Reviving Dead Man's Hand

[Prak]

Pass two of the Native Tribals, I'll work on the two African tribals and the couple Eastern races (along with possibly a couple more that I can make up), probably tomorrow night.

Tribals
Tatanka
Tatanka are slightly smaller than Jotun, standing at only 2.4m tall on average, but their skin seems overlarge even for them, sagging and wrinkling and their massive, horned heads are pushed forward by a large hump, which contains stores of fat and water, allowing Tatanka to go for long periods without food or water. These humps also store time, allowing their shamans to work great magic, and their warriors to be particularly difficult to hurt in combat.
Doing anything seems, to others, to take the Tatanka an excruciatingly long time, but when actually timed, or indirectly observed, it actually take less time to do things, relative to most other beings. Even a run appears to be a plodding, contemplative movement. This is an innate illusion that even they cannot overcome.
Tatanka are a proud, stoic warrior people, who hold great respect for those who endure hardship without complaint. Indeed, the quickest way to gain a Tatanka's respect is to die in battle (which is, notably, not always much of a hindrance in the New Frontier). Though they look much like buffalo, the Tatanka subsist almost entirely upon meat, and spend a great deal of hunting.
Inspiration: Lakota, White Buffalo Woman

• Tatanka Racial Traits
• Abilities: +2 Strength
• Large: Tatanka are just physically bigger than other beings. They receive a +2 dicepool bonus to grapple or stand ground and can carry twice as much as another character of their Strength. Being big comes with drawbacks, as steeds smaller than a unicorn cannot carry them and they are 1 threshold easier to detect.
• Slow and Steady: Despite their apparent slow speeds, Tatanka get to destinations earlier than expected. Tatanka receive a +2 bonus to dicepools for chases and overland navigation.
• Hump:Tatanka do not need to eat or drink for up to seven days at a time. They do not become fatigued by exertion (though they still need sleep).
• Deep Slumber: The threshold to awaken a sleeping Tatanka is 1 higher.

Tatanka who learn how to use the time stored in their humps can master the following tricks:

• Time Stop: The Tatanka can spend a Power Point per character in scene and stop time for everyone but themselves.
• Spatial Distortion: Time and space may not be the same thing, but given that you use one to traverse the other, to a Tatanka they may as well be. With a complex action and a power point, a Tatanka can open a rift between their own location and another out to 10m/potency. They may step, reach, look, or do anything else through this rift as if it were a window. Stepping through requires a Threshold 3 Agility+Atheletics roll.
• Touch of Decay: With a simple touch, the Tatanka can speed up time for another person or object to the point that they begin to decay and rot. They make a Strength+Artisan or Charisma+Medicine test and spend a power point. If directed at an animate thing (steambots, undead, people, animals, etc.) this is resisted with a Physical Resistance test and does damage equal to the Tatanka's net hits. Against objects, thrown pieces of wood and similar are easy (threshold 1), bullets and other high velocity projectiles is hard (threshold 3), and corroding their way through a locomotive to not be run over is crazy extreme (threshold 5) (and probably requires a test to stand ground).

Ani Yunti
Ani-Yunti appear to be 1.8m tall tornadoes filled with chunks of charred sycamore, but are in fact humanoids about 1.4m tall, constantly surrounded by a sheath of wind and ash. They float roughly .2m off the ground at almost all times, completely reflexively, and must actually decide to set down. If they reach through the shroud, they cause a thunderous roar. The suspended material of an ani yunti's windsheath are conductive and even an ani yunti who reaches through it is effectively protected from electricity as the electricity will travel through their windsheath, rather than their body.
The ani yunti people were sympathetic to the early settlers from the old world, and taught and helped them in many ways, from teaching them agricultural techniques suited to the area, to guiding powerful storms around the settlers villages. At the same time, the ani yunti learned from the settlers, especially of architecture and engineering. The ani yunti adopted magitech and began building their own cities. During the Revolution Period, the ani yunti sided with the colonists against the Old World kingdoms, and both peoples experienced immigration, with some ani yunti joining the Union as citizens, and some Old World settlers joining the ani yunti clans.
The ani yunti began to become wealthy, reaping the benefits of a close relationship with the land and the knowledge of Old World technology, and the Southern states grew jealous. The ani yunti harvested power from wind and water with magitech, and they excavated copper, gold and silver from the ground. The plantation owners wanted all of it, and so they drafted a fake treaty, which authorized the removal of ani yunti from their cities and farms, factories and mines, they were forced out at gunpoint, and marched into the west, left to die or thrive as they were able.
Ani Yunti Magic: Ani yunti magic is primarily focused on calling and directing storms. They can't control what comes out of these storms, whether rain, lightning, or even frogs. In the past, this power would be used to call up storms and crudely move them to be put to use agriculturally, feeding the rivers from which the ani yunti watered their crops, but it rains infrequently in the west, and a called up storm is as likely to dump a load of frogs into a river as rain, if not more so. They have embraced magitech even more, and their shamans are a dying profession.
Inspiration: Cherokee

• Ani Yunti Racial Traits
• Levitation: Ani Yunti rarely touch the ground, floating anywhere from 15 to 60cm off the ground. It is particularly difficult to affect them with ground based attacks.
• Windsheath: The particles floating inside the Ani Yunti's wind sheathe are conductive, and thus they are effectively immune to electricity attacks. Their sheaths also make it difficult to identify one ani yunti from another. All tests which rely on differentiating ani yunti have a threshold two higher than normal. They are, however, distinctive as ani yunti. All tests made to disguise an ani yunti as something else have a threshold four higher.
• Metal Detector: Ani Yunti are able to detect metal within 4m of their bodies. This makes them handy to have in hostage negotiations where no one is supposed to have a weapon, or in a mine.

Ani Yunti can learn the following tricks:

• Call Storm:[/b] By spending 10 minutes over a fire, an ani yunti can spend a power point and roll Charisma+Expression or Intuition+Empathy (Threshold 2) to call up a storm. The storm covers 1km/potency, and the MC rolls 1d6/potency x 10km to determine how far away it's center point is from the ani yunti. The type of storm is determined by the number of net hits:

  Net Hits	Type of Storm
  1	Rain
  2	Thunder
  3	Lightning
  4	Hail
  5	Blizzard
  6	Supernatural (frogs, fish, gold, etc. MC's discretion as to what falls)

  
  The ani yunti knows how far away the storm is and in what general direction. They may roll Charisma+Expression or Intuition+Empathy each round to move the storm's center 5km/potency. The storm may have additional effects:
  • If a lightning storm answers, the ani yunti can also use this test as an attack action to cause lightning to strike a specific target (range 2 from ani yunti, damage 5).
  • If a hail storm, everyone and everything outsider takes 1 damage per round/3 potency of the ani yunti.
  • If a blizzard, the ani yunti makes another Charisma+Expression or Intuition+Empathy test, determining the concealment it offers:

    Hits	Distance to Total Concealment
    1	6 meters
    2	3 meters
    3	1 meter
    4	50 cm
    5	20 cm
    6	5 cm

    
    

Kachinas
The kachina people are a collection of tribes, whose people resemble statues made of cornhusks, feathers, plaster, leather and other objects. They are living creatures, but were mistaken by the first colonial explorers to meet them for machines. Smaller than ani yunti, kachinas stand 1.7m on average, and may appear to be anything from bison headed men, to sun humanoid forms with sundisks in place of heads, to half bird creatures. They speak a language of wild gesturing and wooden clacking sounds, and other languages with a faint whistle, and exaggerated glottal stops and habitual gesturing.
Kachini musculature is a complex spring-like system, and their lungs are unpowered, causing them to constantly move, fidgit and dance, as it is both less trouble for them to continue moving than to stop and start again, and a kachina standing still cannot breath without the aid of strong winds moving through the holes in their chests which head to their lungs.
Kachina magic: Kachina magic has a strong somatic component to it. Various dances achieve specific effects or cause certain events, and these are used to control the weather and aid in their agriculture. More powerful magic requires more shamans and longer dances, and most magic governs wind, water and maize, considered by the kachinas to be the elements of life.
Inspiration: Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo

• Kachina Racial Traits
• Abilities: +2 Agility
• Perpetual Motion: Kachina are constantly moving, and it takes a Hard (difficulty 3) Willpower roll for one to standstill unaided. At the same time, it can be very difficult to suffocate one short of locking it in a windless room or covering all of the minute breathing holes which dot their chests. Any roll made to physically suffocate a kachina who can move relatively freely is made one threshold higher.
• Dance of the Elements: Kachina are skilled dancers, the motions typically coming quite naturally to them. Kachina receive a +2 dicepool bonus to tests made to dance.

Kachina can master the following tricks:

• Call Rain:
• Call Wind:
• Call Maize:

Jogah
Jogah are a strange, shapechanging race whose natural form is a ovoid ripple in space, about 1.5m in height, that most closely resembles the disturbance left in a stream by a skipping rock, which even makes a faint burbling sound akin to that of a fast flowing brook. Whereas usually members of a race all look alike only to the most untrained of eyes, Jogah in their natural forms truly do all look alike to non-Jogah. Even when they change shape into another thing, they become a replica of the specific thing they made their mask resemble.
Jogah take other forms by crafting a mask to resemble a specific specimen. When a jogah turns into a deer, it resembles a specific deer somewhere in the world. Most jogah, however, take the forms of people, a fact that the union strongly dislikes. It is unknown whether it is even possible for a jogah to create an entirely unique form, as apparently none have ever tried it, and jogah actually have little concept of the differences between individuals anyway.
Jogah society is remarkably egalitarian, possible a given in a society in which any member can look like anything else, and, in deed, a wandering deer may be a jogah having a laugh, and whose members may not even have genders. The principals of jogah society were largely copied whole clothe by the Union, and the jogah have not missed the irony in this. Jogah have a difficult time understanding, and thus respecting, the concepts of privacy or property due to their incomprehension of the differences between individuals.
The best way to distinguish jogah from the original creature is that jogah do not get wet, regardless of their appearance. Water passes right through them, as if they were empty space. Alcohol does not do this, however, and jogah have occasionally doused themselves in alcohol to fake wetness.
Jogah Magic: Jogah magic centers around wood carving. A dedicated Jogah wood carver can create a mask which in some capacity takes part of the soul of whoever the mask was fashioned in the guise of, allowing a Jogah to wear that mask and seemingly become that person for so long as the mask is worn and the original possessor of the face still lives.

This magic is deeply frowned upon by Old World religions on the grounds that stealing portions of the souls of others is all kinds of not OK.
Inspiration: The Five Nations of the Iroquois, TF2 Spies

• Jogah Racial Traits
• Shapeless- Jogah natural forms are little more than ripples in space. This does give them a sort of natural camouflage, and tests to spot a Jogah in their natural form have a threshold three higher.
• Mask Making- With a Threshold 2 Intuition+Artisan check, Jogah may create a mask that is a double of the face of some other living creature. When they wear this mask, they become an exact duplicate of that creature, and lose the use of their natural camouflage. They only appear to be the creature, they don't gain any of it's special abilities. A Jogah can copy an Ani Yunti (provided they can see the being's face), and will appear as a roaring tornado, but they don't gain immunity to electric attacks.
• Untouched by Water: Water of all forms pass through jogah, regardless of form. This means that they are undamaged by steam, ice projectiles, or even particularly forceful liquid water. Freezing attacks will still damage them, as will freezing environmental conditions, but anything that relies of water in any form interacting with a creature is ineffective on jogah.

Jogah who become skilled wood carvers can learn the following tricks:

• Soul Stealing: With an Intuition+Expression or Logic+Artisan check, a Jogah can fashion a mask in the likeness of another living thing. So long as they wear the mask, they are completely indistinguishable from the model as usual, but may also use any attribute or skill of the target, provided they succeed in a resisted Willpower+Larceny check against the model.

Maizenians
Maizenians are short, plant-like people, just 1.2m tall on average, who are green skinned, grow edible, delicious seeds on their faces, and can absorb water through the root hairs on their feet. They are plant-like enough to derive part of their nourishment through the sun, but must still consume food, and have actual blood.
Maizenians realise that they are agricultural by nature, and their legends tell that in the history of their long gone empires people were literally planted in the ground to create an endless crop for blood-thirsty gods. All the same, even though they consider themselves food, they do not have any desire to die and will defend themselves fiercely.
Some of the largest cities the world has ever seen were populated and constructed by maizenians in the days before the first Old Worlders arrived. Many of these cities have been burnt to the ground under Ifrit rule, while others have seen entirely foreign governments and missions put into place. The conquest of the Ifrits is so complete that many missions in the maizenians' homeland now have maizenian priests.
Maizenians instinctually avoid clothing as it blocks the life giving rays of the sun, and instead ornament themselves with copious amounts of jewelry. Ifrit rule forces maizenians to wear clothing in public (roughly defined as “anywhere outside”), causing the people great distress. Some enterprising and sympathetic people have begun wandering the south, selling small spell engines which can harness the sun and put it back out, allowing maizenians to gather light inside their own modest homes. Ifrit have learned of this and outright banned the sale of these devices as “ungodly,” a fact that does little to stop the sales, or even donation.
Maizenian Magic: The ancient rites of maizenians have largely been outlawed by their cruel, fiery overlords. Now rituals performed in honor of the Golden King and the King of Rain are practiced only furtively in secret. They typically take the form of mock battles between warriors dressed in elabourate costumes to resemble jaguars and eagles, and can pull sunshine and rain from the sky, spread strife, keep lurkers away, or even cause deaths far away. The warriors beat each other bloody with flails, and wear these wounds proudly, though the rituals done for assassination (almost) always end in the death of one of the warriors.
Inspiration: Aztec, Maya

