Worlds of the System

    There are dozens of intelligent species in the System, but only a handful have a significant presence in interplanetary space. Producing spaceships requires the kind of highly-developed orbital heavy industry that few planets possess. 

    (Most) spaceships are moved by chemical rockets which operate by destabilizing metastable metallic hydrogen. This metallic hydrogen is harvested from suspended clouds of particulate in the atmospheres of Eos and Phaethon, two of the System's gas giants. The "mining" procedure is very safe, in modern times, and can be performed almost entirely by unmanned aerostats. Collecting the fuel is what's dangerous — piracy abounds, and an oxygen leak in the fuel-rich atmospheres of the gas giants will result in terrifying firestorms visible from orbit.

    Control over fuel production is control over the System. This has been conclusively demonstrated in the fifteen years since the end of the Second Battery War. At the beginning of the hostilities, Lith and her allies — the Sylvans of Satanazes, the mercenary armies of Koss, the theocrats of Pure and an engineering corps of callow Avian idealists — were opposed by fleets of pirates, rebels, adventurers, mafias, industrial magnates, technological adepts, factions in their own parliament, and the obscure influence of Phobos. The suggestion that fuel production might be entirely annexed and nationalized by one planet inspired strange alliances. Civil conflict erupted even on planets not officially engaged in the Battery War; Lith's brutality in seizing or destroying all foreign stores of fuel, even those in civilian hands, was matched only by their enemies' determination to recover it first. For a time, interplanetary trade was disrupted by the fact that no cargo could be as valuable as the engine that moved it. The capital of Lith was blockaded for two years and its space elevators were sabotaged. Holy sites across Pure were destroyed, some by orbital strikes, others by suicide attacks. Hundreds of stations throughout the System were bombarded by either or both sides. Millions were killed.
    But the Second Battery War could only ever have one outcome. Early supply issues led inexorably to later military catastrophes, and when Lith succeeded in monopolizing production, those who had opposed them found the gates of heaven closed and barred. Fuel is monitored now, and its disbursement tracked. Of course, some slips are still made, despite all of Lith's precautions — piracy abounds, after all, and a small-time operator may grow desperate enough to sell her scrip to a friend with dire need and deep pockets. But the era of the Free System is over. There are no fleets left to check Lith's ambitions. Opposition to the hegemony, where it exists, now takes subtler forms.

Sizes are illustrative; the planets are depicted ~two orders of magnitude larger as a visual aid.

Ava

    Ava is a gas dwarf with a rocky surface. Its atmosphere is dense, foggy and cold, but full of volatiles the Avians synthesized into the first rocket fuels. In prehistoric times the members of the Avian species fought for access to higher nests farther up the rocky mesas and pillars which make up the landscape, where their eggs would be protected from shuffling ground-based predators. It's a common evo-psych Just So Story that this behavior is what drove them ever higher, building homes and towers, and eventually ships to take them as high as anyone can go; interplanetary space.
    Avians follow a strict caste system. All Avians are hexapods; those whose third pair of appendages are feathered wings are Scholars, those with bat-like wings are Soldiers, and those with monstrous oversized hands are Servitors (nowadays called Workers due to a social-justice fad sweeping Ava). These traits don't breed true; Scholars have an equal chance of having children who are soldiers or workers. Because of this, Avians do not form biological family units. All Avians are raised by the state.
    Scholar-caste Avians are the largest and (according to the majority opinion of Avian scientists) the smartest. They occupy choice spots in the bureaucracy of Avian governments, and are the most visible caste off of their homeworld. They like to say they have the temperaments of "ambassadors" and "architects", but more accurately they are "meddlers" and "enablers"
    Soldier-caste Avians are the smallest, and since Avians are the smallest space-faring species this makes the soldiers very small indeed. They often serve as pilots of small craft and are by far the most numerous caste off of their homeworld.
    Worker-caste Avians are the strongest, though not as gifted at war or politics as the others. There are just as many workers as any other caste (or more, considering the mortality rates of fighter pilots) but since they rarely leave Ava you wouldn't guess.

Engineers

    On the topic of "meddlers" and "enablers": when Avians first invented interplanetary travel, they visited every world with a species that could talk and made a simple offer: give them half of the money on the planet, and they will build a space elevator. This led to the First Battery War almost immediately.
    But still, almost every captain in the System has at least one Avian officer. Their intuitive understanding of the dynamics of space travel and the mechanics of a ship's engine make them invaluable additions to a crew.

Purity

    Purity is a young and volcanically active terrestrial planet controlled by a theocratic world-government. There's a stark divide between the city-dwellers who submit to the theocracy (and by extension Lith), the wastelanders who are one step from being completely feral, and the space pirates who acknowledge no authority except their god and their guns. The Pure are a little insectile and a little reptilian, with high population variance in types-and-placement-of-limbs. Some have spider legs, some have additional arms, some have bat wings, some have clawed pedipalps.
    Their god, Pure, is the six-armed guardian of the Gates of Death and judge of mortal souls. In one hand he holds a toothy spear and in another a barbed lash, in a third the keys to Hell, in a fourth a lantern whose light reveals honest men, in a fifth the great and heavy book where your sins are recorded, and with a sixth he turns its pages of smoking brass. Fond of fighter-pilots and infantry. Hates snipers and landlords. Pilots of all species wear his symbols as lucky charms.

Lucky Charms

    Lith's state religion is the Communion of Measure, or the Compassers, depending on your translation. They have accepted and absorbed the gods of other worlds, though they renamed them after their planets in the process. The gods obviously favor Lith over their own people, and a wise businessman never misses an opportunity to capitalize on a positive relationship.
    Non-Lithians are not as eager to adopt the mores and tenets of other cultures. The one general exception to this rule is the god Pure. All spacers are afraid of "dying cold" — to run out of food, out of air, to be pinned under rubble or impaled on flotsam and die of thirst, to bleed out slowly, or (the unnameable terror) to float off into the dark with no tether, no radio, no jets, in a suit topped up with oxygen, and nothing at hand sharp enough to cut your tubes, or sturdy enough to break your faceplate. Superstitious spacers wear Pure's octagram and hope it guarantees them a hot death.

Satanazes

    Satanazes is an unmapped and untamed world. Woses, the males of the dominant species, are obligate carnivores, in that they are obligated to eat animals: when they see an animal, they eat it, even if that animal says "wait please I'm an ambassador I just want to talk please aah". The only creatures that Woses don't immediately reflexively attack are the Sylvans, the females of their species. When circumstances demand that they communicate with others, they do so through the intermediary of their many wives. When circumstances demand that they communicate in person, they show up wearing Scary Attack Dog gear with sturdy chains their wives hold like zeppelin anchors (picture a conversation with a bus-sized tiger that tries to jump on you every few words, held back by half a dozen catgirls). Lithians occasionally try to Weyland-Yutani an adolescent for scientific study, an endeavor with a 100% catastrophe rate.
    As for the Sylvans, at birth there are roughly three of them for every Wose, but as the males grow to adulthood, establish territories, and fight each other for status that ratio increases to more than 10:1. The Woses simply can't keep up with the demand, and so many Sylvans seek both employment and romance off-planet. Many Lithians have problematic attitudes about them.

Painted Tongue

    The Sylvans have a complex tradition of body modification and decoration, which in these days of interplanetary travel has both spread to and been influenced by the other worlds of the System. Piercings, especially facial piercings, are unsuited for spacesuits and breathing tubes, so many Sylvans have brightly-colored but meaningless tattoos splitting their lips or brows, or across the alars of their nose. They think little of clipping their own ears to better fit their helmets — Sylvans heal rapidly, even from serious disfigurements.
    Those who wish to be genuinely outre (which is most Sylvans) must go to more drastic lengths: false teeth of gold or surgical steel or black ceramic, auxiliary lenses, needles of magnetized neodyme in the fingertips, carbon filament knitting sheathing the ribs. A symbolically important modification, rarely imitated by other species, is what Sylvans call umineko: to gnaw off the tip of one's own trigger finger, declawing it, and making it possible for them to handle guns designed for other species.

Koss

    The Koss homeworld is a freezing ocean planet. They were a happy, peaceful people once; tubby walrus-frogs well-suited for their place in the ecosystem, content to swim and sing and live off of kelp and anchovies for a million years more. When the Lithians noticed how big and brawny they were, and beamed them up, and taught them how to make war, the Koss discovered that they were good at fighting. They enjoy it so much that the majority of Koss adults off-world are employed as shock troopers and policewomen to this day.

Contracts

    One half of a Koss contract slightly resembles a vacuum tube, though the low-density nacreous boron ceramic (LNB) shell is much more durable than glass or wire. Mated, the two halves reveal fine-detail legalisms, which typically begin with the religious formula "It appears that she who bears the one part of me owes five years" (or whatever length) "of armed service to whosoever bears my other part, howsoever it be obtained". The Koss regard these trinkets with fatal seriousness. Treasure-troves of legend often include the "rash boon", a contract of indefinite length promising the bearer arbitrary service from a hero, though this practice is not historically attested. 

Lith

    Lith is a desert planet very close to a powerful star. The biosphere is limited, and irritable. Lithians themselves are horned and bat-faced humanoids with long gangly arms and stubby powerful legs. Their skin is slightly-luminescent lavender in the visual range, and mirror-bright in higher EM bands. None of this is important information; what matters is that they won the Second Battery War, and the System is theirs.

Megastructures

    Lith's enormous industrial capacity is sometimes tapped to support grand Parliamentary hazards. Some are moderately successful, though rarely to the degree promised, and never enough to justify the enormous cost in blood, treasure, and the time of engineers.

