Yeah, I hadn't meant in the sense of actually having werewolves and vampires, but rather having something which can fill the same niche mechanically. The problem is that the monsters from After Sundown come in three different varieties, one for each sorcery, but the six roles we have right now are often very much attached to one sorcery. So while After Sundown has vampires with specific types that are Astral, Orphic, and Infernal, we've got Wilderness Guides with specific types which are...Primal, Primal, and Primal. Because an Arcane Wilderness Guide would basically be a Magician, and a Divine one would be very similar to a Lawman.
See, After Sundown had monster archetypes that were very distinct from each other, so that when you had an Daeva standing next to a Bagheera (Bagheera were the Infernal ones, right?), they're very obviously different from one another because one of them is a vampire and the other is a lycanthrope and the fact that they're both Infernal doesn't change that. But if you take the wilderness out of a Wilderness Guide, he starts looking very similar to practically all of the other archetypes.
We don't necessarily have to follow the After Sundown model precisely, of course, but it's nice and elegant and symmetrical and makes things easier if we can.
Reviving Dead Man's Hand
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Username17
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I find that position incomprehensible. "I know about criminals and can read a wanted poster" is something you can do to advance the plot. You can gather information in and out of social situations. Presumably, you can also fire a gun. That is both a combat shtick and a non-combat shtick. That is as much as anyone has.Prak wrote:I've actually seen two of the three movies you just mentioned. But, you're right, I do have a serious shortage of westerns in my source material. What I meant is that "I know about criminals, and can read a wanted poster" is about as valid a character archetype as "I sword good."
I mean, you're selling the "Lawman" short: they can demand assistance from bureaucrats, extort criminals by threatening to bring them before a judge, solve mysteries by finding clues, and track people over miles. But even within the context of your strawman, it's still plenty to hang a character on. LaBoeuf is a fully contributing character in True Grit. Clint Eastwood is a fully contributing character in pretty much every movie he was in while playing the Clint Eastwood Character. Hell, Meryl Stryfe in Trigun is basically the same idea and again a fully contributing character.
Now you may have some sort of phlebtonium considerations in which LaBoeuf won't be able to keep up over the long haul. LaBoeuf is in an aggressively gritty world where the fact that he's pretty good at tracking, pretty good at brawling, pretty good at sneaking, and pretty good at shooting allow him to subdue Tom Chaney and rescue the hostage. That is clearly going to be insufficient if Tom Chaney is going to be a brass robot that breathes fire and can detect metal through foliage with primitive radar bursts.
But all that means is that you need to have some sort of magical training that federal marshalls do. Maybe there are special caster shells that take a lot of training to use or the special Justice Department Voodoo to track or destroy things with sympathetic magic.
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So, Frank, your objection is not that the Lawman has magic, but that it's only holy magic?
Cham: It's been a long time since I looked at AS, and I haven't studied it again yet since I've got a campaign I need to be working on. But you're right, so what we do then is kind of what I had been thinking about and stick closer to the original three sorcery types. Infernal magicians are evokers, Orphic magicians are necromancers, and Astral magicians are abjurers. Infernal wilderness guides know about hell weather and demon beasts, Orphic wilderness guides know about ghosts and ancestor spirits, and can use curses and such, and Astral wilderness guides know about evil plants and can use dream magic. Infernal Lawmen can bind demons and use hellfire, and we can figure out what to do with other types, and so on.
Cham: It's been a long time since I looked at AS, and I haven't studied it again yet since I've got a campaign I need to be working on. But you're right, so what we do then is kind of what I had been thinking about and stick closer to the original three sorcery types. Infernal magicians are evokers, Orphic magicians are necromancers, and Astral magicians are abjurers. Infernal wilderness guides know about hell weather and demon beasts, Orphic wilderness guides know about ghosts and ancestor spirits, and can use curses and such, and Astral wilderness guides know about evil plants and can use dream magic. Infernal Lawmen can bind demons and use hellfire, and we can figure out what to do with other types, and so on.
Last edited by Prak on Wed Jun 13, 2012 7:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
We're splitting the Lawman into three classes anyway. Make the holy one have the Infernal track (paint the hellfire white and say the demons are freaky-looking angles, conversion done), but then have the Astral one be more First Nations in flavor and then the Orphic one is some kind of Mexican Day-of-the-Dead type thing, and neither of the latter two are required to be even tangentially connected to holiness.
Also, I'd recommend renaming Infernal to Divine even if we keep it pretty much exactly the same. The Old West's flavor of God was all about fire and brimstone, we just need to add in a clause that you are not required to be a dick about slinging the fires of hell around. You can, in fact, save it for actual evil people who rob trains and murder people instead of lighting up every brown skinned dude who refuses to get baptized.
Also, I'd recommend renaming Infernal to Divine even if we keep it pretty much exactly the same. The Old West's flavor of God was all about fire and brimstone, we just need to add in a clause that you are not required to be a dick about slinging the fires of hell around. You can, in fact, save it for actual evil people who rob trains and murder people instead of lighting up every brown skinned dude who refuses to get baptized.
I'd rather keep this fantasy religions, rather than fantasy versions of real religions. Playing a christian in an RPG, especially when you have to be in order to get certain powers, is a bit of buzzkill.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
The three sorcery flavours are Primal, Spiritual and Mechanical. Primal gets CoW, CoS, SotS, CoT & LoD. Spiritual get NotB, N, WoF, VoM & DoE. Mechanical gets PoG, ToT, SoS, PoS & PoB. Lots of things get reflavoured, especially NotB to be less overtly demonic as noted above. Thus, the tentative character type list is:
Magicians
[*] Seer: A magician that peers into the murky mists of the future. Primal Source.
[*] Necromancer: A magician that calls up the spirits of the dead. Spiritual Source.
[*] Tinker: A magician that crafts magical technology. Mechanical Source.
Lawmen
[*] Veteran: A warrior from an army or warband back from the war at last. Primal Source.
[*] Preacher: A champion of the spiritual law of the land. Spiritual Source.
[*] Marshal: A lawman bringing justice to criminals and upholding the law. Mechanical Source.
Guides
[*] Mountain Man: Primal Source.
[*] Shaman: Spiritual Source.
[*] Explorer: Mechanical Source.
Drifters
[*] Outlaw
[*] ???
[*] ???
???
[*] ???
[*] ???
[*] ???
Magicians
[*] Seer: A magician that peers into the murky mists of the future. Primal Source.
[*] Necromancer: A magician that calls up the spirits of the dead. Spiritual Source.
[*] Tinker: A magician that crafts magical technology. Mechanical Source.
Lawmen
[*] Veteran: A warrior from an army or warband back from the war at last. Primal Source.
[*] Preacher: A champion of the spiritual law of the land. Spiritual Source.
[*] Marshal: A lawman bringing justice to criminals and upholding the law. Mechanical Source.
Guides
[*] Mountain Man: Primal Source.
[*] Shaman: Spiritual Source.
[*] Explorer: Mechanical Source.
Drifters
[*] Outlaw
[*] ???
[*] ???
???
[*] ???
[*] ???
[*] ???
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
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Username17
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My objection is that "holy magic" has absolutely fuckall to do with the law enforcement arm of a secular republic. And "The Law" in a Western is pretty much by definition a secular institution. Priest Gunmen are totally a thing, but the overlap they have with "Lawman" is pretty much nil. If you want law enforcement priests, you have to go back a few centuries to where the Papacy was able to enforce its own laws.Prak_Anima wrote:So, Frank, your objection is not that the Lawman has magic, but that it's only holy magic?
The idea that "Lawman" is insufficient of a shtick to hang a character on in a Western is totally false. That's the shtick that the protagonist in the majority of the source material is hung on. It's like saying that "Jedi" isn't enough to stake out a character's ability set in a Star Wars game. You might be attempting to make a case that "Lawman" is insufficiently powerful of a concept to hold up at higher levels in your imagined game, but you haven't really made that case and in any case if you were going to jazz up the concept with phlebtonium you'd jazz it up with some sort of secular power because it's a secular position.
Again and still: if you wanted "Inquisitor" (that is: Holy + Lawman) to be a normal character type, you'd pick a setting where that's a normal character type. Again, I direct you to the Three Musketeers, or Iron Kingdoms. The Old West is pretty much a classic example of a place where Holy Lawman is a weird multiclass exception. As evidenced by The Quick and the Dead, where the gunslinger who turned priest was openly mocked.
If you wanted to take the AS concept and run with it in a very close port, you'd want to assign a number of phlebtonium paths and then split them into three power sources each. Off the top of my head, something like this:Cham: It's been a long time since I looked at AS, and I haven't studied it again yet since I've got a campaign I need to be working on. But you're right, so what we do then is kind of what I had been thinking about and stick closer to the original three sorcery types. Infernal magicians are evokers, Orphic magicians are necromancers, and Astral magicians are abjurers. Infernal wilderness guides know about hell weather and demon beasts, Orphic wilderness guides know about ghosts and ancestor spirits, and can use curses and such, and Astral wilderness guides know about evil plants and can use dream magic. Infernal Lawmen can bind demons and use hellfire, and we can figure out what to do with other types, and so on.
| Basal Type | Astral | Infernal | Orphic |
| Lawman | Spirit Hunter | Caster | Zombie Marshall |
| Scout | Totemist | Planeswalker | Revenant |
| Gambler | Knave | Diviner | Fearless |
| Outlaw | Shadow Thief | Marauder | Wraith |
| Magician | Shaman | Warlock | Necromancer |
| Tinker | Spark | Binder | Taxidermist |
Then you could either make people pick their path right away, or you could let them pick a "basic" path (like Gambler or Outlaw) and then prestige class into a power source.
