Character Creation: ICONS Assembled Edition

Time to don the tights of justice! They're itchy and uncomfortable, but they get the job done. And OH, THE JOB OF IT! 

The Game: ICONS: Assembled Edition
The Publisher: Ad Infinitum Adventures
Degree of Familiarity: I ran a previous edition once, I think
Books Required: Just the one

ICONS is a four-color supers game. System is a pretty simple d6 + a thing vs the GM's d6 + a thing, with some permutation for degree of success, team effort, and suchlike. Character creation is largely random, and I'm all about it, so let's so a super-hero! 

First thing, we roll for Origins. An 11 gives me...Unearthly! Sweet! I'm an alien or a demon or something. I get to bump up two Attributes by 2. 

Speaking of which, time for Attributes! Rolling for each one in order, I get:

Prowess 8 (holy cats)
Coordination 5
Strength 7
Intellect 5
Awareness 6
Willpower 4

Human maximum is 6, y'all. Let's see, I don't think I want to swap anything (I could swap two if I chose). I will use my bonuses to bump Willpower to 6 and Coordination to 7. 

Powers! I get (roll) four powers, so now I roll for power type. Four rolls gives me:

Offensive
Defensive
Alteration
Alteration 

Cool, now I roll for each power specifically. For my Offensive power, I get Binding. For my Defensive, I get Life Support. For my first Alteration, I get Animal Mimicry and Alter Ego. I think I'll pop over the Powers chapter real quick and see if I wish to add limits or anything. I have an idea for the character, though. 

OK, I can drop powers to add extras; basically I sub out more appropriate powers. I'm going to drop Alter Ego and my make Binding power contagious; targets that are bound might end up binding others around them. Limits? Actually, first let's roll for the powers' levels. 

Animal Mimicry 4
Binding 4
Life Support 5

Yeah, I might want to limit some things, because then I can raise the levels. Let's see. 

OK, so what I'm thinking is that my guy is an alien conservationist. He goes from planet to planet picking out the most interesting lifeforms, takes their genetic data, and brings it back to his society's "menagerie planets" to clone the creatures so everyone can enjoy them! For whatever reason, though, Earth really captured his interest (plus there is so much biodiversity here!) so he's still hanging around. His Life Support power allows him to travel to any biome without injury or ill effect, and makes him functionally immune to disease. His binding is a little container on his hand that flicks out tiny super-gravity particles, increasing attraction between bodies, effectively immobilizing targets. His Animal Mimicry allows him to temporarily alter his own genetic code, taking on the aspects of animals he's already scanned (this does include humans, but his genetic code is already similar enough that it's not usually worth it). 

So, limits? I'll put Burnout on Binding; he needs to collect gravitons and graviolis, and that's time consuming and sometimes he forgets (in games terms, when I use it I roll a die and one a 1 or 2 it's not available for a while). Otherwise, I think my powers are fine.

Specialties! I get 2. I'll choose these; I want Athletics and Science. 

Look! My hero looks pretty much human; about average height, weight, and so forth (that's to blend in). His race is kind of ambiguous, and people tend to assume he's whatever ethnicity they are. His outfit is a mostly white spacesuit, very sleek and stretchy, with various pouches and pockets on the arms and waist. When he mimics animals, he tends to subtly change size and not-so-subtly gain stripes, spots, pigmentation, and so on; that's not something he usually has much control over. 

While we're at it, let's give him a name. To his people he is Gullatat Tawndy, but on Earth when he's fighting crime (which I think tends to be pretty much by accident), they call him The Encyclopod! 

(Yes, I stole that from Into the Wild Green Yonder. No ragerts.)

Qualities! These are basically Aspects, if we're honest. Let's start with an easy one: Species Collector for the Rupsig (that's his people). Also, I think my guy is Having Too Much Fun on Earth; sooner or later his race might come looking for it. He's Really Chatty - he's enthused and loves learning about this world, its cultures, its animals, its foods, and he hasn't entirely glommed on to the fact that not every Earthling even believes in aliens, let alone is ready to talk to one. 

And then we determine Determination (6 - number of powers, so 3 for me) and Stamina (Strength + Willpower, or 13).  

And that's it! Off to fight crime with the heart of the lion and the wings of a bat!

