Brythwin Island Sessions 0-2 - The Landing - First Two Days

I haven't posted to the blog in nearly a month, which is not usual for me, but it's because I've been building a big dungeon campaign and, for the first time in years (and first ever for an OSR style game!), running it for some people from the phloxserver. 

As with the DEGRADER playtest, actually running systems that you've been spinning around in your head in the abstract does a lot of teaching very quickly. I'd like to do some reports as the game progresses, in order to better organise my thinking around what's working and what isn't. 

But first, the session report (the wonderful EcksianRaven, or 'Glaumring', has put up one of the own here):

The Swallows, a rag-tag crew of Baronial fixers only recently brought together by circumstance, arrive in the court of Petty Queen Gloran, and are charged with travelling to nearby Brythwin lake. Their mission is to put an end to the magical, perpetual storm that rages there, and to slay or drive off the monsters that have been emerging from it. 

Their captain is 'Little' Ganzorig, once a farmhand, now a holy man and spiritualist. 

His personal servant, and second in command, is 'Old' Leo, a veteran fighter and one of the Barony's ancient order of Stewards. 

Their cartographer Euphemia, a Captial Bravo, and a saint of the church in her rough way.

Their quartermaster, Ysolte, the Southern Mentat, who stands seven feet tall and grins horribly, with a brain like a computer and a head full of tumours; whose touch freezes men solid and whose blood runs clear, and burns like gasoline. 

His loyal Cat companion, CCC (Concupiscent Cannibal Constellations), the dream-walker. 

Many Deaths Adorn Her, 'The Duchess', queen of predators, one of the ancient race of Terror Birds. 

Maud Mercy Mandolin, companion and friend to the Duchess, a painter and a street brawler: a dangerous woman. 

Gwynnfain, questing Errant from the southern steppes, trusted with the terrible flamethrower that bears the name Sunset and Evening Star. 

His cousin Glaumring, the youth whose arms are titled Unencumbered by Presumption; a strange and ancient suit of pale metal, with a helm that banishes illusion and falsity. 

Professor December August, schooled in the pattern languages of the academies, friend to ancient and powerful entities. 

Xir Dog companion Harken, stalwart guardian and sweetheart. 

Jane Jansworth, a poet and professional fixer, a woman of quick wit and many talents.

The Mountaineer Foresight, one of the so-called God Warriors, whose feet and fists are death. 

Ymogen the Right Arm, of the reclusive Harpooner cult that makes their home on the Lantern Berth. 

SUN, most gentle animal, a white ape gambler, and bearer of the company colours. 

Lypolde the fighting man, all in black, deadly with the sling. 

Gerald, an elder, a chemist and a manservant both, responsible for keeping his companions in amphetamines, sedatives, and medicines. 

And finally, the company's fortune and their high spirits, Hyacinth the fairy. 

(class list here)

A list of worthies, truly! 

They chose for their requisition: two of the queen's mannequin soldiers, ten civilian attendants (including a smith and chemist), arms and armour from the royal armouries, and a mobile drug lab with equipment and reagents for several weeks use. They are aso given the following report on the dangers that they expect to face:

REPORT ON THE CURSE MEN, BY ONE WHO HAS FOUGHT THEM They attack in small group - five or six at a time. They appear to have once been humans, and you will hear them before you see them because they scream constantly: the screams are anguished and miserable. They do not appear to be able to speak, but they are very fast and very physically tough. They are not disciplined or organised, but they also do not flee, or even notice much when they are wounded. They fight with strange glass weapons - these blades are poisoned or cursed in some way. Those wounded by them waste away beneath the eyes, and none so-afflicted have yet healed of their own accord despite the care of physicians and treatment with medicine. The wasting happens slowly, and then very drastically, all at once. It appears that each wound suffered advances the illness (if such it is) a little more, until the tipping point. The curse is worst of all in the mind - the few survivors cut with the glass blades report a hideous buzzing noise that will not let them rest. 'Splitting' is the world they use; as if the head or mind was 'splitting'. Other than this, nothing is known. None have yet been captured, and none of the slain yet recovered.

Then they set out from the Glorani stronghold and travelled two days to the shore of the lake, where a barge waited to bring them and their supplies across.

Once inside the storm proper the Swallows find themselves needing to decide where to land. The ruins, which house unknown dangers, lie to the south, and the rest of the island is an overgrown, saturated, muddy bog after two weeks of rain. The boat is tossed about and endangered, so they quickly decide to land outside the ruins (which they mistrust) and slightly to the north, and put her to ground on one of the silt beds formed by the recent erosion. Ymogen the Harpooner, a capable sailor, ably oversees the dangerous landing. 

Finding that the ground close to shore is soft mud two feet deep, they send Duchess the terror bird on a scouting mission for firm ground. She makes use of her great speed to run clockwise along the cost of the small island, and quickly runs into the local feral cat population along the northern shore: first five or six, then fifteen, then forty or more, watching her through the rain with curious, predatory eyes. She has discovered their stronghold; and lets loose her terrifying hunting warcry - the cats spring into action and move to cut her off, so she retreats back to the group. On her return, the Swallows decide to move inland, dragging the barge and wagon with them, then send out more dedicated search parties to find a suitable location to pitch the main camp. 

After some scouting revealed a low hill close by the ruins, they drag the barge over to form a stable platform for the main tents, and set about clearing the brush around the camp with swords, and setting up their production facilities and defences. As they work they have a sighting of two large feral cats watching intently from the long grass, but after several minutes they disappear. 

Just as the sun is dying one of the attendants, Tyranox, who is busy clearing brush, lets out an anguished scream. Her leg is caught in the pincer of a huge white coconut crab, and sliced almost to the bone. The Swallows rush into action and quickly exterminate the five horrible marsh crustaceans, before tending to their wounded hireling. As their first night falls on the island they cook the crab meat and eat it, and sing songs, and post watches along the perimeter.

First Day

The Swallows wake, and Captain Ganzorig decides to begin the exploration of the ruins in earnest. He sets his watches and orders for the smiths and chemists, and then gather the first away party: 'Old' Leo, Deaths Adorn Her, Ysolte the Mentat, and the cat CCC.

Together they approach the ruins from the north. The Duchess once again begins a scouting mission, running between the ancient, crumbling buildings, and reports no movement. The ruins themselves are strange: crumbling white 'sheets' of stone divided into rough rooms and corridors, but falling into themselves, without any clear sense of purpose. In the rain they are failry rotting into the earth. 

Between these are three larger buildings, more sturdily made from red brick: one to the north, circular, three stories high; one centrally placed, largest of the three, two stories high, and a smaller one to the south.

In fact, the ruins look like...

...this. 1, 2, and 3 are red brick buildings, 4 represents squat concrete towers with bunker windows, 5 is an iron chute that disappears into darkness, and 6 denotes cast iron stairwells that likewise drop into the earth. The large unmarked sections are collapsing plasterboard rats' nests that once may have had recogniseable purpose, but now just look like (in the words of the duchess) mush and slop.

Ganzorig and party spend some hours going through several of the collapsing sections, and find little of value - some glass bottles, rot and mould, drains in the concrete floors. They try to force access into one of the concrete blocktowers but, having left their pry bars in camp, have no way of forcing the locked doors.  

Next they decide to enter the large northern circular brick building, and to their surprise the huge iron doors are unlocked. Inside they discover three floors of iron cages built around a central shaft, inside which is built an iron scaffold tower, with stairs, walkways that allow access to the cage-levels, and a strange and complicated looking mess of machinery at its top. The building is a panopticon. The floor is tiled, and sinks (beneath the tower) into a broad pit that drops away into darkness. Slumped against the walls they see two fifteen foot tall glass or crystal humanoid figures - statues? puppets? not clear. One of them has a weird iron box on its head, the other holds an enormous translucent spear. They appear totally stationary. 

Side plan of the Panopticon, not to scale. 

The swallows decide that they don't really want to fuck around with fifteen foot tall living statues (although they spend a long time discussing their worth as treasure if they do turn out to be genuinely inanimate), and leave this building be for now. 

