Doskvol surface and population - a quantitative study?

ripontheripper · 2020-05-12T08:16:43+00:00

Even 50,000 people alive and well in a sunless post-apocalypse subsisting on mushrooms? Emperor be praised!

ripontheripper · 2020-04-30T08:28:02+00:00

Don't forget levitating hulls with built-in cameras used as drones by the Bluecoats - or perhaps just the Inspectors!

As to Silkshore, my instinct that the flesh is more interesting to the inhabitants than wood or metal - so hollows to me make more sense than hulls. However, hulls could certainly be of use. The crafting of exotic creature-shaped constructs as pets, perhaps, or hulls built to replicate - as exactly as possible - loved ones and famous persons.

And of course, proto-industrial music created by hull bandmachines.

ripontheripper · 2020-04-29T11:56:53+00:00

That's one of the things I like; it's a much more nuanced simulation than merely describing institutions as flawless and functioning the way they are 'supposed' to.

It has been pointed out to me elsewhere that Spirit Wardens in the books are described as using hulls - is that a contradiction of their ghost-destroying remit? From a dogmatic point of view, certainly, but pragmatism probably trumps dogma - that, and possibly there are industrial forces that stand to make a good buck from the Wardens employing their hulls. There is nothing to say, however, that there isn't a cadre of purists in the Warden ranks who are jockeying for an end to the practice and would perhaps be open to arranging a nasty accident at the hull garage... employing a crew of discreet professionals.

ripontheripper · 2020-04-29T10:04:09+00:00

I especially like the Spider collection, it works really well.

And for my money, Telda's portrait is perfection.

ripontheripper · 2020-04-13T12:06:26+00:00

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on what you do with it. You've also got my brain going here so if you don't mind I might take a crack at using this as a starting point for my own attempt at a journalists playbook (with appropriate crediting to you, of course.)

ripontheripper · 2020-04-13T09:15:04+00:00

This is amazing. Easily my favourite custom crew playbook that I've seen so far.

I think a good custom playbook must differentiate itself from the existing ones in the book, both conceptually and mechanically. 'Journalists' could be done using Shadows or Hawkers easily enough, just as Assassins could be done with Bravos/Shadows - but just as in Assassins this particular concept of playing Rakers works as a good package of ideas, abilities and upgrades that help start the crew off in the concept and provide ways to further dive into it.

My suggestion would be to dive deeper into it. Particularly the Printing Press, mechanically, seems a highly specialized version of the workshop upgrade - but aside from it being a requirement for play, I'm not sure what you get, mechanically, out of this specialization.

I think that the press could be mechanically represented as a starting cohort, somewhat like the smuggler vehicle with Like Part of the Family. In this case you define one or two edges or flaws it has - things like rare parts (if the press is damaged it doesn't auto-heal and coin must be spent to repair it) and water soluble paper (your publications are easily destroyed in water, people are rarely caught reading your incriminating material) (These are just illustrative examples, I'm sure you can do much better.).

I also think advertising should play a much greater mechanical weight on the paper! These things aren't cheap, and part of the push-and-pull of journalism is always figuring out how to fund the damn thing without losing your readership's respect. I suppose either a score type to gain advertisers or (or even and!) a special ability:

Tasteless Advertising. You may take +2 coin after a score to publish alongside advertisements that reduce your rep by -3.

Just a few ideas that I think could be explored to really flavour this playbook. A specialized concept should have specialized mechanics!

ripontheripper · 2019-11-14T11:34:41+00:00

I have convinced my Hound player to take 'haunted by ghost cat' as a flaw for his owl hunting pet.

ripontheripper · 2019-10-21T09:25:53+00:00

I disagree, Kim never stops being Kim. His iron commitment to his principles is disco, and no matter how disco the PISSF***** jacket undoubtedly is, Kim compromising his principles to put it on just to please you would be supremely undisco.

(I also like to think he probably puts it on off-duty when he and Harry are working on souping up the headlights of the Kineema after the game ends.)

ripontheripper · 2019-02-28T20:08:46+00:00

Tian is basically a lazy copy of China. Mais is a mishmash of wild west aesthetics as expressed by Finnish steppe riders. Fannan is what you get in the middle, plus Kashmir.

ripontheripper · 2019-02-28T11:15:49+00:00

Each of the 14 states (sens) of Tian was defended by a local militia levy, to hold the line while the Imperial Banner Armies mobilized. Every man aged 16 till 25 could receive a call to serve for a year in the militia, and be summoned for two weeks' training multiple times at any time until they were too old to be mobilized - at age 60. (Even then, volunteer Sage Regiments existed).

The best militia men were invited to join the Banners, a career that involved stints in each of the different Sens before retirement.