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The idea wasn't that they are directly worshiping the Christian god, but rather that they're worshiping Pelor (possibly Pelor and associates) in such a way that is reminiscient of the Old West, which means fiery pastors ranting about something or other. The specifics of the rant are not important, so long as they are thumping some kind of holy tome, you've go the genre right. It makes plenty of sense for Pelor's servants to be slinging fire around anyway, he's the god of the sun.
Quick rundown of disciplines from After Sundown and how they might be refluffed with minimal mechanical tweaks to Dead Man's Hand:
Authority works fine, but is kind of overly creepy for a western, particularly the Conditioning power. Cloud Memory is also kind of weird for a western setting.
Celerity can be used as-is.
Clout is fine except for Giant Size. It's not really in-genre for characters to suddenly double in size. It is in-genre to potentially just be giant-size (i.e. "I'm an ogre") or to have the strength of something giant-sized, though. Maybe instead of hulking out, you spend Power Points just to take your jacket off and get serious.
Discernment can be used as-is, so long as we're fine with telepathic cowboys. I have no issues with this.
Fortitude is fine, Magnetism is fine, Veil might want to add something about having a disguise kit you keep in your pocket or whatever, but is also fine.
Astral Sorceries. These I feel should have their origin in a loose alliance of nature spirits who don't have a single deity running the whole show. You've got Wolf and Bear and Catoblepas, but none of them is really in charge. And anyways just because they taught the magic originally doesn't mean they have a handle on it still, it's spread too far for them to control it. Call of the Wild works as written. Chasing the Storm mostly has its holes in that you want some characters using gear to do this, i.e. you want your gunslingers shooting lightning from their revolvers, but that's a fluff issue. So long as we aren't expecting our PCs to be captured and stripped of helpful items ever, that doesn't really make a difference. Coil of Thorns and Veil of Morpheus work as written. We may want to change the name on Trail of Tears, but otherwise it's fine.
Infernal Sorceries is a bit harder. You need players to have access to these, too, so you want to avoid making them all 100% Baator approved, but for some of them that's not just fluff but embedded into mechanics. Light of Ennui, for example, is hard to see as coming from St. Cuthbert. Names of the Blasphemies is actually a pretty cool Cleric-type power if it can be used to spread truth as well as lies, but its Banishment as well as the entire Progress of Glass relies on regular mirrors being a portal to Hell and/or the Abyss. Song of Swarms makes perfect sense from an Old Testament perspective, it's just a plague of locusts, but it's not really in Pelor's portfolio. So we might give him a divine sidekick or two to cover bugs and reflections. Walk of Flame works just fine as written (though it runs into the "we want people shooting this stuff and not casting it normally" issue), because Pelor is a sun god and his followers can have fire powers and that makes perfect sense already.
Orphic Sorceries should probably originate from either ancestral spirits or maybe some kind of Moon Goddess. And maybe she's got a bunch of ancestral spirits as her minions. Either way, I like giving the culture-of-origin a Mexican vibe. It looks like every Orphic Sorcery can work as written, since even fantasy necromancy is supposed to be slightly creepy, so nothing has to be de-creepified.
I haven't looked through each and every devotion, but they look alright so far...Although War Form runs into the issue that transformations are not really a thing in fantasy or westerns.
Quick rundown of disciplines from After Sundown and how they might be refluffed with minimal mechanical tweaks to Dead Man's Hand:
Authority works fine, but is kind of overly creepy for a western, particularly the Conditioning power. Cloud Memory is also kind of weird for a western setting.
Celerity can be used as-is.
Clout is fine except for Giant Size. It's not really in-genre for characters to suddenly double in size. It is in-genre to potentially just be giant-size (i.e. "I'm an ogre") or to have the strength of something giant-sized, though. Maybe instead of hulking out, you spend Power Points just to take your jacket off and get serious.
Discernment can be used as-is, so long as we're fine with telepathic cowboys. I have no issues with this.
Fortitude is fine, Magnetism is fine, Veil might want to add something about having a disguise kit you keep in your pocket or whatever, but is also fine.
Astral Sorceries. These I feel should have their origin in a loose alliance of nature spirits who don't have a single deity running the whole show. You've got Wolf and Bear and Catoblepas, but none of them is really in charge. And anyways just because they taught the magic originally doesn't mean they have a handle on it still, it's spread too far for them to control it. Call of the Wild works as written. Chasing the Storm mostly has its holes in that you want some characters using gear to do this, i.e. you want your gunslingers shooting lightning from their revolvers, but that's a fluff issue. So long as we aren't expecting our PCs to be captured and stripped of helpful items ever, that doesn't really make a difference. Coil of Thorns and Veil of Morpheus work as written. We may want to change the name on Trail of Tears, but otherwise it's fine.
Infernal Sorceries is a bit harder. You need players to have access to these, too, so you want to avoid making them all 100% Baator approved, but for some of them that's not just fluff but embedded into mechanics. Light of Ennui, for example, is hard to see as coming from St. Cuthbert. Names of the Blasphemies is actually a pretty cool Cleric-type power if it can be used to spread truth as well as lies, but its Banishment as well as the entire Progress of Glass relies on regular mirrors being a portal to Hell and/or the Abyss. Song of Swarms makes perfect sense from an Old Testament perspective, it's just a plague of locusts, but it's not really in Pelor's portfolio. So we might give him a divine sidekick or two to cover bugs and reflections. Walk of Flame works just fine as written (though it runs into the "we want people shooting this stuff and not casting it normally" issue), because Pelor is a sun god and his followers can have fire powers and that makes perfect sense already.
Orphic Sorceries should probably originate from either ancestral spirits or maybe some kind of Moon Goddess. And maybe she's got a bunch of ancestral spirits as her minions. Either way, I like giving the culture-of-origin a Mexican vibe. It looks like every Orphic Sorcery can work as written, since even fantasy necromancy is supposed to be slightly creepy, so nothing has to be de-creepified.
I haven't looked through each and every devotion, but they look alright so far...Although War Form runs into the issue that transformations are not really a thing in fantasy or westerns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWKGhwwVgKYChamomile wrote:Clout is fine except for Giant Size. It's not really in-genre for characters to suddenly double in size. It is in-genre to potentially just be giant-size (i.e. "I'm an ogre") or to have the strength of something giant-sized, though. Maybe instead of hulking out, you spend Power Points just to take your jacket off and get serious.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Trolls have a version that cannot be. I'm not sure how much that would screw with things as a player trait however.
I'm working on a "here's what the fuck your character was doing while you gone and thus not part of the main adventure" thing for my friend today, so I'll actually work on DMH when I'm done with that.
I'm working on a "here's what the fuck your character was doing while you gone and thus not part of the main adventure" thing for my friend today, so I'll actually work on DMH when I'm done with that.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Stubbazubba
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Yeah, don't forget the Steampunk end of this; mad science can concoct any number of chemical alterations that could turn you into Bane or Abomination. Of course, I now want to see a scrawny steampunk mechanic transform into the Hulk, ripping right out of his white shirt, cravatte, and trenchcoat. I think you could do transformations.
E: And for a more genre-appropriate transformation, see Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from LXG.
E: And for a more genre-appropriate transformation, see Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from LXG.
Last edited by Stubbazubba on Thu Jun 14, 2012 4:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Username17
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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:
-Username17
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".
- Shadowrun. Every culture and every tribe has members of all the different "races". You have British Orcs and Latvian Orcs and Sioux Orcs and Humans and Dwarves of all those flavors too. Can get confusing when you talk about "racism" (Humans vs. Gnomes) and "racism" (Whites vs. First Nations). Your social metaphors can easily get lost when you are dealing with race and ethnicity simultaneously on different axes.
- Everyone is an Elf. All the factions, and I mean every single one, are non-human. By stripping the human baseline out of the equation, you can put some distance between your reader and the historical atrocities, and you can get people to roleplay out those frankly terrifying scenarios.
The Peoples of the World
"Everywhere I've been, and I've been to a lot of places, I ain't never seen something as weird looking as you."
The West is rapidly filling up with settlers from all over the world. The open range is a free-for-all among many interest groups. While the Union declares that it is manifest destiny that it should all fall into their hands, there are still many who simply plumb do not agree. With the natives on the way out and resources up for grab it's no wonder that adventure seeking folks the world over have a hankering to go out West.
The Alfar
"Of course it looks expensive, I made it."
The Alfar are short of stature and tedious of demeanor. Alfar have skin which is colored as the sky is colored, though mostly they are pigmented as a painting of dusk or night scenes. Standing just 1.1m tall, the average svartalf has night black skin (seriously, with little stars and everything) and pupil-less eyes.
Alfheim and Niðavellir have only recently become independent nations, and many of the Alfar have diasporaed across the world. Ill treated by the Ifrit sultans, Svartalf culture has largely turned to science and the busy hands of the Svartalfar have made most of the spell engines which power civilization.
