Excession

Pirates of the Darkening Skies

Kira's Private Box

"I'll bet on the contract," Kira says, handing a sack of gems to the attendant.
The the attendant accepts your bet, hands you a ticket with the bids, and bows out of the room.

Out on the sand, the arena doors are opening.

Viewing Cage

Nervous guards bring Cold Hands, at spearpoint, to a room with a barred window looking out on the arena sands.
The rooftops of city buildings spread above like strange stars, their lights forming meaningless urban constellations. Below, a sea of faces that fugues into unrecognizability.
You are not alone - a human in stained but lovingly patched overalls watches the arena gates open with you.
One of his arms is a mechanical prosthetic, long and ungainly-looking, tipped with a spear blade. One his eyes and part of his skull has been replaced with more machinery, a glowing blue orb in stark contrast to bright brown organic eye beside it. Lank red hair hangs from the biological side of his scalp. He glances at you, nods, and returns his gaze to the arena.

Pirates of the Darkening Skies

Kira's Private Box

Kira chews throughfully, twirling a long fork in her slender fingers.
"Kontina's the only city left in all the world where Desdemona isn't going to be shot on sight," she opines, "I'm not sure which fighter I pity more."
She pauses.
"Not that shooting her does any good." There is a note of... bitterness in her voice.

At Chwegwn's request, the attendant gives odds of 7:3 in Edvard's favour. So far Cold Hands vs. the convict is giving 50/50 but the survivor's indenture contract is being added to the winnings for VIP bets. The final fight is 8:2 odds for Iruulan to win.

Pirates of the Darkening Skies

If I was on vacation or something, I'd knock together full sheets for the fighters and let you all play them out as a combat tutorial but I think I am too tired these days.

Pirates of the Darkening Skies

Alright, might need to accelerate the timeline a bit just to bring everyone offscreen in.
@GD are you okay with some scenes as Ydylis is guided to her new crew?

Cold Hands will get to watch the fights, which may involve some foreshadowing.

Just so I can set the pace, will Adrian or Chwegwn want to ask more about the various combatants or other subjects raised so far?

Pirates of the Darkening Skies

Convention done, game run with dubious success, mental bandwidth freed.

You would think after all these years I'd stop being surprised by how readily players will sell out when an antagonist offers them their lives in exchange for the highest ranking character in the party, and yet.

Ghostfire Horizon - fantasy mech warfare

Some tweaking will indeed be necessary. This is the latest version of the setting with the last entry being most relevant as that's the faction these characters will serve. At least to begin with, I'm open to a defection plotline as we go.

Ghostfire Horizon - fantasy mech warfare

GLORY TO THE PEOPLE'S UNION OF KAER AND THE DEATHLESS CAUSE!

Centuries ago, the Heroes of the Revolution overthrew a theocratic tyrant and rejected the burgeoning bourgeois states of their neigbhours, founding the Glorious Necrocommunist People's Union of Kaer. The Necromancers of the Central Party assumed power, reorganized the country as a proletarian military state, and set about correcting the flaws of the old ways with brutal, merciless efficiency. Famine was solved by raising the dead as farm workers, the growing bureaucratic overhead addressed by ghosts as clerks, and the risk of counter-revolutionary capitalist degeneracy halted by oversight of the Commissariat.
Then the attentions of the Party turned towards the most immediate threat to the Revolution: the Vampire cult of neighbouring Kroms.

The king, prior to his overthrow, had been a puppet of the bloodsuckers, and what kind of creature more perfectly embodies individualistic exploitation of the common man than a Vampire? Worse, a Vampire that calls itself a god?
So began the long war against Kroms that turned the northern border into a nightmare landscape of artillery scars, magical fallout, and renegade bioweapons.

After a century of fighting, you had pushed the fiends back to their Iron Citadel - a great black tower rising high into the sky, beneath which their foul Mother of Darkness slept in anticpation of her apocalyptic rebirth.
To your shock and horror, the international community condemned you as genocides and demanded a halt to your proactive defense. They sent a foreign army of terrible power to crush your comrades and force an armistice. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Party acquiesced to this coercion. For a time.

This imperialist oppression is not to be tolerated. A new plan is underway; a revision of doctrine and weaponry guided by the deathless science of Necro-Tavronism, to develop a means to challenge the international order and fight back against their repression, and to finally destroy the Vampires and their minions for good.