• Emitter Bloc
      A swarm of power-collecting nodes orbits the sun closely; each of these sends a beam of directed energy up to the swarm of control nodes which orbit the sun at a distance; these in turn direct powerful masers and lasers towards innumerable reflectors, retransmitters, beam expanders, radio arrays, and both manned and unmanned deepwater installations. The Lithians use the Bloc to secure and obscure communication. Recently (or not so recently — secret projects are hard for outsiders to keep track of) they have even begun using it as a form of propulsion for stealth probes, which can be precisely maneuvered by limited bursts of energy caught in retractable sails. If you had the correct access codes, and a compatible sail, you could use this system to travel anywhere in the System you wanted, at impossible speeds, using no fuel, while remaining no more conspicuous than any piece of lifeless space-junk.
      The notion that the Bloc could be used to destroy a planet is, of course, absurd. The energy requirements, the wear and tear on components, the fact that the planet-destroying beam would have to be bounced off of a series of large mirrors — impossible. But you should still try to avoid driving your ship into one of those emissions.
  
• Mechanical Intelligence
      Sailors tell tall-tales of machine-minds going insane and turning against their masters. The engineers who build the devices know this is a fundamental misunderstanding. A "mechanical brain" is nothing like a brain; it has no volition and no agency. It is a clockwork device to calculate orbital trajectories, intersection ranges, and other matters which would be slow and imprecise for a (non-Avian) pilot to calculate by hand. It can only turn against its masters in the way of all machines: by failing, like a jammed gun or a leaking oxygen tube.
      Still, Parliament dreams of a machine-mind that can not only calculate but decide what must be calculated. Then the grim-faced Avian engineers would be made obsolete. Perhaps Lith would be able to exploit Ava's greatest secret: the Sewing Drive, which allowed Avian freedom-fighters of the Second Battery War to cross the System faster than the radio waves that warned of their approach.
      The engineers, for their part, have never provided such a machine.
• Company Loyalty
      The B.S.L. Hand That Feeds is a research vessel in orbit around one of Satanazes' dead moons. Two years ago they began experimenting with a new non-invasive transcranial magnetic procedure on their stock of Woses. Their first few attempts led only to aneurysms, partial lobotomies and fatal grand mals, but yesterday they had a breakthrough: if a certain portion of the amygdala can be targeted and electronically destroyed, the Wose loses its hostility to non-Sylvan life. There appear to be no other side-effects of the procedure.
      The lab crew are now split, evenly, on the question of what they should do with this knowledge. But how can there be an argument against applying it to the entire male population of Satanazes? The primary cause of mortality among Woses is death at the hands of another Wose. Surely, say one half of the team, this treatment is as ethically straightforward as a cure for cancer — or for suicidal impulses, if you prefer. There's no moral value to being brutally murdered by an apex predator, no matter how romanticized or "natural" your life might have been.
  

Phobos

    Phobans [or Phoebans, my notes disagree] come from Phobos [or Phoebe, ditto], a debris field orbiting the dead twin of the System's sun at an extraordinarily far distance. Their homeworld's star was stillborn, deprived of essential stellar material at birth and ripped apart in the formation of the System
    The Phobans are used to darkness, crushing gravity-shocks, and the near-silence of trace atmosphere. When they visit other worlds they wear protective, concealing garments, and speak very little through the medium of crackling radio.
    They have hated the Lithians since they met them. Phobos is the sole polity of the System which never officially agreed to the armistice which ended the First Battery War, though hostilities ended generations ago. It takes months or years to reach Phobos by rocket, and dozens of hours to contact it by radio.

Graffiti

    A spaceman who visits enough far-flung stations will see symbols repeated in unlikely places. Even in the high, high wilderness, out past Phaethon, you'll see the tags, badges and seals of the same distant gangs, regiments and academies painted on the walls or chipped into the paint.
    One motif is the "midnight sun", a yellow disc on a black field. For those who can put aside the victories and defeats, the profit and the loss, it symbolizes the freedom Lith promises: freedom from oppression, freedom from want, freedom of self-expression — nothing like the freedom of the Free System. It might appear in a rewinding station to mark the speakeasies of the counter-revolutionaries, or on a mining base to show the way to a supply cache, or it might be found on a distant asteroid, a hundred million miles from Lith, over a mass grave.
    For their part, the Phobans hate the symbol (and for this reason it's sometimes used as nothing more than an expression of anti-Phobos sentiments). They have no fondness for the Sun. It's no brighter than any other stellar object in their homeworld's sky, certainly not bright enough to dispel the permanent gloom, or disperse the clouds of carbon dust which shield the surface from the hateful stars.

Self Same King (GLOG Setting, Campaign Material)

    It has been some two centuries, many many generations of the smallfolk, since the goblins of Hybrasil threw off the yoke of their ogre masters and chased the invading tallfolk back into the sea. But the Goblin King aged and died, as goblins do, and his advisors — the prophesied adventurers who guided him to adulthood and power, and gathered the regalia of his previous incarnations — followed him into the dark long ago, even the blessed Rellek who was favored by the Goddess of Death. The Free Kingdoms that so many goblins died to create have not grown stronger or more powerful with the passing of years. 

    There are old enemies in Hybrasil, and new threats. The Torch Paladins are as proud and cruel today as they ever were before they were forced at lancepoint to bend the knee. From the south the Hobgoblin Empire swallows the island up, mile by mile, town by town. In the north the immortal Dimitar, the ruler of planet Xater and the so-called "Space Hitler", is once more preparing to invade the realms of flesh and blood. Even the lands of the dead are not peaceful, as the Red Lady and the Raven Queen squabble over souls, and in doing so allow the Ghoul and the Lich to slink back through the Gates of Life.

    But you don't care about that, of course. You don't even know who any of those people or places are; you weren't in my Pathfinder game, you haven't met any of these characters, and you aren't one of the players who rewrote the history of this world by "discovering" the "scepter" of the "goblin-king of old" (unless you were, in which case: Hello. Tell Rellek's player he still owes me $5 from the last Creator Clash). You're here for the first time. I can hear you saying to yourself "Michael, what is all this shit?"

    Here, read a little farther and I'll tell you. 

A map of a section of the eastern coast of Hybrasil. Marked on it are three of its largest cities.

The World

    Hybrasil is a large island (think more like Australia than Britain) a great distance to the south and west of the continent of Oriens. Oriens is the home of the tallfolk; elfs, dwarves, humans and &c. Hybrasil is the home of goblinoids. Some centuries ago, Oriens attempted a major colonization effort in Hybrasil. This effort was largely a failure, but it did do enough damage to the political fabric of the island to allow its perennial lower-classes to rise in a revolution. 

    The grimy port-town that was the center of the colonization effort, Orlivka, now serves as the capital of the Free Goblin Kingdoms; "free" in that the ogres who once ruled the region were all hanged, "goblin" in that a lot of its peoples are goblins, "kingdoms" in that they liked the sound of that word (their political structure is more like a palace economy with dozens of minor outlying counties). To the west is Hark, a gnomic (i.e. built by gnomes) tiered city on the slope of a mountain in the Dry Court range. To the south is Laetia, a city built in an enormous swamp and inhabited mostly by various kinds of lizard.

    Hybrasil and Oriens are landmasses on a plane also called "Oriens", because all the plane-hopping wizards live on that continent. The plane of Oriens is unique in that it is closely orbited by seven other "planets" (i.e. the diminutive of "plane"). 

    Hold a prism up to sunlight, and observe the colors on the wall: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. In your world perhaps this happens because of "frequencies" of "photons" or something. On this plane, this happens because of the influence of the Planets. 

1. Red Planet, with red suns hanging low over a red desert, rusted machines and scattered wheels of bad purpose. Exhaustion.
2. Orange Planet, where there is labor, sweat, the drive to build. Purpose.
3. Yellow Planet, incomprehensible to humans, a place of sickening wrath. Fury.
4. Green Planet, primeval forest with predators in every shadow. gnomes love this place. Panic.
5. Blue Planet, the color of the sky and no earth beneath your feet, falling into a gathering storm forever. Awe.
6. Indigo Planet, a whispery world, dark tarns, long shadows. He who waits for dawn here waits for all time. Terror.
7. Violet Planet, great stone halls, tattered hangings, golden ornaments. Avarice.

    Fairies come from the Planets. Gnomes live there too, but they come back sometimes. It's more of a vacation than an exile.

Its People

    The smallfolk, sometimes called "goblins" or "goblinoids", are native to the land of Hybrasil. Though as a whole they tend short, the ogres are some of the largest intelligent creatures in the world. Similarly, while the tallfolk of Hybrasil (sometimes called "humanoids") are generally big, the term includes halflings, who are no larger than a hobgoblin. Humans are larger and sturdier than almost all other races, and far more numerous than ogres. Most racial features you may have seen in other RPG worlds do not breed "true" in Hybrasil and Oriens, and you may encounter people with an elfen appearance but a human's strength, or an orcish face but a goblin's fear of sunlight. 

    But the tallfolk and smallfolk are not the only kind of people. The veil between worlds is thin in Hybrasil, and you will encounter many whose lives have been touched by other planes and planets. "Planetouched", "fey" and "alien" are common words for these people. Any character can be a goblinoid or a humanoid, but your highest and lowest stat (as rolled at character creation) also give you options to be one of these planetouched. Planetouched may resemble goblinoid or humanoid creatures, or may be entirely novel (though they're mostly upright bipeds), at your discretion.

• Smallfolk (any stats)
  The goblins, hobgoblins, orcs and bugbears. The smallfolk are short, wiry and covered in dense orange fur. "Race", as Hybrasilians understand it, is mostly a function of size. Goblins may be only a little over one meter high, while each step above them adds 30 or 40 centimeters. Pureblooded ogres easily reach 3 meters and 300 kilograms (ogres are not PC options).
  Strength: Choose or roll 1d4
  
  1. Tiny. You can slip into any space a fox could. 
  2. Marcher. +2 inventory slots.
  3. Precise. You can balance on anything that can bear your weight. 
  4. Gnawing Animal. Chew through a branch or a wooden door in ten minutes. Lost teeth are replaced in a month.
  
