Three Human Factions

 

Balistigae

The Balistigae were the largest and most powerful of the old state-sanctioned mystery cults, in the unnamed polis that would eventually birth both the White City and the Old Capital. They are said to be the direct progenitors of the White City Pragmatists, and their fearsome methods of total war. Their temples were built as far underground as possible, and initiates were infamous for seeking out fissures and cave systems, declaring them sacred sites, and murdering those who tried to explore them. 

The Balistigaeic mysteries were not preserved, and the specifics of their rituals and observances have been lost to history. 

Maybe they still exist down there, sealed into those strange, airless boxes, eating black earth and filth, waiting and waiting and staring at nothing.

Balistigae Initiate

Corded muscle, straining necks, staring eyes. Black teeth and gums. Steel feet and steel faces. They lie perfectly, perfectly still in the silence beneath the earth. 

HD1, steel boots (can kick as a light weapon, or stomp someone prone as a medium weapon), steel arbalest (d10), ritual garb: a steel facemask, scented-linen wraps at the shoulders, thighs, biceps, and throat (AC 12), movement: as human with supernatural rock climbing skills, disposition: silent, patient, slow and then really fast. 

Paranoia: Balistigae are never surprised. They can see invisible things, and also see through illusions. 

Patience: With focus, Balistigae can still their metabolism completely. If they don't move or think, they can remain alive indefinitely without food or water. In this state, they do not age. It takes about 24 hours of concentration to do it. They are dimly conscious of changes and stimuli in their surroundings, but not of the passage of time.

Earth Eater: Balistigae can eat soil and clay as rations. If they drink a waterskin's worth of petroleum, they gain a second attack in melee for 24 hours. 

A Fighter can make use of the steel boots if they see them used in a combat - to anyone else they are just heavy, practical footwear. 

Balistigae Hierophant

As above except HD3, and with the following equipment: steel boots (can kick as a light weapon, or stomp someone prone as a medium weapon), steel arbalest (d10), ritual garb: eyes replaced with gems (they can see perfectly in the dark), otherwise naked (unarmoured). 

In addition:

Eater of Base Materials: A Balistigae Hierophant can eat stone and gems as rations, and can do this indefinitely without defecating or otherwise expelling matter. It would take one about a day to get through a bucket full of diamonds. They are very focused on destroying wealth this way (gems, not currency, which they don't care about). If you have at least 1000s worth gems on your person, and you willingly give them up for consumption, they will tell you their secret.

The Secret of the Balistigae: It's a mental technique - a way of destroying your own cognitive processes such that you will never be resurrected, or brought into any future, God's or otherwise, after death. When they tell you the secret, it sows this seed in your brain (you don't understand it and can't repeat it) - but by itself the seed doesn't function. To get it to work, you will need to spend at least a month training and studying with the Balistigae. Once you have the understanding, you can trigger the effect yourself at any time (even seconds before death) with a series of mental cues. When you do, you immediately suffer -2 to all mental stats, but it works as advertised. As a side effect of the training, you can no longer be surprised and have advantage on any checks to see through illusions.

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Volcano Men As commoners/bandits/men at arms, but live on the slopes of active volcanoes. Don't mind heat (although not fire resistant) and can breathe sulphur fumes as well as oxygen. Their breath is poisonous if allowed to concentrate.

They mine asbestos and make armour out of it, which they sell at a premium. Asbestos armour is heavy/medium armour -1 that lets you handle or walk on (or be pressed against) red hot substances without damage, and grants resistance against radiant fire damage like fireballs or dragon breath. It's made from plates of pale, stone-like ceramic woven into a flexible underlayer, and usually also incorporates metal fixings and reinforcement, but nowhere that the metal would touch the skin of the wearer.

Volcano Men like colourful gems, and love to accept them as payment for their goods. They grow crops of fantastic size with a combination of greenhouses and volcanic sediment deposits - mostly huge alien-looking fruits and cactuses, all of them edible, many of them hallucinogenic.

They know when volcanoes are going to erupt. They are famously good shots with muskets, and favour a skirmishing and harassing style of engagement when threatened. They don't get along with the Mountaineers, with whom they share territory - Volcano Man jokes will often feature some self-righteous God Warrior getting shot dead in the middle of a preening display of martial arts mastery.

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Dread Generals Partisans and refugees from a forgotten kingdom, once great, conquered and ground to ash by the armies of the White City. The Dread Generals are all that remain of its military, and they still wage hopeless wars against the occupying Imperial powers. They wear heavy black iron plate armour, with helmets that look like skulls, and carry cruel maces. They are famous as sorcerers and torturers, unkillable, proud and terrible, impossible to reason with. They were undefeated in the field before the White City got involved. Then they were field troops, and fought in massed formations of heavy infantry; now they are the commanders of rag tag 'armies' of desperate outlaws, who still swear fealty to a country that hasn't existed for decades. The commanders are old now, but those that remain (there are said to be eight of them) have been driven to obsessive mania by their hatred of their enemy.

HD4, heavy black mace, light athame (poisoned, save CON for paralysis), skull helmet black plate armour, speed as human, disposition: proud, old, cruel, dangerous. Mesmerism: if you lock eyes with a Dread General, you must save CHAR or take -1 to all rolls for the rest of the combat, or until you kill them. This stacks each round. Impossible to avoid in combat unless you shut your eyes and intentionally blind yourself. Army Without Hope: A Dread General, along with any troops they command, will have taken a zombifying draught before combat starts, unless you take them by surprise. This makes them immune to pain and fear, impossible to talk to or reason with, and gives them -1 to initiative rolls. The effects usually last for one hour. Prolonged use fucks you up permanently, and many of the soldiers and all of the Generals show the symptoms: slurred speech, clouded eyes, dulled emotions, a feeling of unreality, or of becoming unstuck in time.

Xcom-like Enemies

Hell, painted by Botticelli after Danté.

Human Adversaries

Militias, civilian security, rookie vigilantes, concerned citizens. 

Given the state of things, there are literally thousands of armed groups in the city, all with different legal status, social legitimacy, and visibility. The standard, and the worst equipped, trained, and organised, are just people with firearms and a sense of group identity. 

You might find yourself in contact with a group like this for any number of reasons. Maybe you need access to a territory they protect, maybe someone has paid them to kill you, maybe they take a dim view to armed special forces abducting people in their area. 

Regardless of the context, the group will be 50/50 non-combatants and trained fighters. They don't wear armour or use explosives, and are armed with a mix of pistols and shotguns. One in three of those with training have ARs. 