• Maizenian Racial Traits
• Photosynthesis: Maizenians do need to eat, but gain most of their nourishment through photosynthesis. On a day that a maizenian is able to absorb sunlight and water for at least three hours, they need only 1/4 as much food as they otherwise would.
• Hardy: It is surprising what it takes to truly kill a plant. Maizenians have some of this resilience, and, provided that they have not been dead longer than 1 day/potency, can be revived when it seems like they should be dead by planting and watering their feet. With a threshold 6 physical resistance test, the maizenian can even regrow lost limbs or their head, albeit slowly.
• Plant People: Due to their partially vegetative nature, it is possible to provide medical aid to a maizenian pulling on botanical knowledge. Anything which would help a person with normal plants may be used on a Maizenian, albeit with an increased Threshold (=1/2 Strength attribute of Maizenian). They can even receive limb grafts, though it is a crazy extreme task (TH5) to graft normal plant parts to a maizenian, a hard task (TH3) to graft another Maizenian's limbs, and a professional task to graft the maizenian's own severed limbs back to them.

Maizenians who delve into their people's history can learn the following tricks:
note all three of these require two combatants to engage in a mock battle. There is no need for the maizenian using them to be one of the combatants, but it is difficult to make them work with unwilling, or unknowing combatants. They all last for as long as the mock battle does, unless otherwise noted.

• Rain or Shine: The Maizenian can call forth a rain shower or a sunny day from the sky, making a Charisma+Sabotage test and affecting a radius of 1km/potency.
• Strife From the Clouds: By spending a complex action, the maizenian can cause a fine mist to fall from the clouds, and cause a wave of terror and panic to flow through a group of people. By spending a power point, and rolling Logic+Intimidate or Agility+Survival, each creature, other than the caster, and the two mock combatants, the mist falls on must make a Willpower Resistance test. Targets who fail are panicked and stampede around irrationally.
• Far Slaying: With a token of the target, such as hair or blood, the maizenian can perform a ritual to kill someone, no matter how far away they are. The sample is fixed to one of the combatants and the combatants battle for one hour, and the caster spends six power points. Then the caster makes a Logic+Medicine or Logic+Survival test against the target's strength. On a success, every real wound dealt to the combatant with the token is dealt to the target, and the wounds appear on the target's body. It is possible, though difficult, for the ritual to succeed and the combatant to not die.

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So, it looks like we have eight European races, seven Tribals (once I do up the two African tribals) and two Easterns (Ifrit and Deep Ones). I'm still not good with conceptual space because I can hold a lot of stuff in my head, or at least don't see it as a bad thing if I occasionally have to check a list when describing things to newbies (not saying it isn't a bad thing, I just don't personally have a problem with it). Do people think I should add another Tribal and six more Easterns, not worry about it, make the number of Europeans smaller (possibly collapsing a few) or what? Plus we need a place for steamborgs.

[Korgan0]

I reckon we can just go ahead and make steamborgs an archetype- it seems pretty simple to make 'borg limbs or whatever a manifestation of caster shell technology in that you bind spirits into the limbs that let them move as you command or what have you. It could probably give you access to super speed/super strength/whatever from the universal powers and maybe some stuff that has to do with putting different spirits into the limbs or what have you.

There's also the problem of whether or not Jogah or whatever can become 'borgs and how that interacts with their powers and characteristics or whatever- introducing some kind of essence thing would end up being difficult given the lack of granularity of the powers, and it also seems like anti-thematic, given that lack of humanity isn't usually as big a deal in ordinary Westerns. If you wanted to put elements of cyberpunk in the game that might end up being interesting, but then there's the problem that messages and themes might end up being blurred and confused, which tends to be a bad thing.

Twenty-four races is a fuckton- even AS had eighteen archetypes, and DMH is also going to end up having character classes and power sources, so twenty-four seems like way too much. I don't know which ones you could collapse/eliminate, but it sounds like a good idea.

[Prak]

Yeah, and the grouping isn't as easy to grok as AS's. Plus DMH is using Archetypes in place of AS's supernaturals, so the whole race thing is completely separate. If there were at least niches for each origin, that'd be a lot easier, but the Europeans are heavily loaded, and the others less so. I mean, I could kind of see something like "Giants," "Dwarves," "Elementals," etc, but European races have 2 Giants (Jotun and Duszek), 3 Dwarves (Skriatok, Lutin, Alfar), 1-3 Elementals (Loci definitely, but also possibly Sidhe and Vanir), while the Tribals have 1 Giant (Tatanka), 1 Dwarf (Maizenians), and 1-2 Elementals (Ani yunti pretty solidly, and then possibly Jogah). And there are still only two Easterns, no Giants, no Dwarves, and 1 Elemental.
Everything else would need some kind of grouping ad hoc'ed for it, and even then the numbers aren't consistent. Maybe race benefits just need to be vastly downplayed. Frank's samples of Jotun and Tatanka each have:

• An attribute bonus
• Two dicepool bonuses of +2 each (from size)
• A "I don't need to worry about an inconvenience" (cold, fatigue)
• A minor bennie (track by scent, store 7 seven days of nourishment)
• A drawback (heat penalties, hard to wake up)

I've tried to follow a vaguely similar model, but I may need to do a third pass. Which is fine, every pass becomes more refined.

Edit: Yeah, steamborgs can just be an archetype. Maybe there's a "Remade" archetype that has Steamborgs (tech), Riven (shaman) and Stitched (arcane), giving us wild west robo-cop, schizophrenic shamans who can call lightning because they have a lightning spirit actually inside them, and zombie marshalls.

[Korgan0]

Yeah, I think that works. It's still a good idea to have the three basic categories of Eastern, Tribal, and European so we can have them map to the three power sources in some sense- it should be possible to have Tribal tech-based characters but there's a nice bit of symmetry in that each racial group invented one of the power sources (or something).

If you wanted to chop out a few of the races, a couple come to mind. It's worth noting that they're all really cool and well-done, but it I think it risks having confusion and bloat if we have twenty-four races plus archetypes, each with incarnations based on power source. the Duszek have a cool concept but it's not entirely sure how that would work as a PC, and it's difficult to envision how that kind of species could even have formed a civilization, so I don't have a problem with them being left on the cutting room floor. The Skriatok seem kinda generic, too- stone goblins who need gold and eat lichen and vodka sounds pretty cool, but I can't think of how that would make a super interesting character. You'd have to patch the holes in the history and politics of the world with some stuff, but that doesn't seem too difficult.