  Weakness: Choose or roll 1d4
  1. Cringing. Save vs. obedience when commanded. 
  2. Mook. Afraid of being alone. 
  3. Macho. Save vs. blind rage when insulted.
  4. Brutal. Save to leave a fight before at least one casualty. 
• Tallfolk (any stats)
  The humans, elfs, dwarves and halflings. The tallfolk are tall, sturdy and largely hairless. "Race", as those from Oriens understand it, is extremely complicated. The smallfolk don't care. Humans may be two meters tall, goliaths and elfs and dwarfs a head shorter than men, and halflings are no bigger than a child. 
  Strength: Choose or roll 1d4
  1. Educated. Extra skill. 
  2. Dark-Eyed Beauty. See by starlight. +1 reaction. 
  3. Iron Stomach. Identify potions and poisons with a little nip, no negative consequences.
  4. Vermin's Foe. +2 to-hit with a thrown object. 
  
  Weakness: Choose or roll 1d4
  1. Protean. -4 to saves vs. mutation or transformation. 
  2. Delicate. Save vs. disgust when apologizing or interacting with filth. 
  3. Greedy. Save vs. blind rage when a non-party member has treasure that ought to be yours.
  4. Foreign. -1 to reactions. 
   
• Frog (Strength highest)
  Damp and bowlegged, green and a touch slimy, inveterate explorers. Despite cruel stereotypes frog-people do not subsist mostly on bugs.
  Strength: Your thick limbs let you jump 30' horizontally or 10' vertically from standing. You can hold your breath for 10 minutes, and can move through water as easily as on land.
  Weakness: You gain 1 slot of torpor every day, plus 1 every 12 hours in an arid environment. 1 slot of torpor is removed when you bathe your entire body in fresh water for half an hour. If your inventory fills with torpor, you are mostly unresponsive, cannot participate in combat, and travel at 1/6th speed.
• Strawman (Strength lowest)
  Mostly harmless. Perhaps literally an animated scarecrow, but more likely a figure molded from dreamstuff in the Great Unconscious (not that strawmen have any concept of the metaphysics involved). 
  Strength: You are totally immune to falling damage or any other form of massive impact. You can crumple into a pile of clothes at-will and reform yourself at any time. Birds are terrified of you.
  Weakness: You are a creature of artifice, not a child of nature. You must wear old gloves to touch the world, and secondhand boots to walk around. Without them you cannot interact with the world. Sources of fire deal maximum damage to you, and you become limp and powerless in water.
• Beetle (Constitution highest).
  Rarely seen unarmored. Flesh may be banded, or russet, or the color of old teeth, while the face and fingertips are shining metallic or gemstone hues.
  Strength: You start with a suit of samurai armor (medium), a tachi (heavy) and a wakizashi (medium, wisdom-based). You can sleep comfortably in your armor, and if your gear is lost or damaged you can replace it in a week or repair it in 8 hours.
  Weakness: You may not ignore an honorable demand for a duel, and when you meet another beetle you must duel them.
• Gnome (Constitution lowest)
  Very wee. Size of a toddler, with the wrinkly face of an old man. Centuries ago this was their land, before they were forced to retreat beyond the Gates. Gnomes like on other planets now — the Green, mostly — but they've been known to come back. 
  Strength: You can fit anywhere a child could hide, and can perfectly disguise yourself as a boring inanimate object while holding your breath. 
  Weakness: The touch of iron weapons (not iron tools, not bronze or stone weapons) burn you for double damage. Save to miss an opportunity to scare the shit out of an innocent.
• Serpent (Dexterity highest)
  Lithe bodies, skin dry and cold to the touch. Held in superstitious horror for their glowing eyes. Capable of great evil. 
  Strength: Non-serpents cannot break eye contact with you on their own. While maintaining eye contact, you may force someone to make a save every round or walk 10' closer to you, even if this takes them into danger or walks them off a cliff. Once in grappling range you may force someone to save or stand rigid and helpless. 
  Weakness: You are loathed. Folk consider your gaze assault, whether or not you try to hypnotize them, so you must keep your eyes downcast in towns. Few temples permit you entrance.
• Panda (Dexterity lowest)
  Fuzzy and round. For some reason I can't grasp, people just love to have pandas around. I say: let 'em die. This is Michael talking, out-of-character. I do not like pandas. 
  Strength: You are characterized by your bold black-and-white coat and rotund body, which people find endearing. These give you +2 AC and +2 HP. 
  Weakness: All Panda-people are born with a crippling addiction to panacea, a substance refined on a different planet and imported at great expense by Panda cartels. For each day you do not consume at least one dose of panacea, you gain a cumulative -1 to all d20 rolls. After 3 weeks without panacea or medical attention, you die.
• Worker (Intelligence highest)
  The female of the species. Tiny black eyes, long black nails, black-and-yellow wool. A long thick tail ends in a sawtoothed spike. Every worker is a harried emcel. 
  Strength: You can gain a slot of exhaustion to work like ten men for an hour. Your blood is bitter black poison; anyone who bites you takes as much damage as they deal. You can viciously sting for 2d8 damage, taking [highest] yourself as you use your own blood as venom. 
  Weakness: Your rations must be syrup and liquor. Save when insulted or fly into a destructive rage. 
• Drone (Intelligence lowest)
  The male of the species. Enormous black eyes, long black nails, black-and-yellow wool. A long thick tail ends in a tuft of yellow hair that might resemble a spike, if the light is bad. Every drone is a hopeless romantic.
  Strength: You have a thick fluffy coat and a good heart, which give you resistance to fire, cold, weather and magic. Anyone you're holding on to has the same resistance. 
  Weakness: Your rations must be syrup and liquor. Save when you see beauty or fall hopelessly in love, again.
• Owl (Wisdom highest)
  Sons of fear, daughters of the night. They appear like a normal person, except for their terrible shadows. The lives of owls are short and brutal; "You'll never go far, but you'll make a lot of people come up short". 
  Strength: See by starlight, and up to 10x zoom. Your shadow is that of a great bird. When not in sunlight you may draw the shadow up over yourself and fly, silently, faster than a man can run. Your flight is steady enough to move down a 10' hallway without touching walls or floor, but you cannot hover, and you need a 10' square to turn 90°.
  Weakness: You are completely blind in sunlight, and must wear a blindfold or hood to protect your eyes. You must save to make any noise other than a wordless scream.
• Peevish Lizard (Wisdom lowest)
  Chunky, scaled, lazy. The lizards hate to do anything that doesn't involve basking in a warm pond, but that lifestyle can get expensive. This is the great injustice of the world.
  Strength: Your jaws cannot be unfastened from something without the aid of a metal crowbar. You can eat a ration to heal 1 HP, and are immune to fire.
  Weakness: You eat and sleep so rarely that you require neither while on an adventure. Instead, you must regulate your body temperature. You gain 1 slot of torpor every day, plus 1 every 12 hours in a cold environment. 1 slot of torpor is removed when you bask in a large fire or on a rock in direct sunlight for 6 hours. If your inventory fills with torpor, you are mostly unresponsive, cannot participate in combat, and travel at 1/6th normal speed. 
• Unicorn (Xharisma highest)
  

  Generations have lived and died
  in the shadow of the unicorn.
  Schools of prestige and power have been founded,
  dedicated to the hunt.
  Kingdoms have burnt forests to find it.
  Fortunes have been reduced to nothing.
  Still, they hunt the Unicorn.

  
  Strength: You have a 2' horn sticking out of your head. It is as sharp as a medium sword, and cannot break or be removed against your will. You can take 1d6 points of stat injuries for one the following magical effects, applied with a touch of your horn:
1. Heal someone for HP equal to stats lost
2. Damage an undead for HD equal to stats lost
3. Burst a lock, bend bars or shatter a chain
4. Cure a malady, such as blindness or paralysis
5. Undo a curse or hex
6. Produce brilliant light from your horn until next you sleep
Weakness: Your blood is precious. The equivalent of 1 point of maximum HP reduction, sprinkled on a field, makes it rich and bountiful; consumed as a potion it cures wounds; applied to the skin it grants the appearance of youth; kept safe and allowed to heal between harvests you could provide this bounty for a long, long time. Even the most callow of wizardlings could use your horn as a wand that would make them living legends. Everyone you meet knows all these things, 1-in-10 are willing to seize the opportunity. 
• Swan (Xharisma lowest)
  Beautiful, doomed. Legends tell of swan-maidens, and the vengeful princes that love them, and the foolish humans that try to enslave them by stealing their coat-of-feathers — or of young men cursed to spend half their lives as birds, and the rest of their lives as cripples. 
  Strength: You own a great coat of white feathers. Pulled completely around you it turns you into an enormous swan. Worn halfway on and halfway off, and it transforms you into an angelic being with thunderous wings. 
  Weakness: Disaster is waiting for every swan, at the end of the line. You have disadvantage on avoiding your Disaster and its sources deal double damage to you. Choose a Disaster, or roll on the following list: 
  1. long falls
  2. legs failing you
  3. serial killer
  4. poisoned by mistake or lack of care
  5. burning building
  6. horns of a wild beast

Gods of Hybrasil

    The native gods are simple and powerful: the Sun, the Moon, the Rain, the Sea and Winter. The invaders brought others: a whole host of gods and goddesses of Magic, Chaos, Law and the like. The two pantheons are uncomfortable with each other, but open war has never broken out. 

    The most adventurer-relevant deities are as follows: 

Wee Jas

The powers of Vanity, Law, Arcana, Death 

The Witch-Goddess, the Red Lady Mother of Magicians, Watcher of the Well, the Gate of Death, Abomination of Necromancers, the Dark-Eyed Lady

Demeanour: Haughty, diligent, grasping, afraid, conspiratorial, far-seeing 

Symbols: Red skull on a red field, a fireball, an eye with red kohl, a tall human woman in dark clothes and red jewelry, a broken hourglass, a wishing well

Common Worshipers: Wizards, ghoul-hunters, those who perform burials, communist necromancers (the ones who want free undead labor), hags

Why do people suffer? They have forgotten their place and themselves, and have struggled against the world. Or they're demons or necromancers: FUCK those guys 

Ban: Stealing the souls of the dead, which are her property. Raising mindless undead and allowing them to walk unchecked, which is disgusting to her. Raising intelligent undead, which are a blasphemy. Opening connections between between mortal realms and the worlds of the dead.

