Exalted: Tempest in a Teapot?

While Exalted 3E has become the most funded RPG kick starter ever, its path has not been without some rocky points– most notably some very ill-timed and unpleasant criticism over the inclusion of Abyssal charms that may bring up questions of sexual coercion (we should note that the claim’s that the charms were outright “rape” charms were incorrect),  while some may feel that they are inappropriate, they were not simply “rape” charms.

The Land

 

The Land is vast—deep jungles and great rivers, with ancient cities and terrible beasts.

And the land is a mystery—even those who have ventured there often don’t come back, or come back with confusing stories.  There are individuals who wield strange powers of the mind and masters of a sorcery unlike any other.  There are cities in the trees and merpeople dancing through the lakes and rivers.  There are noble kings and savage cults that sacrifice the helpless to dark gods.

But there are no forges.  No alloyed metal.  The Land has an innate hatred of such things.  Metals, save for metals still in their elemental form, or the rare results of meteors falling to the land, rust and decay in hours and days.  Enchanted metal can survive…but an army marching into the Land would find itself defenseless in hours.

And that makes the Land…different.  Without metal, the people have had to find other routes to power.  Without the forge and other tools, a wand or psicrown is not simply powerful item; it is a treasure beyond price.  An enchanted sword can be used to carve out a kingdom…unless the wielder is slain through treachery.

And those who can manipulate the powers of the mind or of sorcery are far, far more important than they are anywhere else—and very few individuals can carry the day based on their arsenals.

However, the Land also has treasures.  There are trees that provide fruit that can cure the worst illness, vines that act as living pumps, creatures that were transformed by the Genesis Lords of the Fallen Kingdom to serve as warriors or slaves.   Some of these treasures would be worth a king’s ransom—if only they could be obtained.

But there may be more dangerous secrets within the Land…for some of the ruins indicate that there was once a great civilization within it, a civilization that now lies forgotten underneath a green shroud.  In fact, some wonder if too much exploration might disturb whatever it was that first created the Land, and stir it to new and terrible action.

The Rac

A teaser (beta copy) for the rac.  They’re in an Ogl racial product for pathfinder, making use of the psionics rules from Dreamscarred Press under the OGL license (no endorsement on the part of Dreamscarred Press is implied, and there is no connection between me and them other than the fact that the OGL permits reference to some of their rules).

What’s worse than a bunch of Raccoons?  A bunch of uplifted psychic raccoons…

****

Physical description

Rac are small creatures, looking much like extra large raccoons, including the traditional bandit mask and ring tail patterns.  When they are not wearing anything, in fact, some mistake them for larger than normal raccoons, especially if they take care to disguise the fact that they have fully opposable thumbs.

Creating a Psionic archtype for the magus

Dreamscarred Press has done a lot of very good work on psionics, in fact making them far more effective and flavorful for pathfinder than psionics ever were in 3E or 3.5.  Part of that, has been the addition of psionic archetypes to the various non-psionic classes.

 

However, to date, the magus has not received this treatment, which seems odd when one considers how well the magus would fit with a psychic warrior. Part of it may be the fact that in some respects the magus may seem to be taking the place of the psychic warrior, but then the magus arcana remain very unusual.

 

So, the first questoin to ask is: would it be better to add the arcana powers to a psychic warrior or psychic powers to a magus?  We’ll talk   about that in a bit.

 

Face Trees

A sidebar from a work in progress:

 

Sidebar: Face Trees

Some trees have…faces on them. They’re just close enough to human faces to be disturbing, just normal enough that some will point out that the faces look like perfectly normal patterns one finds elsewhere.

Except “elsewhere” does not have entire groves of these trees.

At night, some of their eyes and mouths start to glow…from the phosphorescent moss that collects in them.  Of course.

The wind makes curious moaning sounds as it whips through them, almost like they’re pleading—or warning…

Just a quick note:

Third party fan work will no longer be appearing here– it runs the risk of making it unclear whether i’m using my own IP or some one else, and is unfair to the actual IP holder.

D&D 5E?

There’s been a lot of about it, to date, but I think a big question is: Will a new edition win back more people than it will lose?

 

Whenever you change editions, some people leave, at lesat in the sense of not buying anything more. I have friends who are completely happy with second edition AD&D and they’ve never purchased much in the way of new products.  Given that 5E will have to reconcile fans of the earlier editions of fourth edition and do it in a way that won’t drastically alienated the majority of the fan base, this is going to be a tall order.

 

 

The Colonies Part III

2600-2750 Tensions Clashes and the Colony war.

But the Colonies were about to find that their road was not without bumps:

While the rate of population increase had dropped from the incredible 4 percent of the early years, it was still quite high, ranging from 1.2 to 1.4 percent.    Small numbers—until one realizes that by 2640, New Rio had over 650 million inhabitants.  Now, the best parts of the world were no longer an issue—it was the decent parts of the world, and a culture which had been based on the idea that land was cheap and available, found that it was nothing of the sort.  The successful corporations, such as MaxTech, rubbed their hands together as they constructed new transports—the visions of new colony worlds, and the fortunes they would create, made them eager.