Movie #773: Star Wars: A New Hope

Star Wars, or Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope as it's sometimes known, is the example that comes with the Hero's Journey Starter Pack and stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, Peter Cushing, and Alec Guinness. There is literally nothing new I can add to analysis or review of this movie, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

So in the far-flung future, or a long time ago, hardly matters, the evil Empire is chasing the plucky rebels through space. The Empire has developed a Death Star, a space station capable of blowing up a planet, but the rebels have procured the plans. A rebel leader, Princess Leia (Fisher) transmits the plans to would-be ally Obi-Wan Kenobi (Guinness) via two droids, C-3PO and R2-D2 (Daniels and Baker, respectively). Kenobi recruits young whiny farmer Luke Skywalker (Hamill) and subsequently space pirate Han Solo (Ford) to help, and together they defeat the evil lord Darth Vader (voiced by Jones, performed by Prowse), blow up the Death Star, and save the galaxy! 

Well, of course, this movie became a mega-hit and spawned one of the most culturally significant IPs ever, so the galaxy isn't really saved per se, but y'know. Luke and Han got medals.

Star Wars is weird. It's one of those movies that even if you haven't seen it, you know it, both by cultural osmosis and because Luke's journey is the classic hero's journey. A lot of older Gen-X folks speak of Star Wars with reverence. And of course they're still making TV shows, movies, and probably novelizations of the world (oh, and an RPG or two). 

But like...it's not really a good movie in a lot of ways. I try to look at older movies in the context in which they came out as well as the context of now; The Exorcist is a well-made horror movie by any standard but it's not gonna make people run puking for the door nowadays. But Star Wars, even by the standards of the time, is pretty weaksauce. The dialog is simplistic and boring (Sir Alec Guinness described it as "banal"), the story is linear and basic, and the characters are made of cardboard. Moving beyond the meta-stuff, the acting is mostly OK, with talented people doing their best. You can see the veteran actors (Guinness, Cushing) flowing with the garbage, Mark Hamill doing his earnest best, the sparks of talent in Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, but at the end of the day it's a kid's movie. 

But it came out at a time when franchise sci-fi wasn't really a thing and blew the doors off, and regardless of how good it is, it's simple and watchable. And if George Lucas had left well-enough alone rather than playing with his junk this junk for years, it would have been a lot better. Instead we have this silly-ass scene with CGI Jabba the Hutt that repeats dialog from the preceding scene, adds nothing the story, and only serves to highlight how cool the practical effects look by comparison. Oh, right, the practical effects are generally pretty cool and hold up well, which is why it's so perplexing that Lucas decided to go back in and add a bunch of shitty CGI effects to a movie made in 1977. 

Anyway, the series highlight is next!

My Grade: C-
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: The Empire Strikes Back

Character Creation: Vampire: The Dark Ages

Ho boy, here we go.

The Game: Vampire: The Dark Ages
The Publisher: White Wolf (but like, back in the 90s)
Degree of Familiarity: It's complicated
Books Required: Just the one

OK, it's not really that complicated. I ran a lot of World of Darkness games when I was in college, starting with Wraith: The Oblivion but quickly branching out to basically all of them. I was hired to be the developer of the Dark Ages line in 2001, which was, in retrospect, a questionable decision, as I have no background or particular interest in medieval history (which is fine, because what they really wanted was D&D with fangs, as I was told on multiple occasions). Anyway, I found a couple of old WW books in my office a few months ago, and in keeping with my "do a character for every edition" policy, it's on the list!

Time was I knew World of Darkness books basically inside and out, but it's been a number of years since I've done anything with these games and even longer since I've looked at pre-2000 WoD books. Reading Vampire: The Dark Ages now, about the best thing I can for it is that the cover looks cool and the example of play, a comic with a script written in rhyme and the game mechanics translated on the facing page, is pretty dope. It's your standard 90s WW dealie, which means a bit of fiction or in-character prose, a chapter of setting, and then into splats interspersed with various system bits that reference concepts that haven't been introduced. As far as organization of information, game rulebooks have improved considerably. 

Also, this game fails the Chupp test so hard. I read through the clan write-ups, since that's usually the part of a WW book that inspires me, and it's just bland. I think what happened is that the folks who wrote it didn't know the juicy bits of the relevant history, and the result is that the book is rather blandly "medieval". That was 100% what happened when I was developing books for the line; I never had a good sense of the world because I didn't know the history and it's not like you can look up "what happened in Europe in 1230" and get an answer that makes sense (never mind that for Vampire what happened before that time is also very relevant). 