Cops

The police are, by far, the most numerous and dangerous human force deployed in the city. Their armed officers run the gamut in terms of effectiveness, but they are universally trained, motivated, and unbothered by the idea of shooting to kill.

Beat cops come in pairs, and will have pistols, sometimes shotguns, and radios to request support. The pairs often deploy with others, so you can usually expect to fight between two and ten cops, depending on what they're anticipating for a threat level. 

Specialists are two man teams, and are sometimes seconded to patrols as force multipliers. Typical specialist teams will be armed with DMRs, or SMGs and flashbangs, but there is no standardised kit. Some even carry LMGs. 

Response Units have light body armour, use grenades (but not explosives), and are armed with ARs, SMGs, and DMRs. They always arrive in force, typically ten officers. 

Special Forces are armed just like you, and are not usually called in for day-to-day operations. They might make an exception if your outfit has been positively IDed on a mission in progress. These are the guys who will be coming for your base of operations if you gain too much heat. All of them have military training, and they like to deploy in overwhelming force, to minimise or eliminate any chance of not meeting their objectives. 

Private Security Corporations

Basically a Special Forces outfit without state funding. Unlike the police, these units will often see work as private guards, close protection, or kidnappers. The invasion makes extensive use of PSCs - their independence from oversight and streamlined organisational structures make them discreet and low-risk options for many mission profiles. What they don't have is institutional staying power - a single bad engagement with multiple casualties can neatly cripple or even destroy a particular outfit permanently. 

PSCs are sometimes inducted into the invasion as 'true believers', who understand and support the aims of the invaders directly. These outfits can make excellent targets for intelligence gathering, as they will often have access to information and trust that 'blind' assets don't.

Still from Borowczyk's The Greatest Love of All Times. Artwork is Ljuba Popovic.

Non Human Adversaries

Hunter Killers

Quadcopter drones of various kinds, with explosives or guns attached. Used by almost everyone these days, with basic models cheaply available. Can be piloted by remote, but are more usually set to patrol or assault a specific position, and fire on whatever they find there. Hunter Killers are hated by the civilian population, and also by a good number of the police. 

Things to know about them:

• They are quite good shots, and very quick to acquire targets. 
• They are not armoured, or really protected in any way. They are designed to be cheap and disposable, not hardy. 
• They are dumb, and easily tricked, flanked, or fooled by things like throwing a sheet over yourself. 
• They are technically illegal, but this line is blurry and poorly enforced. They have a very very bad reputation for shooting civilians without provocation, so those that use them are typically not intending to stick around in the aftermath. 

You will always hear a quadcopter coming. A small HK is harder to hit (-1, unless you're using a shotgun) but limited to a pistol or frag grenade payload - a large HK can be armed with anything. They get a flat +1 to hit with their weapons if they're not being piloted by remote. They need to hover in place to fire, but can otherwise move at 10x the speed of a human outdoors, and 2x indoors. 

MIBs

They look like humans, but are too tall and too broad - this becomes more noticeable the longer you stare, or if you get up close. They are engineered to project violent authority - unsmiling, pale-skinned, eyes hidden, voices unnerved and aggressive. They sometimes accompany the police, generally solo or in two-man teams, and take charge when they do, citing obscure governmental departments and taskforces, and providing strange but obviously-official identification if asked. 

If you actually fight them, the pretence of humanity is immediately dispelled. They are far stronger, faster, and tougher than they should be. They often need to be literally shot to pieces to be put down. They don't appear to feel pain, and make no sound when they die. They won't engage in combat directly if their police allies will see them. They care a lot less about appearances when leading PSCs.

MIBs generally prefer large handguns, but when they deploy in force, which only happens when the invaders feel like they are at risk of losing control of a wide area, they will also make use of military hardware. Their monstrous strength allows them use weapons that are not usually man-portable. They are also more than capable of tearing an operative apart with their hands if they can close the distance. 

MIBs need to be 'killed' three times before they go down for good. Each time they go down, they suffer a -1 thereafter to hit with firearms (shot to pieces!). If they can get into melee combat with you, they dictate the terms, no matter how fucked up they are - either they choose to kill you, or subdue you. Their pistols count as shotguns, and are far too large and unwieldy to be used by humans. They carry tasers and zip ties, and will often prefer capture to killing your operatives.

'Assets'

Dreamers, who have had something done to them, and who now work for the invaders. They are pale, obviously unwell, and have their heads and faces covered with bags, opaque helmets, obscuring facemasks and hoodies, etc. 

Assets work exactly like dreamers, except they move half as fast, and start their check to lose consciousness at -1 instead of 0. 

Most of them have descended into a kind of feverish waking nightmare. They will often ask you to kill them in moments of lucidity. If you can exfil with one, you might have some chance of rehabilitating them - the extent of the damage, whatever the damage is, has not yet been properly assessed. 

Untitled work by Henry Darger, from the retrospective The Certainties of War.

Invader Combat Forms

It is clear that the invaders are not human, although determining what they actually are has so far been impossible. It is known that they make use of various combat assets that are almost completely alien, but hard data about their capabilities has been similarly impossible to acquire. There are rumours: of things that look like tall, bloody people emerging from underground, from sinkholes and other cracks in the earth; of balls of white light that burn and maim the people that look at them; of a weaponised parasite that gestates inside its victims and kills them as it emerges; of manipulators like foam or like liquid, flowing, supple, strong enough to tear a building apart. Shadows with eyes, mould on the walls and on the camera lens, shaky, blurry footage, figures running under streetlamps - people are also going mad, so who knows how much of this is real. 

And there are rumours about the invaders themselves - invisible, floating in empty air, cold, hard, scrupulously exact, remaking the world so that it is like them. 

You're these guys.

It Hurts to be Sent from the Future

And it destroys your ability to think coherently. Angels won't talk about this at all, except under extreme duress. A demon might, and it will probably be with sadness, fear, and confusion. 

Both angels and demons are prototypes, and understand this in a distant way, but the process of time travel (if that is indeed what is happening) is so cognitively damaging that neither can tell you what exactly what of. 

The thing they all know is that it hurts, and that they used to have bodies. The older angels also know about the cooking machines, but they won't tell anyone, and no one has ever been able to coerce one into talking. 

Both demons and angels cry often and easily, the former while they're peeling your skin off or killing your family, and the latter when they think humans aren't around to see it. They also fabulate when their memory fails them, which happens all the time (both short term and long term), and will become angry and belligerent if you point this out. 

