#Game1 News

How social media ruins rpg games ....

2012-01-28T13:00:00.001-08:00

A lot of novels are no longer set in the present. This tends to be true of games as well, and for the same reason: social media. The internet. Facebook. Twitter. All games have problems in that that need solving, all quests have some mystery/discovery lurking in them waiting to be solved. Or you can just google it. Need help? The police are just one cell phone cal away. So are family, friends, co-workers. And why bother meeting in person if you can use google+, set a limited group as 'other pcs' and use that?

Granted, a GM can obfuscate things: the internet is an awesome source of flat-out lies and mistruths. For example, have a pc use wikipedia as gospel and just smile at them in the certain knowledge that the Big Bad had been editing certain pages for years under various sock puppets because it's the best way for a vampire to get prey these days. And cell phone coverage can be spotty, to a degree, but the chief problem is that such plot devices make PCs lazy.

(This is much the same issue as skills in D&D: why look for anything when you can just roll Detect Traps and so forth. Laziness is roll-playing, role-playing is less so. (But using lots of dice is fun, and fun isn't lazy - Sparkie))

There are ways to use this and make it fun, no doubt, but the overall issue is that a lot of tropes uses in games and novels came into existence long before the internet, which tends to hinder and limit them. Sort of making PCs all Amish [which would rock....] or just not having FB and such come up as options I'm not sure what can be done with this problem, insofar as it is one. It can be useful: I would quite like to see a game where the players make social media avatars for their PCs and do in-game stuff with that between sessions but a lot of genres don't work as well when PCs have access to too much information or can exploit the ruthless common sense that comes with it.

At which point the GM pay well drop an EMP on the world :)

CSI: Trail

2012-01-26T19:43:00.000-08:00

CSI: TRAIL

(aka: alcar is actually giving this some thought. Be scared.)

System: BESM3, 250 points, minimum 50in skills. (Vanilla humans cannot get Dynamic Powers, no one can getResurrection.)

The PCs are people living in the landof the Lords of Life and Death. Vampires and werewolves roam theworld, terrible in their power, while magicians slink about the edgesof the world practising their forbidden magics and the remains of theonce-mighty fae hide in shadows and dream of better days.

You are all a forensics team sent toTrail to investigate the death of the last dragon. Because even in aworld where myths and monsters walk they still manage to die andsomeone has to file paperwork, figure out what happened and survivethe attempt to arrest the perpetrators. Most humans are scared of themonsters, thanks in part to the vampire publicity machine crankingthings up to 11 but you've dissected enough corpses to know thatanything that was born can die, no matter what it might become, andthat can be dangerous knowledge in such a place and at such a time.Trail, as always, is a powder keg and the PCs have all the potentialin the world to be matches just by asking the right questions andturning over stones to find out what lies beneath.

Note: Vampires and werewolves are thetop dogs of the setting. While this may not be true in terms ofactual power they are the humans of the supernatural world: they winwith numbers compared to other critters out there and, like humans,have a wider variety of abilities and powers than the other kinds ofmonsters who infest the world.

GM Note: Vampire and were PCs are notallowed. You have Law on your side, a lot of skill, access to magicand technology. Some of the PCs may know magic, others not beentirely human at all or some other variety of monster in the employof a Crime Scene Unit. Players are encouraged to make characterswho'd fit into such a setting and provide useful skills for the groupas a whole.

Other PC Concepts: if a player doesn'twant to make a CSI-affiliated PC, there's always making a local guideto the weird for the government agents and the like if need be. NewPCs can be agents sent into the game, or even from other governmentdepartments.

Genre: LOLAD was first and foremostabout fun and adventure, and monsters being able to alter the worldand become powers in it, upstarts who shook the balance of the oldand established powers. They have done this, quite well in fact, andnow it it time for humanity to try and reclaim some lost power andprestige of its own ...

While the game will begin with amystery (Who Killed Cecil?) this can be seen as akin to the AmandaPalmer killing in Twin Peaks: it's an initial plot-thread but not theimpetus of the game and will likely slip into the background of plotsas PCs become involved in various going-ons in Trail and the attemptsby humanity to take back the night, or at least find a new status quofor the world.

SETTING:

A century ago the world only knew ofmonsters from stories, thanks to the stringent efforts of thevampires. When you can live centuries and enjoy compound interest andblackmail you can accomplish many things, and among those was hidingthe truth of the world from humanity. Some thing the vampires didthat because humans would destroy them, others that it was an amusinggame. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle of that.

A decade ago things began to fallapart: the internet, camera-phones and twitter came into existenceand the vampires were old, and terrible, and not able to see theshape the future was taking in time to truly stop it. Oh, they tried– the RIAA is theirs, and SOPA and all things of that ilk – butthe truth about the world is now an open secret in many places, thefirst among those was the small town of Trail in BC, Canada, where anexceptionally strong group of were outed themselves to the media indefiance of local vampires. How much of this was an accident is,also, open to debate, but the town is one of the few places now wherethe existence of monsters out of myth is not so much 'open secret' asmuch as 'accepted fact' and the town deals with this as best theycan.

Property values have plummeted and yetpeople move to the town, some hoping to become monsters, or slaythem, or attracted by high pay or danger, or simply being too damnstubborn to leave. There are now enough monsters in the town to fitinto a major city and the clashes of new powers vs. old and the NewWorld vs the Old World happen often enough that the detritus leftbehind must be cleaned up, catalogued and explained.

It's a plum job, if you make it outalive: having Trail on the resume looks good almost anywhere, afterall ... if you can survive it here, you can make it anywhere.

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

Weres and vampires have no desire to becatalogued and understood – who does? – but some general factsare relatively well known among those who know about them. (As withthe moon landing, there are a lot of humans who still refuse tobelieve weres or vampires exist at all.)

Weres: In general, were are strongerwhen they're younger and their powers fade with age; as such, werePacks often have competent leaders being beaten by younger were anddon't become anywhere near as powerful or competent as they could.All were heal phenomenally quickly and many can be harmed by silverin one form or another. Most tend to be physical and dangerousbeings, not the least because they have senses humans don't and tendto be driven by a sense of morality that often isn't human a all.

Vampires: Vampires do lack the rawpower of were and sunlight (and fire) are seldom their friends. Whilea vampire can be active in sunlight their actual powers – which aremany and varied – tend to be much reduced. However, vampires canlive for decades and even centuries and only grow in skill andcunning over time. It is said of the old master vampires that, whilethey may not win, they never, ever lose. The downside of such amindset is that vampires tend to plan for the future and not theshort term, finding the acquisition of wealth and mutual funds – tosay nothing of influence – far more important than actual vampiricpowers.

Magicians: Magicians exist, human andotherwise, individuals capable of making their desires real, ofmanipulating energy and changing the shape of the world. While magicis power it also takes a lot of energy, often time, and isfrustratingly limited against vampires and weres, though not otherkinds of monsters. Most magicians keep to themselves and try to maketheir magics as mysterious and unknown as they can.

Humans: The problem of living centurieslies in falling behind; the problem of having the raw power of a wereis forgetting other forms of power. Or, put another way, gun beatsspear. And magic. And often monsters. Human monster hunters do existand are generally terrifyingly good at what they do, at least upuntil they get eaten – or worse.

TRAIL:

The lords of life and death are thetrue powers of the town but divided into several factions which can,in theory, be played off against each other. Certainly the mayortries his damndest to do so.

Cameron: an old-school vampire whoowns/runs a mansion just outside the town, he's been known to take inany strays and has a wide range of alliances and allies throughoutthe town and beyond. He prefers to consider a sheathed sword moredangerous to one waved about and counts Frankensteinian monsters andfae-damaged humans among his stranger allies.

Sophie: The leader of the Vampire Nestin the city of Trail. Sophie and Cameron had a falling out years agoand Sophie decided to become a Power in the city, whereas Cameronpreferred to work from behind the scenes. Sophie is young, asvampires reckon things, but makes up for power with sheer brutalityand a willingness to do terrible and awful things at the drop of ahat.

Simon: The leader of the foremost Packof were in Trail, he reputedly tries to avoid open war with Sophieand is a friend to Cameron. It's said he was in Trail since thebeginning of things and knew Faline before they were even were butthere's a lot of stories about him and most of them are riddled withlies.

Old Rabbit: A native american were whostill has some power over the weres in the local Tribe. His 'pack' israther small but fiercely loyal to the old man. He once ruled all ofTrail and the well of bitterness runs deep within him that so muchhas been lost and will never come again.

Out Lady of the Claws: Faline is saidto be a goddess , something perhaps far more or less than human. Mostbelieve she was a were, though some think she was a fae in disguise.Sightings of her are as rare as those of a bigfoot and whether she isreally any kind of god or not is a subject of much debate. That shewas real is accepted – though, as with Jesus, there are doubters –but whether she is dead or something else entirely is a matter ofsome debate.

Lyn: the local magician-in-charge ofthe coven of magicians who operate in the town. (Well, she would bein charge if they bothered to vote and since they haven't she is.)Little is known about her save that she tries to keep her people outof harm's way from the mightier forces abroad in the city and, likeeveryone else, is said to have known Faline.

Edward D'Eath: A special policeconstable who often deals with monsters and weirdness in the town. Heisn't liked by any faction and collects secrets like other mencollect STDs.

Thoughts on D&D

2012-01-11T19:03:00.003-08:00

So, the next edition is coming out in ~2 years (2013 at some point). I was not a fan of 4e -- admittedly, I didn't play it often and only read through the rules twice but it pretty much struck me as D&D trying to be an MMO and failing, to say nothing of being more complicated than it needed to be. I find as I get older I get tired of games involving flipping through acres of pages and legacy systems that make little sense. So .... some thoughts toward 5e of D&D.

1) The stats will remain as they always were. This is, pretty much, a given. Ditto for HP and AC, however unwieldy they've perhaps become. A thought: give fewer options. So, random dice roll, stat at a time, and you're stuck with them. This will prevent a lot of the min/maxing that begins right at the gate. I would allow for an optional rerolling of all if more than 2 stats are 9 or lower, but that would be it.

2) Scrap the obsession with balance. Classes are not balanced: you play X because it is the best at X, and won't be as good at Y and unable to do Z. Trying to make every class even seems to do a disservice to all of them.

3) If every race can be a PC, then have them all as options from the get-go. People aren't spending money on RPGs like they did back in the day: said model isn't working, so don't piss people off by trying to force it on them.

4) Reduce the amount of books.
PHB (The basic classes, with instructions for how to make everything else into a PC class. Ta-da. Combat stuff. Magic. Also psionics. They'll show up, put them in as part of the main thing from the start.)
DM/M&M: One book. Cull stuff, streamline and focus things.
Optional book: The M&M species done up as PHB ones. The rules should allow the GM to do that on his/her own but this could be handy and include the 'full' M&M list of monsters to make certain people happy.

Also, if one will be making Settings -- which one will -- have some idea as to what and the relevant feats in the main book rather than setting-specific ones. Just a thought.

5) Character generation can be complicated (See: spells, keeping track of). Make an online PC creator, make it free, give .html and .rtf formats for finished PCs.

6) Toss skills out the window, as they're just excuses/reasons not to role-place. Assume everyone can do X at a certain level, add in feats if they want to be better. So anyone can Climb, if you have a feat you can climb really well (and without the equipment). D&D is focused on dungeon crawls and killing monsters -- this has never changed, from a system POV. If skills vanish, it requires actual player skills to work things out, not just 'I check for traps.' *roll dice*. Rolling dice should be for social and physical combat, not broken things like diplomacy checks devoid of role-playing.

7) Cull things. If need be, add all those in as pdf/pod things later on for those who insist on having weapon X and Y and armour Z.

8) Recognize that the Epic 20+ level D&D stuff has never worked; don't bother trying to get it to.

Esper.net issues

2012-01-09T07:40:00.001-08:00

Esper.net seems to having issues (perhaps owing to just five active servers at the moment). As it would be nice to avoid the dal.net meltdown of yesteryear, this is a general announcement:

If you can't get on esper, or it dies entirely, the dal.net #game1 IS still active (and Sparkie is generally in it). Sessions can be run in it, or game1 move back to it if need be.

Coupe De Foudre Game

2012-01-04T18:25:00.000-08:00

Season One: The Clock Strikes Ones (2011 - 2012)

This is the first season of Coup De Foudre (a thunderbolt/love at first sight). The episodes are directed by Alcar, produced by Sparkie and feature the prominent voice talents of Chaos`^ . The episodes are based on a maga series created by Game1 Studios and the first seasion covers the protagonist, Quinn, becoming aware of other Elemententalists and acting in the wider world.

The episodes use the same opening theme, "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper

The ending theme of the first season is "Clocks" by Coldplay

(It is widely believed that the show's entire budget was spent acquiring these songs.)

Episode 1 - A Life Gone Widdershins (Sessions 1-4)

Quinn teams up with a complete stranger to beat up a kid and destroy a library, followed by learning the secret dimensions of the world via throwing the street at someone and prepares to break her GF out of a government prison.

(This is pretty much the first sessions done up as the infamous Wizard of Oz tv listing:

'Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete stangers to kill again.']

Episode 2 - Time is on my siiii -- shit! (Session 5)

And then she died. Only not.

Axis Mundi: less than unknown

2011-12-12T21:36:00.002-08:00

Aka session times and such. Ken is on board, with PC done, and Caltak has had one session*.
For the remainder of this week sessions (defined as starting after 6 pm PST) can be: Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Possibly Sunday night as well. Ideally one of those nights will be Ken's intro session on his own.
Next week: Tuesday, Wednesday, possibly Friday. After xmas I have the 27th and 28th entirely free, nights free after that.

Schedules in the new year can be determined by everyone and work from there. Ideally we should try for at least one session a week with the PCs together and such and figure stuff out from there. The PCs differing talents, skills and allies should ideally lead to them needing each other's help but we shall see how it all plays out :)

Axis Mundi clarification

2011-12-07T07:38:00.001-08:00

A few clarifications on the setting:

The idea of the City (and by extension the world in general) is that the pretense of schools for Adepts is tossed right out the window: each adept masters different tricks, makes their own and few of them even consider their stuff the 'same' as that of someone else. Oh, the power might come from the same general impulse but the execution of it, the meaning of it, is what matters. Further to that, a lot of Avatar-touched people exist, ones who have Channelled something bigger than themselves at least once and fled it, never understood it, embraced it or so forth.

The New Inquisition and the like don't exist, as there is no one really In The Know. It's not much an Occult Underground as an Occult Ghetto with a lot of people with competing ideas and theories squirrelled away in their own lives. It takes the idea that no one knows what is really going on and ramps that up a notch: the people who understand how the markets really work aren't going to share those secrets with others, the person who has discovered that they can get more than just a good feeling when they cut themselves will hide it due to guilt and shame. And so on.

That government agencies have probably pieced some things together is inevitable -- though what, if anything, they do about it would be a question of time and budget. Various religions have some idea what is going on in the world, at least as it applies to their limited paradigm and there is one npc group who have some small clue about avatars but know little about adepts as those worlds seldom interact directly.

Given the nature of PCs to learn and ferret out information, this can make the PCs pretty Important, if they so choose, or the knowledge can send them running away from the game entirely to become bee keepers in Peoria.

Proposed small UA Campaign

2011-12-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

UA Campaign: axismundi inveniendum

Premise: The world is weirder than wewant to know.

The world is pretty strange. A casuallook at the news can prove that, when you have political partiesholding the global economy hostage, American Idol getting more votesthan the last major election, random killing sprees, the inexplicablepopularity of certain celebrities and so forth. The worst part aboutthis is that the world is even weirder than that.

Because there's a kid who cut himselfonce and had the cuts talk to him, people who see auras, ways tomasturbate and see the face of God, a babysitter who has never oncehad a kid back-talk her. Weird things, on the fringes of the world,that are somehow part of something that would be more comforting ifit were alien. And this has touched you: perhaps you saw somethingonce, or did something, or sometimes when no one is looking, you canmake ice cream all fat-free.

As far as you know, it's just you. Oh,there's stories about other things, but the world is full of urbanlegends (not that you'd ever think yourself one) and for the mostpart your life is normal. Until other things happen, and you realizethat there is a secret underbelly to the world, an odd place of powerand will and desire so strong it can change reality. A world you canbecome part of, at a cost.

Theme: Life vs power.

You have a normal life, with normalfriends, family, a job. And then there's this other world, wherepeople can be more than people, where men and women can whistle upthings from shadows or cut someone with a smile or sing songs that nohuman has ever known. It's not just weird, not at all: there's powerto be found in symbols, in the real truth of the world, in themanipulation of reality and collective will. Magick exists, and godswithin us all, but to become part of that, to bepower in the world, might mean giving up all you hold dear.

Powerrequires a touch of madness to be genius, and the real world haslittle truck with this kind of genius.

GMNotes:

Thebasic concept is a slow-burn UA campaign where the PCs become awareof the deeper and wider world that exists within the one they'velived in all their lives. It offers glamour and power and glory, butall at terrible costs. You can get what you want, if you are willingto sacrifice everything else to get it. It's about how the PCsbalance their normal life with this world, madness with sanity andhow they try and keep it all from crumbling about around them.

Essentially,the PCs begin below Street Level, in UA terms. You're just peoplewith some odd secret, the same as everyone else in the world. Untilthat secret becomes useful to people who have become more – or less– than people and their world begins to invade yours, full of alienomens and weird abilities and freaks who've become hypersane. It'sabout how the characters try to adjust to this and deal with thedemands of the weird shit world and the normal world.

Imagineyou tried your hand at reading tea leaves and managed some good BSabout people's futures in it. Now imagine someone revealed that youweren't reading futures but making them and they had a specificfuture in mind for someone, a knife, and pointed out you didn't needall your fingers. You get away, in the end, but the world is nolonger what it used to be, and you can't pretend it is: a veil hasbeen ripped aside, you can see what the real powers and forces thatshape the world are and some of them can see you as well. There'ssomething in your eyes now, something deep and half-wild you have nowords for and the ground under your feet never felt as unreal as itdoes now.

Finalnote: This is a UA game somewhat to the side of the normal rules, inthat it's more about avatars than anything else. Not every avatar ofthe Mother will have the same power, not every adept will use aschool of magick in the same way (or have access to the same tricksfrom it), and a lot of people have one foot into the weird and haveto decide to jump in, tread water or get the hell out of dodge.You're one of these people.

Becauseyou're a regular joe with friends, family and a life, and giving thatall up can't be worth it. Can it?

Setting

The city, somewhere on east coast north america. It's cold, wet and raining when it's not freezing, the sun baking it brown for two months before more rain slides into the cold of winter once again. The kind of place that's full of promise that few ever kind and the rain never quite washes away all the grime from the streets, where it only takes a single block to walk from mansions to slums, where everyone is crowded together but no one knows their neighbours.

It can be cold and hard, at times, but the same is true of everywhere: the city has wild parks and subdivisions done up in varying styles, century-old hotels nestled next to condos built from an Ikea catalogue. The ice cream vans still come, the factories haven't all closed their jobs thanks to China and most of the kids play in the streets under the watchful eyes of parents It's not all bad, and not all good: like most places, the city is what you make of it and what it makes of you.

AC: GM world notes

2011-12-04T11:14:00.001-08:00

I figured it would be neat (if not useful) for players to see this. The vast majority of this was written pre-game, the stuff on law and courts during the game. There was more written on Omegas but I can't make heads or tails of what the hell it was about so it's not part of this post.

GM AURORA CONSERGENS NOTES

The World

This is earth, only it's been nanny-run by the Illuminati for centuries and other conspiracies have grown and altered and changed it as the centuries went by. Despite their wish to not be a power in the world, the nature of how the Illuminati went about protecting it spawned many other conspiracies and secret organizations, often devoted to fighting it at some point in their existence. Which, given its nature, proved mostly futile.

But the Illuminati remained out of government and outside temporal power, which is where the other conspiracies flourished and moved the world from. The trilateral commission, CFR, and likely aspects of the UN fit into this. They were the powers behind the throne, the secret rulers who shaped and directed the world to a point.

In a lot of ways, world war 1 was a wakeup call to all of them: no one had planned it and though, arguably, they all benefited from it it did shake their faith in systems and their own control of them. The 20s did not help this, and the depression of the 30s was engineered to try and reign in a world slowly spiralling out of control. Alphas became more and more prevalent, and their inventions – as well as their genius pushing ordinary humans to new heights – led to the world changing in ways so great and vast almost no one remarks on them.

It does not help that the Illuminati's deep understanding of Omegas as 'demons' and 'angels' was falling apart slowly but steadily under the realities of DNA and evolution. As such, a faction of them tried to prove that such things were not possibly, by giving humans the abilities of Omegas via genetic tampering. AKA splices. They began their experiments in 1931 and quickly decided to use Germany and Nazis to cover it; a loud noise to hide their whispers, as it were.

But the various covert government agencies and conspiracies were getting better at their jobs and, wishing to keel Splices a shameful secret – and, probably, destroy them all – the Illuminati decided to distract everyone by having Germany invade Poland. That this went belly-up beyond any expectations is an understatement. To this day, no one is aware the Illuminati caused world war 2. Some suspect, yes, but there is no proof. (There was an X badge, in the concentration camps: this never made history, and those were taken away to become splices. At some point, the Illuminati not only allowed the holocaust to occur -- or at least was complicit with it. No one knows this because they scoured it from their records and their own minds, but this was their Vietnam, the failure from which they never truly recovered.)

The cold war became a cover for Omega experimentation by many parties: Splicing was discovered by r2-45, the idea of Omegas as the new superpower emerged and nations began secretly trading them around, as if they each bad a baseball team. Bu the 70s, the amount of Omegas made this unworkable, and the lack of a Red Scare [echoes of the Red King?] to get people to comply let to many of those programs falling apart or simply failing to function.

Major problems began to arise with the news, with the Illuminati began to concern itself with too late: a telepath could not alter the image on a TV screen, after all. They did learn how to do this, but it took time and in the meantime they worked on brainwashing and controlling the media of the world, which worked until alphas began to rise up in ranks in said organizations. Killing off alphas was crude and, frankly, noticeable; most were bought off, or blackmailed, but there's always one principled idealist who won't be, and the idea of big media conspiracies became a cause célèbre with deep grains of truth buried in it.

Roswell, in 1978, pretty much created the modern conspiracy theory. Or at least the conspiracy theory as deeply flawed: in the end, it made it easy to dismiss people as nutters because it would be impossible to hide things the scale of, say, 9/11 from everyone and people figured that was obvious, since they had no clue about telepaths and the like. A lot of the 'old' (aka world war 1-2 era) conspiracies fell apart during this time, or had to restructure and re brand themselves in in light of the soon-to-end cold war. Most conspiracies were aware of the Illuminati, or at least that an organization that had been given that name did exist, but the actual age and depth and breadth of it was simply too big for them to believe.

In truth, beyond being composed of telepaths (which wasn't unique) and being able – at their height – to literally make everyone in the world forget things via the Eye, the Illuminati worked because they kept out of affairs not part of their limited plan: the hide the war between heaven and hell from the world. That was it. Once alpha began pushing the world into the insanity of the modern life ~100 years ago, they had to devote a lot of resources to keeping up with the world, finagling with it and trying to achieve their goals while working around alphas. Hence the gradual mistakes and eventual 'collapse' of the Illuminati.

Also, anyone who seriously thinks it did collapse should give their heads a shake.

The Event:

Seven years ago, Barry began to get openly pro-Omega rights. There were more of them in the world than ever, and he figured it was high time they got treated both at citizens and as equals to humanity. That Barry was outside the power of the Illuminati and could, in theory, make others the same made a confrontation almost unavoidable. Hence Sally as spy/telepath and the eventual mental assault from the entire Illuminati, the backlash of which killed many and actually hurt Barry.

That a nuber of people have put 2 and 2 together to figure out that the Illuminati's fracturing and Barry's damage are related doesn't explain how 1 +1 = 2, namely why the Illuminati went after him and to what end. The real truth is, well, hideously simple. Barry hadn't gone off the rails, but he was worried about the possibility; it had been gnawing at him since he started the renaissance and had to watch the outcome of that, to try and balance the benefits of this world with the awful things it has led to. At least, that's what he told them, and they bought it. In truth, Barry was stuck. A person falls into habits over a lifetime, and over millennia he'd fallen into rather deep ones and become very, very predictable as a result of that. It was a chance, however small, to see the world with fresh eyes.

Even Barry had no idea what the backlash would do, but the real movers and shakers in the Illuminati did, or at least took advantage of it. They used that to wipe out a lot of dead wood and cast the weak telepaths aside [as the Choir], left the more morally-minded as the Illuminati [Artie et. al] and have re-branded themselves as Dynamic Solutions Inc., an 'old fashioned think tank' whose offices are old stone buildings with gas lighting and typewriters. Old-fashioned feel, successful hiding from Trevor. Their goal is to offer 'advice' that allows them to shape the entire world from behind the scenes, not the limited stuff the Illuminati did, but hard-core changing of society itself.

To this end, they need the Eye to shut down and put something Other in place while it repairs itself. Their 'genius' in this is to use something that mimics the Red King, and divert suspicion from themselves. Their lack of understanding about the Red King, however, and how he'll feel about it, is the major chink in their current plans.

Now:

The world is run by conspiracies. This has pretty much become fact. Whether it was the unconscious knowledge the Illuminati existed, or simply the realization that one can get more things done from behind the curtains than on the stage, secrecy has become the rule of the game, and real secrets – like the existence of an Illuminati – can he kept by waving them in plain sight.

"See? Area 51 can't be a secret base if everyone knows about it," people say, while above them the real Area 51 floats in the clouds, a giant refitted alien spaceship crammed with alien prisoners and some Omegas unable to convince the government they weren't human. Of course, by government I mean the real movers and shakers, people whose levels of security clearance go far beyond that of the president. Which isn't to say the law, congress and the president don't exist but that, at the real levels of power and influence, they simply don't matter. Omegas are a paradigm-changing event for the world, capable of insane and powerful things, and management and response to them is the real concern of the secret world.

The Law

Laws are odd beasts, often flailing behind the times. That most of the Omega Laws are signed into being without public knowledge doesn't help, but they do exist. They existence of Omegas is, to the government at large (and by government I mean the president, joint chiefs, CIA, FBI and the non-secret branches) only about 5 years old.

Omega Rights: None. Once you are an Omega, who lose the right to attorney and the jails cqan hold you as long as they wish, by any means deemed necessary, should one prove a danger to themselves or the public. The latter is Important, but the extent to which it is used or abused depends largely on situations. This is considered a desperate stop-gap until Omegas police and other services can be made to help keep a lid on things, but has probably made a lot of resentments worse than it should.

Hospitals have underground wards, police stations the same with cells and it's very costly (most of the official blacks ops budget has been sunk into this and keeps a LOT of alphas happily employed devising cells and restraints for Omegas) but frankly the authorities see no other way of stopping Omega crimes. Most SAFE-like groups that have set up have found themselves destroyed quickly by the more organized criminal Omegas who obviously have no desire to be policed.

The fact that the cells and segregation of Omegas is a short step from Camps and the like is NOT lost on a lot of people, which means a fair number really don't like it but are also lost for better solutions for those that need to be locked up. The big problem is conventional prisons are not about reform of Learning A Lesson as much as producing a better class of thug. And trying to set something up that is more relaxed, yet can keep Omegas locked in a location, is pretty much not possible. People are looking for alternatives, but they just aren't finding any barring rewriting personalities and other such charming 'options'.

The police themselves tend to use excessive force, often because they have no clue how much force to use, or how to stop Omegas and they're often shit scared of this freaky weird thing. (Omega police can be the same way, mind.) All of which tends to lead to the healed Omega being brought up, battered and shaken and likely with a deep distrust of The Man, before the courts.

The Courts

The courts are a little further ahead than the jails: being an Omega is not automatically a crime to a judge, desite what the police an authorities tell people, and killing someone with said abilities does not equate a life sentence. A lot of paid psychiatrists are making good money going on about temporary insanity and the 'horror' of becoming an Omega, which does get clients off the book but the end result also stains the image of Omegas in the eyes of judges cleared to hear such cases.

The fact remains that most Omegas who do not kill themselves out of shock and confusion adjust to their new life surprisingly quickly from an outside (human) point of view. The period of WTF? And accidental deaths varies a lot, depending on upbringing, the nature of the change, and the situation the new Omega is in at the time. Presenting this to courts is, however, boring. And given the variety of Omegas, hard to justify as a blanket statement in any event. Overall, the courts tend to look at Omega crimes as acts of opportunity – if you could walk through walls, you'd rob at least one bank – rather than the makings of a career criminal. The police don't see it like that, but they have to arrest said Omegas and deal with inferiority vs. them, lack of weapons and general 'Oh, my god, this 13 year old boy could kill a swat team' levels of fear and distrust that leads to extreme responses at times.

Overall, the system of laws is one of checks and balances, and it's hard to check Omegas and far harder to balance things against them. Official Omega branches of police forces and the like are cropping up, but tend to have the problem of being considered separate from the other branches and contain echoes of segregation and second-class citizenship. That people are aware of this and some want to find a better way is one of the underlying themes to counter the 'ism' aspect.

Omegas

Omegas exist to protect the earth from invasion from other earths and dimensions. Not every world has them, not every world needs them, but they basically exist as the immune system for Life, allowing it to flourish at the cost of their own lives. Other worlds invade, they stop it and so forth. Asteroid falling? Ditto. In this world, few Omegas advance beyond being city-level threats, and most begin at about a block or more, mostly because Omegas never really caught on in this world until cities did. Oh, Barry has been around for ages and there's some old and deep Omegas out and about, but for the most part the rise of civilization led to the need for them. More people means more Omegas, and the skyrocketing population of the last century crossed a threshold in this regard.

Aurora Consurgens: Massive Character List

2011-12-03T21:37:00.001-08:00

GIANT AURORA CONSURGENS CHARACTER LIST (with police and villains added)

Kami Sturges (Chaos)
Probabilities (4), Telepathy (6), Costume making (2), Lead singer/guitar (3)

Malikai Neff Arius
I can see time (4), George (4), Tech and Shit (3), , Instrumentalist (3)

Mason Everheart (Caltak)
Spider-Monkey (5), Overclocked Brain (4), Versatile Keyboardist (3), Jury-Rigger (2), Daredevil (2)

Temperance Forsythe (Lunchie)
Sympathy (4) Invulnerability (4), (3) Antique Bookstore Owner in Training, (3) Make Crafts

Teresa Numbers
Omnicommunication (2), "All is One" (3), God Fist (4), Waitress (2)

NPCS

Heather Sturges (mother). Haro Sturges (father, left in 2001)

Tommy Nash (Alpha (unknown to him) insurance claims adjustor/bandmate.
Jack of all Trades (4), Play instruments (4)+3, Perfect Memory (4)
Note: Chronically lazy. GF is named Marsha

Jerry Welker (Barista/bandmate) (Omega)
Hide (4), Play the guitar (4), Magic tricks (3), Hide People (4)
Hide: Jerry can hide stuff, via making things vanish, not be noticed, teleporting them and so forth. He has a pocket dimension in his stomach he can store thngs in.
Hide People: Instinctive; he hides other mutants from discovery, and himself as well. Powerful ones put a strain on it and give him a headache.
Tells: Always wears gloves, since he has no fingerprints. If he strains his abilities, he becomes invisible and can’t return to ‘normal’ for some time.
NOTE: Bf is named Alan and is with Greenpeace, currently fighting pirates in Somalia.

Elenora Arius (Malik’s mom), Father Hector
I was thinking somewhere 'upstate' which is basically like, a 2 hour trip away
likely by bus
Father used to be a pricinpal for a school, mother worked on the board. Upper-middle class, had the pull to insist their son be in regular schooling. Your father is the more distant of the pair, perhaps because he felt his son couldn’t accomplish all the things a father wishes for a son, though he has got in some nasty arguements with school teachers over the years;
he cares, deeply, but comes from the old school where father’s never show that. Your mom, of course, is far more hurt by the the fact that you felt you had to keep this a secret from them thab anything else, at present.

Shen (r2-45 member, spy)
Captain American Awesomeness (4), Gun-fu (4), Spec Ops (2), Guitar Hero (2)

Beau Bradford (Pizza and cab driver)
Would-be BF. Normal. Note: has a horrible taste in ‘good’ movies, such as suggesting Dead Vixens II for a date.

Nattie St. Germain (aspiring actress, Starbucks barista. Now an Omega ...)
Actress Wannabe (3), Starbucks Barista (2), Sunlight Becomes Her (4), Mist Form (5), Self-Delusion (3)
Self: Nattie is GOOD at lying to herself, better than most people are. It’s not always useful.
Sunlight: Direct sunlight heals her of wounds and brings her back to life, if dead. She can also give off a blinding burst of sunlight, when she has to.
Mist Form: She can turn into a pale mist and float through things, also take people with her.
Tell: 1) her canines are twice as long as they should be, also paler skin and a little taller. Hair is now a pale blond.
2) During the day her skin glows, motes of light dancing about her like firecrackers or fire flies. It is quite noticeable but a bit less so in direct sunlight.