Well, anyway, I'm gonna make a vampire character and get this dot off this book, which will then mean I have two more WoD or WoD-adjacent games in my list (but one of them is likely to elicit strong feelings for me so I'll probably give that one another year or two). 

 

So first I need a concept. I...got nothing. I made a character for Dark Ages: Vampire some years back, but he was pretty bland (for reasons already discussed). 

OK, well, let's approach this another way - the official time in Vampire: The Dark Ages is mid-late 12th century, so let's do a bit of light historical research and see if anything interests me. (Incidentally, this book is shit for giving any specific context or flavor. Like, different nations are mentioned but I have no idea what a game set in, say, the Holy Roman Empire would look like as compared to one set in France. Guess that's what sourcebooks are for! Gotta save space for all the crossover information, so that the developers can shit on crossover in other books/the forums!)

All right, anyway, I've always been interested in the Iberian peninsula and Al-Andalus, and I've never made an Assamite character (and yes, there's a shitload of early WW racism bound up in that clan, but I'm not going to engage with it as best I can). The 1100s were a time of tumult in the area as Christians and Muslims struggled for territory, it looks like (based on my very cursory research). I've always found the idea of the hasty Embrace interested - a vampire that needs a particular quality right goddamn now and doesn't have the luxury of watching a particular person for years before making them undead. So let's say that my character was a cutpurse on the streets of Toledo. He was a young man (maybe 16 or so) when Alfonso VI took Toledo, and knew the city and its various populations pretty well. His sire, an Assamite of some importance but with limited knowledge of the area, was betrayed by a local supposed supporter and needed local eyes and ears, and guess what, my guy just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He has no idea if his mother or father (neither of whom he ever knew) really christened him, but he goes by Trin (short for "el trinchante", the big serving fork you use to grab hunks of meat).

Pretty good start. I'll put "cutpurse" as my Concept, I know my clan, how about Nature & Demeanor? I think I want Survivor as a Demeanor - he plays heavily into the "gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat" persona that he's cultivated, but the truth of the matter is a little darker. Trin's Nature is Rogue, and while that makes him usefully ruthless, it's gonna butt up against his clan's agenda at some point. Speaking of that, he's on the Road of Blood. 

Right, on to Step Two! Attributes! I think a lifetime on the street pushes him toward Physical being primary, but I'm torn between Social or Mental being secondary. I think I'll go with Social; Trin strikes me as a talker.

OK, so 7 points to divide up among Physical, 5 Social, 3 Mental. Let's just go ahead and jack Dexterity to 5, which eats 4 of my points. I'll put two into Stamina and the last one into Strength. 

Social! I want Trin to have a high Manipulation, so I'll put three there and leave Charisma and Appearance at 2. 

Mental! Even split, one dot in each one. Might raise Wits later.

And now, over to Abilities. This concept kinds demands Talents to be primary, but I dunno, there are a bunch of Knowledges I want, too. Let's use my tried-and-true method of putting a dot in everything I know I want and seeing where that takes us. 

Well, ignoring the early-edition stupidity (why is Acting a Talent? Why is Dodge its own thing?), I definitely see that Talents is where I have the highest concentration of Abilities, so yeah, Talents/Knowledges/Skills, I think.

I already have a dot in Acting, Alertness, Athletics, Brawl, Dodge (oy), Larceny, and Subterfuge. Six more points to throw around here. Well, I'll raise Larceny to 3 and Subterfuge, Acting, Alertness, and Athletics to 2. 

Now, over under Knowledges, I have a single dot in Hearth Wisdom, Investigation, Law, Linguistics, and Politics. Four more dots. I'm gonna put two into Linguistics and two into Politics. Trin has a good ear for language and the area he grew up was kind of the border of a few different territories, so he's learned a bunch of languages (he's not literate in anything, though). He's also got a good knack for social dynamics and he keeps his ear to the street on who's pissed at whom, from lowly gang leaders to nobility. It's all connected, after all. 

Skillz! I have a dot in Etiquette, Melee, Stealth, and Survival, and I only have one left, so I'll put that in Stealth. 

On to the fun stuff! I get four dots in Disciplines, which I have to split between Celerity, Obfuscate, and Quietus. Hmm. I think Trin's greatest aptitude is gonna be Obfuscate, so I'll put two dots there and one in the other two. Are my dice pools gonna suck? Oh, actually, none of those powers require rolls, sweet.