Wrath: Real Old Testament rains-of-fire. 

Sacrament: Proper burial of the dead and maintenance of tombs. Destruction of the lich and the demon. The closing of portals, the sewing-up of rents in the veil. 

Blessing: A taste of a single drop from her well of power, which makes mortals into mages.

Claw

The powers of Law, Punishment, Submission

The Torch of Heaven, our Overseer, Balancer of the Pans, President-9th-Class of Hell, King of the Burning Times 

Demeanour: Proud, literal, humorless, bureaucratic, patronizing, protective

Symbols: Fiery sword, crossed torch and shovel, black burn over the eye, locks, barbed chains, three cuts

Common Worshipers: Devils, servants of devils, paladins, pirate hunters

Why do people suffer? All planes and all life exist at the sufferance of the Absolute, who is oddly permissive of the sins of intelligent life. 

Ban: Defying the laws of legitimate authorities. Opening portals. Anarchy.

Wrath: A sharp sword in the hands of a Torch Paladin

Sacrament: None.

Blessing: Grit and fortitude, given to some and withheld from others unfairly.

Neath

The powers of Sorcery, Knowledge, Disaster

The All-Seeing Eye, the Troubled God, the Single Twin, the Dark Master, the Bright Master, the Mystery of Faith, Great Fearsome One

Demeanour: Changeable, generous, paranoid, ruining, unpredictable

Symbols: Pyramid with eye and rays, face split in two halves of black and white, glass sphere, black and white stripes, magical explosions

Common Worshipers: Mages, scholars, apocalyptic cultists, spells, students, magical creatures

Why do people suffer? There is no suffering, but sometimes people choose the long, arduous path of mundanity, foolishly believing this to be "better" or "more character-building" in some way. Why struggle when you could wave your hand and get what you want?

Ban: Mundanity

Wrath: Dreams of brain-melting chaos, when he's mad at an individual. Patches of dead magic, when he punished a whole region.

Sacrament: Any great ritual of magic. Its purpose is inconsequential: the Greatness of the Work is what Neath adores. 

Blessing: Power and knowledge — the good kind, the kind that gets you in trouble.

Fire Kills (New System for a New Setting)

    A few months back I posted a list of random encounters from a weird Napoleonic war zone. This was a snapshot of an alt-history bio-horror setting I have occasionally mused upon in that hidden Vehme which men call "the GLOG server".

Source: "Victorious Hungarian" by Locheil

    The setting of Fire Kills is a post-Great War Europe, with a victorious Central Powers analog working to reconstruct the ruined continent in the wake of manmade horrors beyond our comprehension. The old Hermetic Orders have been supplanted by the French "New Medicine" paradigm, and the war was fought with tanks, machine guns, vat-grown supersoldiers, clockwork brains, poison gas, humoral posthumans, and the sacrifice of half the progeny of Europe. Now, in the shattered ruins, the PCs pick through the rubble and attempt to address injustices and tragedies both old and new.

    The main touchstones are Pumpkin Scissors, Fullmetal Alchemist, the Dishonored series, various Clark Ashton Smith stories, and especially the work of Arthur Machen. For the pseudo-science I'm depending on my limited understanding of humoral medicine discredited turn-of-the-century psychological and sociological theories.

    "What used to be conceptualized as the realms of the Fairy, domain of the Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Courts, is now referred to as "The Great Unconscious". The fairies themselves are "autonomous instincts", or "archetypes" if they're particularly powerful. Our world, scientists now understand, is the 3-dimensional surface of an 11-dimensional hyper-hyper-hyper-hyper-hyper-hyper-hyper-hyper-sphere. What we think of (heh) as "ideas" and "thoughts" are like shadows of the instincts and archetypes moving below. And just as the shadow can be shaped by altering the form, and the body can be shaped by altering its humors, so too can the mind be shaped by altering the archetypes...

    "But! That's all high-level stuff. Nothing for the PCs to worry about, and probably irrelevant to their sincere but lighthearted adventures through war-torn famine-stricken Europe."

    CatDragon of Glass Candles asks, "Who won the Great War in the Fullmetal Humorist setting, or did you make it deliberately up to interpretation?"
    Nobody won the Great War, CatDragon. Sad mime face. All Europe lost...
    But in another, and perhaps more literally true, sense: the Central Powers won the Great War. A united Germany (with Prussian clockwork technology) and Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The French, along with their pressganged "allies", lost. England is a smoking fairy-haunted ruin. The USA was glad to wash its hands of the whole business, and now isolates itself on the other side of the Atlantic. Napoleon is finally "dead". One of his great-grandsons is in charge of France now.

Source: in image

    Well, enough rambling. How does a game in this setting work?

Character Creation

    The PCs fought in the War, perhaps on the wrong side — but now the War is over. To improve the world, to make it a better place for generations to come, to shape the future in their own ideological image, to atone for their sins, or just to make rent, they have become members of the Truth and Beauty Commission (name pending). This gives them either unlimited jurisdiction or none whatsoever, depending on your perspective, and they've been sent out into the world on a picaresque to solve extremely heavy-handed morality plays about the Haves and the Have-Nots. They travel from train station to train station solving problems involving ex-supersoldiers turned bandits, corrupt nobles, failed Evil Science Experiments, traumatized survivors of horrible-but-ultimately-pointless battles, &c &c.

    To make a character, you must consider their Temperament and their Skills. There are four Humors which make up one's Temperament; these are Sanguine for making friends, talking people into favors, impressing superiors, and general sweet-hearted behavior, Choleric for bursts of strength, bullying, headbutting both metaphorically and literally, shouting down others, kicking doors, avoiding consequences and general hot-headed behavior, Phlegmatic for thinkin', translating, designing gizmos, picking locks, deciphering rituals, and general big-brained behavior, and Melancholic for terrifying normals, toughing out wounds, wringing someone's neck in total darkness, befriending horrible monsters and general cold-blooded behavior. A normal human being has 2 points in each of these.

    For the purpose of this post I'll be assuming the PC is a Supersoldier, who has had their humors  realigned (or designed from scratch if they're a test-tube baby) according to the principles of New Medicine. Supersoldiers have 9 points to assign to their Humors according to their taste, though you can have no less than 0 and no more than 5 in a single Humor, and they cannot have a tie for their highest Humor. That highest Humor determines their Temperament. You aren't required to have your characters act stereotypically according to their Temperament, but other characters will expect them to, and will be surprised if they fail to do so.

• If you have 0 Sanguine, you are unable to be happy. You cannot vocalize except to make aimless threats or scream at the top of your lung. 
• If you have 0 Choleric you cannot act in combat and you cannot win arguments.
  
• If you have 0 Phlegmatic you are an amnesiac. You cannot recall your own history, and you cannot use Academic Skills.
• If you have 0 Melancholy you cannot remain silent; you must constantly sing, hum or mumble. You cannot willingly enter darkness without a source of light.

    It's not recommended that you start with 0 in any attribute, although you can if you want to. This is to simulate fucked-up little bastards, and the injury system.

    These Supersoldiers also have 20 points to invest in Skills. Skills don't have a maximum value, but it gets harder to improve them the higher your rating in that Skill is. Ratings 1–4 cost 1 point each, 5–8 cost 2, and so forth. These Skills are as follows:

Battlefield

1. Armory, for the maintenance and operation of firearms and artillery
   
2. Hand-to-Hand, for combat with melee or natural weapons
   
3. Heavy Machinery, for the maintenance and operation of tanks, automobiles, ships and Heavy Machines
   
4. Military, for tactics, bureaucracy, and military history, or for interacting with military authorities
   
5. Shooting, for combat with guns
   
6. Piloting, for the maintenance and operation of planes and airships.
   

Academia

1. Biology, for the history and practical use of the science (including battlefield medicine)
   
2. Chemistry, for the history and practical use of the science (including explosives)
   
3. Forgery, for the production or identification of forged handwriting, fake artifacts, or falsified documents
   
4. Library, for study and for finding references in books
   
5. Surgery, for the history and practical use of the art (including first aid)
   
6. Profession, a generic skill representing training and experience in other fields. May be taken multiple times, e.g. a character might have 2 points in Profession (Law) and 1 in Profession (Actor)
   

Escape

1. Animals, for veterinary practice, handling of tamed animals, or befriending wild ones
   
2. Athletics, for running, jumping, swimming, climbing
   
3. Bluff, for keeping a straight face in a poker game, lying with a smile, or pretending to be something you're not
   
4. Civilian, for information-gathering, befriending normal people, pretending to live a normal life, or for interacting with civilian authorities.
   
5. Stealth, for hiding, sneaking, pocket- and lock-picking.
   
6. Survival, for rope-tying, fire-building, tracks-following and &c.
   

    When a PC is faced with an appropriate challenge, the DM (stands for "Doctor of Medicine" in this game) decides the difficulty of the challenge by assigning it a small integer number. They also decide what Humor and what Skill is appropriate for this challenge. The player adds up their character's total values in that Humor and Skill, rolls that many d6s, counts how many dice come up 4, 5 or 6, and if that total is above the assigned difficulty, they succeed.

    I feel like kind of a dope explaining this step by step. You people have played dicepool systems, right? Shadowrun maybe, or Vampire: the Masquerade? I'm talking about dicepools.

Source: in image

   

Combat

    I should also explain, briefly, how I intend to run combat in this system. I haven't actually tested any of this yet so it's subject to change at a whim. It'll operate a bit like Best Case Scenario. Rounds are about a second or two, and all actions take place simultaneously. If it matters who moves first (e.g. you're trying to slam a big vault door, and a horrible monstrosity is trying to slide under the door and eat you), roll an opposed Sanguine.

