Tag: Subscribestar

Backer Preview: Eldothic Weapons

I’m not dead, I’m just very busy.

Sorcery is always such an extensive endeavor, as you have to build the domain along with the spells, and for this set of the Deep Engine, I’m busy with all Eldothic Technology. This is one of the reasons I stopped everything to work on the Deep Engine, because there’s no way to really talk about parts of the Galactic Core and the whole of the Arkhaian without talking about the Eldoth (For the same reason you can’t talk about the Umbral Rim without the Ranathim), so I’ve been busy.

Normally what I should do in cases like this is blog out what I’m doing, but how can I do that when all my current work is hidden (for now) behind a paywall? So I think for awhile, I’ll be posting previews, discussions and thoughts on Deep Engine tech as backer posts. I’ve reached a point where I’m comfortable sharing some of the tech, and the first such post is out, this time starting with Cenotaphic weaponry, the military arms of the Eldoth and their client races, such as the Arkhaians and the Karkadann. This post is available to all $3+ backers.

Reintroducing the Deep Engine: A Backer Post

We need to talk about the Eldoth. Outside of humanity, has three “foundational races” that represent certain core elements of the setting: The Keleni and their faith in Communion, the Ranathim, their sorcery and the Cult of the Mystical Tyrant and represent the selfishness of Dark Communion, and the Eldoth, who represent the eldritch weirdness of Broken Communion. With humanity detailed, we can discuss the Glorian Rim and the Galactic Core. The Keleni and Ranathim give us the Umbral Rim. We cannot discuss the Arkhaian spiral without talking about that region’s most influential race: the Eldoth.

Specifically, we must discuss the Deep Engine. This is the “sufficiently advanced” technology that the Eldoth wove into the fabric of space-time via the horrors of genocide and the haunting energy of mass graves. They channeled the spooky power of these horrors to allow them to travel across the galaxy, power their civilization and win their wars until the Galaxy, appalled by the nature of their civilization, turned on them and destroyed them in the Monolith War.

The death of Eldothic civilization did not end the Deep Engine. The strange necropoli of cenotaphic monoliths continue to pinion the power of the Deep Engine, allowing anyone who has the correct access (legitimately or, more often, stolen via trickery, deception and physical intrusion into the Deep Engine itself) to generate specific technological effects. The Ranathim would call this Sorcery. The Eldoth would scoff at such superstitious and backwards perspectives, but we’re going to side with the Ranathim on this one and treat it as a unique form of Sorcery.

The Oldest Sorcery

The Deep Engine is an old element in Psi-Wars, dating back to the foundational Iteration 6. Back then, I attempted to cobble together a simple system using the Runes of Power system from GURPS Powers: Weird Powers, but it never really took off. I think people found it too complicated. The simpler “Daemon” system seems to have been more popular. I took one look at all of this and concluded that, obviously, the way to fix this was to make it even more complicated.

I am probably being too hard on myself, but the Deep Engine has a problem in that the concept it represents does not lend itself to a quick, casual treatment. It represents some sort of sufficiently advanced technology, but how does that technology work? It has a powerful “hacker” metaphor, where sorcerers are like “thieves in the night” who find a way to break into the Deep Engine. Well, how do they do that? And what happens when they fail? And how do people who have legitimate access differentiate from those who do not? How does the Deep Engine allow Eldoth, who cannot have psychic powers, to use Psychic Sorcery? And when I introduced the concept of Daemons, the represented avatars of autonomous processes within the Deep Engine: Occult AI, in essence. So how do they work? Can you fight them? And I talk about the Deep Engine “Breaking down,” but in practice, what does that do? I mean, certainly, I can represent in games the way I did in Undercity Noir with lots of ghosts and weird weather, but how can I codify it?

Answering all of the questions made it obvious that what I described was a Domain. What makes the Deep Engine complicated is not the system associated with it, but the weight of all of these ideas and how they interact with the world, and how to make them directly accessible to players. Could I take the inherent complexity of the Deep Engine and make it accessible?

Sorcery should, in principle, allow me to do that. If you can understand Chivare and the Deep Engine works the same way, then you can understand the Deep Engine. Simple anough.

So let’s add in some more complexity. To me, the coolest thing about Sorcery is free spells, ideally rewarded through research and study, or occult adventures or spirit quests. I can easily cobble together a a few different schools of sorcery and say “See? The Deep Engine.” But I wanted to offer “free spells” that sorcerers could explore. For this, I expanded the concept of the Deep Engine Locus and this idea of occult hacking that I called, in my system, “Induction” where characters can gain access to the inner workings of a specific deep engine locus and pillage its secrets at the risk of raising the ire of the local security Daemons. If I combine with this with a “glitch” system, I think I’ve completed the picture of what the Deep Engine should be.

