Your grandfather was a king, your mother a queen. But no one expects much from you. Your grandfather, the Mad King, with his even madder queen, brought his kingdom to such an intolerable state that his own peasants stormed his castle (with the aid of some enterprising foreign barons) and set his head on a pike. With his queen they did you know not what. No one speaks of it. The historians and archivists did not deem it fit to record that particular atrocity in their scrolls, though they gleefully recorded the despoiling of the Mad King's heir, your mother, by the leader of the rebellion, Walter Stonecutter, a peasant, a soldier, a king by marriage, and your father.
Your mother was slain two nights ago by the errant arrow (or perhaps not so errant) of a coalition of rebellious barons. They who once trembled beneath the gaze of your demented grandfather (your bloodthirsty, short-tempered grandmother they avoided altogether) besieged your castle, broke it, and fearing the reprisal of foreign kings and civil war, did not go any further.
And so, as the eldest son of five siblings, at the ripe old age of 14, with your parents slain by the same men who lie at your feet, swearing eternal fealty, you have inherited the throne.
Already, they refer to your mother with the sobriquet of the Unfortunate. Only time will tell what they will call you.
As for your character: >You have very high standards, expecting perfection from yourself as much as you do from others >You seem to inherited your grandmother's looks, particularly her ice-blue eyes. You've been given a wide berth for this, leading to a lonely life >You were the king in your own mind even before you were crowned. You will not let what happened to your parents and grandparents happen to you. And that will require a firm hand.
What follows a golden age is sometimes simplicity. Men realigned to their baser instincts. The weak and timid cowed before the mighty. All concerns reduced to the primitive: a meal, a mate, a hovel to take shelter from the storm or from the monsters in the wood.
Most will die not a hundred yards from where they were born, among those they've known their entire lives.
For a rare few, however, that simplicity and leveling of fortune, presents opportunity. Not quite yet mighty, they are willing to chance everything, endure anything, and forbid nothing, in order to taste power.
You count yourself among their ranks.
>Choose Background [ ] Woodsman: Your old man was a bit of a loner and raised you in a remote cabin in the woods he built with his own two hands. You're bit a awkward around other people, but about as tough as they come. [ ] Outlaw: You've been in and out of dungeons, gaols, stocks, and cages, since you were a boy. Your instinct for survival is almost supernatural, second only to your knack for getting into trouble. [ ] Cultist: You were adopted by a secret cult as a young boy, and raised communally as an initiate into their order. When you came of age, rather than take on a comfortable position befitting your education, you left to pursue the higher mysteries.
IN A WORLD SIMILAR BUT NOT OF OUR OWN: it is the year 1899. Confederacies and petty principalities consolidate themselves in imperial nation states across the global edifice. Empiricism and occultism espouse each other out of the light of The Enlightenment, blurring the line between college and cult. The fabric of society shifts from the manor to the metropolis; the second industrial boom acquaints man with machine for better or for worse. Much like ours, history has transpired in this eerily familiar realm. YET: it is lacks one thing every waking world needs!
A HERO.
Chivalry is dead! Its vestiges remain in the grand armies; an officer's gorget calls back to romantic times. Thousands of modern men's rear sights are recently unblinded by the advent of smokeless firepower, cartridges punching lead through deadly rifling. Outstanding is the craftiness of humanity! The sword shrunk into the bayonet at the tip of martial ranks. And paramors are no more! Only the réal urban femme! Despite the tides of warfare and paradigm the world world still needs—
—A KNIGHT——
—A LIGHT: for a world subdued by smoke, steam, and steel; and alien forces. For a world under the duress of war. For a world at ransom by the erecting of strange companies. For a world captive by wicked spirits. FOR. A. WORLD. IN. DESPAIR.
The world needs HOPE; and someone to keep it as ranger! A suzerain's hunting forest is not without its forester; if none, poachers deplete the game and brings a scourge upon the plot; if so, The Suzerain is assured his enjoyment of such beautiful land!
And that is YOU.
For a world that will be depending on you—Pray, tell:
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A MAN? TO BE A SON OF ADAM? >T R U T H: TELL THE TRUTH AND SHAME THE DEVIL. FIND LIGHT WITHIN DARKNESS. >R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y: TO TOIL AMONGST THISTLES AND THORNS IS A DUTY. >S T R E N G T H: THE WORLD HATED YOU FIRST; BUT YOU WILL WIELD THE PALM. >W R I T E - I N
During the dawn of prehistory a creator now forgotten by the masses laid down his bow; his arrow that which was nocked put an end to our antediluvian ancestors. For a world That. Needs. A. Hero—The people will know you by your LIVERY. YOUR: >HEROIC RED! >RAPPORTING BLUE! >UNYIELDING YELLOW! >CUNNING GREEN!