    To attack someone in hand-to-hand combat, roll Choleric (or Melancholic if you're attacking from surprise) + Hand-to-Hand, versus their roll of Choleric + Hand-to-Hand. If you have more successes than they do, subtract the difference from their Choleric. When they hit 0 Choleric, they've had the stuffing beat out of them. If there's no one nearby to protect them they can be killed, knocked unconscious, tied up, or can have their precious super-organs stolen.

    To attack someone with a gun, roll Sanguine (or Melancholic if you're attacking from surprise) + Shooting, versus their roll of Sanguine plus any bonuses they have from cover or distance. If you have more successes than they do, they have been fucking shot with a fucking bullet. They roll Choleric and if they don't get more successes than you did, they are dead of being shot. If they do roll more successes, then your original number of successes are subtracted from their Choleric as per being wounded in hand-to-hand.

Example Melee Weapons

1. Brass knuckles. Concealable, silent.
   
2. Combat knife. Concealable, silent, adds an extra success when attacking.
   
3. Tomahawk. Silent, +1 success, can be thrown ten meters.
   
4. Lead pipe. Silent, +1 die.
   
5. Wakizashi. Silent, +1 success, +1 die.
   
6. Katana. Silent, +2 successes

Example Guns

1. Webley. A double-action revolver, reliable and accurate. This revolver or ones much like it were carried by Entente officers during the war, for all the good it did them.
   Range increment of 40 meters (i.e. at 41 to 60 meters subtract 1 from your successes, at 61 to 80 meters subtract 2 and so forth). Six shots. Concealable.
   
2. Luger. A self-loading, self-cocking pistol — what a wonder of the modern age! The officers of the Central Powers preferred the Luger. Sidearms made little difference, but these pistols were sturdy enough to survive the war and fall into others' hands, so long as their original owners weren't blasted to smithereens by French artillery.
   Range increment of 20 meters. Eight shots. Concealable.
3. Winchester. A tube-fed, pump-action shotgun, with a heatshield and a bayonet lug for trench combat. The Americans made short, bloody work of those who ended up on the wrong end of this gun.
   Range increment of 40 meters, but ineffective past 80. +2 dice.
   
4. Lebel. A venerable platform, personally approved by Napoleon when he was "alive". This Lebel may have lost her Rosalie in her ten, twenty or thirty years of service, but she still shoots.
   Range increment of 100 meters. Nine shots. +1 success.
   
5. Huot. The Canadians were desperate to answer the Central Powers' growing number of LMGs, so they assembled this monstrosity out of the carcasses of fallen rifles. There's some sort of poetry in that.
   Range increment of 100 meters. Twenty-five shots, but it fires five with every attack. +1 success. If you choose to fire another five, +1 die.
   
6. Osokin. A shamanic musket that can only be operated by those who have accepted a contract with the spirits hosted in the barrel. This machine kills Leninists.
   This gun fires based on Phlegmatic, not Sanguine. Range increment of 50 meters. One shot, and you can either spend 30 seconds reloading it or pay a point from one of your Humors.
   

    I suppose I'm rather out of things to say. This isn't a very good post, I guess, since it's just proposing a derivative, poorly-thought-out and completely-untested system, but I wanted to get all those rules off my conscience. Usable content for this setting, detailing some adventures, factions, characters, locations &c may be forthcoming. Perhaps I'll answer some burning questions, like "what happened to Russia?" (the czarists fled east and made sweet with the indigenous people of Siberia, while the anarchists are running around in the west with tank-trains) and "what happened to the U.S.A?" (it developed a sakoku policy and has been sinking any Old World ships it finds) and "what happened to Britain?" (fairies ate it. Crowley is super dead). Perhaps we'll visit my shitty, abandoned, Dungeon23 idea. It had some frankensteins in it. Anyway, goodbye.

41 Feasts (GLOG Setting)

    At the beginning of the world, where the labyrinth starts, in the first segment of the maze, it is always night. The stars are huge as thumbnails held at arm's length, but so dim that their light makes the silver sand seems black. If you follow the trail of footprints back through the otherwise-trackless wastes, you come to two huge pillars of featureless stone reaching to heaven. The footprints lead back between them, but you can follow them no longer, not without losing yourself in the dark and getting turned around.

    Each intelligent creature in the world, or their ancestor, came walking through that gateless gate with no memory of a life before. Having nothing better to do, and no other idea of the way, they followed the footprints through the waste, and walked until they came to a great sheer barrier of rolling silver fog, and, passing through, so came to the second part of the world-maze, the second segment of the unmeasured labyrinth, the second division of a total that has never been numbered.

    You, too, have come through that gateless gate. You have clothes on your back, and maybe a pocketful of strange coins, or a belt with a knife or a torch. You have no memories except darkness and sand. And yet, somehow, you know a few things beyond any possibility of doubt:

• The desert is the first section of many of the Labyrinth
  
• The Labyrinth has only one path
• The sections of the path are separated by locked gates
• Progression is the purpose of humanity 
  
• Who stops progressing forfeits their humanity 
  
• Who unlocks the last gate reaches the center of the Labyrinth
• Who reaches the center of the Labyrinth wins
  

    Of course, different people have different interpretations, and their children yet more so, and their grand-children yet more so, on and on. Many different schools of thought have arisen as to the origin and the purpose of the Labyrinth; here are just a few.

• Three-Eyed Giant
      A million-billion years ago (or thereabouts) the Three-Eyed Giant made the world alone. He did this to create a test of sorts for the adventurers he knew would come. Each region of the labyrinth, therefore, has a puzzle to solve or an enemy to destroy in order to show you are worthy of reaching the center where the Giant waits.
      Whoever reaches the center will be granted their truest wish.
• Forty-One
      The forty children of the Easter Mother wanted to create a world, but fought amongst themselves as to how they would do so. They appealed to their mother, who in her wisdom ruled that each child would create their own part of the world (and so the Labyrinth has forty sections, you see). The children, tired, fell asleep after all their hard work, and if they have not been waked then they sleep still.
      The Easter Mother is also sleeping. The one who reaches the center can wake her, and begin the creation of the world anew.
• Snake
      Lindurmr; he coils. Nithogr; he bites. Fafnir; he takes. The World is a Snake and the Snake is So Hungry. It has been Oh, So Long since he has Eaten anything worth Eating. Please; take the Vow, shed your Skin, Eat as many things as will fit into your Mouth, and journey to the center of the world to throw your body down to the Mouth of The Snake. Please. Please. 
  

    Any character, from any system, is acceptable so long as they start at level 1 and can reasonably hope to level-up by adventuring. You all start from nothing, walking through the gateless gates and on through the desert.

    The Labyrinth is essentially a gigadungeon (a structure which is to megadungeons as megadungeons are to the blueprint of a house). Each section is a tiny world in itself, a couple of six-mile-hexes wide, a couple more six-mile-hexes long. Each section has its own laws of physics and nature, its own rules of magic, its own ecosystem, its own day/night cycle, its own dungeons, its own civilizations. Civilizations in the Labyrinth are descended from those who voluntarily forfeited their humanity and chose to remain; adventurers who settle down in such places quickly adapt both culturally and biologically.

    At the beginning and end of each section of the Labyrinth is a great sheer barrier of rolling silver fog. Plants, animals, or monsters cannot pass through these barriers, only people can. And people can only pass through these barriers after successfully "navigating" the current section. Exactly what "navigating" a section means is unique to the section. Section #1, the Trackless Waste, is navigated by simply reaching the barrier — the desert is littered with the bones of those who came through the gateless gate before the footprints were clear enough to follow. In another section, you might have to explore a huge temple complex and lay your hand-analogs on the altar at its heart. In another, you might have to help the moon fall in love with the sun before you can pass.

    In the earlier sections there are people who have already navigated or heard from those who have, and they can point you in the right direction. As you continue, navigation becomes more complicated, and your fellows become more competitive and less helpful. Turning back (that is, traveling to a previously-navigated section) brings with it the risk of forfeiting your humanity, so there are pretty strict gradations of HD and Level.

   Sections where city-sized chains hang from the ceiling over a burning furnace. Sections that are frozen. Sections where light cannot shine. Sections only navigable through sacrifice. Sections full of doubtful whispering voices. Sections where you are hunted. Sections where you die if you break the silence. Sections where the dirt is gold and the trees are ruby and everyone has colossal tits.

    That's about all I have to say about 41 Feasts. The setting was based on a dream I had several years ago now. I don't know what exactly I'll do with it, if anything. I just wanted to write it up so that I'll still remember it several more years from now.

    Snake cultists eat each other by the way. That was really important to the dream. They can eat each others' corpses, but they're perfectly happy to eat each other alive or just murder each other to get a decent meal. Their eyes glow blue, and they can sense the presence of other cultists. I think they might burn when they touch silver? It really seems like a shitty deal, to be a snake cultist.

An Encounter Table for a Weird Napoleonic War Zone

    This is for a certain someone on a certain server, as a Secret Santa type dealio.

Source: Old Guard by Den4oStojanov

    The Emperor fights a war on four fronts! From the Portuguese Remnants, in their once-colony of Brasil, the Peninsular Army assaults His western shores, and on His eastern borders each nation of the Coalition masses 150,000 men. To punish Albion He has bade no continental power deal with them; to punish the defecting Russians He has sent a half-million of the finest soldiers of Europe to ravage all the Russias. In the cold Atlantic His navy steadily loses ground (or water, mayhaps) to the proud Briton and the perfidious Dutchman.

    If it were down to strength of arm only, the Emperor might still prevail, even against three-quarters of the world. But the Hermetic and Shamanic traditions of His enemies bedevil His soldiers, influence His commanders, intercept His communications, and slowly turn the tide.

    Only one thing can save the Forever-Emperor; the New Medicine and the tireless soldiers it promises him. Uniting the science of Galvani, Volta, Dippel, Paracelsus and Hippocrates, New Medicine is a vital practice for making armies of dead out of dead armies, for sewing the good bits together to make 5 new soldiers out of 10 old worn-out ones. What's more, these New Medics have begun experimenting in the rebalancing of humors — a little too much blood makes one tired and feverish, but what does much too much blood do? When your heart beats black bile and your brain stews in the cold, dry element, what then?