That single paragraph makes it sound easy, but what we’re functionally doing is creating a second, layered world over the first that only Deep Engine sorcerers interact with. The Deep Engine was always going to be such a world, but making the whole thing is such an exhausting process. I’ve been working on it for well over a year now.

Recently, though, thanks to some help from Jose Fernandez, I was able to compile some of my thoughts into a straightforward manner and streamline everything into a single document which, I hope, is not too overwhelming. There’s still more to discuss, but it’s a beginning and enough that one could start playing a Deep Engine Sorcerer now.

Releasing the Deep Engine

Because the Deep Engine is such a big topic, I must break it up into pieces. There are four “primary” schools of Deep Engine Sorcery. This release will include the first of the four: Whisper Sorcery, the sorcery that manipulates the telepathic neurocomm communication system the Deep Engine uses, which enables the sorcerer to “hack” into the Deep Engine and act as a communication relay hub for his friends. This release also comes with two smaller “Protocol” schools, Polarity Protocols which manipulate electro-magnetic fields and sub-atomic charges, and Subliminal Override protocols, which manipulate the subconscious, instinctive “lizard brain” of most organic beings. With this release, I’ll see what my feedback is like if this is a disastrous approach, or what changes I can make to make it more straight forward.

The future releases will expand both the available spells and protocols and the domain of the Deep Engine. The current plan is:

  • Daemonic Sorcery and additional details on the Daemons of the Deep Engine, and at least two more protocol sets.
  • Cenotaphic Sorcery and more details on the physical Deep Engine components and eldothic technology and at least two more protocol sets.
  • Glitch Sorcery and more detail on whatever remains for the Deep Engine (Glitch Daemons will probably drop with Daemonic Sorcery), at least one sample “Deep Engine Pattern,” and ideally the remaining Protocol sets.

I suspect I can release once every two months, but we’ll see.

These will start as Backer Posts, but they are previews and will eventually be available to all readers. They’ll be available for all $3+ subscribers; I may make it available for $1 $3 (Patreon will not allow cheaper than that, sorry) as a single download on sites that allow that sort of thing. This drop includes: Deep Engine Sorcery, Deep Engine Loci, Whisper Sorcery, Polarity Protocols and Subliminal Override Protocols. The total content is a bit over 25k words.

Feedback

If you are a reader, I would very much appreciate any feedback I can get. In particular:

  • What did you think?
  • Can you understand it?
  • Do you think you could make a Deep Engine Sorcerer?
  • Is the Deep Engine induction roll simple enough that it doesn’t slow your game down?
  • Do you think the 6-protocol libraries of the Deep Engine Loci? Do you think they’re large enough? Should I add a set of “common” protocols to each?
  • How do you feel about the Daemonic Security Response system?
  • How do you feel about the Glitch system?
  • What are you missing in the system?

There are several components I’d like to add as we move forward, but I don’t want to sheer weight of it to slow it down, and then drop a 150k word bible on everyone and demand they read the whole thing to understand it. It should be at least tolerably playable now with these three schools of sorcery.

Sample Loci

One of the core elements of the Deep Engine is that it involves interaction between the sorcerers and loci of the Deep Engine. It would be helpful to have at least something to play with. Without a huge array of protocols, the scope must be necessarily narrow, but here’s three Deep Engine Loci located on Kronos that Deep Engine sorcerers might start with. The details for how these stats work can be found in the Deep Engine Locus document.

These loci are not final, and subject to change.

The Shield Spire

This central spire of Grand Nexus is the most prominent and powerful Deep Engine locus on Kronos. It is the one to which most Deep Engine sorcerers on Kronos are aligned.

Power: 15

Glitch: 6 or less (Critical Failure)

Glitch Theme: Corruption

Protocols:

  • Electron Beam (Polarity)
  • Anti-Polarity Field (Polarity)
  • Polarity Cycling (Polarity)
  • Subliminal Cloak (Subliminal Override)
  • Dominance Aspect (Subliminal Override)
  • Local Aversion (Subliminal Override)

Connected Loci: The Storm Spire (Kronos), the Dead Spire (Kronos)

The Storm Spire

A spire located at the heart of the “Eye of Kronos,” a perpetual hurricane that sometimes brings it torrential rains into Grand Nexus.