Vince Nevels: Band manager (inept), normal 30something who sells ad-space for a magazine.
Walter Markowski IV (Manager at work, entirely normal)

Josef Amsel (died in 1901-1964)
Nazi officer attached to Unit 731 in Japan and a personal friend of Mengele.
Ivan Koshchey: his Illuminati contact. Worked on the Prodigy Project.
Professor Amy Henwick - experimented on the twins after Project was over.

Toby Sykes
Security guard tossed through the air by mutant, has gone on to join anti-freak rights group. Has guns, will travel.

Phoenix Jones (22) (Human)
Friendly Psycho (4), I am vengeance! I am the night! .... please? (4), Spoiled and Rich (3)
Friendly: He’s insane, but he hides it well.
Vengeance: Attempt to become a batmanesque figure; a couple of broken bones later he began to rethink it and read about Omegas, and the theory that being near them increases the chance to become one ....
Rich: Moneys! Because, really, that’s the best power ever.
Human ‘superhero’ who, cheated by fate out of being an Alpha, wants to become an Omega. Hence finding them, stalking them, trying to show up at battles, hanging around them. Kidnapping them and eating them ... anything to attempt the change.

Raymond Terril (Ltd.) (42, Alpha)
Raymond is sherlock holmes :) Except without the cocaine.

Wendy Tiede (26) (Police officer)
She runs Special Division, which deals with Code X stuff.

R2-45

Sullivan Willoughby (Splice, spy), 16. - http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/067/c/2/My_Manself_revisited_by_guineapig37.png
Forget This (4), Dream/Sleep for me (3), Martial Artist (4), Hair Dresser (2), Other Splices (2)
Forget: He can make people forget things just by looking at them/thinking of them. Tiring, but almost always works.
Dream/Sleep: Put people to sleep. Useful and handy.
Martial Artist: Trained in this.
Hair dresser: He likes hair, and having fun with it, cutting it. He’s just miffed that people would think he was gay.
Other splices: Healing (exhausts badly), TK )Hard push of visible energy), Sense mutants (as ‘ripples’), aided by tech implanted in his brain.
Tell: Huge, wide golden eyes. Wears shades.
NOTE: When ‘reprimanded’, the nature of his eyes changes, to seeing x-ray, or auras. Normally they are, for all their odd appearance, just eyes.

Davis Jones (aka the Oracle) (10)
Most days. Davis still thinks he’s at school writing his blog. Only sometimes he’s doing it when teachers talk, right in the middle of class, and no one says a thing. And his friends are all a bit .... dull, these days, and his family never really talks to him and he hasn’t played a new computer game in *weeks*. But still, most days he never sees the man in suits, or really hears their questions. He’s been writing an awful lot of entries, too, but strangely no one comments with spam, as if they’re never on the net. And when he thinks about that, he can almost feel someone watching him, as if the internet was somehow aware of him, looking for him, but Davis knows thats pretty silly.
He does think it would be neat for his stories, even if they are getting confusing now and sometimes he thinks his parents aren’t talking to him because he’s in a hospital, and stuff is dripping into him like in a bad sci-fi tv show. Sometimes it feels like that, that the men and women watching him are doctors and he’s not even in schoolm at all anymore, but that’s so big and scary a thought he’s never dared to blog it at all.
Note: Davis is going to be pretty miffed that the government asshats have had him locked up for weeks AND he hasn’t lost a single pound when his parents have been trying to get him to lose weight for years. That the government haven’t taken steps to reduce his weight (and chances of future heart attacks etc.) won’t strike him as at all worrying until someone else points that out.

Percy McWillians II (41) (Omega)
Reflect (6), Neural Shock (4), Secret Agent Man (4), Art Critic (2)
Reflect: Any harm to him is turned back on the user. Read mind = read your own, blast = hurt self. Counts as 4 dice vs guns, fists etc.
Shock: He can shoot a bolt that zaps people unconscious.
Note: Right arm is artificial. (If it comes up, his arm was removed to provide necessary tissue samples for splices of his powers.)

Andrea
Living Teddy Bear (3), Create Barriers (6), Spec Ops (4)
TB: She is one, but can eat, drink etc. if and when she wants. She dies if all her stuffing is destroyed.
Barriers: On minds, walls, people etc. She can make amazing ones, though they’re stronger in proximity to her. She can also remove barriers others have made.
Note: while she can eat real food etc., she is now in a teddy bear and the only actual nourishment she gets is from hugs.

?
Member whose ability involves taking the mind of foes and tossing it into something else. Like, another person. Or stuffed animal.

S.A.F.E (Safeguarding Against Future Exploitation)

Kim Li (Professor at Freement University-College)
See Genetic Codes (3), PhD in Philisophy and Bioethics (6, Use Mace (3), High-Tech Weapons (2). Mental Shields (2)
The latter are via Trevor. She acts as the front of S.A.F.E while he is the real founder.
Note: Having been born with her ability (as near as she can remember) she may be something other than alpha, or omega.

Trevor (Founder, Omega who looks to be 16 but has far older eyes.)
One With The Machines (6), Clone Body (4). Genius Geek (3), Look Nerdy (2)
Machines: Trevor IS the internet, among other things. He’s human and an AI and terribly good at what he does.
Clone: He got tired of being old (30), so cloned himself a new body. He has six other clones, just in case this one gets damaged and he updates the memories every few hours, so if he does die, his next clone won’t quite know the details. All the clones are alpha-class, body wise. Trevor is GOOD at faking being an alpha.
Look Nerdy: Thick glasses, braces, suspenders, messy hair. He makes it so very easy to underestimate him ....
Tell: None; it is a clone body after all, though if it ever comes up he’s sexually ‘inert’ because he ‘couldn’t be bothered with all that’.
Plot bits: His wife, from before the cloning, should show up with his kid(s)? at some point.
Goal: Originally, he wanted to somehow arrange things so everyone thought they’d won. Realizing this is impossible, he wishes to exterminate the remnants of the Illuminati as a threat to both omegas and humans.
Note: Wednesday December 31, 1969 is the date Trevor tossed aside his original body to become the internet.

Allies:
Ally: Quentin Witherspoon (40)
Looks: Webbed hands, feed, gills, blue=-green skin and sounds as if he’s always gargling. Gills on chest.
Abilities: Breathe/travel underwater, heal fish, repair oceans. (Cannot speak to fish)
Note: Nut about how Omegas should fix the oceans.

Ally: Rosa Bedard (21)
Plump girl with caffeine tremors drinking way too much coffee
Abilities: When she sleeps, astrally sees other worlds/places. It’s not fun.
Tell: None

Ally: Marcia (Agent of the Choir, 30) [dead]
Average-looking woman with electricity crackling about hr skin; forms into wings when needed.
Abilties: Fry people, fly, telepathy (2)
Marcia is here to hunt demons. Really nice and simple.

Bruno Dietrich (German Omega, 65: member of the guild) [dead]
Older white-haired man in good shape.
Abilities: Can fly. (He can carry people, if they’re light)
Tell: Feet never quite touch the ground.

SEE (State of EnlightEnment)

The Most Ancient One (aka Barry Jameson, looks to be 25, tall, good looking)
Stupidly Immortal (no dice needed), Charismatic Handsome Dude (3)
Tell: Covered in tattoos of swirling shapes over all his body, no hair.
Barry is old. Even he doesn’t know how old; someone or something of immense power ripped his mind to pieces 10 years ago and let scraps of vague knowledge behind. In reality, he is 25 but is immortal. Nothing hurts him, all attacks that could miss and so forth. Exactly how a telepath managed to fuck with him, and why, are unknown. It is known that he can permit a power to affect him to a limited extent, so that may have something to do with it.
Goal: Rights for Omegas. He’s huge on this, being one himself. Only he looks entirely normal, which ticks him off. So he has his ally, Carla, use her power in his skin and make a ‘tell’. So yeah, he’s very much screwed in the head but also, in his own way, terribly powerful.

Ally: Carla Vasquez. spanish-american punk (21)
Skingraft (4), Cosmetic Surgery (1), Punk aesthetics (3), Keep Calm (4)
Skingraft: She is able to mark people’s skin and hurt them, essentially branding them. Basically energy net, squeezes tight, can burn right down to the bone. At full strength, all it does is give Bobby tattoos. She has enough sense to want to learn more about the talent and use it to help people via corrective surgeries and the like, but is only just learning about that.
Tell: Her skin constantly changes colour according to her mood, from light tones to dark.

Ally: Damien Vallon (15) - http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/147/1/c/icecreams_by_hellodingo.jpg
Vanish Things (5), Quick (3), Street Kid Smarts/Martial arts (4), Double Agent (2), Play keyboard (2)
Vanish Things; Damien can look at things and make them vanish. Even he isn’t sure where they go, but he uses it daily on Bobby’s hair. Upper limit to it is unknown, but he has to know the nature of the thing he’s using it on, so using it on an empty building is fine, but if people are in it he has to know how many before it works. (This limit may be self-imposed). As he has no idea what his limits are, he’s rather scared he could look at the sun, it would vanish, and the world find out ~8 minutes later.
Double Agent: Damien actually works for the Black Chamer, a covert US think tank who have taught him martial arts and so forth. His job is to keep Bobby sane(ish) and find how how and why the kids mind got torqued.
Tell: Uh. Obvious.
Note: Older brother (Ethan) was in a Boston band called Sarcastic Tornado.

Ally: Thelma Bates (72) (Omega Healer)
First do not harm (4) Then do harm (3), Best granny ever (3) Spy for her age (3)
Do no harm: Healing others. Limited to physical wounds, but she can mend and fix most anything in about ten minutes. Even when not healing, she has x-ray eyes.
Do harm: If someone hurts her, the pain gets traferred back to them.
Spry: Despite being 72, she moves as though half her age and has no arthritis or grey hairs.
Tell: Her eyes turn white and her hands glow when healing others.
Daughter (Mary) can cause diseses.
tell: Pale, dirty, covered in yellowish warts that scream ‘unclean!’

Ally: Alan Moore (17) (Irish,Omega)
Create boquet of flowers (4), Track & Field (3), Emit foul odour (4), Don’t Die In a Fight (3)
T&F: Obvious, was his thing while normal.
Flowers: He can create a boquet of lillies (which appears in his hand) at will. Eventaully he can expand this to other flowers, none of which hurt him to hold/smell.
Note: This makes him plant-like, in a weird way. When he dies, he sprouts up again in time.
Odour: His body can emit a sick smell to drive away others, threats, preadators etc. He has little control over it but delivering a mortal wound does disable it.
Tell: Green skin and bumps all over his body. Though unaware of it, a bump temporarily vanishes every time he makes a boquet of flowers.
Note: Eventually, he’ll be able to turn into a tree. Which is awesomely useless. Oddly, creating boquets of flowers will become more ‘useful’ once he discovers it doesn’t have to be in his hands and could be, say, in the middle of someone’s body or, say, out of their skin.

Ally: Sally Jenkins (aka Oculus. 25, Omega)
Eyes See You (6), Share Power (3), Artist (2), Mind Shield (3)
Share power: She can share her eyes senses with others and also share their own power if they allow it.
Artist: She paints.
Mind Shields: Leftover from her telepathic friend; strong but degrading yearly.
Eyes See You: Sally has 30+ eyes that float about and do her bidding. She can see and hear through them and even fire energy beams (about the strength of a punch). She can also tranfer wounds to herself to an eye, which then dies. It takes her 9 months to grow a new batch of eyes, much like any baby. The size depends on need.
Tell: The floating eyeballs, naturally. She always has at least ten around her and sees through them, keeping her normal eyes wrapped in cloth under long dark hair. She can use them, but doesn’t like to

Black Chamber

Claire - Member who alters phermones to incite events that lead to Omegas needing/wanting to join the Chamber .... she is the minder for Griffin and Damien.

Griffin Dumont (22) http://th04.deviantart.net/fs51/PRE/i/2009/293/6/5/Cold_by_King_of_the_nobodies.jpg
Talk to Dead Men (4), NDE (4), Janitorial Services (2)
Talk to dead men: He can listen to and hear the voices of the dead. This is not exactly fun.
NDE: He can cause others to have a near-death experience. To a small extent, this ability is always on so he can’t be near the dying.
Janitor: HS stuff, was going to go through college to be a plumber for the money.
Tell: skeletal, to the point of painful absurdity. Also carries about him the cold of the grave and the smell of a tomb.

The Untamed King (674)
Living Stone (5), The Gift (?)
Living stone: She’s 10’, made of stone and as such will live a long, long time barring, say, insane uses of jackhammers and such. HJas worked for BC for over 70 years and is native to north america, which is why most of the Hidden Places are on this continent.
The Gift: The ability to bestow privacy on people and places. Originally used to hide misshapen Omegas from the world (her children apparently counted) in mordern times it makes an Omega touched by it invisible to any camera, satellite and so forth. Humans using them pick up nothing and it does no seen unusual at all. It cannot be undone, even by her.
When used on places, it hides them from prying eyes and creates sancutaries for Omegas. gthis ability isn’t as strong as the first, and sufficient interest/pressure (and telling people about it) will open ways into the underground palces she makes safe. She believes that to a tame a thing is to kill it, and Omegas should be free and unfettered in places just for themselves.
The ability also hides her from those wishing to harm her; BC stumbled onto her by pure change, as it were.

Hades et al.

Hades (mid-thirties)
Make Omega (6), Evil is my food (5), Trivia (3)
Make omega: Hades can make alphas into Omegas. He can also do it to ordinary people, but those results tend to be non-viable. In theory, he might be able to make Omegas human again, but if so all he’s ever done with that is wave it over them as temptation to get them to work for him.His blood, turned into capsules, can prevent Omega powers from working, as long as the omega in question isn’t that powerful.
Evil is my food: The more ‘evil’ acts done around him/by him, the stronger he gets. Increases life span, general strength, toughness, destroy a thing by touching it and can pull secrets out of people’s minds to tempt them with. This is an extremely broad power, but actually pretty limited since the ‘supply’ is never study and he has to ration out what he does and why. Using it to promote more evil directly only results in evil-lite, in terms of energy.
Note: Conversely, ‘good’ people are like a toothache all the time. He also can’t enter holy places, though this is probably something the Illuminati did to him. It does mean that, if placed inside one, he can’t leave without aid.
Trivia: he pretends to be centuries-old, despite being 42.

Ally: Rakasha (aka Jaladhi Dev. Hindi, 22) (Pic:http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/049/6/b/ariel_is_troubled_by_madcarrot-d39tusv.jpg )
I has claws (3), Drain Health (4), I eat people (3)
Claws: Fighting, quick, dangerous. The usual.
Drain health: Not quite a psychic vampire, he drains physical strength from others just by being around them. Hades helps keep this in check, obviously.
I eat people: Hey, everyone has hobbies.

Ally: Leo Dowell (15) (Pic: http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs26/i/2008/031/9/3/Grumpy_by_Amelie_ami_chan.jpg ) (Alpha Omega)
Alpha Awesomeness - Ninja (4), Learns Hella Fast (3), I am the storm, said he (4), Body of Water (3)
Ninja: Alphas are good at stuff; he’s quick, sneaky, fast and dangerous. Not insanely strong, no, but that’s okay.
Learn: he learns things at an insanely quick rate. Hence, boredom.He’s 15, just finished HS and is seriously, seriously bored.
I am the storm: He can call up very localized storms, soak people, zap them with lightning and, when really made, shoot energy from his body that makes them want to kill themselves, in theory.
Body of water: His entire body, clothign and all, is actually made up of water. as such, he drinks a lot of water and, if heated sufficiently, would actually become a puddle and presumably die. His body doesn’t let him avoid damage or shape itself around blows (yet) but if hit hard enough to lose cohesion he just reforms.
Note:Omega for 2 months, is with Hades because it is not boring.

Illuminati

Artie Fleetwood: *(Pic: http://th06.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2011/005/2/c/leather_jacket_by_kristollini-d36ixu9.jpg )
Telepathy (10 dice, at least)

Eye, the: The Eye.

Dillon Matus
Mental Bolt (4+3), Mind Shield (7 [Special]), Redneck Hick (4)
Mental Bolt: He can blast minds with serious, insane levels of force.
Shield: He isn;t a telepath anymore; he can’t read minds, and the touch of another’s mind is pure agony. As such, all his telepathy and shields have gone into a shield of immense strength.
Redneck: In so many ways.

The Normalities
The pro-normal human faction(s).

Toby Sykes: Ex-security guard, lost his job to fishy guy throwing him across a grocery store.
Clyde Dales: Anti-alpha librarian, of all things, whose battles against ‘alphas’ tend to centre on anyone smarter than he is. But he did find access to a ‘book of spells’ in the school library, and has been able to use whatever it really is against those who piss him off. He and Toby are in the same support group.
Tanya Richiusa: Formed the ‘Defense of Humanity” Support group. People who’ve lives have been damanaged by Omegas (and Alphas) and basically need to talk and bitch to each other. She has wider Political goals and isn’t entirely aware she is an Omega, since her ability is pretty odd.
Aalim Jabar: Seriously, major anti-alpha dude. Tends to references to ‘jihad’ and is so over the top no one thinks he is anything more than offensive to his own culture. He seriously believes Alphas are the nephilim and an insult to God (and that all Omegas are fallen angels, but currently his focus is on Alphas). He’s the source of the exotic weapons he gives out to other weapons, and has so far avoided Tanya figuring him out.
Karlos Vandemeer (32). Worked at Mount Rosen bakery. was Aalim’s contact with the Red King cult.
Chris: A skinhead whose idea of Humanity is, basically, white people with Omegas in camps.
Bruce and Wanda: Elderly couple who would agree with Chris openly if they could.

Independants

Jillian Connor (pic: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/067/6/2/blue_torrent_by_dreamofinsanity-d3b7qbx.jpg ) (22)
Fine Arts (3), ‘Elecricity’ (4), See currents (3), Self-defense classes (3), Stalk Cute Boys (2)
Elecricity: This is her term for it, but it’s really the ability to expend a power that looks a lot like electricty from her body, in the form of burst of energy from her hands or electric-blue wings. The bolts do feel like an electric jolt, however, that harm the self/soul rather than the actual body. IN other words, each bolt can take off a chunk of someone’s essence until they drop dead, or kill that all at once by overloading them. She is unable to turn it off, so touching peole becomes rather difficult and it defends her mind, soul and body all at once.
Note: Zapping peole basically rips energy from them. Directing her power with more focus overloads the soul of the other person and kills them dead.
See currents: She can see energy: electrical, and presumably others with time. She can see ‘auras’ around people and eventually into the microscopic. It has no real practical use but is quite pretty and she can spot omegas because they auras are unusual and, based on fluxxes in it when they use powers, hazzard vague guesses about powers (mind lit up so mind-based, etc.)
Fine arts: She draws portraits, mostly, and realistic ones at that.
Plot notes: electric storm person (Marcia) dies, she becomes an omega a day later; the link shouldn’t be lost on pcs.
Stalk: her relations with previous boyfriends leave something to be desired.
Tell: White hair, pure white eyes that have an unnerving intensity to to them and, sometimes, electricity about her, plus zapping peole who touch her.

Shelby Smythe, aka Nightmare (Pic: http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs46/f/2009/233/8/8/Love_Feels_Weird__by_NocturneRising.png )
Show Nightmares (4), Run like a rabbit (3), Super Strength (3), Fight Like a Girl (2)
Show nightmares: when he meets people’s gaze, they see a terrible nightmare and can’t break free of. It can kill people or drive them insane, depending on how long he meets their gaze.
Strength: He’s stronger and tougher than most; he can juggle cars, punch through steel etc.
Note: His little sister, Frances, is 8 and without ‘drugs’ she suffers horrible seizures every time she has a vision; the drugs weaken her talent.

Calrion de Flores (45, passes for early 30s) (Omega)
God of the Flowering (3/5), The acrobat of your dreams (4), The language of flowers (2), Seduction of the Innocent (3)
God of the flowering: Calrion can do *anything* with flowers. He can summon, create, alter them, give special smells, transport himself via them and so forth. He can also use abilities of flowers (such as, say, thorns, or tricking predators with pheromones) and even restore lost virginity, in theory. He also uses this power as little as possible, because it’s frankly rather silly.
Acrobat: Spider-man style stuff, can use swords and so forth. He’s quite, efficient and adept at derring-do. Also handy in the bedroom, and not just for swinging from chandeliers.
Language of flowers: He knows a LOT about flowers, often via osmosis and is probably a PHD in such a field, if he could be bothered to waste his time on such academic interests. He may be able to literally speak to flowers.
Seduction: Also good for publicity and his winning smile. He is very much a glory hound and also very much a ladies man., I doubt it will ever come up, but he is bisexual and has no desire to flaunt that, given his talent with flowers and the assumptions silly people make. Not that he minds those assumptions, and plays camp to drive people nuts.. and have them convince themselves he’d never sleep with their wives.
Note: ‘Flowering’ is often at 3, since he seldom wants to use it. When he does, he’s actually scary and can possibly extend it to most any plant at all, if he felt he had to.

Nicky (Nicholas) Christmas (15, Omega) [Prodigy Project]
Pull Gifts From Bag (4), The Magic Of Christmas (3/5), Other Nick (5), Befriend the homeless (2)
Gifts: Nick can tell if someone is naughty or nice at a glance. The talent favours the nice end of a spectrum and sums up the entire life of a person, rather than just present actions (though those have more weight to the skill). Using it, he then pulls gifts from a handy conainer, of presents or coal, to give to someone else. All the gifts are non-brand name, oddly, and attempts to sell them for cash or steal them go poorly, though Nick is unaware of the latter.
Magic: The closer it is to christmas (or when near someone with christmas in their heart), Nick is protected from harm, to an extent. As long as he gives out at least a gift a month, the power will keep him safe fromharm in theory. If Nick tries to abuse it (say, use the 24th to get a LOT of school reading don) it deserts him entirely save in mortal peril. The more he uses it properly, the less weight be gains.
Other Nick: Old Nick. The dark myths, of Sinister Claus and the Devil, are also part of him, and he could become a terrible, evil thing in theory. Close to a split personality, this is the dark side of the dream of Christmas and nothing he’s used consciously, or recalled.
Befriend: He’s good with people. A fat, jolly kid with a twinkle in his eye who can make friends easily and not pass judgement.
Tell: When he can grow a beard, it’s going to be white.
Note: 5’6", 210lbs
Nick: "I'm not any kind of evil thing," with a glare and ..... thins out, in an eyewatering blur, the hair heavy with a fannt smell of rancid meat as Nick smiles, his teeth sharp, skin darkening to the colour of coal and is thin, a shade taller than you, with long clawed fingers and a whip-like tail. "Naughty children," he says, voice light and airy.

Blake Brensen (20? Depends on how old Teresa is)
Lies that make the world go round (7), Get the fuck out of dodge (4), Schmooze Easily (3), Gamble Poorly (1)
Lies: In a very specific way, Blake is the most powerful person on the planet: he can lie to ANYONE convincingly. People with truth powers, telepaths, the Illuminati ... no one, yet, has been able to get through his bullshit when he starts going, and he can con people into most anything if deperate enough. The downside is that he gets carried away and there are people out there thinking he is a high priest vatican assassin warlock, that he has tiger blood, that he’s an alpha, an omega AND the antichrist and a lot of women convinced he owes them child support. And sometimes, when he’s really desperate and tells a huge whopper of an excuse that impossibly works, he gets the feeling of soemthing huge and vast seeking him, as the Truth Itself was offended by his very existence.
Get out of dodge: There are limits, even to excuses, once people compare notes and the same excuse never works twice, so eventually he knows when to get the hell away, and he’s pretty damn good at doing that. As a side effect, he looks so ordinary people tend to forget having met him after a few months, or can’t be sure he is that guy....
Schmooze: He can make friends with most anyone, easily. Alpha, Omega, walking pile of garbage? Doesn’t matter. This is probably the closest thing he has to a redeeming quality.
Gamble: He loves doing it, but never, ever wins. And the less said about the time in Vegas he tried to excuse it away with the apocalypse and started a riot the better, you know?
Note: Blake doesn’t change actual reality, just convinces people his story is utterly right and they convince themselves of that, to a point. The con will break down, faster unless it’s *really* implausible (“There’s no way anyone would make THAT up!” etc.).

Archie Rocco (Omega)
Mason's eccentric artist roommate. Now also an Omega ...
Animate (4), Artist (5), Deep River (3), Floating hands (4)
Animate objects: He can bring small things to life, like paintbrushes, and make them do things for him.
Deep River: Artie is an artist through and through, and that includes a poets understanding of human nature.
Floating hands: His hands (at the wrist) operate independantly of his body. Range is unknown at present, but at rest they press against his arm.
Tell: Hands are seperate from body.

Carter Slade II (~30) (So Alpha it hurts. Has clone bodies.)
Torture Porn (5), Just plain bad-add (5), Batman Fanboy (2)
He only likes one thing in life: hurting people. It pretty much the only time he feels anything (that being pleasure). Being a complete and utter sociopath, he’s gathered together alphas (and \convinced’ omegas to work for him) to keep the world a better place via fear and intimidation. Step out of line, his people kill you. Figures alphas should rule the world, omegas be exterminated.

David Holmes (15)
Wind Powers (4), Flight [3 - via drugs]. Storm Mastery [4 - drugs, can throw lightning], Arcitecture Buff (3)
Tell: Was translucent, hair always blowing in a wind no one else felt.

Beckett Holmes (14)
Create Shields (4), Stone Skin (4), Anime Fan (2)
Shields: Multicolour spheres, often around himself or other things. Tough.
Stone Skin: Skin is made of stone, very tough. In reality, his entire body is stone and movews about to fix wounds, heal damage etc until he’s a hollow shell that can be cracked and broken. Eats stone to survive.
Tell: Skin the colour of stone.
Bio: Two brothers, one given drugs by Doctor D, the oter not. David goes nuts, tries to kill his own brother for ‘standing in t he way of the future’. David’s jealous of his little brother is gone with Power and he goes nuts.

Vincent O’Toole (Formerly 40, now ball of light)
Ball of light (3), Illusions (4), Public Speaking (3), Irish (2)
Vincent is a living ball of small, yellow light; few Omegas have changed as much as he did, and no one knows WHY.
Illusions: Sensory (visual) illusions, though he can fool all senses if he strains himself. Visual in his case includes all werd visionary powers. He can affect up to a city block and give people a permanent piece of himself as an illusion to hide behind.

Artie Fleetwood (22) Illuminati Telepath - http://th06.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2011/005/2/c/leather_jacket_by_kristollini-d36ixu9.jpg
Telepathy (5), TK (2), Secret Agent Man (4), Thinks he is a Master of Intricate Plots (3)
Tell: You can see his skull through his skin when he uses telepathy.

Maxx Quilovax (30) (teleporting guild rep)
Teleport (4), Synasthesia (3), Guild Politics (2), Sense Danger (3)
Tell: Cloven hooves as feet. As such, he teleports rather than walking and all his moments tend to be short bursts of teleportation so he always looks a little ‘off’.

Roland Drake (18) (omega at the starbucks)
Charm People (3), Beauty Beyond Bearing (4), Work crap jobs and like it (2), Trust Fund Brat (2) Gorgeous (4)
Charm: People do what he asks, agree with what he says etc. Basically like a charm person, all the time, on everyone.
Gorgeous: He is. He’s pretty much Hollywood-icon style impossibly handsome.
Beauty: He can cause traffic accidents, physically hurt people and if he shuns someone they may well kill themselves.
Tell: he is far, far too handsome.
Note: His talent is weird, since all of it meshes together into a whole. As such, it charms people into not noticing what he is, finding him cute, liking him and so forth. As such, his mind is a lovely trap for telepaths, people who would sense his talent are so charmed by him they don’t. It won’t stop machines from detecting him, but would influence people using the machines and so forth.

Misha (of the kuma) (5, ?) (Omega, shadow-being)
Shadow Being (4), Telepathic Projection (2 [inate]), Alternate History (2), Push at the world (3)
Russian kid who has got himself lost. Sibling, Alexis, possibly lost as well.
Shadow Being: Misha is a shadow, and sunlight/bright light *hurts* and dissolves parts of him. It can flee into shadows easily, however, and ‘heal’ in moments. If passing through someone, can hurt them via intense cold.
TP: How Misha talks to the other shadow-people. Can talk aloud, but has a high-pitched voice in russian accent, so prefers to chat in people’s heads. TP is limited to close range (unless a telepath hears/wishes to chat), and the other party can block at will. It’s communication only, one-sided unless the other person has TP-like powers.
Push: Misha’s possibly unique ability, to press on thing places of the world and make doors to other worlds. Misha has to be solid to do this, and doesn’t like being solid, so will ideally do it at night without much light around. Can be done to people, if need be, but proves fatal.

Emily Parker (22)
Telekinetic (3). Mistress of the Building (4/5), Music skills of the dead (3)
TK: Large-scale only: she can toss around cars, people, but not pick up a pen, say.
Mistress: This one is weird. The longer she remains in one building, the more control she has over it. In some respects, it’s akin to uber-TK with a building, to the point of energy manipulation: she can rip holes into other dimensions, draw on the building for energy in lieu of food, alter the environment to suit her mood and probably anything else she put her mind to. Of course, as no one knows their own mind and we often sabotage ourselves, the end result is far from some perfect control or mastery, but if you are in a building she has, and tick her off, you are basically very much dead.
Note: this talent works far better on homes than office buildings or apartments thought she could rein it in to one apartment, if she had to. Also, her power is over the building, not the inhabitants per se: so she can do haunting stuff, kill someone with the building and the like, but she couldn’t read minds, heal wounds and so forth. Speaking to the ‘dead’ seems to be an offshoot of the energies from ripping a hole in the world as much as anything else or man act of desperation.
Note 2: At the upper end of things, she can create a sanctuary (or possibly multiple ones) and basically turn a building into an HQ for those in need.
Tell: None, unless speaking to buildings as though they were people counts. And no, they don’t speak back. In realirty, her tell is within her, and insanity. Hence the first sanctuary going belly-up.

Aaron Dupree (17, Omega) [dead]
Create Duplicate (4), Dwarf (4), Thief (3)
Omega with the ability to make duplicates of himself out of other substances. Via Doctor D, he makes over 5000 that go on a stealing rampage throught the city.
Tell: When using power, original body is rooted into the earth and can't move. As he is a dwarf (3'9", all the duplicates are the same height and so on.) Smells of earth and soil, even when clean.

Starchild (Stella Windchaser-Borko)
What the stars sing of in dreams and nightmares (10)
Starchild is a living star, burning with impossible heat. Void might manipulate energy, but she IS energy and terribly, terribly powerful.
Tell: Fire burns and dances about her at all times; her internal body temperature can melt lead.
Void (Arthur Borko)
The whole electro-magnetic spectrum. Yeah. (10)
EMS: most people with this are electric dudes, or magnetism. Almost none realize “Hey, whole SPECTRUM, man.” He can have fun with electricity, magnetism, radiation, visible light, gamma rays. If he put his mind to it, there isn’t that much Void can’t do, if it involves energy.
Tell: He’s a walking void/black hole.
A couple. Possibly from another universe, but no one is sure. they are, probably, the most powerful superhumans in the world at present and haven’t been ‘suicided’ simply because no one is sure WHAT would happen if you tried to kill a star or black hole. Getting someone like Damien to vanish them is theoretically possible (assuming they aren’t too big for his talent), but no one knows where he vanishes things to for one thing. For the most part, they are left very much alone to pretend to be human under illusions Void generates. Some say they are hiding from time itself, but no one knows. No one wants to. They’re just left to be alone, and harm no one. Until the divorce.

Kaegan Maher (11 - 12 in 2 months!) (Omega)
Control Insects (3-4), Insectoid Fun! (4), Pass Classes (2), Sneak (3)
Sneak: Get out of the house to visit friends, usual kid stuff. He’s just really good at it, having learned from his older brother. (And yeah, it extends to locks and cars. He knows how to do the latter, hasn’t done it.)
Control Insects: He can summon them, easiest with just one type, in a several block radius. He can also see what they see and listen through them, if he wants to.
Insectoid: Climb walls, leap high (over 10 stories) and through the air, quick. He can push himself to avoiding bullets, but it turns his eyes faceted and his parents do not approve.
Tell: Antennae on his forehead, but he can comb them back into his hair most times. If he pushes himself, his eyes become faceted. So far, they’ve returned to normal within a day, but his parents are looking into contacts :)
Note: Younger brother is Tully Maher, 10. (superhero name, ‘Biffy’). Older brother, Liam, is 15, into drugs and stuff, and told Tully the ‘weed’ comment figuring his little brother wouldn’t find someone to sell it to him and it’d be funny.
Note 2: He’s been the one beating up all the muggers and tends to quite cheerfully go out and find Bad Guys to stop. Serious problems with authority and he’s hoping be develops webs of some kind eventually, because that would be the coolest! He’s pretty much out to be a superhero, curfew and laws be darned.

Ronald McGee (20s). (Omega?)
Ronald can give Omegas powerz! 2d6, 12 or 2. 2 is a bad power :) 11 or 3 can can give some minor power.

Doctor Vincent Gorsky (Ancient) (Vampire)
Vampire (6), Doctor of Medinces (4), Soduku (3), Seduce Pretty Women (3)
Vampire: Impossibly fast at night, stronger than humans, mild mesmeric powers. Drinking blood heals wounds, prolongs life span. (Omega blood is foul.) Sunlight robs him of powers,. but does nothing else.
Doctor: He thinks a good shepherd (as he sees himself) should take good care of the sheep)
Note: His goth assistance (actually daughter) is named Mina. Both are vampires from another earth.