The dwarves of Alfheim are famous as mechanics, magicians, artisans, and builders. Their attention to detail is second to none, though their plodding gait and irascible mien oft discourage commerce with others. Still, a number of Alfar have taken their legendary skills out West where the demand is strong. And it is very strong.
Inspiration: Germans, Bohemians, Jews
The Ifrit
"Fire burns all things. It burns grass and homes, wood and flesh. It burns in my veins. It can burn your veins too."
The Ifrit are a people literally descended from smokeless fire. Easily identifiable by their metallic skin and burning spit and tears, Ifrit stand an imposing 1.9m tall. All Ifrit can see through fire as if it was clear, though smoke or coal is opaque to them.
A proud race, the Sultan of the Ifrit in Madrid was once granted dominion of all the West by the High Pontiff. Ifrit conquistadors conquered the entire reach from the Golden Kingdom to the Silver Empire and set up a brutal system of Missions across the Western reaches of the New World while holding lands in the Old World as far north as Vanheim and as far east as Alfheim. But of late, the flame of the Ifrit has sputtered and dimmed. The Sultan of the old world suffered terrible defeats to both the United Provinces of Vanheim and TÃr na nÓg. Worse still, holdings in the New World have broken free and declared themselves as a myriad of quarrelsome sultanates and republics. The Burning Empire is now little more than a smoldering memory.
Remnants of the Burning Empire are still quite evident in the West. The priestly Missions are the only civilization in much of the farthest reaches. Ifrit Rancheros still run a great deal of cattle on the range – their land grants from the Sultan worthless paper but their burning sabers leave quite a mark.
Ifrit can interbreed with any people, and lands controlled by Ifrit have remarkably elaborate rules governing the status of those people with various amounts of non-Ifrit blood.
Inspiration: Spaniards, Mexicans.
The Loci
"I love these flowers. They are a part of me."
Loci, whether male or female are very beautiful. Each loci is tied to a tree, a rock, a spring, or some other geographical feature. Because Loci have such a strong tie to terrain, they don't travel as much as other peoples, with the notable exception of Oceanids who sail all over the place and thereby give the entire people a reputation for wanderlust which is entirely undeserved.
Both the High Pontiff and the Eastern Patriarch are Loci. Yet in the Old World there is no major political entity that speaks for Loci people. Most of the formerly independent Loci city states are now the property of the Sun King of the Sidhe. As a result, displaced Dryads are attempting to make for themselves a new life in the New World.
Inspiration: Italians, Greeks.
Coming Soon: The Sidhe (both the Tir Sidhe and the Court of the Sun King); the Lutin (also of the Sun Court); the Vanir (the conquerors of the sea from Vanheim and the barbarous Van from Helheim); the Jotun; the Deep Ones (from R'lyeh); the Skriatok (of the Winter Court), the Duszek (also of the Winter Court), and of course the
Natives:Buffalo People; Wendigo; Mikumwess; Maizenians; Kachina.
The Sidhe[/b]
"Ride into the sunset? I am the sunset."
The Sidhe come from the far west of the Old World, and usually have hair as yellow as the sun of noon or red as the sun of dusk. Sidhe average 1.5m in height, and cast no shadows.
Sidhe flesh burns in contact with iron, and perhaps as a result the Sidhe are known far and wide as master craftsmen in silver, copper, and wood. Sidhe breathe in a continuous stream in and out and this is easily mistaken for them not breathing at all. Sidhe bodies have no striated muscle in them, and as a result Sidhe can stand in any position virtually indefinitely without growing tired.
While Sidhe peoples live throughout the West of the Old World, from the Burning Empire to Vanheim, the nations which are truly Sidhe dominated are the Kingdom of the Sun King on the mainland, and the islands of Tir na nOg. The Sun King demands all of his subjects bend knee to the high pontiff, while the Queen of the Emerald Islands demands that her subjects do not do so. These edicts have brought the Sun King into confrontation with Tir on several occasions, as well as with Vanheim and even his own Lutin subjects. Neither the Sun King nor the high pontiff have much power in the West, though they stand tall in alliance in the Old World.
Inspiration: British, French, Irish
The Vanir
"i'm looking for a man."
The Vanir are an aloof and musically inclined people known for seamanship, swordsmanship, and austerity. A somber and precise people, the average Van stands 1.8m tall. Vanir are quite flammable but they don't have blood and do not bleed when cut.
Most Vanir have long since rebelled against the High Pontiff and Burning Empire, and there are now independent nations of Van all over the Old World. The United Provinces of Vanheim and the Helheim Republic are both relatively non-interventionist republics that are quite wealthy and powerful. Van colonies make up a significant fraction of the segments of Union territories and many of those who go out West from the Union are Vanir.
All Vanir have perfect pitch, but most of them subscribe to religious views which discourage song and dance. The stereotypical Van is both flat of affect and exacting of tone – making them persuasive and unnerving.
Inspiration: Nederlanders, Belgians, Burgundians
The Jotun
"Do you wish to anger me little man!?"
The Jotun stand an impressive 3m tall and are almost as shaggy as wolves. Jotun can stand any amount of cold, and their mere presence chills the air. In the West, Jotun are forced to wear heavy furs during the height of summer to keep the heat off of their bodies to stave off a painful softening of their flesh.
Jotun traditionally drink heavily, and their men grow long and scraggly beards. Where once they were feared as warriors across the Old World, the time of the Jotun has mostly passed. The advancement of the gun has largely outpaced the manifest size and strength of the mighty Jotun hirdmen. The Jotun are now largely a figure of fun in popular literature and the Jotun mostly colonize out of the way lands in the frozen north of the Mid West.
When Jotun become very old they gradually transform into huge dire wolves, forcing them to move even farther into the wilderness lest hey be hunted by their own kin.
Inspiration: Norse, Danes, Cossacks.
The Deep Ones
"Ia Ia, I get right on it, monkey boy."
If a Deep One was standing erect it would usually crest 1.7m by a slight margin. However, a Deep One's naturally hunched posture makes them rarely crest 1.3m. A Deep One's body is frog-like in appearance, with slit-pupiled eyes placed squarely on top of their head and an enormous maw that appears to always be smiling. Deep Ones breath water as easily as air and can resist pressures that would be unthinkable for virtually any other living creature.
The culture of the Deep Ones goes back thousands of years and the Deep Ones considered themselves "civilized" when the Sidhe were busy hitting each other's naked forms with rocks. However, theirs is an empire in decline. The emperors of the deep have long rejected change and the other powers of the Old World have now completely overshadowed them in almost all fields of endeavor. Fine clay and cloth products once producible only beneath the waves have been replicated by Svartalf artisans, and reefs belonging to the Empire are now openly fought over by surface powers as exploitive markets. A river of gold no longer pours into the sea like it once did.
And so it is of little surprise that Deep Ones come out to the West (even though for them the trek is to the East) looking for work. Fearing that the uncounted hordes from beneath the waves might completely overrun the virgin lands, many groups and nations take open steps to limit the immigration of female Deep Ones. Thus it is mostly male Deep Ones that make it to the West to work on the Great Rails – massive multidimensional constructs of steel and memory that haul goods across the great planes from civilized lands to the interior.
Inspiration: Chinese, H.P. Lovecraft
Lutin
"I found a penny yesterday. It is worth money."
The Lutin stand less than half a meter tall and have elaborately colored insect-like wings coming out of their back. While a Lutin cannot remain aloft for long, they can run at tremendous speed with wing assistance. Lutin have small antennae on their heads which emerge from their pastel-colored hair. These allow them to hear sounds much higher in pitch than other peoples. Lutin smell like flowers, to the extent that they can be tracked by this phenomenon.
The Lutin have never had major holdings in the Old World. Lutin lands have been conquered and reconquered by emperors from the North, South, and East. Banners flown by Loci, Ifrit, and Sidhe have been placed over Lutin cities time and time again.
The cube square law works in the favor of Lutin, who can lift several times their own (extremely modest) weight. Most people dismiss Lutin because of their stature, and they have the reputation of being thieves, jovially useless hobos, and vapid entertainers.
Inspiration: Basques, Occitans, Gypsies
Duszek
"Boo."
The measurable height of the Duszek varies with the length of their shadow. As their shadow grows, more of their body becomes ephemeral and difficult to see. At noon and at night, a Duszek stands an imposing 2m tall. At the cusp of sunrise and sunset, only about a centimeter of a Duszek is capable of touching or being touched by objects. Because of their difficulties in touching things for part of the day, Duszek are wont to cover themselves with chalk or birch ash, as these materials are immune to this particular facet of their existence. Caster shells similarly penetrate the incorporeality of the Duszek at late day, so their reputation as unstoppable ghost faced stranglers is of late somewhat undeserved.
Duszeck have several layers of sharpened teeth like a shark and new ones are constantly coming in to replace the teeth which fall out. Duszek do not have finger nails, and use their mouths for many tasks that others turn to hands for. The Duszek have a separate right and left lower jaw and move them independently.
The Duszek are divided in loyalty between the high pontiff and the eastern patriarch, but most of them come from lands under the grip of the Czar and his Winter Court. Most Duszek come to the West by heading East across the seas and the Czar's interest in the New World is mostly limited to hunting and fishing along the Western Coast.
Inspiration: Poles, Russians
Skriatok
"Stay away you greedy meddling giants! I know what you want. You can't have it!"
