Thursday 18 August 2016

ISLES OF THE IMPRISONED MOON - Char Gen


You are a traveler to the Isles of the Imprisoned Moon.

1. Roll 3d6 for each Ability Score. You may swap any two of your scores.

Strength – Fighting, fortitude and toughness.
Dexterity – Stealth, athletics and reflexes.
Willpower – Confidence, disciple and charisma.

Characters start with d6 Hit Points.

2. Consult the following table to find your starting equipment and any special information about your character. Match your highest Ability Score against your Hit Points.


1HP
2HP
3HP
4HP
5HP
6HP
9 or less
Sword (d6) or Pistol (d6)


Musket (d8) Sword (d8)
Flashbang
Porcelain Armour & Mask.
Independently Wealthy & Uniquely Beautiful
with an Unquestioned Reputation.
Pistol (d6) & Knife (d6)
Widow of famed explorer. Three extra languages.
Pistol (d6)
Knife (d6)
Blunderbuss (d8)
Cleaver (d6)
Intelligent Rat

Dreams show your undiscovered surroundings.
Musket (d8)
Hatchet (d6)
Flashbang

10
A Queen

Your STR must be your lowest score.

Musket (d8)
Hatchet (d6)
Hawk
Practitioner of the Subtle Art
Musket (d8)
Gloves.
Kleptomaniac. Can Pick Pockets on a whim but must if a Will roll is failed.
Delusional and brilliantly faking nobility.
Rapier (d8)
Pistol (d6)
2 Acid Flasks
Arcanium.
Pistol Brace (d8)
Grappling Hook

Rifle (d8)
Mace (d6)
 Experienced Thief.
(has lock picks)
11
Rifle, Porcelain Armour,(1)
Hawk,

Dueling Rapier (d8)
Dueling Pistol (d8)
Musket (d8)
Marbles.
Unmarried debutante with famously ‘fine figure’.
Climbs like an ape.
Musket (d8)
Bayonet (d6)

Has intelligent hound-sized Fly
Machete (d6)
Pistol Brace (d8)

Tarot Deck.
Can Dance.
Club (d6)
3 Bombs
Rocket

Five dead children, immune to fear.
12
You seem harmless and are 12 years old.
Club (d6)
Throwing Knives
Arcanium
Extremely Beautiful artists model. Near destitute.
Musket (d8)
Former Nun and Pyromaniac.
Pick Axe (d6)
Manacles
Matches.
Pistol (d6)
Rocket.

Religious,  immune to madness if singing.
Harpoon Gun (d8)
Baton (d6)
Acid


Alcoholic.
Maul (d8)
Dagger (d6)

Chain

13
Pistol (d6)
Ether
Poison

Renowned Artist with Exceptional Hair.
Sword (d6)
Pistol (d6)

Severe melancholic.
Pistol (d6)
Smoke Bomb
Shovel
Musket (d8)
Portable Ram
Game Set

A low sort.

Blunderbuss (d8)
Bolt-Cutters
Fiddle.
 Can calculate interest in a jiffy.
Longaxe (d8)
Rum.
Bomb.
14
Cane (d6)
Acid
Spyglass

Iron Eyes
Extremely silly young girl.
Pistol (d6)
Bell.
Steel Wire.
Smoke Bomb.
Husband a wretch. Numerous debts.
Longaxe (d8)
Throwing Axes
Fire Oilide
Pistol (d6)
Saw
Animal Trap
Spyglass
Pistol (d6)

Fairy needle empowered by sarcasm (d8)


Dagger (d6)
Fire Oil
Mirror
15
A Doctor. INT will be useful to you.
Divorced Entertainer
Longaxe (d8)
Ferret
Fire Oil
Escaping abusive spouse.
Club (d6)
Ether
Crowbar
Flute
Plain, with Sapphic Drives.
Bow (d6)
Knife (d6)
Rocket, Fire Oil
Sword & dagger (d8)
Magnifying glass.
Spouse in debtors prison.
Pistol (d6)
Knife (d6)
Bomb

Serving Girl who weeps too much.
16
Educated Laudanum addict.
Musket (d8)
Pocket Watch.
Bomb.
Pipe-smoking
Beggar.

