H
Hellis
Guest
Original poster
TERRA MAGICA
IC
Gms Foreword;
This setting going to mix sci-fi like elements with Magic. There will some rule of cool involved as result; what is magical scifi if not excuse to wield cool looking stuff! I do attempt my hardest to maintain a sense of internal logic however. A bit of a Final Fantasy-esque approach to technology is what you can expect.
This setting will also implement a system in which I as a GM will base your success in doing things not only on what you write, but dice rolls. In so far that a person doing something hastedly or poorly, might get minuses to his chances if succeeding while a well thought out move might be rewarded with higher chances. There is the possibility of dying in this. There is also system for skills to grow as the RP progresses. And things like growing in renown and reputation. In short, everything has its rewards, but also its risks.
RULES;
PM THE CHARACTERS FOR APPROVAL.
This is a adept rp. I expect anyone joining to be capable of reaching the level expected. And by expected, I will kick you from the rp if you continesly fail to match it. Its nothing personal, but I do not allow for one and two liners.
I as a GM have the right to kick should anyone act up or disrupt the game for any reason. I will not allow any harassment of my players. SO; Play nice.
Characters will die if you mess up.
Feel free to create NPC's. Just don't grow TO attached to them ;D.
All Iwaku rules in general.
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The Fall.
The Fall.
In the year of 2050, Earth faced a a possible extinction event. The sudden appearance of a giant celestial body blinked into existence outside of our atmosphere, sending a chock wave that displaced and detroyed most if not all satellites we had in orbit. And then it begun to crash down towards earth. What first was believed to be a giant meteor turned out to be something else. The massive thing was alive and the size of a small city. And then it shattered and rained down onto the earth as a hail of massive crystalline meteors. They punched down into the earth, piecing down to the crust in some places, causing eruptions of lava. In other places, they hit the ocean, and sent massive Tsunamis across our coastlines. And their effects were not limited to normal physical phenoms. The crystals drastically affected the areas around them. First came the kinetic shock waves of their impact, that leveled everything in a radius around each that was several miles in circumference. But, what came afterward was very unexpected.
Instead of sweeping our planet in giant clouds of dust and ash, the giant crystals that were now embedded into our planet warped the areas around them. In the Amazons, the crystals warped the wildlife and fauna, hyper charged and mutated it into something more fit of myth then reality, and on the plains of Texas, giant beasts were suddenly roaming, the oilfields lost to violent, revolting fauna. The oceans filled with sea serpents and other creatures of myth that turned our navys into scrap metal and made traveling by a sea a nightmare. And in the Northern hemisphere some places were flash frozen with ice that do not melt, enitire cities swollowed by overnight glaciers. All across the world, mankind lost to the new world that was created before them. Eradicated by the natural phenomenons and the powerful new creatures that roamed our earth.
Technology and Magic; Post Fall
Humanity is resilient and masters of adaptation. We weren't entirely wiped out after all, it takes more then alien crystals and magic to undo several millennial of technology and perseverance. Those of us who survived banded together, we huddled up and hunkered down. We adapted and technology became our shepherd. With our population decimated several times over however, there was no shortage of jobs, and the rebuilding would have to take quite a while. In the this new, hostile world, a lot of resources became scarce as there were no longer any functioning companies mining or drilling for them, not mention entire areas of the world would need to be remapped. Our satellites were all destroyed by the strange celestial body that that appeared in our sky at the events beginning, destroying our means of communication.
However, humanity was also gifted with new talents. Some call it magic, other call it etheral manipulation. Basked in the light of the crystals, some humans find themselves capable of tapping into the crystals energies. However, doing so tend to have side effects. Such as spontaneously combust or turning into a tree. Indeed, the average rate of survival for a person tapping directly into the flow of a crystal is less then 2 percent. And those two percent are all insane and liable to join the other 98 percent should they slip up even the slightest. However, as time moved on, scientists discovered ways to harness the 'magic' of the this strange new ore. Using only small fragments of the crystals, mined from clusters that could be found in the wild, one could harness the energy in different forms. We also found that different crystals possesed different elemental properties or different magical attributes. A crystal that harnessed fire for its magic might be used to heat something, while some of the ones that acted almost as if they were lightning in a bottle made for powerfull batteries. And as such, the basis of a new industry and a new field of science was discovered.