They continue searching the surrounding buildings, and come across a series of crudely installed noisemakers rigged to wires in some of the collapsing buildings, and what appears to be the remains of a shooting range: glass bottles lined up in windows, smashed shards scattered about, bullet holes in the walls. As they emerge from the warrens they hear something else for the first time since they entered the ruins - the sounds of human screaming, off in the distance, but growing nearer. They have thirty or so seconds to get in formation before three naked, screaming humans run out of the rain at them. They hold long white knives, and they sound horrible and sad. 

The swallows make the fateful decision not to open fire with their firearms for fear that the noise will bring more of these things down on them. Ganz and Leo brace spears and draw steel, CCC melts into the nearby foliage, and Ysolte flanks to right of the group. When they reach 10ft distance, the Duchess fells one with a throw barb from her crown (she hurls it by flicking her stately head) - it goes in at the eye and kills instantly. The other two fall on Ganz - he gets his spear right through one, which doesn't seem to slow it down much, and Leo beats at it with the pommel of his rapier, and then many things happen simultaneously: Ganz takes a bad wound from one of the glass knives, and looks about to take another before Leo jumps in front of the blow - both are gashed open. CCC springs out of ambush and attacks with claws, Ysolte barrels into one and crushes it to pulp in a bear hug, and the duchess sprints up behind the last, wounded enemy and caves its skull in with her killing beak. 

Everything is over in a few seconds, and Ganz and Leo have both been cut up badly - if Leo hadn't put himself in harms way Ganz could well have died. Immediately their heads fill with a horrible buzzing noise, and they both lose a point of CON. Breathless, shaken, and bloodied, the Swallows decide to return to camp for the night. They take the bodies and knives with them, and after several minutes Ganz and Leo report that the terrible buzzing has ceased. The CON does not return. 

Back at camp, they set about experimenting with the knives. December August, the company academic, happens to have an entity in xir stable, Stygia, that specialises in curses. Stygia (who takes the form of long fingers and the whisper of pages in forgotten libraries) is summoned, and immediately gets excited about having a new curse to study. She gives them some pointers as to its nature, and bids them keep her in the loop. Then they rest. 

Second Day

On the second day the Swallows decide to trying to map the rest of the surface ruins, before attempting a foray down into the earth. Instead of the messing with the giant figures and the panopticon, they head south to reconnoitre the other two brick buildings. The group is mostly similar, but captain Ganz is shaken by his near death experience, and decides to spend the day taking the camp in hand - he is replaced by the sainted Bravo, Euphemia. 

The first thing they do is check the smallest of the brick buildings, which they discover is a church. Eight dead cats and two dead Curse Men are strung up around the exterior, and the building has been heavily barricaded and barred from the inside. Quick exploration of the roof discovers a hole in the tiling, and a ladder into the interior, where they find the remains of the camp left by the first expedition to Brythwin - many supplies, some weapons and ammunition, a sacred timeline painted over an older mural, two more curse knives, one shattered.

They decide to secure this site as a potential second camp/strong point, and move on to the surrounding area. They find little of interest in the nearby block towers (although one appear to have a tunnel leading down into blackness in the floor), and quickly decide to move on the last of the brick buildings yet to be explored: the large, centrally located one. The main door is barricaded shut and painted with a large 'T', but one of the iron doors has been bent out of shape creating a small crawl-way. The party quickly decide that this obvious entry is far too dangerous, and seek alternate routes. 

After some false starts, Euphemia uses her acrobatic skill to get onto the roof, and sees a that the building is a double story barracks or dormitory, built around a lush and vibrant central garden. The roof is partially glass to allow sunlight to feed to plants below, and one of the panels is missing. The party use ropes to climb up with her, and then rappel down, while Duchess runs frustrated circles around the exterior. The check out the garden, which is beautiful and peaceful and moon-like and full of strange fruit and berries (they take 2 INV with them), and then move to disassemble the barricade at the entrance to let the bird in. They find a nasty like barded-wire cage trap around the crawl point at the entry, as well as a thick, weird-smelling, vaseline-like goo on the floor, which they wisely decide not to touch.

A quick whip around the remaining interior spaces reveals some small human footprints in the ash of a fireplace, and 2 plastic rain ponchos hung up on a wall, which are essentially magical artefacts to Baronials, and which represent the first genuine treasure found during this game. They explore enough of the interior that they get the map, which looks like this:

Barracks, ground and first floors. 

The only space not yet explored is 6, which when they enter appears to be some sort of tiled kitchen area. All of the heavy iron surfaces, implements, and stoves have been piled up in a haphazard pile of sharp metal along the eastern wall, which Euphemia immediately decides to pick through, to see if it hides anything. Leo wisely suggests that she tie a rope to herself in case of trouble. As she makes her way across the pile, she realises that the ground beneath it, and some of the iron itself, have been slathered with the same odd-smelling vaseline stuff that they found at the entrance - she puts her hand on it, but makes her CON save against whatever it is, which is to say that her head swims a bit but she basically retains her awareness. She also hears the softest movement from just in front of her, behind the final overturn table. Overcome with curiosity, she climbs further, only to see: a small tunnel leading back and down into the earth; two red eyes but human-looking eyes; the flame of a tallow lantern, thrown at the ground beneath her. 

WHOOOOMP. The whole pile goes up explosively, and Euphemia is immediately reduced to 0hp in the flames. She is quickly yanked to safety by her friends, but the three petrol boms she was carrying have also ignited - Leo tries to draw out the burning rags and throw them away but as he attempts this one of the bottle shatters on him, nearly setting him alight as well. 

Thick black smoke, with a strange and bitter smell (Ysolte the Mentat detects potent hallucinogens in the smoke), starts to fill the room. They consistently make their CON saves against this, and retreat out of the building post-haste. Euphemia is on her feet, but barely, and they decide to cut their losses and retreat back to the camp. 

The deposit the fruit and the strange ponchos in the war chest, which awards them their first XP of the game! 540 all told, split five ways. 

That night they hatch many schemes for dealing with the hated 'vaseline gnome', and also perform some experiments on the curse knives that they have recovered: it seems that shattering the knife does not disperse the buzzing noise from the glass, but melting it down appears to. 

All bed down for another night on Brythwin, and, now that the surface has been conclusively mapped, a descent into the unknown beneath...

Ysolte, the Southern Mentat

Death Adorn Her, 'The Duchess', Terror Bird

'Little' Ganzorig, Little Saint and Elf Friend

'Old' Leo, Fighter and Steward

Euphemia the Ugly, Capital Bravo and Little Saint

CCC, Cat

SUN, Gentle Animal, White Ape

 

Their Submission Only Shames the Victor - Campaign Primer

Steamboat in a Storm, Turner, 1841

Brythwin Island

Petty Queen Gloran is a pale, cruel-faced woman, about fifty years old, strong willed and sharp-minded. She wears pearls, rubies, opals, lead, and glass. Her colours are black and red. She hates the capital, and hates the Baroness. 

Gloran has hired you and your companions to investigate nearby Brythwin Island, which two weeks ago was enveloped in an unnatural and apparently perpetual storm of great intensity. Horrible things have been emerging from this tumult and killing people in the surrounding region. The locals are calling them Curse Men, and they are, apparently, something like demons. 

Details are currently not known. The first team of fixers she sent to investigate have not returned, and she does not want to risk sending in house troops without some idea of what she's walking them into. 

Your missions, should you choose to accept them, are:

• To discover the source of the unnatural storm, and if possible destroy or neutralise it. 
• To discover the source of the Curse Men, and if possible destroy or neutralise it.
• Failing that, to get word back to her with as much information as possible about the nature of the disturbance on the isle. 

She offers a reward of 25k silver for each of the first two, and 5k for the third. 

The island in known to house strange ruins, originally built by one of the ancient, pre-Old Capital Baronial kingdoms. Before the storm came it was deserted and uninhabited save for the local feral cat clans. The name Brythwin is known to have once meant 'castle of light', or maybe 'castle of heaven', in a language now long-extinct. 

The Journey

Two days by foot, and then a barge across the lake. The sky looks scrubbed clean in the mornings, and the sun is pale and beautiful. It is chill this time of year, but very bright. 

