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Guiding Ancestor Runes (Enchanter Upgrade)

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

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GUIDING ANCESTOR RUNES (ENCHANTER UPGRADE)

  • Ancestral Shield. The bonded bearer of the rune retrieves a glimmering echo of an ancestor in the line. This ancestor can assist, in combat or a challenge and/or risk test. It usually takes a full round and a Resolve to manifest the ancestor, who can assist for up to an hour, for one scene or one fight. A Resolve may also be spent to manifest the ancestor for a single round as a free action. This ancestor counts as one of the two maximum assistants a character can have.
    • There are powerful iterations of this rune that can summon two ancestors, manifest them more clearly and in a more articulate way, or more visibly or tangibly, for longer times. These bear costs related to legacy and bloodline in addition to permanent Vitality.
  • Ancestral Lookout. The bonded bearer of the rune retrieves a glimmering echo of an ancestor in the line who can stand guard for 1 shift, 4 hours, automatically waking the bearer if detecting something unusual. The echo can also scout up to a mile away, moving about as well as a dwarf would. Ancestors chosen as lookouts and scouts tend to be ones who had primary skill in those roles. If the lookout is attacked, it dissipates, and the bearer gets a fleeting impression of what did it. The lookout cannot fight.
    • There are powerful iterations of this rune that can fly, move through walls, act with greater intelligence, connect with the bearer as though scrying, and detect supernatural energy. These iterations tend to manifest remarkable traits in the ancestor they echo. Most only bond with bearers from the same family, whether by blood, by having the same Guiding Saying, adopting the same mission, or by living out of similar perspectives.
  • Ancestral Rebodying. These runes can bond an ancestral spirit to an animal that the ancestor had an affinity to in life. The animal gains the ability to talk, and takes on shades of the ancestor’s personality and memories. An enchanter can spend 1 Vitality to coax the ancestor’s shadow into the animal for a brief conversation, or 1 permanent Resolve to bond the ancestor to the animal for the rest of the animal’s lifespan. A permanent bonding is a challenge/risk test, where the risk is breaking the rune and losing the spirit echo and the challenge is sucessful bonding; neither success nor failure means the bond doesn’t work, the Resolve is not lost, and the enchanter can try again with another animal (but that particular one will never work for that echo.)
    • There are powerful iterations of this rune that bring physical mutation to a hybrid animal/dwarf, or allow the fusion to use one or more abilities the ancestor had in life. There are cheaper versions that only bring forward one or two aspects of the echo. Some versions retain the memories the echo earns in each body and conversations, others start from the reset point each time, others don’t bring memories only personality and some abilities.

Guardians of the Nest

25 Saturday Apr 2020

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Clan Rumbleseed, played 4.25.20 IRL (in real life) and 10/25/2121 IG (in game).

  • Miraeg Dunn (Jonathan) Leader, Performer, Mechanic.
  • Ivo Flynt (Imre) Support, Gunsmith, Engineer.
  • Cagroot Hopstrider (KC) Skirmisher, Brewer, Delver.
  • Thoreson Grimeater (Anders) Berserker, Chef, Healer.

Loaded for Bear

The Fellowship left the vent in the hillside and returned to Lebrim Manor’s construction site, performing battle haka and armoring up. They equipped themselves with the best climbing gear they could, including a climbing harness Ivo was experimenting with that could support a human. Ivo asked Justicar Trays to go with them, and he agreed.

As the Fellowship was grimly headed out of the camp, they were met by Magistrate Lyrin. The dwarves swore they were going to prove there were monsters under the hill; the magistrate agreed they would do just that. Unfortunately, that proof wouldn’t shift the growing human conviction that the dwarves were perhaps responsible for the monsters. Frustrated, the dwarves went to take out their feelings on the nest below.