Skriatok stand a mere 1.2m on average and have skin the texture and sheen of marble. They gain nutrition from little other than moss and alcohol, though their demands of these substances are surprisingly modest considering. Most Skriatok allow lichen to grow on their bodies, which in turn mostly limits itself to positions other races grow hair. The specific gravity of a Skriatok is usually about 3 and they sink rapidly in water. Skriatok do not freeze or burn at any practically achievable temperature.
If a Skriatok fails to touch reasonably pure gold for three whole days, he will transform into inanimate stone with the rising of the sun on the fourth day – and remain a statue until gold is again touched to its form. On the other hand, a Skriatok who touches more than a modest amount of gold every day for a month will find himself growing, with his appetites outpacing his increase in size. It is telling that the Czar of the Winter Court is a hulking monstrosity of 4 meters who must drain down a vodka barrel every day.
Skriatok have a reputation for being greedy, unfriendly, jealous, and mean. This is not unwarranted as Skriatok are frequently subjected to paranoid delusions that others will attempt to part them from their gold, their vodka, or their rock algae.
Inspiration: Russians, Slovaks
Slavery in the New World
Slavery is an ugly institution, but not a particularly new one. Some of the first records detail the capture and sale of slaves, and even then it is clear that the idea of slavery predates even the writings of the Deep Ones. Slavery is not even new to the New World. Hundreds of years before the first Oceanid claimed the New World (ironically for the Burning Empire of the Ifrit Sultan), Maizenian priests commanded work crews of thousands of slaves to erect temples to their gods. But it is undeniable fact that the New World has seen the institution of slavery raised from an ad hoc affair to a brutal international institution whose ramifications will be clearly visible in demographics for a thousand years.
The first Ifrit expeditions to the New World happily captured and enslaved whole villages of the native inhabitants, continuing a practice that was commonplace in the Burning Empire. At that time wealthy Ifrit would think nothing of keeping slaves of Lutin, Sidhe, or each other. The Sidhe, similarly kept Lutin and other Sidhe as slaves as a regular occurrence. As colonies began being established in the New World, the colonial powers such as Tir na nOg and the Burning Empire brought other Old Worlders in chains, and supplemented their slave numbers with locally kidnapped peoples.
With the rise of the plantation system, and the extremely lethal work environs of the Oak Swamps and the Southern silver mines, using Sidhe or even natives as primary slave sources began to strain the limits and a new source of slaves was found in the South of the Old World. Anansi and Wakyambi could be kidnapped en masse from their homes and dragged across the seas to fulfill the ravenous demands for slaves. Modern slave taking became so effective that taking Sidhe, Lutin, or Ifrit as slaves became unnecessary, and eventually it was outlawed practically everywhere.
During the time frame of Dead Man's Hand, slavery is on the way out. Slave revolts all over the world are making progress, and abolitionist movements are major political forces on every continent. Furthermore, the skilled labor needs of modern magitech and steam industry are incompatible with slave holding societies: and these new technologies and production methods out produce the slave holding production methods at every turn. But even with the writing on the wall, slave holders are not allowing "their" way of life to go without a fight. Even as popular pinion and economic reality turns more and more strongly against the practice, slave holders are becoming more and more ruthlessly murderous to hold on to the people that they own. In the unincorporated areas of the West, slavers have been known to assault towns believed to have an abolitionist electoral bias. Open war seems inevitable.
Something to keep in mind when you consider the Anansi and the Wakyambi is that they are as a group in the West because of slavery. While free Anansi and Wakyambi certainly exist, practically every one of them is either an escaped slave or the descendent of escaped slaves. While many generations of Sidhe struggled under the yokes of cruel masters, there were also many Sidhe who never tasted either end of the whip. Slavery is a horrible part of the West, and the mere presence of a Wakyambi is a bitter reminder of its cruel past, its brutal reality, and its ghastly legacy.
Anansi
"Don't throw me in the briar patch!"
An Anansi adult stands 1.4m tall and its skin is covered with stripes, dots, and more amorphous contrast markings in brown and pale cream. Anansi can secrete their choice of sticky and non-sticky webbing from spinnerets in their lower back and have venomous fangs. Anansi have two thumbs of each hand and their joints have in general more degrees of rotation than do those of other races. Anansi think nothing of turning their heads to look behind them, and their hands can reach any part of their back without strain.
Anansi pride themselves on their trickery, leading to unfavorable stereotypes among other races as Happy-Go-Lucky folks who don't (or can't) care about big things and are too simple to be allowed to wander free; or as dishonest and cunning natural thieves who can't be allowed to freely interact with civilization. Despite the contradictions, many people hold both stereotypes to be true.
In their native lands it is said that Anansi worshipped strange gods and lived in trees. There are few Anansi in the West who could tell you how much of that was true. Anansi in the West have long since been stripped of their names, their stories have been outlawed, and their web tapestries burned.
Inspiration: African Americans
Wakyambi
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The Wakyambi measure an average of 1.8m tall and have arms which are longer in proportion to their bodies than other sapient races. Seemingly deathly thin, Wakyambi have no eyes, and navigate through feeling perturbations in low frequency sound. Wakyambi normally hum continuously at a frequency at or below the minimum frequency others can hear.
The gold-rich empires and kingdoms of the Wakyambi are by-and-large in flames. The colonial powers of the Old World arm bandits and rape gangs up and down the coast in exchange for slaves, lawlessness and anarchy rule those lands. Even recently free Wakyambi in the West rarely want to return to their homes – there is nothing to return home to.
Wakyambi communicate mostly through a rich song that is largely below the range that other races can hear. It is frequent practice in some slave holding areas to scar the vocal chords of Wakyambi slaves in order to prevent them from being able to secretly plot against their masters. This practice leaves the Wakyambi incapable of supplementing the low frequency sound which surrounds them and thus makes it extremely difficult for them to get around.
Inspiration: African Americans
Kachinas[/b]
"All of life is a dance. We dance because we are alive. How can you live and not dance?"
The Kachinas are a collection of tribes whose people resemble statues made out of cornhusks, feathers, and plaster. While they are living things, the first colonial explorers to meet them mistook the Kachinas for machines. Kachinas stand an average of 1.7m tall, and speak a language wild gesticulations and wooden-sounding clacks.
Kachinas are virtually incapable of standing still. Every moment of the day they are dancing, or fidgeting, or running. The muscles of the Kachina are tied together in a massive spring-like system where it is literally less effort to continue moving than it is to stop. Also, the lungs of a Kachina are unpowered and open to the air through a series of holes in the chest. If a Kachina were to stop moving, it would be unable to breathe (barring a strong wind).
The Kachinas are generally agriculturalists. They live in adobe villages and grow maize.
Kachina Magic: The magic of the Kachina people is very somatic. Specific dances cause specific events, and the Kachina Shamans are able to use these dances to control the weather six months out of the year. More powerful magic requires more Shamans and longer dances. Most magic dances govern wind, water, and maize – which are considered to be the elements of life.
Inspiration: Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo
Wendigo
"If you can understand me, you will be delicious."
The Wendigo are a collection of tribes of wandering hunters and cannibals. The Wendigo are both a race and an ideology of man eating and insanity. The original people are gaunt creatures who tower as much as 2.3m in height even stooped as a mantis is. They are stick-thin and their hands end in claws and hooks. The Wendigo are all-white and their bones grind together audibly if they stay still for more than a few minutes. Wendigo have hooks on their faces which are sufficiently load bearing to hold meat.
The Wendigo tribes are very small for whenever they run out of huntable meat in an area they quickly turn on their own children and devour them. Wendigo are also known to dye captives white and force them to enact their depraved and cannibalistic lifestyle. Wendigo keep to the mountains and the forest and are constantly trying to tear down the cities made by settlers and tribes alike.
Wendigo seem to derive sustenance not from the chemistry of a food, but from its thoughts. While devouring an apple or a potato gives no nutritional benefit to a Wendigo, eating animals is beneficial and eating people the most filling of all. However, a horrible side effect of this is that while eating the livers of many people who had hopes and dreams and language will sustain a Wendigo, it will not satiate them. Worse, such over stimulation causes the Wendigo to grow taller, which in turn increases their need for their ghastly food.
Wendigo Magic: Magic, no matter how cleverly or efficiently it is used, leaks into the world and accumulates in pools and eddies. These turbulences cause the dead to rise and the night to fill with terror. In most tribes it is the job of a Shaman to mitigate these potentially disastrous results. To channel magic into places where its animating nature can be bled off harmlessly or to send it to a far away land. The Wendigo stand a sharp contrast to that aim, and most of their rites involve releasing unrestrained magic and invoking calamity upon the world or its denizens.
Wendigo shamans borrow heavily from the rituals of other tribes. However, since the entire purpose is to advance hordes of the undead and eventually swallow the sun, they rarely bother to actually learn the intricacies of these magics. Wendigo practice human sacrifice, but almost always consume most or all of the corpses before the Lurkers can take their fill. A Wendigo shaman will often stop what he is doing mid-verse and simply stare intently, waiting for the built up magics to dissipate balefully.
The one ceremony that the Wendigo seem really intent upon perform correctly is an induction ceremony. An ordinary person captured by the Wendigo will be burned and mutilated with small knives and hot rocks and forced to eat the flesh of another person. At the end of the dark rite the victim's mind is burned out and its body is recolored white as bone. While no physiological changes other than coloration seem to be changed, the new inductee will believe himself to be a Wendigo in truth – hunting people for food along with the rest of its reviled tribe.