    But I don't need to tell you all of this. It's ancient history now in our terrifyingly modern 20th Century; how the Emperor's undead marines swarmed from their sinking ships up the sides of Nelson's and tore the British sailors limb from limb; how Prince Kutuzov was hanged by the neck from his own artillery by grinning corpses who needed no food, no water, no shelter, no light, no rest; the fate of Lisbon and Porto and Braga and Coimbra. Napoleon's star rose, and would shine until the Great War ended all war...

    Enough for the moment. Let's talk about the sort of thing you might find in a Weird Napoleonic War Zone:

All Russias

    The Tsar trusted General Winter to halt the French advance, but the dead don't mind mud, and the killing-cold can't kill them. Moscow is burned and the Russian Army routed, and still the French hunt for deserters and merchants' hidden treasure-troves in the snow and black dirt.

2. Zmei Gorinich, a proud young Russian nobleman from over Siberia way, is occupying a nearby castle to watch the next battle from its tower. He seems totally unconcerned with what might happen to him if the French win — or the starving Russian conscripts, for that matter. His three wives (in Eastern style) are glad to invite you in, and watch you over their silk fans at dinner, giggling. Won't you stay the night?

3. A small crowd of Domovoi trample in circles in the dust of the road, discussing the terms of their surrender. Their primary concern is protecting the local peasantry, and the fact that if they approach the French camp they will be eaten.

4. A small inn on the edge of the forest serves both sides. A sign declares this to be the "Sky-blue Rodent". Inside, a tremendously fat Turkish barkeep maintains peace between Russian officers and French technicians as they play game after game of grueling, high-stakes billiards.

5. A farm and its granary burn down as the farmer watches. His family, dead already of foreign disease, are all buried behind the house. He waits with a gun for the first Frenchman he sees, living or dead.

6. Battle lines drawn up. The swirling mass of mostly-Frenchmen, with their eyes and mouths sewn wide open, wait at the bottom of a hill for some unknown signal. The Russians ready their heavy cannons and a wall of Congreves loaded with a chemical that will reduce the French soldiers to slavering and disobedient ghūls.

7. Recurring Character

8. A brutal melee between undead and Russians, in the wreck of their artillery and the stink of dead horses. The ground has been churned into mud hip-deep, and even the tireless undead are slowing on this Hellish battlefield.

9. A long line of bodies with bullet-holes through their skulls. Half a mile off, a sniper is watching you, and will fire if she sees you investigate or try and cross the line described by their corpses. Just a little beyond that line a spilled horsecart reveals the glint of twenty kilos of gold ecu.

10. A military camp of insane undead, who have killed all but the barely necessary technicians. They have declared themselves independent, and what's more: they have declared themselves to be French citizens who possess all rights due to them.

11. A treasure-trove of war-materiel on the banks of an ice-spanned river. There's a large suspicious hole in the middle and no sign of whoever left all these guns.

12. Koncek, some barbarian Khan from the south, is hiring any and all adventurers and mercenaries to recover a treasure for him. Far away from here is a lake, and in the center of that lake is an island, and on the center of that island is a dungeon, and in the heart of that dungeon is a chest, and you don't need to know what all's in the chest, you just need to know Koncek will pay you for it with its weight in rubies, ivory, silk and incense.

Europe

    From the Black Sea to the Atlantic, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, in the mountains of Switzerland and on the floodplains of the Netherlands, through the frozen fields of Scandinavia and over the sun-bathed hills of Iberia, all the fighting-men and materiel and wealth of Europe, North Africa, India and America fight for or against Napoleon, who some call the Antichrist and others the Emperor of the World. New technology meets old magic and finds it wanting.

2: Scholomance, a great dragon, lazily flies above a battlefield sending down bolts of lightning and tonnes of hail. He's interested in selling his services (swift flight, control over weather), but so far no one has been brave enough to take him up on it. Maybe Scholomance is frustrated enough to offer a deal to an intrepid entrepreneur?

3: A group of local peasants have had enough of these stitched-together nightmares, and have dug a pit across the highway. They'll be killed to the last man when the Emperor's Afflicted roll through. Most of them will be cut up and stitched together themselves. You can try to convince them otherwise, but they're fairly worked up with their torches and pitchforks and aren't in a talking mood.

4: Portuguese guerillas wait in the trees for the Spanish to march by. Their skin flickers and shifts like a dream of a chameleon. Their flesh is beginning to melt, and their poison blood is beginning to kill them. None of them will see home again.

5: Battalion of Life Guard, eviscerated by grapeshot, lying in slithery heaps in pools of their own blood, moaning for death. They're so full of elixir it's dribbling from their opened guts; there's another few cases in their tents three miles back, if you're interested in looking the Reaper in the eyesocket and spitting in his bony face.

6: A dozen French sharpshooters stand in a small huddle, smoking, waiting for the command to move out. A necromancer and his team of surgeons are quietly measuring their spines, skulls and limbs with calipers and tailor's tapes.

7: Recurring Character

8: A detachment of Prussian soldiers, mostly clockwork. Humboldt's Kosmogeist means they no longer depend on the large, vulnerable meat-brains they were born with; the only fleshy part left of them is their eyes.

9: Austrian cuirassiers ride by, so heavily armored they can't rise or be separated from their horses. Their swords are three yards long, their lances ten, and the steel plates on their body are a yard thick. If there are living men and horses underneath all of that, they aren't making any sound.

10: An Austrian war-eagle, with two heads and feathers of gold bullion, flies overhead with a mocking scream. Take cover quickly; that whistling sound is coming from the fire-bombs.

11: Out in the field are three shallow graves containing three coffins containing maybe 40 of the Emperor's best, all in pieces. Their sabers, rifles and cannons have been pitched into a nearby ravine.

12: Talleyrand, with a young man's heart and eyes and skin but still his old man's brain, is riding out to survey the damage with a small troop of bodyguards. He'd be grateful to hear what the PCs have to think about all of this. "Who seeks peace should prepare for war", he quotes.

Albion

    Napoleon was master of the Channel, not for six hours, but for years and years and years. With every tide another five-thousand French soldiers beach themselves and march towards London, Birmingham, Exeter, Sheffield. The Scots are agitating for an understanding with Napoleon; the Irish are agitating for an understanding with Napoleon; the Welsh and the Cornish and the Manx want an understanding with Napoleon. These days it seems King George's only friends are the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. These days it seems those are the only friends he needs.

2: A clanking money-elemental, vast and scintillating and serpentine and gore-spattered, crawls blindly through the woods seeking a debtor. The Crown sees no reason to risk His armies when He can risk His funds instead; so much gold and silver in one place has had predictable consequences.

3: In this deserted bay, the some of the flotsam of the Battle of Trafalgar has washed ashore. The British ships are plain wood, but the Franco-Spanish frigates were sewn from living flesh and bone, and have quickly rotted to poisonous skeletons.

4: A many-legged mitrailleuse scuttles along, apparently piloted by a bridge of leprechauns. As you come into view, the bald captain orders a mate to "divert power to forward shields".

5: Two zouaves (whose faces are tanned leathery except for the pale patch where they recently shaved their beard) lead a score of Norwegian mercenaries in looting a cathedral. The Anglican minister stands outside, red-faced and indignant. "We stole this from the Papists fair and square", he insists.

6: A blood-choked swamp of crocodiles and sandstone ruins. The air is strange, as if the sun is brighter here than in the rest of England. Human pieces stick from the stinking water, and in the distance one can hear the shrieks of shells and dying men.

7: Recurring Character

8: Press-ganged New Englanders with smoothbore muskets stumble along to the whip-crack of a "British" officer wearing two top hats.

9: A legion, in a surprisingly accurate sense of the word, marches towards a distant besieged town in ranks forty men wide and files a hundred men deep. Some wear bronze maille, others ride chargers in painted armor, others are dressed like Merry Men or Norman men-at-arms or bearded vikings. Each soldier is pale and wan and blinking in the sun, and each officer has leaves woven into their hair and plays panpipes.

10: Just off the coast, a British ship of the line fends off the tentacles of a terrible Kraken. When its great limbs wash ashore, they will be revealed to be sewn from the arms and legs of a hundred African laborers.

11: Treacherous red-headed Fenians wait in ambush for G_d-fearing, King-loving Britons. Their lances are sharp as thorns, their deer are shod in fairy-silver, and their tiny Irish brains are sodden with cheap liquor.

12: Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was slain by Danes and Norwegians shortly after his arrival in Scandinavia. No one is sure what, exactly, is animating his headless corpse. He doesn't appear to be stuffed with Prussian clockwork, or Imperial modified-organ-meat. He isn't soaked in Fairy elixir or glamour. He doesn't even even seem to be a ghost. Perhaps, his soldiers suggest, he wanders the highways cutting down his foes because that's just how much he hates the French.

Lucidity Is Not A Possibility (Orbiters Local 519 Dungeon, Aliens, Weapons)

    This is a spaceship (a dungeon) for Archon's hack Orbiters Local 519, a game of derelictcrawling, salvage and insurance fraud. I've also included some optional alien PC races from a planetary romance setting I used in my pre-GLOG days. Purple text is read-aloud narration.

Setting

    The System is, obviously, a solar system. It's made up of dozens of life-bearing planets, with almost as many intelligent species, orbiting a subgiant star named, unimaginatively, "the Sun". The System's civilizations have been spacefaring for a few centuries, but tech level is still sub Star Wars — it's a bit like the Honor Harrington books, if you've read those. No generic "forcefields", no robots, no AI, no hyperdrives, hacky mechanical artificial-gravity, combat largely centered on torpedo salvos (love a salvo) and railgun broadsides and boarding actions (love a good boarding action). Everything I need for rough and tumble dieselpunk planetary romance.