Down Below

They found the vent, following it to the chasm, then to the pit. Cagroot, the best climber, anchored the rope so Miraeg could climb down first. Halfway down, Miraeg was ambushed by a cave pouncer. Thoreson leaped to his aid, rappelling down fast, and Ivo supported with gunfire. The pouncer was slain, and Thoreson and Miraeg reached the bottom of the shaft to face off with more cave pouncers–after the fear drinker psychically assaulted them and left them vulnerable. Concentrated fire from above, blades and brawn below, and the timely intervention of the justicar won the day.

Ivo earnestly persuaded Cagroot and Miraeg to arm themselves with his pistols. Then the Fellowship pursued the fear drinker further in.

The Sprawling Lair

The Fellowship and the justicar came to a more open area with a vent to the sky far above, and some faint bioluminescent nesting filth. The cave pouncers hung back, and a massive “breathless” monster charged the Fellowship as the fear drinker redoubled their panic. A combination of Ivo’s explosive bullets and Thoreson’s massive sword brought the breathless down, and Thoreson dug deep with the blade, imbduing it with the breathless’s dissipating life force.

Cagroot scrambled up the uneven slope towards where the fear drinker lurked, fighting his terror. Miraeg joined him, and was inspired to fire the killing shot that took the fear drinker down. Cagroot climbed up to verify, and he was spotted by the queen of the nest.

Yaas Queen

The hideous bulk reared and hissed, and Cagroot snapped off a couple hollowpoints and blew it away. The Fellowship surveyed the mounds of jelly with basketball sized eggs embedded within, feeling some trepidation. Fortunately the dying queen vented chemical signals that didn’t enrage the cave pouncers, a symbiotic species, so the opportunistic predators began eating the jelly and eggs and ignoring the dwarves.

Thoreson enlisted Cagroot’s help to harvest the queen monster glandular tract to make rare spices, avoiding the gut parasites filling the torso cavity. Miraeg plucked the golden orb eyes from the breathless to keep as glassy trophies. Ivo contemplated how best to bring down the cavern with the few explosives he had on hand; there was a fissure, high up, and he climbed towards it to wedge the grenades in just the right spot. His climbing skills did not match his engineering analysis, and he took a bad tumble, banging his way down the craggy slope to squash into a wad of egg jelly.

Deeper Still

Cagroot noticed a hole behind one of the egg wads, and he had a waking vision where the ghost of the baroness hiding in his life energy retreated to him, begging for help, as the wavering meat forest trembled with the approach of a predator. The echo fever infection in him was nearing a merging point once again with a corrupt psychic field like the one that the baroness’s ghost escaped from in the first place. Cagroot could eject the ghost into that starving field, or shelter her in his own life force. He chose to shelter her.

Cagroot told the Fellowship to face what was down the hole, and he retreated to protect his refugee ghost. Linking up with the justicar, Cagroot found the man babbling non-stop as his stoic silence was shaken apart by supernatural fear.

The Corrupter

Meanwhile, fresh terror tore through the rest of the Fellowship as something in that hole trembled the earth. While Miraeg resisted, and Ivo clamped down on his sanity using his resolve, Thoreson embraced the inexorable sensation and retreated into his berserker fury, diving down the hole.

He confronted the corrupter worm writhing below, noting its bite radius matched the victims in the wreck of Lebrim’s Manor. He charged the foul thing, and the world went red.

When Thoreson regained his senses, seven minutes had passed and he was climbing out of the pit covered in blood not his own. He announced the thing was slain. All of the Fellowship felt the echo fever evaporate. Cagroot saw a dead gleam in Thoreson’s eyes, once again reminding him of the stare of a cave moray.

The ecology of the underground could be complex, and the echo fever projected by the fear drinker had been flavored by the worm thing in the pit. Their fields had interacted, probably boosting each other. It was not a surprise that the two forces had reached some kind of uneasy chemical truce, and settled near the queen nest and the cave pouncers attracted to her service. Still, knocking apart the alliance greatly diminished the threat of the nest.

