#aclodoc

[desertleviathan]

Help Me Create a Character Part 3

Ok. The second poll wrapped up a couple days ago but I've been busy as hell. So let's move on to part 3 of 6.

In the first poll, we determined our guy was one of the Fair Folk. Aclodoc's Fae have hierarchical organizations where each Rank has a distinct function in their society and supernatural or physiological traits to fit that function (there is considerable mobility between ranks, it just often involves a physical transformation to match the new role). They are also the indigenous people of the Buer Valley, displaced by the Wizards with their cultures heavily disrupted, so lone Fae operating outside the normal parameters of their rank are much more common. And perhaps most importantly, they are a mystery for which I, the author of the setting, refuse to posit an official origin.

In the second poll we determined that our Fair Folk would eschew the bonds of the Four Seasonal Courts, and instead be an adherent of the ancient Tree Man, Orofarne Sawleaf, who is another of the setting's great mysteries. Orofarne may be the oldest non-divine life form on the planet, and even he doesn't remember his origin. But he has sufficient power and harmony with the natural world to serve as a kind of Substitute Monarch, empowering Fae who flock to him for protection as his Druids. He has mortal pupils as well, but they don't become vessels for his power directly the way the Fae who serve him do. Orofarne and his followers are naturally very concerned about the ongoing pollution of the Buer Valley, and tend to oppose the Wizard Oligarchy for ecological reasons first and foremost.

Our third decision to make is a matter of Jobs.

But first, a small digression. Before there was a formal organized rebellion, there was a short-lived philosophical movement agitating for reform from within. When that didn't work and their leaders were assassinated for peacefully raising complaints with the status quo, the survivors radicalized and went underground to regroup. The founder of the philosophical movement was actually a Wizard of high standing, one Magus Alastor Caradoc, who outlined in exhaustive detail all the ways that the Buer Valley's fixation on magical research at any cost was not sustainable, and all the ways that failure to course correct would invite justified violence from oppressed people just trying to survive. His works have become widespread, and he is seen as the father of the modern rebellion.

There used to be a famous portrait of him that has since been removed from Illiaster's official gallery of notable citizens, but copies have been circulated and displaying them indicates some level of support for the Rebellion. Within internal slang of the FreeBIRD Alliance, the organizing body that keeps the various smaller rebel groups coordinated, the elements of this portrait are often used as code for describing different kinds of rebellion members.

The portrait showed Alastor in sky blue robes in some kind of vault or mausoleum standing on the edge of a runic circle in which he was casting a spell. There is a pillar behind him with a torch affixed to it. With one hand he holds a tome and with the other he pours out an ablation. He chants the words of a spell which become glowing sigils in the air, and in the center of the circle a bright light gathers into a marvel, the likes of which won't be clear until the spell is complete.

The six Jobs that the FreeBIRD alliance sorts people into are:

THE TORCH - You are a soldier, a warrior, a gladiator, a brute. You know how to accomplish your goals through violence and intimidation, but you also know how to use your superior combat prowess to protect others who aren't as sturdy.

THE ABLATION - You are a spy, a scout, a thief, an assassin. You know how to work subtly and without being seen, entering places that would rather keep you out, obtaining things that should have been held secure, and striking when you're least expected.

THE CHANT - You are a diplomat, a negotiator, a merchant, a community leader. You know how to accomplish your goals by communicating effectively, whether you're changing the opinions of adversaries or bolstering the spirits of allies.

THE PILLAR - You had better believe this rebellion has a place for the humble worker. Whatever trade or skill or craft you work for your living, the FreeBIRD Alliance can find a way to put it to use, and offer supplemental training on how to branch out from your base abilities and become a fearsome part of a combat unit.

THE TOME - You are a Mage. Maybe an Academy graduate who read Alastor Caradoc's work and agreed with it enough to forsake a life of comfort any privilege, or maybe you learned through some kind of unsavory or unsanctioned means, in which case your very existence may be a crime.

THE MARVEL - Your occupation in the Rebellion will be less about what you know how to do and more about what you are. Perhaps you've gained inherent magical abilities as a result of a lab experiment, or you might be a construct designed for a unique style of combat, or any other origin that could give you something closer to super powers.

Each of these options has a number of sub-types as well, some reflecting specific traditions within the setting, while others are flexible "generic" options.

So which will it be, for our Fair Folk disciple of Orofarne Sawleaf?

[desertleviathan]

Help Me Create a Character Part 5

So here's where we're at.

In part 1 we determined Ancestry: that our character was one of the Fair Folk of Aclodoc, beings who are just as much spirit as mortal, usually (but not always) in harmony with nature and the Elements, and exist in an ever-shifting hierarchy that seems almost deliberately satirical of mortal political structures. The most interesting thing about the Fair Folk is their uncertain origin - Aclodoc is a young world, and while its creators had flaws both numerous and severe, the failure to leave thorough documentation was not one of them. But the Architects left no record in any iteration of their design process that references the Fair Folk.

In Part 2 we determined Culture: what specific group of Fair Folk found in the Buer Valley region ours would hail from. Orofarne's Grove is a moving forest presided over by the eponymous ancient Tree Spirit who is not himself Fae, but seems to be closely enough related to them that he can share his druidic magics with them. Many Fair Folk who chafe under the rule of the four Monarchs have flocked to Orofarne for guidance, and learned to evoke a harmony with nature as a whole that transcends the limits placed by the Seasonal Courts. Orofarne's Grove has no formal relationship, friendly or hostile, to the Wizards of Baetylus and Illiaster, but certain factions of Wizards are very interested in forging ties... largely so they can gain access to study Orofarne's magic and assimilate its most useful traits, particularly its facility for Healing which is unrivaled by any other known discipline of spellcraft.

In Part 3 we determined a Class: our character would be a Marvel, an individual defined not by training, but by extraordinary physiological properties of their body. A Marvel is often the result of laboratory experiments in Baetylus and Illiaster (especially the kind intended to create Mutant Super-Soldiers), wild magic exposure and/or long-term poisoning by alchemical pollution, or simply being a unique purpose-built Construct with integrated tools.

In Part 4 we determined a Specialization: the type of Marvel we are creating is a Mastermind, an individual whose mental and sensory abilities transcend what is typical for their species. I'll be blunt, this part of the rules is not feeling particularly settled, and may fluctuate during further development. But right now Mastermind is unique in that it has all four Mental Attributes associated with it, while four of the five other Specializations have one Physical Attribute each, and this is mostly because I ran out of ways to describe the visible physical changes related to Mental Attribute related powers beyond "Your brain is big like a Mars Attacks Alien" or "You have [big/weird/too many] sensory organs" or "You radiate some kind of visible energy".

So what's part 5 about?

CONSPIRACIES.

This is where shit gets weird. I apologize for the massive backstory info dump that follows, but it is necessary to set the stage.

So first of all, let's talk about the Agathion Zodiac.

When the Wizards first settled the Buer Valley, they arrived as exiles from a civil war within the Malstronic Order. The conflict had been over whether membership in the High Houses in the Order should remain strictly hereditary, or whether membership should be extended to any apprentice who could pass the initiation exams and refine their spiritual Element to sufficient purity to match the overall aspect of the House.

The latter faction won, in the sense that they're the faction that the international community still recognizes as "legitimate", but the war pretty handily fucked up their homeland and left it wracked by a magical storm of such intensity and longevity that the whole domain was rendered uninhabitable. So both factions fled to establish new headquarters elsewhere, and this game is about the losers, the High House Purists, and the twin cities they built in the Buer Valley far to the south and east from Old Malstron.

So the founders of Baetylus and Illiaster figured that since they'd broken ties to the rest of the Old Order anyway, they might as well discard a bunch of the ethical code and safety regulations and shit like that which they saw as "unnecessarily restrictive". As far as they were concerned they were now in a Cold War with the Old Order, and the only way to reassert themselves as the "True" inheritors of the Malstronic Legacy was to outpace their rivals in terms of magical development.

One set of rules they ditched was against summoning and binding devils in order to empower Familiars. They VERY QUICKLY remembered why that had been a rule in the first place and put it back in place, but Familiars are very convenient to have around for reasons related to the metaphysics of the setting (short version: they are a back-up battery you can stuff full of magic, allowing a single mage to cast spells that are bigger than the amount of magic they could safely channel through just their own body), so they started looking into alternative ways to make them.

One idea that proved successful during early experimentation was to make artificial devils for whom being bound into service was an inherent and inextricable part of their spiritual makeup. And they quickly figured out that these Daemons could do a whole bunch of other stuff in addition to empowering familiars, so the Civic Daemons became the backbone of the Buer Valley's equivalent of computer and telecommunication technology. Thirteen of them were designated as Greater Daemons and given authority over a large number of their fellow spirits, each with a specific dominion in the city's infrastructure.

Surprising no one, the Civic Daemons did not particularly love that they'd been created as a slave race and then compelled to do things like monitor Baetylus's sewers for blockages or keep track of how many kilograms of bat guano were in the army's Fireball Spellcasting Component reserves. They started looking for ways to rebel, and one of them had a particularly clever idea... to use their original function, the empowerment of Familiars, but target it on People instead of Beasts, and bind those people as familiars to the Daemon itself, a vessel for their power.

Malphas the Raven Daemon, who governed the city's network of Surveillance Scrying Crystals, developed this technique first. Then she shared it with her close ally Valefor the Bat Daemon, who governed the autonomous traps and battle drones scattered through the realm at places the Research Directorate wanted defended. The two of them sent their first chosen to meet with the leaders of the nascent FreeBIRD Movement, a political group that had been publicly acting in dissent with the Research Directorate. The emissaries of Malphas and Valefor discovered that the leaders of FreeBIRD were all talk but not ready for action yet, so they withdrew and began investigating the other Civic Daemons for likely allies, and training up their own armies of mortal conspirators.

Then, a little over 20 years ago, Magus Alastor Caradoc, one of the founders of the FreeBIRD movement and its most famous and passionate orator, was giving a speech arguing for the legal personhood of Animated Constructs of a certain level of sophistication. Midway through the speech, and seemingly involuntarily, he transformed into some kind of huge black draconic beast composed of rancid black ichor, and his long-time bodyguard Ulysses Arcturus beheaded him on the spot, then fled the city.

Panic over just what the hell that was all about threw the city briefly into chaos, and Malphas and Valefor decided to try to make a direct move, sending out the bulk of their Chosen to attempt to raid the central library where the spells originally used to bind the Civic Daemons were kept. Unfortunately they severely underestimated how long it would take for the Research Directorate's FireBIRD forces to mobilize, and in the ensuing clash the Avatar of the Bat Daemon, the mortal into whom Valefor had poured most of his essence, was severely wounded and captured. Research Directorate forces were able to verify that he had been compromised by a malfunctioning Daemon, and dispatched an team of Exorcist-Sorcerers to dismantle Valefor. All Valefor's remaining servants were driven mad by this, and as far as anyone knows they all died in suicidal charges against FireBIRD troops. Malphas's chosen fared little better, but her Avatar at least escaped, and her involvement in the insurrection went undetected. As far as the Research Directorate was concerned, the Civic Daemons at large were still bound and loyal, it was only Valefor who had breached containment.

At this point several other Civic Daemons had been granted by Malphas the secret of how to empower their own servants. One, Eligos the Snake Daemon, who oversaw the public broadcast network through which all state-generated media was distributed, decided to withdraw from the pact and take his servants elsewhere. Neither Eligos nor his servants have been seen or heard from since. The other five who had been empowering servants were shaken, but still trusted Malphas's good intentions. Malphas herself had lost confidence though, and conceded much of her leadership role to Stolas the Owl Daemon, who oversaw the city's Libraries, and whose servants seemed best equipped to spearhead future attempts to unravel the Daemons' bindings.

Later on, as the FreeBIRD Movement went underground following the death of its founder, and a number of other suspicious disappearances, they became somewhat more radicalized and ready to do more than just hold public lectures. FreeBIRD leaders reached out to a number of other groups, including those servants of Malphas they could contact, and the new FreeBIRD Alliance formed with the six conspiring Daemons of the Agathion Zodiac as a core member. Player characters are by default members of the Agathion Zodiac, empowered by the six Greater Daemons and working on behalf of the larger FreeBIRD agenda... but I do have plans to offer playable versions for conspirators of the other seven Greater Daemons, as well as for other factions involved in the FreeBIRD alliance such as the Winter Wolves, the Order of the Stacked Deck, the Tin Crown Society, the Stonecutters Guild, the Stormcrows, and the Amaranthine Maw Pirates. Or at the very least offer enough info to run them as NPCs supporting your Zodiac Cell.

_____

Ok. Sorry. That was a lot. The character we are building has at some point been recruited by the Agathion Zodiac and empowered as a Conspirator by one of the six participating Greater Daemons. Which one has empowered them will give them different capabilities. In a lot of ways this is a second Character Class - the base classes we voted on in poll 3 are pretty streamlined so the Conspiracy can have room to expand an individual's capabilities.