Backgrounds! I get five dots. Hmm. I know I want Mentor and I feel like Contacts makes sense. Let's put two in Mentor (well-respected elder but not on stable footing here), two in Contacts, and one in Generation for now.

Virtues! Seven dots to split between Conviction, Self-Control, and Courage. Hmm. I think two each and then the last one into Self-Control. That gives me a Road rating of 7 and a Willpower of 3 (boo). 

Freebies! I get 15, unless I wish to take Flaws, which I do. Let's take Infamous Sire (it's only a 1-pt Flaw, after all). I'll take Second-Class Citizen (because he's a street rat). And I'll take Overconfident, seems to fit. That gives me 4 more freebies, so I have 19 to throw around. 

I'll blow 7 on a dot of Auspex (I figure his sire would have taught him that post haste). I'll spend 3 to raise Willpower to 6. I'll spend 2 to buy a third dot of Stealth. That leaves me 7 more. I think I do want a third dot of Wits, so that's 5. Two left. Oh, let's put 'em into Generation, which makes me 9th generation. Nice.

So Trin got snatched up by an elder Assamite named Omar and Embraced. Omar projects this very "Sultan-from-Aladdin" vibe, but he's far from clueless. He's out of his depth because another Assamite stabbed him in the back (not literally) and cut him off from support in Al-Andalus, and Omar just needs a little help to find his feet, reestablish his power base, and then this other fucker is gonna get fed to Trin. 

Trin doesn't know that, of course, and he suspects that Omar is just using him for his street and linguistics knowledge, after which he'll get turned loose to set on fire. Trin's roguish nature might just screw him long-term, here. But we'll never know 'cause I ain't never gonna play this little scamp (which is a shame, I kinda like him). 

Movie #772: Star Trek

Star Trek is a reboot of the beloved sci-fi franchise directed by J.J. Abrams and starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldaña, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, Leonard Nimoy, John Cho, Bruce Greenwood, and Eric Bana. 

A massive Romulan ship captained by a mad...um, miner called Nero (Bana) appears and blows the bejeesus out of a Starfleet ship. One George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth in a cameo) takes command as it blows up and holds the line long enough for survivors, including his wife and newly-born son, to escape. Years later, said son, Jim (Pine) is a drunk douchebag living in Iowa and gets into a fight with a bunch of Starfleet cadets. A captain, Pike (Greenwood), finds him and contextualizes his father's death a bit and convinces him to enlist.

Flash forward a few years. Kirk has befriended a doctor named McCoy (Urban), a xenolinguistics expert named Uhura (Saldaña), and run afoul of a half-Vulcan scientist and the other main POV character, Spock (Quinto). Through a series of wacky events, Kirk and his pals wind up on the newly minted flagship of Starfleet, the Enterprise, with enough information to actually be useful in battling the Romulan ship that's kicking Starfleet's ass. Though more wacky events, Kirk gets booted off of said ship and meets up not only with banished and very Scottish engineer Montgomery Scott (Pegg), but also Spock-from-the-future whaaaaat (Nimoy). Time travel shenanigans abound! Well, they don't really abound, they just serve as a justification for why characters are familiar but their lives played out slightly differently. Anyway Nero destroys planet Vulcan but gets blowed up in the end, Kirk and Spock make friends, and Kirk gets assigned as captain of the Enterprise and starts boldly goin'. 

So...I'm not going to say this movie is perfect. For one thing, it's kind of become a running joke that Abrams lens-flared it to bejeesus and holy shit is that true. Like, at the end when Kirk takes the bridge of the Enterprise as captain I kept wanted him to say "could we turn down the fucking lights a little?" And I'm sure if I were a Trekkie I'd be able to find all manner of things to get mad about.

Thing is, though, I'm not a Trekkie, and so I feel about this movie about the same way I feel about Galaxy Quest. It's a way to make this huge, sprawling, dense property accessible to those of us who only know about it through cultural osmosis. Likewise, I'm sure I miss a large number of Easter eggs and fan-service lines; the ones I caught I mostly understood because of the Futurama episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before." 

But with that said, there's a lot I like about this movie. I love the cast. They're all capable and they all manage to avoid doing impressions of the original cast, so far as I could tell. And I'm sorry, but Chris Pine is a stronger actor than William Shatner ever was, so the movie is like 30% less ham by volume. The interplay between characters is the strongest thing about the movie; my favorite scene is where everyone's together trying to solve the problem (followed closely by literally any scene where Simon Pegg has a line, because I love his Scottish). 