[Username17]

If we're using a roughly Earth-like setup of the colonial empires, the Ifrit Sultan is a European Power as is the Sun King and the King of Tir na nOg. The Winter Court straddles both Europe and Asia, but the people from the Winter Court going to the West are mostly coming from Asia. So Skriatok would actually be a better fit for pearl magic than Ifrit would be.

-Username17

[Korgan0]

Huh, I didn't think of that. Yeah, that would probably work; you could even have some fluff about the Skriatok turning to Exotic Eastern Magics to combat the incursions of some group in order to explain it, providing some interesting backstory and plot hooks for Skriatok characters.

I don't know how you'd fit the Duszek into the Eastern group, but it should be pretty easy.

[Prak]

Ok, yeah, for some reason I keep associating Ifrit with India, I don't know why. For more Eastern races I was going to start looking up which asian cultures actually migrated during the colonial and industrial periods, and hope that there was a noticeable amount of Japanese, since that would help fill things out a lot.

Duszek is pretty much polish for ghost, so there isn't a lot of info online. Seriously, it pretty much just shows a bunch of pictures of kiddy cartoon halloween ghosts, and dictionary entries. But it is Polish, and Poland is pretty solidly European, so it'd be really weird giving them pearl magic.
Really, the thing to remember with Duszek is that they are actually mostly solid for most of the day, ie, at night, and for several hours surrounding noon. It's not till dawn or dusk that they're leaning through houses and shit, and even then, they can cover themselves with birch ash or chalk to negate that. It's seriously harder to imagine how the Lutin built much of a civilization, because they're seriously about a foot and a half tall.

[zeruslord]

as far as I know, Ifrit are from Arabian folklore. There were Islamic governments in Iberia from the 8th century to 1492, so putting them there almost makes sense. Them having sultans and whatnot instead of kings and viceroys and such still screws with my head a bit, to be honest.

[Prak]

Yeah, they're a form of genie, which are from Arabian myth. I'm not so up on history myself, but my associating them with India was just brain wire-crossing.

[Korgan0]

Okay- I'm currently working on roughing out some of the archetypes and at least providing some names and some sample disciplines, taking a lot from what's been said upthread- I don't know when it will be done as I've never really done anything like this before and I fully expect it to be full of holes.

What needs to be done is to figure out a power source schedule thing- not only if we want different power schedules for the three sources but what kind of stuff we want at all. As has been posted earlier the AS power schedules don't really work that well, but I think we need something, and I have no idea what it is.

Here's what I have so far:

Lawman- Marshal (tech), Binder (Spiritual) Enforcer (Eastern),
Wilderness Guide- Explorer (tech), Brave (Spiritual), Hunter (Eastern)
(Wizard-esque dude)- Tinker (tech), Invoker (spiritual), Alchemist (Eastern)
Outlaw- Desperado (tech), Raider (Eastern), Resistance Fighter (Spiritual)
Gambler- Debauched (Eastern), Rake (tech), [something] (spiritual)
Remade- Steelshell (tech), Riven (spiritual), Stitched (Eastern)

I got a lot of this from the guys earlier in the thread, but I thought I should put it together and add a bit more stuff.

Also, we need to really nail down what kind of things Eastern Magic does- Spiritual magic is pretty obvious in that you can summon spirits or infuse them within yourself and Western magic does tech stuff, but no-one's nailed down Eastern magic to that extent. I agree that having magic reside in drugs, potions, and powders sounds pretty cool, but what kinds of things should they be able to do? Super-strength, speed, and durability are kinda obvious. Throwing powder into people's eyes that makes freak out or take damage or something sounds like a pretty cool idea, too. Maybe even flasks of alchemists' fire or what have you. I can't really think of much else though, and that's a pretty narrow range of stuff. Once we deal with these two problems, though, we can easily get cracking on disciplines and stuff.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I believe it's "Pearl Magic", not "Eastern Magic". Which makes more sense, since a large proportion of Pearl Magic users will be coming from the far West.

---

My question is about native magic. Is each native culture going to have its own style of magic? Does this mean that each native culture gets its own classes? Or are you sticking with each race having its own magic, and anything else being non-culturally specific?

I don't really see the value of having Deep One gamblers take a different class from Ifrit gamblers take a different class from Tatanka gamblers, so long as each also gets its own unique magic.

---

Robots are probably Bohemian in origin. Here's what I have:

Golems

Alfar legends say that they built the first golems. The golems dispute this, saying that the first golem created itself. Constructing a golem's body is a difficult and exacting task, but it is by no means beyond the skills of an expert technologist. A golem's mind, however, is a much more tricky thing. Regardless of how the first golem was created, golems are currently animated by installing thinking material from other golems into the 'empty' body. Golem thought matter stores information in a distributed fashion, so such a donation imparts personality rather than specific memories or skills, and the donor won't usually lose specific memories either. When two golems donate thinking material to a child, it puts a not-insignificant strain on both parents, but both will recover reasonably quickly. When a single golem donates enough thinking material to animate a child, however, the effect can be catastrophic. Large-scale memory loss is a given, and the parent is reduced to an almost childlike state.

Golems don't eat food, instead consuming any kind of fuel that will burn in the furnaces of their bellies. The furnace powers a steam turbine which is, in turn, used to generate the mystical energy that powers the golem's soul. A boiler is needed for the engine; as a result golems drink just like most living beings. Thanks to the laws of thermodynamics, golems also need more water when they are hot or exercising.

In combat, a golem can be terrifying. Wreathed in smoke and steam, the air is noticeably hotter near the golem. A deep roaring assaults the ears; as it moves to strike sparks fly from its joints.

A typical golem injury leaks oil, vents steam, and/or sparks. Minor injuries can be patched by the technically ignorant, but more severe damage requires luck or skill to repair.

The entirety of a golem's metal body is used as a radiator to cool and condense steam, and is normally feverishly warm to the touch. Extremely cold temperatures can cause steam channels to freeze, severely weakening the golem. The golem's skin is used to conduct more than just heat. A golem's touch sense comes from sensing slight distortions in its own electric and magnetic fields that appear when it is touched.

-> Golem names are traditionally a concept, followed by "created of" and the names of the golem's 'parents' (e.g. Reason created of Hope and Truth). Such a name is given at investiture and inscribed on the golem's forehead.
-> Uses a steam engine turbine to generate electrical power.
-> Fuel is ground up into small fragments by the mouth and held in a reservoir. The fuel is added to the fire in the belly as needed. Hydrocarbons from the smoke are transformed into various bodily lubricants and fluids.
-> Water is consumed through the mouth and held in a separate reservoir, then added to the boiler as needed.
-> The golem's steam is run in a closed cycle until excess heat makes proper condensation impossible; at that point the cycle opens and steam escapes from vents in the golem's ears.

Common professions: blacksmith, charcoal burner, clockmaker, miner, potter, scavenger, woodcutter.