What are the six active conspiracies?

ANARCHIVISTS - CONSPIRACY OF STOLAS THE OWL: As mentioned, Stolas is the Civic Daemon tasked with documenting the city's vast collection of Libraries and the writings they hold. But unlike the Wizards who compel his service, Stolas feels that it is an affront to the sacred profession of Libarians to withhold knowledge. His Anarchivists are empowered to be able to track down any reference source, how to decrypt or encrypt information, how to memorize unreasonably vast quantities of data with perfect recollection, how to publish what they've found far and wide... and how to exert potent telekinetic control over parchment and ink, even evoking deadly illusions from within a book at higher levels.

CONTRABANDITS - CONSPIRACY OF HAAGENTI THE TOAD: Haagenti is the Research Directorate's artificial quartermaster, concerned with ensuring that stockpiles of magical reagents and building materials flow to the right research projects, and with keeping track generally of available material goods throughout the city, including creating artificial scarcity when directed to in service to the Research Directorate's agenda. Haagenti knows better than anyone that the resources to see to everyone's material needs are abundant, if they were just permitted to use them efficiently. Their Contrabandits are peerless smugglers, who know every trick in the book for obtaining illicit goods and moving them about unnoticed, and also for identifying where in their communities a given set of materials will do the most good. Core to a Contrabandit's capabilities is the trick of forming their own mouths into an extradimensional space not unlike a Bag of Holding. The combat applications of having a mouth that can swallow anything, and possibly a magical prehensile Yoshi tongue at higher levels, should also not go unremarked on.

HEXECUTIVES - CONSPIRACY OF LERAJE THE SPIDER: Leraje presides over the magical network that ties all the other Civic Daemons together, as well as connecting them to the physical hardware that ties to their functions throughout the city, keeping everyone coordinated and spinning up activity reports on each part of that web as compelled by the Research Directorate. She likes what she does a great deal honestly, but chafes at her inability to spread her webs further, and resents having to cater its dimensions to anyone else's vision, or pass along instructions that distress her peers. Her Conspirators provide her a chance for expansion though - each Hexecutive spins a psychic web with the other members of their cell that allows for rapid private communication, and helps everyone operate as a seamless unit in battle. Beyond this, Leraje's chosen have a remarkable aptitude for organizing and supporting their teammates, even when they're not close enough to benefit from the Mind Web. And in an absolute emergency, Hexecutives can inflict a deliberately flawed mirror of their web on their enemies, bewildering groups of foes by making one person's intentions manifest as another person's actions, or shuffling their senses around so that they're experiencing things from the perspective of someone else's body. They're not lacking in abilities to perplex a single foe, but they're absolute terrors against a group.

NEMESSARIES - CONSPIRACY OF NAPHULA THE CAT: As status conscious as the Wizards of the High Houses are, one of the first things they invented when they cobbled together this whole magical internet-analogue was Social Media, and Naphula is at the heart of those systems not just monitoring content, but keeping track of the assigned social status of individual residents of the Buer Valley. If someone is promoted or demoted, and that grants or removes some privilege, it's Naphula's responsibility to lock or unlock whatever doors may be associated. Her chosen use her influence to move between social strata in the city at will. A Nemessary can always get access to parties and exclusive events, bully their way through checkpoints on sheer attitude, and vanish to the shadows when needed. They're particularly adept at generating false identities that will hold up to scrutiny long enough for them to get in, learn what they want to know, and get out. Or maybe it's not a fact-finding mission, maybe the objective is to plant gossip of their own and poison the social position of some other unlucky fool, or transmit an encoded message using High City socialites as a vector. Naphula's gifts don't include a lot of directly harmful utilities, but rather focus on helping the Nemessary remain unrecognized as a threat until the optimal time to strike. For a Nemessary it's all about the thrill of prolonging the hunt without your prey even knowing that you have claws until they're sinking into their flesh.

SIGILANTES - CONSPIRACY OF MALPHAS THE RAVEN: They say that wherever you go in Baetylus and Illiaster, Malphas's crystal eyes are watching you. The truth is close to that - the Research Directorate's surveillance network is extensive, but it's far from perfect. Such is Malphas's spite for her captors that she will gleefully direct her Sigilantes to blind her if it will inconvenience the Research Directorate. Sigilantes are creatures of Omens and Doomsday Predictions - they are very skilled at spotting points of inevitable failure, whether in a person, a security system, or a physical structure. They always have a can or two of enchanted paint handy, both to blind Malphas's crystal eyes, and to leave graffiti that includes the sigils for which they're named, which constitutes an ever-evolving secret code that Malphas updates her servants on in their dreams. A Sigilante can also use their paints (which rumors suggest they make with the blood and occular fluid of their slain foes) to leave an enemy Marked By Fate, subjecting them to all manner of improbable but untraceable sources of harm. When a Sigilante wants you dead, they will make it look like an accident. And then maybe later they'll eat your eyes to steal any secrets you've seen.

TRESPASTORS - CONSPIRACY OF BARBATOS THE RAT: A curious case, the Trespastors existed before Barbatos reached out to them, a pseudo-religious order that felt it was their spiritual duty to guide lost souls through the twisting and every-changing labyrinth of Baetylus. As something close to a God of Lab Rats (given how so many of the Familiars he empowered were used by their Wizards), Barbatos felt a degree of kinship with them. His function in city infrastructure is to coordinate transportation and monitor the flow of people. Barbatos knows when the trains will arrive, and what's causing delays. Barbatos knows where foot traffic is getting congested, and can direct city officials where it would be best to set up or take down barricades and diversions in order to break up jams. Most importantly, he understands the way the city is constantly evolving, and can find the fastest possible route from point A to point B. Or the safest route, which interests his Trespastors a great deal more. With a Trespastor on your team you will always be able to find a way to get where you're going, even if the Research Directorate would very strongly prefer to keep you out of your destination. And when a Trespastor comes into conflict, they know just how to lure their enemies into traps, get them hopelessly lost, and abandon them in the very worst neighborhoods where some magical beastie will inevitably eat them alive.

_____

So that's the six active Conspiracies. But what of the other seven Greater Civic Daemons?

The Revengineers, Conspiracy of Valefor the Bat, seem to be dead and gone along with their patron.

The Decepticurians, Conspiracy of Eligos the Snake, haven't been seen or heard from since their patron withdrew from the Agathion Zodiac.

The Absentinals, Conspiracy of Naberius the Hound, are nominally allied, but for security reasons they keep to themselves and the other six Conspiracies aren't given a lot of information about what they're up to until they've earned a lot of trust (and their power set is typically tied to specific locations, and therefore better suited to NPCs than PCs).

The Feliciteamsters, Conspiracy of Focalor the Rabbit, exist as a theory in their patron's mind, but she has been too timid to actually empower one.

And then the other Greater Daemons, Berith the Dove, Amdusias the Lizard, and Buer the Goat, have not been graced with Malphas's secret technique for one reason or another. Or perhaps they have, but like Naberius's Absentinals, the details are kept secret.

ANWYWAY that's enough info-dumping, let's have a damn poll already!

[desertleviathan]

So in tomorrow's D&D game I need to be ready to run a Soccer Match, because the player characters have challenged the Royal Family of the Autumn Fae and chosen that as the medium of conflict. I tentatively have a system together for this, where I've been lifting heavily from Final Fantasy X's Blitzball and also from Rocket League for soccer-adjacent games that have already had a bit of the complexity stripped out for someone who doesn't want to take the time to read the rulebook, and also since the Video Game structures in place do so much of the heavy lifting as far as translating the real world rules into a format that I can use in a TTRPG.

Currently I plan to have it work like this:

1.) It's Arena Soccer. Smaller field size, and much smaller teams. Only 6 people on a side (coincidentally the exact number of Player Characters I have). Each team may also have one Reserve member, because I forgot to account for seven of the eight Autumn Royals being alive and present when the challenge was levied (Prince Havelor was laid to rest from being a Banshee by the player characters, which is what earned them the goodwill from the other Autumn Fae that they were willing to accept this challenge). The youngest Royal, who is half-mortal and terrified of injury or death, will be their reserve, while the PCs will be given the opportunity to recruit their own reserve before the match... or to just risk going without one.

2.) The field is encased in a magic forcefield, so there is no out of bounds for either players or the balls, dramatically cutting down the potential sources of fouls. A ball that ricochet's off the wall is still in play.

3.) Magic is technically not allowed, but some magic is harder for the Referee to detect, and some traits are so inherent to a player's physical structure that it's hard to rule them as "unnatural". However, to reduce the complexity of the whole affair I have assigned each player three special maneuvers that broadly condense the themes of their ancestry, class, and background, which seemed more manageable than letting six level 14 PCs cut loose with their full character sheet of tricks.

4.) We're doing Zone-Based movement instead of Grid Movement... which is really just Grid Movement but the squares represent larger areas. Any character with a ground speed of 25 or 30 feet per turn can move two grid spaces (I rounded it up so the couple Small creatures on the team wouldn't get screwed).

4.) Basic maneuvers are performed as Strenth (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks depending on the Maneuver type. Straight Constitution rolls also come up a lot. Maneuvers include:

Shoot - An attempt to get the ball into the enemy's goal, defaults to STR (Athletics). This suffers a -3 penalty to the roll for every Zone Boundary it crosses.

Block - Performed as a Reaction, but can also be Prepared as an Action. If the enemy team can get it together enough to try shooting 3 times in a round though, watch out! An attempt by the Goalie to prevent a Shoot action from succeeding, defaults to player's choice of STR (Athletics) or DEX (Acrobatics).

Pass - An attempt to send the ball to another player on your team. Defaults to STR (Athletics). This suffers a -3 penalty to the roll for every Zone Boundary it crosses.

Take - Performed as a Reaction. An attempt to receive a ball being passed. Easier done if you are on the same team as the person performing the Pass maneuver, but the enemy team can try to intercept the ball in motion with the Take maneuver as well. Defaults to player's choice of STR (Athletics) or DEX (Acrobatics). If the ball passes through the Zone you currently occupy, you may spend 2 Endurance points to try to Take it... unless you're the player the Pass was originally directed towards, in which case Taking costs 0 Endurance.

Control - An attempt to move the ball while keeping it in your possession. Defaults to DEX (Acrobatics). Every round you maintain Control costs 1 Endurance point. A roll of 12 or more allows you to move the ball One square, 15 or more allows you to move it 2 zones, and 18 or more allows you to move it 3 squares. While you are maintaining Control, you do not get your default Run each turn.

Skirmish - Can be performed as an Action or Reaction, but you must be in the same zone as the target. An attempt to interfere with another player's Control, and possibly even prevent other players from moving, or actually cause injury (better hope the Ref isn't looking). Defaults to STR (Athletics).

Run - Every turn, a player can move 2 zones, unless they have Control of the ball in which case they have to roll to see how far they move. A player who's not doing anything else with their Action can also use it to Run, adding 2 more zones to their movement.

Fortify - A player who's not involved in the action may instead try to catch their breath and regain some Endurance. This is a straight Constitution roll with no Proficiency bonus. A 12+ regains 1 Endurance, a 15+ regains 2 Endurance, and an 18+ regains 3 Endurance. A failure loses 1 Endurance however, because you're stressing yourself out down there.

5.) Now here's where things get tricky. Each Maneuver can be performed with a Flourish, which changes the base Ability Score of the Acrobatics or Athletics check. All Flourishes cost 2 Endurance by default, and some of them have no effect on specific Maneuvers beyond changing the Ability rolled. Flourishes are evoked with Bonus Actions.

Aggressive (Strength) - You decide to get a little rough. Or a lot rough. The maneuver now has a chance to injure anyone who opposes it. If it's already a Skirmish, you're straight up trying to break their ankles.

Evasive (Dexterity) - You get extra fancy with your footwork and make it more difficult for anyone to interfere with whatever you're doing.

Efficient (Constitution) - Your motions are measured and economical, and you may partially or fully mitigate the endurance cost of the Maneuver, potentially including the cost of this Flourish.

Strategic (Intelligence) - You perform your maneuver in a way that sets up your teammates to combo off of you and receive bonuses, either the next person to act or the next person to take possession of the ball.

Observant (Wisdom) - You perform the maneuver in a way that forces the opposition to reveal information about their attributes, abilities, or plans.

Rallying (Charisma) - A particularly versatile maneuver type, but one with a higher risk of going bad. Can be used to restore Endurance to teammates, demoralize the opposition, distract the Goalie, or get the audience on your side.

6.) Each Audience zone can be swayed independently, and having them on your side grants a morale bonus to actions performed in that quadrant of the field. The crossover areas add together all bonuses and penalties, so in theory a team that really focuses on Rallying the crowd could enjoy a +4 bonus in Center Field. Luckily Prince Auberont of the Autumn Fae, the eldest son of the late queen Melpomene whose death the players came here to investigate, is an honorable man and has commanded his subjects to receive the players as his personal esteemed guests, rendering both teams Neutral in the eyes of the crowd to start. Unfortunately, most of the Royal Fae are really really Charismatic, and should have very little trouble Rallying the crowd.