Decades later, we have managed to incorporate it into vehicles, guns and armor as well as everyday appliances such as ovens and power stations. There is another use of said shards. Some people, considered by many as insane people, have heralded them as a living material and tries to harness the power directly. These are called Shard Heads, who grow addicted to using the magic with themselves as the channel. Handling raw shards is extremely dangerous and the powerful feeling is extremely addictive. Their is however, some people who appears to have mastered the crystals influence better then others. Most of them belong to a sect or religion of some sort who teaches discipline and mental resilience needed to stave of the addiction and its effects. People have, quite naturally, began to refer to them as Mages.
Mages are viewed upon with great suspicion, because they are still ticking time bombs as far the normal person could tell. It should also be noted that Mages focus on shard. That they keep with them at all times as to not split their focus and efforts. Instead they refine their use and power bit by bit to maximize the effects. Where a shard head would just surge himself full of power and use it up in one go.
The New Order; How we rose from the ashes.
With our governments all but gone, the splintering into new factions was a fact. New religions sprung up and old ones changed to accommodate the new reality. Townships formed by survivors act dependently without a central governing body and old city ruins became split between different factions.
Certain factions managed to preserve the old worlds technology with varied degrees of success. These would be the ones who also managed to save the most people, forming cities in the ruins of the old. Advanced technology fused with the new technology of the crystals allows them to fight back the encroaching monsters and shield themselves against the strange new weather and phenomenons. Some have even begun the undertaking of recolonizing the planet. A slow, painful process full of danger. Old maps can no longer be referred to and nature itself is wrought with danger like never before. These zones became known as "Safe Havens" by travelers, and act like a form of budding City states in the new world.
One of these is Ambrosia, a city state on the northern West Coast of what was once the United Stated. Situated in the ruins of San Fransico, not a lot of the old cityscape has been left in a state that can be considered 'whole'. The surrounding are all One of the biggest crystal formations can be seen far off in the distance, a jagged peek of shimmering red where Los Angeles used to be. Nothing remains of Los Angeles. Not Hollywood, not south central. The kinetic wave was enough eradicate most of it, the earthquakes and shattering of LA's entire structure subsurface dealt with the rest. Ambrosia stands as a beacon for human perseverance however. Led by a council of military and scientific experts, they have managed to fight back the worst and is constantly pushing for expansion. The new, lush wilderness might be deadly, but the soil has proven immensely fertile. It has become a trading hub of sorts aswell, connecting most of the west coast towns together by commerce. However, Ambrosia by itself only reach just above 50.000 citizens where San Francisco once boosted over 5 million. That's how massive a loss the region has suffered.
Ambrosia as a city looks something of extremely well of shanty town. Due to the nature of things, there is a lot of materials to build from but little organization in the building it self. Old houses has been rebuilt and patched up, not always to the prettiest of appearences. Farm have been established, and makeshift industries have sprouted from the reclaiming of world. Outside the City, some pioneers have set up a water distillation plant using water magic. It should be noted that a natural effect of humanity once more being "the fledgling species" in a world that seems to actively strive to eradicate it, weapons are common place on most people. Magitech powered melee weapons such as thunder powered spears and more conventional things such as small arms both have their place.
Game Mechanics and Clarifications.
For this RP, I have decided to implement a few mechanics as a GM that will help me add to the RP in a dynamic way. I have provided some tidbits on each.;-
Each character has a main attribute, this is either Mind or Body. Your main attribute determines where his fundamental weakness lies. If your main attribute is Body, you are weaker in Mind related things and vice versa.
You also pick a sub attribute from each main category. They shown below and add specific charachter strengths, such as Intelligence or Dexterity. Aside from those, the player also chooses a unique attribute of their own creation. This Unique Attribute should be related to your concept in a way that helps him or her.