You have with you, in addition to anything given by your class:

• 1000 rations, packed such that they will not spoil. Oil, coffee, salt, eggs, sugar, dried fruit, salt meat, and other luxuries to last two weeks - after these run out, this store will count as iron rations unless you can find some other way to supplement it. 
• 150 torches, 6 oil lanterns, 50 INV of lamp oil. 
• 50 doses of stimulants, 50 doses of sedatives, 5 bottles of white alcohol. 
• The necessaries for making camp: tents and bedrolls, pots and pans, soap and incense. A writ of passage and a banner that proclaims you as the queen's men and women. 
• Basic tools: 2 crowbars, 2 sledgehammers, 5 buckets, 5 hammers, 5 shovels, 1000ft of rope.
• A pack mule and cart, laden with your gear.  

In addition to these essentials, you may choose x of the following options, where x = 2 + the group's highest CHAR mod. Any of these (with two obvious exceptions) can be taken more than once, and the 'essential' options listed above may also be chosen again, at the cost of one of your additional picks.  

• Medicine: 50 doses of Prophylactics, 50 doses of Painkillers, 10 doses of Curatives, 500 doses of Immune Boosters. 
• Specialist Kit: 2 iron files, 2 long-handled bolt cutters, 20 climbing spikes, 5 hand mirrors, 5 vials of acid, 5 vials of petroleum, 5 vials of holy water. 
• Whatever mundane armour or weapons you want from the royal armouries, true for the entire party, up to one set of armour and two weapons (or a weapon and a shield) per person. 20 pieces of ammunition for any ranged weapons. All in addition to your class gear. 
• 10 civilian attendants, who will not follow you underground, or fight in combat. Two of these can be trained specialists (blacksmiths, carpenters, etc.) of your choosing, with all tools necessary for their work - these two specialists can also be men-at-arms (HD1+1, medium weapon, chain, shield) who will fight and adventure with you. 
• 1 of the Queen's personal retainers: loyal, courageous NPCs with character levels. Roll on a table below for each that you pick. If anyone in your party has a CHAR mod of +2 or better, you may modify the roll up or down 1 at your option. All options not picked to accompany the PC party at campaign start will be retroactively declared to have departed in the first, vanished expedition. 
• Histories of Brythwin Island. There has not been time for you to take proper notes of all of this before you leave, but the Queen might be persuaded to let you pack these tomes and old maps with you, to aid in your undertaking. She will want a sincere promise that they will be returned unharmed. In practical game terms, a collection of lore snippets, rumours, incomplete maps, and contested histories of the island you're about to travel to. 
• The Glorani familial heirloom sword, THIS WAY OUT, a huge, black heavy runeblade of ill favour and dark repute. This option will cost two picks on this table (which represents whoever gets to carry it actively charming and ingratiating themselves with her majesty before you leave), and its gifting will mark your party as the Queen's personal executors, not mere employees. THIS WAY OUT has not been wielded in combat in a generation, and its properties are no longer well understood, but in the family histories it was said to steal the souls of those that it slew, and use them to fuel ever greater feats of carnage. THIS WAY OUT comes with a suit of ornate black plate called the Mournful Harness, which you can ask the armourers adjust to your frame if you wish - wearing it will mark you as a Glorani Champion. 
• Anything else you might reasonably request.

Queen Gloran, holding THIS WAY OUT

Glorani Retainers

1. Belaphon and Selinae, Murderers. Two mannequin soldiers, who will follow verbal instruction dispassionately and to the letter. A gift to the Queen from one of her noble friends years ago; they have since given good service. Belaphon is made from iron, Selinae is made from cloth. 
2. Charlie. A rising star in the Queen's staff, known as a competent, ambitious, and withdrawn young man. Good with a sword, but more valuable to his employer for his considered and discreet counsel. Wears fashionable clothing and a neatly trimmed black beard, and carries a pistol, buckler, and sabre. 
3. Executioner Smaug. An advocate for modern and enlightened judicial execution practice, which means that she is a professional chemist with the knowhow to produce high-quality poisons that have a similar effect to a lethal injection. Separately, known to be a hobbyist shooter and a crack shot with a musket. Comes with a mobile chemistry setup and limited reagents. 
4. Advisor Cylon. The Queen's court academic, a sociopath by reputation. Does not wear any makeup or jewellery, which decidedly others her in Baronial company. Nasty rumours about a chronic illness kept well-hidden. Trained as a historian, and keeps a stable of entities myopically focused on killing and maiming things in horrible ways - also wears a brace of pistols. 
5. Golgotha. A trained war hound of frightening size and ferocity. Grey coat, looks a bit like a borzoi with a lot more muscle - comes up to the shoulder on most adults. Exceptionally well trained, loyal, and intelligent, and extremely dangerous in a fight.
6. Dame the Vivisector. A friendly, chatty, and eccentric older woman who wears plate armour everywhere, known especially for her distinctive and terrifying Vorpal Shears. She is, apparently, from the nobility, but no one knows where her estates are. Queen Gloran treats her with extreme affection, almost like family, and the Dame treats everyone, including the queen, like a beloved and slightly exasperating grandchild. Her reputation is for insane bravery and viciousness bordering on sadism. 

Player Rules and Expectation Management

Barony rules unless specified (which are, of course, mostly G24 rules). 

Initiative is procedural, not rolled for. Reach weapons go first (they are controlling the terms of the engagement), and initiative proceeds in order of weapon reach. Inside this rubric, PCs go before monsters. Ie Orcs with spears go before PCs with swords, but the Fighter with a polearm goes before the orcs. Orcs with swords go after the PCs with swords. The PC with the knife goes last. 

Reach is not strictly codified, and is adjudicated 'as makes sense', depending on the weapon. This is probably not going to be worked out at the level of, say, individual medium swords (my estoc goes before your sabre or whatever) - that's too greebly. A heavy great sword longer than a medium straight sword? Yes. A medium sword described in x way instead of y way to give it the reach advantage over another medium sword? Probably not. If ever in doubt, all DM rulings are final. 

Long weapons roll attacks with disadvantage in cramped confines - in very bad conditions (crawling, squeezing through gaps) normal medium weapons might as well. A dagger or similar will never roll with disadvantage because of the environment. 

Typically this will mean that heavy weapons strike first, because typically these have a longer reach, but there will be all manner of exceptions to this (a medium or even a light spear might have reach on a medium sword, a monster's claws that hit as heavy weapons might strike after a medium mace, and so forth). Surprise rounds ignore these rules - the whole side acting with surprise simply gets a full round of attacks with whatever they are carrying.

Dual-wielding with a light weapon in your off-hand gets you +1 to hit with your main-hand weapon, and +1 AC. 

Weapon degradation is tweaked to the following: every weapon and piece of gear rolls a d6 at the end of each day of adventuring as long as it was used at least once. You get -1 to this roll per terrible, unwise thing you did with it (anything it's not built for), and on a 1 or lower, the equipment is damaged. If it was already damaged, it breaks and is lost. Repairing damaged gear is possible (but not broken/lost gear) if you have the skillset, tools, and spare time, and most looted gear will already be damaged. 

Armour and shields are harder wearing, and typically only damaged by acid and similar. 

Class list here. Blank Character Sheet here. 

Everyone starts with two templates, which means that your starting HP is 6+CON, or 2d6+CON, whichever is higher. Baronial humans can multiclass freely between the Baronial classes at character creation.

If you die, you probably remain dead. You might find a limited number replacement characters inside the dungeon, which might give the group limited 'respawns' in situ, but actual reinforcements will have to wait for a hypothetical second party arriving from Queen Gloran, the timeframe of which is by her royal fiat.

Since this is technically a playtest, the first character sheets submitted for each of the classes will be allowed to roll on a special hidden curios list. 

The game can have as many players as are interested - this is the fixer group of mercenaries hired in the first instance. Actual delves will be limited to (probably) four or five people at a time, because I haven't run games in a while and get mental overwhelm quite easily. As the dungeon progresses this may increase. 