Ally: Olin Truong
Gaseous Entitity (4), High School Student (3), Phased (4), Carpentry (2)
Gas: Olin is now a gas, in appearance. He seems to be a humanoid with head, arms, and fading away at the torso into vague gas. He can invent/create gasses at will and invade lungs etc. to poison people, put them unconscious, be visible (sort of) and so forth. He can pull oxygen out of the air and the like if need be.
Phased: He is in a permanent phase-shift. While he appears to be a gas, he couldn’t be sucked up in a vacuum, for example, while the gas he creates/manipulates could.

Marcus Wampler (21) (Omega)
Apple Geek (3), Apps of Power (4), Time Freeze (3), Avoid Bullies (3)
Avoid Bullies: Dodge attacks, in essense.
Apps: He can create iphone/pad/pod apps at will to Do Things. The apps can be permanent additions to the phone, which is beyond broken. The upper limit of this is unknown but attempts at truly silly things tend to turn the phone to slag. Apps made for other applications are half as effective, if they are at all.
Time freeze: If he needs to make an app on the spot, he can stop time, code it, and start time again. It is exhausting depending on if he just slows time or actually stops it, or just goes into a stasis field he can’t get harmed in. Said apps vanish from the phone within the hour, at the latest.
Tell: Has the apple logo branded on his chest. It glows cherry red when he makes an app. has smaller ones (hands etc.) that glow when using the apps.
Note: has hearing aids.

Trent Windle (21) (Omega)
Camouflage (4), English major (3). Gravity Manipulation (3)
Camoflage: He blends into surroundings, all the time. Unable to turn it off, visible when he moves.
Gravity: Increase, decrease weight of things, flight.

Basil Manning (14) (Omega)
Quills (3), Pyro [self and things he touches] (3), Homeless (2)
Tell: Body covered in short, porcupine-like quills he can lanch. When he sets himelf on fire he can lanch them as burning quills
Parents: Susan and David

Lambert Duchall (Omega, Choir member)
Firey Crosses/Shield of the Lord (4), Mind Shield/Telepath (2)
Firey Crosses: He can throw one of her 666 crosses of energy at foes to burn them with the fire of the Lord. (Harms souls, not bodies.)
Shield: The crosses are always around him, thogh she can make them small and hard to see: block attacks
Telepath: He can find sinners.

Simone Duchall-St. Laurence (Omnega, Choir member)
All Have Sinned/Telepathy (3), Will of the lord (3)d
Sinned: She can read the deepest, ugliest secrets of someone at a glance, their sins visiible to her without effort. She has not torn her eyes out, but it is only a matter of time.
Will: Can command sinners. Mind control, basically. Does not work on Omegas, who are demons.
Tell: halo of intense light burns about her head.

Diego Perez (22) (Omega)
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs14/i/2007/074/b/4/a_bush__freedom_grafitti_artis_by_PIGSunit3d.jpg
Teleportation (3), The Flesh is the Word (4), Grafitti art (4), Budding Anarchist (2), Scrap Fighting (2)

Speakers. the

Brother Andre Duceppe (41, Omega)
Andre was normal, until he met Christopher Tamel. Chris was 23, could fly on wings made of song and nothing evil could bear his presence. He was the mesisah come to the world, and then he ascended bodily to heaven [Drugs via Dr. D]. and ever since, Andre has spread the Word. (Chris’s word was, simply, ‘We should care for and love each other.’ Trying to seriously spread that tends to be difficult.)
Healing (5), Preach the Word (3), See Demons (3), Decent pastry chef (3)
Healing: Andre can heal like no one’s business. He can’t fix long term illness, but recent stuff (up to a week, at best, and including death if within a day) can be fixed by his power. He doesn’t like raising the dead, since he can’t shake the feeling that everyone he returns is, somehow, wrong, but he does it anyway to spread the Message.
Preach: He’s pretty convincing and good at the job.
See Demons: he can sometimes see the base desires that drive people as demons, though he lacks the power to cast them out.
Tell: a faint nimbus of light surrounds him at all times.
Note: Andre is due to encounter a certain rabbit soon.

Thingy (used to be Benjamin Odett) (17, Omega and bodyguard)
http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/046/5/c/west_virginia_toes_by_facerot-d39mpma.jpg
First Move (4)+3, Hurt You Up Bad (4), Jockey (3)
First move: He’s *fast*; he generally acts before anyone else in fights and such, protecting Andre.
Hurt You: Strength. His weird body is inhumanly strong: he can break bones without trying, and further he can hurt people by making them feel soiled, sickened inside and like Ick.
Tell: Obvious. he believes omega appearances are ‘the face we all deserve’ and the loss of his best friend (Chris) has driven him so far from sanity it’s not even funny.

Jackie Manchester (21, Alpha)
An alpha who manages the day to day of the Speakers, she is basically akin to batman, if he went into PR for a church.
Tough As Nails (4), Planning (4), Enviro. Science major (3), Trust Fund (4)
Planning: Given time, she can figure out how to take out anyone.

Craig Ensley (23, Student at Mason’s school,Omega)
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/182/3/3/chubby_punk_by_Beechs.jpg
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs51/f/2009/305/6/7/6719df41c296ffe99de1d6d80a6e7469.jpg
Make Screwy Art (2), Incubus (2/4), Fissure (5)
Incubus: he’s an emotional vampire, and tries to control it as best he can. If he gets too stressed or wound up, he changed into something not remotely human and has trouble controlling the power. He can inspire lust in others with a smile, without ever trying to and via a musky smell/his presence make guys fall for him. asa result, he tends to smoke a lot to try and mask it since he doesn’t much like making people call for him. It was cool the first three years or so, now it’s not.
Fissure: He can see the weak points of things at a glance, and break them along those fault lines with a touch. And yeah, this can include people.
Note: He cannot use both abilities at once.
Note2: He has a slight stutter that vanishes once in incubus form.

Prof. Ignatius Hanrahan (54, alpha prof at Sutherland University)
He wants his students to be The Best They Can Be; applied to work at this uni. because it wasn’t rated highly, then Lien came along and changed everything.

Colleen Tew (23, PP ex-member, Omega)
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/047/f/6/the_hooded_gown_by_temperate_sage-d39po5s.jpg
Gate (4): She can make portals into other dimensions at will and take others through with her. The portal can be visible to others or not (using a dimension with no life and a door as a portal is a fun trick to get rid of people) and she can shove other people into one and close it as well, if need be. That she can survive in any atmosphere or lack thereof is also part of the talent. She can, with effort and concentration, make gates to places she’s been before but the talent is otherwise set on random.
Since heading off on her own, she has developed the ability to make gates within the same universe, but it tends to be very exhausting.
Rotating Door (5): She can unconsciously teleport parts of herself, so bullets pass through her as she phases out of reality and so forth. It’s this as much as making gates that lets her survive deep space, worlds made of fire and so forth. The downside is that while out of sync she can’t interact with the world proper, though she can make a gate. Its passive environmental protection is always active, vs. attacks and such works with concentration and if she slips, she does get hurt.
Seasoned Traveller (5): She knows how to use alien tech and equipment as well as undersand alien languages.
This needs fixing up (2): A gift from Meghan at her death; it’s Meghan’s power at a very minute level, so Colleen can feel when something is wrong/off in an area, but not how to fix it alas.
Tell: red eyes with black pupils.
Note: Has a left leg made of an unknown silvery substance that is partly alive and can flow over the rest of her into armour (at the expense of one leg) if needed. Not cybernetic as much as organic technology from very far away. Her lower left arm is cybernetic and currently broken, hence wrapped in bandages. She also scars has on her torso and a secret cache of various other dimensional and alien weapons; the past few years haven’t been exactly without incident.
Of course, once certain parties find out her weapons cache includes strangelet nukes, hiding out back on earth won’t be without incident either.
Note: Colleen HAS met Malik. Or been on a george-dimension world populated only by Malik, at least.

Sonya Everheart (14, Omega)
Hair of the gods (3-4): her hair can change colour, grow and move of her own will, becoming as strong as steel if need be and extending up to 100’ easily, and 30’ to engulf an entire room, growing back whenever damaged. To wrap others up in it, she of course needs to brace herself in place and so forth but that’s not that difficult.
Student (2): She is one, though not a very good one.
Rose-coloured glasses (3): Sonya is capable of seeing the best side to *anything*. There’s always a silver lining or a cloud less dark in her world and making lemonade from lemons only makes sense.
Self-defence classes (2): S.e. Also not very good at it, mostly because of her seeing the good in other people even if it isn’t there.
My precious! My precious (2 to start with): Sonya is now fascinated by hair. She wants to touch yours, feel it, caresss it. If you have great hair, she’ll trust you. And want it for herself. Given the opportunity, she will scalp others for their hair and make it into a wig, and steals wigs from department stores, thrift stores, off the heads of old men in broad daylight. She can resist it on a high roll, but with visible effort and the desire for hair will eventually overwhelm her. Just think how much Mason has :)
Tell: Living hair, which is sometimes noticed if it grows/changes unconsciously. The bigger one is her mental issues above.
Future cliches: Hairdressing and possibly voddoo (which doesnn’t work, but hey)
Plot: She becomes an Omega after she gets home, so Mason’s parents get his frantic ‘OMG! Your sister!’ calls and such, with them unaware he isn’t human himself.

Animus Members [Group symbol: http://0.tqn.com/d/altreligion/1/0/C/Q/2/valknut.jpg]

Sinjin Smythe (20) (Omega, telepath) [Now a minion for Teresa]
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs43/i/2009/087/9/0/Draining_the_life_from_me__by_Em_j_akahana.jpg
Telepathy (4), TK on body (4). Mope (3), Refuse Limits (3)
TP: Short range, a block or two at best (3 to another telepath), but very strong within that range. Manipulate bodies, read minds. Fun!
TK: Generally only his own body. Shield, float etc. He can do other things, but they tire and he loses control of his body. He can use TK to seal his own wounds etc.. Using it on the world/others tires him out fast.
Mope: He is a good little sulker. Can posibly use this to drive someone to suicide.
Refuse: He hated his body betraying him and can use this to force himself to do things he shouldn’t be able to, briefly.
Note: Had ALS, all better now. Well, technically. In theory.
Tell: mismatched eyes glow bright when using power, floating/odd gait.

Kelly Fisher (?)
Telepathic Projection (2), Transmute (4) [works on objects, flesh....]
Looks to be a 4’ grey alien, sans missing mouth (was born female)
Ability: project thought-images with a touch, transmutation (can make crop circles :))
Tell: Obvious.
Kelly makes a living working for a pro-alien people and being a sighting. Really.
"Oh my gosh, was that you in 'Invaders from the Mushroom Planet'?"

Zoe Byrd (35)
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/086/c/1/troll_creature_by_vshen-d3cm394.jpg
It’s a monster! (4), Telepathic cloak (4), Trophy wife (3)
Monster: Strong, claws, fast, in that order.
Cloak; She projects a ‘no one is here’ field. It’s not invisibility (she shows up on cameras etc.)
Trophy: She was marrying her husband, Howard Roark (architect and bastard) and changed on wedding night. He leapt out the window in shock and died.

Patrick Vargus (19)
Possession (5), Host Skills (3), Escape Bonds (4)
Patrick ‘died’ 4 months ago in a car crash and has jumped from body to body ever since.

Judah Menzies (24)
Psychometry (4), Party Trick (4), Perpetual Student [open university] (3)
Psychometry: he can read the past and future of objects with a touch. With effort, this can include people (though reading their future is far harder).
Party Trick: Comes back from the dead, sometimes drops dead without warning. He believes he’s building up an immunity to death.
Tell: Looks like a zombie, grey-skinned and listless.

Possible members: Raymond Terril (Ltd.), Dillon Matus, Pope Blake?

Beth Witherspoon, 54, Omega (divorced)
Many tentacles (6).
Extra arms, mouth etc. at need that eat anything organic and make it taste good. She empties garbage bins for free to help the environment.

THE POLICE

The police station is large, modern building of steel and glass (the windows shatterproof and quite, quite thick) with a huge gate to prevent entrance and egress, a large wall around it and several police cars, poublic parking and even two SWAT vans parked around back.

Aina Saari (Fiinish): often the woman on duty at the front desk.
( You drive your car to the police HQ without incident. It's a solid modern building of glass and steel that tries, too hard, not to look like a prison despite barred windows and the police cars inside the yard. The police officer on duty at the desk is a woman, a little shorter than you, with short blond hair and a watchful air about her, as if she is debating what crimes you've committed just by entering the building. She looks to be about your age, with a nametag reading 'Saari')

Special Branch

This is the branch of the police of Freemont who deal with any and all weird shit. Ostensibly based out of room 418 (a hole) in the police office, their actual base of operations is a subbasement 300' below the surface, where they keep Omega criminals and so forth.

Wendy Tiede: Tough, no-nonsense, In Charge. She's not an alpha, omega, or psychic but she does have access to an alien gun of unknown origin that claims it can kill anything. Often via falling anvils, by choice. Despite her general attitude to the world, she prefers to talk down Omegas rather than do a 'hit first, ask questions later' mentality. Her predecessor did that, and they've yet to find the body of Milo Tinasky.

Breaker, the: An Omega in his 30s who answers to no other name. Immensely tough (3) he absorbs energy from blows and, if he lives, gets back up enough tougher than before though said toughness wears off after a few hours. His primary ability is the 'force bolt' (4), which is a beam of raw force he can send from any part of his body. It hits, and you don't get back up.
Tell: Positively decorated in scars, many of which look like they should have been fatal.

Fiona Baskin: (19)
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs35/f/2008/297/f/9/Smoke_Crows_by_MaGLIL.jpg
real: http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs49/f/2009/184/c/3/Marcel_the_Werecrow_by_astercrow.jpg (basically, has a crow’s head)
Fiona became an Omega following an encounter with Breaker. She ended up following him to HQ and demanded answers, ending up with a job instead. She is frequently overwhelmed since going from a McJob to being a police officer in the space of a few months is insane.
She has the ability to create and sustain illusions over the space of at least a city block, more if less senses are involved. When only using it on herself, her true form is hidden from everyone save Malik. She can also talk to crows and ravens, but she keeps that to herself. Mostly paired with Breaker to keep him less visible.
Tel: Head of a crow, hidden under illusions.

Bradley Johnson, aka The Force (27): A police officer who can change places with any normal human at will. They see a crime, think 'where is a police officer?" and they appear where he is, he appears where they are and arrests the perpetrator. Generally lasts 10 minutes.
Tell: Appareance changes from week to week

Ryan Mitchell (Omega, 32): Ryan used to be in the army but left because only the 'best' (aka alphas) advance. He's lucky (4) and can beat the odds (4), the latter letting him figure out if a plan can work.
Note: missing his left arm. His tell was that when he used his talent ,dive appeared about his left hand and danced.

The Twins: Twin brothers rescued from a mad scientist who look to be about 10. Rather grave, odd and mostly only Hurt speaks. They tend to communicate wordlessly with each other and feel each other's pain. Hurt does most of the eating for both of them as well. Neither sleeps.
Hurt: thinner, with electric blue eyes. Can disrupt people, things, places with a touch. Essentially, the entropic principle walking around.
Hole: chubby, black, empty holes for eyes. Can absorb people, energy ... things. A black hole, but with a nice personality.
Note: actually one being split into two by Experiments, known as the Prodigy Project. Hole is the 'real' one.

Jane Ceil (Alpha): Jane is a short, friendly mad scientist full of bustling energy and always on her meds (really!) who helps figure out how to deal with prisoners and so forth. The twins keep clear of her and she tries to study everyone and everything, often multiple times.

Kirk Watson: 45, civil worker. Tough, angry man whose daughter Cecilly died five years ago (age 13). Some thing stumbled into his house, covered in fur and bleeding acid and he grabbed the gun in the bedroom .... and doesn't use guns, or weapon, now. Divorced, bitter, driven to understand why this is happening and how the world doesn't know, he's become the city Weird liason. Recently became aware of SAFE, but knows no details.

Fixer, the (aka Bert Manning, 45): Alpha who fixes stuff via inventions, invents casts and so forth. Figures out how stuff works, and where it comes from and so forth. Uses low-tech stuff because 'the internet watches us'.

Vance MacDonell: Telepath, died 5 years ago in the illuminati war.

PRISONERS IN CELLS

Calculator, The: Aka Noel Mandelson III (62) (Omega)
An aged poet who gained the ability to add and subtract things from the world. memories, limbs, oxygen .... limited to a 10’ area around him, but still very dangerous.

Speedo, aka Joel Hammling (15) (Omega)
Superspeeding kid who robbed 5 banks before the police caught him, via Breaker hitting him mid-run. The hid fell, hard, and his broken leg healed too fast, limited him with a bum leg. In cells until they arrange for proper surgery, and presumably incarneration.

Robert Smith, (23) (Alpha)
Omega sniper who, on released from the marines (for excessive force) became a hit man for hire.

Matthew Midas (42) (Omega)
Technical prisoner shipped between various cities depending on budgets; everything he touches turns into gold.

Karnena Durvosky (20) (Alpha)
Russian weapons genius whose desire to make anti-matter weapons and time travel machines put her on piles of watch lists.

Quinn (21) (Omega)
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs9/i/2006/064/8/d/_Spirit_of_Ice__by_AkitoMaru.jpg
An asexual hermaphrodite (before becoming an Omega...) who can turn things into ice, make a sword of ice and wings. Forehead is marked by an O on it, though someone has added a half-moon tattoo around the branding. Casually turns people into ice, breasks said ice. Was branded by a human-’rights’ group Quinn subsequently exterminated.

Brett Joad
Speed (4) / TK (4), Copy Skill (3), Emo Boy (3)
Speed: Brett is FAST when he has to be.
TK: Se. Large scale, destructive. Can use TK OR speed, but not both at once. No shield aspect.
Copy skill: He can copy skills of any human he’s close to. Doesn’t work on alphas or omegas, which helps him detect them if needed.
Emo: He wiped out his town. You’d have Issues too. (Note: Dare I name the town Drimdage? :)
Background: Massacred a town when his TK manifested.

Villains

Ze Gang! Basically, a loose knit gang of villains who answered Randal's want ads in various papers advertising money, adventure and so forth. That they answered means they aren't the brightest bulbs, to some, but really it's more an issue of trust than anything else - and he isn't really conning them.

The gang will begin with small robberies, quick tests, send a few members in, rest as backup and so forth. They first test the waters of the police and SAFE, establish unofficial lines not to cross and become media darlings, like the famous bank robber sof the era.

Claudio Schlosser
The conscience of the group, by and large. A poet who yearns for poetry to be in the world again, to be a force again, to make people Feel and Love and Yearn. His method for this is living terrorism. Like tough love, but with using terror and confusion to draw people together and remind them that the only things that matter are each other.
The senses are so sweet (5): He can make people Sleep, Waken, fall into traces and such at will. He can affect entire buildings, though alphas are immune and Omegas can resist; he is, however, aware of those resisting and their locations.
The poets d.r.e.a.m. (3): He has a Vision, and he can share it with others in a blinding ecstasy of love. It functions a little like Temperance, if with darker purpose.
Tell (5): He mimics anyone, and has their fighting skill as well vs. them. Can be easily disoriented by multiple foes at once.
Tell: Everyone who looks at him sees themself instead. (Sort of an echo of the Vision power)

Kimberly Wimberly
Insanely, bitterly bored with the world. She's seen all it has it to offer (rich, travelled everywhere, lost all the money to lawyers after parents died) and becoming an Omega was almost a curse for her, one she resents and takes out on the world.
Drawn to danger (4): Kim is drawn to dangerous situations and people. If none exist, the universe seems obligated to make them happen, or give her the tools to make such danger herself. She can pretty much figure out how big a threat any Omega or person is at a glance, and has a party with said person.
Dance with my death (6)+3: She is poetry in motion, a ballerina of death who moves about, testing her own death and trying to feel anything, at all, ever again. She has a positively ludicrous level of regeneration, to the point that Damien could vanish her and she's be pretty much fine. It also prevents her from feeling pain and heals telepathic attempts to alter her mind.
Insane Strength (5): S.e.
Tell: Her skin is devoid of any blemish, body as perfect as a barbie dolls except for the desperate, sad eyes yearning for exquisite joy of death.

Randal Albritton
The power at the back of all they do. An alpha who makes use of magic, alien tech and pure brilliance, he plans out heists and co-ordinates the fragile egos he's gathered together as the first of many such experiments. To him, the measure of a man - Omega or otherwise - is how they break, and if they get stronger in the broken places.
BS Planning: He does plan, but his real talent is convincing everyone, including himself, that what happens IS what he planned. He is terribly good at this, probably to the point of multiple personalities. He has the natural charisma of cult leaders.
Self Control: Even for an alpha, his control over himself is legendary. He only loses his cool when he wants to, in order ot make a point, and things such as feelings, pain, and loss only affect him to the extent he allows them to, though he's very good at mimicking them to appear normal.
Tricks and Traps: He knows brawn beats brain. History teaches this in ugly, bitter lessons with each barbarian that slays a wizard. So he has access to alien weapons, tech, odd military-grade weapons and knows how to use them; he's physically nothing to look at, and takes perverse pride in considering his body merely a vessel for the genius that will outlive it.

Lexia Rubin [part of Prodigy Project]
The dark, ugly core of the group. If Claudio is a poet, she is anti-poetry, free verse, rap music. Not the 'do this because it freaks out parents' but 'kill them and you don't have to give a shit about that stuff. To her, the conscience is a noose people tie around their necks.
Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor (5): She needs pain to live, She can't eat food, drink anything: it all comes back up. But pain? Pain is her life's blood, her chocolate éclair, a night of passionate brutal sex like rutting beasts in the mud screaming their existence to the universe to make it know they are Real. To this extent, she can influence others to harm her, but they have to have the desire in them to hurt another at some level for it to work.
Hit me baby one more time (5): She needs to hurt others to get more, to find that delicious meal that keeps going and going. [If Kim could feel pain, she'd be the best food ever.] She knows how to hurt, and is very good at it, but never to kill: a dead person can't give anything at all.
Tell: her hands drip blood, like some fairytale monster, but only when she wants them to, eyes also glow blood red.

Caryn Whitlow
Caryn is a new age wicca loving girl who thinks that, because they gang doesn't kill, they're Good People.
Rose coloured glasses(4): She sees the best in her friends, and even a telepath can't change that.
Neither created not destroyed (5): If something is broken, she can make something new to replace it. The more irreplaceable it is, the more power she has to work with, and it need not have been a material thing. As the authorities tend to be destructive, she becomes terribly useful.
Free as a bird (3): karma/sin and all that just don't stick to her: charges don't get pressed, angels don't get angry, that kind of thing. She shares this with the rest of the gang to some unspecified degree.
Tell: Has a halo, and is very embarrassed about it.

Oscar Petrov
The best front man for a gang ever; his job is to give away a chunk of their earnings to poor people in oder to cement good will.
It’s bright in here (4): He can create light by dissolving parts of his body into light at will, which can be used to blind people, blast them or shield them. (He can’t do more than one at once, however.) The more of his body he dissolves, the stronger the power. Additionally, he bleeds light from cuts. As it can take time for dissolved parts to form again, he normally limits it to a thin layer of skin or a hand, for example. He tries to avoid any kind of fight simnce he has no idea how much of himself he can lose before, say, dying.
Sunlight and rainbows (3): He’s light made flesh; Oscar has no need to eat, sleep or anything like that though his body does need solar energy to keep him happy and peppy. He will die/starve if locked away from any light for more than a few days.
Boxing in younger days (3)
University Studies and Grants (3): As a student in his 30s, Oscar has learned how to maximize grants and loans and scholarships and is philosophically behind the goals of the gang. (Money for us, some for other people, as he sees it.)
Tell: Golden skin, hair and eyes.

NOTE: Samson has been hired by them to make sure Oscar is OK.

Weird West: some sample NPC ideas

2011-11-20T14:13:00.001-08:00

Weird West Sample NPCs

Douglas "Mad Dog" McRae

Doug used to be like every other bounty hunter until he lost a leg trying to catch the Mad Trapper of Arroyo Creek. Since bountying was all he knew, he took to training dogs to hunt for him and do all the dirty work, which they tend to be alarmingly good at. He might always get his man, but now Doug and his pack of wild dogs don't always bring that much back of them and them's he hunts have taken to calling them a wild hunt and swear blind that the dogs keep coming even when they should have dropped and died like nature intended.

Path: Adventurer
Level: 6
Fighting: 2 "Sometimes you're the trap, sometimes you're the bait."
Grit: 6 "I ain't about to quit now."
Magic: 2 "Raising a pup is just like raising a kid; you gotta make 'em tough."
Skill: 3 "All being older means is you get sharper than them new kids."

Stamina: 30
Defence: 3 (2 if someone takes advantage of wooden leg)

Weapons:
Shotgun: 1d8 (2-handed, d10 in close combat.) (2 shots)
Dogs: 1d6. (6-8 dogs)

Magic & Weird Stuff:
Dog Howler: 1. Dogs and wolves do what he wants, his pack an extension of his will.
" Get em, boys!": 1. His dogs attack any target he sets them on, with Fighting 3, Skill 1 and 8 Stamina. At 0 stamina the Fighting drops to 1, Skill to 0 and a 1d6 is rolled: if the result is 1-3, the dogs dies, if not it somehow keeps going.

Madame

Madame goes by no other name: it could be a title, her first name, her last. She doesn't much care what anyone thinks and is as famous for that as for the red dresses she always wears as for the harsh justice she meets out on those who harm her girls. Her brothel is a clean, welcoming place where the girls are nice and friendly and heaven help you if you try to take advantage of anyone. No one knows anything about her past, or how she came to own the brothel now called Madame's but she's tough as nails and handier with a gun than many men who live or die by it.

Path: Fighter
Level: 4

Fighting: 4 "You fight for what's yours or you find you have nothing to fight for."
Grit: 4 "Wits are as important as any gun."
Magic: 0 "A woman doesn't need magic to get any man."
Skill: 3 "There's no luck in gambling that that a little skill won't help along."

Stamina: 23
Defence: 3

Weapons:
Handgun: 1d8 (6 shots)

Joerie The Amazing!

A travelling magician currently devoid of assistance (and his bow for cutting people in half, which explains the lack of an assistant), Joerie is never without his coach, or at least his coat filled with wondrous objects and amazements sure to wow the whole family. Or at least the kids: he's not all that picky and getting a good job is hard to come by these days.

Path: Gifted
Level: 4

Fighting: 2 "Sometimes even a coward can't always run away."
Grit: 3 "Except when he can."
Magic: 1 "Desperation is the mother of invention."
Skill: 5 "Now you see it, now you don't!"

Stamina: 20
Defence: 5

Weapons:
Slingshot: d2 (non-lethal weapon)

Magic & Weird Stuff:
Illusions: 1. Sometimes his tricks are so good they fool anyone and he doesn't even use his trick bag! He is is deep denial about this. Difficult Task.

AC: GM Notes

2011-11-19T23:00:00.001-08:00

The Shadowland

It's sociologically interesting, though scary, that you can be inside an evil system and be somehow unaware of it.
- Actor Anthony Sher on growing up in apartheid-South Africa, interviewed by John Walsh, The Independent, 1 May, 2000

For much of its history, this world functioned much like ours, with humans and Omegas existing, the latter often considered gods for much of that history, recorded or otherwise. Unlike Earth-PC, it had no Illuminati or alphas develop and many Omega regimes in areas destroyed others as they were born, whenever they could. (Greece, with the 'titans' replaced by the 'olympians', served as a warning about allowing other factions of Omegas into ones own area.) History blundered on, until the Romanov's of Russia.

Russia wasn't much in 1000 CE but the family made a name for themselves swiftly and may have been responsible for the empire before them (the Ruriks) about whom history records little. By 1600, the Romanov's had become a family of shadow people and shortly after claimed Russia as their own, the family expanding in both power and influence down the centuries, deftly avoiding the traps of the renaissance and enlightenment as tricks/memes by other Omegas. Thanks to their influence in trade and resources, the industrial revolution was not as forceful as it might have been, but to forestall the influence of other nations, the Romanov's did .... something.

A ritual or act of will, or science, or something else altogether than murdered the sun and put the world in perpetual twilight at the best of times. (This was about 1905.) Freed from the sun harming them, they spread their borders and moved outward into the world, trigger world war one against them. Germany led the war, which lasted four years and crippled the economy of the world, leading to stalemate; Russia had Germany for a time as spoils, but lost it due to civil uprisings and the Great Depression that followed. An attempted coup of the Romanov's by a group known as Bolshevik's (aka Omegas) failed near the end of the war.

(Some say, in dark corners of the world, that the house of Rurik existed to ensure the sun did, and was a house of light, and that the Romanov's murdered the last of that line to achieve their effect on the sun but no one knows. It is also possible that the Einstein of this world helped them, given the time line but for the most part it doesn't matter that much.)

Russia's crippling sanctions on Europe paved the way for the rhetoric of Churchill and Hitler that led to world war two in the 1940s. The USA reluctantly joined late, against the Russian ally of Japan, but it did not matter, Despite the attempted magic of the German regime and the combined will of the Omegas on the side of the Allies, the Axis Mundi that was the house of Romanov won, shattering Europe and the world.

In the 60 years that have followed, the house of Romanov has grown from strength to strength, destroying pogroms (mobs of humans, aka cattle) and Bolshevik's (aka omegas), the end of war war two seeing the Great Cleanse that wiped most magicians from the world, and the few telepaths as well.

Where things are at: The world is largely under the rule of the Romanov's at present. Obey, and things are fine, you're kept in your communes and do world they need 'solids' for, which mostly involves gladiator sports and building palaces, because even shadow people like a good palace to live in. Disobey, and they destroy you utterly along with your family, friends and whatever town you come from.

The discovery of other worlds in the 1970s had led to an increase in Romanov population in preparation for conquering other worlds, though the influence of suns and such has limited their plans thus far. In the USA, a few enclaves of humans exist who believe themselves hidden, with 1950s era technology [minus computers and nukes] who allow the truly dissatisfied a place to hide and the Romanov's get to watch them curiously and see what happens in those zoos. Travel is done via zeppelin through the shadow-cities of the ruling family and australia doesn’t exist in this world, having been destroyed to remove it’s Hurt and Hole analogues from existence.

The world can be considered an absolute monarchy at top, communism (we all live like shit) at the bottom with the various culls and slaughters of Omegas and the like echoes of nazi fascism. For all intents, they have destroyed the other Omegas of the world and the Romanov's rule supreme. Glory to the Shadowland.

The Romanovs: As living shadows, they can hide in shadows, listen to thoughts/conversations and communicate with each other via shadow-speak. As well, some (or all) can make dimensional doorways while making their bodies solid, though it is very exhausting. Since they can attack via shadows, and free/kill with unearthly cold, they are rather hard to stop or defeat. Lastly, some can use the shadow dimension for magic of one kind or another.

All the shadow people are sexless at 'birth'. Each shadow person can make progeny when old/strong enough but it costs less energy if two make it together. So the royal line itself has actual heirs with a mother and father, as members of the House can choose a sex with age and service to the Crown, but most other members have just one parent and often never get to have a sex [which is really a self-chosen title], which is largely a status thing. In other words, reproduction via a pair costs each less energy and is important since if you are too weak, someone else might come for your position or status.

(They do reproduce often, for numbers are necessary for an invasion. After the age of 10, each produces 1 child every 1-2 years and it is not as if they die of old age...) It has been noted that they have coquered at least six other worlds and consider the dimension Nattie used as a shadow-dimension and, therefore, theirs. The full extent of their power over it remains unknown, but they have managed to make the sun of their own world work via cold fusion and the like and can be considered very, very dangerous as a whole: centuries of breeding and being The Power of a world do that to do you.

Misha: A very young member of a cadet line of the family, Misha dragged its older sibling (Alexis) through the shadow dimension largely by accident. Alexis was lost on another world, Misha ended up here. Due to PC and NPC accidents, the Shadowland is now aware of this world but wasn't prepared to invade so deputized Misha to 'prepare the world for invasion' rather than lose face. And for amusement.
To Misha, anyone with telepathy is a potential shadow power and Misha can, in theory, be 'adopted' by them and thus gain parents, AND a sex, and status, but this is more a desire than current goal. Game-wise, Misha is an interesting example of a kid raised in a terrible and evil regime who is entirely oblivious to how bad it is.

FYI, the overall plan for the Shadowland involved Misha (Or Alexis) learning about alphas, and since the alphas are nature's response to the Illuminati, then hunmanity on their world would evolve humans imune to shadows and the cold. the logical plan is to murder the rest of humanity to prevent that problem from occuring :P

Note: Misha has revealed that shadow-people are taught to believe in reincarnation: everyone comes back, so life and death don’t truly matter. You lose this body, yes, but you get another. A Shadow-body is the best kind, because they’re so tough and good and can last a long time. (Which suggests that the shadow people have ways to retard or limit the aging process,) This is, thematically, hinduism (without the ‘human life = best’ bias) used as a justification for murder. Being a shadow-person is obviously best since solids die so very easily.