Return

The Fellowship returned to the surface and hefted their monster trophies back to Lebrim Manor’s construction site. They had a terse exchange with the magistrate, then loaded up the wagon and prepared to leave.

Baron Lebrim came to see them off. He assured them they could come back anytime. The teeth in his smile seemed much too sharp. With that, the Fellowship departed.

Legendary Weapon: Breathless Blade

This two-handed blade can be activated by its bearer by spending a Resolve and a defend action. All foes in melee range count as being targeted by a successful defend action.

Movement Runes (Enchanter Upgrade)

24 Friday Apr 2020

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Here is a new upgrade for enchanters who can access Caskbound clan secrets.

MOVEMENT RUNES [ENCHANTERS]

These runes enhance the bearer’s ability to move through an environment.

  • Needs of the Beast. Each of these runes evokes a kind of animal. When activated, these runes convert your needs to the needs of the animal for air, food, or water. Usually runes will focus on one kind of need, but masters can invest more to make broad-spectrum need substitution. These runes are most often used to imitate fish to allow water breathing or imitate desert creatures to minimize water needs. Dark uses for the depraved or desperate can evoke predators and scavengers, to eat raw meat or carrion. Some are cursed, invoking the hunger of birds who need to eat constantly to survive.
  • Grace of the Beast. Each of these runes imitates a movement ability of the animal it evokes. Generally, movement is increased or expanded, and spending a resource can grant a feat of motion. Examples include the wall-scuttling ability of spiders, the patagia gliding of cave lizards, the swimming of sharks, and the leaping of cats.
  • Friction Control. These runes allow the bearer to adjust friction on a touched surface. Some focus on making objects slippery, some focus on greatly increasing resistance to motion, and some are flexible enough to do either or do both with a sliding scale. Motion reducers are often put on locked gauntlets to protect against disarmament, or doors to make them difficult to open while the rune is engaged.

Each rune type has many, many sub types that have specific effects and durations negotiated in exchange for the creation and activation costs.

 

Sustainer Runes (Enchanter Upgrade)

18 Saturday Apr 2020

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Here is a new upgrade for enchanters who can access Rumbleseed clan secrets.

SUSTAINER RUNES [ENCHANTERS]

These runes are only available to the law enforcement enchanters of Clan Rumbleseed. Criminals do not serve prison sentences. They are banished, executed, and/or punished with sustainer runes. The runes come with a price in Vitality or Resolve that may be extracted, usually a month at a time for Vitality or a year at a time for permanent Resolve, and during that time the criminal must stay near the runes they fuel.

Criminals can gain no Ledger until their sustainer debts are paid.

A Resolve costs can be used to power a penal exchange, often an anvil, hammer, or bellows. One Resolve powers the exchange for about a decade and allows it to hold up to 10 Vitality (more can increase capacity or duration). The exchange can have Vitality costs linked to it. All enchanted objects created with sustainer rune power belong to the clan, to be assigned to temporary bearers by the archon.

So, a settlement might have the Punishing Table, a big anvil, and once a decade a Resolve cost bolsters its connection to the sustainer runes. For that decade, all the Vitality costs meted out can feed into that Punishing Table to be spent on crafting other runes, using those costs instead of the Enchanter’s personal Vitality.

  • Vitality Tribute. The bearer of this rune is assigned 2-10 permanent Vitality cost, and ordered to remain within 1 mile of the exchange until the cost is paid at the rate of 1 Vitality per month. Leaving before the cost is paid causes a destructive energy cascade that burns out 2 permanent Vitality per 1 left unpaid.
  • Resolve Tribute. The bearer of this rune is assigned 1-3 permanent Resolve cost, and ordered to remain within 1 mile of the exchange until the cost is paid at the rate of 1 Resolve per year. Leaving before the cost is paid causes a destructive energy cascade that burns out 2 permanent Resolve per 1 left unpaid.
  • Absolution. Effectively a pardon, this rune restores up to 10 permanent Vitality or 3 permanent Resolve to the bearer of a tribute rune. This energy can come from a linked exchange, or if used to right a wrong, can come from a tribute rune put on another dwarf (who is often assigned service to the one wronged until the debt is paid.) In that case the bearer of the absolution rune must remain near the source of the incoming energy for a week per Vitality or a month per Resolve (though longer time frames can be built in.) Absolution runes cannot restore more Vitality or Resolve than tribute runes cost.