Asynch chatting and other stuff can happen in the base camp in the public server; delves will be in real time. 

XP is awarded 1 to 1 (silver standard) for loot (coins, gems, treasure) deposited in the company war chest, and is divided evenly among surviving members of a delve. Saleable goods including art count for half their value, unless sold in town. XP might also be distributed for other achievements by DM fiat. Multi-classing after character creation will be difficult without access to specialists. 

Third template is 800xp, fourth is 1600xp (first is 200, second is 400, if that ever becomes relevant). 

Expect: 

• A small megadungon, with a focus on dungeoneering, resource management, and combat. Very little, if any, social and domain stuff. 
• Relatively high lethality I think?
• Some light and enjoyable scrambling of Barony lore :)  

Northern Steppe Encounters

 

Fleshing out a region that is still weirdly un-fleshed-out. 

On the northern steppe you may encounter:

Nomad Houses

A 'house', 'family', or 'clan' - terms the nomads use interchangeably. Northern nomad houses are universally mobile horse riding pastoralists, and they ride in extended family groupings. The largest houses are very large, some up to ten or fifteen thousand, but they only very rarely ride together to preserve grazing land. More usually, a group of nomads will be between fifty and two hundred, made up of kin groups, and presided over by an influential patriarch or matriarch. Every nomad rider has personal loyalty to their immediate family and to their larger house, and warriors, traders, and diplomats will wear the flag-capes of both to signal their political positioning and lineage to others. 

Houses are known by the livestock that they keep; either cattle, dogs, or horses. All nomads ride horses, but not all are 'horse houses'. Nomad marriages are typically arranged between houses of different kinds, and each has their associated stereotyped character: cattle people are wealthy, proud, hospitable, and warlike; dog people are practical, clever, aloof, obsessive, sometimes underhanded, and make bad enemies; horse people are charming, mercantile, physically attractive, gregarious, sly, and impossible to lie to. 

The nomad houses administer their territories and sometimes engage in limited feuds and border conflicts, but the steppe is currently in a period of relative stability, plenty, and peace. Many Baronials hold ancestral memories of terrible wars against their neighbours, but in the present day trade and cultural exchange are flourishing.

A nomad house will be composed of between fifty and two hundred adult riders, all of whom are capable fighters and especially practiced with the bow. They will be lead by family heads, who each have personal ties of allegiance (often via marriage) to the patriarch or matriarch of the house. The house head will be wealthy, and will keep a retinue of picked troops, who form an armoured and professional corps of fighters around which the rest of the house can organise in times of trouble. If the house produces any Errants, they will typically be outfitted by the largesse of the house head, and more often than not this means that only errants of aristocratic heritage are gifted the star weapons that they are so closely associated with.  

Nomad Rider

HD1, medium cross-hilted straight sword and composite bow, 50/50 unarmoured or light armour, sun goggles, movement: as human, disposition: typically clear-thinking, light hearted, gregarious, and claustrophobic. 

Will personally own two horses, and have access to more via the family's herd.

1 in 3 Riders will be accompanied by a Steppe Hound, who are considered part of the family. 

Steppe Hound

HD1, bite as medium weapon, unarmoured, speed: twice human, disposition: well-trained and well-loved companion animal. Will guard the bodies of downed Nomads to the death.  

If a Hound moves and attack on the same turn their target must test STR or be knocked prone. 

Nomad House Troops

As Nomad Rider, but HD1+1 and wearing medium armour. House troops are elites, and used to preferential treatment. They are easy to offend, and have a keenly developed sense of personal and house dignity. They wear the flag capes of their houses and kin groups, just like errants do.

Patriarch/Matriarch

As Nomad Rider but with between 2 and 4 HD, depending on seniority. Patriarchs and matriarchs are rulers of their territories, and administer these by personal fiat. They are used to being deferred to, and treated with complete obedience and respect. Patriarchs and matriarchs often quested as errants in their youth - 50/50 that they still have access a single star weapon that they used back then. It is considered a mark of prestige and shrewd political acumen to own star weapons that you no longer need to use. 

House Champions

Sometimes, a young errant will not get wisdom on their travels, or will find and preach a wisdom that is incompatible with the expectations of steppe adults: marriage, family, husbandry, and trade. These individuals are treated with a wary type of respect in their clans, and given the title 'champion'. They symbolically 'marry death', a ceremony that involves being buried in the earth for a day and a night, and are often outfitted with more star weapons, at great expense, by the family head. Steppe champions are extremely dangerous personal fighters, and typically become fixers, instructors, and war advisors (and even assassins) to their houses. 

Champions occupy a strange social position at the fringes of their society, and are significantly freed from many of the usual expectations of propriety. Young steppe fighters, from many different houses, are routinely apprenticed to famous champions to learn marksmanship, swordplay, and strategy, and the friendships, crushes, and rivalries of these formative years often go on to define the character of each fresh generation of riders. Enough fall in love with their tutors that social customs and allowances have developed around the relation - something between Greek pederasty and The Secret History - and this is seen as an appropriate, pre-marital sexual and romantic tutelage that unfolds comfortably outside the normal channels. 

Stat House Champions as Patriarch/Matriarchs, who additionally carry d3 star weapons. They are unbreakable, and roll to hit at +1 over what their HD would indicate. Champions are often highly eccentric, superstitious, and fey-minded. They might crossdress, or wear expensive and eye-catching foreign clothing and cosmetics. They are generally treated more like ghosts or spirits than people by the rest of their house, and most of them are used to this and not given to socialising much. A House Champion will nearly always have a companion animal, with even chances of a dog (use the Hound entry above), cat, or raptor bird.

Cats are HD1, have claws as light weapons, unarmoured, speed: twice human, disposition: catty. They move silently, can disappear in grass or shadow, and deal an additional d8 damage from ambush. 

Raptor Birds have 1hp, talons beak as light weapons, unarmoured, flight: as hawk, disposition: proud, swift hunters. They perch on the shoulder when not 'in use'. 

Finally, a House Champion has a 50/50 chance of being accompanied by 2d4 Youngbloods - use the the Steppe Rider stats above. If a Youngblood is killed in battle, d3-1 other Youngbloods (determined randomly) had a crush on them, and will now fight to the death. If the Champion is killed, this is instead d6 Youngbloods. 

Reapers

They call themselves Reapers because they think it sounds intimidating - most people just call them bandits, or scalping, murdering bastards. Reapers are a border phenomenon: Baronials who have grown up near the nomad territories, and who have adopted some of their ways and developed a strange hybrid culture focused on terror raiding and banditry. Reapers are still recognisably Baronials; they wear tattered and faded finery in the fashions of the capital, and make use of firearms and heavy armour where the nomads would use bows. They ride steppe horses, and ride very well, which is rare in the Barony proper, where heavy infantry are the socially-lauded troop type. Reapers are a perennial thorn in the side of both societies, and the nomads will often work with more settled Baronials to root them out and kill them. 

Reapers have developed a style of raiding that is significantly focused on terror and psychological warfare. They are famous for scalping, mutilating, and torturing captured foes, and for dumping the remains in uncovered mass graves about the border. Reaper bands are widely reviled, but successful groups can become powerful regional players, and there are often unspoken agreements between these successful raider-captains and their neighbours. Reapers make excellent deniable assets if you want to persecute your neighbours without playing hand too obviously. 

There are many romantic and bawdy tales of young Baronials fleeing poverty, debt, or the law by joining bands of Reapers, making masses of coin murdering on the steppe, and retuning home in triumph. The moral instruction in these tales tends to depend on the location of the Baronials telling them - more romantic further north, and less (and more concerned with illustrating the inevitability of their capture and execution) in the south.

Reapers

HD1, medium sabre or warhammer, light armour, sun goggles, movement: human, disposition: mad max raiders. Reapers ride good quality steppe horses, and will usually own two of them each. 1 in 3 carry a pistol, musket, or blunderbuss. 

Reapers who roll max HP are Baronial ex-mercenaries: they have HD1+1, are dressed in heavy armour, carry shields, and always hold firearms. 