The action scenes are fine. Everything's CGI, so like, it looks cool, but eh. I've been watching space battles my whole life, and part of the charm of Star Trek is janky effects, so making it so slick feels a little out of place (actually, the engine room of the Enterprise and Nero's ship are my favorite sets, precisely because they feel a little more real). 

I also enjoy the justification for the reboot - Spock's venture into the past changed everything, but not in a way he can fix. Only thing to do is let things play out, which handily also means the crew can have new adventures without constantly recycling moments from the first go-round...oh, I'm not saying they did that, just that they could have. (KHAAAAAAAN!)

Also RIP Anton Yelchin. 

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: Star Wars: A New Hope

Character Creation: The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl

Voof voof, comrade.

The Game: The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl
The Publisher: 9th Level Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I love games like this. It's such a specific concept, it probably doesn't have a great deal of replay value, but man, "you play the dogs of Chernobyl fighting Lovecraftian horrors," what a hell of a pitch. And let's be real, it's $15 for the book. You'd spend that on a movie ticket alone. 

So anyway, that's really the pitch for the game. Characters are a pack of doggos (very good doggos), who live in and around the town of Pripyat. There are monsters in the woods that leaked out through a tear in reality, and the humans don't really have much of a clue. Humans mostly try to shoot you, and some doggos actually remember the time before all this when humans took care of doggos, but some were born in the aftermath. It's got the potential to be a truly tragic game, though you could make it a straight horror game without much trouble. 

First thing we'd do, normally, is choose a pack. Pack basically describes the dynamic of the PC group, and it does matter mechanically because you can roll your pack die if more than one dog is helping out, but since it's just me I shall skip it. 

Next we pick role: Hunter, Courser, Elder, or Guard. I dunno. I don't really have a concept, so I suppose I shall go to my music library and randomly pick a song. Just a moment.

Oof. OK, then. This is a song about living in the moment and recognizing that nothing will ever be the same as it is now. Let's just lean into the damn tragedy, here. My doggo is an Elder (which, annoyingly, doesn't at all indicate how old he is; there's a different choice for that, and I feel like the writers knew it was a bad choice of words because it's called "Expert" in one place in the book). 

My character's name is Mitya. Mitya was already old when the doom came to Pripyat, and had pretty much resigned himself to snoozing most of the rest of his life. And then he wound up living through horrors he never expected as his humans were forced to flee and the young human he'd watched grow from a baby sobbed as they forced him into a truck. Mitya has thought many times about lying down to die, but he just doesn't have it in him to give up until his pack is out of danger...so, pretty much never. 

I picture Mitya as a bloodhound, which I don't think are common in Ukraine, but whatever. Some kind of hound. Anyway, the next choice is Generation, and Mitya is Wyse (meaning he was born before the disaster and lived with humans). He gets the Remembers edge from that.

Next up, Breed. I want Mitya to be big, so I think I'll pick Borzoi. That means I get to pick an Edge from Agile, Fast, Gentle, Quiet, or Smart. Hmm. Not Agile or Fast, not at his age. I like Gentle, actually.

Calling! This is the place Mitya has in the pack. Is that not the same thing as Role? WHO KNOWS. (There are some kind of ill-defined things in this game.) I think Mitya is either a Guide or a Shadow, and I think Shadow is interesting for a dog so big. I'll take Hiding as his Edge.

And that's really it. Mitya is a great big Borzoi, mostly white with black patches. He's really good at lying still and letting everyone forget he's there, and he's really good at staying quiet for longer than you'd think. Mitya remembers the days before all the fire and smoke, and he's given up trying to teach the pups about it. He encourages them now to find the joy they can in the days they have, because sure as summer follows spring they'll end, something will change, and all they'll have is what they can remember. 

And on that cheery note, we're done!

Character Creation: Gods of the Fall

aaaaaaaah splat

The Game: Gods of the Fall
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game, but I know Cypher OK
Books Required: Gods of the Fall and the Cypher System Rulebook

For as much as I love games where you play as the God of [Whatever], there are a bunch of them that kinda miss the mark. Like, Scion always tried to be something like the game I wanted - when it was first conceptualized it was meant to lean closer to American Gods - but it got bogged down by being an early-aughts White Wolf product and the original developer getting kicked to the curb. (Though maybe the second edition did better, I haven't read through all of it.) In Nomine hits some of the right notes, too, but it falls short by keeping the really good stuff (like being Word-bound) out of PCs reach.