Class: University Don

Source unknown.

University Don

You are one of the exquisitely civilised ape academics of University. Your caste is revered by all genteel islanders, and you are famous for your shrewd council, for your skills as an advocate and researcher, and for your inability to lie. 

The life of a graduate in the halls is rough, violent, and short for those who fall from favour with its various factions - cliques and secret societies dominate the social life of the apes, and duels, brawls, and feuds of all kinds bubble beneath the cultured surfaces of the lecture halls and dormitories. The traditional duelling weapon is the blunderbuss, and all Dons of the University will keep one to hand as they see to their convoluted business. Most of them covet tenure, peer review, and publication above all things, and as such have no need to leave the great halls of University. Some choose to adventure on obscure missions of their own.

Skills: Pick a Major, a Minor, and an extra-curricular from the list below. 

Gear: Fine academic robes and a fancy hat: +1 to reactions with islanders, the enormous hat (you have to wear the whole thing to get the bonus) has bells on it, making moving silently impossible, a fraternal or sororial medium gladius engraved with your name, a spyglass, a compass, a stylus and notebook, a blunderbuss with ten rounds of ammunition and powder. 

A: +5 HP, +2 STR, +2 CON, Ape, Don.
B: pick one more Minor, and one more extra-curricular. Post-Doc. 
C: pick one more Major. Dignitas, Lecturer. 

D: +3 HP, +1 STR, +1 CON, Professor, The Secret. 

Ape: the apes of the islands are visibly unlike those in the Barony. You speak flawless common without an accent, can climb anything climbable, and can grasp things in your feet as though they were hands. You have terrible strength and ripping jaws, which give you natural weapons (d6 damage). You know the jungles of the islands well enough that you and your companions will never need to spend rations while traversing them. You treat corpses as rations, although eating the dead is considered impolite in human company. 

Don: by a bureaucratic accident of history, all students at University have the right to call themselves 'Don', which fresh graduates do with great zeal. The form is like Don Remazzio, or Don Balasquez - ape naming customs are fake Italian or fake Spanish. As a Don you may legally act as a lawyer or justice of the peace in any island settlement, and will always be received well unless there is a good reason why you wouldn't be. You can also never knowingly tell a lie. This is not a choice or a cultural thing, you literally can't do it. Everyone knows this, and relies on it. 

Post-Doc: If information exists somewhere in an archive, you can always find it given enough time. You may legally act as a celebrant or police officer (under regional jurisdiction) in any island settlement. People who don't know better will assume that you have specialist knowledge of all elements of the curriculum (see table below, this does not include extra-curricular activities) until you give them a reason not to. You may choose wield a blunderbuss in one hand (or foot) instead of two; if you do so, you roll at -1 to hit with it. 

Lecturer: You can teach others specialist skills that you know yourself. This can be done quickly, for up to ten listeners - it takes d4 hours, and they gain access to the skill for the next hour. This is merely a basic understanding of core principles, so any rolls they make are at -2, but it otherwise functions as any other skill. It can also be done in downtime: spend 1 year of downtime teaching someone a skill, or 2 years if you or they are doing this part time. You are legally allowed to work as a judge, surveyor, or humorist in any islander settlement. 

Dignitas: If someone has attacked you during this combat (whether or not they did damage), you attack them twice instead of once in melee. 

Professor: You grow into your full maturity, and quickly double in size. You require twice as many rations as before. You are legally allowed to challenge the judgement of any King or Queen of the islands - even if they disagree with you, they must allow you to make your case, and cannot kill, imprison, or maim you in the aftermath. You have the legal right to raise militias, requisition equipment, and provide writs of safe passage in any island settlement. 

The Secret: You have, through long, torturous searching of the self, learned how to lie. No one knows or suspects this. Doing so will cost you either d10 psychic damage on the spot, or a single point of max HP, your choice. Neither will betray on your face. 

The Curriculum 

If you take it as a Major, you get both the skill and the listed effect - if it is taken as a Minor, you only get the skill, which functions like any other. 

• Languages (for your skill, choose 3 languages that you speak). Listening to someone speak a language you don't know for one hour lets you communicate with them in simple terms: words of max four letters, sentences of max four words. 
• Mathematics. You can do anything your player can do with a calculator in your head, immediately. 
• Geometry. You can accurately assess a structure for weak points like an engineer. If you miss with a ranged weapon, your next attack with that weapon is at +1. 
• Architecture. You can accurately assess a structure for weak points like an engineer. You know with certainty who built something and when. You can ask the DM for a simple interior map of a building by looking at its exterior. 
• Rhetoric. If you wish to, you can always 'win' an argument (the DM should give a lot of leeway here, but this is still within reason - no one is buying your argument that you should be able to walk out of their shop without paying), and extend it to whatever length you wish. You can choose to make someone furious, or open to your point of view. Other apes distrust you, and it is rare to actually change a person's mind in any deep way. 
• Literature. You know all the classics, and have a 1 in 3 chance of knowing obscure works. If you know a work, you can remember everything in it (the DM will tell you anything you want to know about it). You have +2 to reactions with people who care about books. 
• History. You can ask the DM questions about the written history of the world and receive accurate answers. There are many things about the world that are not well understood, and many more that are not written down. 
• Jurisprudence. You know all the laws of the land, and roll any checks in a court of law at +4. You are legally sacrosanct - agents of the state will not harm you willingly, unless you force them to, and they will always spring to your defence if they see you attacked. You get +2 to reactions with criminals who you haven't unsuccessfully defended yet.  
• Strategy. The war college of the apes is strange place, and mostly teaches abstract principles, with a focus on paranoia, mutual anticipation and misdirection, the (again, mutual) 'infection' of an enemy by friendly forces, and the practice of feints, bluffs, and false retreats. You must see more clearly than your foe, in greater recursive clarity. You gain +2 to your initiative rolls, cannot be surprised, and are conscious of your surroundings when you sleep. 
• Alchemy. With 500s of material, a stocked laboratory, and a week of downtime, you can brew a draught that will: cure any disease, permanently chemically lobotomise someone, give the drinker a +1 and a -1 to stats chosen at the time of the brewing (if you drink more than one of these, you lose d4 max hp per potion past the first), or raise a corpse into a mindless servant for a day. 
• Optics (requires C template or better). One of the three noblest sciences, to the apes of University. Those that study optics do so in the Great Observatory. Any optical equipment is twice as powerful in your hands, you may accurately range artillery (or precise rifle fire), giving the firer a +4 to hit after a miss, and you know the secret of manufacturing Jale and Ulfire lenses. You also speak the Language of the Stars. 
• Paradox (requires C template or better). One of the three noblest sciences, to the apes of University. Those that study paradox do so in the Great Observatory. You can enter a state of trance wherein various futures and permutations of events run through your mind. You can ask a single yes or no question of the DM, about an issue that you have some awareness of, and they will give you a truthful answer. When you do this you must immediately eat 10 rations (or an entire human or ape corpse) and then sleep for 24 hours - if either of these conditions are not met, you lose d3 max HP. In addition, if you ever meet a Modron, you can roll a contested INT check with them in place of an attack - if you win, they take d6 paradox damage and are stunned for a turn.  
• Statistics (requires C template or better). One of the three noblest sciences, to the apes of University. Those that study statistics do so in the Great Observatory. You can accurately assess threat in real time, which corresponds to knowing one of the following about any creature you can observe for one minute: its HD, all of its attacks, its intelligence, its speed and AC, its immediate desires. You are beloved by both angels and demons, and they will seek to use your skills for their own ends. You dream often, and in terrifying clarity, of the cooking machines. 