Example;
Joseph is a engineer. I choose his Main Attribute to be Mind; With intelligence being his mind sub, and Dexterity being his sub attribute for body. As enginer, I gave him a Unique Attribute called "Ingenuity" wich gives him bonuses when i comes to coming up new solutions on the fly.
Mind
Intelligence; Intelligence is the great divider. The reason humanity still stand. Highly essential if your intentions is to work with technology.
Focus; The ability to stay focused in any situation. A very useful skill for both Hunters and Mages, who must stay on target when stalking a beast or not lose focus during spell casting.
Mental Fortitude; A person of great mental fortitude is a person who can resist the mental strain of stressful situations and keep his calm. Some spells are easier resisted if you are of a resilient mind.
Body
Strength; The physical strength of a person. This trait is for those who plan to carry a lot of heavy stuff, weapon or otherwise. Strength is important if you plan to swing any sort of melee weapon aswell.
Dexterity: The flexibility and general ability to do things with finesse, speed and subtlety. Dexterity in usefull for everything from dagger and cloak activities to simply being able to work on complicated, delicate machinery
Resilience: The ability to take a hit and keep going. Resilient characters can take more of a beating and easier survive poison and other forms of purely physical harm.
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Archtype provides the specialization of your character. Is he a adventurer or a monster hunter? IS he a mage or engineer. I already have a few thought out, but if you feel there is something that would be relevant as archtype, you may make one up and send my way for approval :D
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Tamers; Tamers and hunters have one thing in common, they go out into the wild to find beasts. Where a hunter is after a trophy and a paycheck, the Tamer is about understanding the new hostile fauna. Tamers are rare due to the extreme risk of the procession. And while hunters often kill beasts, Tamers are part of the same networks. If there is a beast that can be taken alive, you might need a tamer to domesticate it later.
Class Skill;
Animal Empathy
Tracking
Knowledge; Beast
Riding
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Monster Hunter; As the name entail, you hunt the new beasts of the world. Never a shortage of prey, seeing how humanity is again one of the smaller species, a hunters work is never done. Hunters are often hired to hunt down beasts that terrorize the outer areas and farms. They are integral to human survival just as the hunters of old had been. Their tactics, preferred prey and equipment vary. Monster hunters are generally associated with the Hunter Network, that feed them missions and information. The network having a local HQ in any major hub.
Class Skill;
Tracking
Knowledge; Beast
Weapon (Any)
Survival
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Mage; Mages are the few who opted to connect directly to the magic of the crystals. Doing so by the means of small shards they keep on their person constantly these are individual of immense focus. A mage only knows the magic of the one crystal they have chosen to wield, but wields it far better then machines that generally can do only one thing. Most mages are part of different sects, cults or religious factions dedicated to the mystery of the crystal.
Class Skill;
Knowledge; Magic
Arcane Talent
Sense Magic
Knowledge; Crystals
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Soldier; There is no shortage of dangers that threaten a city or a private interest. Due to this Soldiers generally come in two flavors. A protector of the city or town he lives in, or a contracted mercenary who is paid by the local businesses to protect property from bandits and beasts. A soldiers specialty obviously lies in weapons and warfare.
Class Skill;
Weapon (Any)
Weapon (Any)
Tactics
Intimidation
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Engineer; The men and women who are behind humanities advances and in large parts their survival. The engineer build, fix and dismantle what needs to be dismantled. If a soldiers more advanced gear stops working, it is the engineers who is likely to fix it. It is the engineers who maintain the city defences, the infrastrucure and the vehicles as well.
Class Skill;
Technology (Any)
Knowledge; (Any)
Repairs.
Maintence.
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Explorer; A new world, means new maps, new dangers and new trade routes. Exploration and surveying is a booming industry for the daring adventurer. The world needs these fearless pioneers that travel to hard to get places, discovering and collecting data that benefits everyone.
Class Skills;
Geography
Path finding
Lore; New World
Lore; Old World
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There is always someone who reverts to the old savage ways when things go bad. People more concerned about physical dominance and the alpha male mindset. Enter the Thug. This archtype is all about intimidation and close, in your face choices. The thugs are natural inhabitants of any society with a underbelly, just like the scoundrel.