But Gods of the Fall is literally a game where the PCs slowly uncover their own divinity, and I gotta say I'm feelin' it. The basic premise is that 42 years ago, the city of the gods literally crashed to Earth, all the gods died, and over the new few decades the world has kinda fallen to shit. Slavery (which the gods had outlawed) runs rampant, powerful sorcerers set themselves up as feudal kings, and in the biggest city you can literally purchase a license to do just about anything, including commit murder.

The PCs, in this setting, are new gods, but at tier 1 they don't necessarily know it yet. The game asks the GM to consider whether starting characters know their dominion (that is, what they're the god of) - either approach is fine, but it changes the dynamic somewhat. 

I like the setting. There's a lot going on, but it's a setting that invites PC fuckery (much like Shadow of the Demon Lord, actually). And I actually have something of a concept, so let's gooooo!

Characters in Cypher System consists of a type, a descriptor, and a focus (so a character is an adjective noun who verbs). Gods of the Fall adds a dominion, so it's adjective noun who verbs, god of dominion. I know I want my dominion to be Silence, and I know I want my focus to be Speaks Curses (it's in the Gods of the Fall book); I like the idea of the God of Silence having to remain silent because his words are too devastating. Kind of a Black Bolt situation. But I have not chosen type and descriptor yet, so let's do that. Also why don't have I have a PDF of Gods of the Fall? Weird. Maybe I bought it secondhand. 

Anyway, the four types are slightly refitted in Gods of the Fall, so I can pick from destroyer, shaper, champion, or savior. I don't think champion works, but maybe destroyer? Nah, too action oriented. Shaper is very magicky and not really what I want...I think savior actually works, in a weird backhanded way. 

OK, so as a savior I get Might 8, Speed 9 and Intellect 11, and then six more points to split up. I think I'll bump Intellect to 12, Might to 10, and Speed to 12. I get Enthrall, which is the one where I speak and keep another being's attention, which is very much in line with what I'm going for. Then I get three more abilities from the savior list. I definitely want Mental Link, which allows me telepathic communication. I want Erase Memories, that seems in-theme. For the last one...how about Practiced with Light & Medium Weapons.

And then I get the same Edge/Effort spread as speaker, which means I get Effort 1 and Might Edge 1. 

Next I need a descriptor, and I gotta say I'm really liking Humble. That gives me 4 extra points in my stat pools; I'll put all four into Intellect. I'm trained in Intellect defense, which is nice. But then I'm also soft-spoken, meaning whenever I apply Effort I have to spend an extra Intellect point, which is rough.

And then my focus is Speaks Curses. The tier-1 ability is a cursed tattoo that hurts anyone who touches me, which I'd normally be really cool with but it's not really in theme here. Fortunately, I can swap it out for Curse of Baleful Blistering; I can curse someone and they get gross pustules all over them.

And that's all the mechanical stuff, but I need to think about background for this guy. And since I don't have a strong idea, I shall roll on the savior table and see if I like what happens. "As a child of a diplomat you enjoyed the finer things, including an enviable education." Nah, doesn't fit. "You dream of a powerful creature in the shape of a tiger almost every night. Though it is sometimes frightening, you eventually decided it was your spirit guide leading you to a great adventure." That's better. One of the Big Bads of the setting is a sorcerer who has a bunch of pet (and animated stone) tigers, so that'd be fun to tie in. 

So let's say that my guy is from the city of Corso, the same city that the aforementioned sorcerer lives in (her name is Nulumriel). He was an average citizen who witnessed Nulumriel and her tigers out and about one day, for a reason that he's never known. But one of the stone tigers turned and looked right at him, and every night since he's dreamed of that tiger, and known that what the tiger desires above all is stillness, to return to the endless vigil of being a statue. Its movement and roar are a curse. 

Simplicity Averint (for 'tis his name) was raised in an orphanage that acts as a feeder institution for the Slave Districts - children live there until someone adopts them (never), they find a way to buy their way out (almost never), the escape (sometimes), or they're sold as slaves (usually). Simplicity escaped when he was 13 and walked out into the city. He's survived on his own, doing odd jobs for people who can't afford to own slaves (cleaning, mostly). When he speaks, people wince, even if he's not cursing them. Better just to keep quiet. 