The Colonies Pt. II

 

2500—Challenges and Opportunities

 

Internally, the rise of populations was beginning to lead to the rise of a professional class—universities were founded and the slow process of making use of hte still preserved libraries was started.

And a slow process it was.  Reading the documentation was one thing—turning it into machines was another.  For over 200 years most communities had done well enough with simple technologies, and technicians who were more or less apprenticed—now attempting to produce an industrial order proved difficult, indeed.

One of the largest issues was the simplest—the inhabitants by and large had what they wanted.  New Rio, even with it’s 85 million, had fewer people on it than had existed at any time after the age of bronze on earth, and in most communities, founding a new steading, or even a new village, meant hopping in a ATV and driving for an hour or so—true, the best sites might have been taken, but on a world with over 120% earth’s land area, “second best” was very good indeed.  Even so, their was a slow drive to start regaining the old technologies, and by 2520, Rio and at least five other colonies had once again gained the ability to enter orbital and system space.

But it was on Rio and later, Maxwell’s Landing that the first steps towards what would become a defining characteristic of Colonial society evolved:  The Corporation.

Most of the Colonies had little in the way of high level government—founded by those with every reason to distrust government, most Colonial charters were firmly against vesting too much authority in the hands of the planetary “authorities” and so they had little—the settlements were more or less independent.  But in order to re-establish some forms of the more advanced technology, more in the way of organization and resources were needed.  So, on both Rio and Maxwell’s Landing, groups started to form corporations—organizations where the founders, usually those bankrolling them but just as often workers, would contribute shares, in the promise of sharing in the benefits when the corporation became profitable.   Just as had been the case on Old Earth, the main benefit of these organizations was their longevity—they would endure beyond the lifespan of any particular founder.  This would have major implications for the future.

But in teh beginning, their influence was minor—investment wasn’t easy to come by, and only the best corporations endured.  New Rio’s MaxTech invested and worked hard to develop a line or rugged and inexpensive VTOL and ground vehicles, and by 2520 had also built the first fusion powered shuttles to be constructed since the arrival—although it only built 10 of them, their being little demand for more. In addition, MaxTech started the dlow and difficult process of determining how to reactivate the mothballed fleet of jumpships left in high orbit, a task of no mean difficulty.  On Maxwell’s Landing, Common Dreams, Ltd, did much the same thing, though they suffered from the fact that the colony ships had been parked in a lower orbit, and had long since fallen to earth.

But Three factors helped these nascent companies along  the first was that the growing populations now had a small but growing professional segment and their “major cities” while laughable compared to the far off inner sphere, were at least large enough to start to create a culture that prized growth—and luxury.  That was the second factor—with prosperity came a desire for luxury goods and the new corporations were increasingly able to fill that need—and that gave rise to a wealthy class of businessmen.

 

And there was the fact that with ever larger populations the dangers of disasters grew, as was shown by a series of major storms on Rio—which resulted in MaxTech and several other corporations showing a better face than the largely ineffectual central government.  No power was directly deeded to them as a result of this, but that prestige translated out into more money and more importantly more and more children from the (still very large) families migrating to the cities to try thier hands at a new way of life.  Given the still impressive growth rate, the worlds of the Colonies found themselves able to absorb quite a bit in the way of consumer spending.

 

But even so, it wasn’t until 2560 that the rebuilt jumpship Drake made the Journey to Maxwell’s Landing, there to exchange news and a few representatives—and not until 2600 were more than 10 jumpships operating, with a single new jumpship being produced at the Rio orbital yards every two years.  It was, however, enough.

The Colonies were no longer a group of independent planets, but a community, however loosely linked.

Working on a Deep Periphery Group

Battlemech is owned by Catalyst Labs, Inc. and No infringement is intended by this fan work.

 

Battletech is one of the oldest science fiction gaming universes out there that has been, more or less in continuous production—perhaps only Traveler can claim a longer period.  As such, it can be enjoyable to work on other settings, other ways of making use of our…Giant Stompy Robots.

Note that the Sarapha cluster setting had a problem, having to do with the group breaking up due to scheduling work, so I’ll be working on this right now.

 

 

 

The Deep Periphery.

 

The Deep periphery, starting well beyond the Innersphere and near periphery states is a nebulous concept—it essentially starts at the borders of the periphery states, but has no end. As terra incognita, it’s a wonderful place to put all sorts of worlds, and settings, comforted in the knowledge that we will never have to worry about what will the Davions say. (not that many people care about that, one way or another).

But the deep periphery has some questions that need to be asked—for example, with such a huge space, why would deep periphery nations ever even come into contact? If the universe is full of uninhabited worlds, why would you have them be close enough to each other in the deep periphery to have any meaningful contact?*

 

*This last can be a problem in many settings, not just battletech—a world, is a big, big place, and having people fighting desperately over other worlds when their own worlds are nearly empty can be…an issue.