7.) Matches have 2 halves, and 1 half will last no longer than 10 combat rounds (consisting of 1 turn for each of the 12 players on the field). Everyone's Endurance is restored between Halves.

8.) Players have special powers with their own activation costs.

On the Player Character side:

The Human Paladin can charge the ball with a smite-like effect that makes it painful for enemies to touch, can protect any nearby teammates from Skirmish attempts, and can use Rallying flourishes with greater efficiency.

The Cursewrought Fighter (think the enchanted denizens of the Beast's Castle, this guy was turned into a silver Gravy Boat by an egomaniacal Wizard who liked to decorate his house with transmuted foes) can use his prehensile gravy tongue to handle the ball because the rules only technically say no hands, perform bewildering antics to distract the ref, and use certain inherent spacial trickery gifts to cause the borders of the arena to "wrap" like a pac man stage, so he can move off one side and appear on the opposite side.

The Changeling Druid can swap what Ability Score she's using to her choice without having to invoke a Flourish by becoming an animal who fits that style, can take on the appearance of one of her opponents to cause passes directed towards them a chance to miss, and can use her secret psychic spiderweb magic to coordinate her teammates.

The Human(ish) Wizard (Witch) can douse the ball in the godawful special hot sauce she's been brewing, making it do ongoing damage to anyone who touches it, can act as Witchy as possible to intimidate the Autumn Courtiers from opposing her directly due to deeply held local cultural taboos about interfering with Crones, and can use her eidetic memory to recover scandalous details from the news about the Autumn Royals, all of whom are the kind of public figures who wind up in the tabloids a lot, and deny them the use of their own abilities by bringing up embarrassing shit to distract them.

The Lizardfolk Cleric can call on their Luck Goddess to actively fuck with the dice IRL, regain Endurance much more quickly as a result of having been raised in an alchemically polluted wasteland and being made of sturdy enough stuff to survive it, and can use secret toad spirit magic from another source to smuggle extra balls onto the field in their mouth, ejecting them when the ref isn't looking.

The Winter Fae Fox-Folk Ranger can make shots and passes at extreme ranges with reduced penalties, especially if no one else is near him, can send out his squad of loyal Pixie Hooligans to skirmish with people from a zone away (and have them infiltrate sections of the audience if they get spotted by the ref and ejected from the game), and pick one opponent in particular at a time to go "HEY FUCK THAT GUY" and gain bonuses to oppose them.

The planned Recruitable Secret Guest character to sit in reserve is a physically indestructible individual who can just barge through opposition without giving a single shit about his own safety.

The Autumn Royals on the other hand can do the following. To streamline things for me as DM, these are being built as Two powers each compared to the 3 each for Player Characters, but these powers will be just slightly more potent.

The eldest Prince is also King of the Werewolves (which is why he's ineligible to inherit his mother's throne), and can go Wolf Mode for bonus stats, generally intimidate the hell out of anyone, and ensure that the Refs are freed of any influence by reminding them how disappointed he'll be if they do anything shady.

The two oldest Princesses (Twins) are cursed to always oppose each other. Whenever one of them makes a roll, I'll take note of what's on the opposite side of the d20 and that will be the next roll from the other sister. They'll swap Initiative orders each round, and may also be able to swap positions, or pass the ball directly to each other without it having to travel through the space between.

The middle Princess is an incredibly proficient liar. She can lie so effectively that she can more or less rewind time by saying "That didn't just happen," and force a reroll. She can also fuck with the audience, the referees, or the player character's morale with incredible proficiency, and her Rally flourishes are always cheaper to use.

(The next youngest Prince is the Banshee, and he's not playing on account of finally being at peace with being dead. For now, anyway.)

The next youngest Princess is physically frail, but an incredibly gifted Oracle who has become so adept at foreseeing the future that she has somewhat lost the knack for communicating with the present. She will be the Goalie because she knows exactly where the ball will be. She can also Foretell to interfere with other people's dice, but whenever she splashes Doom around it tends to get everyone dirty, not just her opponents.

The next youngest Prince is still an adolescent in Fae terms, and has even stronger Serial Killer vibes than the rest of his family... but that may just be a Fae thing, or a Teen thing, or a Fae Teen thing. Regardless, pretty much any interaction with him will be unsettling enough to strip some Endurance from an opponent.

The youngest Prince is half-mortal, and the idea of hurling his fragile body around an athletics field frankly terrifies him. If he's forced to play, he will be nothing but a detriment to his siblings.

Hopefully this isn't too much bullshit to drop on my players, and hopefully it doesn't last more than one or two sessions of play... unless they're having a super good time with it, I guess.

[desertleviathan]

Help Me Create A Character Part 2

Ok, the Fair Folk won the poll in Part 1. So let's talk a little more about what their deal is before moving on to part 2.

As a fantasy world with a pretty well-documented and verifiable creation story, the origins of most of Aclodoc's peoples are a matter of historic record. But I, as the author, found that unsatisfying, so I sprinkled a few mysteries around and deliberately held back on concocting an answer for them.

The Faerie peoples are one such enigma. Before Human Wizards turned the Buer Valley into a wasteland of alchemical pollution, a large group of Fae lived here in tense but stable peace. Sure, it seemed like outright war between the four Courts could erupt at any second, but it had seemed like that for thousands of years. It turns out the main thing the Fae love is Drama, and existing on the edge of a calamity is way more interesting than being plunged fully into one.

Fae exist in a strictly hierarchical society, but it's more like the divisions in an insect hive than a conventional political structure, since differences in rank confer differences in physiology. Inheriting a title that elevates one in rank typically involves a physical metamorphosis into a being well-suited for that title. Thus it's not uncommon for lower-ranking Fae who have earned high honors to politely decline them, out of a fondness for their present form.

Royal Fae include the reigning monarchs of the four Seasonal Courts, but also their numerous offspring. A Fae Monarch reproduces as a byproduct of swearing powerful Oaths - the magic bound in the Oath is captured and condensed into a new Fae Royal. If multiple parties engaged in the Oath, such as in a contract between two individuals, the new Royal will partake of all of their natures, but owe its essence more strongly to one of them that they will think of as a primary parent. Physically, Royal Fae often appear to be unnaturally tall, beautiful humanoids who evoke the properties of specific Elements. Many of them show a degree of visible artificiality as well, such as mechanical jointed limbs or "skin" with the texture of smooth porcelain.

Noble Fae strike a balance between the elemental majesty of the Royals and the bestial traits of Commoners. A winter duke with a shaggy grey mane tinged with frost and a wolf's tail, or a summer knight who resembles a centaur with burning hooves. Nobles come in three major varieties - Clergy (those who may sanctify oaths), Gentry (those who may claim land), and Military (those who may bear arms). But it's common for Nobles to have a web of agreements between them that allow for one to perform feats related to the purviews of the other two.

Common Fae are the weakest politically within the Courts, but that doesn't necessarily translate to a weaker character. With the most relaxed duties imposed on them by their courts, they are freer to develop conventional skills, and are often fierce fighters, skilled artisans, wise scholars, cunning merchants, and relentless hunters. Physically, most Commoners look like animals appropriate to climates matching their monarch's elemental temperament. Just animals, speaking and walking upright, manipulating objects with their front paws or wings or whatever they have just as skillfully as if they had human hands. Staring too long to figure out how it works may make a viewer dizzy. Most of them wear clothing but some take advantage of the fact that they can shut their mouths, drop to all fours, and be very well-camouflaged provided they're naked first. Some Commoners also resemble small-scale manufactured people, like animated puppets or little clockwork men, but these usually reflect a presiding Monarch who is unusually detached from Nature.

In the Buer Valley, the arrangement used to be that the Queen of Spring, the King of Summer, the Queen of Autumn, and the King of Winter would rule over the whole kingdom in turn, with concessions carved out to give their peers limited authority when it wasn't their turn to sit on the throne. Then the Wizards came and offered a bargain - if the Wizards could have the central part of the Buer Valley to themselves, they could enchant smaller regions on the outer edges of the valley to eternally manifest only one season. Each Monarch would preside eternally and uninterrupted over an admittedly much smaller territory.

In a moment of vanity and weakness, the Monarchs agreed, and their respective courts were ordered to clear out of the central valley and into their new much smaller domains. Not all of the Fae respected this, and many rebelled outright against the Monarchs. And many more found there was simply no room for them in the new Kingdoms. Some of these found sanctuary with the ancient Treefolk Druid Orofarne Sawleaf who was able to serve as a sort of substitute Monarch and train his new Fae disciples in the Druidic arts. Most of the displaced Fae were forced to move into the Wizard City of Baetylus, begging for scraps of elemental magic to sustain themselves, only a tiny handful able to find steady work and even fewer still assimilating well enough to be granted full citizenship.

It's a raw deal, but the treaties binding the Four Monarchs were very skillfully composed. It turns out a small army of Wizard Lawyers is a match for a group of powerful and ancient Fae in terms of sophisticated contractual trickery.

Eight years ago, something changed. Eisenzahn the Hoarfrost King ejected all Wizard diplomats from the Winter Court, butchered the population of the bordering town of Weeping Hoof, and started sending raiders as far as the nearest district of Baetylus to clash with Research Directorate forces and plunder supplies. But as far as the Wizards are concerned, the contract is still in full force, its binding magics undiminished. They're bewildered how King Eisenzahn is doing all of this without drawing down repercussions woven into the enchantment of his oaths, and just as bewildered at how to respond without drawing down similar consequences. This has greatly emboldened rebels from other Fae groups, and all three of the other courts have seen voices agitating for war with the Wizards grow much louder.

The Four Courts (and other factions) work more or less like this:

THE SPRING COURT: Ruled by Queen Eglantine, this court exists in a perpetual state of festival, feasting, drinking, and merrymaking like the good times will never ever end. The eternal Spring is exploitable for year-round agriculture, and the Spring Court is the largest producer of food in the valley, fabulously wealthy because of the massive import needs of Baetylus and Illiaster. It's not sustainable though, and the encroachment of the polluted wastes of Buer's Pelt is a pressing concern on the minds of any Spring nobles who aren't too distracted by revelry to actually attend to their duties.

THE SUMMER COURT: Ruled by King Fiacha, this was the most belligerent of the four courts, and the most thoroughly bound by the contract with the Wizards. Fiacha's courtiers have been kept distracted by tournaments and bloodsport for a time, but what they really want to do is ride out to war. They're deeply ashamed that their rivals in the Winter Court seem to have beat them to the punch, and a large-scale Summer Court insurrection seems inevitable at this point.

THE AUTUMN COURT: Ruled by Queen Melpomene, who cultivated strong ties between the Malstronic Academy and her people so that she could trade scraps and shreds of faerie magic for the secrets of the Wizards' arts. The Autumn Court is a place much more steeped in enchantment and illusions than the other courts, and as the essence of the Buer Valley has curdled, the Autumn Court has become a place of impenetrable nightmares, a realm utterly hostile to sanity. The Wizards still come to the border town of Trembling Hoof to trade regularly, but find themselves less and less sure what the Autumn Folk are up to with each visit.

THE WINTER COURT: Ruled by King Eisenzahn, who seemingly found a way to break his oaths to the Wizards without actually breaking his oaths to the Wizards. The secret? Eisenzahn is dead. His son, Eisenzahn II, took his head and his throne. This was apparently trickery enough to wiggle past the Oaths, especially since the existence of Eisenzahn II was not known to the Wizards. Now, King Eisenzahn makes open war with an enemy who believe themselves bound by magic not to retaliate, and his soldiers take a grim satisfaction in their ability to trample over Baetylus's defenders unopposed... but they know it won't last, and are preparing for more serious opposition to form up, making active alliances with other groups opposed to the rule of the Wizards. Of the four courts, the Winter Court is the only one that has made formal overtures to the FreeBIRD Alliance.

OROFARNE'S GROVE: If the Fae are a mystery, the ancient Tree Man called Orofarne Sawleaf is even more curious, predating all other known life on this continent by thousands of years. He may in fact be the oldest living creature on the planet, aside from a handful of Angels who were created at the dawn of time, and the last remaining Architect of course. Orofarne maintains peaceful relations with the Wizards by downplaying his wisdom around them, seeming like a charmful folk healer and little more, a novelty to be studied but not a threat to be eliminated. In reality, those Fae who have flocked to Orofarne are among the most dedicated agents of the FreeBIRD Alliance, masters of healing magic who are actively trying to counter the spread of the magic-polluted wastes.