Simplicity is barely 18, skinny (malnourished, really). Everything he owns, he carries, and most of what he owns is stolen, except the black amulet he wears. He bought that from a junk peddler for two pennies, and staring at it makes him think of the stone tiger. 

And that'll do it!

NOVA: Dust Cicadas

Today we played a one-shot of NOVA. It's pretty dope! Check it.

Many years ago, the sun exploded. Shards of the sun crashed into the Earth, a sliver of the moon remains visible in the sky, and people have built settlements around the shards. 

Our story takes place in Radia. Radia is a commune kind of arrangement - a central hub with a larger shard where the farming happens. Multiple other smaller settlements surround it: The Northern Watch (to the north, doy) builds walls and focuses on perimeter defense. The Dangles, off to the south, consists of a couple of weather stations that handle communications in Radia. The West Hide (again, not surprisingly off to the west) houses multiple scientists and botanists working to study the ashy marshes and find new foodstuffs. Homerun, slightly southeast of the central hub, is the administration hub and population center, and acts as a feeder to the other areas. Finally, the Armory, to the east, is where Sparks (the big mechsuits that people use to venture out into the Dusk for various reasons) are constructed and programmed. 

Today, five people are being taken to the Armory to be "fitted" for Sparks. Edward B. Rock is the son of farmers in West Hide, but his family has been here for generations and he already has a Spark - it belonged to his great-grandfather, whose dog tags he wears around his neck.

Marie Strider is a teen from the Dangles. Something of a technical savant, she works as a kind of mobile IT person. She's happy enough to fix comm tech, but she really wants to get out of Radia and wander.

Sammy Chestnut is a scientist from West Hide. He figures that by piloting a Spark, he can get further out into the Dusk and interact with nature.

Lily Cantor is from Homerun and wants with all her heart not to be a farmer. She's done multiple jobs in multiple spokes, and figures that if she's a Spark pilot, that'll keep her out of the fields.

Aiden Crane is another farmboy, but from Nitrofarm. He ran away from home at one point and Ed's family took him in for a time, and he's been known to drink with Marie. He had a crush on Ed's sister Alice...but Alice was killed by Hellions six months ago, and Aiden wants to pilot a Spark to find them and take revenge.

The five of them ride through a bit of the Dusk to the Armory, feeling the chill nip at them before the smaller sunshard warms them again. Sarge, one of the officers from the Northern Watch, brings them into a bunker where multiple Sparks sit against the wall. He describes each of them and demonstrates their capabilities with a table - the Pyre, the Scorch, and so forth. Ed's unit, a Pox, is already here.

The new pilots poke at the machines, before eventually picking their Sparks. Marie chooses the Voyager, the most mobile of the Sparks. Aiden takes the Pyre, while Lily picks the Scorch. Sammy chooses the heavily armored Warden armor. Sarge teaches them how to program their Spark to fit their style and then leads them out into a corral. 

"Best way to learn is by doing!" he says. "But we're not going to send you into active combat; that's a waste of Sparks. And you. So you get hardlight enemies!" He explains that the tech draws on the nearby sunshard to create hardlight illusions, solid enough to pack a punch (and give a slight electric shock) but not able to seriously injure anyone. He tells them that they need to understand their Sparks' capabilities, but also each other's. With that, he actives the enemies - a horde of giant tarantula-like creatures!

Ed releases a stream of green gas and infects one of the spiders, while Marie activates her Spark's tech and "marks" several of them (and they light up on the other Sparks' HUDs). Aiden surges forward with his Pyre, summoning up a sword of light and fire, and slashing at the spiders, while Sammy picks one up, squeezes it, and hurls it. Lily sucks up the energy left behind when they die and parcels it out as fuel to the other Sparks. The spiders retaliate - several of them surrounded Aiden and bite at him, delivering multiple little zaps.

The Sparks make short work of the spiders. Sarge tells them that they did well, but they need to think about their positioning. He notes that Marie barely moved, and tells her that in a real battle she'll need to be more mobile - the Voyager isn't a tank like the Warden. He also notes that if the spiders had been real enemies, they might have done real damage to Aiden's Pyre. But he feels that they're ready for a mission - he sends them out to relax, but report back here tomorrow!

The pilots talk amongst themselves and come up with callsigns - Ed is called Bugspray. Aiden is Bey (as in "bey blade"). Sammy is Wally. Lily is Juice, and Marie is Beacon. They talk about tactics and Lily explains a picket fence (making best use of Wally's huge shield), and they all get some sleep.