Extracurricular Activities

• Boxing. Your natural attack is now a d8, and counts as dual-wielded. This attack doesn't kill people unless you want it to. 
• Calisthenics. You gain +1 DEX, never lose your balance, and take half normal fall damage. 
• Track and Field. You may ignore up to 2 points of fatigue. 
• Fencing. You may parry one attack per round with a sword - make an attack roll, and if it succeeds, your enemy's attack has no effect. You may take this option twice - if you do so, you gain the following: if you have parried all of an enemies attacks in a single turn, you may choose to riposte (an attack of your own, out of sequence, whose damage dice explodes), or disarm them. 
• Shooting. Your blunderbuss is exchanged for a pistol or a musket (your choice), which you get a +1 to hit with. 
• Singing. You can heal your party of d6 fear damage while you rest. You can also choose to make a roll on the wandering monster table at any time, and gain +1 to your reaction rolls with people who like singing (almost everyone). 
• Wrestling. You gain advantage on all grappling checks. You may take this option twice - if you do so, you gain the following: if an opponent starts their turn grappled by you, and you are in control of the grapple, you can make a contested STR roll. If you are successful, you can choose to break a limb or your choice (if they are human this will usually take them out of the fight), or their neck (which will kill them). 
• Rowing. You gain +1 STR, and can row with the power of 4 ordinary humans. 
• Ball Sports. You gain +1 to your initiative rolls. 
• Swimming. You can hold your breath for twice as long, swim twice as fast, and see perfectly underwater. You never suffer any disadvantages to fighting underwater with weapons that are designed for it (mostly spears and daggers). 

Damosel (Original)

I recently redid the Damosel class for the GLOG, which is what I write in nowadays, but old hands will remember that the class was originally written years ago for Cloak and Sword, now sadly defunct. There has been a swelling of interest in the old hack, including in things like the Esprit table (remember that old thing?!), so I thought it would be appropriate to reprint the original here before all is lost to time. 

Damosel (Original)

 

Gear: an exquisite jacket and expensive clothing, a rapier, a thin knife, a +1 pistol, cosmetics. 

Skills: formal etiquette, informal flirtation, the code duello. 

+1 to hit and +1 defence when you fight against a single opponent.

Artifice: In cities and towns, you have +1 to your reaction rolls per 500s of finery you wear, to a maximum of +3. You get an additional flat +1 for nobles, or eligible bachelors who have seen you fight. This is a +3 if it was the eligible bachelor who fought you. 

Duelist: For each turn you fight an opponent one on one, you gain +1 to hit, and +1 defence against them, to a maximum of +3. This bonus persists between fights for individuals - if you've fought against someone, your bonus against them is for life. 

Hunter, Hunted: Poets, teenagers of a certain temperament, and birds of prey hold Esprit for you. You hold Esprit for anyone you fall in love with, and for anyone who refuses your advances. Romantic rivals who you respect hold Esprit for you, and you hold it for them. If someone loses Esprit for you, for any reason, you suffer minus d3 max hp for a month while you recover. If you love someone, and they love you, neither of you hold Esprit for anything else - in addition, both of you roll on the death and dismemberment table at disadvantage. 

Cruel Barb: You may parry up to two attacks per turn - roll an attack against your opponent, and if you hit, the attack is mitigated. If you parry all of your opponent's attacks, you may make a single riposte of your own, essentially an attack out of sequence, or disarm them. The damage dealt by your riposte explodes. 

Exterminate all the Brutes: You make two attacks instead of one against: police, the clergy, doctors, lawyers, judges, and the family of those you hold Esprit for. You cannot receive blessings of any kind, nor would you if you could. 

Crueler Barb: If you kiss someone who you love, and who loves you, they can never lie to you again, nor you to them. This will lead you to ruin and doom.

Natural Born Killers: If you can see your lover, and they still hold Esprit for you, you cannot be killed while you clutch a weapon. You still roll on the death and dismemberment table as normal, you simply don't die until your sword, dagger, pistol, table leg, shard of glass, etc. are torn from your shrieking, vengeful, bloody grasp. 

The City, the City

Mithraeum in Pompeii

When you see its streets and walk its sunlit arcades for the first time, the impression is of scale. The doorways are ten feet tall, the ceilings of the apartments twenty feet. Stairwells are broad and open. Construction is based almost entirely on serried arches, arcades, courtyards, terraces, and broad openings used interchangeably as windows and doors, which are gated with iron grillwork. Every part of the interiors are touched by sunlight and wind. Inside, the floors are sometimes bare stone but more often colourfully tiled, and glazed tiling is also commonplace as wall decoration - sometimes it is even used for roofing, though dark clay and red terracotta are more usual. 

The great bulk of the built city is its apartments, the habitation of the citizens, which, to a Baronial, look like watchtowers or fortifications. They are very tall, usually four or five stories, and broad at the base, built around a broad internal shaft such that the sun can enter the internal rooms on both sides. Sometimes they stand alone, surrounded by smaller allies, but more often they are erected one after another in long runs along the broad white stone streets. Each apartment houses a single citizen. Those of wealth and status are able to trade and buy apartments of greater size or better position, but all citizens have one by law. Each great tower complex is accessible by an iron gate, and the keys for each of these are manufactured only by the Palace. It is a great crime in the City to reproduce them. 