Inspiration: Algonquian, Cree, Seminole
Ani-Yunti
"WE'VE HAD DAUNTING PROBLEMS IN MANY CRITICAL AREAS."
The Ani-Yunti appear as 1.8m tall tornadoes filled with chunks of charred sycamore. Ani-Yunti are in fact humanoids who are about 1.4m tall who are surrounded by a curtain of wind and ash at all times. Their feet rarely touch the ground. When an Ani-Yunti reaches through its wind sheathe, it makes a thunderous roar. The suspended particles in the wind sheathe are conductive, and Ani-Yunti are effectively protected from electricity. Ani-Yunti can feel the presence of metals within about 4m of their bodies even if there is solid rock in the way.
The Ani-Yunti were very sympathetic to the settlers from the Old World and aided them in many things. They taught them agriculture techniques appropriate to the land and moved storms away from their cities. The Ani-Yunti also learned from the settlers, adopting much of their magitech and building cities of their own using the fruits of Old World science. During the revolutionary period, the Ani-Yunti fought side by side with the colonists against the Old World kingdoms. Some Ani-Yunti joined the Union as citizens, and some Old Worlders joined the clans of the Ani-Yunti.
But as the Ani-Yunti became wealthy, the Southern states became jealous. The magictech devices of their cities harvested power from water and wind. They excavated copper and gold from the ground. And the plantation owners wanted it. And so a fake treaty was drafted authorizing the removal of all the Ani-Yunti from their cities, farms, factories, and mines. The Ani-Yunti were forced out of their homes at gunpoint and forcibly marched into the West, left there to live or die as the elements saw fit.
Ani-Yunti Magic: The Ani-Yunti can call and direct storms. What actually comes from these storms, be it rain or lightning, frogs or hail, is completely out of the control of Ani-Yunti shaman. By putting the proper smoke and songs into the air, groups of shamans can create the storms and move them crudely north or south, east or west. In ages past this was used primarily for agriculture as a storm upstream would send water down the rivers that the Ani-Yunti could use for agriculture. But in their new lands, the rains come infrequently and the paths of rivers are unpredictable.
The Shamans have become marginalized in Ani-Yunti tribes. Their power has been almost wholly replaced by magitech engineers.
Inspiration: Cherokee
Maizenians
"The sun is the source of life, but it is also cruel and harsh. Life is a planted seed, ultimately harvested in death. If you do not resign yourself to this, how can you be happy?"
Standing 1.2m tall, the Maizenians are a plant-like people who grow edible and delicious seeds on their faces. Their feet are covered with root hairs from which they conduct all of their drinking. And while they do gain a substantial amount of nutrition through photosynthesis when their green bodies are exposed to the sun, their veins flow with bright red blood and they do have to eat food.
The Maizenians are deeply aware of the agricultural nature of their existence. The legends of their fallen empires held that people had been literally planted in the ground in order to create a constant crop for blood hungry and savage gods. Maizenians consider themselves to be food, though they generally have no particular desire to die
Some of the largest cities the world has ever seen were populated by Maizenians in the days before the arrival of the Old Worlders. Many of these cities have been razed to the ground, only to have the sites claimed by the devouring jungle which surrounded them. Maizenians avoid clothing (but not jewelry) instinctually as it blocks out the life giving rays of the sun. Under Ifrit rule, Maizenians are forced to wear clothing in public, which causes them distress.
Maizenian Magic: The ancient practices of the Maizenian priests have long been effectively outlawed by the Ifrit overlords of the lands once belonging to the Golden King and the King of Rain. The few rituals which remain are practiced in secret. Mock battles between jaguars and eagles spread strife, pull sunshine and rain out of the sky and keep lurkers away. The Maizenians who participate in these rituals have elaborate animal costumes and beat each other bloody with flails.
Inspiration: Aztec, Maya
Tatanka
"It does not take many words to speak truth."
Tatanka are massive and hairy creatures standing an average of 2.4m tall. Their skin seems fit for a creature still larger, and it hangs down from their bodies in clumps. Tatanka have a hump which pushes their horned head forward and carries nutrients and water sufficient to keep them going for days. Tatanka can sustain activity every moment that they are awake, but Tatanka do not dream or even breathe while asleep.
Tatanka appear to move and speak very slowly, though this is in part an illusion which permeates the Tatanka people. The directly observed speed of any Tatanka action is almost comically slow: sentences have measurable and aggravating pauses punctuating them, the Tatanka puts one foot in front of the other at a painfully slow pace yet it actually reaches any destination (even near ones) in a shockingly short amount of time. The actual information passed in a Tatanka conversation is often quite high.
The Tatanka traditionally hold a certain veneration for putting up with hardship. Theirs is a warrior culture, and suffering or even dying is perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate one's worth. While the Tatanka look very much like buffalo, they are almost the opposite when it comes to diet. Tatanka traditionally hunt for most of their food and will travel long distances to accomplish this. The spatial distortion which accompanies all Tatanka is very helpful in battle, and bulls are justifiably feared.
Tatanka Magic: All Tatanka store time in their humps, but the Shamans are truly adept at using herbs and prayer to gather time and use it for things. Much of Tatanka magic is centered around medicine, and indeed all Tatanka magic is collectively called "medicine". Tatanka rituals exist which will weaken or destroy targets as if a great weight of time were placed upon them, as well as rituals which repair living things as if they had been granted a long time of recovery.
Truly accomplished Tatanka shamans grow younger over time, and end their days as calves.
Inspiration: Lakota
The Jogah
"I encourage you to think of the effects of your actions not just on yourself, but on others in the world. After all, you could be anybody and it is unreasonable to second guess your own identity in important matters."
A Jogah's natural form is almost never seen, but on those rare occasions when it is, a Jogah appears as an ovoid ripple in space roughly 1.5m in height that is most analogous to the disturbance left in a stream after a rock is skipped across its surface. Even the burbling sound the naked Jogah makes is not unlike the sound of a fast flowing brook. And yet, this information is rarely useful in identifying a Jogah because a Jogah's form changes to match a specific creature when they wear a mask made in that creature's image. A Jogah does not become "a deer", it becomes that deer. And most Jogah choose to take the forms of people – a fact which has not endeared them to the Union.
The Jogah have a history of a quite egalitarian society, whose principals were largely copied in the creation of the Union (a fact whose irony is not lost on any Jogah). The Jogah have very little concept of differences between individuals and historically have a difficult time respecting or understanding privacy or property.
Jogah can be recognized from the original person because regardless of how they appear they do not get wet. Water passes through them as if they were so much empty space. Alcohol does not do this, and enterprising Jogah have been known to fake wetness by dousing themselves in the strongest of fire water.
Jogah Magic: Jogah magic centers upon 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
"Everywhere I've been, and I've been to a lot of places, I ain't never seen something as weird looking as you."
The West is rapidly filling up with settlers from all over the world. The open range is a free-for-all among many interest groups. While the Union declares that it is manifest destiny that it should all fall into their hands, there are still many who simply plumb do not agree. With the natives on the way out and resources up for grab it's no wonder that adventure seeking folks the world over have a hankering to go out West.
The Alfar
"Of course it looks expensive, I made it."
The Alfar are short of stature and tedious of demeanor. Alfar have skin which is colored as the sky is colored, though mostly they are pigmented as a painting of dusk or night scenes. Standing just 1.1m tall, the average svartalf has night black skin (seriously, with little stars and everything) and pupil-less eyes.
Alfheim and Niðavellir have only recently become independent nations, and many of the Alfar have diasporaed across the world. Ill treated by the Ifrit sultans, Svartalf culture has largely turned to science and the busy hands of the Svartalfar have made most of the spell engines which power civilization.
The dwarves of Alfheim are famous as mechanics, magicians, artisans, and builders. Their attention to detail is second to none, though their plodding gait and irascible mien oft discourage commerce with others. Still, a number of Alfar have taken their legendary skills out West where the demand is strong. And it is very strong.
Inspiration: Germans, Bohemians, Jews
The Ifrit
"Fire burns all things. It burns grass and homes, wood and flesh. It burns in my veins. It can burn your veins too."
The Ifrit are a people literally descended from smokeless fire. Easily identifiable by their metallic skin and burning spit and tears, Ifrit stand an imposing 1.9m tall. All Ifrit can see through fire as if it was clear, though smoke or coal is opaque to them.
A proud race, the Sultan of the Ifrit in Madrid was once granted dominion of all the West by the High Pontiff. Ifrit conquistadors conquered the entire reach from the Golden Kingdom to the Silver Empire and set up a brutal system of Missions across the Western reaches of the New World while holding lands in the Old World as far north as Vanheim and as far east as Alfheim. But of late, the flame of the Ifrit has sputtered and dimmed. The Sultan of the old world suffered terrible defeats to both the United Provinces of Vanheim and TÃr na nÓg. Worse still, holdings in the New World have broken free and declared themselves as a myriad of quarrelsome sultanates and republics. The Burning Empire is now little more than a smoldering memory.
Remnants of the Burning Empire are still quite evident in the West. The priestly Missions are the only civilization in much of the farthest reaches. Ifrit Rancheros still run a great deal of cattle on the range – their land grants from the Sultan worthless paper but their burning sabers leave quite a mark.
