore in July!

All Patrons (all I ask for is $1) get to vote on a generic topic, which includes the following options:

• Action Vehicular Combat - The Great Playtest
• A Deep Dive into Conditional Injury
• A Review of Fantastic Dungeon Grappling
• Trademark Moves as Style Basis
• Martial Arts as Power-Ups
• Plague Creation Rules
• Slave Armies
• Wildcard: General RPG topics
• Wildcard: General Psi-Wars setting topics

For my Psi-Wars fans ($3+), we're focused on rule collation currently.  They'll get to vote on a set of rules to add to the wiki, and a single template that I'll revise and add to the wiki.

The rule vote options include:

• Abstract Wealth: 
•  The Call to Adventure: how to get a Psi-Wars adventure started.
•  The Road to Adventure: Space and Planetary Travel in Psi-Wars 
•  Unveiling the Secrets of the Galaxy: Investigation in Psi-Wars 
•  Action: Combat rules and Vehicular Action rules 
• Psionic Powers
• Communion.

And the template vote options include:

Core Templates

•  The Commando
•  The Diplomat
•  The Fighter Ace
•  The Officer
•  The Security Agent
•  The Spy

Rim Templates

•  The Assassin
•  The Bounty Hunter
•  The Con Artist
•  The Frontier Marshal
•  The Scavenger
•  The Smuggler

Additional Templates

•  The Mystic (Including lenses for Akashic priestesses, Divine Mask cultists, True Communion monks, etc)
• The Space Knight (including lenses for Maradonian knights, Templar students, Dark Initiates, etc)

This is my big thank you to my patreons, and I hope all of you take the opportunity to make your voice heard.  If you have specific thoughts I am, as always, available on Discord!

Patreon Polls: June

Every month, for my Patrons, I hold a poll on topics for the next month, so I (ideally) give you guys at least one post per month that suits your interests.  A patron recently suggested that I make these polls visible to the public, so that people can see what we're talking about behind the scenes and, if they like it, maybe become a Patron.

All Patrons ($1+) get to vote on a general GURPS topic

• A Deep Dive into Conditional Injury: I've been using Douglas Cole's Conditional Injury for my ships, but how well does it handle personal combat? I'll do a thorough review of the article, make suggestions on how to alter it or improve it and discuss how it might apply nicely to certain genres.

• A Review of Fantastic Dungeon Grappling: I backed Douglas Cole's recent backstarter, not for the product itself, but because I wanted a copy of Dragon Heresy and Fantastic Dungeon Grappling.  This might also turn into a review of Technical Grappling, as they're essentially the same thing (as I understand it).

• Trademark Moves as Style Basis: Back when Pyramid was still a thing, I had one idea for writing an article: the synergy between designing trademark moves and martial arts styles, and how to use one to build the other.  It's a topic I find myself explaining to people online regularly, so I could codify it into a single post.

• Martial Arts as Power-Ups: When I started working with GURPS Martial Arts, I found it a little disappointing, as I was used to a different style, similar to Exalted where one buys moves and powers rather than some nuance to a skill.  I've recently been exploring power-up ideas for martial arts and struck upon an idea of how to combine the two. (This topic has obsessed me recently, and I actually have a mess of worked examples already)

• Plague Creation Rules: As part of Orphans of the Stars' biotech rules, I worked out some guidelines for creating your own diseases: how severe should they be, what sort of knock-on effects might a disease have, etc.

• A New Ultratech Framework with Setting: So back when I created my series on Ultra-Tech frameworks, I had a sample setting that I wanted to release to illustrate it.  I left it unfinished as it took more work than I expected.  I could round it off fairly easily and release it, if you're interested.

$3+ patrons ("Fellow Travelers") get to vote on Psi-Wars topics. Normally I allow a lot of leeway, but recently I've seen a lot of demand for rule collation, so we have two polls running right now:

For Rule Collation:

• The Basics: BAD in Psi-Wars, Impulse buys, and other basic core rules of Psi-Wars
• The Call to Adventure: how to get a Psi-Wars adventure started
• The Road to Adventure: Space and Planetary Travel in Psi-Wars
• Unveiling the Secrets of the Galaxy: Investigation in Psi-Wars
• Action: Combat rules and Vehicular Action rules
• Templates! Just pick a template and revisit it!
• Psionic Powers, including Negative Psi and new Techniques and Powers
• Communion, with all the various little rules its picked up over the years. 

Last month, we had the Eldothic Deep Engine, but this turned out to be a bit more involved than I expected, so I pivoted, and this month we're looking at which race we'd like to see elevated to a full "conspiratorial" setting element, complete with their secrets, stats-as-monsters, and how one goes about defeating them.  Options here include:

• The Eldoth, the Deep Engine, and their servitors
• The Skairos, the Devils of Persephone and the Labyrinthine Worlds
• The Templars and their secretive Chapters and the Temples of Communion
• The Cult of the Mystical Tyrant, the Imperial cult and their catspaws
• The Ghosts of Broken Communion and Death Cults
• The Anacridian Scourge, its corruption, its relics and its connection to the Machine-World of Azrael. 

If you'd like to join in, just hit the link on the side.  Otherwise, I'll see you later this week when I announce the winner and thanks, as always, for reading.

Patreon Update - the February Roadmap

January worked out really well, so I thought I'd try more of the same for February.  The following is available on my Patreon:

• The February Roadmap and Retrospective (Public)
• The February General Topic poll (all Patrons)
• The February Psi-Wars Topic (Fellow-Travelers and better)

Patreon Poll: the Fourth Chapter

Who is this mysterious Templar?  That's up to you!