    I read Orbiters Local and said to myself, "G. R. Michael, this is a brilliant little game. Spaceship scavenging. Space hulks. Space. What a great idea. Say, how about you write out some crap for the System setting from all those years ago?", to which I responded, "Yeah, maybe". Seven months later, here we all are.

Species

Avian (Lesser)

    Slender, feathered, six-limbed humanoids from the gas-dwarf moon of Ava. As the first space-faring race of the System they spread their technology and their values to other civilizations (much to their own regret). Employed as engineers, architects and armorers on every world, station and ship out there. Culturally, Avians follow a rigid caste system which can only be escaped through off-world service.

SOLDIER-CASTE AVIAN
3' humanoid, 12' of batlike wings.
No movement penalty in microgravity. Free movement in pressurized microgravity (flight).

WORKER-CASTE AVIAN
3' humanoid, extra pair of massive arms
No movement penalty in microgravity. Strength is 16 when forcing things with extra arms. Extra hands count as terrifying size.

Pure (Lesser)

    Slender, scaled, six-limbed humanoids from the volcanic moon of Purity. Closely related to the Avians, though a little taller, more assertive, and with more toxic stingers and fangs and suchlike. The Pure are often stereotyped as all being pirates, procurers, poisoners, phanatical worshipers of the god of Hell, or some combination thereof. This stereotype is very accurate.

PURE
5' humanoid, weird eyes
Remain conscious in hard vacuum. Choose: natural thermal scope OR natural electronics scanner.

Sylvan (Normal)

    Tall, willowy, catgirl humanoids from the forest planet of Satanazes. Introduced to the System relatively recently by corporate interests trying to abduct the males of their species, the monstrous Woses, for use as some kind of bioweapon (this was a hilariously bad idea). Sylvans considerably outnumber the males; this situation is partially alleviated by large harems and partially alleviated by wandering catgirl sharpshooter mercenaries.

SYLVAN
7' humanoid, catgirl
Agility is 3d4+4. +1 reaction rolls (everyone loves catgirls).

Lithian (Normal)

    Horned, highly-reflective, batlike humanoids from the desert planet of Lith. A nation of gunboat capitalists, ferocious in battle and dominant in commerce. The word for their incandescently pactolian super-terrestrial world means "the larger of the two suns" on both of its inhabited moons (Ava and Purity). Lithians are found in every corner of the System and at every level of the social totem pole, except for the bottom, which is for the people they don't like.

LITHIAN
6' humanoid, crown of horns
+1 to Strength, Agility and Perception.

Mission

    "While docked at fueling station over the gas-giant Eos, your crew hears of a tragic accident: two boats, one of them a massive cargo hauler, have collided in low orbit. They're expected to fall into the clouds below in days, if not hours, and be lost forever. What a shame."

THE BOAT:
    "The privately-owned LUCIDITY IS NOT A POSSIBILITY was carrying material to a construction point in Eos orbit when she was struck. As a cargo hauler, the boat is blimp-shaped, with a small (usually detachable) area for the crew and a cavernous (usually depressurized) area for the stuff. She's newer-model, so the powerplant should still be operational if it has fuel, and the phantom-grav should keep working well past crush-depth. Her manifest isn't particularly detailed but you should expect heaps of steel beams and plenty of construction equipment."

THE PROBLEM:
    "A smaller boat smacked into her, hard. So hard that you only have automated distress signals; no one from either boat called for help themselves. The second boat blared about a second and a half of factory-default radio-noise before dying. That means it was probably a pirate or a smuggler with jailbroken systems; either way, you have no information on who she was or what she was carrying."

OBJECTIVE:
    "Reclaiming the main cargo hull with a mothership your size is out of the question. The thing is hundreds of meters across and it's falling into the gravity well of a gas-giant as we speak. Instead, recover as much high-value cargo as possible, and try to salvage the crew-area. Salvaging the crew-area will count as a successful mission."
SECONDARY OBJECTIVES:
- Manifest indicates 10 spacers and 2 "guests". Confirm the status of all 12 who were on board at the time of collision.
- Identify the second ship and prep it for salvage.
- ???
- ???

scale suggestive, not intended to be accurate.

    That, uh, "map" is for my own reference, and is only semi-readable to others. Let me give you some more information:

Approaching:

    "The LUCIDITY IS NOT A POSSIBILITY sits in low, decaying orbit, almost brushing the farthest-reaching fingers of the gas giant's clouds. The crew-area clings to the swollen cargo-area like a beetle on a ball of shit. Her tiny plasma engines are still online and struggling to keep the structure upright; the much larger primary engines, on the cargo-area, are dark and cold.
    "The second boat, the one responsible for this collision, looks like an Avian warship. Long, thin, designed for ramming cargo boats like this and disemboweling them. She sticks halfway out from the side of the cargo-area, bent like a hairpin. Looks like someone tried to jam a cigarette into an egg and gave up. Her engines are dead as well.
    "There's pretty significant damage to the hull of the cargo area, obviously. Looks like the whole thing warped and buckled from the forces of the impact. Pseudo-gravity is online, and the warship is visibly fighting to tear free by gutting the cargo-area completely. You might have a few hours before the superstructure collapses, or you might have thirty minutes."

    You don't need to point them out immediately, but a quick glance at the hauler makes it obvious to the PCs (all veteran spacemen) where points of interest like the conning tower, phantom-acceleration room and power plants are relative to each other.

Entering:

    "There are three plausible entrances to the cargo boat. The conning tower on the crew-area should have an airlock appropriate for your shuttle, and the lights are on so the systems should be functional. The massive loading doors on the bow of the cargo-area probably weigh as much as your shuttle, but there are wickets for easy access to the bay, which you should be able to hack or otherwise breach. Finally, there's a whopping great hole where the warship rammed the cargo-area. Shouldn't be a problem to hop from the shuttle into the Lucidity."

    It will, in fact, be a problem to hop from the shuttle into the Lucidity. The pseudo-gravity is leaking; a jump from the transport shuttle over to the hull might turn from a straight line to a ballistic arc just at the end, sending you "down" and, probably, towards the atmosphere of the gas-giant. Uhoh.

The Koss Transport:

    She's what the Avian warship collided with in the hull. Bad luck for the Avians; these transports were built in the second Battery War specifically to withstand collisions like that. Koss transports are 50m long and shaped something like a horseshoe crab. Their armor is the second-closest thing to indestructible in the System, and they have a dozen tiny pseudo-gravity systems built into their hulls for the sole purpose of bleeding off impulse (techno-babble for "their interiors don't have artificial gravity but also the crew doesn't splatter when the ship hits something").
    The transport can physically blat lighter, twinkier boats out of heaven. She can intercept fire from battleship main-guns without flinching, and run an arbitrarily-dense blockade with up to a dozen (skinny) (tightly-packed) VIPs and a single pilot. Koss transports are the armored limos of space: you wouldn't want to pay for the gas on a roadtrip, and you wouldn't want to have to crack one open with only a conventional warhead.

    This transport has four stasis pods, two of them smashed and their occupants killed, two of them on emergency power and their occupants badly injured. The transport's captain is lying prone behind a rifle on the loading ramp, in position to defend her ship and her crew with her life, if she hadn't bled to death in her ruptured suit a few hours ago. She died cold — bad luck. On her body is half of a contract stick. Combined with the other half, found in the Command room up in the crew-area, makes you the legal owner of one more combat mission for the two surviving Koss mercenaries. Worth a credit to the right buyer.

    The ship itself is a secondary objective if you can get it out of the cargo-area and to the Mothership for scrapping. The controls have been fried by EM, but you could try and jury-rig them to bash your way out of the hold, or just cut the hull out from beneath the transport.

Primary and Secondary Lifts:

    The elevator cars are smashed at the bottom of the shafts. If the pseudo-grav is still on, you'll have to climb with a grappling hook or magnet boots. The two shafts could be cut through fairly easily. If they're cut or collapse on their own (this happened to one group) then the cargo-area will start to rapidly fall into Eos and the crew-area will stabilize its own orbit, making for relatively easy salvage.

Navigation Room:

    The crewmen in this room died very, very hot — good luck. The hold was pressurized, so the warship's impact popped the hydraulic seals at the base of the primary lift, the door into the nav room, and the door into the crew quarters. The six corpses in these rooms show signs of primary blast injury; mottled faces, ruptured chest cavities, and crushed eyeballs. Go all in on the scene. "They're dead, but they don't even look surprised about it". Say things like "the walls are splashed with frozen blood" and "loops of icy intestines are splayed out like spaghetti".

Command Room:

    There's a handwritten note left on the big fancy captain's chair, reading

        Not my fault.
        Can't hail the rest of the crew.
        Falling into Eos.
        If you're looting my ship sometime in the next two hours, fuck you.

            Captain Valerio Adhara

    Of the two ultra-premium lifepods (mahogany paneling, leather seats), one is missing. The other can be jettisoned empty, or filled with bulky loot if you'd like. The shuttle can pick it up easily enough.
    An examination of the console reveals that the captain deleted his half of the contract with the Koss mercenaries, but forgot to empty his trashbin. It's easily recovered.

Phantom Acceleration Room:

    Here's how Lithians make artificial gravity: they start with a few discs-within-discs of ultradense material suspended on a cushion of magnetism, they spin 'em up to incredible speed, mrmflrbhurbabfm, linear momentum to angular momentum, linear moment to angular moment, mmmblafdhbiblf, gravity is not a force, murmblfhf, impulse, curved spacetime, bup bup bup.

    This is all well and good unless you're standing in the room with those spinning discs when your boat gets hit by something. The crewmember who was in here has been reduced to something like 13 kilos of carbon dust and 42 kilos of water vapor, assuming he started out at 70 kilos.