Staff (d8)
Tongs
Glue
Former Prostitute

Hatchet (d6)
Net, Fire Oil,
Burnt Face
Insurrectionist.

Pistol (d6)
Whip (d6)
Cigars,
Lost Eye
Pistol.
Acid.
Bird Repellent.

Hook Hand
Pistol (d6)
Bomb

Pursued by Violent Husband
17
Escaped Prisoner & experienced cross-dresser.
Halberd (d8)
Fake Pistol
Spinster. Former Bedlamite.
Sees Things.
Pistol (d6)
Net.
Prosthetic leg.
Club (d6)
Paint.
Crowbar.

Loud Lungs.
Musket (d8)
Accordion

Old, with
Wooden Leg and a shameful dog.
Sword (d6).
Steel Wire.

One month pregnant. 

Unmarried.
White Ape.
Mute
18
Garotte (d6)
Musket (d8)

Faints Under Stress.
Pistol (d6)
Grease
Hacksaw,
One arm.

‘Given to the Bottle’.
Obsessive Abolitionist and Hysteric.
Pistol (d6)
Cigars, Poison, A Fugitive.
Sword (d6)
Shield Armour
 Sword (d6)
Questionable ferret.
Hideous Tobacco-Chewing
Crone.

Albino Crab Man.

Mute


(Several results involve information from Mateo Dias Torres' Pernicious Pamphlet, which you are under no obligation to buy. If you need a rule or some information, message me and I will give it to you. Likewise if you need an Arcanium and don't have 'Into the Odd'. Likewise if you roll something wierd and don't know what it is or if the rules look odd or there are no rules.)

If it sounds like you’re a woman then you probably are. If it’s unclear then you are whatever gender you prefer.

Languages are stolen from the Pernicious Pamphlet, they are:

Ara Gorash - The Outer Gods, Agorath, etc.
Elegaic - High Status dead. Vampires, Liches, some Ghosts.
Lament - Lesser dead, skeletons, zombies, rebels.
Shrike - The language of birds.

You can keep languages 'free' if you want.


3. You are, of course, utterly free to decide your own name. You may also click one of the buttons below and to the right marked either ‘Underdark Common name’ or ‘Underdark noble name’, you should not choose a name either beyond, or below your station.


The World

On the Nightmare Sea, where no Sun has ever shone, chiming ships navigate by the patterning of swells and the nightmares of sleeping Navigators.

The navigators come from Nox, the city of white flame which rules the Nightmare sea. Only the navigators of Nox have the power to reliably cross the black water, and the Navigators all eventually go mad, and therefor Nox is mad.

There are many strange places on the Nightmare sea. No-one has found its boundary. Isles of bone where tribes with iron eyes find their way with magnetism, insane psychic whales and silver caravels with indigo sails. There are warm reefs where phytoplankton stitch mazes under the black water and intelligent Nudibranch make libraries of dreams.

And there are the Isles of the Imprisoned Moon.

There is no Sun upon the nightmare sea, and never will be, but there is a moon, a stolen moon snatched from the 'skies' (whatever they are) and chained here eons ago.

The moon is huge and bound above the surface of the black sea with cyclopean iron chains. A link in the chain is about the sise of the World Trade Centre.

Is it as big as our 'real' moon? It seems impossible, but its fucking BIG. It reaches high up into the sky.

The Imprisoned Moon is a pale silvery white. It's not reflecting light from anywhere, so far as anyone on the Nightmare Sea knows, there is no-where for it to reflect light from, they know of the Sun only from theory and legend, but if you told them that the moon was reflecting light from a lamp it could no longer see, they would find the idea poetically appropriate.

There are isles around the imprisoned moon, ringed archipelagos like the rings around a planet or the splatters from an ink-soaked ball being slammed onto white paper.

Some of these islands may have been here when the moon arrived, some may be relics of whatever semi-continent was here before, many were called up by powerful magics, or simply built with armies of slaves.

They are here becasue the moon brings light, the greatest currency of the Nightmare Sea. (The currency of Nox is Mirrors, literally small coin-sized glass-fronted, silver-backed mirrors with the sign of their issuing city etched into the silver or the glass.  Large mirrors are always treasures. Anything larger is handled in Occultum (equivalent of 'Obols' from the Pernicious pamphlets. "Obols allow for otherwise impossible transactions—souls, kingships,futures, dreams.")

