Vile
It is a Vile land, a rune-pocked and marred wasteland, a sun-beaten, weather bashed and often bloodied disgusting place. This carrion-world will be consumed by its inhabitants and born anew in chaotic and vile ways....
Long ago the aberrant star-gods emerged from the twilight and slithered onto the hardpan of the earth. The horrors spattered offspring onto its dry, craggy surface in a miasma of ecstasy. Their seed, the black ooze slipped beneath the ground and gestated. This was the beginning...
-The Book of Vile Memory, First Gleaning, lines 15-17;23-26
Introduction
Welcome to Vile, a faction game set in a world of eldritch power fused with mechanical horrors and vaguely on the same tech level as the american old west. Vampire land barons broker power with demons. Undead industrialists coax oil from the desert waste. Settlers mingle with mutants and clockwork automatons. The great rails carry mercenaries and sorcerers to the far reaches of the frontier. Zombie gunslingers collect bounties for Carrion Wurm overlords. Shadow cultists spill innards onto ancient mausoleum floors...technology and eldritch sorcery mix, mingle,collaborate. Necromancy, palmistry, bio-meddling, grafting, hexing, witchcraft, steam, gas and electricity are all sources of power. Adventurers explore vast subterranean caverns, sucken continents, ghostly ruins, mountains of bones. Species thrive and die, fortunes amass and fade, religions prosper and offend. Calamity. Rot. Disease. Good Luck!
Themes and Tone
- The Grotesque is the mundane. Sacrifice. Mutilation.
- Magic and Technology are nearly indistinguishable. Most sources of power are largely misunderstood. Old knowledge (even if it is technology) is often viewed as eldritch power. Necromancy, palmistry, bio-meddling, grafting, hexing, witchcraft, steam, gas and electric power all coexist, mingle and mix..
- The Dead Are People Too. Vampiric industrialists, Revenant oil-barons, horrors from the far realm-all part of society. Zombies make for great workers...they don't sleep or complain...
- The World is Old. Long ago cosmic horrors colonized this planet, changed it and corrupted the very order of nature. A millenia of darkness has resulted in a world rotting from the inside...Many denizens still worship the Great Old Ones.
Places
- Hecates Tower
- New Blightsburg (New-Blight)
- The Blood Marsh
- Phaetas
- The Lamprey Fields (on the coast)
- Lost Ygal
- Scaablin
- The Skin Warrens
- Slaughter Plains
Races
- Automata Automota vary greatly, only sharing the common trait of containing some sort of motorized components. The power sources vary wildly from eldritch power to bio-meddling. Automota are often isolated from one another, but often ingratiated with locals for their skills as tinkerers and knowledge.
- Geists Geists are manifestations of Psychic energy created when many people/things/creatures perish at the same time in a horrible way. Geists inhabit host bodies and control them. They inherit the memories and traits of the host, and retain that information when they switch hosts. Hellgeists are the most powerful type of Geist, a collection of a millenia of suffering souls.
- Graveborn A broad category of races, Zombies being the most common Graveborn, those creatures classified as deceased. The result of an ancient viral infection, Zombies can be found in every corner of the world. Docile and even capable of crude forms of communication, zombies make for excellent labor-force.
- Grubs The Chthonic Grub-folk are common-place in the frontier. They hail from the sunken plains and very probably from beneath the earth itself. Virulent and impish, the Grub-folk are nonetheless hardy settlers. Those that abandon the traditional Grub communals are outcasts, traitors (as the Elders would say) and often killed on sight by other Grubs. Many of these outcasts resort to banditry and vigilantism along the frontier.
- Medusae Creatures found in the Blood Marsh, The Cnidarian Hegemony encompasses a wide variety of tentacled and cephalapoidal creature ruled by the highest caste-the Medusa. Grey skinned, permanently pustuled and vicious, the Medusa rule the Blood Marsh with an insatiable thirst for sacrifice and flesh.
- Leechfolk Leechfolk are the distant cousins of the Grub, probably originating in the vast network of caves and canyons beneath the earth. Leechfolk are varied in appearance and physiology. From the humanoid jawless Leechfolk, (which have no external suckers, but rather a sort of fleshy straw that extends from their torso) to the 'Gnaths', mounds of segmented flesh with sharp teeth with which they latch onto prey. All Leechfolk are haemotophagus, getting sustenance from various blood-sources. They can survive on haemolymph pills, a pharmeceutical made from insect ichor.
Companies/Factions
- The Cynners, Boomtown
- The Stained Witches
- Winifred Oil, New Blightsburg
Characters
- Carnifex, Geist Mercenary
- Gak, Grub Vigilante, in employ of Winifred Oil
- Murphiben Yates, Mechanic, Winifred Oil
- Progeny Bolt, Automaton
- Stitch Vittle, Leechkin Vagabond
Gods
- Bapst, God of Profanity
- Kronin, The Liar
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Things:
Guidelines
- Be cool. No arguments needed (or wanted).
- Stick with the themes and tone of VILE. This is really important..
- PM me or any co-GMS char/faction/race sheets before posting. We can help edit and write if you need help.
- Quality posts. 2-3 posts maximum per week. 1 post minimum every 10 days. If you can't be here, no problem! Let me know! Posts should consist of at least 2 paragraphs and be grammatically correct.
- If you make a faction/race expect other players to use them as well. This is a co-op worldbuilding game as well as a traditional RP.
- I will not except any sheets from any other role-play.
EDIT#5:Updated Guidelines.
EDIT#4:Added Automata, Leechfolk, Stitch Vittle, Progeny Bolt.
EDIT#3:Added Medusa,Cnidarian Hegemony,Grubs and Zombies. Added Guidelines section.
EDIT#2:Trying to push the potential for co-op world-building. The size of this RP could grow pretty quick and become really complex depending on the level of interest. Added Faction/Town Sheets. Added Grak,Grub Vigilante,Murphiben Yates, Mechanic, New Blightsburg, and Winifred Oil.
EDIT: This thread created to maintain the (large) amount of interest originally expressed. Discuss, create collaborate. I check the forums several times a day but don't always have time to reply, but I am around. Feel free to PM me. Originally I had planned on writing up a million details for all of the places and races, but I've decided to leave everything open ended and let those interested write what they will, however if something doesn't quite fit the overall feel of the game, (no fucking unicorns please thank you) it will receive an unapologetic no. Expect things to be added. Expect things to change. Standard forum rules and all that. Thanks for taking interest and reading!