Loading Area NPCs:

    As soon as anything interesting happens on the boat, Zayman will try sending out from his hardsuit. The shuttle will hear him and notify the PCs by radio. If they're ever face-to-face, Centiplease, as a Psion, will contact the PCs telepathically and try to negotiate a deal to get him and his bodyguard off the ship and onto a neutral space station. It's not unreasonable for some Lithian company-men to want their comings and goings to be kept hush-hush, but Centiplease and Zayman will carelessly reference their warship instead of their cargo-hauler, will unconvincingly claim to be normal crewmen with no idea what happened, and have obviously been in a recent firefight.
    If pressed, Zayman will explain a "hypothetical" where "maybe" a group of "freedom fighters/terrorists" attempted to "intercept a Lithian black-ops squad" and were "unpleasantly surprised by the contents of the cargo-hauler" but were ultimately successful in killing the black-ops squad and "throwing their bodies" out of a convenient "airlock". Hypothetically. He can give the PCs dogtags if they think they need physical evidence of the fate of the two guests.
    If pressed further, or if the players start seriously discussing a plan to attack the two OOC, Zayman will use his Jump Jets to tackle the nearest PC and burn Simulspace rerolls kill the Hell out of them with his Vibro-Wakizashi. Be up front with the PCs about the risk; he's got Threat Projection, after all. Zayman will sell his life dearly to protect Centiplease, though the two of them are probably toast against more than one or two PCs. A sad end for a legendary pair of space-bandits.

    Centiplease's organization has enough money to make their rescue a secondary objective. Turning them in to the authorities for the bounty also counts. Faction play!

NPCs and Monsters

Laser-Rats
    Laser-rats are, technically, a kind of mustelid.
HD: ½.
Lasers: 1d4 damage, 1d6 if they didn't fire last turn.

Stowaway
    Freezer-burned and somewhat crazy, wearing a bubble-helmet and not enough layers on his body. Miraculously survived the impact despite being exhausted, dehydrated, and space-crazy. Either desperate for rescue or murderously enraged, depending on the reaction roll.
HD: 1.
Wrench: hits for 1d4 damage.
Space-Crazed Babble: Every round you can hear his voice, make a Perception check. If you succeed, take 1 point of damage.

Barnacle
    As Cirripeds.

Eel
    As Anguillomorph.

Wose Young Juvenile
    The males of the Sylvan species are apex predators and obligate fratricides. They look like the reasonable halfway point between tigers and gorillas. They're brawny and ugly, with shredding-claws, crushing-jaws and camouflage stripes. Young juveniles are about the size of a shuttle.
HD: 20
Armor: 2
Obligate Fratricide: Must attack organic creatures which are larger than a rabbit AND not a Sylvan. Cannot fail morale checks if doing so would prevent him from attacking a valid target.
Apex: On his turn, makes one bite attack and two claw attacks
Bite: 1d6 damage, healing for the same amount if used on a biological enemy.
Claw: 1d8 damage, ignoring 1 point of armor.

Koss Mercenary
    Wearing combat-rated Hardsuits in their company's liverie, and armed to their many needle-like teeth. Koss women are about 12' at eye-level and feel no moral pangs when stomping on childlike enemies.
HD: 3
Armor: 1
Monstrous Size: PCs fail strength checks by default. Has 20 strength, if it matters.
Power Armor: Wearing the equivalent of a Hardsuit equipped with Coolant Tanks, Ablative Armor and a Tower Shield. Equipped with a Monstrous Handgun and a random weapon from their list.
Monstrous Handgun: 60' range, 1d6 damage.
K76 Sip-Northover Incendiary Problems Projector: a rapid-fire incendiary limpet launcher, designed for area-denial and ambuscades. 1d6 damage in 10' radius, pierces Thin walls when set off. Rounds stick to metal and can be detonated later. 100' range. Targets caught in the blast are set on fire, taking 1d4 damage a round until they take an action putting themselves out. Can be fired twice in a combat turn generating the Heat of two attacks.
K205 Cryptogenic Ski-Troop Enabler: a backblast cryo-fluid launcher, designed to give the user high-speed movement over level ground and small enemies. 1d8 damage in a 60' line, piercing no walls, generating no Heat. When firing the weapon everything within a semicircle behind you is tossed 30' away. If you lack 30' of rear clearance, you are tossed forward.
LSW-500 Woman-Portable Beam (Variable Lens): an internal-spooling incendiary beam emitter. 1d6 damage at 100', 1d8 if you didn't attack last turn, piercing no walls. Sets targets on fire. Internal mechanisms can change the beam type (the Ammo), given 1 Heat and an exploration turn.
[unnamed, poorly advised hunter-killer drone project]: a light flak drone hive. Deals 1d4 damage to anyone within 60' (goes around corners), piercing no walls. Max damage to flying enemies and objects.
K202 BLASH: a bombardment explosive rocket pod, for safely obliterating your enemies in a mixed-cover mixed-allegiance and target-rich environment. 2d4 damage in a 20' radius at 200', piercing Thick walls. Damage is divvied out to targets in the blast radius as you please. Can deal maximum damage in one attack, though its ammunition is expended for the rest of the mission

Centiplease Fortigaster
    An Avian scholar. The smallest caste, both physically and in raw numbers, but the top of the heap regardless. Their feathered wings are five meters from tip to tip. Their bones are too heavy for true flight, but they can hurt you terrible by flapping.
    HD: 3 (1/11 HP when you encounter him)
    Psion A–B: knows Lesser Telekinesis, Send/Receive and Remote Viewing.
    Scholarly Swordsman: may make two attacks per turn with his bitching space katanas
    Bitching Space Katanas: 1d6 damage, ignoring a point of armor.

Zayman Hazred
    A Pure. Grizzled, dangerous, wearing a hardsuit he's been tinkering with for 20 years. Probably rather gruff unless there's another old coot in a hardsuit or another mercenary with a simulspace addiction.
    HD: 3 (6/11 HP when you encounter him)
    Armor: 1
    Powered Armor: Wearing the equivalent of a Hardsuit equipped with Jump Jets, Passive Radiators and Ablative Armor.
    Mercenary A–B: knows Microgravity Agility 1, Threat Projection 1, Simulspace Addict 2
    Double-Barreled Varmint Gun: a rapid-fire frangible scattergun, for killing space-vermin without puncturing walls. 1d8 damage in a 30', rerolls 1s and 2s on damage rolls against unarmored targets, pierces no walls.
    Vibro-Wakizashi: a snub-nosed armor-piercing melee weapon, for killing the Hell out of combat robots and people in power armor. Deals 1d12 damage at grappling range, ignoring armor, passing through Thick walls.

Weapon Generation.

    Archon has two or three different systems now, but this is the way I do it. Roll 3d12 for Weapon, Ammo and Augmentation.

Weapon
1. Rifle- 1d6 damage, pierces Thin walls, 100' range.
2. Beam Emitter - 1d6 damage, doesn't pierce, charges to 1d8 if you didn't use it last round, 100' range.
3. Rocket Pod - 2d4 damage, split the damage between as many targets as you want, pierce Thin walls, 200' range.
4. Scattergun - 1d8 damage in a 30' cone, pierces Thin walls.
5. Melee - 1d10 damage in melee, pierces Thin walls.
6. Drone hive - 1d6 damage, can fly around corners, doesn't pierce, 60' range.
7. Autocannon - 1d8 damage, 20' radius, pierces Thick walls, 100' range.
8. Limpet Launcher - 1d6 damage, 10' radius, pierces Thin walls when set off, rounds stick to metal and can be detonated later, 100' range.
9. Fluid Thrower - 1d8 damage in a 60' line. doesn't pierce walls, generates no Heat.
10. Claymore Array - 1d6 damage to everyone within 100', destroys Thin walls.
11. Disc Launcher - 1d6 damage at 100', ricochets to a random target for 1d4 damage. Doesn't pierce walls.
12. Assault Cannon - 2d6 damage, +1 Heat per combat, pierces Thick walls, 100' range.

Ammo
1. Armor-piercing - ignores armor, wall pierce up step.
2. Frangible- no longer pierces walls. Reroll 1s and 2s on damage rolls against unarmored targets.
3. Flak - no longer pierces walls. Deals maximum damage to drones and other fast-moving targets.
4. Explosive - damage radius is increased by 20', wall pierce up one step.
5. Recursive - adds Heat to damage rolls.
6. Incendiary - targets take 1d4 damage each round until the fire is put out.
7. Cryo - targets must Save or cannot move on their next turn.
8. Pulse - targets must Save or be knocked down when hit.
9. Rail-assisted - range up one step.
10. Beacon - all your subsequent attacks against target have +1 damage. stacks.
11. Spalling - ignores armor, deals extra damage equal to target's armor.
12. Wildcat - damage die up one step, gain 1 Heat if damage is above normal maximum.

Augmentation
1. Light - damage die and wall-piercing down one step, reduce Heat cost to fire by 1.
2. Heavy - damage die and wall-piercing down one step, increase Heat cost to fire by 1.
3. Autonomous - fires under the control of a computer. You can use this weapon and take another action.
4. Rapid-fire - you may attack twice, each attack costing normal Heat.
5. Hardpoint-mounted - damage, wall piercing and range up one step, increase Heat cost to fire by one. You cannot move and fire this weapon on the same turn.
6. Assisted Targeting - spend an action and choose a target. Damage against that target is rolled with advantage. Targeting does not cost Heat.
7. Bombardment - you can choose to have the weapon deal its maximum damage on its attack, but it runs out of ammunition or charge and cannot be used again during this expedition.
8. Heatsink - the first shot during each combat generates 1 less Heat.
9. Internal Spool - may change Ammo type. This takes 1 Exploration Turn, and generates 1 Heat.
10. Backblast - When firing the weapon, everything within a semicircle behind you is tossed 30' away. If you lack 30' of rear clearance, you are tossed forward.
11. Snub Barrel - range down one step. Damage up one step.
12. Badly Malfunctioning - deals 1 damage to you when it would generate Heat. Damage die up one step.

Damage steps: 1, 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, 1d20
Range steps: grapple, melee, 30', 60', 100', 200', 500'
Wall-piercing steps: none, Thin, Thick, Armored, any number of walls until it hits Armored, any number of walls