Here are some tributes demanded for crimes, for scale. Each one is 1 heavier per prestige upgrade of the victim.

  • Murdering a clanmate. 4 Vitality.
  • Murdering a Master. 6 Vitality.
  • Conspiring against the archon. 4 Vitality.
  • Assaulting the archon. 6 Vitality then banishment.
  • Killing the archon. 8 Vitality then banishment.
  • Conspiring to sabotage an exchange. 4 Vitality.
  • Destroying an exchange. 1 Resolve.
  • Sharing clan secrets. 1 Resolve.

 

Crystal Light

18 Saturday Apr 2020

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Clan Caskbound, played 4.17.20 IRL, 8.30.2121 IG.

  • Devron Leveller (Mark) Berserker. Chosen, Mason.
  • Dandel “The Dan” Deeptunnel (Simon) Berserker. Carouser, Miner, Brewer.
  • Korvask Wyrt (Michael) Vanguard. Enchanter, Scholar.

The Fellowship returned to Whiskey Forge in Stoneshadow. On the airship trip back from the skyfall crater, Korvask felt unsettled, the Nexus of the Mind Shards uneasy in his bones.

Delivering the Gift

The Fellowship immediately got an audience with subarchon Sabado and told him about the Nexus. He was not an expert, but could understand the potential implications of what they retrieved, so he arranged for an audience with Archon Basrencru, who placed a Friendship Rune with his seal on a clay tablet for them to authorize a visit to the Veinsluice Forge and a meeting with Master Smith Eelee. Helbek was also summoned, as an expert scholar and treasure of the clan; he was delighted at the possibilities of what Korvask had retrieved and carried within.

Veinsluice Forge

The Fellowship passed through the central exchange of the clanhome, taking in the sights and sounds of the Remembrance Day celebration of all dwarves who fell in service to the clan. Moving deep under the clanhome, they placed the Friendship tablet in the belt buckle of the giant stone guardian statue protecting the forge, which was the museum, vault, and prestige crafting center of the clan. The statue allowed them passage through the deep vent corridor, the only way in and out of the heavily warded and protected compound below.

They witnessed the glorious 30 foot tall statue carved by Mad Marga; it was one of her signature sculpts, so obviously nude, but draped in canvas. Within was an Ur Shadow, cosmic energy traces left behind by Hellifino.

Master Smith Eelee and her apprentice Kaskel met them, and MS Eelee suggested relocating the Nexus to coat the wall behind the statue would be excellent placement. Then she went off with Helbek to review some of the new pieces while Kaskel offered hospitality to the Fellowship (after pitching the idea that heroes like them could ease the way for an enterprising adept smith to found a master forge in Khundrukar.)

The Portal

The Dan was at loose ends, but Devron invoked Hellifino and the Gods of Ur, drawing on the Ur Shadow, ritually blessing Korvask and attuning to this chamber. Korvask meditated on Caskbound and the ancestors and the Gods of Ur. Something else was in the energy of the Nexus, a hostile force; it stirred, taking in all the focus on dwarven ancestors from the festival above, possibly reaching out into the guardian statue, now perhaps posing a danger as the dwarves attuned to it and to this warded place.

A shimmering crystal pool formed, an interface to again enter the Nexus. Korvask extruded two mind shards so his companions could escort him, and together the Fellowship delved into the Nexus.