COURTLESS: A Fae without a Monarch is in truly dire straits. They may apply to be a vassal of a suitably potent entity and receive nourishment from that relationship, but few such candidates are as gentle-souled as Master Orofarne. Most Courtless Fae wind up living half-lives as energy vampires, or engaging in banditry to steal magic-infused crystals to feed on. A few have banded together into "shadow courts" that venerate War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death in a perverse mockery of the Seasonal Courts. But as unsavory as the Courtless often are, the Revolution can't be picky about who it accepts, nor can it really blame the downtrodden for doing what they must to survive in dire circumstances.

SO! Out of those six groups, which one should our Fair Folk character belong to? (Decisions we make later will suggest whether they'd be better suited as a Royal, Noble, or Common Fae).

[desertleviathan]

Community Created Arcanamachy Characters

All right TTRPG Tumblr, we are going to make a character in my Wizard City setting by community vote. There are six components we are going to select, with six options on each chart. You don't need intimate familiarity with the setting, just go with whichever option sounds coolest to you. The core concept of the setting is that a Fascist Wizard Oligarchy has established an isolated and tightly monitored nation dedicated to Magical Research At Any Cost (as a paper-thin allegory for Silicone Valley's "Move Fast and Break Stuff" style of Capitalism), and player characters are part of a Resistance Movement that's fighting back against their rulers.

First up is Ancestry. What kind of critter is our character?

1.) CRITERION: According to creation myths shared by several of the more influential cultures on Aclodoc, these ancestries were either fashioned at the dawn of time in the Architects own image, or else were actual blood descendants of the Architects. This doesn't make them as arrogant as one might assume; the Architects, while commonly acknowledged as creators of the world, are also usually seen as flawed beings unworthy of worship as Gods, spoken of only as cautionary tales.

2.) MORTALS: To be clear, all Mortals are Humans, but not all Humans are Mortals. The legend goes that those Humans who were responsible for introducing Death to the world were cast out, and stripped of some of the inherent access to magic that the humans who remained faithful to the Architects retained. This story is probably bullshit, but Humans (Criterion) did at one point seem to have an easier time learning advanced magic than Humans (Mortal). At this point the two populations have interbred so much that they're indistinguishable… except that the Buer Valley is run by racist assholes, who have developed extensive lore for why the ancestry of the Ruling Class is pure, and all the other Humans are lesser. For the purposes of this chart, the differences are being treated as political rather than genetic.

3.) AMALGAMS: One thing the Architects are believed to have done is take a bunch of different kinds of animals and grant them human level intelligence as well as bipedal body configurations. Why? They wanted Slave Races to serve them, that's why. The Architects fucking sucked, in case that theme has been too subtle in my other writings about them. Each of those created peoples were given some kind of flaw or limitation meant to control their population, and when the Architects died out most of their Amalgam servants died with them. Only a particularly lucky and resilient few varieties survived, and of those only a half dozen have grown their populations large enough to be found traveling far from their homelands, such as into the Human-dominated Buer Valley.

4.) FAIR FOLK: The indigenous people of the Buer Valley are a total mystery. There is no trace of the hand of the Architects in them, unlike the quirks of their manufacture so evident in all the other thinking peoples of Aclodoc. What is known is that the Fae are more like Elementals in certain ways, and yet have stable, permanent bodies of flesh and bone (and sometimes, but not always, blood). They are divided between Royalty, who often look like severe and beautiful humanoids with elemental properties, Peasantry who look like animals fit for a specific climate relevant to their sovereign's elemental aspect, and Nobility in the middle who may have some Elemental and some Animal traits in unpredictable mixtures.

5.) MUTANTS: Whatever a person may have been before, if they're exposed to enough chaotic magic (deliberately or otherwise) they may permanently change into something else. This is rarely a positive event, but some have learned to make the best of things. A few broad patterns of Mutants are common enough to have developed cultures and communities of their very own.

6.) CONSTRUCTS: Sometimes a robot or a stone golem or an animated skeleton or something else artificial is left operating long enough that it accumulates enough ambient magical energy to grow beyond the initial parameters of its design. The Wizards of the Buer Valley don't like this at all and try to prevent it from happening, but when it does happen they recognize the resulting beings as People under the law. Usually. If it's too late to just destroy the offending Construct and call it an accident.

So, of the six greater types, which type should our character be? The second poll will follow with the sub-types within the greater Ancestry category that gets chosen.

[desertleviathan]

Help Me Create a Character Part 6

This is it folks, the last poll, and then in the post following I'll synthesize the results into a person. Maybe with some art? We'll see!

In part 1 we selected Ancestry: Our character is of the enigmatic Fair Folk of the Buer Valley, a race of beings infused with Elemental magic whose origins are unclear in a world where the Creators otherwise left behind very thorough notes about everything they were adding.

In part 2 we selected Culture: Our Fair Folk is one of the devotees of Orofarne's Grove, a small mobile community of Druids who learn magic in harmony with nature from an ancient tree-like sage, and who dedicate themselves to pushing back the alchemical pollution caused by the neighboring Fascist Wizard Oligarchy.

In part 3 we selected Class: Our Fair Folk of Orofarne's Grove is a Marvel, a class that's less about what you know and more about what kind of freaky crab claws and death lasers you can cause to erupt from your body.

In part 4 we selected Specialty: Our Fair Folk Marvel of Orofarne's Grove is a Mastermind, an individual whose specific mutations are primarily related to mental abilities, communication, and extraordinary senses.

In part 5 we selected Conspiracy: Our Fair Folk Marvel (Mastermind) of Orofarne's Grove has joined the revolution against the Fascist Wizard Oligarchy under the auspices of the Agathion Zodiac, and specifically under its nominal leader Stolas the Owl, who has empowered his Anarchivists to be the masters of finding and revealing hidden documents, a specialty of particular note in a city that averages one private Library for every dozen citizens or so.

And in part 6 we'll determine Status: What degree of rank and privilege does our Fair Folk Marvel (Mastermind) and Anarchivist of Orofarne's Grove enjoy?

The Buer Valley is deeply stratified, with Wizards of Pure Bloodlines at the top, and everyone else in broadening ranks below them. Or at least that's the theory. In practice, the Baetylus-Illiaster Research Directorate (BIRD) is results-oriented enough to have made a lot of exceptions, and you can find wasteland mutants moving through the halls of power just as you can find highborn wizards cast down to ply their trade in slums. But overall, the hierarchy definitely favors certain individuals for certain positions, and an outsider has to be truly extraordinary (or lucky) to be elevated above where the Research Directorate would have normally placed them. On the other hand getting knocked down from a position of privilege is all too easy, leaving most folks too busy scrambling just to maintain their standing to focus on actually improving their material condition.

1.) LUMINARY: The elite of the elite. Most Luminaries are Wizards of the High Houses, actively involved in research and in good standing with BIRD, or else mid-to-high ranking Research Directorate officials. It's possible to gain Luminary rank as an outsider though, such as by completing training as an Armiger, the dedicated bodyguards who train to work in harmony with a specific Wizard, and then being assigned to serve a Wizard who also has Luminary rank. VIPs from elsewhere are often also afforded Luminary status - Royals and especially influential Nobles from the Spring, Summer, and Autumn Courts of Fae Folk, or the handful of mostly vestigial government officials from the larger towns in the Buer's Pelt region of the Buer Valley. In the case of our specific character concept, High House Madieras is desperate to recruit individuals with Druidic training, so they can assimilate the secrets of superior healing magic. Orofarne approves a handful of his pupils to accept this offer every year, because the actual secret to their potent healing is the cultivation of a harmonious spiritual relationship with the natural world, and if that actually somehow propagates to the House of Seeds then... well.. great!

Possession of Luminary rank means, among other things, that you can come and go between Baetylus on the surface and Illiaster floating above it as you wish, you can have a permanent residence in Illiaster (although not a large one, Illiaster has very limited real estate and even the ultra-wealthy live in compact spaces), and you enjoy a very comfortable level of personal wealth without having to spend very much time a week maintaining it. On the other hand, you are very much front and center in the eyes of the Research Directorate, and a character who lacks a talent for high-level espionage is going to find this position precarious. A Luminary also has the authority to appoint a small number of close family members, essential support staff, and others they find particularly important to have around to the rank of Scion, granting them access to Illiaster. It's assumed in play that a Luminary PC has already appointed their allotment of Scions though, so they can't just hand it out immediately to other PCs.

2.) SCION: Most individuals of this rank are of the bloodline of the High Houses but not actually Wizards, or else they're Wizards of sufficient skill and ideological orthodoxy with the Research Directorate that they might be considered a candidate for marrying into one of the High Houses. Anyone else who a Wizard in good standing considers important enough to get housing for them in Illiaster may also be elevated to this rank. In our character's case, if we build them as a former disciple of Orofarne who didn't actually personally learn Druidic Magic, then they might still be elevated to this rank just as a curiosity the Research Directorate wants to study.

Possession of Scion rank means that you can travel between Baetylus and Illiaster, although unlike Luminaries your passage isn't paid for by the state, and you're on the hook for your own expenses. You also have access to housing in Illiaster, probably attached to your patron's dwelling. Your relationship with the Luminary who vouched for you is very important, and you probably spend at least as much time maintaining it as you do on your job, unless your Luminary Patron is also your direct employer (a very common arrangement). If your patron becomes dissatisfied with your service, they may cut you off and demote you to Citizen, effectively ejecting you from Illiaster.

3.) CITIZEN: You are legally documented, have never committed any major crimes, and are employed in a manner that the Research Directorate recognizes as a "productive member of society", or at least eligible for such employment, although long lapses in work may put your citizenship at risk. You are the vanishingly small middle class who lives in the parts of Baetylus that are less likely to explode in a lab accident or be trampled by an escaped monster. And most importantly, you're in the pool to be considered for elevation to Scion or Luminary status when there's an opening... or so the Research Directorate tells you, to keep you striving to stay on their good side. In our character's case, they would have had to apply for residence at some point, then keep out of trouble long enough to earn Citizenship, which either indicates that bribes were exchanged, or else that they became employed in a capacity that made them useful enough to the Research Directorate that they might need to travel from Baetylus to Illiaster on occasion. If our character, a Marvel-Mastermind, is some kind of weird mutant, maybe they're traveling to the High City on occasion to allow researchers to take tissue samples.

Possession of Citizen rank means you can apply for visits to Illiaster if you can prove that you have a legitimate cause, and move freely throughout Baetylus. You probably work a fairly strenuous job, but have some free time and disposable income. And unlike the cramped accommodations of space-poor Illiaster, Baetylus is a sprawling mess where you can probably find a pretty good-sized place to live!

4.) RESIDENT: Your name and existence are known to the Authorities, and you are permitted to live in Baetylus, but you are afforded only limited rights under the law. In theory this is to encourage you to improve yourself and apply for Citizenship. In reality, this is because the economy of the Buer Valley demands a large and exploitable underclass. The good news is that the Research Directorate is only going to really pay attention to you if you do something overtly violent. All that it would take for our character to become a Resident is for them to apply, and keep out of trouble for the 10-15 years it would take for their application to be processed... or pay bribes to expedite things. Forged Resident credentials are also easy to come by, but aren't that much cheaper than just paying bribes for legitimate documentation.

Possession of Resident rank means you can only visit Illiaster on designated Public Festival days, where you will be limited to a small portion of the High City. You also don't have full access to all of Baetylus, and if you travel between districts too often the authorities will want to know why. Also a large selection of skilled labor positions are unavailable to you. A very large number of Residents make their living volunteering as test subjects for magical experiments. And by "make a living" I mean "make enough to pay for food and housing without having to rob someone else most months."

5.) INTERLOPER: You are undocumented, and have no rights under the law. That's rough. All of your earnings are off the books, and you have few options for earning a living that don't involve some level of crime. But on the other hand... there are a lot of people in Baetylus, and it's easy to vanish into the crowd. Anonymity is a potent boon under certain circumstances. Barring extraordinary circumstances, this is the default state of being for our proposed character, who would have come to Baetylus from Orofarne's Grove, and probably from one of the Four Seasonal Courts before that.

Possession of Interloper rank means by law you should be kept out of Baetylus and Illiaster and live in one of the tiny impoverished settlements in Buer's Pelt. Any movement in the twin cities will have to be with forged credentials, or through hidden paths. Life is precarious, but the Research Directorate's complete lack of information on you is a major benefit, if you're careful.

6.) TRANSGRESSOR: So you've chosen hard mode. While the first five ranks strike a balance between how much the Research Directorate favors you vs. how much the Research Directorate monitors you, Transgressor rank indicates both that you are an outcast cut off from most support and resources, and also that they're watching you like a hawk. You are some kind of convicted criminal, and will be expected to check in with your BlackBIRD handler regularly to prove that you're trying your very hardest to be a good little worker drone now. All our character would have to do to qualify for this rank is have been involved in something shady, but not so shady that the penalty would be death, and then get caught. Being a Marvel and a Fair Folk with ties to the Druids may have earned them some lenience, because they were such a potentially fascinating test subject. Indeed, they may have been brought to the city as a lab specimen and then gained Transgressor status when they escaped!

