Excession

Through Darkening Skies - original weird fantasy sky pirate adventures

<Snipped quote by Excession>

I'll take you up on both of those offers.

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BTW, I notice that none of the sample characters have any languages listed in their skills. Are they all incapable of speaking/understanding any language or do all characters get one free language that doesn't need to be listed?

@rush99999

You get your native language for free at full fluency. I cut it from the samples because they were written for a convention and I was trying streamline a bit (I was in an evening slot so drunk players were a strong possibility).

Through Darkening Skies - original weird fantasy sky pirate adventures

Because I am bad at sleeping

Worldcap

At the geographical centre of the southern continent is a mushroom of immense size. It towers miles into the sky to rival the spires of the Stormlords that dot the lands beyond, an impossible structure born from a mastery of the magic arts that outmatches the human.

From the cap descends an energy field, a dome to protect the forest, the Awakened Wood that sprawls like a green sea to define the wheel of the Stormcircle. The forest and the Worldcap are older than old, elder even in the memory of the earliest known Scions of the Blood.

Around the stalk of the Worldcap is the mysterious city of the Crantiré. Immortal beings of living wood, they are few in number, but near every one is a powerful Magus - Heartwrights and Communers, for the most parts; Magi of Mind and Life.
As such their city, their technology, even the whole forest are made to some grand design. An immense living mechanism forged with Magic to unclear ends, where even the fauna are designed for purpose.

Beyond the city dwell the Elementals, humans imbued with mystic powers, traits of animals and nature. In contrast to the metropolitan Crantiré, the Elementals live in nomadic bands that thrive in symbiosis with the forest; they tend to the trees and the beasts, manage the flows of Magic through the woods, and reap the benefits in return. They regard the Crantiré as gods; it is generally understood the Crantiré think of them no differently than they do the birds or the wolves. A vital part of the engineered ecosystem, but not their equals. Despite this, the Elementals have never seen themselves as oppressed or derided, as they are most often left to their own devices and live comfortably enough. The ebb and flow of the Wood leads them into wars with each other, and suspiciously well-timed sicknesses keep their population within the right bounds to maintain the Wood without being able to challenge the Crantiré.

Several times in history, the Wood has sought to expand. It has cast immense seedpods into the world beyond and sent Elementals to guard them, to nurture them, sacred duties the Elementals have executed with a violence that has not endeared them to the rest of the world. Each time these excursions have been driven back, and by some secretive treaty after The Third Seed, Djuke Imperus was able to check the ambitions of the Crantiré.

The Wood remains a mystery, and a terror, to those born outside.

Sometimes you will find Crantiré defectors in the world, cast out for transgressions against orthodoxy or simply for being Dims - beings with no Magical power - that the Crantiré have no use for. Elementals who leave may be exiled, or seized by wanderlust, or decided they did not trust the sylvan gods of their home and their dictates.

Through Darkening Skies - original weird fantasy sky pirate adventures

Still getting a feel for things around here; trying to work out where to make an OOC thread, somewhere to talk character creation, that kinda stuff. So we can plot out more what folks want, how you know each other, set some goals.

In the interim; I appreciate if IC posts use the character name as a title and hyperlink to the character sheet for quick reference.
Strong personal character motives are great, even if those are 'make a fortune and retire comfortably'.
Anyone interested in being captain and/or owning an airship? Elsewise I'm going to indebt you to a Council Captain who will loan you a ship and make someone captain.

Through Darkening Skies - original weird fantasy sky pirate adventures

Not officially but humming will get you put on a watchlist

Through Darkening Skies - original weird fantasy sky pirate adventures

<Snipped quote by Excession>

Speaking of coherence, when you say 'Goblin receive 3 Attribute points per member' do you mean that Goblins get 18 extra Attribute points and lose three of those points every time a body dies?

@rush99999

After much consideration, current version will be:

Each member of a Goblin has Str 1 Dex 2 Fit 2, which each additional member contributing to a roll adding +1 up to a cap rasonable for the task at hand (6 Str is achievable if, for example, something is big enough for all six members to get a grip and lift it up, but they can't manipulate something hand-sized with that kind of strength).
You get 40XP to spend on Mental and Social Attributes, and any single member can benefit from those so you can multi-task.

I am not averse to you having a vehicle or perhaps a small mech.

Night Shift - a short horror RP

I hope I'm not too late to the party, I had an idea for a slightly more selfish character with some unsavory goals and motivations, like perhaps a fledgling dealer to go alongside our pothead security guard. Someone a little more self-centered and willing to throw someone else in harms way to secure their own safety.

@TaintedMushroom

As long as they have a reason to be at an isolated gas station for for... three hours, sounds good to me.
If you're in that's the three I need to roll the ball

Night Shift - a short horror RP

Let's see what you got.