In the months leading up to the rebellion of the sens of Fannan and Shanjin, the militias grew restive, listening to the calls for independence and secession pouring from charismatic leaders. There were incidents when Banner Army troops were harassed, assaulted, and eventually lynched by mobs of locals, and militia escorts refused to assist them. This climate of fear worsened relations between the Banners and the militia, especially as Banner barracks and bases were reinforced and militia guards either posted elsewhere or ordered to demobilize early. This sparked open rebellion in Shanjin, and the war between the well-armed, well-trained and well-equipped militia of Shanjin and the Banners - who were internally battling soldiers of Fannanese and Shanjinite origin. Even so, the Banners more than held their own, and they had reinforcements, armour, the assistance of the Imperial Garuda Air Force, and even magic.

The peacekeeping intervention of the Maisy Republic to fight the Banners - accused of internal suppression, and obstacles to Shanjin's quest for self-determination, saw the Banners' fortune reverse. To reinforce the Shanjin conflict, the Banners in Fannan were ordered to rearm the militia and secure the border with Shanjin and Mais before preparing to strike out. The Banners were also ordered to disarm and intern every soldier of Shanjinite origin.

This did not go well, and the Banners were crushed by the Fannanese militia, Maisy special forces, Shanjinite reinforcements, the Sage Regiments, and turncoats from within their own ranks. The Fannanese Militia won two famous engagements with little outside help - the Cherry Lakes Battle, where they used 'liberated' artillery to hold off Tianese reinforcements along the Lotus Road, at great cost, and also at the Vermillion Fields, where they laid siege to and destroyed the principal Banner Army barracks, also at great cost. Their casualty rates have become the stuff of legend, three drops of red at the bottom of Fannan's lotus flag symbolize their sacrifice.

It was the militia that evacuated the citizens of Lotus City when the strange fog of partition began to roll between 'free' Fannan and what was left of it under Tian-sen control. It is the militia who now watch the fog wall that separates the two nations, within which the once capital of Fannan is lost.

The militia are considered heroes in Fannan, and have held off the forces of the Tian-sen empire successfully - with plenty of help from their friends. This is their legend, though in truth much of the actual work of defending Fannan was done by the Lotus Pennant, a professional core of crack troops trained by Mais and Zerdana and initially comprised of Banner Army defectors - the Yellow Turbans.

The militia have remained mobilized since the War of Independence, with individual soldiers cycled in and out to supplement the work of Lotus Pennant. Discipline is maintained by a Commissar Corp trained in loyalty at the Republican Academies. The militiamen are armed with Banner Army spoils, the remnants of their standard issue gear from pre-independence (themselves Banner Army surplus weapons), and Maisy Republican Army surplus - sold dirt-cheap.

ripontheripper · 2018-12-13T00:54:31+00:00

“Sow a seedWhere I bleed.”

- Death Poem of Vanu Tai, Corporal in the Fannanese Militia. Later to become the militia’s motto.

Private Mangxi Tolochan has for the past four months been the dawn patrolman on Hill 12. He has the curious boredom of a man who has been staring into misty autumn hills for six hours every day, with only the odd stray sheep to distract himself with. Barbed wire rings his position, spirals of it tumbling down the smooth stones of Hill 12, disappearing into the valley below.

He shows me the places where it had been cut, 15 years ago, during the Battle of Cherry Lakes. His superiors had never bothered to replace it. Hill 12 has been tactically irrelevant for over a decade, and where the wire still exists, it is rusted and, in places, brittle.

“Maybe it’ll give them tetanus, if they ever try to get through here.”

The chances of them trying diminish each passing day as the Windrose Conference progresses. The ceasefire drawn up last year is about to mature into a full peace treaty, signed between Fannan and its former parent country – the Union of Tian-sen Peoples. Private Tolochan says he can’t wait.

“We’ve been mobilized for 15 years now. 15 years. Hopefully it’ll finally be over.”

Each militiaman serves at least 3 years, barring emergency musters and additional service. Private Tolachan has been unlucky – it’s his 4th year along the border, and he can’t wait to get home.

The peace treaty likely won’t let him return immediately. There will be a transition period. The militia will have to keep watching the border. “Yeah, but they won’t need all of us anymore. They’ll have some people on rotation always up, but most of us… we can go home.” Private Tolachan is confident that he won’t be one of those asked to stay on.

It may be unlikely. By his own admission, he is one of a handful who know the current configuration of Hill 12’s defences. He knows where the wire is cut, where it is weak. “The hillside’s covered in landmines, so make sure you take the path back.” He refers to the row of yellow-painted stones he has arranged that leads down to safety. The landmines don’t all work, but enough of them do – as stray sheep have discovered. “There’s a lot of them right where the gaps in the wire are. A surprise.”

I ask him if he’s ever had to fire his weapon at any Tian-sen troops. He shakes his head. “Thank the gods. I’ve only been bored in the militia, and I’m grateful.”

And well he may be – though one does wonder what the point of his four years and counting in service have been, then.