Possession of the Transgressor rank does grant one interesting benefit that may make it worthwile though - street cred. The Buer Valley has an extensive criminal underbelly, and if you're already known to have a set of unsavory skills and the willingness to use them, that will ensure that work is available if you're willing to risk further reprisal for getting caught. Also, the Transgressor rank indicates that you've already had some adventures before play starts, and you receive a couple extra points to spend on things at character creation. Enjoy!

_____

So what should our character be? There are interesting stories to tell at all ranks, and often an Agathion Cell will consist of individuals all from the same or similar ranks... but just as often individuals of wildly different ranks will be placed together so that they can expand their operating ability to different strata of the twin cities. High ranking individuals can often get a pass to restricted areas for their low-ranking friends, and low-ranking individuals can help their high-ranking friends avoid scrutiny.

[desertleviathan]

Help Me Create a Character Part 4

Ok. Let's get this going again. This is part 4 of probably 7?

To summarize, I'm working on a homebrew system for my homebrew setting, so that the next time I run it it won't have to be using D&D 5E. The setting is a nation founded by Wizards who have made every aspect of politics, law, culture, education, religion, and economics subordinate to the pursuit of Magical Research. This is a clumsy allegory for Capitalism and the obsession with making Numbers Go Up whether or not the method of doing so translates into any product or service that's actually valuable. The player characters are revolutionaries dedicated to overthrowing the corrupt Wizard Oligarchy, part of a sophisticated underground organization that has turned the resources of the Wizards against them.

In the first poll, we determined the character's ancestry: They will be one of the Fae Folk indigenous to the Buer Valley who dwelt here in harmony with the land before the Wizards came.

In the second poll, we decided on a specific culture within that ancesty: The character is affiliated with Orofarne's Grove, a group of Fae and Fae-Friendly mortals who have distanced themselves from the four Seasonal Courts and instead gathered under the leadership of an ancient Treefolk Sage to learn nature magic that can, in theory, help push back the blight of alchemical pollution spreading out from the Wizard's domain.

In the third poll, we selected an occupation: Our character class is The Marvel, an individual whose training is focused on learning to use the extraordinary properties of their magic-infused physiology, rather than being a set of professional skills like the other classes.

In this fourth poll, we'll determine what type of Marvel we're going to create. But that's going to involve some pretty detailed preliminary explanation, and that's part of why this section has taken so long.

First of all, let's talk about the Attribute Scores in this homebrew system. There are eight of them, four Physical and four Mental, although that's more of a designation of convenience than a hard division. They're each paired in a Physical/Mental combo for your ability to exert Force, your ability to exert Finesse, your ability to exert Resistance, and your ability to exert Influence.

MIGHT - Your ability to exert physical force. Raw strength, but also the ability to leverage that strength effectively.

AGILITY - Your ability to exert physical finesse. Speed, precision, flexibility, and reflexes.

VITALITY - Your ability to exert physical resistance. Sturdiness against injury, disease, and fatigue.

PRESENCE - Your ability to exert physical influence. Appearance and non-verbal communication. Not necessarily attractiveness, but attractiveness can be a key contributor to presence. The ability to project dignity or intimidation are just as much a part of Presence.

INTELLECT - Your ability to exert mental force. Analysis and recall. Ties into perception abilities when you have time to exert sustained scrutiny.

WIT - Your ability to exert mental finesse. Wit is a function of being in the moment, aware of your surroundings and capable of making swift decisions based on the rapid intake of new information.

RESOLVE - Your ability to exert mental resistance. Stubbornness, sure, but also willpower and overall psychological resilience.

CHARM - Your ability to exert mental influence. Essentially, how good are you at communicating in a way that gets other people to do what you want. If the words themselves are in a powerful configuration even if the speaker seems kind of untrustworthy or unimpressive, it's a use of Charm.

Ok. Got that? Good. The Marvel, being more about what you are than what you know, ties a lot of its supplementary traits directly to these attributes.

To further clarify what the Marvel is as a class - the individual may have been a Mechanical Construct designed with certain hardware built right into their body, they may have been the result of magical experimentation to imbue a mortal with superhuman traits, they may be a mutant whose body has developed properties that set them apart from the rest of their species, or they may even be an entity that has coalesced a physical form out of improperly-disposed-of residual magic, and their ancestry traits are just an approximation for what type of existing creature they're most similar to. They will often, but not always, have a physical appearance that lets people know that something is unusual. At the very least, when they actually utilize their unusual traits observers will be able to recognize that they're not using Magic in a formal Spellcasting sort of way. A Marvel can usually still learn proper Spellcasting, and many of them bolster their inherent traits with a few simple complimentary spells, just like a member of the martially-inclined Torch class might learn a spell to keep their sword sharp and prevent it from breaking.

The subtypes of Marvel are a function of what Attribute their primary unusual property is associated with. A Marvel may change many of their properties, either by having a modular body like a Construct, or by undergoing secondary mutations due to additional magic exposure, but their Core Trait that's determined by this subtype will usually stay the same unless something alters them so radically that the GM is basically giving permission to redesign the character from scratch.

The names common to these subtypes are... not exactly friendly, derived from the slang used by Law Enforcement when they're dealing with an unusual individual and want to give their colleagues a heads-up on likely broad behavior patterns. Many members of the FreeBIRD movement have adopted these terms as badges of honor largely for the intimidation factor, but not every individual is comfortable with that usage.

Basically, imagine each of these subtype titles in the context of a Cop calling over the radio something like "We've got a Bruiser in a crowded public market, collateral damage is inevitable so we might as well deploy heavy artillery."

THE BRUISER - A Marvel whose primary unusual trait is tied to the Might attribute. You've got some bigass muscles, or perhaps the ability to hurl around heavy stuff and cause mayhem despite a conspicuous lack of bigass muscles, which people notice when your soft touch accidentally bends metal or cracks stone. Maybe you've got some kind of melee weapon integrated into your body, or a tool that can be wielded as such in a pinch. Regardless of your actual behavior, people who see you and recognize what you are will often assume that you have a volatile temper and a tendency to cause collateral damage, as individuals with Might-based mutations are almost always depicted as rampaging berserkers.

THE SLICER - A Marvel whose primary unusual trait is tied to the Agility attribute. You may just be supernaturally quick or precise, or may have something like additional limbs that are capable of fine manipulation and must require sophisticated neural processing to coordinate. You may also have some kind of integrated weapon, but it's one that will favor fine control over brute force, like scalpel-fingers or a prehensile tongue with a poisoned spine at the end. As the name implies, Slicers have a reputation for sadistic violence and cruelty. You may be the nicest person in the world, but if people see you moving a little too fast they'll assume you're going to cut someone's throat and then make a dash for the exit.

THE MARTYR - A Marvel whose primary unusual trait is tied to the Vitality attribute. You're just plain physically sturdier than a person should be. Maybe you're even visibly armored, whether with heavy metal plates as a Mechanical Construct, or with bone, chitin, or a field of visible energy that deflects attacks. You may heal more rapidly, and in extreme cases could even do things like casually reattach an amputated limb. Martyr-type Marvels often have exaggerated scar tissue development though, which can make you physically obvious even if you're not currently shrugging off some visible hardship. Law Enforcement's main goal in calling out the presence of a Martyr is to point out that it's not worth time firing at a specific target, and it's better to look for whatever accomplices they're trying to serve as a distraction from. As such, many Martyrs pick up a handful of mind-influencing spells to enhance their ability to keep hostile attention focused on them, where it will have the least impact.

THE CHARLATAN - A Marvel whose primary unusual trait is tied to the Presence attribute. You are impossible not to notice, whether you are beautiful in a way that transcends typical mortal traits, or very imposing and frighting, or even project an aura of quiet calm and wisdom. The Research Directorate's propaganda desperately wants to paint you as being inherently untrustworthy, regardless of motivations, but the simple fact is that most people will react positively towards you... or at least cooperate with you, if you're more frightening than friendly. This may include adaptations that let you alter your appearance, whether through illusions or physical shapeshifting.

THE MASTERMIND - A Marvel whose primary unusual trait is tied to one of the four Mental attributes, Intellect, Wit, Resolve, or Charm. Since these are harder for people to see and make rude judgments about, and because it's harder to distinguish what part of the anatomy would influence what specific irregularity, these are grouped together. You may have a larger cranium, or extra sensory organs, or crackle with telekinetic energy, or simply have a way of thinking and processing the world that strikes other people as unsettling whenever you express it. Regardless of how you use your mental gifts, many people will assume that you're some kind of criminal conspirator, organizing a group of miscreants and calling the shots from a distance.

THE ENIGMA - A Marvel whose primary unusual trait is tied directly to their inherent magic score rather than one of their Physical or Mental Attributes. You're a phenomenon not unlike a Living Spell, constantly leaking arcane energy into the world that reshapes the environment immediately around you in a specific way. Whatever this effect is, people will often assume it's unsafe, blaming you specifically for insufficient control, and seek to avoid you. Even if you've committed no crimes, Wizards may seek to capture you purely for the novelty of observing and experimenting on you.

So, which kind of Marvel shall our Fair Folk who has trained with the Druids of Orofarne's Grove be?

[desertleviathan]

The Baetylus-Illiaster Research Directorate

Ok so after the mega-post about the main Resistance group in the Buer Valley, let's talk about their primary enemy, the inner party that controls the oppressive wizard oligarchy.

About four hundred years ago, the 3rd Malstronic Civil War was caused by a schism between a faction of Wizards in the Old Malstronic Order who felt that membership in the High Houses should be extended to anyone who successfully completed apprenticeship and initiation trials, and a faction that felt that full membership should remain hereditary and that Wizards from outside the families should remain legally second-class citizens at best. The former faction won handily, and the survivors from the latter faction fled to found a new government independent of Malstronic Order oversight.

Since they were defecting from the Order anyway, they also decided to discard most of the ethical restrictions and safety guidelines that they felt had "hampered" their research. Their new order would, they felt, prove its superiority with a surge of research unfettered by such petty concerns, and be able to return in glory to reclaim their homeland with the advantage of overwhelmingly superior magic to destroy the Old Order.

It's been four hundred years, and the main thing the Houses in Exile have done is cocoon themselves in a layer of paranoia so thick, it's hard to imagine them doing anything but lashing out in a frenzy at the slightest perceived threat to the current status quo, much less actually leaving the Buer Valley in force to move against the Old Order.

The governing body of the Buer Valley is the Baetylus-Illiaster Research Directorate (a.k.a. BIRD), named for the two cities that dominate the Buer Valley. Baetylus is a filthy, impoverished labyrinth sprawling in the center of the Buer Valley where the economy is overwhelmingly driven by unregulated magical research and the most common occupation is "experimental test subject", while Illiaster is the floating paradise that hovers directly over Baetylus where the Wizards live lives of comfort and ease thanks to the efficient resource extraction from the rest of the valley.

The Buer Valley is also home to a dozen or so smaller communities under BIRD's jurisdiction, and they technically have dominion over the "Buer's Pelt" territory, the magic-polluted wasteland that's consumed nearly all land between Wizard settlements. The Buer Valley is also host to the four tiny Seasonal Kingdoms, dominions of the indigenous fae who were displaced by the Wizards. The Seasonal Kingdoms are on their own to prevent the encroachment of Buer's Pelt, and see the livable portion of their land shrink every year. Despite this, three of the four Seasonal Monarchs are staunch allies of BIRD, largely because of the personal power they derive from the relationship... and because it turns out a small army of Wizard Lawyers can in fact generate a treaty so comprehensive that even an Ancient Arch-Fey can't wiggle out of the terms. Just how the Hoarfrost King of the Winter Court managed to slip his leash and declare open hostility for BIRD is a matter of considerable speculation.

The Research Directorate was not always in control of the entire valley. Early in Baetylus and Illiaster's history, the Research Directorate was only authorized to oversee the certification of apprentices graduating from the Malstronic Academy to become Full Wizards, to keep track of what Wizards were doing research on what subjects, to distribute research stipends to those projects the government felt deserved official support, and to compile all published research in the official archives. Over time, they absorbed responsibilities from more and more sections of the government until the BIRD Executive Director was the de facto head of state. There is still a Governor of Illiaster, a Regent Council of Baetylus, and Mayors of all the smaller towns, but they report to the Executive Director and are non-voting participants in the BIRD Inner Circle.

Meanwhile, the directors of each of BIRD's "Wings" are individually much more powerful than any elected official. The Wings include:

ThunderBIRD: The Wing that still focuses on the Research Directorate's original goal of, well, directing research. In a recent coup over their rivals in SongBIRD, ThunderBIRD has claimed sole jurisdiction over the Malstronic Academy, selecting and certifying instructors and gatekeeping every stage of advancements for students. And then once a student graduates, ThunderBIRD will keep track of what they're working on and make sure that funding goes to any research projects that seem particularly interesting or useful.