The Emperor gifts its citizens shelter, food, and water. All citizens' apartments are fed by aqueducts built along the line of their roofs, and each individual allotment has its own drinking supply. These outlets run through the building, feeding troughs and cisterns and even internal fountains, and then into broad gutters that run down the centre of each of the great public streets. They wash the city clean, of blood, shit, refuse, until only the wet, white stone remains, shining in the sun. The non-citizens draw water from public wells. The Empire also runs large eating halls at the Palace's expense, where anyone, citizen or no, can eat without payment. 

Each room, no matter its height from the ground, will be open to the weather - the style in the City is open windows on all sides, nearly as large as the wall they are placed in. Most will install grills and gates over these openings to stop unwanted access, but some choose not to - especially this is an affectation of great players of the image game, and is thought to signify their confidence in their own ability, their great pride in being untouchable, undestroyable, open and impossible to harm, even without securities, even vulnerable to the imposition of any stranger. 

The rooms themselves will be sparsely furnished in iron and occasionally timber. Often the aqueducts feed cold (or hot, for the very wealthy) bathing areas built into the tiled floors. Often there will be a cask of petrol to burn in the kitchens. Subdivision of the apartment rooms, should it become necessary, is accomplished with mobile timber screens. There are also glass screens, which give separation without privacy, and have various convoluted cultural associations - they can be used for flirtation between intimates, by friends looking to enjoy one anothers company without directly interacting, and sometimes in the play of the image game, to indicate where a relation between two things has been introduced or insisted on. The White City has a great love of stained glass, but, unlike the Barony, with its intricately-worked portraits and scenes, the Citizens prefer enormous sheets of a single, intense colour, worked into mobile panels that can be installed in the room as needed. Thus an entire space can be stained red, blue, golden, at the whim of its inhabitant. 

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Outside the apartments, the streets are laid out on many levels. They are broad enough to support arcades along both sides, where stalls can set up and trade, and where citizens walk or play the game. They have a verticality; it is as though the City itself were terraced, and by moving across it you also move up and down its various levels and partitions. You can buy and sell things with silver, gold, ceramic, and electrum coins from a thousand cities - the merchants will accept your tender. The City mints no currency of its own. It is understood that its limitless wealth is of a different kind. 

The arcades are broad, shaded, and pleasant, and sunlight gleams of the quick-flowing channels that run down their centre. Where are the citizens? They are resting, or at work on some play or manoeuvre. They are about their business. The gangs of the White City are not so primitive as those in the Barony. The gangs are sprawling networks of operators working toward mutual ends. They are open to infiltration and subversion, and they are constantly undermining and merging with their competitors. Each player knows the tolerances; can feel them on the skin; when to go and when to stay; when to speak and when to disappear. Sometimes someone overplays their hand, someone is killed in the streets, stabbed or lynched by enemies. The best is to become no one's enemy. You may not know, depending on who has put themselves against you, how you came to be targeted. There are many things you can do to make yourself dangerous in some ambiguous, potential, to-be-seen type way. The murder of citizens is not legal, but it is also an understood component in the workings of the City. You have shelter, food and water, you have your security. You need to learn the tolerances if you would go hunting for that other thing, for glory and status in the eyes of the others like you. It is not a small thing to play. 

The non citizens, the mercenaries, fixers, labourers, and slaves, live in crowded barracks in the arcades, or at the foot of the city walls. The soldiers live with them; and attempt to insulate them from the strange calculations of the citizens. It is something like hostility, but cleaner, dead-eyed, with its feints and simulations, its total victories and total defeats. 

Sugar from the South

 

The Southern Nomads trade hard boiled sweets for fantastic sums of money, which makes many of the Southern houses extremely wealthy. 

The secrets of the manufacture of these sweets, which are considered a royal delicacy from the Northern Steppe, through the length of the Barony, and up to the north-most borders of the empire, are a secret as closely guarded as those of the Star Weapons of the Northern Nomads. 

It is known that the Southerners farm (and sometimes hunt, for the rarer specimens), a type of hard-shelled, darkly iridescent ice beetle, about the size of a clenched fist. They dry out the carapaces, crush them to a powder, mix it with water and various oils and regents, and compact the mass in small, hand-portable pressure cookers that faintly resemble Imperial coffee pots. This first processing is well known, but when repeated abroad results only in a foul smelling slurry of pulverised beetle. The true secret comes afterwards. 

The pressurised mass is wrapped in imported paper, and taken by the house's Sweet-Maker (this trade specialism is passed down through families, and comes with a military raiding rank, roughly equivalent to a Baronial skirmishing captain) to one of the southern holy sites: a sub-zero pool of salt water, still and reflective, where the firmament is doubled perfectly on the terrestrial earth. Often, but not always, the house Star Seed will accompany them.

Something happens to the small bundles of paper and crushed up matter. It involves a small fire, animal fat, a series of glass lenses, water, blood, a broad iron dish that spits and smokes.

When the Sweet-Maker returns they carry four or five immaculate, black, glossy, sugar sweets. Each is worth a month's wages in the cities. The taste is difficult to describe - tartness, aniseed, citrus, alcohol, sugar, of course: something of all them, also different from all of them. 

'Paper-men' and 'paper-women', merchant bands made up of Baronials and Northern Nomads, trade wrapping papers to the southerners in exchange for a share in their sugar wealth. They also bring glass bottles to fill, because other export of the South is naturally-carbonated water, which can be found only in the chemical vents at the southern edge of the world, and which the White City has an endless, insatiable thirst for. 

-

Southern Sugar Candy 

Each worth 500s if still in their paper wrapping, 150s if opened, 50s if loose. Reacts to water and heat as any hard sugar candy - poorly. 

A sugar candy counts as a ration that eliminates a single point of fatigue when eaten, but gives you a point of fatigue when you wake up the next day. They don't count as a ration if the last ration you ate was a sugar candy. 

Sparkling Water

Just water that tastes better and costs 20s a bottle. You should drink it with ice to get the proper effect. Just now catching on in the Barony.

Damosel (for Phlox)

 

It would be rude not to.

Gear: an exquisite jacket and expensive clothing, a rapier, a thin knife, a +1 pistol, cosmetics. 

Skills: formal etiquette, informal flirtation, the code duello. 

+1 to hit and +1 defence per template when you fight against a single opponent.

A: In cities and towns, you have +1 to your reaction rolls per 500s of finery you wear, to a maximum of +3. You get an additional flat +1 for nobles, or eligible bachelors who have seen you fight. This is a +3 if it was the eligible bachelor who fought you. 