A party of high-level adventurers wake up in Westeros.
>>
You awake to pine needles, moss, and several broken ribs. Gasping in agony only makes things worse, and it seems an eternity of ragged breathing before your blind fumbling manages to locate a healing potion and get it to your mouth.
Not for the first time, you reflect that wizards are not made for the rough-and-tumble life… but one must tough to survive as a wizard, and an uncommon tolerance for pain is no small part of what earned you a place among the greatest of the present age. Broken bones are momentary; an elven archmage’s accomplishments stand eternal.
Sitting up and glancing around, you find you’re in a forest, ancient and grey and dripping with lichens, lying at the edge of a perfectly-circular clearing that still smoked from whatever produced it. Around the circle are several other members of your expedition. You quickly identify your sister Anya, and see that she’s also more or less intact, although her arm is in a position that suggests a need for healing.
What in the hells just happened?
You wrack your brain to try and put together the last moments before consciousness failed you. You recall well the runes on the ritual chamber floor scrawled in blood and still-steaming entrails, bright with unholy radiance, the singing of the remaining devout as they called to their True Master awaiting in the realms beyond, the sheer power that had been enough to make your head spin. You and your party members traded spells and shot with the Nightrunner leaders as they desperately fought to finish their work. Blood and screams and gunsmoke filled the room. Then the ground started to shake as the ceiling fell in great stone chunks, the air became thick and hard to breathe, and then you were falling and everything was dark.
In hindsight, robbing the mansion of a self-proclaimed mad god may not have been the most brilliant idea you’ve ever conceived of.
The plan was simple: sneak in, abscond with a few artifacts of great power, and then sneak back out. Simple, clean, and efficient, a targeted blow to an arrogant tyrant who was much too wealthy for his own good. It’s not as if your schemes never hit snags—no, they more than often happened to, but the offending situations were more often than not scenarios you could realistically overcome. You were swift on your feet, fairly clever, and could disarm anyone in seconds thanks to your power. Whenever you were matched up against haughty nobles and complacent merchants caught unawares, you were nigh unstoppable, a veritable specter to their wandering eyes.
Against this so-called deity? Not so much.
The moment he laid eyes upon your person, you were assailed by a wave of sheer, immutable POWER. Instantly, you were forced to your knees by the pressure, teeth chattering and bones creaking as it felt like the very world itself was smushing you with its thumb. You push against the marble floor below in an effort to keep yourself from toppling over altogether, but it is a demanding struggle indeed, and your poor arms just can’t seem to stop shaking; for a moment, you’re worried they’ll dislocate right then and there. It is at that moment you realize, in a distinct impression of shock and horror, that you are severely and utterly outmatched. No amount of crafty, clever cunning or quick reflexes could unearth you from this ungodly trap, and you suspect it may indeed mark the last time you ever glimpse the light.
But it’s never hopeless, or so the remnants of the Thieves Guild taught you years ago. So even now, even as you are being crushed into the pale stone by an intangible force leagues beyond anything you could have previously imagined, you observe, you think, you plan. You see the man—Lord Cull—grinning at his gaggle of cultists and sycophants, pointing and laughing and gloating at the sheer depth of your failure. There he was, clad in silk, gold-threaded robes stained in bright magenta, an obsidian crown laying atop his pristinely-groomed hair. His pearly whites were almost blinding, and his supreme smugness fuels the last dregs of your defiance, feeding into the dim flames of your willpower constrained by the pressure weighing you down.
Prior to 2070, a third world war happened, throwing the population in a downwards decline. Humanity tried solving it’s labor shortage by allowing human cloning, however it backfired, as the blueprints got leaked, and the world was swarmed with an overpopulation of clones. After secret documents got out, confirming the existence of a hundred special operations clones, the practice got banned again globally, and all clone life was deemed illegal, with specialized forces formed to find and capture any remaining clones. Many were captured, put back to work in key industries, many were killed, and some escaped and are on the run. It is now 2090, both the human and clone populations are unconfirmed, leading to increased distrust and tensions, the world is on the brink of collapse.