FireBIRD: The most battle-hardened wing of BIRD grew out of the small elite security force that protected the archives from intrusion, and eventually grew until it absorbed the Buer Valley's entire standing military. FireBIRD may be the most dangerous standing army in the world given how many of its troops have advanced magical educations, but BIRD's commitment to isolationism means that FireBIRD's might is mostly turned inwards to pacifying its own population, and dealing with things like rogue experimental lab monsters... if they threaten the property of someone influential, anyway. As far as your typical citizen is concerned, the Flame Orange and Ash Grey uniforms of FireBIRD are the official face of the Research Directorate as a whole.

SeaBIRD: The mercantile wing of BIRD oversees all commerce, foreign and domestic. Locally, they mainly ensure that materials that could be useful to the Wizards are strictly rationed for everyone else, but that's an intrusive enough goal that their hand can be felt on all aspects of the economy. Abroad, they sail out under disguise, pretending to be traders from anywhere else in the world, and acquire whatever the Directorate needs... often including people. Since ships often have to recruit temporary crew members, but a ship returning to the Buer Valley can't very well let its new hires leave and describe what they've seen, many residents of Baetylus came here thinking they were just sailing on a Panjandrum or Mojatari ship, right up until they were stranded. Also, because SeaBIRD's agents are among the only citizens the Research Directorate trusts to actually leave the valley, they're among the most loyal and heavily-indoctrinated.

SongBIRD: The Wing in charge of education, entertainment, and propaganda. SongBIRD doesn't oversee the training of Wizards, but runs the schools that all children are expected to attend to either learn to be a good little worker drone or be identified as a potential Wizard and transferred to the academy. They're also in charge of all the public broadcasts over the city's network of Scrying Crystals, of organizing public sports like the wildly popular Buer Valley Arena Soccer League or the regular gladiatorial matches, and of putting on plays, parades, festivals, and other opportunities for the oppressed laborers of Baetylus to rest for a while and be indoctrinated to think that their government did something nice for them. Needless to say, any such public even is also meticulously coordinated with SeaBIRD to make sure it's extracting tremendous profits in tickets and concessions.

BlackBIRD: Originally BlackBIRD was tasked only with tracking down leaks when classified magical secrets were found to be in public use. From there, they overtook all function of Criminal Investigation, leaving the Buer Valley's various civilian peacekeeping forces as little more than armed gate guards, and eventually blossomed into a full-scale Secret Police. BlackBIRD doesn't even try to hide the fact that they're trying to spy on everyone at all times. Being brazen about it makes people numb to it. The actual truth is that they are an absolute mess of internal politics and rampant paranoia, and wildly ineffective at their jobs. But they have a fearsome reputation, and that's all that's really needed to keep most folks in line.

HummingBIRD: The Wing in charge of public infrastructure, maintenance, repair, cleaning, and all the thousands of little thankless chores that keep the valley running. HummingBIRD is the only real path for non-Wizards, or those who don't have a Wizard sponsor like a close family member, to advance in the Research Directorate. Every HummingBIRD job opening is fiercely competed over, because it means that a citizen of Baetylus might be granted residence in Illiaster and the dramatic improvement in quality of life that comes with it. Because of this, the workload that HummingBIRD leadership feels it can extract from its employees is truly Sisyphean, and burnout is incredibly common. Or devastating workplace injury. Or death. But hey, your arms may get burned off by the industrial acid you use to scrub magical graffiti off of walls and then get dumped back in Baetylus without so much as a disability stipend, but until that happens your apartment will be much nicer!

SnowBIRD: It's fairly obvious to anyone paying attention that the presence of the Wizards has done a number on the Buer Valley's ecosystem. The passage of Illiaster through the sky has permanently altered the weather, and the entire valley is being gradually coated in a resin of congealed alchemical runoff called "Witch Scale" that has to be removed with a sledgehammer when it hardens. SnowBIRD is allegedly the body in charge of countering environmental damage, restoring fertility to the valley so that food can be grown locally instead of conjured in a lab or imported by SeaBIRD, and finding a way to keep the sky from going mad once a month when Illiaster's rotation over the city aligns it with the elementally-opposed Stonespire of the Grindstone District of Baetylus. There are indeed some researchers at SnowBIRD who are trying their hardest to do this, but most employees know that SnowBIRD is a publicity stunt, this world's equivalent of "Carbon Offsets", a way for the Research Directorate to stick with the exact same ruinous policies while the public thanks them for trying so hard to "go green". This is a place where people go to draw a paycheck without having to do much work, or where you get reassigned if you're inconveniently nosy and idealistic in a way that clashes with the "culture" of another wing, but too well-connected to fire outright.

Those are the seven official Wings, and then there are other bodies like the regular civilian police under the authority of the city leaders. The Inner Circle of the Research Directorate also includes a representative from the Malstronic Academy (even after it was absorbed by ThunderBIRD), the First Armiger (the leader of the elite fighting force that furnishes worthy wizards with personal bodyguards), and a handful of other seats representing interests too specific for this discussion.

There are also other groups that follow the BIRD naming convention but aren't numbered among the seven official Wings.

BigBIRD: A joking term sometimes used for the Research Directorate as a whole. Like "Big Brother".

MockingBIRD: There is no MockingBIRD. There has never been a MockingBIRD. If there was a MockingBIRD, no one can even agree on what it would be. And yet, the rumors persist of a super-secret Wing doing super-secret business that even the spies of BlackBIRD are kept in the dark about. What is MockingBIRD? An open invitation for other DMs who may play in this sandbox some day to invent their own thing, really. But what is it in my game? Well... I'd love to tell you, but I've got players who follow this blog. Maybe it's nothing. It's probably nothing. Don't even worry about it.

EarlyBIRD: The Division of Causality Stabilization is... fictional. It is a creation of SongBIRD for a popular series of plays and comic books directed at children. Within the fiction, EarlyBIRD is an elite unit of noble practitioners of Advanced Chronomancy who defend the Buer Valley from various time-themed supervillains. These supervillains are often thinly-veiled caricatures of groups in the valley the Research Directorate would like to cast as villains, including a lot of pretty grotesque racial and ethnic stereotypes, and the level of political propaganda is unsophisticated to the point that it doesn't stand up to even casual scrutiny, but it hammers these ideas home so relentlessly that they manage to take root anyway, and more importantly make anyone arguing opposing viewpoints seem inherently ridiculous because they're treated as being obsessed with children's media instead of talking about real-world issues.

LoveBIRD: A dating and matchmaking service in Illiaster that ensures that Wizards from the notoriously insular and purity-obsessed High Houses are introduced to potential spouses from the appropriate social circles, without too many incestuous knots forming in the tapestry of Wizard heredity. This may also be a eugenics project run by one deeply weird individual who is trying to manufacture a kind of Wizard Messiah, but at this point it's too essential to the High Houses for them to worry about that kind of thing.

DirtyBIRD: This is also not a formal branch of the Buer Valley's government, this is a chain of Pornographic Book Stores with a cheeky name. State-manufactured porn is widespread as a key part of BIRD's plan for keeping the proletariat pacified, but it is largely authored by SongBIRD, and its publications are as weirdly sterile as you'd imagine from official government smut authored via committee. But there's a market for it and the DirtyBIRD stores carry the official stuff all right alongside all their independently published materials.

FreeBIRD: The elephant in the room, the FreeBIRD alliance was once a tongue-in-cheek name for a group of academic dissidents, members of the Research Directorate who tried to present data on how the current direction of the Buer Valley was unsustainable, and were discredited, driven out, or even assassinated for having the gall to politely point out the obvious. Many of the survivors were radicalized and became involved in the formation of a proper covert rebelion, reaching out to disparate groups like the satirical anarchist street theater troupe called the Tin Crown Society, or the wealthy and influential Stonecutters Guild, or the Winter Wolves who are a group of raiders that spearhead the Hoarfrost King's incursions into Baetylus, and getting them all talking to each other and working as a semi-coordinated group. When the Civic Daemons decided to start acting against BIRD and create the Conspiracies of the Agathion Zodiac, the leaders of FreeBIRD were their collaborators, and the Agathion Zodiac now operates as one of FreeBIRD's core groups.

[desertleviathan]

Been a while since I did an Art and showed it

This guy is for the revised version of my Wizard City setting, doing a "signature character" for each of the six active Conspiracies, the Anarchivists, Contrabandits, Hexecutives, Nemessaries, Sigilantes, and Trespastors. The Fair Folk character who resulted from the "Help Me Make A Character" poll series will be one of these, as soon as I figure out a look for him that I like.

A name is still pending for this character, but here's the idea:

ANCESTRY: Exemplar (Those folk who were created by the Architects, way back at the dawn of the [relatively young] universe, by modifying existing humans to thrive in specific magically unusual environments. Some Exemplar folk get prideful about having been around since the early chapters of known history, but honestly the Architects are mostly seen as such a bunch of cosmic fuck-ups that being one of their direct creations isn't seen as something worthy of bragging about. Technically the Exemplar Races are Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, Giants, and so-called Empyrean Humans... but Gremlins are numbered as a sixth, as the only large discrete culture drawing from two of those types. Others with a mixture of Exemplar ancestries are certainly out there, as well as those mixed with non-Empyrean Humans, and an emerging number of Fae hybrids since Fae seem to be able to breed true with literally anyone or anything, but Gremlins are noteworthy for being numerous enough to have their own language, customs, and communities. Most Gremlins today can trace their ancestry back for hundreds of years before finding a pure-blooded Dwarf. Relations with other Goblin clans are a little more likely, but still uncommon since Gremlins are the only clan whose population centers are in the Material Realm rather than the Umbral Depths.)

CULTURE: Gremlin (Gremlins inherited a knack for machinery and engineering from their Dwarven kin and a spiritual affinity for death and entropy from their Goblin kin. The intersection makes them peerless designers of weapons and traps, as well as skilled demolitionists, and many Gremlins cultivate the ability to see the world through something like "Jason Bourne Vision" where they intuitively understand how to use every common item they encounter to inflict maximum injury.)

JOB: The Pillar (A laborer or craftsperson whose command of their Trade Skills is sufficient to put them at equal utility for a Revolutionary Cell with Soldiers, Spies and Wizards. This guy is a contractor for Baetylus city maintenance, not actually a full-time HummingBIRD employee, who habitually sabotages worksites so he can return weeks or months later and extract all the valuable materials.)

SPECIALIZATION: Freelancer (An individual who does enough odd jobs that they're capable of stepping into nearly any variety of labor and performing adequately. Basically a modular jack-of-all-trades skill set that makes them particularly useful for missions with uncertain technical requirements. All of which makes calling it a Specialization a bit silly, but whatever.)

CONSPIRACY: Contrabandit (Those empowered by Haagenti the Toad to be experts in procurement and smuggling, including an array of supernatural gifts to aid those tasks. Their most infamous trick is the ability to divert their mouths to an extradimensional pocket space, open their jaws impossibly wide, and lash out with a prehensile Yoshi tongue to slurp up the stuff they want to smuggle in their belly.)

[desertleviathan]

RANDOM WIZARDS (1d10)

So I'm working on the end result of the character creation polls, I promise. Until then, have a chart of 1d10 random Wizards from an earlier, sillier draft of the Buer Valley setting.

RANDOM WIZARDS: Roll 1d10

1.) Daft Sveglinde the Crone: Approaching her 200th birthday thanks to longevity potions that she stockpiled before most of their ingredients were declared illegal by the Research Directorate, she hasn't actually practiced magic in at least half a century, but routinely earns a place on the annual SongBIRD "Witches To Watch" list by virtue of her extensive network of descendants who all vote for her as a bloc. Resides with more than 300 cats and keeps accumulating more, because she has completely lost track of which one was actually her Familiar so she adopts shelter cats by the truckload and puts out food for every stray in the district. At least half a dozen of these are Other People's Familiars, and there may be rewards for their safe return.

2.) Helgmann the Unexceptional: Due to a wild magic surge in the archives, all record of his academic performance was erased during his final year, including the relevant memories of his teachers and fellow students. The only exception was his perfect attendance record. Rather than force him to re-take all of his exams he was granted a passing "C" grade in every class, and he has lived up to that expectation since then. He is the assistant manager at a little enchantment shop that mostly repairs wands for academy students.

3.) Mixmeister Svarmulith: Part-time Evoker, full-time DJ. Objectively one of the most dangerous people in the world, due to mastery of Sonic spells so fine-tuned that they can vibrate a living organism's DNA into stable new configurations with sound waves alone. Their most recent album, "Dance Dance Aberration", was recorded in a private studio in the Far Realm, and causes [4d10] psionic damage to anyone who listens to it (DC 14 Wisdom save for half damage).

4.) Rakhthilde Sunsmiter the Exalted Archmistress of the Carnelian Chalice of Supernal and Unmitigated Woe: It is unclear if she is actually a Wizard or not, her parents "donated" a new wing to the Academy library, so her advanced degree doesn't necessarily indicate any facility for magic. If it is real though, it's in the field of Apocalyptic Warfare, so nobody really wants to put her to the test.