All Reapers wear as much jewellery and expensive clothing as they can, and if the PCs loot their bodies after a confrontation they will find d3*10s worth of finery and cosmetics on each corpse. These goods are worth double in the north of the Barony, as long as you can convince the seller that they are authentic 'Reaper wear'. 

Smiths and Smith Houses

Smithing is a sacred profession for the nomads, and smiths are an exception to all of their usual customs. The Star Smiths are the most famous and celebrated, but all metalworking stems from their art, and brings its practitioners into contact with the divine. 

Nomad swords are some of the best in the world - the characteristic long, straight blade and cross guard are markers of quality everywhere. Most nomad swords are simply well made medium straight swords, but a masterwork made from a celebrated smith might be treated as a +1 weapon. Smiths never sell these weapons for money - you will need to get into nonspecific and potentially lifelong debt with them, or cause them to become so to you, to get access to them. 

All smiths live in a Smith House, which is traditionally built atop a mine or the site of a meteor impact. A Smith House is at once a fortification, holy site, demilitarised zone, and gaming house for other nomads, and smiths usually become vastly more wealthy from the patronage of their houses than the selling of their worked goods. Nomad maps note only three types of fixture dotted through the within the broad political territories: watering holes and rivers, burial grounds, including those of past civilisations, and Smith Houses. 

A typical Smith House will look, to a Baronial, like an extremely wealthy walled town. Mostly they are built in local, un-mortared stone - some import timber framing as a signifier of their status. Some Houses are built up enough within their walls that they become a single, massive, continuous building, subdivided into vast guest halls, gaming rooms, kitchens, forges, waterways, gardens, and kitchens. The wealthier the smith, the more prestigious their House - the houses of the Star Smiths are great and beautiful fortifications that rival those of the Baronial Petty Nobility. 

All smiths require access to a flowing waterway, and good quality fuel. Established Houses will already have both in ready supply, but should one of the other be compromised, a smith will pay extremely handsomely to have access reestablished. 

Smiths also keep apprentices; young nomads whose eyes are said to reflect the stars. Unlike the holy people of the ice clans in the south, this does not appear to be literally true, and refers to a specific sort of ungrounded and astral inclination in thought. Apprentice smiths work with mechanisms and firearms, competing to produce 'graduation pieces', and be selected for dream tutelage by the Star Smiths. If called on to defend the House, apprentices can do surprising damage with their strange contraptions. 

Stat smiths as commoners who possess a nearly supernatural facility with the metal that they work. Star Smiths are typically found seated in front of pools of still water, deep in dreaming meditation. They cannot be awoken from these trances, to the point that you can kill them, carve them up, etc. without a response. Killing a Star Smith with earn you the particular ire of a specific Star Person. 

Apprentices are statted as Nomad Riders without any equipment save their graduation piece. A graduation piece is a +1 pistol, musket, or blunderbuss with one of the following:

1. Repeating. Can be fired up to three times per attack action, with a -1 to hit per shot already taken that turn. 
2. Silenced. Makes a soft thwwppp sound when fired. The noise won't draw attention.
3. Sighted. If the firer does not move this turn, the star weapon rolls to hit at +1. If they spend a whole turn aiming with it, and don't move on their next turn, then it receives +4 to hit and a +1 expanded crit range that turn. 

In addition: Ghost Stories

Ox Men, Horse Men, Dog Men

N.B. 'Men' here is simply what they are known as, there are plenty of female Ox, Dog, and Horse Men. 

Tall, thin giants who hunt the peripheries and burial grounds of the nomad clans. They are said to live where horses cannot go: in stinking sumps, amidst sharp stony shale cliffs, in caves and pits. They have long fingers and skin like stone. They eat people; especially they eat lost people, or riders who rode their horses to death, or the wounded from battlefields. They are always watching and waiting for the moment to come loping out of the darkness grinning with the pleasure of imagining the meal to come. 

The nomads call them ghosts or spirits or demons or ghouls. 

Steppe Ghost

HD4, x2 long fingered, grasping hands as heavy weapons (If both hit, you are additionally grappled, and take an additional d6 strangulation damage per turn you remain so), armour: as chain, speed: twice human, disposition: lazy, smiling, calculating, utterly without pity. 

Ox Men are proud, bullying, bellicose. They have golden horns growing from their foreheads, and erect golden phalluses between their legs, including females. They are unbreakable, and deal fear damage equal to regular damage when they attack. Any currency that has been owned by an Ox Man is tainted and cursed: you roll on the death and dismemberment table with disadvantage while you carry it, and can only be rid of it by spending it, which, naturally, passes on the curse. Ox Men keep vast hordes of looted gold.  

Dog Men are sly and cruel. They run and stalk in total silence, but the alert can always hear the wet sounds that their mouths make as they salivate at though of devouring you. A Dog Man can eat a human corpse in thirty seconds, and will heal to full HP if allowed to do so. They always appear in groups of at least 2d2. Their shit is a deadly poison, and smells so bad that it can stun you if you have less than 10 CON; CON save resists. 

Horse Men are social and personable, though no less dangerous or sociopathic - you can bargain with horse men if you have something they want. They will appear, rarely, leading bands of desperate outlaws in terrible campaigns of wanton slaughter and abandon, they even occasionally come to administer small human settlements. Horse Men can run all day, as fast as their namesake can gallop, without tiring. They also deal quadruple damage instead of double on crits, which represents them kicking your head smoove off. 

Deep Time Nightmares

The further into the steppe interior that you travel, the older and stranger become its hauntings. 

Oliphant Men

Oliphants were an ancient race who fought against the Bird Kings, and who refused alliance with early humans, considering them weak and pitiable. They were exterminated in totality by their foes, and their bones can now be found packing out whole strata of the chemical burials. 

Oliphant Men are terrible to look upon, crowned with both wisdom and kingly wrath. They are HD6, and fight with huge bronze spears (gigantic weapons) which can fire burning beams by reflecting the light of the sun (as longbow +1, radiation damage, only works in bright sunlight). When they speak, humans hear it as a Command, and must save CHAR to resist the compulsion to obey. 

Oliphant Men must be actively disinterred from their chemical burials. They have the disposition of mummies. 

Bird Men

Whence came they? And how made? None now know. The most feared and bloodthirsty spirits of the steppe, and terrible to look upon. Tall, thin, proud, vengeful. It is not known if they are birds-become-men, or men who have taken some aspect of death into themselves, and changed. Bird Men fight with ripping talons (as 2x heavy weapons) in place of hands, and terrible great beaks shod in bronze, long and thin like that of a heron. The beak will only ever be used to kill humans, and counts as a vorpal gigantic weapon. If it kills someone, their soul is sucked and slurped messily out of their skull. 

Bird Men appear saturated with gore and the leavings of carrion. If you meet their eyes you must save CHAR or be paralysed with terror. Each is utterly, inexpressibly insane. They each wear d3*100s worth of hammered bronze jewellery about their neck and face. If you run from them they will always catch you. Behind them you can hear the din and clash and roar of terrible battle, and smell its stench. There are swamps in the deeper steppe where the very earth still reeks with poisoned blood and offal from the ancient wars against the Lords of the Universe. Bird Men are said to haunt these places.

Serpent Men

Serpent Men look like people. You will know what they are when they grasp you and you feel their hideous, bone-snapping strength. Then you will really see them. 

Serpent Men know things about you and the people that you love, and will shout the most hideous obscenities, and the most private intimacies. This is unbelievably demoralising for most people - unless your ears are stopped up with wax or similar you take d10 fear damage each turn you fight a Serpent Man.

The words of a Serpent Man expose you to a random disease. This is true whether you hear them directly, or read their writing, or listen to a recording or an echo: the words of a Serpent Man always carry contagion.  

The Ice Clans

 

The Southern Nomads inhabit the steppe country that girds the end of the world. Beyond their territories lie blasted polar wastes: black rock, white snow, blue ice, and a sun that drives people mad.  

There are people who live there, and to their northern brethren they are holy people, closer to the sky and the stars than any other. 

They say that if you look into their eyes you can see, buried deep within, the gigantic wheeling of the constellations, the glittering arcs of cosmic bodies, the frozen void space that is the home of the sacred progenitors of cognition. 