B: You may parry up to [templates] attacks per turn - roll an attack against your opponent, and if you hit, the attack is mitigated. If you parry all of your opponent's attacks, you may make a single riposte of your own, essentially an attack out of sequence. The damage dealt by this riposte explodes. 

C: If you kiss someone who you love, and who loves you, they can never lie to you again, nor you to them. This will lead you to ruin and doom. You gain +1 attack. 

D: You cannot be killed while you clutch a weapon. You still roll on the death and dismemberment table as normal, you simply don't die until your sword and dagger are removed from your person. 

The Impossibility of Distinction

It is like you are sick. It is no longer possible to hold something clearly in your head and to make a decision one way or the other. There are great machines, hidden, drumming their awful repetitions, burning into and stopping up the grey matter of the brain. There are times when the room you live is like hell, and then it is back again, exactly as it was. You can't control this. People survive as best they can, and sometimes they disappear. Casual cruelty is omnipresent, accompanied by terrifying and apparently random acts of violence, strangers killing strangers.

This is the invasion - a psychic illness. The police multiply and multiply. The difficulty is in knowing where to start. When you can't think you can't draw the necessary distinctions and nothing coheres. You struggle through mud and darkness and the best minds turn slowly to their private despairs. 

A dreamer can still (yes, still, even in the face of it all) see things brightly and clearly. They can imagine the world apart from itself, and in the act make an incision in the terrible power of the invasion. When the world became sick it also became more plastic. They can make things different, better and also worse, but different, and different in their own name. They can distinguish one thing from the other, because there is their difference, and there is the rest, the mud world of police and random killings, and the two are utterly unalike.

Dreamers are in terrible danger, and nearly all of them are abducted by the invaders, to fates obscure and awful. They live in terror of discovery. 

You must find them, teach them trust, and galvanise that clarity of purpose that still (yes, still!) burns, hot, bright, wonderful, in true colour. 

-

A dreamer is exactly like an operative, but takes a full turn to reload a weapon, has -1 to hit with everything, and takes 1 stress every time they are subjected to enemy fire.

They also have a spatially-limited omnipotence - they have to concentrate, but when they do, what they describe in their minds, happens. If they concentrate for a turn, this is 5 metres, for 2 turns, 10, for 3, 15, etc. 

Every turn that they do this, they must roll a d6, +1 for every turn already spent concentrating. If the number is above five, they fall unconscious for the rest of the mission. 

Gustave Moreau, St Cecilia (The Angels Announcing Her Coming Martyrdom)

Xcomish Procedures

Some more bits of skeleton for this weird xcom game.

You are a combat squad, but you are also a self-sufficient outfit, operating without external support. As important (or more important) than your combat capabilities are your capacity to research, plan, and prioritise where you use your very limited resources. Every mission is a risk, and nothing should be attempted without weighing cost/benefit. 

How this works:

You have eight operatives. Give them names!

Four of your operatives have specialisms, chosen from the list below (you can take them in any combination):

• Intelligence Gathering
• Field Work
• Tradecraft

The game runs month by month. At the start of each month, you assign your operatives to intel, field work, or tradecraft. You can assign anyone on anything, you don't need the specialism. 

Every month, your research efforts give you sufficient intelligence to launch d2 missions, which are randomly generated from the list below. Every operative assigned to intelligence gathering that month increases the die size by one - if the operative has the relevant specialism, they instead increase it by two. 

Once you have generated your missions, you can choose which, if any, you would like to run that month. You can assign operatives to preparatory field work in advance of running a mission, which will make it easier for you in some way. You can specify what you want them to focus on: 

• Reduce enemy numbers - your operatives have assessed patrols and other enemy movements.
• Provide you with a better map.
• Provide you with important information - there are non human enemies present, the cops can expect rapid reinforcements, there are dreamers involved, etc.

An operative with the relevant specialism can do two of these things, or do one of them twice as well. 

At the end of the mission, the DM will make a hidden d6 roll for heat. You get:

• -1 if no unsuppressed shots were fired by you or your opponents.
• -1 if no enemies were left alive. 
• -1 for each operative assigned to tradecraft, and -2 if they have the relevant specialism. This is not an in-mission thing, it represents them covering and spoofing your tracks both before and after the fact.
• +1 if LMGs or explosives are used. 
• +1 if you leave the body of one of your operatives in the field. 
• +3 if they get taken alive. 

If you ever get to 10 heat, the bad guys have enough intel of their own to raid you in your current base of operations. They will do so with overwhelming force - those of you who survive will escape and set up a new operation with 0 heat. 

MISSIONS

1. Special Intel. Get a hard drive with critical information about the invasion on it. Crucial to forming a long term plan of action. 
2. Mundane Intel. If you can exfil with it, you add d3+1 missions to next month's roster. 
3. Armoury. Your supplies are extremely limited - this is a stockpile of ammunition, weapons, body armour, etc.
4. Active Abduction. You learn that a local dreamer is being abducted (or assassinated) by the invaders, and have a chance to intervene. 
5. Holding Cell. You learn the holding location of a high value prisoner - they might be another operative, a dreamer, or someone else useful to you. 
6. Heat reduction. You find a way to reduce your heat by d6 - this could be sabotaging hard drives, or assassinating someone specific. 
7. Kidnapping. You learn the whereabouts of an important enemy collaborator, and have an opportunity to take them alive. The rewards for doing so vary, they could be scientific breakdowns of enemy capabilities, detailed counterintelligence efforts (heat reduction), high ranking police or PMC targets (reduce effectiveness of those forces), things that look like people (who knows?) etc.
8. Zone Work. You have become aware of a zone of localised psychic/dreamlike instability (think the Silent Hill otherworld). You can explore it to learn more about psychic phenomena, the things that live in these places, and their connection with the invasion. 

GAME START

When you start the game with your eight guys, you can assign each of the following once:

• Point Operator. Gives +1 to hit at close range.
• Marksman. Gives +1 to hit at long range.  
• Veteran. Gives +2 to your rolls on the panic table. 
• Medic. Doesn't need to test to stabilise someone.