Ifrit can interbreed with any people, and lands controlled by Ifrit have remarkably elaborate rules governing the status of those people with various amounts of non-Ifrit blood.
Inspiration: Spaniards, Mexicans.
The Loci
"I love these flowers. They are a part of me."
Loci, whether male or female are very beautiful. Each loci is tied to a tree, a rock, a spring, or some other geographical feature. Because Loci have such a strong tie to terrain, they don't travel as much as other peoples, with the notable exception of Oceanids who sail all over the place and thereby give the entire people a reputation for wanderlust which is entirely undeserved.
Both the High Pontiff and the Eastern Patriarch are Loci. Yet in the Old World there is no major political entity that speaks for Loci people. Most of the formerly independent Loci city states are now the property of the Sun King of the Sidhe. As a result, displaced Dryads are attempting to make for themselves a new life in the New World.
Inspiration: Italians, Greeks.
Coming Soon: The Sidhe (both the Tir Sidhe and the Court of the Sun King); the Lutin (also of the Sun Court); the Vanir (the conquerors of the sea from Vanheim and the barbarous Van from Helheim); the Jotun; the Deep Ones (from R'lyeh); the Skriatok (of the Winter Court), the Duszek (also of the Winter Court), and of course the
Natives:Buffalo People; Wendigo; Mikumwess; Maizenians; Kachina.
The Sidhe[/b]
"Ride into the sunset? I am the sunset."
The Sidhe come from the far west of the Old World, and usually have hair as yellow as the sun of noon or red as the sun of dusk. Sidhe average 1.5m in height, and cast no shadows.
Sidhe flesh burns in contact with iron, and perhaps as a result the Sidhe are known far and wide as master craftsmen in silver, copper, and wood. Sidhe breathe in a continuous stream in and out and this is easily mistaken for them not breathing at all. Sidhe bodies have no striated muscle in them, and as a result Sidhe can stand in any position virtually indefinitely without growing tired.
While Sidhe peoples live throughout the West of the Old World, from the Burning Empire to Vanheim, the nations which are truly Sidhe dominated are the Kingdom of the Sun King on the mainland, and the islands of Tir na nOg. The Sun King demands all of his subjects bend knee to the high pontiff, while the Queen of the Emerald Islands demands that her subjects do not do so. These edicts have brought the Sun King into confrontation with Tir on several occasions, as well as with Vanheim and even his own Lutin subjects. Neither the Sun King nor the high pontiff have much power in the West, though they stand tall in alliance in the Old World.
Inspiration: British, French, Irish
The Vanir
"i'm looking for a man."
The Vanir are an aloof and musically inclined people known for seamanship, swordsmanship, and austerity. A somber and precise people, the average Van stands 1.8m tall. Vanir are quite flammable but they don't have blood and do not bleed when cut.
Most Vanir have long since rebelled against the High Pontiff and Burning Empire, and there are now independent nations of Van all over the Old World. The United Provinces of Vanheim and the Helheim Republic are both relatively non-interventionist republics that are quite wealthy and powerful. Van colonies make up a significant fraction of the segments of Union territories and many of those who go out West from the Union are Vanir.
All Vanir have perfect pitch, but most of them subscribe to religious views which discourage song and dance. The stereotypical Van is both flat of affect and exacting of tone – making them persuasive and unnerving.
Inspiration: Nederlanders, Belgians, Burgundians
The Jotun
"Do you wish to anger me little man!?"
The Jotun stand an impressive 3m tall and are almost as shaggy as wolves. Jotun can stand any amount of cold, and their mere presence chills the air. In the West, Jotun are forced to wear heavy furs during the height of summer to keep the heat off of their bodies to stave off a painful softening of their flesh.
Jotun traditionally drink heavily, and their men grow long and scraggly beards. Where once they were feared as warriors across the Old World, the time of the Jotun has mostly passed. The advancement of the gun has largely outpaced the manifest size and strength of the mighty Jotun hirdmen. The Jotun are now largely a figure of fun in popular literature and the Jotun mostly colonize out of the way lands in the frozen north of the Mid West.
When Jotun become very old they gradually transform into huge dire wolves, forcing them to move even farther into the wilderness lest hey be hunted by their own kin.
Inspiration: Norse, Danes, Cossacks.
The Deep Ones
"Ia Ia, I get right on it, monkey boy."
If a Deep One was standing erect it would usually crest 1.7m by a slight margin. However, a Deep One's naturally hunched posture makes them rarely crest 1.3m. A Deep One's body is frog-like in appearance, with slit-pupiled eyes placed squarely on top of their head and an enormous maw that appears to always be smiling. Deep Ones breath water as easily as air and can resist pressures that would be unthinkable for virtually any other living creature.
The culture of the Deep Ones goes back thousands of years and the Deep Ones considered themselves "civilized" when the Sidhe were busy hitting each other's naked forms with rocks. However, theirs is an empire in decline. The emperors of the deep have long rejected change and the other powers of the Old World have now completely overshadowed them in almost all fields of endeavor. Fine clay and cloth products once producible only beneath the waves have been replicated by Svartalf artisans, and reefs belonging to the Empire are now openly fought over by surface powers as exploitive markets. A river of gold no longer pours into the sea like it once did.
And so it is of little surprise that Deep Ones come out to the West (even though for them the trek is to the East) looking for work. Fearing that the uncounted hordes from beneath the waves might completely overrun the virgin lands, many groups and nations take open steps to limit the immigration of female Deep Ones. Thus it is mostly male Deep Ones that make it to the West to work on the Great Rails – massive multidimensional constructs of steel and memory that haul goods across the great planes from civilized lands to the interior.
Inspiration: Chinese, H.P. Lovecraft
Lutin
"I found a penny yesterday. It is worth money."
The Lutin stand less than half a meter tall and have elaborately colored insect-like wings coming out of their back. While a Lutin cannot remain aloft for long, they can run at tremendous speed with wing assistance. Lutin have small antennae on their heads which emerge from their pastel-colored hair. These allow them to hear sounds much higher in pitch than other peoples. Lutin smell like flowers, to the extent that they can be tracked by this phenomenon.
The Lutin have never had major holdings in the Old World. Lutin lands have been conquered and reconquered by emperors from the North, South, and East. Banners flown by Loci, Ifrit, and Sidhe have been placed over Lutin cities time and time again.
The cube square law works in the favor of Lutin, who can lift several times their own (extremely modest) weight. Most people dismiss Lutin because of their stature, and they have the reputation of being thieves, jovially useless hobos, and vapid entertainers.
Inspiration: Basques, Occitans, Gypsies
Duszek
"Boo."
The measurable height of the Duszek varies with the length of their shadow. As their shadow grows, more of their body becomes ephemeral and difficult to see. At noon and at night, a Duszek stands an imposing 2m tall. At the cusp of sunrise and sunset, only about a centimeter of a Duszek is capable of touching or being touched by objects. Because of their difficulties in touching things for part of the day, Duszek are wont to cover themselves with chalk or birch ash, as these materials are immune to this particular facet of their existence. Caster shells similarly penetrate the incorporeality of the Duszek at late day, so their reputation as unstoppable ghost faced stranglers is of late somewhat undeserved.
Duszeck have several layers of sharpened teeth like a shark and new ones are constantly coming in to replace the teeth which fall out. Duszek do not have finger nails, and use their mouths for many tasks that others turn to hands for. The Duszek have a separate right and left lower jaw and move them independently.
The Duszek are divided in loyalty between the high pontiff and the eastern patriarch, but most of them come from lands under the grip of the Czar and his Winter Court. Most Duszek come to the West by heading East across the seas and the Czar's interest in the New World is mostly limited to hunting and fishing along the Western Coast.
Inspiration: Poles, Russians
Skriatok
"Stay away you greedy meddling giants! I know what you want. You can't have it!"
Skriatok stand a mere 1.2m on average and have skin the texture and sheen of marble. They gain nutrition from little other than moss and alcohol, though their demands of these substances are surprisingly modest considering. Most Skriatok allow lichen to grow on their bodies, which in turn mostly limits itself to positions other races grow hair. The specific gravity of a Skriatok is usually about 3 and they sink rapidly in water. Skriatok do not freeze or burn at any practically achievable temperature.
If a Skriatok fails to touch reasonably pure gold for three whole days, he will transform into inanimate stone with the rising of the sun on the fourth day – and remain a statue until gold is again touched to its form. On the other hand, a Skriatok who touches more than a modest amount of gold every day for a month will find himself growing, with his appetites outpacing his increase in size. It is telling that the Czar of the Winter Court is a hulking monstrosity of 4 meters who must drain down a vodka barrel every day.
Skriatok have a reputation for being greedy, unfriendly, jealous, and mean. This is not unwarranted as Skriatok are frequently subjected to paranoid delusions that others will attempt to part them from their gold, their vodka, or their rock algae.
Inspiration: Russians, Slovaks
Slavery in the New World
Slavery is an ugly institution, but not a particularly new one. Some of the first records detail the capture and sale of slaves, and even then it is clear that the idea of slavery predates even the writings of the Deep Ones. Slavery is not even new to the New World. Hundreds of years before the first Oceanid claimed the New World (ironically for the Burning Empire of the Ifrit Sultan), Maizenian priests commanded work crews of thousands of slaves to erect temples to their gods. But it is undeniable fact that the New World has seen the institution of slavery raised from an ad hoc affair to a brutal international institution whose ramifications will be clearly visible in demographics for a thousand years.