Flaws: The death of others of their kind doesn’t truly anger them (since a shadow-being is the best possibly incarnation, any shadow-being that died after finishing a Duty returns as one, or so they believe). Obviously, younger ones (esp. those who are kin) tend to be more inclined to friendship.

Games!

2011-11-13T13:43:00.001-08:00

The itch to run something stirs in the ether. With caveats, because they are pretty:

Player interest at the moment leaned towards a western. (The Weird West rules look simple and decent (and hey, only $1). Player ideas/input can be tossed up on piratepad (ask me for the link) and we'll go from there.

The game in question will run 1-2 times a week, ideally on set nights. Unlike other games of yore, this one is entirely about making fun things and having run rather than having deeper meanings and various Ethical Issues(tm) to be part of the setting, unless players want/include 'em.

If the game idea doesn't take off -- and it is just at the idea/hashing about stage right now -- can always run other stuff as long as it's a) not a one player game and b) requires little or no research or setting design.

And we're back....

2011-10-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

Or at least somewhat. Trip was awesome, next month is the insanity of nanowrimo. As per agreement with Ken -- and personal choice -- I'm just doing the one novel this month, but since I don't have vacation time to use on nano as I did in previous years it is liable to consume the month. Which means a whole 3 months without games by me, which is some kind of record I think.

Things should be back to normal by December, however. Aurora Consurgens can continue. If players would rather do something else, that can be brainstormed during november and such. For personal reasons, I no longer want to do one-player games so it'd need to be something else.

With dice, of course.

up, up and away...

2011-09-18T19:15:00.002-07:00

Heading off Tuesday to Italy for one month. YAY! Spark'll be down for that time, neither nick should be lost (esper has a vacation feature) and I should be back on the 20th or so. At which point I'll likely begin working on nanowrimo stuff, which will suck up November as always. Games should resume in December, however.

Announcement

2011-08-26T13:26:00.001-07:00

The following will not surprise too many people, I think.

Due to preparation for upcoming trip (end of Sept. to end of Oct.) and nanowrimo after it, as well as a desire to devote more time to writing, I will not be running games until December at the earliest. I have been too busy of late to devote enough time or energy to AC and running half-assed sessions is a disservice to the game and the players.

Apologies to all concerned.

And AC is baaaack!

2011-07-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

After the two-week hiatus, AC is up and running again. It's a nice, shiny Monday morning and telepaths are investigating odd schools while drug dealers prepare to try and move operations and the world carries on as 'normal'. The extent to which the world can remain like that is, of course, up for debate, even with new telepathic conspiracies in the making.*

FYI: The GM is now living in the same building as his brothers, so there may be odd pauses and such (as Chaos learned last night) when people insist on coming over to visit and such without due warning or filling out the proper risk assessment forms beforehand.

* That the telepathic conspiracy is having problems arranging for a simple MRI is, probably, just a giant double bluff on their part, unless it is a triple bluff.

BE & SM: What happens when one crosses D&D with BESM.

2011-07-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

For the BESM D&D Game, some rules & assumptions:

RULES:

1) Shock Value will be used (see p. 158 in BESM book for details). Basically, you get hurt and you have a good chance of being out of it from the wound. Combat Techniques and/or a high soul can alleviate this, ditto with things like regeneration.
2) Critical Damage is being used. 12s will count as criticals in the sense of Something Awesome happens, 2s as a massive screw up.
3) If your PC ends up with attacks and abilities that require the use of the expanded rules chapter to function, make sure to remind me of that and them as needed.
4) I expect most PCs will make use of Restrictions and Defects. I am not setting a hard and fast limit on either. I do expect players to keep tracks of the concentration, energy cost and such of abilities themselves.

ASSUMPTIONS:
1) Most every PC will have increased shock value and/or regeneration. Humans, dwarves and such do not have the latter save from magical stuff and/or high 'levels'.
2) Mind shield and resistance can be had by anyone, human or monster, but barring run ins with magicians, clerics or other monsters shouldn't apply too often.

SETTING:
TShe game setting is intended to be the usual 'monsters come in from the cold' kind of story. The backstory IS grim, but probably not first-hand knowledge to the PCs and mostgly just stories told by old people of another era, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing at all in this era. Your PC concepts can be as serious or absurd as you wish, but the tone and style of the game will pretty much depend on what everyone makes and does.

Besm D&D game idea

2011-07-06T07:23:00.001-07:00

History

For much of its history, this was a D&D world like any other, a smorgasboard of ideas and concepts jumbled together. It is said that the world did make more 'sense', long ago, but there was a war involving dragons and elves that has long since passed into myth, even among dragons. The elves, who live longer, do not speak of it, but for a long, long time -- and even now, to an extent -- the elves and their kin are somewhat feared because racial memory runs deep. It was enough for the elves to be left alone for some time, even when the human kingdom of Osgiliath began to expand and the wizards and warriors devised new methods of making weapons that changed the face of the world.

(OOC: Basically think of an industrial revolution in terms of magic: magical devices are made on assembly lines, regular weapons as well and so forth. After two generations the alliance with the dwarves was struck and 7 generations ago both races ceased selling weapon and metals to anyone else.)

Within 10 measly human generations the entire face of the world has been changed. In the last three the monsters and other races have been domesticated, extinguished or driven into hiding in various dark corners of the world still inaccessible to the armies of man. That these grow fewer with each passing year goes without saying, and yet is still being said. (Can you tell I am writing this on little sleep? I can.)

6 generations, the elven empire in the western continent fell to the humans, as much due to their skill as to overconfidence and decadence of the elves. The humans made an exact replica of Osgiliath there stone by stone and razed the elven city and burned down the fabled trees and forests of the elves. Most of the elves died then, by their own hands. The few who remain are jesters in human courts, or hidden in the wilds of the world, and they have such long, long memories ...

This is not to say the world is entirely human: the dark wood and its like still exist, scattered but real, and the remnants of the mighty orcish armies that once terrified the world still remain in various steppes and plains. Only without weapons the orcs have descended into barbarism and are truly only a threat to each other in this new age. And the dwarves, of course, have the underworld to themselves: and how long this alliance with the humans last is the only deep fracture in the new world they have made.

Summary (as humans count generations, so about 30 years apart*)
10 generations ago: humans Industrialize, begin the march on the world. Osgiliath begins taking over neighbouring kingdoms.
8: Dwarf/human alliance. Metals in exchange for technology.
7: trade of weapons and metals by both races with other ones ends entirely. Arming ones enemies is, after all, unwise. War is essentially declared.
6: the elven kingdom falls, and many monsters flee into hiding, expecting a retaliation from the elves (or their allies) that never comes.
5-4: the mighty orchish armies fall apart without a steady supply of weapons.
3: the monsters have fled into various woods and dark places.
Now: most of the monsters have passed into human myth and legend, which is good for the monsters to a large extent. Only the rangers are liable to recall the precise truth about monsters.

(For humans, living over 60 years is rare, though more common now without monsters. This basically assumes that the entire timeline is about 500 years old, at best.)

* Humans live this long thanks to clerical healing.

Geography
The eastern continent: Home of the empires of man, initially. Now almost entirely settled and broken.
Western: original home of the elves, now mostly conquered; a light in the world gone out.
Northern: Barbarians and ice; mostly conquered by the dwarves more than humans, even above the surface. In exchange, much of the underworld beneath the two cities of Osgiliath are in human hands.
Southern: From whence came the orcs. This is the location of the dark wood and the point at which the campaign begins.

Setting Note

If you want to add stuff in the history about your race and stories about it, let me know and I'll add them to the file.

Campaign

While at first blush things might seem somehow hopeless, much of the human empire is conquered human kingdoms who don't always sit easily under the yoke of Osgiliath. While the empire has been frankly amazing in the arts of war, they have yet to produce civil leaders of equal caliber so local laws and customs can sometimes be odd and exploited by the PCs. As well, your status as 'mythical' begins can give you an edge, to say nothing of pushing human/dwarf relations hard, finding out what kind of plan the elves might have, re-arming the orcs or finding out what the wizards want etc.

The PCs

Given BESM and the anime genre, the PCs are basically made of awesome compared to most of the humans they'll run into. Oh, some have magic, and prayers, and weapons and spells, but the PCs have supernatural abilities beyond anything those small and jealous humans can manage and that shall be both your glory and your doom.

besm D&D Game: basics

2011-07-03T10:25:00.003-07:00

Premise: Think lolad, except as monsters set in a D&Desque fantasy setting.

Themes: Survival, The Quest(tm, patent pending), the reservation system

System: BESM 3, 250 points. This game will use the heroic level benchmarks except skills are not necessary: only get what fits the character, if any.

Characters: Build something from the monsters manual in D&D, or even another source entirely. Players are encouraged to make up as detailed a culture as they want to make their 'monsters' as civilized as they wish. (Think of how the old world viewed the new for human attitudes regarding the Pcs.)

Setting: Your Ye Olde Fantasy Worlde. The world has never been named – though the humans are working on that – and used to be pretty generic and normal until the humans perfected hot air balloons and zeppellins and began to travel into lands they couldn't reach. The missionaries of the three-faced God and Goddess plunged into the wilds of the world and innovation after innovation strengthened the human nations until they had continent-wide empires stretching from sea to shining sea. In the past two hundred years the humans have advanced (and bred) ferociously to engulf other lands and progress has never seemed so sweet a mistress.

In their fabled towers, the mighty and awful wizards work magics that keep the empires growing, gathering apprentices to make fabled magical items a step at a time, saving time and energy and equipping the armies of man with weapons to slay even the greatest of monsters. Of these wizards, the most famous are Morinehtar (the darkness-slayer) who destroyed the last of the Great Wyrms with a single word of power and Romestamo the earth-helper, who forged the alliances with the dwarves that benefited both mighty races and cleansed the underworld of many old monsters.

And as above, so below for the dwarves have supplied metals and wondrous smithing to the humans in exchange for the fabled 'industry' of the magicians and applied that to making their own marvels; armed with human magics and their own weapons, they have conquered the lands under the earth as they own. Each mighty empire leaves the other alone, content for now to secure their own dominions.

Which brings up to the Dark Wood that winds through the Everglass Mountains. These were mined dry by the dwarven ancestors centuries past and were refuge for the last of the gnomes before the dwarves destroyed them all. Now they are one of the few blank spots on the map, a place of monsters and the wild that the armies and desires of man have yet to conquer. It is your home, for however long it lasts.

Notes on races:
Elves serve the humans, acting as messengers and court jesters and wonders as the pygmies on earth did for the courts of Europe. There are few of them left, and most believe they can wait out these empires and times and the world will again be theirs. (The extermination of the dark elves under the earth does not bother them, as those were not real elves.)
Gnomes: Extinct, thanks to the dwarves.
Halflings; Someone has to work the mines the humans have, after all. Most are considered just short humans and not a separate race at all.
Half-orc/whatevers: Very rare, all considered monsters.

Notes on classes:
Barbarians: Some exist, though the northern wastes are not very empty any longer. Most are considered scum by the empires and end up in the Dark Wood and places like it to test themselves against the last remnants of the world of their father's stories and the legends of their father's father's, despite knowing their may be none left for them to pass those stories onto. This does not stop them from wishing to hunt and destroy monsters, naturally.
Bards: Next? Seriously they're bards.
Clerics: The followers of the God and Goddess have spread far and wide. While they don't have political power in most lands, they have much popular support and gather many followers to try and 'cure' the monsters and make them human again, or yoke them to the will of humanity like they did the horses, wemics, centaurs and griffins. Unlike other classes, they would rather find a use for monsters than destroy them.
Druids: The druids are the only humans on the side of monsters, if at all, as much as they are on the side of the woods themselves. (Though the woods would be safer and nicer without all those monsters in them.) They tend to be rare and distrusted by all sides but are generally the only humans who will not attack monsters on sight.
Fighters: S.e. Knights are basically fighters in magical armour whose goal is to destroy monsters, and they are very, very good at it.
Monks: Warriors who often protect the clerics, monks are capable of taking down monsters without weapons at all and rely on the strength of the gods and the magic of their prayer to defend themselves. Some of them are not, always, horrible, and they tend to view the world differently from the clerics but are wise enough to keep their views to themselves.
Rangers: Big game hunters. They are often the most dangerous foe of the monster in the woods since they have studied the tracks, habitat and such of monsters.
Rogues: No one trust them. Obviously.
Sorcerer: Those who have made deals with monsters (and worse things) for power. They can be human or monster but serve masters and forced beyond the ken of others. Wizards tend to kill them on sight if given the chance, if only to tidy up the world a little bit.
Wizards: Mighty and scary magicians, often enough, who are the backbone of the human empires. They tend not to interfere directly in the empire and seek other things than mere temporal power.

Monsters:
The ones that exist will depend on the PCs and characters they make.

Aurora Consurgens: Campaign Nature

2011-06-26T18:56:00.002-07:00

An adventure is an inconvenience properly considered
- Chesterton

Based upon chats with players on the nature of the game, the following is put forth:

1) This is a game with multiple players often busy at different times and able to play between 2-4 times a week for the most part.
2) The more players active in one channel, the more attention the GM gives it. (This is simply how things work out, for obvious reasons.)
3) Plots exist as connection points between multiple characters (PC and NPC) with combinations thereof eliciting varying results, which in turn get modified by Sparkie anyway. In general, one can assume that PCs are going to be more creative than NPCs.
4) Because of 3, problems can arise that cannot be solved by any one PC or NPC; this is pretty much the nature of games, really. PCs are fallible, and screw up, and are not Mary Sues to be able to solve any problem they make alone. (Also, more PCs involved in a situation means there are other people to blame if things go wrong. Which Sparkie assures me they will.)

As such, one can manage to survive just fine without friends or allies, but with them one can do a lot more. And, if played right, get all the rep. from the situation for yourself, or definitely gain in reputation from being involved in that at all. In other words, PCs need to be proactive in finding allies and friends -- as well as enemies, because one is judged on the caliber of enemy you have as much as anything else.

What this means for sessions is that it behooves players to link up and work together when as as they can; the various groups (the police, SAFE, R2-45, Disco) exist partially to support this. (Hell, it is pretty much the meta-game reason for safe: it exists to make the world a better place, and saying one doesn't want to pretty much defeats the purpose Of being a PC, and a hero of ones own story. Which isn't to say it's the only option; Teresa's a police officer, Temp is also part of Barry's group. Etc.) So, if players are on at the same time and in roughly the same time frame, finding reasons to meet and work together works better for their characters own goals and the game as a whole.

If they aren't, or the PC is busy on a specific plot deal, that's always fine and sometimes to be expected. But given the nature of the game, there are very few plots that will only affect one PC (for example, Mason's school has drawn in SAFE, the police, etc. as a mystery to be solved) and as such are seldom problems one PC can solve alone*. Which doesn't mean they can't try, but just because each PC has a hammer does not mean they are necessarily the right tool for the job, or to nail down a specific nail.

There is no shame in asking for help, as difficult as it might be for PCs to do that, to PCs or NPCs. And yes, this means players will need to chat during (and between) sessions and figure stuff out for how to connect together and share info. and so forth, but that's part of the fun too. If need be, we'll end up trying to set up a couple of specific set nights and have the rest be more loose, but I'd rather avoid that as much as we can at present.

* Or they can take a power-boosting drug! It's safe! Honest!

Aurora Consurgens: Alphas

2011-06-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

On The Best and Brightest

Kim Li, for the MilInt Report.

Alphas are not something spoken of often in the world: that they exist is accepted in the secret worlds and societies that thrive under the common world, but few -- if any -- in depth studies exist on them, often because those who are in charge of institutions and have no desire to inquire too deeply into their own naturally. However, this deficiency is one that should be rectified in the coming years for Omegas coming to light is also guaranteed to expose alphas, a harsh glare that will compass the following anecdotal data:

1) Alphas account for at least 60% of the top .01% that control ov er 80% of the world's wealth; among this elite, the count less tha 30% of charitable donations. This should not be seen as a slight, but practical realization of the inherent problems of wealth distribution.
2)

AC: Sex and Eugenics

2011-06-17T10:01:00.001-07:00

By Dr. Kim Li, special to Sexthulhu Magazine

Being an examination of the Old World and Omegas, with specific reference to the Guild

The history of Omegas in Europe is the history of a vast eugenics experiment. An omega may be defined as two things: an ability and a mutation, and the history of omega eugenics is often attempts to acquire abilities without mutations, but The Guild is unique in sometimes seeking to go the other way.

The history of it is murky at best, often being that of isolated and/or wealthy families who end up with an Omega among them who has a useful talent. The omega then bears of or produces as many offspring as possible, all of whom are kept close to their parent, shown the power and essentially told they will develop it as well. In a family of fliers, this leads to kids being tossed off of rooftops until they fly and so forth. Given the factor of proximity in creating omegas, this would prove a fascinating experiment in the willed nature of omega abilities if data existed about said families. However, propaganda and lies among Guild members makes this difficult to determine.

Despite this, general evidence seems to indicate that at least four generations of such breeding are necessary to achieve adequate result, which is an Omega ability inherited by the family and often weaker than that of other omegas. Curiously, the they breed for mutation rather than ability (for example, strength or toughness) the resulting mutation tends to be stronger but with more physical effects in the long run, which can lead to infertility of one kind or another.

Omega Fertility

Omega fertility is a complicated issue. Some omegas have so little control over their ability as to be virtually unable to engage in sexual acts (for example, a pyro on point of orgasm would burn a room). Or, for example, an Omega whose body produces acid could be unable to bear or produce a child. As well and some mutations render omegas unable to reproduce, such as phasing or invulnerability. Performance anxiety is an obvious problem if you sweat muccus or have a body even your own mother would not love, which further complicates matters. On the whole, however, omegas remain human enough to be able to reproduce with humans and also each other.

Assuming they are compilable, the children of two omegas do tend to end up being born with physical mutations, and conservatively over half the pregnancies do not make it to term. On the flip side, having both parents as omegas means the child is almost 100% likely to become one though not necessarily more powerful than any other.

Aurora Consurgens: Session 70 and plots

2011-06-15T07:57:00.001-07:00

So, last session was #69 (and at least included a kiss between PCs to commemorate that). 70 sessions into the game, here are the plots as follows. A lot of this can be considered OOC knowledge.

Doctor D: Drugs to boost alphas and omegas that can sometimes kill them. The PCs have figured out that the drug comes from two people thus far; Gideon Barrie, an omega connected to the trinity nuclear test and Sam Smith, who was injected with Hurt's power and thus linked to the Prodigy Project. One of the labs is currently being spied on and the PCs are quite likely going to be able to kick the Doctor D people from the city, if nothing else, in the short term. Their overall motive in selling cheap drugs that can cause Incidents remains unknown.

Hades: A very powerful omega who can turn alphas into omegas. His blood can also weaken the abilities of weaker omegas; he has left the city, but does have his people (Leo and Rakasha) harassing the Doctor D people for reasons of his own. He seems motivated by causing more evil in the world, simple as that.

The Prodigy Project: A project begun in the 60s intended to making Omegas as weapons that would be indistinguishable from humans and/or have specific abilities the Project needed [Griffin is the only surviving result of that generation]. The second generation included Kami, Lexia, Meghan and Colleen along with the twins (Hurt and Hole). ~15 years ago it became illegal to experiment on omegas as the Project did, so it shut down and discarded the various results, perhaps sending the most promising to other countries where Dynamic Solutions Inc wouldn't have to deal with pesky regulations. The twins were were sent to an underground lab in the city and experimented on for a further 5 years until the police found out about it, got them out and have them as quasi-officers now.

Omega Rights: An ongoing battle to get proper rights for omegas. Barry, who apparently was damaged clashing with the Illuminati 5 years ago, is heavily involved in this in terms of wishing to inspire others but doesn't take too much of a hands-on approach barring his disastrous attempt to take Alan shopping in the mall. He desires for humans to be the best they can and seems baffled that so many have no desire to be that way.

The Red King: an old enemy of Barry's, who apparently died ~800 years ago but didn't die and has various cults around the world trying to bring him/her/it back. It -- or something like it -- tried to take over the superflow recently but the events with the shadow world and portals disrupted it.

The Eye: A telepathic google that exists in the 'superflow' that is the human unconsciousness. Was heavily damaged during the Illuminati war but at its peak was capable of allowing the illuminati to alter the memories of every human on earth at once.

The Illuminati: A telepathic conspiracy that is millenia -old, the Illuminati existed to hide the existence of omegas (whom they took to be angels and demons) from the world but the rise of scientific thought and infighting slowly damaged it and 5 years ago it seemingly fell apart entirely as those who wanted to rule the world fought those who did not; the surviving members (including Artie) seem content with trying to keep Omegas largely hidden as best they can.

Sutherland University: Mason's alma mater, this is a small arts university whose music whose art and music history teacher (Ignatius Hanrahan) is studying the creativity of the student body and had an arsenal of weapons in his office that included rocket launchers. The headmaster (one Arnold Lien) has apparently travelled to a lot of small art schools and the rates of suicide (and suicide by cop) after he leaves are high. Here, he is connected to a student (and incubus) named Craig and the school is rather mellow and pleasant and entirely devoid of worry over omegas or anger over other things.

Shadow-World The shadow-people have been connected to this world via the actions of Nattie and Kami and one of their own (Misha) apparently came here by accident and is spearheading the invasion. By trying to get windows and cars to hate each other. They used ot be human on their world and became pure shadows, taking over other worlds simply because they can and being full of amusement and arrogance, seeing this world as nothing important at all. But it has defied them ....

PCs chatting to family: Nattie has plans (before she died in the shadow world etc.) to get PCs and NPCs to reveal themselves to their families as part of SAFE helping others without seeming hypocritical about it. As she has been shaken up by the Shadowland experience, this is on hold for the moment though Malik and Temperance are both aware of the plans.

R2-45; The government agency that 'tags' Omegas for study; all the pcs have shut their tags off via one means or another, and this is likely not going to sit well, long term.

The band:Kami, Mason, Tommy, Jerry and Emily are in a band together! Damien is working as their roadie, Malik is becoming a fan ans Jerry wants the band to succeed. A nice, normal plot compared to other things.

GM note: Both the Doctor D and Sutherland University plot are expected to wrap up soonish, given the nature of the PCs in ferreting out information. Other plots have been seeded and new ones exist thanks to the existence of PCs in a world :) The goal for the game is to have several ongoing plots (which may or may not be related) tying in more than one PC so there is no overarching 'the game is over' plot for this game, but also so it can end when and if people want without too many loose ends left dangling.

Aurora Consurgens: hyding

2011-06-07T07:22:00.002-07:00

On The Phenomenon of 'Hyde' among Omegas

Dr. Kim Li, special to the Fortean Times

Hyding, as it is known in the rarefied semi-academical world of Omega studies, refers to Omegas whose nature is often hidden from themselves as well as others. In some cases this is a defense mechanism to hide the Omegas nature or protect them from harm, in which case they seldom give away their nature in their 'normal' form. This tends to apply to Omegas whose humanoid 'other' appearance tends to resemble mythical monsters, so the extent to which the change is a psychic break in the mind over what said appearance seems to suggest is a large open question.

Waking up one day with a face only a drunk mother could love and tentacles for legs is, undoubtedly, hard to deal with. Waking up covered in fur and looking like a B-movie werewolf is an entirely differently class of strange and in its own way harder to deal with since the actual resemblance to myths tends to be superficial at best. (For example, no Omega whose appearance could be equated to a werewolf has been bothered by silver or the moon unless rigorously conditioned to believe they should be harmed by such things.) This also applies to Omegas who look like classical gods, demons, angels and so forth: at some level the person isn't able to cope with that and creates a new personality that is the Omega, or at least holds certain aspects of it. That this can be dangerous goes without saying.

The other side are Omegas whose nature is at odds with their personality, or at least their understanding of it. Combative abilities for a pacifist, for example, fit in with this problem. In these cases, the Omegas seem to split their abilities between their normal self and the Other, and most seem to be easily found out as Omegas regardless of appearance in their normal 'self' form. This suggests that a fear of one's own potential is impliclict in this ind of Omega, and hence abilities that are generally destructive or damaging by nature.

Whether the Omega will recall the change -- or what they do when changed -- is likely dependant on psychological factors, which can be mitgated by showing the Omega video of them changing, for example, or pictures of the changed form.

(will finish later)

Summer is the Season for War

2011-06-05T00:21:00.002-07:00

I'm a little weary of the random four-hour sagas lately; the individual PC adventures, while interesting, wears thin on everyone involved I'm sure. They're fun, don't get me wrong, but enough of anything can fatigue even the most subtle of tastes. Our games have taken the scheduling and complexity of most marriage-based bedding.

To that end, I'm thinking about touching something we haven't in a long time. A good old-fashioned D&D war game. The premise, style, and so forth is simple: go forth, kill things, get treasure and experience. Intriguing plots, silly themes, and NPC casts warranting expositions are all things I want to shelf for this run, if it runs. Alcar probably won't like it at all, but some of you others might.

Combat will be grid-based and different from the typical setup in that I won't make it as one-person-at-a-time. That is because people are kind of slow, and I will not run more than two sessions of this thing if I have to sit through a 45-minute kobold beatdown.

Our availabilities are all still somewhat odd. The tried and true method of everyone sitting down for an hour or two would be good, but I honestly am hesitant to commit to anything. I prefer more asynchronous methods these days unless we can all hit up a regular schedule, and to that end, I'm not sure what the best way to do this would be. I don't like regular schedules, but I like having everyone around the same table. I don't know how to get the egg without the chicken!

If there's interest, toss me a line sometime. Not here, though. I hardly ever check here.

Aurora Consurgens: NPC Notes

2011-05-29T17:57:00.002-07:00

NPC NOTES (For Players)

(Very minor characters, like Mac and crew or Beau, aren’t included in this. Listing is by first name.)

Aaron Dupree: Omega who created the Incident via clones of himself and ODing on drugs.
Andrea: Sullivan’s r2-45 boss, who makes shields and is apparently a stuffed bear. The reasons behind this have not been released, but Sullivan is scared of her.
Archie Rocco: The Best Roommate Ever. He migh be a bit slow on the uptake and lose himself in the muse, but nothing seems to faze him at all for long, including becoming an Omega.
Arnold Lien: Headmaster of Sutherland University.
Artie Fleetwood: Illuminati member, telepath currently containing the Eye inside him. Not having a fun time at all.
Alan Moore: An omega who smells horribly and makes flowers. Currently setting up a flower shop and often used to solve problems by PCs and NPCs. Has only tried to kill himself three times thus far.
Allison: Tempie’s friend, currently trying to deal with ‘weird stuff is real’ as best she can and re-thinking her ideas of how the world works.

Barry: Apparently Old. Also terrible and scary to some NPCs; little is known about him save he was damaged in the mind five years ago and is pro-Omega rights, believing if people are the best humanity can be then everything will work out just fine.
Basil Manning: Omega with fire powers and quills who is trying to adapt to his new status, helped by friends and his parents.
Beckett Holmes: Omega with stone skin and shields; currently working with S.A.F.E but very, very keen to stop the people whose drugs killed his brother.
Breaker: Special Branch police officer who blasts stuff; has scars that Fiona covers.
Bradley Johnson: Omega police officer who often deals with warming people to keep careful; seems able to switch places with civilians who spot a crime.
Becka: Alpha and friend to Tempie, who has shown her real self to them and been rebuffed for the sheer sociopathic overtones common enough to alphas. To what extent it was her doing devil’s advocate is thus far unknown.
Bert Manning: Alpha mad scientist working with the police; often builds steampunk style tech.
Blake Brensen: An alpha-omega on the run who apparently creates memes and is believed to be the pope.

Calrion de Flores: Omega acrobat who is new to the city and feeling his way about it; has yet to encounter Alan, thankfully.
Chester Fields: Teresa’s best friend.
Chris: Skinhead who joined the Circle of Humanity support group in the belief it would be like concentration camps. Has an elderly couple (Bruce and Wanda) agreeing with him.
Claire: Former Black Circle member, murdered after her attempt to trick Mason into joining it failed utterly.
Craig Ensley: Omega as Mason’s school who is an incubus and breaks stuff; unaffected by the effect on the school, he is currently starving due to a lack of real emotions and made some very odd agreements with the headmaster about his scholarship (which seemed to involve sleeping with him).

Damien: Omega kid who looks weird and vanishing stuff; apparently has no moral qualms at all with killing at the tender age of 15 but is also a horrible, horrible liar. Is involved in the Black Chamber, S.A.F.E. and Barry’s group and sometimes gets a bit stressed out over being over-extended.
Diego Perez: Omega anarchist who spraypaints things and teleports; currently evading the police rather handily.
Doctor D: Codename for the person who makes the omega-boosting drugs.

Emily Parker: An omega who seems human, she was raised by a very religious mother and has difficulty seeing the weirder Omegas as NOT demons; she’d have made an excellent Choir member in another life and is still trying to process her own beliefs with the wider world, since she has no desire to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Eye, the: Illuminati supercomputer that exists in the superflow that is the jungian consciousness. Currently suffering from a blue screen of death.

Fiona Baskin: Police officer who can make illusions and often tries to diffuse situations without violence; often partnered with Breaker, who she also attempts to diffuse.

Griffin Dumont: Black Chamber member who can speak to and harm the dead, among other abilities. Very creepy guy who is apparently now Damien’s minder since Griffin killed their last one.

Hades: Self-titled omega who is seen as a giant threat; can turn alphas into omegas and feed on evil, though he left the city shortly after a confrontation with Kami et al, leaving his peole to carry out his will. (It has been claimed that he has no desire for the police to toss the Twins at him)
Hole and Hurt: Twin omegas who were part of the same project as Kami. They are quite powerful, one being akin to a black hole, the other entropy, share senses and don’t like being too far from each other. The police often use them, out of necessity, to deal with major threats.

Ignatius Hanrahan: Professor at Mason’s university who is unaffected by the weird aura of the place and doesn’t much care for Omegas.
Ivan Koshchey: Illuminati member who worked on the Prodigy Project. Not a nice person at all.

James Forsythe: Tempie’s father, who has years of experience in the world and in literature to somewhat prepare him for the reality of the world. He seems to be taking his daughters changes and new friends in stride thus far.
Jane Ceil: Alpha with special branch who deals with keeping the other members in line and looking after the twins when no one else is free.
Jerry Welker: The kind of Omega whose ability suits him. He’s terrible private, which makes being friends with a telepath difficult. (Also says as few words as possible, except when the GM forgets this. He gets less absurd in this regard when discussing music or drunk.) At present, he’s expressed no real stake in Omega issues and prefers a normal life.
Jillian Connor: New Omega who can fly and zap energy; has been recruited into S.A.F.E. by Mason and may have a thing for him.

Kaegan Maher: 11 year old omega with power over insects and leaping talents; wants to be a Superhero and convince PCs to be the same. Tends to break down when arrested or fighting a ‘villain’ who is actually a hero as the world has then gone off the superhero comic vision in his head.
Kelly Fisher: Omega who looks like a grey alien; she can heal, works in movies and takes great delight in teasing others.
Kirk Watson: Mayor’s aide who deals with all Omega stuff in the city. Seems to have whats best for everyone in mind, though his office is often less useful in implementing this.
Kim Li: Works for S.A.F.E. and can see genetic code; seems interested in Omegas primarily from a research perspective.

Lambert Duchall: Choir Omega member who, along with his sister Simone, tried to kill Basil. They were driven away but, unlike his sister, his zeal appears to have bee untouched by Tempie.
Lance Christensen: Alpha police officer not allowed into Special Branch because of his rather violent solutions to the problem of omegas.
Leo Dowell: Alpha turned Omega who works for Hades. Very, very sure of his skills and often gets in over his head with problems. Despite being a complete bastard, he is willing to work with PCs for goals that benefit him. Easily offended when someone insults his, ah, clothing.

Mabel McGuire: Police forenics expert who can see through bones etc. Seems quietly efficient.
Marcus Wampler: Omega with power over his ipod who apparently sees a division between omegas who can pass for human and those who cannot. Has yet to replace hearing aids with the ipod since he has no idea if he’d randomly stop being an omega or not. Is also terribly girlshy.
Misha: Shadow-alien from an alternate world who is currently living in Teresa’s shadow and preparing for plans to lead the invasion of this world. Really.

Nattie St. Germain: Best-friend and roommate to Kami. Currently leading the S.A.F.E. field team and coping rather well with being an Omega. Seems determined to Make A Difference, which is slowly but surely pulling the two of them apart.
Nicky (Nicholas) Christmas: an omega who volunteers at the local homeless shelter; has yet to actually appear in the game. (Given the length of this list, is that a surprise?)

Probably crazy: See Quentin.

Quentin Witherspoon: An omega tied to the oceans, he’s an Oceans Rights activist who is probably insane and definitely crazy.

Rakasha (aka Jaladhi Dev) Omega who looks rather nasty and works for Hades.
Ralph Compton: Internet investigative reporter with very little skill for it. He is, however, willing to jump off the deep end into the weird.
Raymond Terril: An alpha whose observational skills allow im to bill himself as a psychic; used by the police.
Roland Drake: Omega at a starbucks with unconscious super-charismatic powers.
Ronald McGee: Waffle House cook whose specials sometimes do odd things to people.
Ryan Mitchell: Apparently a lucky police officer with only one arm, so how losing an arm is lucky is anyone’s guess. Often makes sure the twins don’t do anything too horribly and adjusts situations in the favour of the police.