Patreon Week continues.  If you've enjoyed the Templar Chapters, now it's your chance to make your own!  My patreon now sports no less than 10 polls that, put together, will introduce the 4th Chapter.  Are they a secret cabal waging a shadow war on the Akashic Order?  Perhaps they are an order of librarian knights preserving long-lost lore of ancient dynasties.  Perhaps they are a militant group of zealots on the edge of the galaxy, safeguarding the Keleni royal line and preparing to restore both the Knights of Communion and a new Communion Golden Age, with the last Grand Master preserved in cryostasis below, ready to be awoken.

The final results are up to you!

If you're a patron (this is for my Companions, thus $5+), check it out!  And thank you so much for your continued support.  If you're not, don't worry, I'll unveil the results when we collate all the documents of the new version of Psi-Wars.  Have fun!

Patreon Post: Keleni Art Preview and the next Art Poll

It's Patreon week!  First up, I have the result of the Keleni art, available to all $3+ patrons (my Fellow Travelers!) who can view it here.  For my Companions ($5+ patrons), the next art poll is up.  Do we want to look at the sinister and ancient Eldoth, the exotic and alluring Traders, or are we done with aliens and want to move on to humanity?  Go and vote, my Patreon faithful!

As always, thank you, Patrons, for making all of this possible.  The art, in particular, comes directly out of the funds you donate to this project.

Patreon Post: The Cult of the Emperor - Poll Results

Last month, I had a poll of the last schism of the Cult of the Mystic Tyrant: The Cult of the Emperor.  Herein, you guys voted not just on what the substance of the Cult was, but who the Emperor is, who the War Hero was, and who the Emperor's Hand is.

Today, those results are revealed!  Behold the Emperor unveiled.  This Patreon Post is available to all Fellow Travellers ($3+ patrons); If you're a patron, check it out; if not, as always, I'd love to have you!

Patreon Special: Domen Khemet, the Ranathim Cult of Death

Last month, at the culmination of the Divine Masks, I offered my Patrons a poll to choose the fourth and last Cult of the Divine Masks: the Cult of Death.  Those poll results are in now, including Domen Khemet, a fully detailed version of the Cult, ready for play. The cult utilizes the Broken Communion miracles detailed in Tuesday's patreon post about Broken Communion ghosts.  Further, it has a unique relationship with the Cult of the Mystic Tyrant, as Anthara, the founder of the Cult of the Mystic Tyrant once swore an oath to them that the later cult broke, so be sure to check those elements out too.

This post is available to all $3+ patrons, as it represents a preview.  The Patreon Post contains a discussion of the votes and my thoughts on them, as well as the completed cult.  If you're a patron, check it out!  If you're not, as usual, I'd love to have you.  Enjoy!

Patreon Poll: The Cult of the Emperor

It's here!  For all of my $5+ patrons (Companions and better) I have the poll on the Cult of the Emperor.  In it, you'll get to decide on the origins of the Emperor, where he first encountered the Cult of the Mystical Tyrant, how he put his personal stamp on it, who serves him (and whom he serves), and what his name and ultimate agenda really are.  There's also additional questions about the Imperial Hand and the War Hero, the Emperor's Mentor.

If you're a Patron, check it out!  The poll will be running for one week.  I'd love to get your feedback.

Patreon Poll: The Cult of Death

It's time for another Patreon poll.

The Divine Masks worships the Archetypes of Communion as Gods and its priests master the power of incarnation to become living Gods.  I've explored, or will explore, all three Dark Communion Archetypes (the Rebellious Beast, the Beautiful Fool and, coming soon, the Mystic Tyrant), but I also wanted to touch on True and Broken Communion.  For True Communion, I chose the Bound Princess, but for Broken Communion, I revisited an old favorite: Death.

But what should Death look like?  Should it be an ancient funerary cult?  An assassin cult dedicated to the unmitigated power of Death?  Or perhaps the terrifying worship of something beyond human (or Ranathim) conception? And, if you've read the Dead Art and the Gaunt preview, what's the relationship between these and the Cult of Death?

It's all up to you, Patron.  I've created 13 posts (an introduction, available here and 12 questions), which are available to all $5+ Patrons.  If you're a patron, check it out!  If you're not, as always, I'd love to have you.

Patreon Post: Skairos - The Secrets of the Devils of Persephone

Like gargoyles, the images of the devils of Persephone haunt the temples of the Akashic Order, acting as symbolic guardians against unworthy interlopers who would profane the Akashic Record.  According to Akashic lore, the devils of Persephone predated the arrival of human colonists, terrorized the early residents of Persephone, and then gave them the secrets of the Akashic Record.

This could all be symbolic metaphor.  Just as a Oracle needs to brave the perils of her own trance to gain access to the Akashic Record, so too did the colonists of Persephone needs to brave the perils of some space monster to found the Akashic Order.  But could they be more than just symbolism for the danger inherent in exploring deep time? Were they real? What secrets did they know?  And how are they connected to the Shadow Council that rules the Akashic Order?

Today is a special preview that looks at the possible perspectives on the Devils of Persephone, treating them as anything from symbols to space monsters to a secret bloodline to an alien race.  It also looks at the secrets of Shadow Initiation, and what secrets the Akashic Order "learned from" the Devils of Persephone. This preview is available to all $3+ Patrons!  Associated with it is a poll for all $5+ patrons, who may decide what, if any of it, is canon for the Psi-Wars Setting!  If you're a patron, check it out, and vote!  If you're not, we'd love to have you.