You have in your stores:

• 10 ARs
• 20 pistols
• 10 more long arms in any configuration that you want - these are shotguns, DMRs, LMGs, and SMGs. 
• You have enough ammunition for 10 reloads for every individual firearm that you have (20 per pistol). How long a reload lasts you in combat is per weapon.
• You have up to 10 long arms and 10 pistols suppressed. This can be in any combination, with the caveat that LMGs cannot be suppressed. 
• You have 2 vests, 4 full sets of body armour, and 2 heavy plate carriers. They give you -1, -2, and -3 on the death and dismemberment table, respectively. The vests can be worn under civilian clothing. 
• You have 4 sets of thermal vision goggles. 
• You have 50 flares.
• You have 20 grenades, in any configuration you like. The available options are: smoke, stun, fragmentation, and demolition packs. Only the last two count as using explosives, demolition packs must be set or thrown, and then detonated at your option. 
• 10 medkits, each with 5 uses. 
• Everyone has, by default, a knife, rations, water, and a torch. You can easily source civilian tools like sledgehammers and crowbars - these will take up inventory. 
• You might find more powerful weapons and gear in armouries as you play - automatic shotguns, dedicated precision or anti-materiel rifles, specialist grenades, scopes, RPGs, metamaterial armours, etc. 

INVENTORY

Your operatives can each carry a knife, torch, headgear, pistol, and two long arms for free. In addition, they get 8 inventory slots (-2 if they are carrying an LMG, -2 if they are wearing heavy plate carriers). Each slot can contain:

• Ammunition. 3 per slot for pistol and SMG ammo, 1 for other long arms, 2 slots for LMG. 
• Grenades. 1 per slot. 
• Tools. Generally 1 per slot, especially heavy or bulky tools may take more. 
• Flares. 3 per slot. 
• Medkit. 1 per slot. 
• If you are overburdened for any reason, you cannot move. 
• Carrying a human (or human sized) body needs four slots open. 

STRESS

When you take stress, you roll a d6 and consult the breakdown table, adding your current stress level when you do so. Your operatives are all trained and blooded, and usually only take stress from horrible alien and psychic shit. If you gain civilian assets, they will take stress damage every time they take fire, which might make them do ill-advised things like try to run out of cover while under suppressive fire. 

Yes, it's true, I love Long War 2, it's easily the best TBT game I've ever played. 

More to come!

Wake Up Motherfucker

UPDATES

• Campaign Procedures
• Dreamers
• Enemies

This is technically a Glaugust post because it has a HPless combat system. It's actually more like a set of extremely rough notes towards an xcom-like, inspired by the inimitable Bad Doctor's way way way better post here.

Hail Glaugust, hail Phlox's server. Hail!

-

Something changed in the last fifteen years, and now the world is dying. People disappear and the state does nothing; either impotent, or active accomplices. No one knows anything any more. It is impossible to focus, and too easy to dream more of the sickness into being. 

You are ex-military; deniable assets originally charged with conducting anti-organised crime operations on home soil. Two days ago your handler fed you a dossier of information about the invasion, and disappeared. You and your squad went to ground, and tried to process what you had been told. 

Now you operate without official support, making use of whatever you can scavenge. Your first and most urgent priority is to procure any available intelligence on who exactly is perpetrating...

The Invasion

Squads

Members of your squad move individually, but they attack altogether. What is relevant is whether they are in cover or not. They move on a map, which is marked up with cover. 

Each member of the squad can choose to fire on a target they can see, which is a dice roll depending on their weapon. You roll each lot of attacks on each target all together. Most things need a 3+ to kill, and an AR is a d6. Cover (and other things like your combat stress or your enemy's armour) modifies the number you need to hit, and weapons modify the dice you use.

Operatives carry up to two long arms and a pistol, and can use them freely each turn. 

Most things, and all humans, die if they get hit once. This includes all your guys. You are trying to play without taking fire, because even in cover and with body armour your guys are fragile. Also, in the XCOM tradition, the enemy has infinite guys and they only have to get lucky once. 

Horrible wound tables. 

You are trying to set up situations where you can wipe an enemy in a single round of fire - before you open fire, you're trying not to let them know you're even here. 

You need to allocate all fire in advance, before you roll anything.

Your squad is probably around ten people. If they die, it is non-trivial (a mission, most likely) to find replacements. 

You have some tools to keep enemies pinned, stunned, or otherwise out of the fight for a limited amount of time if you do need to protract a firefight. Things like smoke, flashbangs, suppressing weapons, etc. 

Throwing a grenade is done instead of firing a weapon, and you have all the usual types. Explosives are dangerous to use indoors and at close quarters. 

As with procuring reinforcements, resupplying materiel is non-trivial. 

Actual invaders (as opposed to their police ground forces) are really bad news - harder to kill, harder to disrupt, more lethal. Even basic hybrid foot soldiers, the MIBs, need to be taken apart with high calibre weapons and explosives if you want to put them down. 

Stress is omnipresent, and plays the role of a degrading factor, like HP, in a system where everyone dies in one hit. 

Breakdown tables. The results are usually permanent, and many will take an operative out of the game. 

Dreamers and Suburban Wastelands

The conspiracy are not exactly the government, but the government is full of its infiltrators, so they have a lot of power and force projection capacity. They fear being truly exposed, but the current state of society would make this difficult. Most action takes place in the suburbs and cities of the present day, which are hollowed-out to the point of barely functioning. Most people are just trying to survive, although things have not degenerated quite into general breakdown. Cops are omnipresent.

Dreamers are a byproduct of the invasion, which also happens in the mind. The world comes to pieces. Think the degraded reality in something like Serial Experiments Lain. A dreamer has a sort of spatially-limited omnipotence, but is just as physically fragile as any other human. 

Dreamers are civilians (as opposed to your operatives), and will break down quickly if exposed to combat. 

Invaders are also dreamers, and much more powerful. 

Most of what you are doing is invading police-held compounds (and eventually alien facilities), trying to find any actionable information you can that might let you effectively strike back against the invasion. Dreamers will be revealed to be a key component of this. 

Invaders

The cops and MIBs are not really invaders. Invaders are something terrible. They are psychic, and locally psionic, like human dreamers but more so. They have some technology that makes them impossible to see clearly, but you can usually feel them when they are close. They can be killed, but it is difficult. A body has not yet been retrieved from a combat mission, and this is your most pressing immediate objective. 

Alongside the MIBs, it is known that the invaders have access to several other combat lifeforms. We know that they exist, but specific capabilities are currently not well understood. They are tough, but they do bleed and die.

Specifics

Body Armour gives you a + modifier on your injury table roll, depending on its type. It only works once in the field, but can be repaired afterwards.

Cover makes you harder to actually hit (medium cover +1, high cover +2). Keep in cover. 