Sally Jenkins: Ally of Barry’s with many eyes whose primary talent seems to involve not being around whenever PCs are.
Samson Hardcastle: Alpha, former ace whose hardcore stance on Omegas has been changed by Mason. Possibly a free agent for hire now.
Sebastian: Good friend to Tempie who wants to become more than friends, to a level even he was unaware of. Currently very embarrassed about this.
Shamanic Elder Porpoises: Fish who taught Quentin to speak to fish and so forth. (See Quetin and ‘probably crazy’ for details.)
Shelby Smythe: Omega who can make people see nightmares; forced to work for Hades in return for drugs to help his sister but seems okay now.
Shen: An alpha’s alpha from another universe, trapped in this one and working for r2-45. Apparently immune to all omega powers and seriously creepy.
Sinjin Smythe: telepath and telekinetic who recently awakened; has been gifted with nanites so his powers don’t burn his body out too fast as his ALS has apparently not gone away so much as been semi-countered by TK powers.
Sullivan Willoughby: R2-45 splice who is involved with tagging omegas and apparently trying to get Kami to join their organization. Poorly. There is some evidence that this is intentional.

Tanya Richiusa: Unknowing omega who turns a pro-human support group with the aim of making humans and omegas get along; has recently been horrified to have skinheads join it.
Thelma Bates: Kindly healer with many cats. Looks after Omega strays and her own granddaughter and is very much neutral in all respects.
Toby Sykes: A security guard who lost his job to Omegas. Pro-humanity, but not to the point of skinheads.
Tommy Nash: The laziest Alpha ever. Give how fast he picks up this and his tendency to provide rather, well, blunt solutions to problems, this is probably for the best.
Trent Windle: Friend of Malik’s who is trying to adapt to being an omega, how odd other omegas are and that Malik isn’t the person he thought he was. With limited success.
Trevor: Claiming to be a clone of himself (and the internet, sometimes), Trevor has a talent with machines -- and information -- that makes him useful and valuable, if one can put up with his relentlessly cheerful and geeky personality. Has issues with Barry’s ideas of ‘Rights right now’ and such and has claimed SA.F.E. exists partially to stop him from becoming Evil.
Twins: See Hurt and Hole.

Vince: The useless band manager who wants to Make It Big. So far his lack of success has been his only notable feature, though he has pushed for the band to be Distinctive.
Vincent Gorsky: Hospital doctor and vampire from another world who, along with his daughter, claims to be trying just to get by in this one. Now owes Trevor a favour; goals and motives remain unknown.

Wendy Tiede: Human heading up the police Special Branch; competent and willing to think outside the box.

Aurora Consurgens: SAFEty First!

2011-05-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

(Aka the pamphlet Nattie does up for Temperance)

S.A.F.E.

SAFE stands for Safeguarding Against Future Exploitation. Broadly, the first mandate is to protect humans from being exploited by Omegas. The second is to educate humans about Omegas and so protect them from humans as well. Imagine if you woke up one day with the ability to walk through walls at will and see-through skin. Your family is poor, your dad just got laid off from work and now everyone stares at you with no clue what to make of you. neighbours whisper about demons or freaks or the justice of God and you have nothing to say against it, having no clue what happened to you. Further, there is a bank six blocks away and you know that slipping into the cells to nab safety deposit boxes would be a piece of cake. You might not want to, not at first, but your dad can’t get a new job and you blame yourself, Then the neighbours lose some money kept in a jar, and they decide you took it.

From there, the end of the story writes itself: crime, suicide, or running away. SAFE wants to permit Omegas to start over, make different stories, find better paths and uses for their talents when we can. The police will arrest, detain and possibly kill Omegas. Our job is to fight them if we must, but after to offer choices, to try and understand and offer up options. To that end, our field team is deployed to stop threats and problems the police are not equipped to and other members exist to defuse situations before they reach the point of intervention, or to find Omegas and educate them about themselves before they make the wrong choices.

Everyone screws up. But we believe people deserve second chances, and even third chances: SAFE even hires Omegas (with rather good wages offered) if their talents and personality fit the group, help them to find jobs and plans to work with other kind of outreach groups to prevent disasters before they happen. Make no mistake about it: An Omega can be a natural disaster if pushed too far by the world, and by word we mean people:

* If people think you are a criminal, it’s a hard thing to keep fighting against that and not eventually give into expectations.
* If people name someone a monster, they can help to create a monster.
* If the world seems to hate you, it’s terribly difficult to not internalize some of that hate.

But you wouldn’t? Or never would? Perhaps not. But we are not assuming Omegas are going to be saints, or that they should be judged by higher moral standards than anyone else through no fault of their own. If we can educate Omegas about their nature, the world about Omegas, and stop the few bad apples among us from tainting the rest, then the world will be safer for everyone. It isn’t an easy job, and it won’t ever be an easy calling, b ut no one ever made the world a better place without striving to make people better people. And the only way to make a better person is to educate away ignorance and fear.

Aurora Consurgens: The Doctor Is In

2011-05-20T08:56:00.002-07:00

The official file: Little is known about the individuals collectively known as Doctor D, save that they operate out of various floating labs and supply enhancing drugs to various people, all entirely ilegal. Distribution is entirely word-of-mouth and the cost of the hits is often less than five dollars, and can be bartered down further with trade. Given the cost to make the drug, one either assumes a strange villainous philanthropy ('Everyone deserves drugs, so I will bankrupt myself giving it to them') or some other, darker motives involving possibly psychological dependency, but the latter doesn't hold out as repeated users report no increase in fees.

Proposed solution: Pass onto SB.

The Special Branch File: The D Drug (street names for it are many and varied) are a series of drugs that boost both Alphas and Omegas in terns of actual abilities. They seem to be derived from blood samples from at least one Omega, possibly two, and have a very short shelf life. The drug proper seems to be sent directly to the labs, where it is synthesized into injectable form (pills have been reported but not yet seen). The injectable version must be used within 2 hours of being made or becomes inert and useless, which goes a small way to explaining the cheap price.

The labs used tend to be underground and there are at least 2 active in the city at any one time, moving at least weekly. Given at least five staff and distribution costs of the raw material, precisely how and why this is really being funded remains a mystery. Several samples are held in the Basement in suspension but obviously testing them is not a viable proposition.

Noted effects from users include a high, which is only to be expected with an increase in abilities. Weaker Omegas seem to become much more powerful than already strong ones, which increases the danger of loss of control and power. Thus far, the fatality ratio seems to be around 10%, with users in an agitated state more likely to OD on the drugs. (Curiously, more alphas OD than Omegas, but that may be because Omegas physiologies differ greatly.)

All 'staff' of the Doctor D labs encountered have telepathic suicide codes in them and are unable to divulge useful data. As the vast majority tend to have needle marks, it's quite possible that many of them were users at some point before being recruited in. All camera footage of the Doctor D delivery people have shown the same person, suggesting an Omega, plastic surgery or a cloning procedure. A telepath is obviously involved at some level and rumoured invisible soldiers exist to protect the product as well.

Addendum: Clearly, whoever set this up has no desire to be caught and has set up the system to hide as best they can. Alpha experimentation on Omegas seems the most likely source, based on evidence of previous experiments on Omegas, and a captive/blackmailed telepath is possible, though unlikely.

The drugs do seem to work only on alphas and omegas and are also marketed to them: meaning that until they begin destabilizing the human world, resources to deal with the issue will likely be limited.

Proposed solution: When Mitchell next stumbles on a cell, get the twins their asap and remove it with extreme prejudice. Do this five or six times and the distributors are likely to end up leaving the city alone.

Note: Two labs removed thus far; no change noted in Doctor D plans as yet.

[Magin note: Hole has expressed, via Hurt, a dislike of continuing this plan unless no people are harmed. Who the hell proposed this anyway? - Jane]

On Magic

2011-04-26T20:47:00.003-07:00

Clay

Magic is just another one of the ills that are a pox on the world. Eating away at the status quo for some purported gain, or if nothing else, for the sake of its own existence, the only difference between magic and any of the plagues is that we haven't seen proof that it can propagate itself. The day that gets out, we'll probably see the last few reminders of civilization go right out the window... if the window's still even there.

At the core, magic is about cheating the system. It goes around conventions, making big, sweeping changes that are passed off as subtleties when they only are from the conventional perspective. Take a look at the larger, bigger pictures, though, and magic frequently winds up being a flashy, expensive, complicated way of convincing yourself you've taken a shortcut. By the time the final balance is calculated, though, the price... well, magic is weird by the very nature of the stuff, and the price of playing with fire is, inevitably, getting burned.

People who explain magic only help to spread the disease of easy hopes, of hope without respect for losses that have already been suffered and losses which may occur. Magic is the perfect expression of human avarice, but that doesn't stop people from deceiving themselves just like we've been doing with other, more conventional profits for years. Magic doesn't belong in this world, but that doesn't stop it from working.

Greg

For a bit, math people tried to work out a grand unified theory of everything. One equation, force, or energy that created the entire universe. These never panned out, and always uncovered some missing component like a ransacked jigsaw puzzle. The reason for this explains what magic is, how it works, and why Two forces animate this world. They are truth and irony. All that exists comes from some combination of these two forces...

Existence itself, what conventionally is, that's the truth of the matter as the saying goes. Simple or complex, it conforms to expectations and is everything we suspect it to be. Irony, on the other hand, is everything we imagine it to be... it isn't even really a tangible force so much as an energy, which is no matter... in both senses, if you're not paying attention to it.

Irony has a power of suggestion or negation. It's a very definite thing by definition, but in existence, is more malleable and even relative. We can use irony to bridge all the gaps truth presents.

Trafficking in the art is something like being a comedian, if magic is something like laughter. A joke is like a spell. There's lead-ins, punchlines, and there's always the hope that it'll be understood when you finish. Humor and irony are some of the largest insulators against the terrors of truth, and living a life of magic is about deciding to stare at the abyss and laugh when it stares back... and if you're lucky, it'll get the joke.

Lyn

Magic? Why is it that no one ever seems to ask about the important things first? Magic on its own, magic without the feelings, without the heart, it's like a house without any doors. There's just a shabby attempt at a purpose.

I haven't touched it in a long time, but when I first took up magic, it was only after knowing why I should use it, knowing how it would be used, and knowing that it was something I was meant to do. At least for a time. The ritual associated with it is a little surprising for someone who only knows about its power; it's strange to think that so many different outcomes come from the same general motions, words, and outfits.

We take up magic in order to rid the world of tragic malignancy. By filling our hearts with love and our souls with purpose, we can glow with a glory that once created worlds. The light and shadow we cast as a result is what magic is, and the challenge is to make sure you do not cast more shadows than you enlighten. Or, some would say, to be ready to glow brighter when that happens.

A lot of things can't tolerate magic, because of the impurity in the world. We can't help it that out of sin came knowledge, and out of knowledge came a lot of things that aren't necessarily sinful or bad... but the light can remember their heritage, and when we glow too brightly, it finds something to do if our purpose and desires aren't enough to keep it occupied.

Sophie

Once upon a time, stuff was pretty normal. You could guess how life would go. Heck, you could probably even make a bit of money betting on it. Destiny doesn't bother itself with being understandable, I guess, and so magic enters into whatever exists and sends it off in new, confusing directions.

Magic is the current that flows through the world, the stuff change, progress, all those words that kind of describe the fact that the universe is alive, gets made by. Without magic, nothing really has any real animation to it. Of course, with magic - and with too much magic - things just plain fly off the handle.

Magic can twist the present with little parlor tricks as easily as it can twist your actual existence. There's a moment that happens when you actually first realize that things aren't right and you're not sure if they're stable, where you kind of stop believing in everything, abandon all your principles, and invest every shred of will into scraping along whatever the world's inside of to try to cling to reality and existence. If you emerge, you'll emerge having flexed a muscle that most people never know exists. And if you did if well enough, you realize that maybe, just maybe... you could flex it again. By working on that one muscle, building its capacity and endurance, you can hone a certain strength. It almost makes everything else acceptable. For whatever's left in the gap, there's always a good drink.

Aurora Consurgens: After 45 sessions

2011-04-26T07:03:00.001-07:00

Our dreams were bold and vague ....

So, we have not passed 45 sessions in a titch over 2 months -- over 20 each month which is pretty darn good. The game is now into week 3, time wise (for Kami) and certain things have wrapped up.

* Everyone is at the same time (yay!)with only minimal strain on time and space.
* r2-45 has attempted to tag everyone thus far, the poor fools.
* Most every PC is aware to greater or lesser extents about the state of police/society with regards to Omegas.
* Everyone has been offered the opportunity to join S.A.F.E.
* And The Event has happened.

Said Event was one Aaron Dupree, an Omega who could make duplicates of himself from other things, ODing on drugs from Doctor D. The end result was over 5,000 duplicates running around stealing all over the city and the mobilization of both S.A.F.E., the police and their Special Branch to deal with this in about one hour. On the minor plus side, it was raining. But a lot of people saw odd stuff -- as if duplicates of a thief all made of garbage were not odd enough -- and the official explanation/lie about 'gangs' is going down about as well as cough medicine.

This can reveal Omegas to the city in one way or another, depending on PC choices and actions. The ball is basically in your court for how this all goes down, with overall agenda S.A.F.E. (and the police, via Teresa) push on this and where it leads.

Aurora Consurgens: a helpful pamphlet

2011-04-20T11:28:00.007-07:00

Help! My child is an Omega!

... what IS that?!
Omega is a term for a human who has undergone a mutation which makes them different from other people. Your child may be able to make water solid, float in the air or any of a number of inexplicable things. NO ONE knows why this happens: anyone who claims to know is lying to you.

Perhaps more importantly, your child will also have a mutation (often physical) which sets them apart from other humans. This may be fur, skin made of copper or even quills.

Remember! This is not your fault. It is something that happens without reason.
Also, it is not your child's fault.

...What can I do?
First, make sure you are safe. Is your child radioactive? Poisonous? Does their touch hurt? If so, contact your local CDC and the police department. Mention Omegas, Special Branch, Branch O or Branch X (designation varies by area} and someone will help all of you adjust. If your child is NOT an immediate threat to you or themselves, there is one necessary thing:

Tell them you love them.
And understand that they are as scared and confused as you are.

How can my darling accept this?!
Most younger Omegas adapt to their new status rather quickly. It is the hurtful remarks of other humans (and Omegas) that lead to problems. If your child has adapted quickly, all the better for them. This does not mean that you are expected to, merely that you can likely cross off suicide from your list of worries regarding your child.

What happens next?!
As your Omega has quills and is a pyrokinetic
his/her ability to harm others is classed as: moderate
which means your child can return home with you.
If your home has been damaged or destroyed, you must speak with your insurance company re: damages and causes.
Your child's actions may class as arson
which the company is aware of. Discrimination against families with omegas is an unfortunate reality of the modern world.

Laws and Compliances
As some Omegas can be considered Weapons of Mass Destruction (or at the very least armed and dangerous), all Omegas should report to the local police detachment detailing their name and known abilities. Testing, if available, may be offered free or charge. In the event of damage or accidental loss of temper, this will count positively to your child's conduct. As Omegas are a widely-kept secret at present, attempts to put your child on a chat show and the like are liable to be met with official disapproval.

Omegas do NOT have the same rights as humans; your child can be held indefinitely and without bail or due process if the court deems it necessary!

But my child wants to help!
Good! Local enforcement agencies and universities can use all the help they can get dealing with uncooperative Omegas. The more Omegas cooperate, the more visible they become and the sooner the powers that be pass laws making Omegas equal citizens under the law.

But my child is human as anyone else!
Due to the Fifth Geneva Convention (1950), Omegas are not considered human insofar as laws and restraint of suspects come into play. Consider your child's abilities and the limits of jails to understand the reasoning behind said laws.
Note: A protocol allowing experimentation on Omegas was annulled in 1996; anyone attempting to experiment on your child without your and the child's consent is breaking the law.

.. but Junior was going to Harvard!
Regrettably, much bias and propaganda about Omegas exists among those who do know of them. Educating neighbors and friends will be a difficult and lengthy task, but also a necessary one: in convincing others your child is still your child, you help convince yourself. Job prospects for Omegas vary based on mutation but the government has a very open-ended hiring policy.

A warning
You and Basil Manning will have difficult times and days head; no Omega school exist, so homeschooling is a must depending on the age of the child. As more Omegas manifest and comply with the law, the odds increase that the laws will adapt themselves justly to deal with Omegas among us.
However, attempts to claim treatment of Omegas is akin to racism, sexism, gender discrimination and so forth are considered invalid and a difference in degree rather than in kind. (So yes, you may drawn comparisons between what the government feels necessary and those of concentration camps, but given the nature of Omegas and the danger a portion of them obviously pose, these are not considered parallels.)

If you have further questions ...
Please contact Kim Li at Freemont University or any member of SAFE who will be glad to assist you. Kim can also explain the nature of SAFE, which is largely to protect humans from Omega abuses and help Omegas gain the trust and understanding they deserve.

© the Office of Kirk Watson, Omega Liason, 2011.
This pamphlet is for informational purposes only; the contents are liable to change at any date and its use as an educational tool is limited thereby. The office of the mayor assumes no responsibility for misuse or misunderstanding of this pamphlet or attempts to use it to 'prove' the existence of Omegas.

Aurora Consurgens: a treastise on laws

2011-04-12T10:19:00.003-07:00

On Superpower and Systems

Doctor Herman Valderschung, Journal of Comparative Normality, pp. 115-116.

The existence of Omegas deforms the world. That this is true is without question: the answers and solutions depend upon how the world responds in turn. This paper aims to cover the basic problems in dealing with Omegas and offer several unpalatable solutions.

Firstly, Omegas are weapons of weapons of mass destruction. This is not true in all cases, and the scale of destruction is generally limited --- held in check by the limits of flesh, conscience and the imagination -- but the potential remains. And yet, a human with a gun can do as much damage, if not more. We regulate guns, thus people who are guns presumably need to be regulated as well.

Secondly, Omegas who commit crimes run afoul of the law. The cost of incarceration for a lifetime is ~2 million dollars for normal prisoners. Death penalties cost more, due to appeals processes and so forth.

Thirdly, there is the issue of discrimination and Omegas in everyday life and the workplace.

To regulate Omegas, one must have a branch of government open to scrutiny whose job is to keep records of all Omegas and their capabilities. That this can be stolen and used is without question but unfortunately no other solution exists. Omegas who do not register will be considered illegals and jailed or dealt with accordingly. Omegas whose abilities allow them to detect and classify other Omegas will be hired for this program. This allows us to determine what kind of Omegas qualify as dangerous, the degree of danger they pose, and to incarcerate them before crimes are committed if need be.

(I am well aware this measure will not be considered favourably, but allowing someone with such power -- and willingness -- to kill with it before arresting them will only serve to blacken the public image of the large majority of Omegas that are not killers and have no desire to be such.)

Regarding criminals, Omegas should be jailed for life. As some are supernormally resistant to damage and most forms of execution, keeping Omegas imprisoned for life is the only viable solution; as well, said Omegas may at some point have abilities society can make use of. The cost of building such prisons and devising ways to imprison Omegas will be extremely costly, but peace of mind has little cost in the long run.

Thirdly, the deeper issues at stake of separating Omegas from the general populace cannot be ignored. What happened in Germany can easily happen here, and perhaps more readily given the more alien appearance of Omegas. Leaving aside how one would make concentration camps (clearly prisons fall under the same penumbra), the obvious danger is creating criminals out of otherwise ordinary Omegas. Integration of Omegas into the world as a whole would be the only solution that does not lead to genocide.

In order for that to happen, the onus is on the Omegas -- and humans who are their allies -- to step forward into the light. This will not be easy, and could easily lead to persecutions and witch hunts, but is nevertheless their only viable option and must be understood as such.

To this end, the laws must move from punishment to understanding. Most new Omegas have no idea what is going or that others like them exist. Give a child a firework and they light it off. Make a child into one, and the results can be more unsettling. Despite this, the attitude of the law to Omegas should be akin to trying to calm down and reason with a crazy person rather than outright abuses of force.

Aurora Consurgens: Time and Space and PCs

2011-04-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

We're into session 34 or so of the game, so a recap: (The Wed. in game will mark 2 weeks since the game began (for Kami) in game time).

Mailk and Teresa are on Sunday in the a.m., currently at Freemont General Hospital with Basil, attempting to let the kid see his parents.

Meanwhile, Mason is spending Sunday night with Samson, Kaegan, Jerry and Trevor, trying to get Samson to stop being a dick.

Over on Monday, Kami is working on fixing the Eye and Nattie is off doing SAFE stuff.

While on Monday evening, Teresa has become a police officer, has her own car, and has learned disturbing things about how the law can treat Omegas.

So far, no one has broken time (which is awesome) and things are proceeding well.

Things to keep in mind: Omegas have only 'surfaced' in the last five years, as far as many government institutions are concerned. They are trying to keep it under wraps and deal with Weird Stuff with budgets not equipped for that, so most of the hospitals and police forces are more liable to slip stuff under tables, lose paperwork, drug patients into comas because it's cheaper than trying to fix them/made cells for them etc.

Aurora Consurgens: Experience (Redone)

2011-04-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

The previous system was bugging me as being too complicated, so herewith is the revision. Experience will come in two forms: Experience Points and Pips.

Pips

Pips are a +1 to a roll. For each session you play (or wish to but can't due to too many players/scenes at once) you get 1 pip. They must be used prior to the dice rolling. So having 3 dice in Awesome Street Fighting and spending for pips nets 3d6+4.

Alternatively, if you have them banked you can spend 10 pips after a roll is made to redo your entire roll; no further pips can be spent on it, but it does allow recovery from a critical failure.

Experience

PCs get one experience for every 3 sessions they play. To increase a trait, you spend an amount of experience equal to the next level of experience. So do go from 3d6 to 4d6 requires spending 4 experience. This also means that getting from 5d6 to 6d6 requires spending the same experience necessary to get a new 3d6 stat.

Powers cap out at 7d6, other abilities (and less broad powers) at 8d6. Growth in powers in game requires experimenting with them and using them, naturally.

For the most part, the vast majority of npcs will not have more than 4d6 in stats (with an eventually 5 in their best skill), barring alphas and government agents.

This system is designed to allow the creation of new skills and abilities as being more important than upping existing ones; pcs learn, teach each other things, and so forth.

Situational Bonuses

if two people are fighting (say, a chess game to determine if Kami becomes their love slave) ans both have an ability they can bring into play, the person with the more relevant ability may get a +3. So Weapons Guy (3) vs. Sword Master (3) means the latter gets a bonus in a sword fight vs. the former.

Damage will also net the loss of a die/penalty if warranted.

Final Note: The experience rule is being implemented retroactively. So if you have 4d6 in something, 15 session is enough for 5d6. Players are expected to keep track of the amount of sessions they are in and provide updated stats accordingly.

Aurora Consurgens: Session #30

2011-04-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

It is now Sunday in game. Hurray! Plot-wise ..

* Teresa has convinced Quentin to join DREAM, partially via Disney films.
* Temperence plans to take Basil to the hospital to see his parents.
* Malik has a bar owner very much wanting to be his Manager.
* Tanya has invited Damien and Teresa to a Circle of Humanity meeting at her place Sunday Night. She had not recinded the offer to Damien despite his murder of Aalim.
* Kami is making costumes for SAFE and has had an r2-45 member declare herself Kami's bodyguard.
* Mason has managed to make friends of a superhero and also enemies of sort (aka Leo).

Where things are going:

All the PCs are now aware they are Omegas and several have been approached by various organizations about recruitment. Things are liable to start coming to a head for various subplots and plans NPCs have for PCs (and PCs for NPCs). Also,Temperence shall meet Omegas who are weird and fine with that, like Mason.

Games in a night:

Games 1 - 3 max. While doing 4-5 is also possible, I'm finding it seems to go too slow and some PCs and plots get sidelined. Combat scenes obviously end up taking precendence in terms of time and action, which is also not fair to other players. In general, session preference will be given to players behind, time-wise, or who haven't been able to make a session in a few days.

Aurora Consurgens: on magic

2011-03-25T07:23:00.003-07:00

Magic does exist in this setting, but it is pretty much a human-only method of power. This isn't to say others can't learn it, but mostly they don't need to because they've power enough already. It's based on the theory that information is superior to matter and energy (see Ed Fredkin for an overview on that) and allows one to cheat the universe by manipulating that. Which isn't near as grand as it sounds, since Omegas essentially do that without trying just by existing.

The use of magic tends to be rituals and words/symbols of power used as shorthand for a much longer mental equation designed to change the world. Small, local scale effects that take time, energy and serious amounts of effort to replicate what Omegas do for a very brief period. The other kind, the one that's considered actually dangerous, is said rituals, with energy costs involving human sacrifice and so forth, that punch holes in the universe and allow Things into it. Which is dangerous since what immune systems the universe has don't catch such entities and they can do pretty nasty things -- if they get through, which happens very, very rarely.

This illustrates the big danger of magic, in that it involves manipulating the universe, but the universe is ~90% dark matter, aka: we don't know where it is. So trying to manipulate a system you barely understand, and are a small fragment of, can be quite dangerous at the best of times. (Some magicians believe Omegas embody the so-called dark matter, but that's neither here not there.)

In game example: Aalim Jabar had a magical knife, and protections on his home. Damien pretty much vanished it without effort. Magic might do minor things, but that is generally all it does without a cult, a lot of dead people and an insane amount of determination. Which is pretty much what the Red King cult seems to be about, though what they're trying to do seems to be an unknown, thus far, but is worrying enough that the people really in charge of the country want it stopped.

OOCLY, magicians are pretty rare (few are self-taught and those often accidentally kill themselves) and they aren't that powerful, even at the best of times. It's really only the mass human sacrifce meaning bad stuff (and the human sacrifice angle in general) of the nastier sory of magician that leads to them being stopped.

Aurora Consurgens: on the nature of Omegas

2011-03-23T13:45:00.003-07:00

Dr. Kim Li, Freemont University College, for The Radical Inquirer.

There are people in the world called Omegas, possessed of power ordinary humans can scarce imagine,things from stories and legends. Accept this as truth, or treat the following as a thought experiment.

It is theorized that every person has the potential to become an Omega, but this theory is, broadly, false. There is certainly some genetic basis for becoming an Omega, but environmental influences, the nature of other Omegas and one's own life and way of thinking are factors. As Omegas cannot be easily categorized, the question of why some become Omegas and others do not cannot be fit neatly into boxes. The following are observations, not certainties. There are outliers on every graph, and for Omegas moreso than perhaps others.

Emergence

The emergence of Omegas tends to happen either during Puberty, College, Mid-Life Crsis or, more rarely, Old Age. (There is a class of younger Omegas, often triggered by abuse, but that is too dark and deep a topic to get into at present.)

Puberty: The emergence of the Omega during puberty is the most common, happening in at least 60% of documented cases. Testimony of Omegas tends to fit with this, though it seems to be more the age bracket that is affected rather than the actual onset of a specific stage of puberty itself. Most wake up one day from sleep and find they are no longer entirely human.

College: Several factors come into play here. Stress, a city with a lot of people (and hence, more Omegas) and a greater chance of meeting them tends to lead to the change during this stage. Curiously, most of these Omegas report being awake during the change.

Mid-life: As stress accompanies puberty and college, so too does it factor into the mid-life crisis. Further, becoming an Omega seems to happen to people suffering under the delusions of such crises and/or considering dramatic changed in lifestyle (for example, divorce). most of them deal poorly with the change of self that accompanies becoming an Omega and hates of attempted suicide are reportedly quite high.

Elderly: Omega abilities and changes developing among the elderly are uncommon but tend to be caused by a change in lifestyle, death in the family, being in a home with other Omegas present. Also, this is the only group where people have reported becoming Omegas out of need -- for example, to save the life of a grandchild to the extent that their form often seems imprinted by the desires of the child as well as the needs of the situation. (One Omega had their mind put into a stuffed bear a child owned, which became superhumanly powerful.)

To sum up, the key factors seem to be stress, change in one's life and/or immanent death that lead to at least 60% of people becoming Omegas. Others can have tose factor in, but tend to result from being in the proximity of Omegas: the more Omegas a location has, the more it seems to produce -- though since many Omega travel about this is difficult to verify.

Lastly, Omegas seem to be drawn to each other by their shared nature, which often manifests in the form of a further physical change which gives the Omegas s secondary ability associated with it. This change isn't always visible and seems to have no chemical or sensory basis. Nevertheless something draws them to each other, as if to long-lost kin.

Physical Mutation

The obvious signs of being an Omega are not actually that obvious at all times. Some 'tells', as they are called, only show whne using abilities, or when not using them, or are active at all times but can be covered. Further, some Omegas can make illusions for others and there are rumoured to be holographic devices that perform the same task. As a final cautionary note, some Omega changes approximate oddities found within the human spectrum, so someone with a large port wine stain may just have that, and not be able to bring chalk drawings to life, for example.

With few exceptions, no Omega likes referring to their change as a disability of any sort and a surprisingly most adapt quite comfortably to their changes. Or would, if not for the reactions of other humans and Omegas to them. This, of course, is the rate among those who do not take their lives, but given the variety of changes, and the nature of them -- which sometimes has little, or nothing, to do with their other ability -- tends to vary, but has yet to produce a non-viable lifeform.

In other words, no matter what the Omega becomes, they're still alive and their bodily processes adapt to the new state, if they aren't discarded altogether. Most Omegas tend to have minor cosmetic changes -- alterations to skin, body and appearance that still retain their basic human form. The second class tend to classify as 'monsters' in appearance, some being entirely astonishing entities that shouldn't be able to walk around, let along breathe and talk, yet ate still able to. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these Omegas are generally in hiding or killed shorting after their change takes place so further data on the physical change, and what purpose it may sere to Omegas as a whole, remains unknown. A third kind are Omegas who look human but lack physical bodies any longer: they are theorized to exist, give whatever causes Omegas to exist seems not to care too much about actual biological function, but few have been encountered.

All of which means there are at least two forces acting upon the Omega: their own fears, desires, wants and causes of stress that may be a factor in their ability and the secondary physical change, often coming with abilities of its own, whose nature and purpose is unknown. It may be that this is what marks Omegas as Omegas to each other, on some extremely fundamental level, but as yet there is no data to support this theory.

Aurora Consurgens: As of session 23

2011-03-23T07:47:00.003-07:00

Game-wise, it a Friday! (The game began, from Kami's pov, the previous Wednesday, so for her it's been almost ten days [And she hasn't rolled enough dice - S.].)

As present, Kami was about to head home after band practice involving Mason, Mason was about to head to the hospital to be x-rayed to make an 'alien' happy, Teresa is trying to find Aalim and solve the mystery of the weird knife with Damien (Griffin having insisted they do) while Malik is -- thanks to bad luck -- being subjected to Trevor's recruitment drive into S.A.F.E and, finally, Temperance is slowly learning she is an Omega, and trying to help Beckett do something other than beat up drug dealers to make up for the death of his brother.

Whew!

Plot-wise:

The band is a major plot element, having drawn in Kami, Mason and linking to Malik in the future. Great one for pc interaction and rooted in the normal world (mostly).
S.A.F.E. is trying to recruit PCs. Good money, some danger. (The latter leading Trevor to want to recruit as many willing Omegas as possible.) Which connects with ...
R2-45, the government conspiracy trying to tag and monitor Omegas, likely not happy with people finding ways to turn those off.
Other conspiracies, such as D.R.E.A.M. and the Black Circle, are active, but have so far not attempted to recruit PCs*, though how long this state lasts, and to what extent PCs can resist forcible conversion, is up in the air.
Meanwhile, in the villainous plots, Doctor D is still supplying alphas and omegas with drugs to boost abilities and is apparently insanely well-connected.
Hades, on the other hand, seems content to sow evil and discord. While his blood can apparently nullify Omega powers, for some reason he hadn't decided to go about offering a 'cure', despite the obvious evil and havoc that could cause.
Finally, people. (I say finally because Alcar has stopped yammering on and on and on.) More plots are good. Plots lead to dice, and dice lead to fun and fun leads to excitement! - Sparkie, whose conspiracy of 'roll more dice!' seems to be failing. Jerks.

* Mostly **
** Okay, just the once, but Sparkie ensured it failed.

ETA: As of today, the game has been running for 1 month and done 23 sessions. Which is nicely insane :)

Aurora Consurgens: Conspiracies (also, cast list)

2011-03-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

Cast List: Exists on piratepad now, for all players to edit, add to etc. (Snarky notes appended to npcs or pcs encouraged by Sparkie :)) Link to it is in game1 topic. It is OOC and does contain charactersn who've yet to show in game.

Conspiracies

There is one conspiracy so great is can bring down the moon, so brilliant it burns even the worthy as it makes them pure, and so terrible that darkness quells from it and sorrow seems, at times, its mate.This conspiracy is called love.

Regarding the game, there are a lot of conspiracies running around, from good to bad to utterly indifferent. The following exist at present:

Aces: Street gangs in cells of 5-6, recruited from the military (the top 2% of whom tend to be Aces, hence easy recruitment). They believe Aces are humanity 2.0, and they wish to eliminate Omegas, whom they see as a threat to the world they will inherit.