The men and women of the Ice Clans are tall and rangy. They eat only meat and blubber, and they do not work metal, though some will carry knives and other steel and iron necessaries traded with their northern neighbours. They are stereotyped as direct, simple minded, and prone to casual violence. Their reputation with other nomads is something like that of the Mountaineers to the Baronials -  simple, honest, pious, wrathful, fey. 

Trepanning is nearly universal, and cannibalism is widely practiced - the Ice Clans take a equivocal stance to meat and sustenance. When they raid they fight with axes, picks, and bows. To pursue them onto the wastes is death. 

In game, stat Ice Clans as Southern Nomads with HD1+1, and access to light armour at best (no shields). All members of an Ice Clan band will be trepanned, and as such will have access to a single gift from this list. 

Sky-Gazers

A strange type of holy person, solitary and detached even by the standards of the southerners. Sky-Gazers move from clan to clan on vast circular pilgrimages across the ice. Each walks the orbit of a celestial body, whose interests they claim to represent on the terrestrial surface. Sky-Gazers speak rarely, and when they do it is usually in declamatory hate-poetry against sentient life. The Ice Clans treat them with reverence and fear, and provide them with food and shelter during their endless elliptical wandering. 

Sky-Gazers are conduits, like Mentats. Unlike Mentats, who maintain a degree of autonomy, a Sky-Gazer is nearly literally instrumentalised by the power that they serve. The Star People can use a Sky-Gazer's eyes to look out into our world, from a human point of reference. The Star People mostly have no need for or interest in the vision mechanics of a human, but they can hijack Star-Gazers to use like camera puppets to facilitate this when they wish to. 

Unlike the frightening but mostly incidental contact that most nomads have with the Star People, a Sky-Gazer can expose you to their terrible vision-consciousness directly. 

In game terms, a Sky-Gazer is an Ice Clansman or Clanswoman with a gaze attack that deals 2d10 psychic damage to a single creature that they can see, or d6 psychic damage to everything they can see. 

Unlike most gaze attacks, blinding yourself, closing your eyes, and using mirrors as reflectors has no effect. The 'gaze' is actually just a video camera feed to the being that is causing the damage, and that being does not give a shit about mirrors, or whether you can see it. 

The bodies of those slain in this manner disappear.

The eyeballs of a Sky-Gazer have strange properties. If you place them inside the sockets of a corpse, they will 'beam' the last things that the corpse saw in reverse, from from moment of its death, like a projector. Like a projector, this is useless if you don't have a surface to project onto, and it can also be used as a bright, directional light source. The video feed will play backwards for the exact amount of time since the Sky-Gazer's eyes were removed from their head.

If you implant a Sky-Gazer's eyes into a living body, they immediately become a feral ghoul-like thing bent on the destruction of all sentient life. If you do this to a PC, they immediately become an insane and dangerous NPC and their player must roll a new character. The Southern Nomads call these things devils or abominations. The hostility of the astral minds must be channelled through its appropriate agents - when the Gazers are slain and their eyes taken, it is only right that punishment be visited on those responsible. 

An Abomination is HD2+1 (or the HD they had in life, whichever is higher), x2 hands-like-claws as light weapons that deal cold damage, unarmoured but takes -1 damage from weapons, movement: human, disposition: clever and motivated serial killer. 

They constantly intone hate poetry in the language of the stars. They are unbreakable, and impossible to reason with. Northern Nomads kill them on sight, but Southerners and Ice Clans will instead attempt to restrain and 'keep' them as honoured guests. 

What this usually means is a gagged and bound ghoul-thing propped at the head of the communal table, given the choicest cuts and the best liquor, which it will not be able to touch, much less eat, and everybody present trying their best to avoid looking at its terrible, straining, bulging face. 

Stairs to the Sky

When the nighted heavens are draped in coloured fire it is said that one might find a stairway up into the strange cities and territories that can sometimes be seen behind the shimmering curtains of light. The stairways are made of glass or ice or starlight - the stories differ. They will deliver you into a Dreamland utterly unlike the one you know. Travel up into and then back from these strange passages is how Sky-Gazers are made. Many young, pious nomads go in search of them, and many are the frozen corpses of those searchers littering the ice floes. 

Mobile Fortresses

A persistent myth in the Southern territories. The Mobile Fortresses are said to be built from star metal, and excavated from solid core ice over hundreds of years by chosen Ice Clans. Those who are able to excavate them after decades and centuries of labour are said to be biding their time, waiting for the end of the world, which they will bring about with their terrible engines. 

Mobile Fortresses might have legs, tracks, they might fly, they might burrow beneath the earth. There are a hundred different stories. They are built from strange iridescent metal, and they effect subtle changes on their inhabitants, who grow taller, more slender, more terrible and more beautiful. 

None can truthfully claim to have seen one.

A Mobile Fortress is a dungeon like any other, and must be navigated like one. It will always have a heart and a brain (usually in rooms close to the centre), and if either are destroyed it will be 'killed'. You might consider using this dungeon as a template that can be reskinned. 

A Mobile Fortress is inhabited by Star Children, which are what remains of Ice Clans whose ancestors spent centuries in the holy work of excavation by hand.

Star Children are long limbed, slender, flexible, vibrating, with strange reflective skin and terrible eyes and faces. They are said to be beautiful, and they are said to be monsters, perversions of the human form.  

Star Child

HD3, armed with an invisible heat sabre (medium weapon, +1 fire damage, invisible blade makes defending against it difficult - heat sabres roll to hit at +2) and empathy (see below), unarmoured, but perfectly reflective skin confers immunity to psychic, radiation, and fire damage. Movement: like an octopus and a cockroach walking around using a mostly human skeleton. Disposition: curious, capricious, unpredictable. 

Star Children do not eat, drink, or sleep, and do not (or cannot) speak. They can share emotions and simple concepts (friendly, distressed, 'over there', go away) via telepathy if you look into their eyes, or if they touch your bare skin with theirs. 

If they want to kill you, they can use this innate ability to 'link' enemies together such that what one feels, all feel. In game terms, every enemy that falls under the gaze of a Star Child takes the damage that every other enemy under the gaze takes. Blinding yourself against gaze attacks works as normal, and a mirror will additionally subject the Star Child to the effect. 

Star Child Astral Raider

What remains of clan champions and leaders.

As Star Child above, but HD4, possessing four additional invisible arms, two invisible heat sabres, and an invisible Star Weapon, rolled for on the usual tables. This Star Weapon does not have ammunition as usual, and usually contains a single shot which immediately recharges under starlight.  

Astral Raiders can 'flick' their skin from reflective to Vantablack or Vantawhite at will. Vantablack renders them immune to cold damage and needing to breath, and Vantawhite confers AC as plate and confers resistance to normal weapon attacks (half damage). 

Star Child Projector Captain

As Star Child above, but HD5, and possessing the gaze attack of a Sky-Gazer. A Projector Captain's gaze attack has a 360 degree area of effect. 

Projector Captains are completely invisible, and can see invisibility. They can make other objects permanently invisible by painting them with their blood. 

They can confer the ability to see invisibility to, or blind, others who they are able to touch skin-to-skin. Both of these conditions are permanent, and can be resisted with a CHAR save, although the Projector Captain can attempt to do so again next turn as long as the skin-to-skin contact is maintained. 

If you drink their blood, your soul will henceforth be invisible to beings that would otherwise be able to sense it.

AFFRAYER

 

The last entry in the trilogy of vaguely scifi capsule games. 

CW: A whole heaping of utopian fascist aesthetics, as is appropriate to the genre. 

All images taken in situ at the Wallace Collection in London. 

You are a teenager, or maybe in your early twenties. Your home is under threat - actually the whole planet is under threat, everything you love, everyone you know, all of their small human dramas - and so you have joined the military as a volunteer, to defend everyone, all of this. 

They gave you a sharp blue uniform, and six months of training on their bases on the moon. The battlefields that will decide the fate of every human will not be on earth. Your training is with the weapon, the body, which is really two bodies, one hot and one cold - but we will come back to this later. 