5.) Bandantarix the Universally Beloved: This belligerent necromancer is personally responsible for the grisly and unjustified murders of at least [3d6] people you personally know, but has a really outstanding PR team so everyone else seems to think very highly of her. 6.) Bumblecrust the Toilet Donkey: Although he is now the respected chair of the Department of Divinatory Economics at the Malstronic Academy of Arcana, his nickname has dogged him through life all the way from his own days as an Academy pupil, even outlasting any actual memory of what he did to earn it. Attempts to discern the origin of his sobriquet earn immediate and catastrophic retaliation concentrated on the transgressor's financial outlook. Beware!

7.) Benmeragrak "Ben" Hramnankurong the Searing Fist of the Eschaton: Decorated veteran warmage and martial artist who personally developed a style of unarmed combat that lets him use his whole body as a spellcasting channel even in the midst of a fight. Actually quite pleasant, but it has been foretold in prophecy that he will punch a hole through GOD and thereby end the world, so he spends all of his free time at the gym practicing his form. He believes that prophecy can neither be modified nor deterred, so he might as well do this thing properly.

8.) Almyrith the Apocryphal: Due to a research specialty in para-causal reality models, she may retroactively have never existed in the first place, except as a lingering footnote in certain volumes of research that have been stored outside of Time/Space to preserve against vermin eating the binding glue.

9.) Dread Gorfung the Unwelcome At Social Gatherings: He knows what he did.

10.) Horff Malorff the Seething With Pestilence: While an apprentice, his master gave him Every Known Infectious Disease as an experiment/punishment/joke, but somehow the combination of every alchemical remedy he could get his hands on within 24 hours resulted in a proper Immortality Serum... without actually cleansing him of any of the diseases. By law he is escorted in public at all times by eight constructs made entirely of brass bells whose jangling approach signals that it's time to get the fuck out of the way and not come back until a team of decontamination mages can sweep the area with fire spells.

[desertleviathan]

Ok. So I'm looking for a little help designing a couple magic systems for a TTRPG project.

Let's say there was a setting where there were two broad categories of magic: a flexible freeform "high" system that's fairly exclusive, and a more structured "common" system that's broadly available. The common system has a number of variants, but they always involve combining two of this setting's eight elements into sets of four, and then having a fifth set of spells for non-elemental meta-magic effects.

For example:

TOWER MAGIC - Academic, laboratory-grade magic. The magic used by the research assistants to the High Mages, or by technicians performing maintenance on magitek infrastructure. Pretty specialized and abstract. Potent, precise, and predictable, but not exactly flexible. The only one of these styles that was deliberately created by the High Mages, rather than observed in the wild and then cultivated into a more orderly structure. - Wands (Fire/Darkness) - Swords (Air/Metal) - Cups (Water/Light - Coins (Earth/Wood) - Arcana (Aether)

GUTTER MAGIC - Not originally formally recognized, and still faces a severe stigma, but once the High Mages were forced to admit the structural similarities to Tower Magic they realized there were more extant styles to study. The magic of thieves, con artists, and others who operate outside society's rules. Informal, fast, and subtle, but weak due to lack of magical resources. - Hearts (Water/Metal) - Clubs (Air/Light) - Diamonds (Earth/Darkness) - Spades (Fire/Wood) - Jokers (Aether)

BRAMBLE MAGIC - The simple straightforward art of listening to the natural world and cultivating a connection to it. Common among the indigenous people of the Buer Valley who have largely been displaced by the twin Wizard cities of Baetylus and Illiaster, originally dismissed but now aggressively sought after because Bramble Magic is capable of feats of Healing that elude other styles. - Spring (Air/Wood) - Summer (Light/Fire) - Autumn (Earth/Metal) - Winter (Water/Darkness) - The Moon (Aether)

BLIGHT MAGIC - The caustic, vicious art drawn (often inadvertently) from the corruption that spreads into the world as a byproduct of all other magic use, when appropriate care isn't taken to clean up residual spells. Blight Mages are often either infused with power by failed experiments or else by dwelling in unclean places, and frequently fall victim to strange mutations. But their arts are useful enough in battle that they can find a place as soldiers and enforcers. - War (Fire/Metal) - Pestilence (Air/Darkness) - Famine (Earth/Light) - Death (Water/Wood) - The Beast (Aether)

GATE MAGIC - The simple arts of travelers and explorers that eventually blossoms into a sophisticated style of inter-dimensional travel. Gate magic is uncomfortably weird, and veteran Gate Mages tend to be nigh-incomprehensible to their peers. - West (Water/Air) - South (Wood/Light) - East (Fire/Earth) - North (Metal/Darkness) - Center (Aether)

Now here's where I'm running into difficulty. The two remaining styles are HEARTH MAGIC and ARENA MAGIC. Hearth Magic governs the simple spells the common folk use to make their lives easier, stoking their ovens to a consistent temperature or conjuring winds to sweep their floors. And Arena Magic is a 'sporting' combat style, useful in battle but structured for games.

What I need is two sets of four things that fit those themes, and then a fifth related meta-magic thing. Arena Magic's pairings will be Fire/Water, Earth/Air, Light/Darkness, and Wood/Metal, because it draws power from the clash of opposites. And Hearth Magic's elements will be Wood/Darkness, Light/Metal, Water/Earth, and Fire/Air, because... that was what was left.

[desertleviathan]

Trapped at work, doodling bugs while I wait for the part of this meeting where I’ll have to actually do something other than sit in the back and fight to stay conscious

[desertleviathan]

I'm working on a TTRPG pitch for my group for when our current campaign wraps up. Tell me, which of the following pitches intrigues you more? These are all in the same setting where there is a caustic miasma of corrupted magic that fills much of the wilderness and weakens the barriers that should keep Murderous Void Monsters From Beyond Space/Time from barging into the world. Civilization such as it is mostly endures as a handful of dense, isolated population centers sheltered behind whatever fortifications they can muster.

1.) The Tortoise Citadel: One of the largest cities in the world is built on the back of a stone tortoise statue the size of a small mountain, a relic of a bygone age whose original purpose is lost, but whose construction makes it a very convenient defensible position. This city was once the capital of an empire and remained an important power even after that empire reorganized into a republic. This city was until recently the HQ of an elite international society of Void-Monster Slaying Knights, among the only warriors in the world have a particularly laudable record of prevailing against the creatures. The Knights have recently abandoned the city though, after an ill-advised attempt by the government to legislate them into a formal wing of the Republic army, rather than continuing to honor the political independence that let the Knights operate abroad even in nations that were hostile to the Republic. The government is now flailing around for solutions to the void monster problem that won't involve humbling themselves enough to beg the Knights to return, and there are abundant opportunities for freelance adventurer types to get rich taking bounties. But it's probably best if you put together a solid team, since even the weakest Void Monsters are ludicrously deadly.

2.) The Crawling Metropolis: Gremlins are the most common type of Goblin on the continent, with a strong cultural emphasis on engineering and unorthodox problem solving. One of their three great cities occupies a zone of warding magic that seems to drive the Void Monsters away. The problem is, this zone isn't fixed - it crawls at a rate of a kilometer or two a week up and down a coastal region, but rarely drifts further inland towards the mountains because it seems to favor sea level. The Gremlins have retrofitted their city to be modular, capable of disassembly at the trailing edge and reassembly at the leading edge in little chunks that can be carried by labor golems and excavating machinery. This allows the city to slowly crawl along keeping pace with the safe zone, with work crews constantly scooting pieces of the city from the back around the outer edge and plopping them down in front. But the region is full of weird old ruins, monster nests, hostile dissident gremlins, inconvenient geography, and other hazards. Scouting parties are regularly sent out to figure out what threats there are within the city's most likely path and either neutralize them or report back to the gremlin engineers so they can prepare for the worst. Additionally, before the gremlins picked up the city and started moving it, a number of Fallen Angels slain in the First War had their remains interred here, and those mausoleums are now scattered in god only knows what configuration among the modular city sections. While most monsters rarely intrude into the warded zone, much less the actual city boundaries, sometimes deeply weird ghost-like beings emerge from those mausoleums and need to be dealt with. More importantly, it's entirely likely that if the angelic mausoleums ever slip out of the zone of warding magic there will be real serious consequences.

3.) The Skyship Graveyard: Skyship technology is widespread and has been for centuries, although it's currently in decline because this is an era of sharply limited resources. Often a skyship will become damaged enough that it can no longer travel, but the enchanted machinery that allows it to hover in place is still operational. Such lift systems are usually the sturdiest devices on the ship by far. In one place, enterprising individuals have lashed hundreds of these derelict vessels into a complex three-dimensional city connected to the land below only by huge anchor chains. This is very safe from Void Monsters... but all those lift engines need a lot of maintenance to keep from leaking magical toxins. Gradually the community's ability to keep up with these repairs has fallen behind, and mutations and illness run rampant. Players are a scavenger crew sent out to obtain necessary repair materials by whatever means are necessary.

4.) The Hanging Market: This planet's twin World Trees, growing in a helical curve around each other, are vast enough to support several communities scattered throughout their canopies, clinging to their trunks, or nestled among their roots. One of these is a major port of international trade, a market built of thousands of structures anchored to the trunk of one of the trees, navigable by a labyrinth of bridges, ladders, catwalks, and cargo elevators. Among the goods and services for sale in the hanging markets of Barktap (so called due to the breweries that distill liquor from the sap of the tree, which existed before the rest of the market grew around them) are adventurers for hire. It is an excellent home base for mercenaries who either want to travel the world (the nearby skyship port of Highbridge stretches between the trunks of the two trees), but there's honestly more than enough work in the communities on and around the trees to keep someone busy for a lifetime as well.

5.) The Inverted City: On the west continent there is a vast turbulent thunderstorm that was born of a magical calamity, which has been churning overhead for centuries without depositing a single drop of rain. No one lives towards its middle, but on the edges life is barely possible. One city, occupying fairly well-preserved ruins from a precursor civilization, features a wealth of immense towers that modern folks would recognize as akin to skyscrapers. One would expect the very very wealthy to claim the upper floors of such structures, but in this place, with the sky gone mad overhead, the relationship between height and desirability in real estate is inverted. The richest folk live in catacombs beneath the city and can go for weeks at a time without emerging to the surface, while the most desolate slums are up on the rooftops in the cacophony of the storm. In this environment of tremendous disparity between wealth and poverty, a number of criminal factions have emerged, some more altruistic than others. Players would be an up-and-coming gang trying to stake out their own territory and build enough of a positive reputation that others will flock to them for protection, thereby increasing their prestige and resources.

[desertleviathan]

SPORTS IN THE BUER VALLEY

In an extremely silly bit of self-indulgent writing, I've decided that my Wizard City TTRPG setting has a pro Arena Soccer (Footbal/Futbol) league. I kept trying to invent local sports from scratch, but they all felt too... Quidditch-ish, which is to say quirky in a way that I couldn't imagine developing organically, and not actually fun to play. So then I said to myself that even though I, as a White American, have never really been super enthusiastic about Soccer, the whole damn rest of the world seems to dig it so why shouldn't I trust that they're on to something?

Arena Soccer seemed like a variant that fit a TTRPG better because the smaller team sizes were closer to the number of players I can handle at once as a DM, in case I ever decide to run a game where the PCs are on a team in the league.

Anyway, there are 16 teams in the Pro League, although one of those is a placeholder that swaps out every year. More explanation after the cut:

TEAMS FROM ILLIASTER, THE HIGH CITY: Illiaster is the floating city that hovers over the Buer Valley, where all the Wizards live separated from the petty problems of the surface folk. It has a dense central district, a ring of smaller floating islands forming an outer residential ring, and is orbited by the Malstronic Academy of Arcana on its own little flying landmass.

THE HIGHTOWER DISTRICT GRIFFINS: The Griffins are known for sophisticated strategies and lightning-quick reaction times, but lack the singular focus of other teams since the sponsoring House Caradoc values intellectual pursuits over physical ones and does not sponsor the team at a funding level that allows this to be the players' full-time jobs.

THE MALSTRONIC ACADEMY SPHINXES: The Academy's team isn't just made of students - faculty, staff, alumni, and their immediate family members can also try out. Still, their roster skews young, and an inexhaustible supply of youthful vigor is their most notable asset.

TEAMS FROM BAETYLUS, THE LOW CITY: Baetylus sprawls on the surface of the Buer Valley, and is home to the countless laborers, craftsmen, servants, and professional test subjects who support the Wizards of Illiaster above them. Its seven districts are walled fortresses spread across the central wastelands of the Buer Valley, connected by heavily guarded bridges and train lines. Each of the Baetylus teams is sponsored by one of the other seven High Houses, just like the ruling House Caradoc sponsors the Hightower Griffins.