Black Chamber: A conspiracy so secret that members cannot normally mention it. Recruits weirder omegas, often after saving them from mobs, though recent evidence shows at least one member has been trying to cause said mob events in order to produce more loyal recruits. (As Kami pointed out, Claire did such a horrible job of that that she clearly hadn't done it before, much to Damien's relief.)

Choir: A branch of the Illuminati existing now, whose goal is to destroy demons (aka weird Omegas). Attacked S.A.F.E. once, and had no problem killing bystanders, which is apparently unusual for them. Very militant and hard-core.

CFR: The Council on Foreign Relations is a non-partisan think tank in the US based around international relations and, in reality, about how nations deal with Omegas as the new superpower and if nations should catalogue their Omegas, grade them and trade them etc. in order to preserve the current balance of power.

Doctor D: A drug-runner in the city who has managed to hide from conspiracies, vigilantes and Trevor to take. Guards shipments using power armour Damien referred to as 'edgetech', which Trevor had never even heard of. Probably not a conspiracy in himself, but obviously funded by several.

Dream: A conspiracy whose goal is to make finer worlds by connecting humans, alphas, and omegas into a shared understand of their larger role within the biosphere. Uses the word 'Gaia' a lot but seems convinced everyone should be on the same side since they all live on the same world.

The Guild: Not a conspiracy, as such, but various families of Omegas whose talent is passed down and whose members develop it, often during puberty. They generally have only one ability but are very, very good at using it and tend to tread omegas without lineage as lesser beings. Often mired in their politics in the Old World.

The Illuminati (original): The big one, so big it hid behind that name. A telepathic conspiracy of at least 2,500 years to keep humans unaware of Omegas (aka angels and demons, to them). The rise of scientific understanding -- and questions about omegas and genetics -- coupled with the growing thought that they could do a lot more than just put out fires, led to some Event five years ago that broke the organization, killing many members and sundering it.
Unless, of course, it did not.

The Illuminati (current): Still exists, mostly telepaths who are trying to keep a lid on Weird stuff and each other. Further goals, desires and so forth are unknown, as is how effective they are at all.

IRS: It`s only natural.

Majestic 13: A group of government-sponsored superhumans (12 in total) who deal with various problems and crises. Military-trained, work well as a unit and not to be underestimated.

r2-45: Government conspiracy whose goal is to catalogue and study all Omegas. They tend to brand them like animals and have several agents (called splies) who are made from skin samples of several omegas and legally not persons. Involved in hiding Omegas from the world, which has become more their primary goal following the collapse of the Illuminati.

Aurora Consurgens: Cast List

2011-03-17T08:17:00.001-07:00

We now have ~~two~~ ~~three~~ ~~four~~ five? players for the game. It is officially no longer even remotely a 'side game'. Which should be weird, and awesome, and pretty interesting and -- in theory -- lead to Barry recruiting at least one PC to his Omega Rights campaign: someone weird has to be willing to march down the streets with a sign, right?

Fun things to note thus far:
a) No one player has made a 'normal' superhuman at all. No traditional kind of energy blast or flight powers or the like at all. Which is pretty interesting and probably fits better into the x-men/mutation aspect of the game than, frankly, a lot of the x-men do. It also means that dealing with weird stuff and problems is going to require friends, alliances, working together and the like.

2) I am going to try doing the 'no set time' aspect of the game still. Granted, PCs in more sessions will get more experience* but it also frees players from the obligation of feeling they must make a certain session and so forth. In line with this, few sessions should end on cliffhangers requiring two specific players to show the next session and so forth, though this is liable to happen a few times.

* If for some reason you do want to play some night but are unable to due to issues of time (you on on day 8, everyone else on day 6), you'll get a 'pip' of experience anyway. Not the same as advancement towards an experience die, but it is something.

iii) Your government wants you! Recruitment of Omegas to various government agencies is quite high, even if the motivations of said agencies sometimes have dark sides, or bureaucracy limits their actual effectiveness. PCs tend not to be joiner-types to said groups, but that won't stop them from trying and should prove fun all around.

The current 'big' plots

S.A.F.E.: An organization set up by Trevor and Linda, S.A.F.E. aims to keep humans safe from Omega abuses and generally protect the city from harm. They do offer money, and are pretty loosely structured at present. Depending on Trevor's ulterior goals, they're probably the closest thing the cuty of Freemont has to any superhero league at present.

S.E.E.: Barry Jameson and the Omegas he's gathered to him (or are spying on him for other people...). His goal is free and equal rights for Omegas and, as far as he is concerned, appealing to the best in human nature will allow this to happen and, say, someone like Damien be allowed to work behind the till at a restaurant. It is worth noting that he seems to seriously think this is possible in the kind of incompletely-formed idealistic dream that such plans are made of.

Doctor D: A drug-runner who supplies drugs to boost Alphas and Omegas in power. So far, one Omega has died to the drugs and he has serious resources and money, apparently aiming to make the city a base of operations for his midwest trade. And yeah, use of a large dose of the drugs is fatal, for all the awesome power it gives in the short term. (There is also someone putting out self-help books that achieve the 'be all you can be' effect, but they don't seem to be related.)

Circle of Humanity: Tanya Richiusa runs a small meeting group out of a local diner that exists to explore human/alpha relations. It tends to attract crackpots and the like, but one of her goals is to have Omegas show and humans realize that being an Omega isn't the best thing in the world, a paradigm shift she believes will also make them question their loathing of the elite alphas, with luck.

Aurora Consurgens: Epicality (and Omega Rights)

2011-03-15T07:21:00.002-07:00

Points established in the setting thus far (Some of it being OOC):

1) The Illuminati used to prevent humanity from being aware of then 'angels' and 'demons (aka Omegas) having their wars via insane degrees of telepathic manipulation, until Darwin et al made some of the Illuminati question this idealistic mindset, which in turn led to questions about why the Illuminati were just putting out fires when they could prevent/control them. To an extent, this split seems to have let to some Event five yeas ago that destroyed the organization, which has since splintered to various factions among those that survived.

2) Trevor's claim that (unopposed), six Omegas could destroy a single city. Depending on abilities and working together, this is probably broadly true and once you factor in drugs to boost powers and apparently self-help books that to the same, the amount of time it would take becomes debatable.

(In general, I'm operating under the assumption that most any Omega with a combat-oriented power can probably take out a city block worth of area by their lonesome without real effort.)

In terms of epic, this game is structured more like the x-men are in teams and allies combine together to achieve maximum effect (see the 'defeat' of Hades as an awesome in-game example). Even PCs, alone, will not win the day in all battles, though ideally are the decisive force and centre of it. Why? Because power-creep ruins a game faster than other things, so if PCs and NPcs are on a generally equal footing* it requires more skill and RP to win the day than out and out dice and being better.

Which isn't to say the latter won't happen: the PCs vs. 'new' Omegas, after some experience is gained, is pretty much going to == 'the pc wins', which is as it should be. The really powerful and scary Omegas are either still in check by the Illuminati (or various government agencies, in a lot of cases), dead, or simply have no desire to rule the world, which, frankly, most don't. Though invasions from other worlds (yay!) and alpha and omega mad scientists (bwahahahaaha!) can skew that a little, and shall.

A lot of what happens regarding various battles -- how people see it, with Omegas as the new superpower, how they deal with being 'inferior' and such will depend on PC and NPC actions during the game. Do you try and build bridges, protect a world that hates and fears you etc.? And if it does, doesn't it make sense to make the world like you instead?

How players deal with that, and what they do about it, will determine a lot of how the world reactions to various epic-level events as and when they happen. In other words, some of the setting is about how you change the world, for the better or worse, and how it reacts to them. You might only do this visibly on the local level of one city, but such things do spread.

Caveat: Omega Rights, etc.

One player has basically said that such plot aspects to the game bore them. Which is fine: not everyone wants or desires or deserves some imagined 'equality' (and there are characters who do think it impossible because equality doesn't exist [Damien counts, though he's never voiced it in those terms]. But from a character -- aqnd player -- pov, do you want to play a game where everyone hates your character and you have to operating out of hiding and in shadows? Likely not. Which is why changing how the world sees you is as important as anything else. Reputation is as important as power in many ways.

The entire minor Barry-driven plot Omega Rights, and others like that, are largely intended as background, since I figured that players would make PCs that:
a) passed for human pretty much or
b) didn't, but the usual stigma didn't really apply to them.

And players did, because who would want to make Toxic Man or something useless like that? Not I, certainly. The second kind of PC (i.e. Mason) also gets to highlight certain questions about how much of the anti-Omega hysteria is generated by interest groups etc., which can become important.

Aurora Consurgens: something on the net

2011-03-11T12:25:00.000-08:00

Found on a posting board by Anonymous, who is just a trifle more reliable than Wikipedia ...

The secret histories of the world are that: they do not end up on any page, often not in any memory. They are the purged records, the fires, but even ashes leave things before, and nothing is entirely forgot. Ghost memories, echoes, hunches and fragments of dreams remain when all else is dust and forgot even by legend. For instance, to mention the Terrible King by any title would see this vanish off the internet, and the writer from the world. Secrets. Lies. Necessary, perhaps, but still lies, and bitter as they go down.

We change the world, the secret warriors, fighting wars you will never know about, stopping the darkness because someone has to, because it is necessary and the price of knowledge is power, and the price of power is the obligation to use it. We fight the secret wars, and our comings and goings are unknown, sometimes forgot even by ourselves, so secret are the wars. Hexton is merely a word, now. Where is truth to be found, if we bury it so deep that nothing can drawn it forth into the world?

There is no reward. There can be no reward, for this. If people realize what goes on behind the stage, those who set it up have failed. I know this. We know that. And yet. And yet, the silence that folllows is so deep we wish to fill it with action, with words and names and meaning. And that is why we all fail, all those secret groups and terrible conspiracies without name, because the lure of the world pulls at us, and the desire to be More tugs at us all. And there are so very, very few who can resist such temptations, who can be given power that makes the world a toy to them and not then play with it, sometimes just to see what happens.

Five years ago, the oldest and deepest of the conspiracies, hidden behind the name of Illuminati, published and known to hide it further still, flattered. Fell. Even ideals only carry one so far, and the urge to act is always a deep, terrible thing. We are never done with doing, for all we wish we were.

Aurora Consurgens: 12 sessions in

2011-03-10T08:21:00.004-08:00

12 sessions in, the game has acquired a new player [I believe that's first for an intended side-game] and various plots proceed apace:

The band is trying to get more members, and now may have a rhythm guitar player player who can toss people through the air with her mind and somehow create haunted houses, of a sort, who has also killed over 10 people by accident, but hey: bands need rep, right?

S.A.F.E. is finding things harder going than planned, since Doctor D has taken extreme steps to protect his drug shipments -- steps that led to armed men in battle armour killing Nattie, though it didn't take. Nattie and Damien are reevaluating things, as is Trevor.

For her part, Kami is trying to keep people sane, is the employee of the month (!) and may win a car in a raffle! Sullivan seems occupied with other matters and the Illuminati have yet to try and contact Kami, unless of course they already have.

Meanwhile, a bit across town, Mason's two weeks of dealing with his own change have taken a turn for the bizarre that seems to involving a woman named Claire who is trying to start riots involving Mason for reasons of her own, going as far as manipulating a brand-new Omega and refusing to explain herself at all. She does seem to have wanted Mason involved in problems and is quite annoyed all her attempts at causing that seem to have failed thus far.

Upcoming Fun! [Which should include more dice, please. - Your Unfriendly Homicidal Editor Sparkie]

How long can Mason stay in the building if weird stuff keeps happening?
Will Jerry's ad for Omega band members in the local free magazine get answered?
Will Kami end up with a car that calls her 'Michael'?
How long will it be before Nattie realized that Kami wasn't kidding about the horror stories of being a telepath in a world were other Omegas are scared of them ...
Along the same lines, how long will Sullivan be allowed to use kids gloves regarding Kami?
Can Archie continue to remain the best roommate ever?
What does Barry plan to try next in his quest for Omega Rights?

Meta note: As Kami can read minds, I expect she'll read Mason's at some point, or at least get the usual flickers of emotions and thoughts people do tend to leak. Since his mind can run 'faster', that can be considered a quasi-mental shield when activated; other than that, RP it in msg and such when you feel the need to make use of it.

Meta note 2: A game where one PC can think solutions insanely fast and one is a telepath does bode poorly for a lot of those secretive organizations trying to hide their goals from them. Which should be great :)

Aurora Consurgens: fun essay

2011-03-03T08:13:00.002-08:00

Something for Kami to find on the 'net Sunday morning before she heads out shopping ....

Understanding The Future
A paper by Dr. Kim Li, department of philosophy, Freemont University-College.

The world is too small. You can drop pins, and people find out. The world is too small. Elvis can fake his own death and hide for decades, preparing for a comeback tour with Michael Jackson. Both these things are truth (the small, the big). We live in a global world, a connected world, and despite the worries about the next great plague it has many benefits, as with most other paradoxes. It is easy to hide, but hard to not be found if people go looking.

All the old truths and certainties of even the last century are being swept away. Information is power, knowledge our candle in the dark and access is everything. We have it, are learning from it. (See 'San Francisco Crime Watch' (Robinson, Crusoe , 2009) for an example: citizens can chart out where the worst crimes are, since the police files are transparent, and push for action in those area.) We live in a world that is becoming more transparent. Libertarians would have us rejoice in this, believing we're all adult enough to deal sensibly with the data we are given. Conservatives believes only they should have the data and use it as they see fit. Liberals, of course, change their minds daily. (I was told I had to write a Political Essay this year: that paragraph is it. If you want to waste your time being offended, go do so.)

Everyone hears the stories and rumours of strange people with impossible gifts, curses, powers and the like. A lot of the evidence for them is anecdotal at present, but will likely not remain that way. There are deeper questions as to how new these people are, how they were hidden and so forth but it is, generally, rather easy to trick people. (For example, you are reading this essay.) If even a third – if even one – of these stories has basis in fact, it is a paradigm-changing moment for the world. Read that sentence again: if you aren't scared, you didn't understand it. The last one was, arguably, the atom bomb.

Historically, such paradigms don't go down well: the old world discovered the new, and decided the inhabitants weren't human. What we have are humans evolving into other states, possibly even post-human ones, and how we deal with that will determine if we are the old world or the new. If you see a man whose skin is covered in bark, what would you do? What will you do? What won't you do? We have deep troubles dealing with differences in our society, hiding away gimps, cripples, freaks until recently, throwing people into institutions because it was easier than accepting them as human beings.

Do you think we shall ever have pictures in fashion magazines of people in wheelchairs and have it not treated as a kind of game? How, then, do we deal with people who used to be normal and how look like horror-movie monsters, or (worse still?) look entirely normal and do monstrous things that are impossible to our limited understanding of the world? These are not idle questions. They deserve answers and need answers, but each of us will answer them differently, and hope that we can be the best in humanity when it comes times to truly face the questions.

Because there will be monsters, if we treat them like monsters. There will be war, if we think they are not like us. I am not saying it will be easy to accept such things. I am not even saying that we can, but I feel the effort most be made and, if we cannot achieve understanding, we could fake it under the guise of tolerance. If they are to be the future – if we do not fight them in a war to the death – could we at least have them say we tried, as best we could, to accept?

Aurora Consurgens

2011-02-28T08:01:00.001-08:00

Aurora Consurgens [Breaking dawn]

Kids these days. It's the common complaint of parents: the wrong shows, the wrong music, the disgusting things they do to try and one-up the antics of their own parents. Only now, that's nothing. The world is too big, too global, too much of everything. It's hard to hide, that some kids aren't kids. They're stronger, faster, dangerous. They're more than other kids, more than other people. Evolution on crack, as the leading theorist Ms. Elenora Thompson put it.

And if that were all, that would be enough. But there's other kids, too. Able to do things that defy reason, miracles that mock physics. Able to create fire, to turn things into other things, to change the way we see and understand the world. Why this is, no one knows. It was hidden. Though how any government did that, and for how long, is unknown. But too many escaped handling, escaped conditioning, flew under the radar [some literally] and slowly but surely a new kind of being has been discovered. Something old? New? Government tricks? Aliens? No one knows. Or if they do, they're not talking.

Two new species of humanity exist now. They get called different things, are capable of stuff no humans are, but as a brief rundown.

Homo Alpha: People who are better than human. Stronger, faster, quicker. They heal quickly, are smarter than most, shrug off drugs etc. They're widely believed to be a human answer to Omegas, essentially, and what humanity may some day become. Despite the title, there is a lot of variance among them: some are geniuses at one thing, others awesome at a few things and so forth.

[In other words, you can get Reed Richards (intelligence wise) and Captan America, ability wise, falling under the same penumbra. Since people are capable of pretty impressive things, it's often hard to prove someone is one without drugging them – and some have died of such things, so it is not an idea test.]

Homo omega: The x-men style people. One, at the most two, related abilities that are, frankly, beyond the scope of modern science and understanding. A guy with strength CAN lift up an entire car, when his attempt should just rip off the bumper and so forth. Currently theory holds that there's some physics distortion field involved, but that's mostly scientists making up terms. The fact is that these people can do impossible things as easily as breathing and few of them look human at all.

Basically, mutants in the sense of being weird and different: red skin for fire-users, etc. It's generally held that the most visible and physical the 'tell', the stronger one is, but that's not strictly true since not some only have tells function when using abilities, but the general public is ignorant of this.

(Meta note: Telepaths don't exist, to the common knowledge of even alphas and omegas. Some abilities are so dangerous it's considered best no one knows about 'em.)

System: Risus! YAY! Dice: ~12-15. 4 die max for starting cliches, 2 die cliche minimum. Should have at least one hobby/future profession cliche that won't lend itself to being Useful. I am assuming the PC does not begin the game with martial arts and the like and learns such things via experience dice and teaching as the game progresses. (Ditto for increasing power and control of it.)

Homo Alpha: Post-olympic level ability (X), And (Y). Sometimes Z, or a more general 'all-olympic level'. Basically, you could get ninjas, batman, the punisher and the like out of this. They look like normal people, but aren't. Downside is their senses are better than human, so intense aural or visual stimuli can throw them for a loop. (Not well known, naturally.) Also, at least a third suffer some degree of sociopathic or autistic tendencies but most of that is blamed on upbringing.

Homo Omega: Likely the PC, naturally. One-two abilities. If more than one, the other is physical and based on mutation of the body in some way. In other words, one could have Fire (and burning eyes when using it) or Fire and flight with red skin/giant flaming wings, as an example, though the two don't have to be connected. The huge downside to this problem is normal humans with skin conditions and such can run into problems, which helps no one at all.

Note: Omegas spend their lives human until either some Huge Stress, puberty or being around a lot of Omegas fighting triggers abilities/powers/changes. Unlike alphas, who are born as they are, omegas do get to lead a normal life to a point.
Note (2): Whatever ability(s) the PC has should ideally be scalable. Game begins with PC new to the power/ability and with player providing ideas for scaling it up. So you begin with control/understanding of power at basic level, RP it up a notch as the game goes, and then have further milestones achieved via experience dice. Having one power ability and one mutation-style ne allows for growth in both, naturally.

EX: A pc with blueish tint to skin, ability to manipulate ice.
Start: make snowballs, throw them at people.
RPed stuff: Create ice, alter ice into water.
Experience (with dice): Freeze water in people, create ice duplicates.
More experience (with dice) animate duplicates , create second skin of ice as armour etc.
Still later: make an ice age?

SETTING:
Modern world, except paranoia has gone through the roof. On one hand, you have 'humans' who look like everyone else but are Better and on the other weird mutants who are Unclean and so forth and can probably kill other people with a thought, if sufficiently annoyed. The law hasn't begun to come to grips with this, and drug are already being marketed that can boost Omegas (and Alphas) to new heights – or depths. To say nothing of fast-tracking vastly illegal government experiments on humans (a la iron man) to give humanity a 'fighting chance'.

The world is basically a powder keg, and into that steps the PC.

THEMES:
Ism: This is the major one, really. On one hand, there's people who look human and 'aren't' (Alphas) and on the other people who don't look human who can level entire city blocks and so forth. Lots of fear, mistrust, and so forth, parents who go "think of the children!" and the like. On the plus side, it is getting rid of the previous racism and sexism humans had. A lot if mistrust, lies and such will be spouted.
(This one won't always be bad: someone can cleverly parlay it into hollywood-level fame and fortune, after all.)

Destiny: What does one DO with such power, especially when one begins to get inklings of the upper limits? You are, after all, a walking WMD, and the consequences of that can be pretty dangerous at the best of times, to say nothing of when being framed and so forth. As per the 'ism', it takes a lot of strength to be hated and not internalize some of that hate, eg: becoming a monster since people figure you are one and so forth.

Shaping the world: as the game increases to Epic levels of threats and problems, the extent to which one can change the world, if one has the right to and so forth. Should the Omegas ignore the humans, let them make their own path, catch them if they fall or raise them up? A lot of this gets deep into nanny state level ideas: what if people no longer put parachutes in planes because the odds an Omega would show to stop the plane from falling being ~70%? Etc. As the PC and NPCs gain in power, this becomes more and more important: you can have a huge impact on the world, become Celebrity famous and so forth, be the latest Hitler to scar the pages of history: it's pretty heady, and should prove fun to explore.

A few final notes: I doubt there'll be much call for secret IDs and costumes in such a setting. Hiding'd be rather difficult, after all. I figure there's some who will end up with cool 'call names' to market their brand, others who decide humanity should be exterminated and become terrorists and so forth.

A lot of groups with a lot of agendas can make for a fun game, especially with the giant question of the how and why of alphas and omegas hanging over it, and a lot of people having their ideals – or huge bets – riding on which theory is 'right', if any of them are.

Sample NPC:

Joseph Frizel, German-American, second generation. Age: 16, tall and thin. Looks normal enough save for vertical cat-like eyes.

Cliche: Cat (3), Bad Luck (4), B&E: (4), 70s clothing fetish (2), Electrical Engineer (2)

The son of 2 famous cat burglars, he's taken up the family profession with a twist, owing to being an Omega.
Cat: Can turn into a common black house cat. Really.
Bad Luck: Can give others bad luck, especially in cat form. Quite useful, not controlled at present.
B&E: Obvious. He's good at it.
70s clothing fetish: he's got this thing about the 70s and happily steals such things, up to and including furniture. Knows far too much about the decade.
Electrical Engineer: Began an an offshoot of B&E (with security systems) but he's found he likes working with such things, and was considering that as his legit profession before becoming an Omega.

Cat stuff: Claws, good night vision, land on feet, agility. All increase during game. Does NOT like turning into a cat, since the whole "I am cool/awesome' vibe he tries to give off doesn't work once he becomes a cat.
Further: Actually has an awesome cat-like vibe. People like him, think he's cool even when someone who steals and wears 70s clothing should not be cool.
Experience: turn into other kinds of cats, talk to/control cats.
Later: 9 lives? Other cat-like animals? Turn into cat and people just pour out their life stories to their own fur-covered therapist?

Bad Luck: The more actually impressive and useful power, though not flashy.
Start: uncontrolled, works on enemies and friends.
RP: Just enemies.
Experience: some idea of how to direct/focus it and eventually to the point of altering someone's fate, cursing them with superstitions and defying entropy at the maximum levels.
Eventual limited ability to give good luck, like cat hairs of inspiration?

Very basic, at present, but it's one idea.

Fairview Update

2011-01-10T08:19:00.002-08:00

Where things are at:

The last session was late October (school and work limited the last sessions to pretty much single-player ones) and then November and the hell that is December hit. So, this update.

Alex: Had been captured by the evil servants of the Shadow Walker (again), mostly due to being with Joni one session and then the player having to abscond due to work for a bit. OOCly, the plan was for the shadow walker to offer to undo her nature and cut her loose, as she's been nothing but an annoyance. Which lets Chaos re-spec her somewhat and figure where he wants her to go, as a character.

Emma: Emma is still dealing with Julius and the fall-out from her time travel escapade. Her father is aware (somewhat) of what Emma is and has ties to Vericorp, but doesn't seem pleased about what his daughter has become. Ah, families. Helena has agreed to let Emma drive a car and Emma is slowly but surely meeting adults and other people who aren't boring and have dull ideas that power shouldn't actually be used and the world is an egg people can break etc.: her kinds of people, in other words.

Joni: Currently, Joni is trying to find out why a self-styled God is using a home depot as a base point for building her own temple in the city, with Brodie and the Scry with her. She also has Hell looking for answers to things she's done and continuing to make her school/place of power into something to be reckoned with as well as her goal of making a police force for the city's supernatural community.

Karl: Is working for Vericorp and the Inquisition, hoping if the former leads to a shitstorm, the latter will allow him to clean it up. Despite Brodie having been changed somewhat due to time travel, Karl requested working with someone else and, unless the player shows again, can be considered to be MIA on a Very Special Mission.

Rei: Is doing just fine, thank you, and working on her tan.

Overall Meta-plots

Vericorp: THE VP of human resources (Loric) claims to be a god and knows the woman who calls herself Star and Emma's father of old. What the company's goals are -- and his in particular -- remain unknown at present but Vericorp seems determined to find a way to make money out of supernatural creatures even if it does open a portal to hell in the process. Company motto: profit = progress.

Scry: Still trying to find a way to free his master/best friend. He's at least managing a truce with Eugene, though neither really trusts the other, and seems content to wander about helping the pcs without, yet, asking for payment in return.

Magicians: the local magicians have yet to react the death of the White Lord, and no one is certain what that will do to whatever balance and power structure they had. His kids, who helped the PCs kill him, seem willing to be allies at least and it's doubtful he has friends who would avenge his death, though someone may on the grounds that it looks bad for the major magicians to have one of their own die.

Temporal Skinwearers: the 'fake' Cristal and Peter, whose goals and mission seems unknown at present; brought back via Emma's attempts to fix the past.

Hell & Heaven: [Redacted] But they do have plans, oh yes.

The Grey Man: After the failure of the storm, he's done nothing since. Licking wounds? Debating leaving? No one knows, least of all the PCs.

The tree: What is it? How much has it changed JOni, Ike and Helena? Who wants it, or to destroy? It was one of the first major plot events, and its tale is not yet done.

Other side plots include Dennis's plans with werewolves, Dave and friends building transformers, real estate companies trying to buy up cursed land and Joseph's quest to get his friend Kyle back from the Grey Man. (There are also ninjas, and one evangelical ninja out there, but they are busy consolidating power.)

And finally, this is a note I had at the bottom of a file, make of it what you will:
The antichrist will, naturally, run for public office. Tired of secularism? Vote antichrist! Want pro-life? Vote antichrist!

Game Update

2011-01-09T22:27:00.000-08:00

Okay. New year, time to get crackin' (or crackling, to use a fire metaphor)

Option A: Continue Fairview. I'm up for this if players are (players currently being Chaos, Ken, Tass). If all 3 players are on board, or just two, it can work. And if someone wants to continue it as a single player side-game, I'm up for that as well. If people are NOT, however, I don't want people thinking they should play it just because it has gone on so long etc.

Option B: New Game! I'm up for anything modern (in terms of era), depending on what players want, both as settings and as characters. (High fantasy and sci-fi generally require a LOT more setting work than I'm prepared to spend on them, especially the latter.)

Option C: Lowlife finally begins! Set some time, in some era, and goes nuts.

Option D: Sparkie begins phase one. You are not authorized to know about phase one.

Option E: Cereus. [This one depends on ken, though :)]

And november...

2010-10-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

is coming upon us again. During which time all games will likely be suspended while I wander off and write absurd amounts of words in a vain attempt to find meaning to my existence and stave off acknowledgement of how hollow and empty life is.

Or something like that :p

Side Games...

2010-09-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

What i call the 'side games' continue, with Prototype X. There have been a few now over the years since La Fin de Siecle, some successful, others not so. One or two have even had another player playing an NPC as a secret PC, which was all kinds of fun to gm.

For the most part, they tend to be modern games that lean to an anime feel, largely because it requires less prep and such on the part of the gm. The main character has knowledge of fighting, gathers up allies and weapons and so forth. With few exceptions, said games have been designed with one player in mind from the get-go and tend to be built on a spur-of-the-moment aspect around the character concept.

So far only Chaos has done these, but the offer is open to other regulars in game: sometimes a game idea simply works best with just one player, no matter what the idea may be.

Ones done thus far:
* La Fin. The first one and arguably the best thus far. spawned 2 sequels that should, ideally, have not existed, but were still fun regardless. To clarify: the setting had done all it needed to by the end of the first game, so the stuff after that never had that spark.
* Plague of Demons. This one was odd: RL got us for awhile and he game never took off again; it was approaching the final act of the plot. My original idea had been to wrap up the first game quickly, have the necromancer win (!) by losing and then set up a second, modern, game in the same world, with the PC having the advantage of the players knowledge of the setting. Could still happen, at some point.
* 'mgame' (One with Ericka as a teacher, never titled). A flawed idea of a PC as teacher of magical students that never quite worked. It did have another player play an npc, which did make for interesting fun.
* Succubi game. Run by chaos, and ran into the same problem as the above in principle: a character meant to know the setting/be a power in it prior to game and a PC whose player knows nothing of it (since it's often made on the fly) seldom works in the long run. Flawed PC concept for such a setting.
* The Book of Going Forth. Another odd one; it was meant to work in a more episodic manner, a la tv show seasons, but the player never did find it quick enough. Which is a pity: I may be tempted to revisit the setting with multiple players at some point.

Who Killed Cristal McIver?

2010-09-11T18:59:00.000-07:00

My notes for that plot ....

This is basically going to be the Twin Peaks plot of the campaign. Cristal planned to bring Roy back, aided by Andy (magic) and Peter (arranging things in the club so she could make the ritual space). And then she died. Possibly murder, even though it’s somehow been arranged to look like suicide. [Of course, one PC knows she did it and another player knows OOCly but that’ll just add to the fun of it.]
Fact: Cristal is dead, and planned to bring Roy back.
Fact: someone made it out to be suicide.
Fact: Ike is certain someone tampered with the ‘information’ at the scene
Fact: Cristal had John (whose parents own Solomon Security Solusions) disable the cameras and such at her home last year, so parties could be more .... interesting.

[Theories, arranged by Ike from most-least likely]
Conjecture: Andy (who has used magic to try and kill Brodie) blames her for his failure(s), kiilled her.
Conjecture: Peter was sick of being second-place to Roy.
Conjecture: Harley killed her because Peter would be heart-broken and he’d get the club.
Conjecture: Brodie killed her, because all of this was her fault.
Conjecture: Matt has gone nuts because of the angel. Maybe crazy enough to kill the person responsible for it.
Conjecture: Rei killed her because she doesn’t want her brother back (or to protect Roy)
Conjecture: John supplied Harley with the info. about the cameras and such. John is a privacy-nut who hates his parents business and spies; perhaps unstable enough to kill Cristal himself
Conjecture: Her parents hired ninjas to kill her because she spent too much money.
Conjecture: Joni, or any other Popular Girl, did it out of spite that Cristal achieved her status via wealth.
Conjecture: The Coven wanted info on Andy/the rituals Cristal learned and went too far. (Other magicians could fall under this, or people trying to prevent Cristal from doing the Necromancy Ritual again.) And yeah, this one includes Ike himself.
Conjecture: Depending on her influence on the kendo club, the fencing club seeking students may have tried to prevent the kendo club from expanding itself, which is possible thanks to money Kevin got them. Taken to a further extreme, Kevin figured this might happen and arranged her death via proxy.
Conjecture: It *was* suicide, and someone is trying to make that it could have been murder. Parents, possibly for insurance.
Conjecture: Roy killed her for daring to attempt to bind his awesomeness.

Notes on the Prototype ...

2010-08-17T07:20:00.001-07:00

what has come up thus far with regards to Kadmon:

As Kadmon proper:
When engaged or not, Kadmon is invisible to almost all video, audio and other forms of scanning. This ability cannot be turned off but does make it much harder for VC to find him.
* Kadmon's non-engaged persona was intended to spy, so he's very good at reading body language of humans and figuring out if they are lying to him or not.
* Is stronger and faster than humans, though it takes more energy to access functions when not engaged.
* 'skin' can't get dirty or harmed; Kadmon obviously has no blood, so being stabbed and the like would give up the disguise.
* Weighs 152 lb, can alter that to +/- 50 pounds.
* Can heal damage via electricity, over time.
* Senses are more than human in this form as well; has photographic memory and can record and play back events on other media if needed.
* Lastly, Kadmon can lie extremely well, even going so far as hiding the extent that certain things (like removal of a 'rib)actually cost from his host.

Engagement: Nik is able to do this by touch, regardless if Kadmon wants to or not. It's also been possible when the prototype is stuck on a rebooting cycle via thought rather than contact.
Abilities once engaged:
* Enhancement of Nik's regular senses.
* Access to radio waves, infravision, some degree of x-ray vision and so forth: basically a rather wide sensory array filtered through Kadmon and accessed as needed. Kadmon has noticed that his sensors do not extend to low-earth orbit.
* Increased speed, strength, and so forth. A physical high in some respects. Actual limits unknown thus far.
* Armour, the limits of which are untested. Kadmon is able to protect the host from feeling the effects of damage to an extent but Dr. Ledwin did die from being hit by a car during escape from VC.
* Increased speed, enough to seem to be a blur to even people in vehicles. Can be faster for short periods, but the limitations of the host (such as breathing) come into play.
* The armour is able to change appearance and become visible or not at Nik's discretion.
* Electrical absorption, which ca shut down technologies around Kadmon.
* Seeing electricity in power lines, people's brains, etc.
* Ability to zap people with electricity, including directed neural storms to the brain to cause strokes.
* Kadmon also seems able to absorb tin (and possibly other things) after running electricity through them.