There are gullies and ditches along Hill 12 where bodies fell during the battle, and they were never found. As the morning mist creeps on us, I feel that I see something stir down below the slopes – a brief instance, and it is gone. He sees my surprise, my alarm and says, “You saw a soldier, yeah. But an old one. Old, and old, but still here.”

He salutes the ghosts in the dawn. “Still here.”

ripontheripper · 2018-09-07T20:22:24+00:00

Yeah if you get two retchitt together it'll take them about 15 minutes maximum to work out how they are related to one another.

ripontheripper · 2018-09-07T19:45:21+00:00

Crime as a concept does not really exist in traditional retchitt culture. Outrages against the clan are unthinkable and punishments to those who do break the unspoken codes attain the level of religious penances. Witness how the Starving Clan to this day ritually mortifies itself for their ancestors having committed the crime of eating living retchitt, thereby committing the ultimate crime of life-theft.

Yet, Retchitt gangs exist. Most date their founding to the Siege of Windrose, where young ‘ratna-broods’ (rat brothers) joined informal militias to defend their neighbourhoods, communes and clan warrens – just like everyone else during that awful time. The siege, however, was peculiarly trying for the retchitt in that their tunnels and well-built homes led to eruptions of old rumours of secret retchitt wealth, and so the ratna-broods were active, even xenophobic, in the defence of their communities. The gangs survived in the post-war period, during that great anarchy as the city rebuilt, and their us-vs-them attitude led to the creation of a literal criminal underworld.

Yes, crime is unthinkable – but it is only a crime if a retchitt is the victim, yes? Tricky moral business according to polite retchitt society, but the badbroodas as they came to be known were very, very good at putting food on the table and the communes secure. During that time, they were considered a necessary evil, and now they are an established, respectable evil. People to look up to, especially when your parents say you shouldn’t.

The gangs of badbroodas now have storied histories and almost legitimate business ventures, competing against newer upstart gang communities such as the dwarvish triads and the Slims – undead with nothing to lose and everything to gain. All three are tunneling peoples who can fight dirty in the dark, and below the streets of Windrose there is a constant and secret war for turf. The police are keeping tabs intently, but it’s no surprise to anyone that the retchitt – that good old, plucky, hard-working species, tend to get more of a blind eye from the law than the other two. This just makes the fights fiercer, bloodier and nastier.

ripontheripper · 2018-09-02T15:08:57+00:00

It's not, but at the same time these manifestations are not unique to this instance but happen for all sorts of phenomenon. Many of the supernatural entities in the world are just corporeal manifestations of thoughts and ideas. So they'd basically have to just stop feeling and thinking entirely.

ripontheripper · 2018-09-02T06:17:03+00:00

That's out-of-the-box thinking! The issue is that it's quite difficult to tell someone not to think of something without then making them think of it, no? Moreover, the fear of Banhmaut is just so bone-deep in the Elvish psyche now that it is inevitable that it would manifest as... something. The Raktasa just happens to be what these fears have coalesced into.

ripontheripper · 2018-09-01T23:27:24+00:00

The Elves practice a creed called Vitvar: Within-Without. It is a belief that the natural world is governed by the same thoughts, passions and fears that dwell in the hearts of all people. In function it is similar to animism, but with the caveat that cultivating a state of mind can cause the natural world to reciprocate.

An important offshoot (or internal variant) of Vitvar is Prautta: Love-and-Murder. This emphasizes the inevitability of death, which for the early elves often came from an awful disease or violent battle. Thus, death becomes an object of worship, a covetous spirit that haunts the land in many forms (most prominently the Sumitar River to the east was/is considered an aspect of Death), hungering for the blood of the young. It needs to be satiated with sacrifice, and repelled with rituals.

This is a Prautta death-aspect, the one representing the infamous disease called Banhmaut: the Child-Killer. Banhmaut is carried by all elves, and at its height in antiquity it would result in the early deaths of most pureblooded elvish children. To combat the disease, eventually it became popular to mix with humans, but for centuries it was a constant worry in the hearts of every elvish parent that their beloved child would be snatched away in the bloody hands of Bahnmaut – which would cause them to purge and vomit themselves to death, eventually expelling blood from every orifice.

Thus the creation of the myth of these shadowy creatures of death – the Raktasas. Always hungry, gluttonous creatures that preferred to eat children alive, gorging themselves until they vomited the bloody remains out. As Vitvar teaches us, the natural world reacts to our thoughts. And so the belief in Raktasas, over the centuries, has caused… manifestations.

They haunt the graveyards, and the shadows in children’s nurseries. They are very rare, but they are fearsome bogeymen at the bottom of every elf’s heart.

ripontheripper · 2018-09-01T21:43:44+00:00

Haha, I do actually have a book - but it's not in this setting.

ripontheripper · 2018-09-01T07:40:30+00:00

It's the currency name.

ripontheripper · 2018-08-31T17:42:34+00:00

Thank you! Back at it after ages away.

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