The first Ifrit expeditions to the New World happily captured and enslaved whole villages of the native inhabitants, continuing a practice that was commonplace in the Burning Empire. At that time wealthy Ifrit would think nothing of keeping slaves of Lutin, Sidhe, or each other. The Sidhe, similarly kept Lutin and other Sidhe as slaves as a regular occurrence. As colonies began being established in the New World, the colonial powers such as Tir na nOg and the Burning Empire brought other Old Worlders in chains, and supplemented their slave numbers with locally kidnapped peoples.
With the rise of the plantation system, and the extremely lethal work environs of the Oak Swamps and the Southern silver mines, using Sidhe or even natives as primary slave sources began to strain the limits and a new source of slaves was found in the South of the Old World. Anansi and Wakyambi could be kidnapped en masse from their homes and dragged across the seas to fulfill the ravenous demands for slaves. Modern slave taking became so effective that taking Sidhe, Lutin, or Ifrit as slaves became unnecessary, and eventually it was outlawed practically everywhere.
During the time frame of Dead Man's Hand, slavery is on the way out. Slave revolts all over the world are making progress, and abolitionist movements are major political forces on every continent. Furthermore, the skilled labor needs of modern magitech and steam industry are incompatible with slave holding societies: and these new technologies and production methods out produce the slave holding production methods at every turn. But even with the writing on the wall, slave holders are not allowing "their" way of life to go without a fight. Even as popular pinion and economic reality turns more and more strongly against the practice, slave holders are becoming more and more ruthlessly murderous to hold on to the people that they own. In the unincorporated areas of the West, slavers have been known to assault towns believed to have an abolitionist electoral bias. Open war seems inevitable.
Something to keep in mind when you consider the Anansi and the Wakyambi is that they are as a group in the West because of slavery. While free Anansi and Wakyambi certainly exist, practically every one of them is either an escaped slave or the descendent of escaped slaves. While many generations of Sidhe struggled under the yokes of cruel masters, there were also many Sidhe who never tasted either end of the whip. Slavery is a horrible part of the West, and the mere presence of a Wakyambi is a bitter reminder of its cruel past, its brutal reality, and its ghastly legacy.
Anansi
"Don't throw me in the briar patch!"
An Anansi adult stands 1.4m tall and its skin is covered with stripes, dots, and more amorphous contrast markings in brown and pale cream. Anansi can secrete their choice of sticky and non-sticky webbing from spinnerets in their lower back and have venomous fangs. Anansi have two thumbs of each hand and their joints have in general more degrees of rotation than do those of other races. Anansi think nothing of turning their heads to look behind them, and their hands can reach any part of their back without strain.
Anansi pride themselves on their trickery, leading to unfavorable stereotypes among other races as Happy-Go-Lucky folks who don't (or can't) care about big things and are too simple to be allowed to wander free; or as dishonest and cunning natural thieves who can't be allowed to freely interact with civilization. Despite the contradictions, many people hold both stereotypes to be true.
In their native lands it is said that Anansi worshipped strange gods and lived in trees. There are few Anansi in the West who could tell you how much of that was true. Anansi in the West have long since been stripped of their names, their stories have been outlawed, and their web tapestries burned.
Inspiration: African Americans
Wakyambi
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The Wakyambi measure an average of 1.8m tall and have arms which are longer in proportion to their bodies than other sapient races. Seemingly deathly thin, Wakyambi have no eyes, and navigate through feeling perturbations in low frequency sound. Wakyambi normally hum continuously at a frequency at or below the minimum frequency others can hear.
The gold-rich empires and kingdoms of the Wakyambi are by-and-large in flames. The colonial powers of the Old World arm bandits and rape gangs up and down the coast in exchange for slaves, lawlessness and anarchy rule those lands. Even recently free Wakyambi in the West rarely want to return to their homes – there is nothing to return home to.
Wakyambi communicate mostly through a rich song that is largely below the range that other races can hear. It is frequent practice in some slave holding areas to scar the vocal chords of Wakyambi slaves in order to prevent them from being able to secretly plot against their masters. This practice leaves the Wakyambi incapable of supplementing the low frequency sound which surrounds them and thus makes it extremely difficult for them to get around.
Inspiration: African Americans
Kachinas[/b]
"All of life is a dance. We dance because we are alive. How can you live and not dance?"
The Kachinas are a collection of tribes whose people resemble statues made out of cornhusks, feathers, and plaster. While they are living things, the first colonial explorers to meet them mistook the Kachinas for machines. Kachinas stand an average of 1.7m tall, and speak a language wild gesticulations and wooden-sounding clacks.
Kachinas are virtually incapable of standing still. Every moment of the day they are dancing, or fidgeting, or running. The muscles of the Kachina are tied together in a massive spring-like system where it is literally less effort to continue moving than it is to stop. Also, the lungs of a Kachina are unpowered and open to the air through a series of holes in the chest. If a Kachina were to stop moving, it would be unable to breathe (barring a strong wind).
The Kachinas are generally agriculturalists. They live in adobe villages and grow maize.
Kachina Magic: The magic of the Kachina people is very somatic. Specific dances cause specific events, and the Kachina Shamans are able to use these dances to control the weather six months out of the year. More powerful magic requires more Shamans and longer dances. Most magic dances govern wind, water, and maize – which are considered to be the elements of life.
Inspiration: Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo
Wendigo
"If you can understand me, you will be delicious."
The Wendigo are a collection of tribes of wandering hunters and cannibals. The Wendigo are both a race and an ideology of man eating and insanity. The original people are gaunt creatures who tower as much as 2.3m in height even stooped as a mantis is. They are stick-thin and their hands end in claws and hooks. The Wendigo are all-white and their bones grind together audibly if they stay still for more than a few minutes. Wendigo have hooks on their faces which are sufficiently load bearing to hold meat.
The Wendigo tribes are very small for whenever they run out of huntable meat in an area they quickly turn on their own children and devour them. Wendigo are also known to dye captives white and force them to enact their depraved and cannibalistic lifestyle. Wendigo keep to the mountains and the forest and are constantly trying to tear down the cities made by settlers and tribes alike.
Wendigo seem to derive sustenance not from the chemistry of a food, but from its thoughts. While devouring an apple or a potato gives no nutritional benefit to a Wendigo, eating animals is beneficial and eating people the most filling of all. However, a horrible side effect of this is that while eating the livers of many people who had hopes and dreams and language will sustain a Wendigo, it will not satiate them. Worse, such over stimulation causes the Wendigo to grow taller, which in turn increases their need for their ghastly food.
Wendigo Magic: Magic, no matter how cleverly or efficiently it is used, leaks into the world and accumulates in pools and eddies. These turbulences cause the dead to rise and the night to fill with terror. In most tribes it is the job of a Shaman to mitigate these potentially disastrous results. To channel magic into places where its animating nature can be bled off harmlessly or to send it to a far away land. The Wendigo stand a sharp contrast to that aim, and most of their rites involve releasing unrestrained magic and invoking calamity upon the world or its denizens.
Wendigo shamans borrow heavily from the rituals of other tribes. However, since the entire purpose is to advance hordes of the undead and eventually swallow the sun, they rarely bother to actually learn the intricacies of these magics. Wendigo practice human sacrifice, but almost always consume most or all of the corpses before the Lurkers can take their fill. A Wendigo shaman will often stop what he is doing mid-verse and simply stare intently, waiting for the built up magics to dissipate balefully.
The one ceremony that the Wendigo seem really intent upon perform correctly is an induction ceremony. An ordinary person captured by the Wendigo will be burned and mutilated with small knives and hot rocks and forced to eat the flesh of another person. At the end of the dark rite the victim's mind is burned out and its body is recolored white as bone. While no physiological changes other than coloration seem to be changed, the new inductee will believe himself to be a Wendigo in truth – hunting people for food along with the rest of its reviled tribe.
Inspiration: Algonquian, Cree, Seminole
Ani-Yunti
"WE'VE HAD DAUNTING PROBLEMS IN MANY CRITICAL AREAS."
The Ani-Yunti appear as 1.8m tall tornadoes filled with chunks of charred sycamore. Ani-Yunti are in fact humanoids who are about 1.4m tall who are surrounded by a curtain of wind and ash at all times. Their feet rarely touch the ground. When an Ani-Yunti reaches through its wind sheathe, it makes a thunderous roar. The suspended particles in the wind sheathe are conductive, and Ani-Yunti are effectively protected from electricity. Ani-Yunti can feel the presence of metals within about 4m of their bodies even if there is solid rock in the way.
The Ani-Yunti were very sympathetic to the settlers from the Old World and aided them in many things. They taught them agriculture techniques appropriate to the land and moved storms away from their cities. The Ani-Yunti also learned from the settlers, adopting much of their magitech and building cities of their own using the fruits of Old World science. During the revolutionary period, the Ani-Yunti fought side by side with the colonists against the Old World kingdoms. Some Ani-Yunti joined the Union as citizens, and some Old Worlders joined the clans of the Ani-Yunti.
But as the Ani-Yunti became wealthy, the Southern states became jealous. The magictech devices of their cities harvested power from water and wind. They excavated copper and gold from the ground. And the plantation owners wanted it. And so a fake treaty was drafted authorizing the removal of all the Ani-Yunti from their cities, farms, factories, and mines. The Ani-Yunti were forced out of their homes at gunpoint and forcibly marched into the West, left there to live or die as the elements saw fit.