[Korgan0]

Golems I think would work really well as a playable race- maybe they're the remnants of a long lost empire or something. For the steelshell (or what have you) I was thinking just steampunk cyborgs, with magic/steam (probably both)-powered limbs, bodies, and weapons.

Pearl Magic works, but we still need to nail down what exactly it can do and how.

I just think we can have all native magic work on the basic principles of summoning nature and animal spirits, or invoking them in order to do various things. We can differentiate different native magic users by having them focus on summoning different kind of spirits- we could have a discipline for animal spirits, another for elemental spirits, and then maybe another for ancestor spirits or something. There should be enough differentiation and versatility that we can have a reasonable set of magical disciplines, all of which have the schtick of summoning/invoking spirits, given that you could concievably invoke a lightning spirit to shoot a bolt of lightning or what have you.

[Prak]

Okay- I'm currently working on roughing out some of the archetypes and at least providing some names and some sample disciplines, taking a lot from what's been said upthread- I don't know when it will be done as I've never really done anything like this before and I fully expect it to be full of holes.

What needs to be done is to figure out a power source schedule thing- not only if we want different power schedules for the three sources but what kind of stuff we want at all. As has been posted earlier the AS power schedules don't really work that well, but I think we need something, and I have no idea what it is.

Honestly, racial stuff makes sense as something along the lines of a lunar schedule (recharging when they sleep), though some as a ritual (Skriatok sitting and fondling their gold).

Here's what I have so far:

Lawman- Marshal (tech), Binder (Spiritual) Enforcer (Eastern),
Wilderness Guide- Explorer (tech), Brave (Spiritual), Hunter (Eastern)
(Wizard-esque dude)- Tinker (tech), Invoker (spiritual), Alchemist (Eastern)
Outlaw- Desperado (tech), Raider (Eastern), Resistance Fighter (Spiritual)
Gambler- Debauched (Eastern), Rake (tech), [something] (spiritual)
Remade- Steelshell (tech), Riven (spiritual), Stitched (Eastern)

Honestly, it's not even "Eastern," for classes, anyway, it's "Arcane," as you go study shit. Basically Tech is "I cobbled this together, and it at least vaguely works with the laws of physics, even if it's fueled by aether," Spiritual is "I put a fire spirit in this bullet, it goes boom." and Arcane is "I fucking studied, damnit, and can tell the laws of physics to fuck off, at least in limited ways."

Also, we need to really nail down what kind of things Eastern Magic does- Spiritual magic is pretty obvious in that you can summon spirits or infuse them within yourself and Western magic does tech stuff, but no-one's nailed down Eastern magic to that extent. I agree that having magic reside in drugs, potions, and powders sounds pretty cool, but what kinds of things should they be able to do? Super-strength, speed, and durability are kinda obvious. Throwing powder into people's eyes that makes freak out or take damage or something sounds like a pretty cool idea, too. Maybe even flasks of alchemists' fire or what have you. I can't really think of much else though, and that's a pretty narrow range of stuff. Once we deal with these two problems, though, we can easily get cracking on disciplines and stuff.

Tech- Steam engines, things that worry about conservation of energy (though Aether exists as a substance that stores a large amount of chemical energy in a small package, that will release it with small amounts of electrical or heat energy imparted into it). These things don't generally have magic signatures, unless it's integrating a magic source of energy into an otherwise mechanical device. Spell Engines likely also come from this.
Spiritual- Spirit fetishes a la Werewolf the Apocalypse and Hollywood shamanism. Take a spirit, put it in an object, have a magic item. These things also don't typically register as magic, but anything that sees spirits will totally see these things.
Arcane- Knowledge of how to do stuff that isn't ruled by the laws of physics. Mix these substances, get a potion of fire breathing. Do this dance, kick up a dust storm. Pour these ointments over a corpse, get a zombie. Definitely will register to "Detect Magic" stuff, can help with the other things. Also has "put magic energy into a vessel, usually a pearl" because the most recognizable form comes out of Eastern traditions, though there was totally magic in ancient Alfar forges and such.

My question is about native magic. Is each native culture going to have its own style of magic? Does this mean that each native culture gets its own classes? Or are you sticking with each race having its own magic, and anything else being non-culturally specific?

I don't really see the value of having Deep One gamblers take a different class from Ifrit gamblers take a different class from Tatanka gamblers, so long as each also gets its own unique magic.

Each race has a few tricks they can learn, which probably best all fall under the heading of Universal magic, simply because they don't draw on a specific source. Really, I could see Jotun learning Jogah tricks, but it'd be really difficult, since Jogah have the potential in them from birth, and it's partially instinct, where as others need to start from the ground up.

Golems look pretty good, and what you wrote up works beautifully for Tech golems. Riven are literally people put back together by spirits, so their dietary requirements and special effects are going to be mostly normal/touching on animistic ideas, and Stitched are things like Frankenstein's monster and undead and such, and so probably require something more mystic.

[Korgan0]

On the other hand, the problem with having Arcane magic is that it seems kinda generic and vague: Wizards in DnD have the 'arcane' schtick and can end up being able to do pretty much anything, while the other two power sources have far more finite capabilities, namely doing things with culturally appropriate spirits and doing things with culturally appropriate machines. Also, both have a very specific mechanism, namely talking to spirits/using spirit fetishes and building machines that do cool things, so it stands to reason that our third source should have a similiar thing going on, and I think the powders/drugs things works pretty well.

It might be productive to do what AS does and have a fourth heading of "ritual" or "wild" magic, which is stuff that doesn't have something absorbing the byproducts. It could probably just be said that no-one uses it anymore and leave the mechanics up to GM fiat, or there could be actual rules for it. This allows magical macguffins and plot-affecting things to have some kind of structure while restricting regular PC stuff to these specific power sources.

This is probably really dumb, but could power points be a straight-up narrative thing? When you run out of power points it just so happens that you run out of fuel/get too tired/your spirits get pissed or what have you- this means we don't have to have a mechanic that matches the internal systems of the power sources while still having an easy-to-understand, robust system for power resource managment.

[Prak]

On the other hand, the problem with having Arcane magic is that it seems kinda generic and vague: Wizards in DnD have the 'arcane' schtick and can end up being able to do pretty much anything, while the other two power sources have far more finite capabilities, namely doing things with culturally appropriate spirits and doing things with culturally appropriate machines. Also, both have a very specific mechanism, namely talking to spirits/using spirit fetishes and building machines that do cool things, so it stands to reason that our third source should have a similiar thing going on, and I think the powders/drugs things works pretty well.

Yeah, it really can be Alchemy, I guess. It's just as easy to explain undead or fireballs with "I mix all this shit together, it does this" as with "I studied hard." Better, actually.