@Draku69

Petey The Prompt

Pete Holmes

This is a pretty sweet gig. Sure, you have to order everything off Amazon and shit because the town has always been so small, but you just get to chill out by the radio all night, smoking. And serving customers, sometimes. Otherwise you can listen to all the prog you want, smoke all the doob you've got, and carefully chart the extent of Reptilian infiltration in the US government via their Illuminati puppets.
You've got a little grow operation in the storage shed, and Lottie doesn't know. She's kind of a stick in the mud. Anyway, this job doesn't pay so much, so you need that op to pay rent and take care of mom. Jerry is a pretty chill guy, even if his music is a bit heavy. Seems highly strung lately.
You've carefully lined your little service box with tinfoil to keep out any behaviour altering rays and there's a minifridge full of Dr. Pepper & Jack Daniels under your seat – it's all good in here.
When you're officially on break, rather than just technically, you like to go look at the stars – you can see them all so clearly out here. The best thing about living so far out. Your dad was an astronomer before cancer got him. Mom, well… you visit, but she doesn’t hide her disapproval easily. You send her money or buy her necessities every week.

Night Shift - a short horror RP

No worries. It's entirely your preference - if you want to see the sample I can share but feel free to do something entirely different.

If we get one more player, we can get started.

Night Shift - a short horror RP

There is certainly a lot to work with there. Now if I can get confirmation two other people are onboard I can start things up.

Through Darkening Skies - original weird fantasy sky pirate adventures

With two kinds of Trollkin this will probably be helpful, then.

Big lore dump

At the end of the world, on the southern shore of the ice wastes, lies the great city of Trollhaven. It is the home and only city of the Trollkin, who have never in their long history been inclined to venture far for long nor seize more lands.

At the heart of the metropolis is the High Fane, carved from ice and snow. A vast complex specially designed for acoustics where the great woolly Trolls dwell. Tall as two humans, with thick coats and large tusks, the Trolls live in contemplation of The Resounding Cry; the last syllable of the song their deity, Mother, sang to bring the world into being. Visitors to Trollhaven can hear the echoing trollsong from the Fane at all hours, said to be strangely comforting. The Trolls lead the Trollkin - spiritual guides, temporal adminstrators, a council of elders to discern the future of their people.

The rest of the city is a hive of activity, where the Orc children of the Trolls live their lives in upkeep of the city. Sturdy and lightly furred, Orcs are infamous to outsiders as lacking imagination, blunt and open - but such outsiders have never seen them in their element. Orcs mostly adore engineering and the city is a testament to their cooperation, pragmatism, and regimented thought. Everything is functional almost to a fault, straight and angular, efficiently built with a particular aesthetic bent provided by their commitment to amplifying the Song through the stucture of the city itself. While Trolls give the big-picture orders and deal with external powers, the Orcs accept delegation for running infrastructure, construction, maintenance. They are also the frontline soldiers of Trollhaven when they are forced to violence, an unbreakable line of riflemen and pikes. Were it not for their lower numbers they would be the most formidable military force this side of Great House Lezek. As it is, the Orcs ensure Trollhaven is a valuable and prickly trade partner, mining worldseeds and ores from the land beyond the city, devising new mechanisms and chemicals.

The Goblins are the last of the Trollkin but by no means least. As small as Ratfolk, each Goblin is a single mind in six bodies. This makes them excellent sailors and airship crew, and while they support Orcs as part of the labour force at home and adding an extra creative spark to their works, for centuries Goblins were the only Trollkin to rove beyond their home. It is said no explorers have seen as much of the world as Goblins.

Trollhaven does not use money. The people work always for the good of the whole, under the guidance of the Trolls. Orc quartermasters staunchly manage the food and materials of their districts to ensure there is enough for everyone. This does make Trollkin culture quite rigid - noncomformity is punished harshly by exile, and many Trollkin can barely survive cut off from their community. Those who do are eccentrics found around the Known World in odd professions. Their most strict tenets are twofold; neither Orcs nor Goblins may sing, for that is a sacred act only for Trolls, and to manifest the power of a Magus is to demonstrate disconnection from Mother. Both are punished by exile.

A single ward of Trollhaven called Quarantine is given over to visitors to the city. Foreigners are not permitted to enter the rest of the city and barely tolerated where they are, but the Trolls decided this was necessary for diplomacy. Thus Quarantine is filled with embassies, mercantile company offices, and a small tourist industry run by those who felt out of place everywhere else.

Trollhaven sells metalwork, firearms, gunpowder, worldseeds, and fossils to the outside world. They import primary materials, especially wood, and meat. Trolls are obligate carnivores and not so ascetic they are averse to sampling morsels from distant lands. The city doesn’t require trade too desperately but following a series of resource wars instigated by outsiders (and one holy war instigated by the Trolls), it was decided commerce was the best way to keep the peace.

Trollkin loyalists who leave home are often scholars and archeaologists, such as Trolls looking for traces of Mother or Orcs seeking to learn from foreign architecture. Trollkin exiles are often eccentrics or Magi; Trolls who cannot hear the Cry over the magic roiling in their soul, Orcs who shamed themselves serving as mercenaries, one-Goblin acappella bands on the run.