Ani-Yunti Magic: The Ani-Yunti can call and direct storms. What actually comes from these storms, be it rain or lightning, frogs or hail, is completely out of the control of Ani-Yunti shaman. By putting the proper smoke and songs into the air, groups of shamans can create the storms and move them crudely north or south, east or west. In ages past this was used primarily for agriculture as a storm upstream would send water down the rivers that the Ani-Yunti could use for agriculture. But in their new lands, the rains come infrequently and the paths of rivers are unpredictable.
The Shamans have become marginalized in Ani-Yunti tribes. Their power has been almost wholly replaced by magitech engineers.
Inspiration: Cherokee
Maizenians
"The sun is the source of life, but it is also cruel and harsh. Life is a planted seed, ultimately harvested in death. If you do not resign yourself to this, how can you be happy?"
Standing 1.2m tall, the Maizenians are a plant-like people who grow edible and delicious seeds on their faces. Their feet are covered with root hairs from which they conduct all of their drinking. And while they do gain a substantial amount of nutrition through photosynthesis when their green bodies are exposed to the sun, their veins flow with bright red blood and they do have to eat food.
The Maizenians are deeply aware of the agricultural nature of their existence. The legends of their fallen empires held that people had been literally planted in the ground in order to create a constant crop for blood hungry and savage gods. Maizenians consider themselves to be food, though they generally have no particular desire to die
Some of the largest cities the world has ever seen were populated by Maizenians in the days before the arrival of the Old Worlders. Many of these cities have been razed to the ground, only to have the sites claimed by the devouring jungle which surrounded them. Maizenians avoid clothing (but not jewelry) instinctually as it blocks out the life giving rays of the sun. Under Ifrit rule, Maizenians are forced to wear clothing in public, which causes them distress.
Maizenian Magic: The ancient practices of the Maizenian priests have long been effectively outlawed by the Ifrit overlords of the lands once belonging to the Golden King and the King of Rain. The few rituals which remain are practiced in secret. Mock battles between jaguars and eagles spread strife, pull sunshine and rain out of the sky and keep lurkers away. The Maizenians who participate in these rituals have elaborate animal costumes and beat each other bloody with flails.
Inspiration: Aztec, Maya
Tatanka
"It does not take many words to speak truth."
Tatanka are massive and hairy creatures standing an average of 2.4m tall. Their skin seems fit for a creature still larger, and it hangs down from their bodies in clumps. Tatanka have a hump which pushes their horned head forward and carries nutrients and water sufficient to keep them going for days. Tatanka can sustain activity every moment that they are awake, but Tatanka do not dream or even breathe while asleep.
Tatanka appear to move and speak very slowly, though this is in part an illusion which permeates the Tatanka people. The directly observed speed of any Tatanka action is almost comically slow: sentences have measurable and aggravating pauses punctuating them, the Tatanka puts one foot in front of the other at a painfully slow pace yet it actually reaches any destination (even near ones) in a shockingly short amount of time. The actual information passed in a Tatanka conversation is often quite high.
The Tatanka traditionally hold a certain veneration for putting up with hardship. Theirs is a warrior culture, and suffering or even dying is perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate one's worth. While the Tatanka look very much like buffalo, they are almost the opposite when it comes to diet. Tatanka traditionally hunt for most of their food and will travel long distances to accomplish this. The spatial distortion which accompanies all Tatanka is very helpful in battle, and bulls are justifiably feared.
Tatanka Magic: All Tatanka store time in their humps, but the Shamans are truly adept at using herbs and prayer to gather time and use it for things. Much of Tatanka magic is centered around medicine, and indeed all Tatanka magic is collectively called "medicine". Tatanka rituals exist which will weaken or destroy targets as if a great weight of time were placed upon them, as well as rituals which repair living things as if they had been granted a long time of recovery.
Truly accomplished Tatanka shamans grow younger over time, and end their days as calves.
Inspiration: Lakota
The Jogah
"I encourage you to think of the effects of your actions not just on yourself, but on others in the world. After all, you could be anybody and it is unreasonable to second guess your own identity in important matters."
A Jogah's natural form is almost never seen, but on those rare occasions when it is, a Jogah appears as an ovoid ripple in space roughly 1.5m in height that is most analogous to the disturbance left in a stream after a rock is skipped across its surface. Even the burbling sound the naked Jogah makes is not unlike the sound of a fast flowing brook. And yet, this information is rarely useful in identifying a Jogah because a Jogah's form changes to match a specific creature when they wear a mask made in that creature's image. A Jogah does not become "a deer", it becomes that deer. And most Jogah choose to take the forms of people – a fact which has not endeared them to the Union.
The Jogah have a history of a quite egalitarian society, whose principals were largely copied in the creation of the Union (a fact whose irony is not lost on any Jogah). The Jogah have very little concept of differences between individuals and historically have a difficult time respecting or understanding privacy or property.
Jogah can be recognized from the original person because regardless of how they appear they do not get wet. Water passes through them as if they were so much empty space. Alcohol does not do this, and enterprising Jogah have been known to fake wetness by dousing themselves in the strongest of fire water.
Jogah Magic: Jogah magic centers upon 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
Last edited by Username17 on Thu Jun 14, 2012 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Yeah, Option 3 is probably the best. We could do a Firefly style "There's no one but us humans" spec fic setting, but I think that's kind of boring. Shadowrun's approach is fine in more modern and futuristic settings where the cosmopolitan nature of society makes sense.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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deaddmwalking
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Option 3 is problematic. Most players want to interface with the world - a world that is admittedly fantastic. Even for a player that chooses a fantasy race, they tend to understand that choice in terms of how it differs from a human. Not offering humans as a choice raises a barrier to play. If it's for your use only, option 3 might work.
Otherwise, divorcing it from the real world a little more makes sense. In that case, integrated races might work best. No confederacy, just a demon wasteland being settled by a vanguard of pistol-packing paladins in dusters.
Otherwise, divorcing it from the real world a little more makes sense. In that case, integrated races might work best. No confederacy, just a demon wasteland being settled by a vanguard of pistol-packing paladins in dusters.
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DSMatticus
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Yeah. I read Frank's race write-ups, they're interesting, but I have no grasp of what normal is in the context of that. And while I understand that at its core that is ultimately a very incorrect sentiment, it is disconcerting nonetheless. It's like fantasy world vertigo. I can't find a place to ground myself.
Settings really benefit from having "humans" or just some obvious default human stand-in, even if they actually have pointy ears and are green or whatever. Yeah, it reflects a terribly inappropriately ethnocentric way of thinking, but that's what's going to work best for pretty much any given audience.
Settings really benefit from having "humans" or just some obvious default human stand-in, even if they actually have pointy ears and are green or whatever. Yeah, it reflects a terribly inappropriately ethnocentric way of thinking, but that's what's going to work best for pretty much any given audience.
Look to Rango for how a completely nonhuman Western would operate. Everyone looks weird.DSMatticus wrote:Yeah. I read Frank's race write-ups, they're interesting, but I have no grasp of what normal is in the context of that. And while I understand that at its core that is ultimately a very incorrect sentiment, it is disconcerting nonetheless. It's like fantasy world vertigo. I can't find a place to ground myself.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
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deaddmwalking
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I love Rango, but even then, it feels a little strange not recognizing what role each character might play. That's good in a movie where some of the motivations are going to be revealed by the plot and narrative - the fact is, the same holds true for an RPG given enough time. A lot of players won't be able to really commit to the game without a pre-established frame of reference. Like it or not, humans provide that for a large number of players.
It would help if some of the races were just renamed something which players are automatically familiar with. That, or if Prak could draw up ~20 pictures of all the different races. Probably the first one is easier. If the Sidhe are called Sidhe Elves, players instantly feel a bit more grounded in the world. The Loci can be called Dryads or Naiads or something. The Jotun works well as a name, but it should be mentioned they're often nicknamed Frost Giants or Frost Ogres. I'm also not getting a strong visual on what the Vanir are supposed to look like. They are slightly taller than the average human and otherwise not physically described (except in that they don't bleed, which is not typically apparent anyway).
Option 2 does not need to be cosmopolitan. If the races are Human, Revenant, Lycanthrope, Possessed and Golem, then it is entirely reasonable for just about every race to appear in every society without implying that each is equally accepted everywhere you go.
Last edited by Grek on Fri Jun 15, 2012 1:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
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CatharzGodfoot
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They're carved out of wood (ash for men, elm for women).Chamomile wrote:I'm also not getting a strong visual on what the Vanir are supposed to look like. They are slightly taller than the average human and otherwise not physically described (except in that they don't bleed, which is not typically apparent anyway).
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
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JigokuBosatsu
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Personally, I loved Frank's race writeups. I'd love to see them illustrated- and I think it would go a long way to making them more comfortable to a player. (Also, since I've started writing up "Markus Barrister, Rakshasa For Hire" as a comic, maybe I can smoke out an artist. 
Or hell, just set it in Dead Man's Hand and call it a tie-in.)
Or hell, just set it in Dead Man's Hand and call it a tie-in.)Omegonthesane wrote:a glass armonica which causes a target city to have horrific nightmares that prevent sleep
JigokuBosatsu wrote:so a regular glass armonica?