 

 

Well, fortunately, the canon police won’t beat us about the head, so here we are:

 

The Alliance and the Jump Program.

 

The Terran Alliance faced increasing amounts of resistance as it become ever more ossified.  The leadership, like many dictatorial governments, desired to crush the resistance, but that wasn’t working and to many of the Alliance, the idea of shipping dissidents to colony worlds where they could make even more trouble was a bad idea…

But the development of the first KF drive sail, and long-term hibernation technology (which had actually been around for some time, but was largely unused due to the existence of FTL changed things…) changed the equation.

Now, the alliance could offer their dissidents a bargain—in return for cooperation and for not rocking the boat, they could be offered the chance to move far, far beyond the alliances borders…and incidentally out of the alliances hair.  Even during this period, The alliance had accepted that it would never rule “all of space” as even the most hide bound ruler could do math and look at the vast expanse of the milky way.

 

Equipped with small crews, and “volunteers” in deep sleep, the first KF driven ships, set sail for the far stars—the bargain was simple, the ships would not stop until they had moved at least 1500 light years away from sol.  Any attempt to return would be met with deadly force.

 

There was, of course an ulterior motive for this—anyone leaving would forfit all goods and property to the Alliance, and do so “voluntarily” avoiding any nasty complaints about  the seizure of property. The ships themselves were fragile things, equipped with drives barely capable of .1 G and ramshackle shuttles which would ideally work just about long enough to let the colonists land.  After all, whether they lived or died was of no importance to the rulers of the Alliance.

 

However, the first colonists had made the decision to leave, go far, far beyond the reach of the Alliance, or for that matter the colonies that were springing up around it.  They took the 1500 light year minimum and tacked another 700 light years on it, to a region of space that long range space-based telescopes indicated had a large number of planet bearing systems.

 

And so the first ship, the Freedom, left in 2150.

While some wondered how this worked with the Colonization Procedure Referendum, that the Alliance had passed, the answer was simple—these colonists were never expected to be seen again—and for that matter more than a few expected them to simply die out there in the trackless depths of space.

Regardless, carrying anywhere from 2500 to 10,000 colonists in cold sleep, the ships left on a regular basis, the Alliance benefiting from the expropriation of their property as they left.

The journey was very long—ships in that era did not travel the 30 light years a jump of modern jump ships and their “sails” were actually far more primitive than modern KF drive charge sales, which required them to spend more time charging and jumping.  But many, perhaps most of them made it to the region of space that would one day be known as the Colonies.

 

First Landings

 

The colony region started just over 2200 light years away from Terra and had much the same planetary and stellar density as did the regions around Terra—and the first few ships found garden worlds—at least in comparison to what they’d feared.

 

But even so, the landing period was hard—some died as their shuttles came apart, others died of disease and malnutrition and all the dangers that might lead to the death of a new colony, far from home.  Even today, their are still occasional finds of the nearly invisible ruins of some proud little colony that started…and vanished.

However most of the first wave found their way to what would become known as the 20 worlds, 20, more or less earthlike worlds that were within 100 light years of each other.  They largely settled in small groups, as new ships arrived, breaking down their shuttles and making use of the ship components they could not use on their worlds to serve as satellites for various purposes.  By 2230 most of the new settlers had arrived, just over 500,000 in total, although fewer than 400,000 survived the first few years, a testament to the hardship—and the forgiving nature of their worlds.  By 2235 most of the shuttles were no longer functional and it would be over 100 years before their was any more interstellar commerce.

 

The Colonists had had time to think before their departure, and they realized that the Alliance had little interest in seeing them succeed, and so planned for the most modest beginnings—and to do that, they turned to the most effective and self programming AI system known to man.

That is, they had children—lots and lots of children.  The garden worlds were able to support life, but they had no automation, not much in the way of tools and while they had records and libraries, a community of 400, or 4,000 can’t do much with instructions on how to build a fusion power plant, especially if they start with “found an electronics industry”

So the founders focused on the simple things, starting with basic education and a farming community, while working to maintain as much of a medical base as possible.  This wasn’t the policy everywhere—but it was the successful policy, and with the knowledge that their colonies could easily fall below the threshold of viability they worked to increase their numbers.

 

And they succeeded.  The average population growth of the Twenty Worlds peaked at 4 percent, and on most worlds was at 3 percent. It made sense—their was little in the way to prevent the colonists from taking their new worlds save the fact that there weren’t enough of them.  New Rio, the first settled world, started with a population of 35,000 men and women, and two hundred years later boasted just over 85 million citizens.  Most of the other worlds had the same stories.

 

Even so, it should be noted that most of the worlds were both largely empty and still unable to fully take advantage of their libraries.  Much of their population was scattered in small communities, with vast stretches of land in between them.  New Rio, for example, made use of solar and fuel cell technology, mixed in with hydroelectric and did not have the capability to construction fusion systems, even though they had the “technical” knowledge.

However, this would start to change as the Colonies celebrated the first day of 2500, major changes were coming to them… both internally and externally.