You, brave comrades, are an experimental unit formed to test a new kind of weapon: Osteiodon - a necromechnical battle frame mounted with heavy weapons, able to traverse all terrain and adapt to changing battlefield conditions, protecting the pilot within its armoured shell, using bound ghosts to control subsystems and enhance the skills of the operator.

Soon begins your deployment to a remote and secret base for training, testing, and practice maneouvres in the Dead Marches that divide your nation from the Kromsians.
Be watchful, soldier - there is the enemy without, but also within; subfactions vying for control and prestige, infiltrators from outside, the constant threat of the secret police, and the pitiless gaze of the Commissar always sensitive to Reaction.

==========================================

This is a game in the Darkening Skies setting.
This RP will be for 4-6 players, outlined below.
The mechanics are easy enough to learn, a dice-pool system that's simple to use but has mechanical depth if you want to engage with it.
No prior experience with this game or tabletop games required. All skill levels welcome.
One post a week is ideal, once a month is acceptable.
No set post length - just post what you feel is necessary to move things along and satisfies you creatively.

Our cast must include:
Two mech pilots.
One Necromancer-engineer project lead.
One Commissar.

We can optionally fit:
The Necromancer's protegé.
One more pilot.
An experimental Revenant Soldier - a ghost bound into a humanoid necrotech robotic body built for combat.

Pirates of the Darkening Skies

<Snipped quote by Excession>

Why don't they like that?

@rush99999

Every Djuka ends up the exemplar of some field, and people give them a title like 'king of x'. Not every Djuka likes the implied rule and responsibility.
Zyeka, it's rumoured, was being groomed to succeed Imperus but rejected that in favour of healing people. Even now they sort of wander around semi-anonymously giving out medical care, refusing payment.
Another few years and they'll have a cult to rival Imperus' own.
One way that they're alike is that Imperus accepts, or even pursues, the mantle of rulership but famously hates being worshipped. This hasn't stopped the formation of two thriving cults to Imperus, one of which has interpreted some prehistoric scripture in such a way as to believe the highest act of devotion to Imperus is to try and slay Them. Every few months someone breaks into the audience chamber at the Ashen Palace with a gun or explosives or a magic spear and is promptly dogpiled by bodyguards.
One might imagine Zyeka preferred to avoid that kind of regard.

Pirates of the Darkening Skies

Little tidbit; there are currently 10 living Djukanim.

Imperus, natch.
Manadalthraxus, of course.
Alexander, King of the Iron Fist.
Great Healer Zyeka, also called Monarch of Healers though they don't like that at all.
Tristan, King of Assassins,
Amelia, Queen of Architects.
Yarrow, no title yet earned, reputedly an excellent artist.
Saradel, no title yet earned, known to be an excellent pilot.
Ventriss The Hermit, whereabouts unknown, infamous for trying to reject their heritage.
Eloise, Imperus' granddaughter, aged five.

Pirates of the Darkening Skies

Kira's Private Box

The attendant bows before speaking, but is visibly a touch nervous. Why, you wonder?
"Edvard is a Spriggan exile. An oddity. They fight with thorned whips growing from their own body and sap blood from their opponent. There is a rumour they have been modified by Lybar Desdemona right here in Kontina."

Adrian's ears cannot but perk at this. Cousin Desdemona is a minor legend in the House, a grim fable with an unhappy ending for everyone she meets. She's wanted by the Inquisition for a litany of crimes against sapience, but you most remember how she made grandmother cry. Your grandmother never cries, but when someone brought up Desdemona during a diplomatic visit her face darkened like you'd never seen before and she had to excuse herself.

"Tyesto is a young woman claiming to be a disciple of the Queen of Swords, and her skills are certainly impressive."
"She what?" Kira looks up from a plate of cloud scallops.
"Just so, captain Yrva," the attendant replies. "She will not elaborate on this claim."
"How old is this kid?" Kira asks, suddenly dour.
"She said 22, captain Yrva."
Kira barks a gunshot laugh.
"Arrogant lying little shit. Djuka Irene died nearly thirty years ago, there is no Queen of Swords anymore."
The attendant bows, saying nothing.