It might be productive to do what AS does and have a fourth heading of "ritual" or "wild" magic, which is stuff that doesn't have something absorbing the byproducts. It could probably just be said that no-one uses it anymore and leave the mechanics up to GM fiat, or there could be actual rules for it. This allows magical macguffins and plot-affecting things to have some kind of structure while restricting regular PC stuff to these specific power sources.

Well, there will totally be wild magic storms and pools and shit. Sometimes it will be spirits, sometimes it'll just be "stuff." I don't think it really needs to be too much more specific than that, except for "how do we counter it stuff" which should still be in there. Though it's at least somewhat reasonable to say that the countering effect is dependent on what you're doing, rather than what you're countering. So, instead of saying Wild Magic A is counterable with salt, and Wild Magic B stops functioning if you pour booze on it, you say "Tech counters by basically being a sponge," "Spiritualism counters by drawing magic spirits away and basically smothering it" and "Alchemy counters by throwing magic dust on it" or something.

This is probably really dumb, but could power points be a straight-up narrative thing? When you run out of power points it just so happens that you run out of fuel/get too tired/your spirits get pissed or what have you- this means we don't have to have a mechanic that matches the internal systems of the power sources while still having an easy-to-understand, robust system for power resource managment.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb. But I really think we can tie Power Points for DMH to "you're just too tired to do any more engineering/spirit dancing/potion making. Take a nap, and you'll feel better."

[Prak]

The racism issue is something you're going to have to tackle one way or another, it's simply too big a part of the time period. Deadlands actually tries to do a "don't worry about it, racism is icky and we don't have to deal with it" gloss, but ends up being almost the most offensive thing you could possibly write on the subject. See, it turns out when you report "both sides" and have all the bad icky racism go away with a handwave, that doesn't make things inoffensive. It actually just means that you just wrote up a bunch of things right out of the propaganda books of fucking slave holders and announced that racism all goes away if the slaveholders win. This is only slightly less offensive than announcing that antisemitism goes away forever if the Nazis win World War 2.

Having the White Man be "humans" and everyone else be Elves and Orcs is extremely offensive on the face of it, and is a non-starter. Doing it the other way really isn't any better. About the only way i could see it working would be one of the following:

• No Elves. Everyone is a human. White skinned humans, dark brown skinned humans, in-between skinned humans. This has the obvious problem that writing about a scenario where Black people are oppressed can be fairly unpleasant. But of course, rewriting the period so that they aren't oppressed is extremely offensive because it's "holocaust denialism".

Ok, so I've been doing more thinking about "No Elves" (just vamps, werecreatures, etc.) because it is really hard to conceptualize a western, or possibly any setting with absolutely no humans (and Mixed Race Cultures is just still really weird). Also, I'm afraid that "shite tons and shite tons of fantasy races" will fill up all the conceptual space and leaves no room for vampires and zombie hordes and shit. Not to mention the issue of "what the fuck does a vampire jotun even look like?"

But that leaves us the problem of writing about southern slavery, the trail of tears, and all that with no distance what so ever.

How offensive would it be to say that slavery and first nation oppression are much more isolated incidents because the slaves and first nations people rose up and used magic and spirit pacts and beat sufficient shit out of their oppressors that slavery was officially abolished, and the union worked with the first nations people, albeit reluctantly, because the union didn't want a similar spirit war to happen again and wreck their shit? And so, yeah, you'll find people foolishly running slave plantations, or riding into a first nation village to try and take the land by force, but most of society sees these people as fucking idiots, and even the people who are still racists will stop you because they're afraid of "them injun witches."

Is that less offensive?

[Chamomile]

It seems fine to me. For the First Nations stuff in particular all you really need is a magic spirit-cure for smallpox and the levels of oppression and genocide they experienced immediately go right out the window. I mean, India got oppressed by the UK, for sure, but it still existed as a independent culture capable of forming its own nation, and the natives still outnumbered the conquerors by like a hundred to one. I'd go with a setup like that.

That said, I would definitely avoid making vampires and werewolves a normal part of the setting. It's borrowing too much of After Sundown's fluff just because we're already nabbing its mechanics. You hadn't mentioned anything about vampires or werewolves before the mechanical switch.

[Prak]

The entire point is a weird west setting with necromancers and zombie hordes and characters with spell-bullets. The primary differences from AS would be 1) not everyone is playing a supernatural, and there aren't three flavours of six types of supernaturals, and 2) no masquerade.

I would make werewolves and vampires playable for characters, but being a vampire would be your schtick. Sure, you could be a gunslinger too, but you would have vampire powers, and maybe one or two powers from other schtick lists, but it's at the expense of having "Lawman" as your schtick. Vampires and werewolves wouldn't have comparatively massive, far reaching, hidden empires, they live on the fringes, alienated from their families and friends because they happened to survive a monster attack rather than die. I mean, the entirety of monster pcs could be a single archetype, and everyone is a steve, because there are 15-17 other things to be.

[tussock]

and Mixed Race Cultures is just still really weird

But the USA was a huge melting-pot of mixed-race cultures at the time. Germans and Swiss and Italians and Irish all working in the same place. Protestants and Catholics living amongst each other. In some places all the police are Irish and all the mafia Italian, but not everywhere.

Just do classic D&D, various Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit, Gnome, and Human groups representing the dominant euro national/religious groupings. Big, strong, uneducated Orc slaves who they treat like shit in the south and not much better up north, some Half-Orcs who can "pass". Hobgoblin gold miners facing the special yellowskin taxes over from the far east. The more rare each national representation is in the US cities at the time, the more radical the D&D race you use to represent them.

It's just, instead of Orcs and Goblins actually being Evil baby-killers, that's just what all the demi-humans say about them. There's Evil Orcs (and Evil Elves) just like there's Good ones. Objectively, most dominant groups are Evil.

Make your natives the Giants, low tech and slow breeders that helped out the early settlers only to see themselves overrun with numbers, guns, and tools all too small and fragile for their massive hands to work (other than a few who carry field artillery). Too dangerous as slaves, they've been repatriated inland, and the bones of many of them still dot the road.

Who are the Humans? Depends, but the thing is to put a few Humans everywhere, and a few Orcs everywhere, so the old world nations are more nationalist with a mix of races, but the US (and other places) have become racist with a mix of nationalities instead.

And d20 is perfect mechanically. It's just that legends will get a lot of lucky flesh wounds rather than people who get a lot of lucky flesh wounds being considered legends. Custer was last to fall against the Giants because he was the highest level guy there.



Which all, if I run my mental checks, seems I could play a free black man without facing constant in-game racism who could in turn fight against deeply unjust and ongoing racial slavery. I could also play an educated "European" Orc who does face the in-game racism while being legally free to kick people's ass for it. Escaped slaves of either sort so they may or may not face discrimination. Native Human and Elven Giant-friends that the racists accuse of being turncoats.