While you train you get to know the other volunteers. They are people of all kinds, from every class and age and nation imaginable. They are the whole world, and they bring with them its chaos and its human dignity. You all speak Common, of course, just like your parents did. Training with the body is gruelling, but the military have lots of practice making people like you into soldiers. 

When you are ready, you and your section (who you have come to love, in your way - they are soldiers of the universal polis, whose spoil is our common birthright, and they are red-handed and red-eyed killers, like you) will be attached to great relativistic sling engines and fired out to blasted airless warzones deep inside the territory of the enemy. 

Watch them in the minutes before the drop. They are calm, checking equipment and diagnostic screens, turned away from you, the contours of their faces just visible in the soft light of the instruments, insulated by their competence. They seem ageless this way; painted icons; terrible angels holding burning invisible swords. In these empty moments you love them all, and your love is wide, unmoored from any particularity (their faces are all so alike), and you love yourself too because you are one of them, caught up in the great, anonymous choir that will sing ruin or victory; now, in this moment and for all time; now, thirty seconds to drop; you wait for the call from your captain, it will come, now; ten seconds, now... 

The empty air rushing past and the roar of the thrusters beneath you and the whine of your terrible weapons, your apocalyptic weapons, which scream while they reduce the world beneath you to smoke and fire and glass, as they wipe your enemies away; your enemies are chaff before you and the others. You are angels. Carriers of the terrible sword that cleaves what is eternal from what cannot to allowed to survive, that makes your declaration to history, for all time. 

But your foes are terrible too. They are the dragon, the one without grace, the one without shame, with a hundred heads and a thousand catching claws. You can kill a hundred million of them and the rest will erupt from the earth to drag you down, to tear you to pieces. Keep firing then. Keep firing, and be quick about your murderous business. 

Your missions are simple: meat grinder, kill 'em all, search and destroy. Everyone has a punch chute back to the sling craft, which activates once the mission is complete. Only once the mission is complete; there were too many pilots punching early, too many objectives failed, too many bad futures in the simulations...

If you are lucky you will be sent home to earth, to a fate uncertain, hundreds or thousands of years into the relative future. If you are unlucky there will still be work to do here and now. The wait for new orders can be weeks or months. The probe heads have not yet developed the means by which to attack sling craft, so you will be safe for a time, even bored, which when it happens seems nearly unaccountable.

PILOTS

You have two bodies, the cold body and the hot body. The cold body is the one that sits in the machine shop, gorgeously at rest; the one that you can tune and amend to your design. 

The hot body is the one that drops, autoguns blaring their staccato retort, flares blossoming from the shoulders in ribbons of fire, thrusters burning the earth to glass, scorched and vibrating and killing and coming to pieces under its terrible acceleration. 

The pilot is not quite a body at all, more like a mind, or a shadow, or a hallucination. A pilot is more attuned to the COLD or the HEAT, with repercussions in the rules to follow. When you create your character, this is your first choice. 

The second regards the other players in your game, henceforth your squad. You all know each other, there is a good chance you all like each other. Choose at max one person on the squad that you don't like: this can be cold disdain, a personality clash, or even open hatred, but it will never get in the way of your professionalism - you are soldiers, and you rely on one another in combat. You still trust this person with your life. Choose any number of squad mates that you desire, and any number you are in love with.

This is the description of your pilot. A tendency towards COLD or HEAT, and a web of monodirectional relations with your squad mates. Your squad is made up of other PCs, in whose webs you will feature in various ways.

THE COLD BODY

The terrible weapon that you have been trained to use. It rests in the hangar, attended by technicians and specialists who will maintain and outfit it to your specifications. 

The cold body starts with:

• A frame, with 10 integrity (or 11 if your tendency is towards COLD). If this drops to zero the pilot is killed: crushed and maimed as the steel shell deforms, burned to death in reactor leaks, transpierced by kinetics that defeated the armour, torn into pieces by the force of explosions, simply vaporised. There are a million ways to die inside the body.
• Four integrated point-defence rotary autocannons, each with rounds for ten turns of continuous fire. When fired on the probe head swarms each autocannon deals d4[1000] casualties per turn of fire to a max range of 8km, or 2d4[1000] within 3km. 
• Thrusters that can hurl it around the battlespace like a missile - this can be used defensively, to get you out of harm’s way, or offensively, crashing down amidst the thickest frays atop a column of plasma. You get infinite jumps, but at anything lower than 10 integrity, you must spend a single point of integrity to make each jump. Whenever you land or take off using your thrusters, everything within 3km is disintegrated by the plasma backblast. Each jump has a maximum range of 30km. 

You have five requisition points to build it out from the following list. You cannot take mulitples of single options unless they are marked as Light Weapons. If your tendency is towards COLD, you can upgrade three of these options (and can spend multiple upgrades on a single option), if HOT you may only upgrade one. Requisition from the Specials category can only be taken by pilots with a COLD tendency. 

For each successful mission you complete, you are awarded requisition - usually one, maybe more if your performance was exemplary. 

Weaponry

• Assault Rifle. Deals 2d8[1000] casualties per turn, to a range of 10km. Ammunition: 10 turns of fire. Light Weapon. Upgraded: ammunition for 15 rounds or range to 15km. 
• DMR. Deals 1000 casualties per shot fired, per turn, to a range of 30km. Can be set to fire once, or three times, per turn. If fired once, and the hot body has not moved this turn, can be used to kill a Leaderform (see below) within range. This can only be done once per turn, no matter how many DMRs you are holding. Light Weapon. Ammunition: 15 rounds. Upgrade: holds 30 rounds or range increased to: 60 km. 
• Shotgun. Deals d8[1000] casualties per turn to a range of 10km, 2d8[1000] within 5km, or 3d8[1000] within 3km. Light Weapon. Ammunition: 10 rounds. Upgrade: Ammunition: 30 or stepping each range profile up by 2km. 
• Rotary Cannon. deals 3d8[1000] to a range of 20km. Cannot be fired in the same turn as a jump. Ammunition: 20 rounds of fire. Upgrades: 40 rounds of fire or range to 25km. 
• Plasma Lance. Lays down an AOE in a 90 degree cone, 5km long. Destroys everything in the AOE. Ammunition: five rounds. Upgrades: ammunition for ten rounds or range of cone to 8km long or the AOE gets Destroyer. 
• Artillery. Targets a point within 40km (no LOS required), then lays down an AOE with a 2km radius. Fire is accurate to within 10 - [integrity] km. Everything inside the radius is destroyed. Cannot be fired on the same turn as jumping. Can fire up to three rounds per turn. Ammunition: 15 rounds. Upgrades: Target point range increases to 50km or ammunition to 30 rounds. 
• Mines. Lay down a number of mines between 1 and 3. If enemies path over this square, place an AOE of 3 x [number of mines] km, and destroy everything caught in the blast. Ammunition: 12 mines. Upgrades: add Destroyer to the AOE or upgrade ammunition to 24 mines. 
• Atomics. Targets a point on the map, at any range (no LOS required), then lays down an AOE with a 10km radius and Destroyer. Everything inside the radius is destroyed. All hot bodies on the map take a point of integrity damage when an Atomic goes off. 1 round. Upgrades: 15km radius or 3 rounds. 

For the above:

• Light Weapon means that the gun can be held and fired in one hand. You may take multiples of these weapons and fire both on your turn, if you wish. 
• Destroyer means that even very tough opponents, which would usually take sustained fire to bring down, are destroyed if they fall under the AOE. 

Defensive Installations

• Armour. +2 Integrity. Cannot be taken more than thrice. Upgrade: +4 integrity. 
• Shielding. You no longer lose integrity for jumping, until you are reduced to 5 integrity, after which point you lose 1 point for jumps as usual. You do not suffer integrity damage from atomics use unless you are below 5 integrity. Cannot be taken more than once. Upgrade: the 5 integrity thresholds are lowered to 3 integrity. 
• Flares. You are not targetable by enemy fire while flares are firing - if you are the closest target they will still shoot at you, and the shots will be wasted. You may fire them for free, and they function until the beginning of your next turn. You have enough flares for three rounds. Upgrade: enough flares for six rounds.