Due to Nik's modifications, Kadmon can pick up wifi, access the 'net and hack. He's also been able, with great effort, to split off a part of himself and resist direct orders.
Potential: The ability to split parts of himself off means it should be possible to create duplicates, or at least a host for Pandora. Since Kadmon was intended to be able ot think and adapt, the end-limits of what he is capable of under Nik's guidance remain unknown.

Personality: Created to be a weapon used by a host, Kadmon defaults to doing what the host asks, though he has learned to ask 'why', a fact that horrifies Pandora. All things being equal, he would rather someone say, 'go do this' than go do something himself, which probably makes Pandora a back-up host as well in some situations. In Kadmon's case, this doesn't seem to be a desire to avoid responsibility as much as simply being how he was made, a fact he has defended when pressed by Nik.
Kadmon also views his memories/data as 'himself' and the loss of those to be a loss of self, something he abhors given the effort he has gone to acquire a sense of self. He has successfully refused direct orders to erase memories but later recanted and, presumably if pushed on the issue further, would have given in at the end.

Sexuality: Having been created as half a mated pair, Kadmon is not asexual when it comes to his own kind. Of which only he exists. Humans, on the other hand, so not seem to elicit any response at all.

Pandora: Originally intended to be a mate to Kadmon, she was shelved and turned into a AI to take over if Kadmon was damaged and was intended to be removed prior to the project being finished. She is a quantum computer and has limited use within Kadmon but has fun being an AI on the internet despite the existence of other ones.
Pandora is more mature than Kadmon, in many ways, and does seem able to treat certain orders as guidelines but lacks his ability to flat-out change and grow and has been shown to want to repair Kadmon, considering him to be damaged in his present state. On the plus side, she does have more of a sense of humour than Kadmon does.

Fairview: the August Update

2010-08-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

As of last night's ~7 hour session, the game has hit 58 official sessions (76 including the side-ones and so forth) and been going over six months. Given players dropping out and vanishing and other players switching characters, this is rather impressive. It's also survived a 3 week hiatus with Gm and then a player being sick, school, people moving ... so something is going right.

Currently, plot wise, the Grey Man's storm has been destroyed, the consequences of which have yet to be felt and the White Lord, one of the major magicians in the city, has been sealed in his place of power by the PCs and is unable to escape. Various NPCs have announced themselves in favour of Joni's plan to make the supernatural community in the city have a sort of oversight organization to keep things in line but thus far none of them have real power to help enforced that.

Character-wise, Alex is working on her plan to get free of the Shadow King, and Emma and Trevor are trying to figure out why it makes any sense that magicians don't make the world a Better Place^(tm) and Joni's own plans are proceeding quite nicely. NPC-wise, El Nino/Scry and Eugene Stoffel are sort of getting along, Helena has yet to kill Ike out of sheer frustration, Cristal and Peter (the real ones) are actually beginning to get along, Pierce Chevalier is planning to betray the Grey Man and the Grey Man is finding everything so very amusing.

In terms of dangling plot threads, there is the question of what the other major players (magician-wise) in the city will do following the death of one of their number: the PC s will, unquestionably, have made an impression so what follows from this should prove interesting.

30 XP was given out after this session, making it 60 in total thus far. Investing in health/regen is probably a good idea at this point ... unlike the White Lord, the other magicians are not going to underestimate the PCs. Well, probably not too much. With great power comes great arrogance :)

Side-note: there are a lot of NPCs now running about that the PCs have met: most are off doing their own things, connecting with the PCs as and when PCs seek them out or they need help. That being said, if players -- or their characters -- want to make use of certain NPCS (Please, don't pick Cristal, don't pick Cristal) or have them play a bigger role in their plans, let me knows.

Prototype X

2010-07-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

A modern earth side-campaign intended to have an anime feel, Prototype X is about a regular kid (Nik) who ends up bonded to a prototype armour devised by the multi-national company VeriCorp. VC wants their wayward weapon back, Nik wants his life back and Kadmon wishes to be used soley as a weapon -- something Nik is not in favour of. At present, Kadmon is living with Nikolas, Nik having lied to his sister (and guardian) Anna.

So far the only attempt to retrieve Kadmon has been via an ancient satellite that read dreams (which Nik easily hacked and disabled via Kadmon) and several SWAT-members who were easy to harm and run away from. Kadmon is aware other weapons have escaped, but not what ones nor where they are. At present, Nik is hacking the quantum computer backup AI (Pandora) in Kadmon to allow her internet access and learning about such technologies.

For his part, Kadmon seems horribly eager to please Nik, going so far as to offer access to pandora and connecting to the internet, both of which were apparently forbidden. What either of them will become as VeriCorp continues the search remains an open question, as is what other weapons exist and what their own goals are ...

Ramble on rpg design bits

2010-07-16T22:36:00.001-07:00

Two posts in one day?! That's a record for this blog. Anyway, I've been reading a fun horror rpg but ran into interesting problems:
* 16 stats. With different abbreviations for each. And using non-'standard' ones, like INL for intelligence. I find nothing throws me off a game faster than a giant pile of abbreviations to memorize.
* Disadvantages. So, it's horror. It lists AIDS and Alzheimer's. And being a virgin. At which I went 'uh, what?'.

At which point it occurred to me that I've yet to find a game system with disadvantages that do NOT feel like pandering to min/maxing. BESM actually does pretty well in making (most) of them real disadvantages that cost to take, save for -ism and the like. It's probably a personal preference, but I'd rather people took such things for RP value and the like rather than for, well: "Omg! I must balance out ze point costs! Quick, Bad Temper!"

I suspect it would be interesting to make an rpg where character point totals didn't have to match so stringently. Or allow other methods of balancing than disadvantages, perhaps something like Hooks and Tails in other systems or stuff that encourages background and complications. No firm ideas as yet, just some thoughts.

Dresden Files game

2010-07-16T10:17:00.001-07:00

DRESDEN FILES - DETROIT. (No campaign name as yet.)

"And if in the end, there is only darkness? If the world is meant to end in darkness?"
Jilly shook her head. She refused to believe it.
"How can you deny it?" he asked.
"It's just . . . if there's only supposed to be darkness, then why were we given light?"
For a long moment, he sat there, shoulders drooped, staring down at her hands. When he finally looked up, there was something in his eyes that Jilly couldn't read.
"Why indeed?" he said softly.
- Charles de Lint, "The Buffalo Man"

The following is a summary of the initial chats on the city, as I recalled them, and some additional bits and ideas. Nothing of it is set in stone.

Detroit is, in practise, a hell on earth. Half of its population has vanished in 50 years, entire subdivisons are deserted (over 30K empty buildings) and the employment figure is between 25-34% depending upon the source. Half the schools have closed, it's 'ground zero' for education and jobs and essentially an American Mexico City -- this is how bad things can get when they simply keep getting worse.

THEMES

Urban Decay

This is the biggy. The city is falling into the abyss and no one seems able to stop it. Weirdly, the people who seem most willing to stop it are the Canadian government, via Windor .. a city that thrives while its sister city fails. Bail-out money and the like has been offered but to what extent the tide can be held back is an open question.

Things to explore:
* Why has Windor succeeded? Magically, it could somehow he considered to be 'stealing' Detroit's potential. A coven of magicians? I imagine there would be some interesting conspiracy theories about this. Perhaps the area they link to in the Nevernever influences things?
* Twin it with Mordor? :)
* The places it leads to in the Nevernever would be BAD places. And a lot of things can leak through: you have a city with shit police protection, urban jungles gone wild and areas more fitting for the third world than first -- a perfect feeding ground for nasty things, and for finding people desperate enough to make any kind of Pact.
* Some of this can be linked to the demise of the auto industry, leading to a competing theory to the above: magicians hate Industrialization, so they broke Detroit as a warning/lessson to the world. Things have fallen apart, the centre hasn't holded, people in the city are probably more aware of magic ... and scared people make leaps of logic others wouldn't.

Racism

This isn't a theme we've much explored in Game1, but Detroit is almost a poster child for it. The population is 80% black, 20% white (for all intents; other minorities are seriously minor). The average income is ~28K for a family. The math isn't pretty.There's a lot of anger and resentment boiling away that's one wrong word from exploding.

Things to explore:
* The music scene. Seriously, this is Motown and yet most of the famous rappers are white. What the hell? Seriously, what the hell?
* White Court vampires are into Sex and Porn. Black Court vampires have been destroyed by a Book/White Man's Education. The White Court is huge (in most cities), The Black Court is nothing. The parallels would be interesting for people to draw even if they have no real basis in reality.
* The sane folk. The city hasn't fallen apart, and some of that is because people don't blame it on race and so forth and actually talk to each other. While this theme is dark, there's some counterpoints to the urban decay in that the shit has not hit the proverbial fan.

THREATS

Save With Magic

Basically, at least one clued in Wizard willing to break the laws of magic to alter minds and enthrall people to create a better world. It's blatantly ignoring the fact that magic doesn't solve anything as miuch as make things more complicated but a desperate activist watching their hopes for the future crash and burn again is liable to ignore than and try and fix things in any way possible.

Things to explore:
* The domino effect. Lies beget other lies: You make one person Change, and others wonder why, begin to question, and you have to control more minds to stop those questions until it spirals out of control.
* To what extent does/can this work, short term? If it has actual tangible benefit -- short or long term -- then it could be worth it. If one has made the world a better place, then what purpose are the laws of magic actually serving, and whose ends?

GM Thoughts

I don't want this to be Harry Dresden in another city. As such, both the police and the mob are kept in the dark about Weird Shit as much as possible. (An ex-police officer investigating things they shouldn't is fine, ditto with minor criminals trying to make use of magic and such to have it backfire.)

I want the general populace more clued in, at a basic 'weird shit happens' level. Dresdenverse has no Illuminati, no Sleepers or WOD Veil -- and yet magic has, despite being real and powerful, somehow been forgot. Who benefited from this and/or arranged it? Such questions, of course, assume anyone deliberately did. (For my money, the first theory is closer to an in-game truth.)

The Eugenics Theory: The White Council dooms magic. Magic is inherited, and every warlock who dies reduces the amount of potential magicians: the rise of the internet (and people realizing their potential/heritage) has slowed what was becoming an obvious trend, but has not eradicated it: magic became rare because magicians did, and the extermination of warlocks does more than the Inquisition ever did.
The Conspiracy Theory: The Council encouraged science etc. because their magic is better than it (e.x.: electronics -- some 'coincidence') and if kept in a few hands, magic is safer and less dangerous. Letting people become convinced magic wasn't real prevented great harm via magic.

Differences from Dresden Files: The red court have NOT been wiped out; the vampire war ended as a cold war stalemate a while ago.

Also, I'll probably make use of/throw in things from the Nevernever a LOT. It's s fascinating aspect of the setting that is seldom touched on and there's a lot of interesting places to go with it regarding Faerie, Hell, Heaven, God(s) and so forth.

CAMPAIGN

Power level: Starting as Chest-Deep seems viable (8 refresh, 30 skill points, cap at Suberb) seems viable.

Players: Ideally, 3. More or less are possible.

Low Life

2010-07-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

As noted on the forum, Low Life is going to exist. As a game using the Amber system. The basic idea is on the forum and is essentially:

1) It's the 80s (reasons for this on forum) and
2) You are pretty much the first people in the world with abilities past the human. How these manifest depend on what you buy, in terms of actual powers, increases in stats and so forth.

The core concept is that the PCs become more (and maybe less) than human, them finding out what was done to them and how they go about changing the world. Up until the PCs, the world is normal: how the dominoes fall after that entirely depends on what they do.

Ah, unknown armies

2010-06-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

Came across this in my notes for the Apotheosis game:

A collection of fictional books.

The History of Psychology by Tom Cruise
Why Hitler Was a Boddhisatva by the Dalai Lama
The True History of Magick by James Randi
The Autobiography of God (Reader's Digest condensed version)
Voynich Manuscript, translated by Edward Fitzgerald
How I loved My Mother by Sigmund Freud
Shattering of the Glass Family by J D Salinger
The Cruel Ones and You by Dr Seuss
I See With My Other Eyes by Hellen Keller

Return of the Trip

2010-05-31T11:41:00.007-07:00

Remember when I said that I would be going on a trip but then it was postponed? Well, now it's actually happening. I'll be leaving on June 8th to ride around in my step-dad's big rig as he delivers various things to points unknown, and then return on June 24th (assuming nothing unexpectedly cataclysmic happens). I won't exactly have internet access for most of this time... although, to be honest, I will have some basic internet access on my iPhone and while I do have an IRC client installed on it... it kind of sucks. Besides this, I'll be required to follow an abnormal sleep schedule, going to sleep around 5pm and waking up some time around 2am. (Ideal schedule for avoiding most traffic, but strange otherwise.) Therefore, I don't think I'll be available for games for those 17 days.

I would have brought this up earlier, but... well... I kept forgetting to. My bad.

For anyone who's interested, I'll probably be making regular posts on my twitter account, complete with Geotags.

Fairview: May Update

2010-05-09T10:45:00.002-07:00

Somewhere, east of the sun and west of the moon, a place without east nor west nor even suns and moons, protean creatures who seem to be the love child of a spider-goat and a rabid lawnmower move through deep dark shadows that absorb the echoes of their feet, chittering prayers in voices that have never known fear before. On the throne of cartilage and cast-off nightmare foam a figure sits, a gun in one hand and courage in the other, adjusting her crown as things circle in the shadows, looking for weakness, waiting for a moment to strike even as other things move towards the throne with wounded limbs to offer sacrifices to the new queen, Rei ....

Well, no. Or at least not yet. To sum up: Rei decided to end suffering quite visibly, attempting to kill one person and use their body to kill another. Peter died, Snaketongue was very annoyed the plans for Kevin being president could have been derailed at all and Rei ended up being banished Outside the universe by Joni. Despite the above, it is unlikely Rei shall return.

Plot wise, Emma woke up from a coma and is adjusting to life several years after her coma and events are slowly pulling her towards the other PCs. Being a healer (and a helper!) shall no doubt aid this as the game goes on. Alex is trying to work on destroying her family curse, Karl is balancing two very different jobs and Joni has collected even more Items (including a school).

As Alex's fencing school and the high school have pretty much done their job of connecting PCs and NPCs together at times, they're more or less becoming purely background now. Alex's grandfather is dealing with the day-to-day aspects of the school, Karl has been asked to do a new assignment (Vericorp having decided he's more useful than Shell and, probably, more able to destroy Brodie if their newest employee turns out to be a problem) and Joni is trying to deal with various magicians, keeping friendships and dealing with the ramifications of having beaten up the antichrist and prevented it from being born.

NPC wise (in no parrticular order and probably missing more than a few):

The Grey Man is free again, though what the entity in Kyle plans remains unknown, as if whatever he did to Ike and Denice as 'payment' for being kept captive for a weekend.
Helen and Thomas, agents of the Shadow Walker, are preparing to deal with Pierce Chevalier, who seems to be worried that the Shadow Walker is still manipulating him and that Alex is a trap/trick.
Julius Gull and Drake Hakurei are trying to find out what Emma is, in their own ways.
Helena is friends again with Joni, so everything is OK.
Dennis is trying to prevent the flaw Joni discovered in his metal from working and is being Mr. Grumpy over the issue.
Alex's sister and mother are on the run, though from whom or why is unknown at present.
The Scry is considering recovering his t-shirt from Emma and pleased Alex is helping him not have to learn to use a sword.
Brodie is now working for Vericorp, who really should have insisted on a psych test beforehand.
Blot is killing rats and being very bored.
To continue with B's, Brandon is fine now, sans headaches and unsure why. His parents are worried that the miraculous recovery can end as quickly as it came about.
Tyrell is coming to terms with the knowledge that the Grey Man toyed with him for centuries for no other viable reason that 'just because'.
Eugene Stoffel is trying to find ways to spite his father and make use of the family estate. This can't end well.
Bea's mirror-self is getting worried about losing her job for hitting on her boss.
Father Brownwell is finishing translating Enochian for Joni and getting worried that it is later than anyone thinks.
The White Lord is debating steps to take against Joni
Kevin has decided to embrace his power rather than allow others to be hurt because he didn't use it. The school might well get its own helipad.
The werwewolves in the park are debating steps to take against the animal control officials.
Mr. Stuffins has decided that if people keep trying to put him on a diet, the end will be very, very nigh.

And #game1 turns 12 ....

2010-05-01T13:10:00.001-07:00

So ... 12 years. For a channel created to run a one-off D&D session with 3 people, I'm astonished it's lasted this long. (Two of the first players, for the record, never returned: D&D murder mystery is not to everyone's tastes.) The channel has seen many, many GMs and games throughout the years and had a lot of players, some of whom have been around, off and on, for over ten years. To say this is a surprise to all concerned underestimates it, to say the least :)

A few milestones that come to mind:

Sparkie, who came into existence as a joke NPC during the 'generic D&D games' that compromised the first months of Game1 and eventually turned into the Wasted World. When the time came for a dicebot, Sparkie got upgraded.

Wasted World. Spanning Three campaigns (for reasons of time travel, the second campaign and half the third technically never happened), it was the first real game1 setting and included everything from wizards with magic shops and pet Otyughs to gods among the PCs. A personal favourite highlight is the attempt of level 1 thugs to mug the PCS, en route back to the city they had acquired during a war. The players were convinced it couldn't be simple ruffians and the encounter lasted over an hour.

It's also the campaign that introduced Jeramias to D&D. He and a friend had browsed the books in a store, he ended up on game1 that night and his pc existed as an idea without stats for a whole campaign as he learned the game on the fly.

Callaran, a year-long D&D campaign that involved kender convincing evil clerics to be good and a vampiric halfling, among other highlights. Ended when the halfling killing other PCs for their attempted murder of him when he became a vampire and the bard being the only survivor.

LOLAD began life as a 'finish that character, a game will fun' incentive that ended up being game1's first foray into modern earth. (D&D 2e being used to run a modern game with vampire and werewolves. Insanity.) It had PC romances, AIs, werepanthers, necromancers, The Faline, dragons, werecows and lasted six months, spawning 2 sequels, another game set in the same world and the lolad 1.1 sequel that ended up being ran by Alcar and then re-envisioned by kentari in the game crossover idea*. It ran in D&D (2e and 3e), besm and a custom system at differing times. Confusing but fun :)

Hubris was the first truly insanely gm-intensive game that began the game1 superheroes games, spawned a sequel set 20 years later and ended due to GM burnout, which is still a regret. Probably the single most in-depth game I've ever done, in terms of the sheet amount of work put into both Hubris and Aftermath.

Shroomform. Just ... shroomform. (This sentiment can probably be applied to the Amber games as well.)

The Lands of Blood games. Aka: death gods without power, a succubi drunken master and a jedi knight, among other things. Stormtroopers and Sith crash-land on a D&D world with Cthulhu waiting in the wings. Probably even crazier than that makes it sound.

Several demented unknown armies campaigns have run, but trying to summarize them up would probably lead to this blog getting a mature warning label. Caltak's PC Hugh was in at least 2, maybe even 3, campaigns, making him one of the only pcs to do that trick.

Ios, a cliche-driven fantasy game in D&D that marked Game1's last 'serious' foray into D&D. To this day I am never quite certain how the hell the Lee/Lirk/Orgg love triangle really came about, but I think Theliar can be blamed.

kbesm, a modern besm game that got a sequel run by kentari and then by alcar*. Crazy-awesome fun all around. Generally any game that spawns sequels enters the pantheon of game1 awesomeness.

Unstrung Heroes deserves a special mention for having run since 2003. The first two sessions were six months apart, long enough that one player had forgotten he'd played in the game. It's ran off and on since them, often with a few sessions close together and a year (or more) gap between sessions.

* Alcar and Kentari ended up not wanting to run/continue sequels to lolad and kbesm, despite requests, so swapped settings. Dunno if it will ever be done again, but it was a lot of fun to run and the cross-over between both settings would have been epic had it ever come to fruition.

Tales from Fairview: House Rules

2010-04-25T17:33:00.000-07:00

This is a revision of the previous house rules (since that one lacked clarity). "Funky stuff" is a technical term for weapons doing other effects than just damage.

Critical Hits

As per the normal rules, difference of 12 between attacker and defender nets double damage for the attacker. 12 more is triple and so forth. Rolling a 12 to hit (and not getting that difference) only nets double damage if one has Critical Strike. The GM confused the two as the same thing.

The Dreaded 2

Rolling a 2 to attack or defend. If you still win the attack or defense, you do so very poorly and, if it is an attack, funky weapon stuff doesn't work at GMs discretion. Perhaps more importantly, your opponent realizes how badly you stumbled and may get a bonus to their next attack or defense. For the most part, it's intended to be RPed as situations dictate.

Rolling a 12

If you roll a 12, you hit. If the defender still wins the roll, attackers damage is limited as equal to ACV (and, at GMs discretion, no funky stuff). If you get a 12 and win, the opponent may suffer a morale loss and so forth based on how awesome you were. On the flip side, they're also aware of what your limit for 'best' is.

Both the 12 and 2 are meant to be largely RPed in terns of story effects. If you succeed because of a 12, it looks really awesome. If you fail because of a 2, it looks that much worse. If either results in critical hit/failure, you screw the pooch badly or open up a can of awesome.

Ties

This is the real rules revision: Ties now go to the defender in a battle, not the attacker.

Divine Relationship

A few things: it can only be used once per round and the total refreshes every day, not every game session. Also, if you do use it in combat, this is noticed by the foe. You almost fail, manage to recover at the last moment and so on. This will get noticed if it happens more than once in the same fight, and if the battle is anything Official, cheating may be called :)

Fairview: some meta notes

2010-04-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

Session Complications: Generally, what we end up with is four players, their pcs sometimes at four different times, doing different things. (Monday's session even had Joni doing things Sunday and then finishing up Sat. night stuff.) Add in combat, trying to keep notes, spark's quotes and trying to somehow keep continuity together* and things get, well, complicated. Fun, but complicated.

The downside of that is that sometimes one character will get the short end of the attention stick, as it were. Generally speaking, the player who arrives last tends to have this problem, mostly because everything is in full-swing with everyone else. To try and alleviate this, some thoughts:

1) Get in touch/involved with the other PCs. (This is, generally, a good idea all around.)

2) If the plot doesn't really allow for that -- say, Karl waiting on the inquisition -- poke me in channel a few times if/when you find it too slow. A lot of players are playing to rather late hours in their timezone, and I'd rather not have any of you feel the time was wasted. So nag if need be :)

* This has held together shockingly well, often thanks to players taking broad hints, like Leon insisting Alex join him for lunch since other PCs and NPCs had broken into her office in an event playing out before Alex arrived at said office. Ah, the joys of time.

Side sessions: These will mostly be for single-player plot bits that mostly just involve that character. Rei taking Dennis to the vet was the most recent one and gave them some RP time as well as allowing Rei to figure out more about what went down Thursday night. Karl will be taking more steps to find his computer this weekend and so forth.

Sheets: Everyone has 30 XP right now. Modification of character sheets is allowed, within reason. (If you want to stop having/using a major ability, say it burned out ... though your character won't know that, and may well try to use it again.) Send me updated sheets, preferably before Monday.

Fariview: Hope's Poems

2010-04-10T19:53:00.001-07:00

For Rei, because she dared read poems by a girl who lost her brother. (Alas, the GM was not in a really gothy mood.)

i.

there are no words
no words to say
grey emptiness within
blank smiles without

all I do is grasp edges
thought is stained with grief
I miss even hating him
we are the total of our regrets

ii.

We never talked as strangers do
My brother, he and I.
The silences are deeper now
And all his words a veil.

We never spoke as friends do,
Trading light grey lies.
All my thoughts have weight now
I whisper lest I wail.

iii. [This one is crossed out savagely, but readable]

Sometimes the strong are O! so weak with secrets they can never keep
One wrong word and panic leaps 'til only death alone can reap;
It's only love I want to speak, but his fears sweet silence keeps
Grey truth and lies slowly creep while loss hides hope and weeps

iv.

They told me you were dead and gone
And that alone I must continue on.
They told me you have gone away
To a place I may visit yet someday.
But all I saw and all I know
Is they put you in the ground.
Tell me that it isn't so,
That gravestones are fairy mounds.

I wish that I could believe
That some part of you hasn't forgot,
I wish I could deceive
Myself that death's not our lot
I wish I could feel relief
If we just lie there and rot
But I can't help but believe.

All the empty words that people say
Can't bring you back to me today,
I waited here until grey dawn
But the day has come and gone.

v.

when I think of death I think
of silence and the end
of empty halls and laid-down burdens
grey gardens we no longer tend

And when I life of life I know
that all things must break
and heart's lessons are scar's
tissue and all we forsake.

vi.

Each word I write is poor and fettered.
Pictures found worth untold worls.
The truth is a liar, the wise man says.
All I know is what is gone.
All I feel is hollow and grey.
All I wish is for an end.

Fairview March Update

2010-03-19T07:16:00.001-07:00

So. We're at 22 official sessions (34 in total) in 4 months and things are going pretty well. Two weeks have passed in game-time and most of the current major players on the stage have made their various moves and now the PCs get to ruin all of that in the way that only PCs can. Charcter-wise:

Alex is preparing for the big fencing tournament Sunday in game. As Chaos is busy this month with classes, this is pretty much largely an Alex-centric background event which works fine as is.
Bea's player is MIA, so Bea's mirror-clone has taken over but has yet to interfere with the other PCs. Yet.
Joni is trying to deal with the Grey Man via the kids in comas and has gained access to a lot of magical books that she and Ike are in the process of translating.
Karl, newly arrived to Fairview, is dealing with attempted (and successful) mind control by students at the IT lap and currently attempting to get his company to contain the thing that Brodie has become. What Vericorp will do with their own weird monster remains to be seen.
Rei, for her part, thinks the scientologist hospital sicked the Grey Man/Kyle on Fairview General and is planning to use them against the Grey Man. Somehow. That or burn the hospital down.

Sparkie is rather miffed that, on the rare occasions he does side with an NPC, PCs keep winning the dice contests anyway.

NOTE: PCs will get 30 experience once we hit session #30 [Karl shall get his at ~session #40]. This was planned since I figured by then a lot of PCs and NPCs would be aware of each others powers and limits, and this gives them another edge (or two or three) to surprise with. It can be spent or saved as needed.

Tales from Fairview: the end of February thing

2010-02-28T14:24:00.000-08:00

Okay. February has ended, It is Wednesday of the second week fo the campaign. We've had 20+ sessions and are now up to 5 players. Current plot threads include: The Grey Man, The Grey Men, the Stoffels, ninjas, school and work, other magicians and possibly werewolves being beaten up for justice. Other plots include Leon finding a BF for his daughter, what is happening to Joni's foster brother the slow destruction of Peter Danier the kendo club president and the utter apathy of the police force in responding to anything at all.

Upcoming plots include a Praetorian Academy-sponsored fencing tournament (This weekend in game: mark it on your calendars!) and presumably Eugene Stoffel either going right around the bend, clinging to the shores of sanity or taking a long vacation.

So far the overall linking plot is the Grey Man's threat to destroy the city (somehow) and that the Grey Men, who claim to be watching events, seem to find most of the PCs worthy of study and examination. That the self-called watchers have taken to using guns and knives and trying to kill for information just makes things more interesting.

Things to keep in mind:

Plots will NOT come looking for PCs that often. If you want your character to be involved, get involved. They need to go out and do things. Visit and/or spy on NPCs and PCs, get to know people outside a school/work setting, meet people, make use of their weird abilities to find out what they are capable of, etc. Go to work or school, fine. But your character can go out after, have dinner, visit a bar or pub, go for a walk in the park, meet their neighbours. Boring characters make for a boring game, after all. If you feel the character needs to be pushed out of their comfort zone to do so, chat with the GM and other players for ideas.

Fairview: 9 sessions in

2010-01-15T19:43:00.002-08:00

To date: 3 presessions and 4 official sessions (really 6, counting the other-night ones). Currently all the PCs have met each other*, if only briefly, and have yet to get along. I suspect that running presessions where pcs do not meet is not something I shall do in the future and that, ideally, everyone will know everyone else before a game begins.
* Bea excepted, since Fen is away for a couple of weeks.

Plot wise, there are grey men (who seem to have something to do with dreams) following certain PCs, a man called the Grey Man who seems to wish the destruction of the city, a cult centred around Roy's brother who seem to have summmoned an angel and several other things that have been hinted at. PC-wise, there is Leon's quest to get his daughter married, Alex's quest for more students and funding, Joni dealing with her foster family and the odd friends and enemies she's developed and Rei's quest to find her brother and not get fired from work. (For her part, Bea is looking for a teacher of magic and has claimed an otherworldly entity as her servant, by its choice, which seems to be connected to a Mr. Stoffel, a rich man who owned a lighting company and is now quite dead.)

Some plots are connected, others are not: unlike other games where X is solved and the game ends, this game has been designed with several plots going on at once and each PC knowing things the others do not about some of them. The PCs shall naturally create new plots, adding complications and generally make life for the inhabitants of Fairview quite interesting.

Lastly, a list of NPCs has been put up that is semi-complete.

The end of presesssions

2010-01-03T13:15:00.001-08:00

Game time has been set at 9 pm EST, Monday and Thursday nights.

So far, plot-wise, we have 4 PCs, all female (which is new) and three out of four of them have been followed and/or stalked by mysterious parties. Session #1 and on will be party-based and most sessions take place, in the game world, as afternoon-evening, since the pcs have work and/or classes during the day.

Current connections between PCs:
Alex: Has been trying to get students from the HS to her fencing school, has students from it. (Including probably Joni's foster brother).
Bea: has adopted some magical stalker who has gone out to see interesting things for her. Currently fixated on a house in the wealthy part of town. And if any PC needs someone to do do taxes, perfect!
Joni and Rei: Both go to the same school.

There are others, of course, but will not be given away at present (Hint: everyone is connected to Roy.).

The Fall of Fairview Pleasant Pointe

2009-12-23T21:46:00.000-08:00

[00:45:59] fennec: "This blog needs to be used more." -- alcar. mon, aug 10, 2009.
[00:46:07] * fennec reads the blog! :b

Kentari decided to make a BESM game also.

Go HERE for details.

Tales from Fairview: taken things

2009-12-15T06:46:00.000-08:00

(This shall be updated as PCs are made and changed)

Taken:

Appearance
Chimera
Cthulhu kindred
Demon
Fencing
Fire [by Spark]
Luck
Mind Control/Telepath
Ninja
Pet Monster
True Swordsmanship without cheating

(Current as of: Dec 20)

BESM Game?

2009-12-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

ETA: Game will be titled Tales From Fairview

Okay! Here we go: a new game idea, reasoning(s) behind it etc. and so forth.

System: BESM 3e, ~450 points (stats, attributes, skills). Dynamic Powers'll be a no-go unless whatever the player has in mind (like a werewolf) can only be done via that. Power Flux is viable, magic as well.

Time: Mon., Thurs. or Friday night, ~7pm PST (10pm EST).

Setting: Earth, modern day, nameless large North American city. PC ages are entirely up to the players* but we've done enough college, school, etc. games that I'd rather this wasn't one. It doesn't mean pcs can't be school students, just that said things won't be a focus of the game.
* I'd personally be happy if some people want to tackle the 'playing relatives' idea we've bandied about.

Characters: Pick something you want to make and make it. The idea is to go for anime-style fun so being able to hold oneself in combat (both social and phsyical) is probably a good idea. Everyone should take at least one defect [curses are encouraged] and think anime when figuring out powers and the character.

The world: It's this world, only most people ignore the weird shit. People can only handle so much reality, and even less unreality: gas main explosions, drugs, kids being kids and such will be concocted to explain things. Or people freak out and then manage to forget whatever they saw quickly. The government is aware of such things, and the men in black (to say nothing of the men in mauve) are present and tend to quietly make sure no one rocks the boat too far.

Why these abilities exist and how people come into them are unknown, at least to the pcs. There'll be many theories, of course, from aliens to gods and even everyone being game pieces created by gods known as 'players'. It is NOT a superhero game and anyone trying to be one is liable to find a depressing lack of supervillains.

Despite all the awesome, the mundane still exists: family, taxes, jobs and so forth.

Note: How the players connect together'll depend on what you all make. You could all work at the same place, all be Freemasons, have some wealthy friend/patron/sugardaddy in common: it'll depend on what is made.

Note 2: If someone decides something is their schtick (i.e. their thing) then no one else can get it, or at least not be as good as they are. (No one should be obligated to have to get a schtick; it's just for thems who wants one.) If someone wants to be the best-ever master of telepathy, it's theirs, meaning that they can go to 6-7 in the power and no one else can. Chat with other players before taking something as a Big Thing in case it conflicts with someone else's idea. Being 'the werewolf' and such could also count as this.

Note3: Everyone gets 2 levels of mind shield and resistance for free.

Under the hood: This idea was based on me thinking about what made other games fun and a game with a lot of lattitude. Chaos's bdsm game, early lolad and some aspects of kbesm fit into this. Ditto with that you can play character you've made before, if you want to try them in another setting and so forth. Depending on how things go, multiple characters for players might get allowed if people are willing.