Guns 

• AR: d6 at all ranges. Can suppress by firing three times (still contributes one damage dice as normal). 3 rounds of fire. 
• Pistol: d6 at close range, d4 at long range. 1 round of fire. 
• Shotgun: d8 at close range, d4 at long range or against a target in armour. 3 rounds of fire.
• DMR: d8 at long range, d4 at short range. 3 rounds of fire. 
• LMG: must be set up to fire (cannot have moved that turn), d10 at long range, d8 at short range, can suppress by firing three times (still contributes one damage dice as normal). 5 rounds of fire. 
• SMG as pistol, but with more rounds and provides a mobility bonus if it's the only long arm you carry. 2 rounds of fire. 
• Reloads take up an INV slot. Pistol reloads are 3 per slot, LMG reloads take 2 slots.

Grenades: coming soon. 

Injury tables: use your favourite and most horrible. 

Stress and insanity: coming soon, needs to be robust. A gradual slippage into dissociation, punctuated with active breakdowns that are permanently crippling. 

Myths that are Spoken of the Islands where the Sun Dies

 

The Sea People

Large, well-formed humans, with bright red skin and bright blue hair, which they wear long and wild. They have a single eye in the centre of their foreheads - a sign of their oracular powers - and long, sharp teeth. They wear thick armour of mother of pearl, and fight with bolas, spears, nets, and hammers. They make their homes in tall, shimmering, white stone castles of great beauty, which rise above the foam of the sea, pale and luminescent, in the pink light of the dawn. 

The Sea People drink nectar and eat honey, and, lacking nothing, spend their days in idleness when not at war. They play music, enjoy games of skill and chance, and compose poetry which is incomprehensible to outsiders. They are easily insulted, but also easily befriended. 

Their faces are frightening in battle, but kind, virtuous, and smiling in friendship. The wise among them are very wise, and they live for a long time. They say that they have seen the future of the world, and, fearing it, taken the islands where they live out from the flow of time. 

The islanders of the Lantern Berth tell stories about the Sea People, with whom they trade when the islands can be seen. Intermarriage is unheard in the present day, but there are old, old stories of courtships and even children. Those of unusually large stature born on the Lantern Berth are still called 'Westerners'. 

The Flower of Life, the Fruit of the Invincible Heroes

On the furthest island, so far West that you find yourself walking not on solid earth but in dream, or nightmare, or the past and the future, or the world as it should have been, it is said that there is a flower of indescribable beauty, that grows above a pool that is still, cold, deep, green, dark, and utterly clear. To see this flower is to know tranquility and the end of striving. Each year, it weeps a single drop of golden nectar into the pool. If you can catch it and drink it, before it disappears forever into the shadowy green depths, your body will be made whole, and you will live as the immortals do. 

On that same island, where only the virtuous may tread, there is a mountain of sheer rocks and precipices. It stretches up to heaven, and the gods sit at its crown, amusing themselves by sending down fortunes and sorrows like javelins. At the peak of the mountain is a pear tree that was there when the gods arrived. Its fruit are green like precious jewels, and the gods guard them jealously, but if a human is very lucky and very brave, they might be able to steal one. To eat the fruit is to be strong like a summer hurricane, terrible as the sea in anger, quick as time passing, clever, light-hearted, loved and crowned with victory. 

The Serpents and their Poisons

On the Western Isles there are great serpents that swim in the sea, and that whisper poison into the ears of the unwary. Those that heed them grow sick and inward-looking, and shutter themselves indoors, counting their misfortunes until they die. The serpents sometimes walk about in the forms of people. They have a special fondness for wearing the faces of priests and magistrates, such that their poisonous words may spread further and do more harm. Those that live on the Western Isles will council you to stay polite with those who preach sermons, but to check theirs eyes, their tongues, their faces, and to know them well before you heed them. 

Once in each generation, the populations of the Isles will lead a great pogrom against the serpents who walk like people. They say that they have a simple test, infallible, to pick out their quarries. It is a word, they say - a word that the humans tell their children, and that the serpents do not know and cannot pronounce. What is the word? Do not ask them - once and they will insult you as a dangerous fool; twice, and they will kill you and hang your body from a scaffold, for the rest to beat to pieces with sticks. 

The King of the Isles

A man who wears a cloak of shimmering fish scales, and who travels the islands in a thin, proud boat that moves swiftly, without sail or oar. He carries royal weapons, a terrible, heavy mace, and a knife of bronze, wave-bladed, like the sea, and he commands loyalty from all the lesser kings and queens of this place. He rules in truth, where others claim to rule. He is mostly content to accept the hospitality of the island courts, but sometimes, when he is angered, he will demand a child from his hosts. None dare defy him - he is beloved by the sea, and holds within himself its awful strength. 

What happens to the children none can say. It is said that you can see them sometimes, staring up at you from the water where the sea is deep and wide - thousands of their faces, of children who did not grow old, swimming up to see you, and catch a fleeting glimpse of the land of air and sun and sky that they were stolen from centuries ago. Some of them are armed as though for battle; some bears the marks of violence. All watch you, with an expression impossible to read, and then disappear back into the depths.  

The king has a pleasant singing voice, and he loves to sing. You will hear him before you see him. Be polite, and grudge him not his royal share in your wealth. 

The Observatory of the Apes

The apes of the Isles are not like the apes of the mainland - they do not live beneath the earth, or drink petrol, or dream of black stars and burning seas of iron. The apes of the isles are astronomers and philosophers, and they live in a walled city that they call University. They speak all languages, and collect texts on all topics from around the world in their great library. The largest building in University is the observatory, with its hundred telescopes, and its single Great Lens, which the apes say can look through time. It is not yet ready, but it soon will be - then the mysteries of the past and future will finally be laid bare.

In the meantime, the apes debate and practice rhetoric. They are beloved by the other islanders, and University is sacred, neutral ground, never to be disturbed or warred on. The apes themselves have a great fondness for fanciful dress and flowery language. The laws of University are strict - the only capital crime is to tell a lie. If you are found to have lied you will be stripped in court, beaten (to tenderise you), and eaten alive by your monkey judge and monkey jurors. 

How to get there...

You can't, the islands don't exist. Or maybe they exist on certain days, or beneath certain stars. Those that live on the Lantern Berth will laugh at you for asking, and if you press them will tell you - it was possible once, but no longer. Those that try are never seen again, and the Western seas boil and smoke and writhe with monsters. Maybe, maybe, you might get there if you can see them when you set out. But to see the islands is a thing that happens only once in a lifetime, if that. 

Give up on this idea, you will throw away your life, and the lives of your companions.