Like the old story about Pandora’s box, humans have a tendency to unleash horror upon themselves, and whether this particular cataclysm will be the end of humanity, or merely another bump in it’s journey is yet to be seen. But you don’t care too much, seeing most humans don’t even view you as equal. Monica Hopkins, a nice name, certainly better than „CCST-64-F“, the factory code printed in the small electronic sheet implanted into your eye. The name was chosen by your creators, all tho the reason being practicality more than attachment. You were one of a secret line of clone humanoids, created specifically for spy operations, hovewer due to human hubris, your very existence is now outlawed. You realize your purpose everytime you look into the mirror. A rat meant to spy on the French government, and yet most of the world no longer believes in localized governments. „Get moving, you’ll miss the train“ a grumpy voice reminds you, Drew Hill is a nice old man. At one point he held a gun up close to your forehead, and with anger in his eyes shouted obscenities at you. That’s long passed, he’s no longer in the police, and even if he was, he’s not one to shoot people for biological differences. You pick up your bag and trail off. „Have a nice day Drew“ you say before closing the door. You head out to the city, the train already closing into the stop as you approach. While clone labor is outlawed, most places will still hire if the need is there, which has allowed you to pick up oddjobs and part time work across the city. Today you head out to the inner city for a bartending job. It’s well paying, and a nice opportunity to get out in between some people, but the risk of capture increases as more eager bounty hunters seek out clones. You step on the train and pay for your ticket, most seats are empty, so you get to chose a nice window seat. As the train begins moving you notice a younger woman eying you up suspiciously from the neighboring seats. By her outfit, you can tell she might be a plainsclothes officer, ironically for being out of uniform, most of these cops dress the same. >Engage the woman in conversation >Ignore the woman >Get out on the next stop
<span class="mu-b">Iustus</span>, the Righteous. <span class="mu-r">Impius</span>, the Unholy.
Two divine forces, locked in an eternal struggle, each seeking to claim dominion over the shattered world of <span class="mu-g">Requiem</span>.
Born from the fragments of countless realities, Requiem is a land of broken existence—its foundation shattered, its soul corrupted by the ceaseless war waged by its gods. For eons, they have fought, with neither side able to achieve victory. Their battle stretches across the cosmos and through the hearts of every living being.
In this, the Twelfth Cycle, the gods grow weary. Tired of their endless clash fought through lifeless vessels, they devise a new plan. To settle their dispute, they reach beyond their broken domain to find suitable avatars. From unknown realms, they summon the bravest and the darkest of hearts to fight in their name.
Impius, harbinger of ruin, calls forth the vile and the wicked. Six hearts of thorn, tainted by malice, rise to serve him in his unholy mission. They are his Warriors.
Iustus, beacon of order, seeks those of courage and conviction. Six hearts of survival, pure and steadfast, are chosen to stand against the onslaught of darkness. They are her Champions.
The war that has raged for ages grows ever more brutal. The clash of light and shadow echoes through the land. But soon—
please only select races from the chart, and don't select races nor terrains which are marked with a big red X, because I don't want to run those
races mentioned but not chosen will exist nearby
if you want some kind of special fluff for the race or for the world tell here as well, if there is support we can include it
we start tomorrow, today is for deciding the race
I might change rules on the fly to control complexity creep, but combat rule is unlikely to change, so I'll post it here
combat is solved with 3d100 to beat a DC which is modified according to circunstances, whoever has more successes win, 100 counts as 2 successes, 1 counts as -1 success. anyone who wants to roll can roll, but only once, and I will pick the best result.
I kinda like vancian magic so we'll probably use it for our system
updates will be usually once a day, but if I miss one day don't panic
we might do extra updates or even day long sessions on weekends, but not necessarily, will depend on how much time I have free
I'm intending to run this civ for a few months, perhaps up to one year
>you walk into the doctor's office for your yearly appointment >the waiting room receptionist recoils from you, for you have not bathed this morning, nor worn deodorant >you awkwardly browse /r9k/ in the waiting room >after waiting 5 minutes, you are sent to the back. "The doctor will see you now" >an older, caucasian gentleman walks in. >"Hi, I'm Doctor Miller." >you stifle a laugh, he looks puzzled. >You open your mouth. Your autism cannot be contained. >"Doctor Miller? More like DOCTOR NIGGER!" >the doctor looks offended