Class Skill;
Weapon (Any)
Weapon (Improvised)
Intimidation
Brawling
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Not everyone found that the safe havens were for them. The scavenger is one such type of person. A scavenger is typically semi-nomadic and similair to the Explorer. But where the explorer is about finding out and figuring out the world, the scavenger is about surviving it. The scavenger do no live in the city or towns. He may visit them to sell things, but other wise. He is a pure survivalist, he lives on the edges of the world.
Class Skills;
Stealth
Survival
Weapon (Conventional)
Knowledge; (Specific Area)
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Where there is people, there is crime. Were there is crime there are crooks. And where there are crooks, there arbiters. Arbiters are the people who are tasked with policing society after the Fall. They work much like regular policemen did Pre-Fall with the added problem of having to deal with Magic and Monsters. Their life is not a easy one.
Class Skills;
Knowledge; Criminality
Weapon; (Any)
Martial Art;
Deduction;
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Traders; Even when we reach near extinction, you cannot keep man from turning a buck. The Traders are the ones who travel from town to town, to outposts and to farms and barter for goods. They might arrange caravans, or you might have one come into town with a massive back pack. The Trader is essential to the economy of places, both big and small.
Class Skills;
Haggling
Appraisal
Diplomacy
Social
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Scoundrel; Where there are people, there are fools. Where there is fools, there are scoundrel. A scoundrel is a criminal of the less violent kind. A trickster, a card shark, a bluffer and a half. The scoundrel knows the right people and how to use them to his own profit. He can not only talk his way past the man with the gun, but is also capable of walking away with his wallet.
Class Skills;
Bluffing
Social
Sleight of hand
Pick Pocket
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Skillassigment
Each player is given 4 class skills dependent on their archtype. They are also given 3 skills of their own choosing to compliment those four. They can range from everthing from driving to sneaking to athleticism. You might want to pick up a weapon or combat skill as engineer or a explorer. Or you might want to pick up first aid as a soldier. It's up to you.
Skills are what you are good at. A soldier has knowledge about weapons and as such starts with the knowledge of two types of weapons. When a skill says (Any) such as "Weapon (any)", replace the parenthesis with the specialization of your choice.
Example Weapon (any) -> Weapon (Spears)
Skill growth.
A characters skills will grow under the course of this game, and to make this simple for me as a GM; I will abstract things a a bit. After specific objectives are completed, or missions undertaken to satisfactory effect, I as a GM will reward you with points to spend in both skills and attributes. You will also be able to spend a point to aquire a new skill when this happens, as to broaden your skill repertoire.
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There are a few catagories to keep in mind when you look at weaponry.
Magitech; The wonder of the new world, magictech utilize the magic of shards to different effect. A fire crystal can give you a safer, more reliable version of a flamethrower. Or it can coat your blade in white hot flames. A spear might be given the extra punch of a thusand volts of electricity gathered at its tip.
Coventional: Coventional arms is the old world tech that relies on reliable things such as gunpowder, bullets and trigger discipline. While alot of information was obviusly lost in the fall and its massive decimation of the population, there is still a surplus of weapons for those that can find them. And the knowledge of how to contstruct them is not all lost either.
Simple; Simple weapons are anything that's none mechanical; Swords, Bows, Spears etc
Explosives; What the TNT box says. Explosives and bombs. While there are bound to be explosive stockpiles somewhere, you might want to be careful approaching those. -
With the advent of Magitech, there are numerous uses for the crystals. One of the main ones is for fuel, either by steam engines using fire and water crystals or electric engines using lightning crystals. Machinery, both industrial or commercial exist that makes use of it. The machines that are cutting a swathe out of the new, very dense, Californian forest are mainly powered by magic.
For military purposes, people have experimented with incorporating crystals into armor. But so far the results have been quite subpar.