The next day, Sarge briefs them. There's a big structure out to the southwest, and it's had a lot of Hellion activity lately. Hellions are usually mobile, so if they're staying in one place there's a reason for it. Go out there, do some recon, assess any threat, and at your discretion, burn it. The pilots suit up and head out into the wastes.

They reach the structure, an immense pre-cataclysm factory complex. The walls are gutted in places and the main gates are wide open, but it's still pretty fortified. Beacon gets close and surveys the area, keeping out of sight, and notes between 15 and 20 Hellions in the place. Most are soldiers, armed with clubs or machetes, but a few have firearms and a couple of have flamethrowers. One has a much sleeker weapon and a jetpack that she uses to zoom around the area; she's clearly a leader.

Beacon isn't quite sure what they're doing here, but she also gets some weird readings from the ground. She streams this info back to the others, and Lily does some quick analysis and determines that these are life-signs. There are living things buried here. The Sparks sneak up (with Beacon providing guidance) and hide in an outbuilding, and see that one of the Hellions is taking soil samples. Beacon taps into their comms to keep tabs.

Before doing anything, the Sparks decide they'd like to know what those buried things are. Doing a little scanning, they find a few that are outside the factory and out of eyesight. Wally smashes his immense fists into the dirt and pulls up a huge cicada-like creature, still torpid and sluggish, but obviously dangerous. If these things are buried all around, what are the Hellions doing with them? Bugspray crushes its head, not wanting to let it wake up), and Beacon gets a burst of chatter - "got a big pheromone spike! Tracking...".

They head back to the outbuilding and see that the scientist-Hellion is now using a device to track the pheromones - and she's pointing at them. The jetpack-wearing leader notes the outbuilding, and says "put a couple of incendiaries in there."

The Hellions fire a couple of grenades and the Sparks scatter out. The building blows up behind them. Bugspray steps forward, letting his poison gas leak a bit, and a couple of the Hellions fall back, recognizing a Pox when they see one. But the leader yells, "TAKE 'EM DOWN!" The battle is joined!

Wally charges forward and slams down his shield. Bey runs up the wall to a catwalk and runs a Hellion through, and then jumps for cover. Beacon marks a few and Bugspray infects some, immobilizing them, but sniper fire drops him. The Hellion leader leaps forward and lays down a line of fire, scrambling the Spark's HUDs for a second, and one of the firebugs napalms them. 

Juice helps Bugspray to his feet, and Bey hurls his light-spear at one of the snipers. Wally charges in and stuns one of the Hellions while Beacon marks more and sends out a hard-light decoy. Juice follows up by jumping amidst them and igniting herself, burning several of them to cinders. Beacon sends out explosives and the leader falls, and from there it's not difficult to kill the rest...except the scientist, still alive, fingers her device and the life-readings from the buried bugs go nuts.

Bey leaps off the wall and puts his blade to the scientist's throat, telling her to stand down. She drops the device, but tells Bey it's too late, the bugs are already waking up. Wally pulls one out of the ground and crushes it, while Bugspray releases a concentrated dose of poison and kills two more. The scientist looks past Bey and sees Bugspray...and pulls off her mask, revealing herself to be Alice, his supposedly dead sister! "Ed! It's me!"

Just then the cicadas emerge. Bey (whom Alice hasn't recognized - she only recognized Bugspray because of the armor) scoops her up and runs out of the factory. "Wait, who are you?" she asks. "A friend." Wally leaps forward and smacks a bug with his shield, and Beacon runs up to try and find the device that Alice dropped. The bug that Wally hit spews some chemical cloud at them. More bugs swarm Juice and start chewing on her armor. The armor's protocols take over and she releases waves of energy that liquefy a couple of the bugs and rejuvenate the other Sparks. 

Bugspray helps her up, and they get back to the battle. Beacon marks bugs and launches miniature explosives at them, and Bey slashes right through one. Wally smashes the last two together, and the Sparks are victorious! But what about Alice?

She reveals that the Hellions saved her six months ago (and shows the burn scars she was left with), but wouldn't let her leave. They wanted her to use her knowledge of cicada life cycles and biology to control them and send them to swarm Radia; the Hellions were going to pick the remains after the bugs ate everyone. The tech to awaken them is based on the Pox armor, in fact. 

The Sparks take Alice back to Radia for debriefing, and then on to celebration. Their first mission is a success! But who knows how many more of these bugs are out there in the Dusk?