Keep in mind that this is a modern earth game. Characters from other earths/times are not encouraged concepts. (Half demons and such, sure, but Victorian Adventurer dragged out of time or dwarf from Fantasy World not so much). Characters should be human or at least able to pass for human under the right light. As well, most characters will just be coming into their powers and/or just aware of most of them. As pcs don't start with handbooks, most characters should have to discover the various abilities they have rather than just knowing they can do X, Y, Z offhand.

The nature of the setting will depend a lot on what players make. Give your character a nature and theme (sci fi, supernatural, magical girl, or whatever) and the game will synthesize all of that together. Keep in mind general anime ideas, fun, and what other people make: if everyone else makes supernatural-themed, and you go for a cyborg some rethinking could be necessary.

Toss thoughts here, in #game1 etc.

Start date: Early January. (Attempting to run games over xmas is fraught with peril :))

Attendance: Need not be Mandatory. If you don't think you can make certain sessions or times, build reasons into the character for it.

Summaries etc: Will be done on the forum rather than a webpage, unless someone else wishes to make one.

And we're back(ish)!

2009-12-03T07:52:00.000-08:00

November gives way to December. Games shall return. Exactly what, in terms of having more than 2 players, remains unknown at present.

Whatever runs'll depend on what people feel like, after general consensus.

About the only thing in my head at the moment is a very vague modern besm game, 450 points, make whatever you want, build game around what players make.

Games on hold (that alcar runs)

2009-10-31T11:25:00.001-07:00

It's november. The usual :)

Plague of Demons

2009-09-26T00:31:00.000-07:00

To give the new side game a proper title.

The premise is that it's 1345, 2 years before the Black Plague strikes, and the current PC, Pam, is a demon hunter. Basically, many (if not all) plagues in history were caused by demons prior to this, and Genghis Khan's invasion was actually a demonic army, or at least had demons in it. Prior to this, demons had little knowledge of how to fight wars.

Pam is a demon hunter for the Order, an organization funded by the Church to protect Christendom -- and the rest of the world -- from the demons of Hell. Pam's family is well known in the church and produce many members of the order and high-ranking priests from the far-off land of England. She's joined the Order, been paired up with 2 other novices (Rose, a healer, and Bede, a thief/magician) who are seeking a supposed Necromancer or Sorcerer north of Rome and Saint Jude's Academy, where they get trained.

Normally, novices wouldn't be sent out on their own, but the Order seems to be short handed and their true mission is to find signs of demonic activity close to Rome. They've been ordered by Abbot Costello to not engage the Necromancer and asked by Gerard, the spear-wielding member of the Order who took them on their first mission, to find out if the Necromancer is a real one and if he can die.

At present they've reached the city of Reti and so far encountered people spell-bound to raise the dead, a sorcerer making a magical Gate and, currently, a weapon in Reti capable of killing Healers. The Necromancer seems aware of them and is throwing up roadblocks to slow them down, but to what end remains unknown.

THE WORLD IS IN YOUR HANDS

2009-09-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

This is not an idle statement: to save the world from itself, several superhuman beings have banded together and taken over the entire world. You are among this number. Each of you is far more than human, capable of feats inspiring both awe and terror. You are the heroes, the guardians of a new age, and this is your story.

The year is 2020, the Year of Good Vision. By 2011, the middle east had enough nukes to turn each other into piles of dust, and all sides were willing to use it. Russia was sliding back into communism, the USA was entering into another cold war, China was threatening to cripple the global economy without using a single weapon, global warming had reached a fever pitch, Africa was a mess the world was having trouble ignoring and everything seemed to be heading down a long dark tunnel with a mach at the end.

That was when a group of superhumans – heroes and villains – got together and declared the world under their protection and law. Superhumans had existed since the first word war (blossoming in the second) but had mostly fought their own battles, dealt with their own kind. They were gods, but their concerns were with heaven and not earth, as one wag put it.

Until they came down off their mountains, put aside their old battles (what became of their myriad foes remains unknown) and the heroes went to the villains and told them that we all lived on the same world, that it meant we were on the same side, and by dint of compromise and debate, the Protectorate was born.

And despite all the naysayers and new age gurus and the revelationsists, the world past 2012 thanks to them. Nuclear weapo ns were destroyed along with those far more dangerous, governments abolished. The hoarded wealth of the Swiss banks was used in africa, along with the monies at the Vatican never used to actually help the poor. Wealth was redistributed, and goods as well.

Eight years have passed, and the world is a far different place. Most of the world counts as a second-world country (running about the level of technology from the early 90s: cable TV, cable for computers, pentium IIIs and cellphones though things are steadily improving). Most governments have been reinstated, organized religions given very limited access to funds, and militaries are pretty much folded into the police for each country. And over it all the gods watch, patient, their vigil neverending.

This is an idea for a superhero RPG game. Basically, it’s about what happens to humans once the superhumans rule the world. It’s about freedom, security (and happiness), duty, power, responsibility and how far we can go to save each other. It’s about angels and choices, power and will, and the world of our desires.

It’s not a perfect world, but what world is? Things are changing, education has become free and the world is slowly moving towards a one-world government. Goods and wealth have been redistributed, the systems of power that permitted the idea of maximizing profit dismantled or limited, and the world is once more looking towards the future. Only the past keeps rearing up its head, and there are those convinced humanity should never have been saved, those who hate the gods for taking away freedoms, and a few villains still around trying to remake the world in their own image.

The PCs are all members of the Protectorate in good standing. The dark side of the dream has begun to rear up and some believe the dream has reached it’s zenith. No one knows how far various factions will go to achieve their ends. The world has been saved, but whether it is better, whether the current system can remain and so forth are debates ranging about the globe, with no real answer in sight.

System: Undecided. BESM at 900-1000 points might do; the template in my head is roughly analogous to the Justice League in that PCs could easily take down regiments, and maybe destroy a city alone, but no one (at least, no pc) running around with the power to break worlds and moons in half. Weaknesses are required, magic preferably not used and each PC should be able to take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’ as well as have some mode of transport to get to places quickly.

Toss thoughts here or in game1; this is pretty rough at this point.

This blog needs to be used more.

2009-08-10T17:49:00.000-07:00

Like, for real.

Okay ... Game Stuff

2009-07-10T07:45:00.000-07:00

Right. E-speaking might work (so far, odds are stacked against it) . but left-handed typing is viable. Slower, but still viable. So, with that in mind, some ground rules of sorts for at least the start of this experiment:

* The GM is unlikely to type out 440+ bits of text; they'll likely get broken up better. Ditto for "text" *action bits* "text", which will probably become 3 lines so people don't end up waiting impatiently. (I may reformat it for Spark's quotes, may not.)
* Spark is liable to be quieter, at least via Alcar usin the msg'd !say #game1 and !me etc. See? This isn't all bad.

Player wise, for games I'll run:
* PCs wandering off alone will slow things up even more. This is pretty much a given.
* If you aren't playing during a game, don't msg the gm.
* If you are playing, try and do it only when necessary; don't expect a quick reply.

If it would make for a good quote, the above is null and void :)

This is pretty much going to be an experiment: try a few sessions, see how it goes. If it ends up too slow, some -- or all -- of the games may be cut until the gm heals.

Games on hold

2009-07-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

Catch-all post for this:

Alcar got defenstrated Sat. June 27th. Operation, unfun stuff, and this weekend (July 4th-5th) going to get right arm operatged on -- to attach tendon -- and splinted for six weeks.

As such, all games are on hold that he is running until further notice.

The very minor plus column involves catching up on dvds and such yet to be watched. The other side is lack of writing and/or games will not be fun

Trip Postponed

2009-06-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

Well, it turns out the air conditioning in the truck is broken and only works when the truck is in Drive, and since it also happened but to a more severe degree on other new trucks that were issued by the company, it may not get fixed until after he's already been here and gone on the next run. And unfortunately, taking a later trip this summer would conflict with either me going to ConnectiCon or to the start of Fall Classes, so it looks like this trip is postponed until next year or something.

EDIT: Now I'm told there's actually a real possibility it will be fixed in time. Stay tuned for updates. :p

FINAL EDIT: Ok, it's not happening this year. Oh well.

Caltak Hits The Road

2009-06-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

Starting Tuesday, July 7th, I will be on the road for 17 days with my step-dad. He's a trucker, you see, and he recently received a new truck from his company which has 2 bunks. We only see each other when he's home for a weekend between each of his 17-day trips or when he takes a week off, and since I'm currently unemployed (by choice) and on summer vacation from college, he offered to take me on a trip. Since I like an excuse to see more of the country for free, I accepted. Now, I hopefully won't be entirely incommunicado during that time, since I'll be bringing my netbook and a few other electronic entertainments, but I can't ensure I'll always be within range of an unsecured wireless network. So, while I'll attempt to be on IRC whenever I can, it may be spotty at best for that time period.

Task Force C: Session 01 thoughts

2009-06-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

Had the requisite three PCs, so that part went well. Some quick thoughts:

Having PCs get to know each other when they're all in a job for various dubious reasons never quite works. Gar tried, though.

The PCs are pretty well-made, in terms of diversity, for dealing with many problems.

Mya turned out a bit odd. She genuinely cares for Merlyn, but finds the idea the boy might be lonely to be surprising, having never consciously considered that. The police know of her, according to Constable Rogers, as "the crazy woman" for reasons not yet specified. She tends to talk formally, not notice when she is being patronized, and is very keen to protect Merlyn, even going as far as finding files in the basement.

The filing and bureaucracy aspect does come from actual policing. To an extent, it's a fail-safe to prevent future scrutiny. In most police forces it's gone further than that -- in the UK, modern tech. is being used to reduce the amount of time spent per shift on paperwork to 1.5 hours. This is the reduced rate on an eight-hour shift. Factor in the PCs making to do paperwork for the police and FBI and things get more than staggering and verge into Paranoia-level absurdity. Shall be fun :)

And, as an added bonus, PCs who miss a session will spend the entire time doing paperwork instead.

Fun searches that found game1 (fennec's archive, that is)

2009-06-17T22:14:00.001-07:00

Sparkie would like everyone to know that he made #9 for 'Sparkie' on google, and this should terrify you all.

Odd searches:

this can be the most difficult emotion to modify, because when you get mad you will be like a furious bulldog, and persuading you to stop sinking your teeth into the other person's leg can be extremely tough.
airheads bubble dog's crazy mission teletoon game
good stalker names
Slut lolad
zacharel funeral
i think there's a dragon on my roof. a fucking dragon. i thought only montana had dragons, what gives? brb potty break rofl
"you were given a sex change"
caltak university
"there are good reasons to be afraid of the dark"
torture game1
lords of death sunglasses
antichrist can't "enter a church" omen
he's gotta be strong, and he’s gotta be fast, and he’s gotta be larger than life: investigating the engendered superhero body
sparkly rainbow thong detachable penis
snailslug's touch response
rule34 faline [!]
vampires 6501
goddess of despair

And as far as images went, 'cycle of rebirth' wins out.

Games: they are fun.

2009-03-19T23:28:00.001-07:00

aka: where we're at.

Currently, Alcar is running Spirit of the Century on Mondays. Ken is doing nobilis and a besm mecha game in the future.

After this, Alcar plans to do a fantasy quest game, somewhat as a break from the mystery-style games of late. Prophecied heroes, magical items, and all that fun. Probably vanilla Risus, for the sanity of all involved.

Ken may be running a besm game set in the kbesmu universe after the current games.

Alcar also has an odd game going through his head that won't go away, but it'll probably just be a side one-player game at some point.

Unforgiven, the side Alcar/Chaos game, continues.

Current games

2009-01-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

aka: "because I am too lazy to alter the template"
subtitled: "and posting here will make it seem less ill-used."

Currently, we have aBesm Tuesday nights.

kNobilis is running ... Thursdays, I think?

Alcar is running a one-player game with Chaos (Unforgiven) some nights, and Ken is doing the same with Alcar (Zeitgeist). Aside from those, nothing is currently in planning though Alcar is soliciting player ideas for the post-abesm game starting, oh, now.

game and nano2008

2008-10-26T23:50:00.001-07:00

cross-posting to the forum:

Abesm WILL run as scheduled during November. Side sessions are very unlikely, and summaries of sessions likely to be pretty short and to the point. I shall try and make all BESM sessions (their may be a conflict; not sure yet). All other games -- and their are some ideas in the works and such -- will be on hold until December. possibly January, since December is a tricksy month for most.

Sparkie is liable to complain :p

cross-game amusement

2008-08-06T00:40:00.000-07:00

for those who don't know; players wanted two campaigns to continue. Mine was lolad, ken's was bemu(u). We'd both burned out on them, and someone jokingly suggested we switch worlds. Which we laughed about, and the found made more and more sense.

End result: I am playing his former PC (Cameron) in what is now klolad, and he is playing Drew in abesm.

Hence, this bit of minor amusement...
<kenGM> not many people here use the word wino
<kenGM> :P
<Cameron> I don't think it's too common anymore.
<Cameron> rofl!
<Cameron> I saw the line, and Cameron, and wasabout to type:' Damn,ken, I was about to write that"
<Cameron> and then I recalled *I* am playing Cameron :P
<kenGM> ;P
<kenGM> amazing

Searches that find game1

2008-06-23T17:41:00.001-07:00

This may amuse no one else, but here are the top searches for images for the game1 site going by month.

December 2007: wallpaper cthulhu parchment
Jan. 2008: twin blades of azaroth
Feb.2008: fennec foxes keeping warm in cold places
March 2008: pictures of types of freash water turtles
April 2008: velsa dog
May 2008: "austin powers" burrow llama
2 weeks ago: incubus paranormal wheels on suv
1 week ago: redneck pictures of the armpit serenade (This was actually #2, but#1 was a more mundane search of 'unknown armies')

random thoughts on D&D fourth edition

2008-06-06T20:40:00.000-07:00

This is just as I go through it...

- Eladrin? Why DO we need 2 races of elves?
- Clerics can follow philosophies... Nietzsche anyone?
- "astral sea"? Really?
- Warlocks rock; they finally gave the sorcerer balls.

Overall, I'm liking the classes a lot. (I still don't see the point to keeping the ranger; and throwing the monk etc. into another book is irksome, money wise.)But on the whole they seem quite nice, with multiple options for a character ensuring, I hope, that things don't get too stale if you have two of the same class in one group.

- Warlords at first level would be damn odd; "Yes, I AM a natural leader. I was king of the hill SIX times and captured the flag for Pelor!"
- The epic levels look like crazy, awesome fun. And finally SOUND epic.

More later.

More:

- Why does it take so long to find out what 2[w] and such are? Glossaries are GOOD to have in the front as references.
- Rituals seem both interesting and fun.
- Also: lots more HP. Which is probably a very good thing.
- Alignment is better; they added 'if you choose one' for one thing.
- However, the gods are not. Most campaigns - the vast majority, I imagine - will either be a) homebrew or b) a different setting. Which means inserting things like Feywild and such are a pain in the arse, to say nothing of wasting space detailing the gods (and only the good ones at that).
- Races: why ARE humans the only one whose flavour text emphasized both the good and evil?

Final thought:

I will NOT be using stupid maps. I don't care if WOTC tries to ram the goddamned things down our throats (like, say, now). When - make this if, at this rate - I run 4e, there will be no maps and gametables and virtual tabletop crap. We never needed it before, and I am not planning to use it now.

Oh, and this should explain enough:
<gemm> this has been what, an hour, hour and a half of trying to find something that works?
<alcar> 'xactly :PO
* alcar can flat out guarentee I won't be using such things when I run 4e
<Chaos`^> fuck it... we'll do it live =p
<gemm> now you can't get a program to work, huh? :P
<Chaos`^> oh
<Chaos`^> i'll get it to work
<Chaos`^> it's just that my windows on this computer is broken
<Chaos`^> so...
<Chaos`^> i'm going to use another computer
<Chaos`^> brb
<gemm> ...
<gemm> I just want to start...
<kentari> wow. :P

Apotheosis: 10 sessions in.

2008-05-20T23:30:00.000-07:00

(Technically, 9.5. But what the hell, 10 sounds better.)

At present, we have... a cabal!

Current goal: Defeat Ms. Whitman, the psych teacher who claims to be a Bodhisattva and has survived being beaten with a crowbar, removal of her spine and being dumped into a sewer. She's connected to some other world accessible through a suitcase (at the least) and a mysterious Key they've yet to find or locate. The nature of Ms. Whitman and her goals remains a mystery at present, though she claims to want to either enlighten or kill those who killed her in the first place and seems to have returned with preternatural healing, though whether the spider-thing inside her remains is unknown at present.

Members:

Adella: Avatar of the Flying Woman, psychology student, and has an 'in' with a dealer in rituals and occult rumors and lore. Avatars may lack power in the observable sense, but the universe is on her side -- she's once felt infinity itself watch her,and worked a ritual and had it come true.

Delilah: Physics professor and wife to Marcus. She knows a little of the OU, enough to have her own minor trick and to have seen tenebrae before (she believes they're dark matter, and than quantum physics is a lie -- which makes her teaching it quite an interesting experience). She's worried she's in over her head, but the lure of answers to her questions drives her ever onwards.

Marcus: Del's husband; he's mostly playing it cool and keeping cards close to his chest, owing to run-ins with Sleepers and his wife's memory lapse once. Despite having committed no real crime beyond being a drive for a marijuana pickup while demon-possessed, he's the one member of the cabal the police are currently watching.

Nate: A friend with benefits to Adella (one of many). he's still coming to terms with discovering he wasn't ever human and his mechanomancer grandfather seems to have given up most of his memories that could explain why Nate was made, and how he's the product of cbyermancy. So far he's removed one person's spine - by accident - and is trying as hard as he can to act human.

Talnish - mechanical engineering professor and mechanomancer, who has beaten one person with a crowbar (self defense, he says, but whatever makes you sleep at night...) and buried one body dropped on his property outside the city limits as well as seen his dean turn into a giant pig after eating McDonalds. Somehow he's kept his his professorship, but how long that lasts is anyone's guess...

Apotheosis: some news

2008-05-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

Your character can discover this in the radio, via the newspaper, on the net, by TV: doesn't really matter how. (They might not even at all; your choice.)

Radio Free Essex:

"This is DJ Arnold, who has never been a DJ but it sounds pretty sweet, on 999 AM. Essex University is the top of the news for the hour, on the hour. Or under it, as the case may be! The top story -- who am I kidding? it's the only one! -- some psych students weren't able to get into a lecture hall so they had a mass orgy outside. Witnesses reported it, and several joined in because it "felt right" according to one witness who did not want to be named. I'd be more worried about STDS, but hey!

"The teacher for the class remains unaccounted for, but if I was Ms. Whitman, I'd be flattered: most students just leave when the teacher isn't present! One teacher, who asked not to be named (this is sort of theme of the news today) said that, while he welcomed a return of 60s style protest activism, campus-wide orgies were a bit much. Students seem divided according to my unofficial poll. A good 50% think it was drugs, like a date rape one or LSD. 25% think it was a protest, or possibly an art piece, and the rest think it is a sign from Satan about the whore of Bablyon and the end times. Well, I guess we all know who they're talking about, even if oficialdom is remaining mum!

"Now it's time for a break with Right Said Fred, and "I"m Too Sexy For My Campus!"

Wessex TV:

"The top story of the morning is the unexplained sexual activity at the university yesterday afternoon. Opinions range widely, but there has been no official report on the cause of the event, nor why a psych class would engage in that kind of experiments. The head of the psychology department, Dr. Robert Dickinson, stated that Professor Whitman had been under a lot of stress lately and that perhaps her dissertation on William Masters had begun to cloud her judgment.

"He further cited a possibly apocryphal story about her teaching practices coming under question since she was rumored to improve grades for studies who would consent to be subjects in her studies and give in-depth accounts of their sexual experiences to date. This no doubt influenced her other classes and led her to have students believe she would give them all at least a B if they engaged in group sex.

"The police are still investigating the situation and Sergeant Leatherwood only said that they had called in the FBI to check for drugs or contaminants in the local water supply. Asked about the possible sightings of Delaware police cruisers, Leatherwood only said that the county had asked for aid and refused to comment further on the matter."

The Rutherford Daily Independent Standard:

Top Story: UNIVERSITY PROTEST
While officials remain silent, rumors about that yesterday afternoon a mass orgy that took place outside a lecture hall abound. Surprisingly, few pictures of it surfaced, and those that were turned into our office were too grainy to be of use.
When questioned, students claimed "The Man" had taken it from them, but refused to explain further, leading to increased worries about drug abuse and immorality on campus. The police have to far refused to comment, but locals have been picketing the university campus and MAGS, an organization claiming to be Mothers Against Group Sex, has taken up emailing the university to demand an explanation. Until one is forthcoming, the story will likely not die.

Other News
Walter McDermott, a janitor at the university, was found murdered in a room at the Super 8 Motel approximately 3 am last night. The police are not releasing details at this time but are requesting anyone with information to come forward at this time.

Barnes & Noble wishes to apologize for their recent promotion of a new book "The True History of Magick by James Randi". Like their recent 'press releases' of "The Cruel Ones and You by Dr Seuss" and "Shattering of the Glass Family by J D Salinger" and "How I loved My Mother by Sigmund Freud" it seems to be the work of a very bored staff member. Strangely, the only titles that were recognized as actual fakes were "The History of Psychology by Tom Cruise" and "Why Hitler Was a Boddhisatva by the Dalai Lama".

A fire in the Walmart photo lab left one staff member hospitalized but no one else harmed this morning. The company and fire marshal are currently investigating.

In more pleasant news, a remake of the Flying Nun is scheduled to begin filming in one of the ghost towns south of Elysium. Since it's still pre-production there is no word on if they're hiring locals.

On the net:
LOL! Did you hear about Sara and the other students??? That's so awesome!! I wish I'd been there!! I bet someone got pictures!!!!

u r all going to burn in hell!

Obviously, there was no 'orgy'. We are university students, and well aware of safe-sex. It's clear that the university is in cahoots with the government in covering up something important. See: the 'police cars', the amount of junk mail everyone gets, the new Tiki Bar at the south end of campus, and economics departments refusal to have a stated opinion on FDR and the conspiracy to bring down his government as all the proof you need that something Big is going down and our corporate masters wish to hide it from us.

You're so full of it. Everyone knows the CFR is connected to at least 6 deans, and they're the ones who really call the shots. And if you believe that, I have an alien corpse to sell you.

Come on you guys! Lets' not fight! INTERNET ORGY EVERYONE!

Apotheosis: 5 sessions in.

2008-04-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

So far things are moving ahead at a brisk clip. People have been put into paintings, Sleepers arrived (Well, he was on vacation, but even so), Holes in the fabric of reality leading Somewhere Else creating magickal briefcases and turning professors into monsters of some kind, a magical Key having been discovered, demonic possession, the murder of said professor by two students, a clockwork, and another professor. Oh, and an orgy on a mundane level, along with Marcus proving his love to Delilah by not having sex with Sara.

Characters So Far

PCs
Adella - Free spirited college student who has, of recently, been able to float in the air after sex.
Marcus - husband to Delilah, a mail-order husband with skills he never wants to use again and a Key whose provenance he doesn't understand
Talnish - mechanical engineering professor and Mechanomancer

NPCs
Delilah - Physics professor and wife to Marcus, locally considered a 'witch'.
Nate - Friend with benefits for Adella who seems to be a post-post modern automaton who was entirely unaware of that until recently.
Sara - Sex-loving room mate to Adella whose life seems to revolve entirely around sex. Also, apparently hunted by Sleepers.

Other Cast
Martin Caidin Sr. - Nate's grandfather. Known to Talnish as a reclusive mechanomancer outside town.
Father Karl Horne - The priest at St. Jude's, the local Catholic church.
Edith Kilmore - the old lady who runs the heritage house and has apparently met Marcus before, though the latter has no memory of it.
Suzy Quimby - the girl who accidentally painted Sara into a painting. hasn't gone insane quite yet.
Ramona Whitman - the former psych prof turned into some kind of 'thing' by the Other Place. Currently deceased.

Minor Cast
Leon Debran - owner of the Bleeding Crow, never seen yet.
The Bartender - surly 20 going on 40 something bartender at the Bleeding Crow.
Milk Delivery Man - a man who delivers milk, with live cow, to Delilah's house.
Paper boy - the pre-dawn paperboy who delivers papers.

Apotheosis Notes

2008-04-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

So, we have a mail-order husband of a physics prof and a free-spirited college girl as the PCs (so far).

The town of Elysium, Kansas, is a small university city in the county of Rutherford. 3000 students, 1300 other residents and then assorted staff and such. It's bracketed by ghost towns, like munch of Kansas, and the locals claim the New Deal destroyed it, though there's almost no one left who can provide specifics to that beyond generic bitterness.

Essex University is the centre of the city, for all intents. What this means is the bars are little more lenient with students and the three police officers sometimes let things slide they shouldn't. Sergeant Jerry Letherwood runs the small police station along with constable's Oki Oki and Lance Christensen.

Aside from this, the city has two hotels - a Day's Inn and a Super 8. There's the usual bars, Denny's, Starbucks, McPlaces and so on. Stuff can be added and such as players want.

Unknown Armies campaign idea

2008-04-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

Apotheosis

There are so few left, so terribly few. Every few years the old gods put on new faces, ripping them from the flesh of the living, standing over the bones of the dead. These are only metaphors: but the gods change. All things change, or perish. One pursues novelty or clings to habits. Both ends may be destructive. All things change, and move towards their end.

Every year new gods are born, despite all the old gods do and be and every effort of will and desire. Things happen, despite our most feverent prayers, our most profound hopes. The world gives birth to new gods in this age of change and wildness where all the terrible power of old traditions breaks down and in the centre of the world the world discovers that the centre does not hold.

You've heard whispers, or rumours of them. Read graffito visible only under a new moon. Saw the homeless bum who told people The End was coming get bundled off by men in white suits when he tried to tell people the truth, screamed: "You did it!" to everyone he met, weeping whiskey tears all the while.

Something is changing, has changed, is coming. There is something in the air, the hint of a storm, the knowledge that the calm is over. The world is changing. You feel it in your pineal gland, see it in strange news items, read about it in the gossip section of the paper. Somewhere, out there, men who are far more than men are gathering, and men who are terribly less gather as well. Their are armies moving through shadows, down paths known only to small children and cats, and though they are unknown, they are still armies, and there is still a war.

Because the rumours say that we made the gods, and that the universe will remake itself once we've made so many. That they will make a new one. A better one. Or they did yesterday, and there are those who want the old one back -- it doesn't matter, not really. All that matters, all that is known, is that there are over 330 gods walking the world, and that unless we are terrible or clever or very lucky, soon there will be more and there will no longer be a world.

So, this is what popped out of my head for an Unknown Armies campaign. The PCs can be In The Know (as much as anyone is), or only some, or be thrown off the deep end to tread water and drown beautifully. Entirely up to the players, as is the PC.

Standard UA PC (220 points). Each PC has a Dark Secret, something horrible they've done and never want anyone to learn. And a Trigger, which is something Weird you saw (or the first weird thing you saw) that told you the world was even stranger than advertised on cheap talk shows during ratings week.

The PCs should be connect somehow. This can be an ally, an organization, them being neighbours in the same apartment complex -- it's up to you all, but your PCs should know each other before the game, at some level.

Where it's going: This is unknown armies. Surreal urban fantasy, sprinkled with horror. It's about power and consequences, and what you'd do to change the world. It's about having the guts to see the world as it is, not as we desire it to be -- and maybe, just maybe, finding a way to make the desire come true, or learn why it can never be. It's about being as hard as you have to be, as kind as you can afford to be, and doing what has to be done.

Because the heart of the world has a secret, and everyone knows it even if no one can really believe it. And it means everything, and nothing. You find it scrawled in bathrooms, written on your bed sheets when you wake up, replacing texts in a newspaper. Truth so old no one believes it. Magic so old no one understands it.

You Did It.

.... Now what are you going to do about it?

Oppressors: the newscast

2008-04-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

Posting this here, to avoid cluttering up site etc. It's the next morning now, in game, and I'm going to assume your PCs find out about/hear/watch this via someone or some way. Nice and simple.

----

The local news network is on the TV, the familiar backdrop behind the desk currently riddled with bullet holes. They've been left as a massage, either by the Haud or by the humans that remain. The news anchor is, currently, an ex-camera man. He's presentable, looks okay in a suit, and has a decent smile. Which is, really, all that's needed.

"This is the news of the hour, on the hour, being repeated every hour. The Haud have graciously allowed the local news network, Choam, to continue running as a Haud news network. Many local networks across the world have been connected together in this manner. Unlike previous news sources, we will not pretend to be fair, nor unbiased. The Haud have -- dealt with those who would refuse; the rest of us wish to live and keep our jobs.

"Here is what the Haud wish to have reported today, the 11th day after their invasion and the destruction of Pluto.." The smiling man taps some papers on the table, then begins:

"Following regrettable losses of lives and breakdown of basic needs due to the suppression of various governments and resistance, the Haud wish it to be known that regular services of food and supplies will begin today into cities. All grocery stores and drug stores are now under Haud control and will be supplied with regular food. Farms and the like producing food are exempt from all taxation and are to contact any local Haud representatives if they require additional aid or manpower. Quotas are no longer to be enforced, and people will get the basics they need, as they need them. Taxes will be thirty percent across the board, payable and usable at the local level to fix the cities and towns damaged in the war for the foreseeable future.

"In practise, the food system should amount to one bag of food per person each day. Attempts to play the system will be met with removal from the system by, ah, death. Attempts to halt the system will result in no food being delivered to the town or city for at least two days. Destroying any outlet - i.e. grocery store and the like - will result in Examples being made."

The smiling face takes a deep breath. "The Haud wish is to be known that they have made, and will continue to make, examples of those who defy. For those who are, ah, slow: if you defy the Haud, the area around you will be slaughtered. There will be no mercy given, no second chances. Attempts to use this to kill your own enemies will lead to your immediate death, along with all family, possibly friends and even co-workers. I -- well, I guess we all know where the Haud stand.

"Ah. Food is being given out until the normal distribution centres resume proper operation via former secret government warehouses the Haud are opening. Err. Apparently the best before dates system was largely a fraud for certain products, which our government would take when they 'expired' and store them. To what end, we may never know. Expect to get a lot of non-perishable items, I imagine?

"Technology is being quarantined by the Haud after various 'incidents' and the Haud will ration out anything on an as-needed basis. A bureaucracy for this purpose is being developed; those who lost jobs due to the Haud invasion may be given preference towards positions in the news system as compensation. Gas and oil reserves are now closed, and electricity generated by power plants will be the only source of power in cities. If it is not enough, cities must find ways to cut down on power usage or appeal to the Haud. Giving up various resources, such as computers and such the Haud can make use of, will result in net benefits for communities.

"The internet will remain down for the foreseeable future, as will normal TV and radio stations as well as the press. Pirate stations and the like will be permitted to a limited degree. All natural resources in the world are going to be used by the Haud for their needs and distributed for ours on an as-needed basis. Attempts to resist this are, plainly, not encouraged. If humanity proves useful, select members of our species will be allowed to join the Haud as soldiers.

"We are to consider this a great honour. That is all.

"This is Leon Chomsky for Choam News, signing off. We will continue to repeat this broadcast until the Haud give further updates."

I'm not quite dead... In fact, I think I'm getting better.

2008-04-10T01:09:00.000-07:00

Yeah! So, hi again. It's me. I know I sort of disappeared again for no apparent reason... I wish I could say it was because my life is so busy, but it's really not. I mean, a lot of stuff has happened, like job changes and remodeling a section of my house as a place to gather with my friends and doing that whenever possible... but there really have been plenty of opportunities for me to come at least hang out in #game1 and I simply didn't. I'm sorry about that. But hey! I think I might be back now. So... yeah. What's up, guys? :)

Oppressors: Where it stands

2008-04-04T07:06:00.000-07:00

Currently we're 3 sessions in (technically 5). The PCs have one base - the warehouses - while making plans for other eventualities, the Haud had murdered a few hundred people, some allies have come forth, some enemies bit the dust, one superhero driven insane and an actual use found for Ma'Ti.

Some of the weaknesses and the strengths of the Haud have been figured out but, since the PCs have yet to truly act against them,the aliens seem to pretty much be ignoring them. The police, otoh, are not - but they're merely human. And, unrelated to the PCs, the fanatical religious element of the city is linking the Haud to serpents and Satan and preparing actions of their own ...

Fun things so far:
- The potential in making a superhero's daughter into a supervillain is just fun.
- A use being found for Ma'Ti. He wasn't meant to have a real use. He was a walk-on joke.
- The disparate ways in which the PCs gather allies and build their own power bases.

Surprises:
- So far, no one has really done anything out and out Evil.

Oppressrs: Not feeling oppressive enough?

2008-03-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

I think everyone is aware of this policy, but just a note via head office anyway:

You can alter your PC as you wish during the first three sessions, baring in mind that they remain generally the same character. I.e. if you realize your PC can't pull their weight in a brawl, you can juggle more points into ACV/DCV and so on. Management is willing to be flexible on this, though removing a power your PC has used will require in-game shenanigans to explain it away.