Don't run the old west without racism though, not without a gigantic lampshade. Like sexism that goes away when your female character puts pants on, and there's a shop called "liberation for women" that just sells pants and people don't notice.

Mind, you could do the same with racism and wearing a long-sleeved shirt. Taking a man's shirt off his back becomes a pretty serious thing indeed.

[Prak]

The idea wouldn't be "the west minus racism" but rather, "the west, but slavery was outlawed because a bunch of slaves called on anansi and tore their owners new assholes and when white men came to relocate the natives with forced marches, the natives called up wendigo, and the white men froze to death before they even got the natives off their ancestral land," so the racism is roughly late 50s/60s level, where there is totally racism, and there will be racists crazy/foolhardy enough to lynch a black guy, and the black guy may well be defenseless, but there are seriously vengeance gangs of minorities that bring down unholy hell on the racists for it.

Edit: yes, I fully realize that Minoriteam Mage Gangs is probably insanely offensive. Excuse my sheltered white boy mind.

[Prak]

The West was descended upon for one thing: Resources. There was land and gold and it didn’t belong to another nation that the East recognized. Peoples flooded from the East to claim some of that for themselves. Great wagon trains streamed laden with supplies and people with guns and teemed with animals and beasts. Sickness claimed some, poor preparation others. More than one group was reduced to a single Jotun who was able to survive the most hellish of freezes but was forced to eat his companions to avoid a slow and painful death of starvation.
When the people got there, they found that the West was just as inhabited as the East had been when they got there. And they cared about as much as they had then.

Alfar and Duszek who’d normally be bitter enemies in the civilized towns back east stood back to back as they gunned down hordes of Kachina with six shooters loaded with spell rounds.

The spell round, specially prepared ammunition into which power and magical effects can be placed, invented by alfar, won the West. Another alfar invention, the spell-engine, further subjugated it. A spell-engine takes in magic energy, such as that placed into it by a spellwright or found within certain naturally enchanted substances, and uses it for motion. Great metal containers with these engines were created—Theurgerails—which allowed people to cross distances that would have taken a week in a day. Now Anansi and Wakyambi freed when the West outlawed slavery work the rails still feeling the bitter sting of hatred that burns within the Old Worlders who brought their ancestors to the New World, and Deep Ones stream in from the ports finding work on the same rails as they find themselves unemployable elsewhere.

Playing in a Lawless Land
The West is known as a lawless land. This is a bit of a misnomer, as there is definite law enforcement in the West. However, the law is more of a paramilitary force supported by independent bounty hunters than departments of constables in the East and the Old World. In towns, the law is usually one man, or at best, two and whoever they can round up to dispense ad hoc justice. Judges travel from town to town, and it’s not uncommon for the mob to execute a suspect before the judge makes it around to hold a trial. The extent of a sheriff’s ability to keep the peace in his town is limited to his senses—what he can hear or see personally, or what someone summons him for.

For this reason, the West is the next best thing to a bandit’s paradise. Might makes right, and if you can outgun the sheriff, you can take the peasants for all they’ve got. Gunslingers roam from town to town for their own reasons, some act as traveling lawmen—marshals—others look for any job they can find—from theurgerail jobs to smuggling cattle for the owner so he doesn’t have to pay taxes. Life is cheap on the frontier, but not as cheap as ammunition.

The Old West
Though temporally closer to our own modern day, and possessed of certain modern technology equivalents such as guns and the precursors to combustion engines, a game world based on the old west is culturally and technologically surprisingly much more similar to the Iron Age. States and kingdoms and nations exist theoretically but, except for unifying high level government, the states and towns of the west may as well be as distinct from the cities of the East as Sparta was from Athens in ancient Greece. Messages are faster by telegraph, but not as fast as a text. Theurgerails are faster than foot or horse, but cars don’t exist. Everyone’s got a gun, but at best they hold six bullets, and when you’re out, you might have to fall back to your blade—not everyone has a speed loader. The law exists, but tell the marshal the guy hanging in a tree was caught balls deep in your daughter, and he’ll probably look the other way. Cut the marshal in on your take from robbing the shipment, and you may well get off entirely. The West has outlawed slavery, but you may be the first of your family for several generations back to not be treated like property, and if you go back east, you may get a lesson in what you missed.

How Weird Is Your West?
There are no humans in Dead Man’s Hand. None. Some races look more human than others, but all are substantially non-human. Even the “dwarves” and “elves” of DMH, alfar and sidhe, would require their actors wear makeup closer to Hellboy or Mystique than Gimli or Legolas.

The simple reason for this is that anytime you add fantasy races to human history the end result makes someone uncomfortable. Whether intended or no, D&D’s vaguely first nation/Asian elves and vaguely African orcs and strongly German/Scottish dwarves paired with usually Caucasian western European humans is loaded with unfortunate implications. If one were to do this in a western genre game—which would have to handle themes of genocide, slavery, and prejudice—it would just be all bad. A game of DMH’s type has three options: everyone’s human, every culture is completely mixed, and no one’s human. While “Completely human western with added magic” would be a very workable game, the game needs to handle very real historical events, and using humans would make them hit far too close to home for people. Ignoring them, or saying that fictional events completely resolved the issues (as some games on the market do) just makes matters worse. While a futuristic game such as Shadowrun can get away with insanely cosmopolitan populations being the rule of the day, it would be very weird for a western game (not impossible, just very odd). Having ifrit and sidhe conquering and subjugating neighbouring lutin and selling wakyambi and mass murdering tatanka makes it possible to distance oneself from the real historical bases for such events and minimize the discomfort the book might cause by bringing them up.

The races of Dead Man’s Hand are based on mythological creatures, primarily from the mythologies of Europe, the Americas and Africa. Races generally culturally reflect the cultures which tell stories about them.

Home on the Range
The world of Dead Man’s Hand has seen many eras and advancements, and will see many more—assuming the wendigo do not have anything to say about it—but the era, and location, which Dead Man’s Hand is primarily interested in most closely resembles the Frontier Era of the American West, around 1860. This means the Rotary Printing Press, gas mask and jack hammer have all been invented, but the repeating rifle has not, and cartridge revolvers are relatively new on the market (having first hit around 4 years prior). The theurgerails are just starting to see wide commercial use as rates have only recently fallen to reasonable prices, and while a trip across country is much faster, it can still be something of an ordeal. That said, it is a remarkably prosperous time for the railroads.

Tensions are brewing over state’s rights. While slavery has been outlawed in northern states, the south still has countless anansi and wakyambi, as well as some alfar, sidhe and lutin, enslaved and subjected to unspeakable cruelties at the hands. Most anansi or wakyambi in the West are either freed slaves themselves, or were born to slaves.

[Prak]

OK, so I've been thinking a bit more about this project and have the beginning of the sorceries figured out.