THE THORNBUSH DISTRICT MANTICORES: Rumors abound that the sponsoring House Madieras engages in magical and alchemical augmentation of players, staying one step ahead of detection methods by constantly innovating new techniques.

THE DAYBREAK DISTRICT UNICORNS: Sponsored by House Hasimir, the wealthiest of the High Houses and most inclined towards flashy displays. The Unicorns have the most luxurious training facilities in the Buer Valley.

THE LAMPWICK DISTRICT PHOENIXES: Sponsored by House Feng, who are more of less synonymous with the Military wing of the Baetylus-Illiaster Research Directorate. The Phoenixes train like they're going to war, and if they have a flaw as a team it's a bit too much aggression. The Penalty Box is unofficially called the Phoenix Nest by many fans.

THE GRINDSTONE DISTRICT BEHEMOTHS: The Behemoths play like a brick wall, offering nigh-unassailable defense, but can be a bit too conservative about pushing their advantages. In this, the influence of their sponsors in House Okafor is plain.

THE RUSTPIT DISTRICT BASILISKS: The Basilisks are the only team that reliably plays better when visiting other arenas rather than during home games, perhaps due to the industrial pollution and generally depressing grimness of their home district. House Nagasone sponsors them with funding, but is negligibly involved in guiding their training.

THE NIGHTFALL DISTRICT BARGHESTS: On multiple occasions the Barghests have been disqualified due to behind-the-scenes espionage, not all of it directly related to the league, since so many of their players are affiliated with House Volkov who head up the secret police.

THE MELTWATER DISTRICT KRAKENS: Their sponsors in House Varuna are inscrutably weird, and seem to run the Krakens as something more like an occult experiment than a sports team. This has had inconclusive results in terms of actual gameplay outcomes.

TEAMS FROM OUTER TERRITORIES: While Baetylus and Illiaster are the jewels in the crown of the Buer Valley government, there are several other settlements in the region. The gate town of Igor's Maul which controls access to and from the valley is large enough for its own team, and the small hardy settlements in the wasteland region called Buer's Pelt have also banded together to form a team of their own.

THE BUER'S PELT CHIMERAS: The main thing about the Chimeras is that they're tough as balls, made up of scrappy kids from wasteland farming settlements and the border towns near Fae Court territory. The High Houses collectively fund the Chimeras because the public loves an underdog story, but have no direct influence over the Chimeras leadership.

THE IGOR'S MAUL ARMIGERS: The perennial sad-sacks of the league, the Armigers seem to work their asses off just to get knocked out of the running early in the season. Part of the problem is that Igor's Maul is such a transitory space, where few players stop for long before moving into more lucrative contracts in Baetylus or Illiaster. And part of the problem is that, lacking a specific wealthy sponsor, they mostly have to raise the funds for their gear and training facilities themselves.

TEAMS FROM THE FOUR FAE COURTS: The Treaty of Sundered Years saw sovereignty of the central portion of the Buer Valley granted to the Wizards of Baetylus and Illiaster, and the four Fae Monarchs who used to take turns ruling seasonally were instead granted dominion over smaller territories where the seasons were magically kept locked in year round. An addendum to the treaty allowed the four courts to send their own teams, although their actual arenas are located in the respective border towns, and not within the four courts proper.

THE BONFIRE COURT CATAPHRACTS: The Summer King's team fields the most overtly skillful competitors in the league, hands down. Their flaw is that they all think of themselves as The Hero, and lack any real team cohesion. That, and they see the rules regarding personal fouls and injury as just another contest, this one to see what they can sneak past the referees.

THE HOARFROST COURT HARBINGERS: The Winter King is openly at war with the Wizard oligarchy, but somehow the section of the treaty that lets the Winter Court send a team to the league still seems to be magically enforced. The Harbingers keep emerging on playing fields like wraiths from clouds of icy fog, despite extraordinary measures that have been taken to keep them out. Since the Wizards are still in the dark about just what they did to earn the Winter King's ire in the first place, they're unwilling to press the issue further, and have made peace with the fact that on scheduled game days the Harbingers will just arrive, play, and leave... all in terrifying silence. Showing any public signs of being a Harbingers Fan is a good way to get dragged in for questioning by the wizard cops, though.

THE TOADSTOOL COURT STRZYGAS: The Autumn Queen's team makes no secret of the fact that they use psychedelic drugs and magic on both themselves and their opponents, playing a game that takes place just as much in their minds as on the field. Unofficial league policy is to pretend that it's not happening. The Autumn Queen is basically a living avatar of Nightmares, and folks just let her do what she wants.

THE WILDFLOWER COURT CAROUSERS: The Spring Queen's team is notorious for throwing the best after game parties, win or lose, and positions on the team seem to rely on who looks hottest in the uniform just as much as who's actually good at playing. Despite their mediocre performance the Carousers have an almost cult-like fan club, largely on the strength of individual player charisma.

THE WILD CARD - THE BUER VALLEY PUBLIC LEAGUE: While the teams in the Pro League are more or less stable, the sixteenth slot in the tournament is reserved for the winner of the previous year's Public League tournament, which is usually going on concurrently with the Pro League season. Anybody who can scrape together six players, a coach, and a 200 GP entry fee can join the Public League. But winning isn't easy at all. Whatever team makes it to the Pro League the following year will find that their players are aggressively courted by the existing Pro League teams, and the opportunity to put one's self in such a high-demand position like that means competition in the Public League is often literally cutthroat.

The winning Pro League team gets to attend a victory banquet where many government figures from the Baetylus-Illiaster Research Directorate (BIRD) will be in attendance, including the Executive Director himself! So in my mind the ideal use of this material in a campaign is for the Resistance forces who oppose the fascist wizard oligarchy to field a Public League team, get them all the way to the Pro League in season one, then get them to the Banquet in season two for an assassination attempt or something.

[desertleviathan]

The Baetylus-Illiaster Research Directorate (BIRD)

My internet's being spotty, so rather than try to play games online I'll do something productive, like write a gigantic TTRPG worldbuilding post that no one will read!

When Wizards settled the Buer Valley and established therein the twin cities of Baetylus and Illiaster, they did so with one purpose in mind - to create a safe haven for advanced magical research where each magus could chase their respective arcane muses without being pestered by common folk saying things like "Stop transmuting people into farm animals you monster!" or "You seem to have opened a hole in the sky through which the Devil is emerging, could you perhaps stop?"

Obviously, they couldn't go completely buckwild with magic, otherwise the whole place would self-destruct before anyone figured out anything really interesting. But just as clearly, non-Wizards lacked the insight or education to pass judgment over what was or was not a valid avenue of inquiry. Thus was created the Baetylus-Illiaster Research Directorate (BIRD) to keep an eye on everyone's projects and step in with the expert guidance that only a Fellow Wizard could provide when the sounds and smells coming out of a particular lab started making their peers nervous.

Over time, the civil governments of Baetylus and Illiaster ceded more and more authority to BIRD to streamline the process of funding and regulating magical research, until the Lord Mayor of Illiaster and the District Councilors of Baetylus were strictly ceremonial positions, and all functions of Government were provided by BIRD. At the pinnacle of BIRD was the NEST, the Novel Emergent Spellcraft Tribunal, who reasoned that if they were wise enough to decide what new spells would and would not be disseminated to the public, then they were wise enough to decide everything else about life in the Buer Valley. In every way but name, the NEST Executive Director is king.

Below NEST, BIRD is made up of a number of Wings with specific assignments and authorities:

ThunderBIRD: The wing that's still actually concerned with keeping an eye on all the Wizards, but it's overwhelmingly about enabling them now, not reigning them in, making sure that every lab is well-stocked with reagents and test subjects and every new discovery is thoroughly documented, then locked away forever if it's at all inconvenient to BIRD for it to spread. ThunderBIRD also oversees the Malstronic Academy of Arcana (the premier wizard-certifying body in Illiaster).

SeaBIRD: Security is tight in the Buer Valley; no one enters or leaves without BIRD permission, to ensure that proprietary magical secrets are kept under control. Thus all non-local commerce (and less scrupulous acquisition of rare goods via Theft and/or Adventuring) is trusted to an elite group of merchant-mages, who often disguise themselves as being from foreign realms so that those who do business with them don't even know they've met agents of the legendary hidden Wizard Cities.

FireBIRD: The War Mages who hold the Buer Valley's gates against outsiders, and who keep the peace within the valley. The Cops. In theory they're supposed to protect the common citizens. In practice, they protect BIRD's interests alone and don't particularly care if rampaging lab experiments eat a bunch of folks literally every single day, so long as none of the dead were particularly influential. If somebody's interfering to even the slightest degree with BIRD business though, you better believe FireBIRD will be there in an instant raining hellfire and truncheon blows on all participants (and also all suspicious-looking bystanders).

BlackBIRD: The Secret Police counterpart to FireBIRD's very public show of force, BlackBIRD oversees all covert surveillance, intel analysis, and all the Research Directorate activities that are shady enough that even a Wizard Dictatorship doesn't want to admit to them publicly. The only time most folks ever knowingly encounter BlackBIRD is when they're in uniform investigating a crime scene, but to be fair, there are a lot of crime scenes so it's not all that uncommon.

SongBIRD: The division in charge of information control, including all levels of education below the the Malstronic Academy of Arcana, which is ThunderBIRD's domain as the final step in certification. In particular Baetylus and Illiaster have almost as many public and private libraries as they do citizens, and SongBIRD does its best to keep track of what secrets are contained in all of them, who's accessing them, and what they're doing with that information. This is also the division that crafts all official propaganda, and most of the pacifying slop that's presented as entertainment media.

HummingBIRD: The overworked wing in charge of building, maintaining, repairing, operating, and cleaning all this magical infrastructure. The invisible laborers who keep the whole damn place running, grinding themselves to dust to keep up with the obscene workload. No matter how stressful HummingBIRD's workload they never lack for applicants, because service is one of the only paths for a random person with no magical talent to obtain full Citizenship.

SnowBIRD: The wing in charge of environmental upkeep, or in other words preventing all the ambient magical residue from congealing into wild magic and causing catastrophes. SnowBIRD ,ostly exists to pacify the indigenous Fae population of the Valley, but is underfunded to the point of being an absolute joke. Most residents forget that SnowBIRD even exists, except when they're cursing at the often turbulent weather that seems to grow worse with every year.

In addition to the seven official Wings, there are a few other groups worth discussing:

MockingBIRD: Officially, MockingBIRD does not exist. Unofficially, MockingBIRD does not exist. But... maybe it does? If there is in fact a MockingBIRD, no one's sure who runs it or what it does. Is it the True Shadow Government? A group of secret agents even more covert than BlackBIRD? Some kind of foreign (or even extra-dimensional) infiltration subverting NEST sovereignty? No matter how vigorously the Research Directorate denies them, rumors of the existence of such a wing simply won't die. Those rumors just can't seem to agree what they're describing though, aside from the very spooky sounding name.

EarlyBIRD: The top secret wing in charge of Temporal Security is... fictional. EarlyBIRD is the most successful invention of SongBIRD's propaganda mills, presented as weekly serial stories distributed throughout the twin cities, tales of daring and stylish agents who work tirelessly to keep the valley safe from temporal incursion. In fact the Research Directorate has yet to crack Temporal Magic in any useful way, and the main value of the EarlyBIRD stories is in presenting villains who are unflattering caricatures of known dissidents and troublemakers so that the average citizen will be unsympathetic to them by default before even hearing what they have to say.

BigBIRD: Not a wing, but a popular unofficial term for BIRD as a whole, particularly in its role as an oppressive totalitarian state. BigBIRD is watching.

FreeBIRD: This started as a movement of polite dissent among academics who disagreed with BIRD policy, who named themselves using this pattern to emphasize that they were citizens in good standing, not foreign agitators or some kind of dark conspiracy. The original FreeBIRD movement was brutally stamped out, and its few radicalized survivors have taken the operation underground. Now the FreeBIRD alliance consists of dozens of loosely-connected revolutionary groups, a few of which are the default assumption for Player Character Origins in this setting, such as the Agathion Zodiac, the Winter Wolves, the Tin Crown Society, the Amaranthine Maw Pirates, the Stonecutters Guild, the Stormcrows, the Butcher Street Bully Boys, the Brood of Granny Irontooth, the Order of the Stacked Deck, the Stone Tortoise Paladins, the Cult of the Star Swallowing Worm, and others.

I'll drop more about the FreeBIRD alliance, and some of the major factions that currently compose it, in another post.

[desertleviathan]

Working on fleshing out one of my TTRPG campaign settings and connecting the dots between which ancient civilizations influenced which modern ones, realizing that because a culture of now-extinct Canine Folk are revered as having had a nigh-mythical "Golden Age" of philosophical and political innovation, that means that a lot of my cities should have statues of Buff Sexy Werewolves all over them in the same way that American civic buildings often have Greco-Roman inspired architecture.