The Founder’s Shadow

Moving into the crystalline cave-like environment, steeped in a red-tinged yellow glow, they explored the other-dimensional space. Traces they left behind pulled together to form a giant stone dwarf shaped like the clan’s founder, who came at them with a massive shield and hammer. They battled the echo, and put it down. As it crumbled, they continued following the light, closer to the heart of the Nexus, looking for the force that resisted them.

The Crystal Guardian

Cinder-bodied behemoths with crystal armor and weapons lurched out of the walls at them, and desperate battle followed. They survived, smashing the hulks apart, and Korvask spotted the energy trace that was flowing through the crystal forming their opposition. His recognition forced it into a liquid crystal form, and it snapped out blades and attacked.

The Dan smashed it with one hit, seemingly, as it sprayed apart to avoid his blow. It re-formed and surged at them, impaling them on crystal spikes, vicious and fluid; the more they hit it, the more pixelated it became, unable to render its smooth shapes with such ease.

Finally Korvask launched at it with a devastating shield bash, knocking it apart, arresting its energy in a frozen kernel in the crystal. As he drove his shield through its essence, he captured some of that essence in the defensive weapon.

The Heart of the Nexus

A liquid crystal form rose, freed from within the defensive shape that had grown around it, and accepted the dwarves (specifically Kovask) as its guardian shape. They were gently returned to the surface, and the Nexus swelled up around the statue and up the back wall, gleaming with yellow light (and dislodging the canvas around the magnificent nude statue.) Korvask decided to stay connected to the Nexus. Devron offered worship to Hellifino for their victory, and for the new crown jewel of the Veinsluice Forge.

The Shield Shard

This sturdy vanguard style metal shield can attune to its bearer. In combat, the bearer can choose an incoming attack to dispel, and the shield flies apart under the impact, inflicting 4 Vitality to everyone (but the bearer) in melee range and totally negating the hit. If the bearer chooses to use this ability after damage is revealed, the bearer must spend 1 Resolve. The shield can reform in about 1 minute if the bearer spends Resolve, or 1 hour on its own.

How the Magic Flows

20 Thursday Nov 2014

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Here is an excerpt to help players understand how magical skills fit together, and to help GMs know how to manage descriptions and decisions about what’s covered in a skill.

Adepts, Alchemists, Chosen, and Enchanters all produce mystical effects. However, they are very different in practice.

  • Adepts can see and feel the magic that binds the world together. The mutagenic processes that warped the dwarves into a slave race in the mists before civilization still lingers in them; they are open to manipulating the latent energy in the world. They sense different flavors of supernatural energy, and they can weaponize energy.
  • Alchemists have learned that combining different materials carefully can create incompatibilities that provoke magical effects, or synergies that elevate otherwise undetectable magic in physical matter. Their work is rooted in observation, a ridiculous amount of memorization, some superstition, and a handful of luck. They revere formulae as ways to control and exploit the world. Everything has energies and harmonies, and knowing how to repair or disrupt those harmonies is a key to power.
  • Chosen have a trace of divine energy threaded through their veins, whether because they are descended from gods or because their ancestors were touched by that energy somehow. Many chosen can trace their lineage back to someone who was raised from the dead, punished by a god, bathed in divine blood, or some other miraculous event. Chosen can touch on the cosmic, and provide an outlet for that energy to distill into the mundane world. When they act to bring about harmony, they align with their energy. When they bring about despair and darkness, it sours in them. The Gods of Ur, real or symbolic, serve as their guides.
  • Enchanters have mastered using runes to pull the threads of the fabric of reality, drawing energy through objects to achieve certain effects. Visible tangible shapes hold a complex multi-dimensional matrix of energy that tugs reality into alignment with the rune’s purpose, achieving magical and impossible feats. Reality is repurposed, adjusted by symbol and pattern.

None of these mystical abilities are dependent on any of the others, and they can be combined to create truly peculiar shamen of the dwarven people. Some upgrades are provided for each, but GMs can make up their own for their games.