Sorcery in Dead Man's Hand is primarily divided into European, Native and Asian traditions, but defined as Machine, Totem and Pearl magic, based on the common vessels of each.

Machine magic is the magic of Western Expansion and the Industrial Revolution. It is characterized by smoke, fire, cogs, steam and coal. The sorceries of Machine magic are

• Stoking the Boiler magic of fire, engines and steam
• The Minute Factory magic of insects and industry
• The Long Drive travel magic
• Wild Arms bullet magic
• The Ashes of Progress magic of decay and disease

Totem magic is the magic of indigenous peoples. Frequently used by petitioning Spirits through representative carvings, it primarily deals with the natural world and the spirits thereof. Totemic sorceries include:

• Call of the Wilds animal magic
• Song of Storms weather magic
• Incense of Dreams dream magic
• Names of the Spirits name magic
• Roots of the World plant magic

Pearl magic is the magic of the far east. It is primarily characterized by water, darkness, herbs and poisons, and usually involves expertly mixed powders and ritually prepared pearls. Pearl sorceries include-

• Hungry Ghosts Necromancy
• The Hidden Way poison and darkness magic
• Pearls of the Deep water magic
• Smoke and Mirrors mirror and shadow magic
• Herbs of the Yellow Emperor alchemy and medicine

Some of these are either whole or partially filled from AS, some are combinations of AS sorceries, like Smoke and Mirrors being Progress of Glass and Play of Shadows mixed together. Wild Arms is the sorcery written by Artless. It deals with spirits, so kind of feels like it should be a Totem sorcery, but it's all about modifying bullets, and so feels very Machine. I could strip it for devotions and then come up with something else, but that requires coming up with something else.

What do people think of that as a start to magic in Dead Man's Hand?

[Prak]

Archetypes
Nation isn't everything. People think it is, but even the most grizzled veteran of the "native relocation effort" will grudgingly admit when the Tatanka they normally refer to through various impolite to outright offensive terms saves his ass by repairing the theurgerail. Usually.

The point is, that as impressive as a character may be just from their Nation and paragon powers, their occupation gives them the skills and knowledge to do more than survive. A jotun may be able to tear up an enemy squad by turning into a giant wolf, but given the knowledge and magic of a marshal, they can empower bullets with fire spirits or fuel spellengines.

Whereas After Sundown has eighteen separate types of monster characters become or discover they were at some point in their life, all with different power sets and very meaningful differences, Dead Man's Hand characters start life as powerful supernatural characters, and then learn a trade. There's already 24 different Nations, and to add eighteen archetypes each with a set of 8 powers each would be to hand starting characters more powers than even a D&D wizard has to consider at one time for most of their career, to say nothing of how many options a player has to consider just to make that character.

Dead Man's Hand archetypes, then, have only a few powers, and there are only six, which are further flavoured by shtick. Archetypes are, conceptually, on par with being a vampire or a transhuman in AS. This makes shticks roughly akin to being a Daeva or a Nosferatu, but rather than being the specific breed you are within a supernatural type, are the method you employ in your chosen profession. A marshal and an enforcer may use methods from entirely separate parts of the world, one focused on enchanting their bullets with fire and the other on manipulating darkness and poisoning bullets, but both are Lawmen, and will be able to find common ground. ...once they finish their dick measuring jurisdiction contest.

Lawmen
The law in the west is a chaotic thing. Certainly there is a code of laws in place that is decided upon at the federal level, mostly by powdered wigs across the continent, and then modified at the state level, mostly by wealthy beings of questionable legitimacy. But there is little in the way of infrastructure or manpower in the west. The largest law enforcement power in the west are the Pineda Rangers. Trained in the territory of Pineda, and that being their sole jurisdiction, the rangers are nonetheless respected all through the west, and will receive cooperation from most sheriffs, even as far as Ourican Country. Of course, they also primarily are a tool of the establishment, and will commonly bust unions attempting to organize labor, and support large ranchers against small ones, and so have quite a few enemies among law-abiding "little folk" ...often literal littlefolk. The next largest official law enforcement force in the west are the Unified Territories Marshals, who are a federally trained and regulated police force. While the actual organization is larger than the Pineda Rangers, they are also more thinly spread across the continent, and primarily concentrated in the eastern territories.

Lawmen Powers

• Vigor (Basic Clout)
• Quickness (Basic Gunplay)

Wardens (Machine)
Lawmen trained in the west by UT government organizations are trained in Machine magic. They learn to manipulate their bullets to deliver true-striking shots when it matters and trap campfire spirits to allow them to create a dense cloud of smoke under which to sneak up on targets.

• Core Training: Wild Arms
• Pillar of Smoke
• The Lady

Binders (Totem)
Binders are a law enforcement tradition which grew out of native medicine men and shamans. Their job is not just to banish troublesome spirits of illness and injury call similar down upon their tribe's enemies, but also to hunt down dangerous invested spirits and engage enemy binders.

• Core Discipline: Names of the Spirits
• Spiritual Forensics
• Spiritual Autopsy

Enforcers (Pearl)
Enforcers are trained in the martial arts of the far east. Their techniques draw on both those of the fearsome masked Lung Zhanshi, and the elusive Yin. Most far eastern immigrants in the West are employed as near-slaves building railways, but anyone with money can come and find a life in the west, and there's no small number of wealthy merchants who come over with their own muscle.

• Core Discipline: The Hidden Way
• Spit of the Serpent
• Crack of Darkness

---

So that's sort of what I'm looking at for the Archetype writeups. There should be more fluff, definitely. Mostly the powers require prep ahead of time. It occurs to me that maybe Wild Arms should be more about marksmanship than special effects like lava bullets, since most of the magic is stuff you have to put into a weapon.

[Artless]

Feel free to change whatever you want for it. If it helps, half the idea I was working with was that a fair number of the practitioners would treat and exploit the spirits of things like a resource rather than something with any kind of awareness or sentience. Beyond that it was just a couple things I thought would be cool, variegated effects to have happen when a character pulled a trigger, hence the lava bullets and the bullet that makes thunderstorms.

[Prak]

Yeah. Machine magic definitely sees spirits that way, and it would be one of the larger tensions of the setting. Basically, Machine magic is the logical conclusion of the frontier manifest destiny ideology, everything exists for the exploitation at the hands of "man." Totem magic is the (stereotypical) native ideology of working with nature and never taking it for granted, even when you must use it as a tool. Pearl magic is the idea of ritualized perfection*. It doesn't necessarily espouse an attitude as to the use of nature and resources, except perhaps one of responsible use, but rather that all forces can be mastered through ritualized practice.

The other side of this is to maintain separation of effects, cosmetically if not mechanically. That said, I could definitely see Machine magic taking what it sees as useful from both Pearl and Totem magic, both as the youngest form of magic, and as the most opportunistic.