These are the Isles of the Imprisoned Moon, this is where you have been sent, or to where you have escaped.

Because of their gift of reliable light, the Isles of the Imprisoned Moon have foliage and ecosystems, the do not rely exclusively on bounty from the sea and on magic. Life grows there, and not just fungal life.

The isles are powerful but anarchic, if they were ever to combine they could form a challenge to the power of Nox, but they never will.


(In a sense you can imagine this as Egypt to Nox's Rome, if Egypt was a gigantic archipelago like Indonesia and was ruled in a manner similar to anarchic timelost city states. And if Rome was totally fucking insane)



The Society

A mish mash of anything from Regency to Victorian with technology stretching from the barrel-loading musket to (at best) the Navy Colt.

There are no automatic weapons, cased rounds are experimental and super-rare. It's just about possible that someone, somewhere is working on an experimental electric light, but its unlikely as magic can do the same thing better.

There is a class system. The Navigating Houses at the top and unreasonable cannibals at the bottom. in Nox, Liberals don't campaign against slavery, they campaign against cannibalism. 

People can be materially rich and still hungry. Food is scarce.

Almost everyone believes in the class system in some way, including your characters. Broadly, the further towards the left and top you are in the diagram above, the higher class you are, the further towards the bottom and left you are, the lower your class.

Ghosts, Liches and Vampires can all be civilized and higher class. Vampires, Skeletons, zombies and ghosts can all be horrid and common, it depends on their circumstances. They also believe in the class system.

Slavery itself is at ancient Greece levels rather than triangle trade levels and is status based (you can buy yourself out) rather than race based (apart from Crab Men).

Light and currency amount to the same thing, though we won't be tracking those heavily. It's assumed that everyone has, or has access to, a whale oil lantern. (The light from the oil of Psychic Whales gives of a slight moaning when lit.) Remember you will still need a free hand  to carry a lantern.

There are few Clerics but almost everyone is a bit religious. For the Navigating Houses their sleeper ends up being a quasi-god (though never actually worshiped). Other gods are Agorath, Chthulu (a commoners version of Agorath), Manpac and of course Conchodeus and Zoophoria who are known everywhere in the Uncertain Worlds, though both in somewhat nightmarish aspects down here.

Everyone is Poor

Your character might be technically rich compared to some other characters, but they are poorer than they think they should be, especially compared to their desired standard of living. Maybe they are in debt or have lost status due to a scandal, either way they are in a desperate state.

The higher status your character is, the more absolutely vital it is to them that they do not make it explicit that they are poor.


8 comments:

  1. I would play.

    How do HP work here? Are they a buffer before you start taking Strength damage, or do you die/start dying when you run out?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi George. It's based on the 'Into the Odd' ruleset. First you take hit point damage. Once those run out you take STR damage. Every time this happens, after the STR points have been removed you have to save (roll under your STR) or take Critical Damage, which effectively puts you down, you then need medical attention or will die.

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  2. Nice to see you back on Nox and the Nightmare Sea. Any chance we'll see more poetry? I don't think Ive read too much worldbuilding via poetry in rpgs, and that post was glorious.

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    Replies
    1. Nooo idea. Still in depression/stasis. Depends on what happens in my life and how I feel about that.

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  3. This is really, really cool.

    Also I sat up all night last night reading MotBM and it is a fucking brilliant masterpiece.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks very much Parvel, glad to hear you like it.

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  4. What approximate power level is knowing a "Seal of X"? Is it the equivalent of knowing a spell/cantrip, the ability to summon a representative of that particular being? Or is it something more esoteric? And if I'm intimate/familiar with a Watcher or Incubus, do I just make something up? Just wanting to get a feel for how to rejigger this glorious mess.

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    Replies
    1. A seal is roughly Cantrip level. Being an intimate mainly means you can speak to them, but to get anything useful out of them you will need to give up something. I reccomend reading Mateo Diaz's 'Pernicious pamphlet' as thats where I stole that stuff from.

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