Power: 12

Glitch: 12 or less (15+)

Glitch Theme: Surge (Secondary: Noise)

Protocols:

  • Neural Network Investion (Polarity)
  • Pulsar Beam (Polarity)
  • Wrench Portal (Polarity)
  • Polarity Affinity (Polarity)
  • Polarity Overcharge (Polarity)
  • Polarity Storm (Polarity)

Connected Loci: The Shield Spire (Kronos), the Dead Spire (Kronos)

The Dead Spire

A spire located in the arctic region, it is widely considered lethally haunted, and restricted from common travel.

Power: 9

Glitch: 15 or less (14+)

Glitch Theme: Dead (Secondary: Ice)

Protocols:

  • Fear Blast (Subliminal Override)
  • Subliminal Pariah (Subliminal Override)
  • Sleeper’s mark (Subliminal Override)
  • (Three hypothetical Necrokinetic Protocols)

Connected Loci: The Storm Spire (Kronos), the Storm Spire (Kronos)

Keleni Breathing V — Release

Don’t forget to breathe

The Nameless Monk, Forbidden Kingdom

Alright, the Keleni Breathing post is out and available to all Fellow Travelers ($3+) on both Patreon and SubscribeStar. Thank you for your patience! I wanted to discuss some design notes and hype it up a bit. I hope you enjoy using it as much as I enjoyed writing it up.

Some additional notes on the breathing styles. Most martial artists in the Psi-Wars setting will probably study “external” styles first and foremost, so I would treat Keleni styles as advanced topics. They are worked examples of what “Trained by a Master” looks like in Psi-Wars. Second, I wouldn’t treat these like a menu, where characters go through a kung fu brochure, pick out the one they want, and then trundle off to that specific mountain temple to learn that specific style. I would treat them as scattered pieces of lore. There may be many Keleni monks who know the Keleni Breathing foundation, but few who know any of the more advanced concepts. If a deeper tradition exists, it’s likely the only one on the world. Some of the styles might not be known, or may be in the process of being discovered, or perhaps there is a mixed tradition, such as one style as a more advanced option to another style. You can just toss it in as a one-off power up on a scary NPC (to quote one of my players from Dhim “That’s one pissed off gelgathim“), or you can make it central to a kung fu-oriented campaign. The styles are designed to interact and you can mix and match, though a character with a couple of martial arts styles and a deep study of two Keleni breathing styles will easily run you 500 to 700 points. These are advanced characters!

Deciding where and how to use such styles can say a lot about the setting and its traditions. In my campaigns, I have Rage-Breathing available in the Stygian Veil, taught by a captured Keleni masters to some fighters who have converted to True Communion in the Pit, including one Terahastro, an elite pitfighter and former gangster. The rebellion on Covenant is led by a Prophet and has all sorts of fun factors, but they almost certainly have a Keleni Breathing master somewhere, though probably not a member of the rebellion (yet?). They either know Mountain Breathing or Celestial Breathing, possibly both as a single tradition. Dream-Breathing is probably known to the Dark Vigil chapter on Samsara, which they use with the power granted to them by their psychoactive tattoos. But these are just suggestions. You can decide how and where you want to use them. They are, after all, powerful kung fu secrets. While I’ve not required any “secrets” perks, it might be valid to treat certain power-ups as rare enough to require a perk to learn them.

In any case, enjoy, and thank you as always for supporting this project.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Today are the Ides of March! And in honor of those, I have released Domen Meret, the Ranathim Imperial Cult, as a backer special.

When Ozamanthim began the tradition of the Ranathim Tyranny, he cast himself as the divine ruler of the Ranathim people. He used the power of Dark Communion and his own natural psychic affinity to enter into trances and to channel the divine aspect of the Mystical Tyrant into his proclamations. A cult of priests assisted him in the rituals of court, making his edicts more than the mere acts a ruler, but elevating them to the divine. Since the fall of the Tyranny, the original cult has largely faded away, but on a few scattered worlds one can still find the strangely masked and robed courtier-priests of the old way. Their centuries of ritual wrote the will of various tyrants into the fabric of Dark Communion, and sometimes, they have the power to channel these aspects of long dead rulers. Others remain ready and waiting for the return of a once and future dynasty, a return to the Cult of Ozamanthim.

For those interested in what being someone like Ozamanthim results in, I’ve released a new lens for the Mystical Tyrant Cultist, as well as divided up the Cult of the Mystical Tyrant into power-ups.

I’ve also released details on Divine Mask Cults as organizations.