Specials

• Range Finders. All range bands are increased by +2km. Can be taken more than once. No upgrades available. 
• Sedative Injectors. You auto-pass a single panic check. Cannot be taken more than once, but contains infinite uses. You must declare use before rolling a panic check. No upgrades available. At the mission end, roll a d6. If the result is less than the number of Sedative Injectors used, your pilot is dead on arrival at the sling craft. 
• Advanced Thrusters. Your thruster jump range is increased by 2km. Can be taken more than once. Upgrade: you can make a 'jump' in place once per turn to boost dodge out of the line of fire of incoming projectiles. This costs you integrity as normal, and nullifies a single ranged attack. You can boost dodge a number of times per turn equal to upgraded Advanced Thrusters.

THE HOT BODY

Once you jump in, the only way out is through. 

Play takes place on a topographic map, 100km x 100km. You will see emergence points and Engines marked on the map, as well as elevation information as per usual for topo maps. 

You may drop into any square you wish, and you destroy everything within 3km when you do so, as though you just jumped to it (you did, from orbit). 

Each turn is composed of a Comms cycle, an Orders cycle, a Computation cycle, and an Enemy Movements cycle. 

The Comms cycle is simple. You have a timed window in which to discuss your plans and declare intentions with your squad mates. This might be an open discord chat, a channel set aside for the purpose, or anything else. Each turn's Comms cycle is usually one minute long. Be explicit, clear, and efficient with your intentions and instructions - friendly fire is a killer. 

Pilots with a tendency towards HEAT get an extra minute of comms. 

A note about the comms cycle: during a battle, you are not able to communicate with one another in universe outside of the comms cycle. This is a high trust covenant thing that players will need to buy into for this game to work.

After the Comms cycle, the Orders cycle begins. All pilots give their orders to the DM - generally jump instructions with coordinates, and weapons firing solutions, either on landing, or from their current position if not jumping. These orders are not visible to other players. The game consists in making your plans, then inputting your orders, and hoping that everyone has the same plan in mind. 

The DM will then compute turns, per the plans submitted, update the map that everyone has access to, and calculate damage on enemies and friendlies, if any. 

Players caught in AOE suffer d6 damage to their integrity. Players caught by Destroyer weapons are vaporised. 

Finally, the DM will take the turn for the enemy (as described below), and calculate any appropriate damage against player bodies, before starting the turn cycle anew. 

PLAYER ORDERS

Each turn declare whether you want to jump, then assign targets to your weapons. Nearly all weapons (artillery and atomics are the exceptions) require LOS to fire. This means that there is no intervening terrain if you draw a straight line from you to your target. You can choose to land on any specific elevation inside the square you jump into, but you cannot change this elevation once you have chosen it without moving or jumping on your next turn.

For each point of integrity below five, your jumps will scatter than many potential kms. 

Other than jumping, your mobility at the scale of the map is limited. Your hot body can jump and sprint extremely quickly for a machine of such size and weight, but this will still only move you 1km per turn at max. 

Your four integrated autocannons will fire on the nearest targets automatically unless you override them manually, or switch the system off (this can be done per gun if you wish, say, to conserve ammunition). 

All other weapons are targeted by you. You can fire as many weapons as you want each turn, provided you have the hands to do so. Artillery, mines, and atomics do not require hands to fire. Rotary cannons and plasma launchers require two.

Every time a player dies, your body takes five or more integrity damage in a single turn, or a swarm reaches you, you must test for panic. You roll a d6, with a -1 for each of the following:

• Players killed.
• Panic tests already failed.
• Any of your weapons are out of ammunition (this only applies once, even with multiple weapons dry). 
• Each additional player who has failed a panic test this turn. 

If the number is 0 or below, you panic for a second and forfeit your next turn entirely. 

If someone you hate is not panicking, you may choose not to panic. 

If someone you desire is panicking, you may choose not to panic. 

These bonuses can only be used once (twice if your pilot tendency is towards HEAT) per mission, per person. 

You have a +1 to panic rolls per person you love who is still alive. You have a -1 to panic roles per person that you love who has been killed. 

PROBE HEAD SWARMS

The main forces of the enemy, poorly understood by earth scientists and only glimpsed in flashes and snatches by pilots in combat. The probe head swarms travel from system to system extinguishing stars. Their great terrestrial engines facilitate their travel across galaxies - these are typically your main targets. Without the engines, the swarms are unable to project outwards to the energy sources that they use to sustain themselves - they will starve, or go into hibernation, or suspended animation, or something. Whatever this state is, it renders them non-threats to the earth of the distant future. 

A swarm is composed of hundreds of millions of enemy soldiers. When hot bodies start crashing down out of atmosphere, the probe heads begin their swarming behaviour in defence of the engines. 

A probe head swarm has an emergence point. There will usually be about as many emergence point as there are hot bodies on mission. 

Probe heads start pouring out of the emergence point, and advance at a rate of d6km per turn towards the nearest threat that they detect. This leave behind a 'trail' of swarm bodies - swarms advance like long tentacles on the map. If a 6 is rolled, the swarm splits into two, which both advance 3km towards the nearest threat - the second swarm splits from whatever point on the swarm 'tentacle' is closest to a PC. 

As the swarm is wounded and pushed back, it will start to 'wake up', resulting in more d6s rolled for advance rates per turn (also resulting in more splitting). These points are detailed below, under Leaderforms. 

Weapon damage is given in number of 1000s of probe heads destroyed. For each 1000 killed, the swarm is pushed back one kilometre. Swarms can only be pushed back this way to a maximum of the maximum range of the weapon firing, measured from the point it was fired from. 

If a probe head swarm reaches a player, their hot body immediately loses d6 integrity, with a +1 for each time the swarm has 'woken up'. 

Artillery and other AOEs can obliterate large sections of probe head swarms behind their actually mobile 'front'. When this happens, the swarm is immobilised until the back line of the swarm catches up to its now isolated front elements. Swarms prioritise moving towards isolated elements and enemy hot bodies equally - they will move towards whatever is closest. 

Fighting probe heads is like damming rivers. You will never be able to kill all of them. You are in a race against time. 

LEADERFORMS

Each probe head swarm is directed by a Leaderform. It is located at the furthest edge of the swarm. On each emergence, and each splitting of the swarm, roll on the table below to determine the type of Leaderform. 

Leaderforms are typically invulnerable to weapons fire - the exceptions are Destroyer AOEs, and DMRs. 

If a swarm's Leaderform is destroyed it is effectively isolated, as per the rules given above for AOE weapons. Another Leaderform will pick it up soon, and when it does its own swarm immediately advances d6km. 

Leaderforms:

1. Horror. While this Leaderform is on the map, all panic rolls are at an additional -1. 
2. Ranged. Fires on the closest body within 40km as it moves, dealing d3 points of integrity per turn. 
3. Slaver. Adds +1 to its swarming movement rolls. 
4. Alarmer. Adds an additional 'Wake Up' counter to the swarm if killed. 
5. Tank. Absorbs d6[1000] casualties per turn for its swarm. 
6. Critical. Explodes when killed, per the rules for Atomics. 

ENGINES

This is the player objective - you are here to cripple and destroy projection engines, such that the probe heads will be unable to make their movements across the galaxies. 

Each map will have a set number of engines (and map 'difficulty' will usually directly correlate to the number of engines you have to destroy). Each engine will be built from a number of components (each kms long) that will need to be destroyed, generally in sequence, to turn them critical. Most engine components will have an integrity score like your hot body, which is reduced by your weapons as normal (1000 probes heads of damage is = to one integrity for this purpose). Destroyer AOEs will delete them the same as they do everything else. 

For each engine destroyed, the swarm will Wake Up, and roll an additional d6 on their swarm movement rolls. 

DOWN TIME

If you survive your mission, you will punch the chute and exfil back to the sling ship. 

You and your surviving squad mates have a few months to kill time and swap spit.

You may choose to mix your web of relationships as you wish, and are encouraged to RP any changes.