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As covered before, there is a trick to using magic. One who uses raw magic has to be dedicated to it, and in complete control of himself . These magic users are rare simply because it is difficult and risky without any proper benefit compared to using Magitech. A Mage cannot use magitech weapons as their crystals would interfere with their connection to their own crystal. It is for this reason that the Mage archtype cannot be mixed up. You cannot 'dabble' in magic. As a handler of raw magic, it needs to be your life. That is not to say a mage cannot use a knife, or have survival skills. Your main skill has to be the magic, and your other skills will take a back seat somewhat.
Meanwhile, Magi-tech is reliably safe, but entirely dependent on technology to corral it. Weapons can be lost, broken or otherwise incapacitated. Not to mention Magic enhanced Armors still takes hits and the crystal could go critical. -
The main component for any sort of magic is the mysterious, crystalline ore. For common folk, they are simply referred to as Crystals. The power of a crystal varies depending on its size and purity. Most of it mined from clusters that can be found in different minor impact zones where the magic hasn't turned everything into a nightmare of beasts and overgrowth. However, the closer the location of a major impact zone such as LA, the more powerful the cluster you can mine.
Depending on the area said cluster is found in, you get different types of magic. Crystal Clusters growing partially in water tend to be harnessing water for its magic. The magic is as varied as there is physical laws to defy it seems. Every element is represented: air, water, fire, earth. But also external forces such as Kinetic energy, electricity, magnetism. Not even time and space is entirely safe as there is known to be crystals that lets you speed yourself up or slow others.
A crystal is not infinite in power however. They hold a spark of sorts, that machines and mages draw upon to use magic. That is why, after a time they turn into a dull grey. One can however, recharge a crystal by leaving it a element of your choosing for a extended time. Depending on the element of the crystal its charging speed is different. Putting a crystal in a lightning rod per example is a great way to get electromagic. Where water magic take a long time to regain its spark. On the other hand, Electric magic depletes the fastest, and water the slowest.
Ambrosia has no shortage of water based magic crystals due its place at the coast. Being in the same state as the LA Impact zone, but far away enough to not be completely overwhelmed by its magic, they also have crystals of decent size and purity.
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Some useful lore related information;
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Time line of events;
BF/AF (Before/After the Fall event)
Year 0 (2050): The event, world goes dark as all satellites are wiped out. Earth is pelted with a ran of crystal death for several days. The crystals warp the world, waking magic and creating entire new biomes and breaking the laws of physics. Science baffled, world falls into ruin as weather and beasts destroy everything.
AF 3: Ambrosia rises from San Francisco ashes. Starts as a small community, locked in a territorial struggle with organized looters.
AF 5: Ambrosia keeps gathering refugees, a army cashes is discovered and helps Ambrosia to establish a well armed militia. Looters getting fewer and less organized. The hostile new world is eating them up.
AF 10 years; Ambrosia starts to erect proper walls around the core hub of the settlement. Reaching two 2 thusand survivors. Farmlands getting some serious overhaul. Domestication of large oxen like animals called Bay Bisons by the locals.
AF; 20 Years; 10 000 citizens reached, about 3000 of those are born after the events. The rest are refugees that gotten to Ambrosia from their own scattered towns. Beast tamers are hard at work, trying to domesticate the different docile beasts that traverse the nearby land. Expansion starts, heavy losses as conventional arms can only take you so far.
25; Magitech is starting to become more commonplace, more aggressive expansions take place. A part of the old San Fransisco bay is reclaimed. Water pumps are set up, giving the safe haven a functioning water supply again.
34; Ambrosia reaches 30 thousand citizens. Spread out in several districts in the old San Francisco ruins. Connected by roades traversed by magi-tech propelled vehicles. Ambrosia people are arriving in droves from all over, flocking to the west coasts biggest safe haven.
40; Hunters bring down a thunder bird, marking the first ever of the killing of the legendary beast that terrorized them. Rapid expansions take place, bolstered by the knowledge that humanity can strike back again.
50; RP starts. The road to The Red Crystal Summit (LA) begins.
CHARACTER SHEET.
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Name;
Age;
Appearence;
Biography;
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Archtype;
Attribute;
Skills;
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Weapon;
Equipment and Gear;
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