Finally, for those interested in Domen Meret, the confluence between the Divine Masks and the Cult of the Mystical Tyrant, that ancient imperial cult that remains largely only as a historical curiosity, as well as a new Transcendent Path, the Path of the Faithful Vizier, you can find the backer posts here:

Backer Specials: Cabala Scan and Undercity Noir 2.0

Did you enjoy the 100 NPC Challenge posts? Well, I’m writing a worked example as Backer specials. These will available to all Dreamers and better ($1+). In the first post, I lay down the basics of what setting I’ll use as the basis for the 100 NPCs and introduce some basic ground work for it.

Undercity Noir: Mortimer and the Slug

This will be the second time I ran this particular playtest; the first time, I arranged it for a very awkward time slot as it was meant to include someone from New Zealand. Now, I’ll be running at a more reasonable time for most Americans and Europeans. The call is currently going out to Disciples and better ($7+), and preferably people who haven’t already played yet, but I’ll widen my net if I need more players.

You can get the details here. (There’s also a subscribestar link, but all of my Subscribestar players already participated, so I’ll skip it for now).

Wiki Update: Lithian Culture and the Thuluvida Deck

Well, it’s out. I’ve been quiet because I’ve been finishing off the monstrously large Lithian culture document. It’s so big I had to break it into three parts. You can check it out here.

I also have a special treat for Backers. All Fellow Travellers ($3+) backers can pick up their Thuluvida decks on their respective backer site. This consists of rules for running Thuluvida, Lithian rune-casting, as a form of fortune telling, or as a gambling game played in Lithian cafes and temples, or perhaps both at once! It comes with two variant decks, in case you want to use it in your games.

It’s my intention to release some designer notes on the Lithian culture document, but that might have to wait. In the meantime, enjoy the wiki article and the decks!

Backer Post: Domen Tarvagant Poll Results

We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled Wilwatikta posts soon. Tech took a very long time and so I lost a lot of my lead. So in the meantime, I thought I’d drop a poll result that’s been a long time coming: it’s from the first “joint” poll I wrote in Google Forms years ago. Why has it taken so long to come out? I’m not sure, because I’ve been actively using them (my backlog of “unreleased” content I have is becoming a bit of an issue; I should really focus on getting it out). In any case, if you wanted to know more about the other Ranathim death cult, the forbidden one, here you go! With luck, I’ll get the actual cult out soon!

Backer Update: Khedu the Hunter Released!

A couple of months ago, I issued a poll for the “Fifth Slaver Cartel.” Last month I released the poll results. Today, I release the actual cartel.

Khedu was interesting, especially given how aggressively social he turned out to be. He has a (dishonest) philosophy of “Slavery Apologetics” that I worked out in some detail, but I didn’t bother to include it because I’m not sure how much detail you actually need on “Khedu brainwashes his slaves using vile techniques.” But if there’s interest, I can put some additional detail in it. Khedu also uses really sweet custom power-armor. I didn’t bother to stat up that armor, or Khedu himself, because none of the other slavers got such an extensive write-up, but as I write out more bounty hunters, I might give him a full write-up too.

I had originally intended 5 underlings, but I ran out of steam at three. I’m not really excited by the idea of a slaver privateer, not enough to give him a full write up (plus I feel like that would really ask for some details on a ship), and I’m struggling with creating a slave-catcher bounty hunter underling that is sufficiently distinct from Khedu himself. So I stuck with the standard three, which does tend to push things in a more courtly direction, but still, I think you’ll like it.

The astute may notice a reference and some lenses for a “Liaison Theory” and “Shinjurai Companions.” What’s that? Well, stay tuned, dear backer! It’s a preview for the next backer post!

Finally, I’ve written up a small change for Hordokai, replacing Krull, the Warlord of Dhim, with Grimluk, the Black Krokuta, who has a more “Uruk-Hai” feel that I originally wanted from Hordokai, but evidently forgot.

All of this has been codified into a single work, the Book of Hunger, which includes all nine Slaver Cartels. It’s available to all $3+ backers.

Wiki Highlight: Slaver Cartels

 I’ve been hard at work on the Umbral Rim and the organizations, technology and monsters native there. I’ve finally worked out detail on the Slaver Empire and the sort of organizations the Slavers, aka the Temkorathim, naturally form, which I call “Slaver Cartels.”  I’ve described them in detail on the wiki.

For Backers, I’ve offered up additional details for four sample Cartels, the ones described in the wiki entry itself.  I may eventually release these to the wiki as well, but I feel like the wiki has enough of an information overload and I’m not sure how necessary this level of detail is. But in any case, as a thank you to all $3+ Backers (Fellow Travelers) I have uploaded the Book of Hunger

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:

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: