[Age of Lead]: Forager [class]

 

 

FORAGER

Sentient trilobite-like creatures, possibly of extraterrestrial origin, foragers live between the cracks and gaps of proper imperial society. Foragers lack imperial citizenship status; as a result they may be abused- even killed out of hand, by members of the aristocratic classes. Despite their lowly status, and barring the odd case of casual murder, adult foragers are largely tolerated within imperial holdings.

 

Juvenile foragers are called mites, and considered vermin by everyone, including adults of the species. A forager gains its full size and reaches sentience at about 10 years of age; an adult forager stands (on it’s rear legs, the number of which varies) at about 1.5 meters. Foragers do not care for their young; most do not survive to adulthood. Foragers can live up to 50 years. Adult foragers occupy the bottom rung of imperial society and often make their living cleaning sewers, handeling the dead and crime.

 

A forager’s prime requisite is dexterity; a minimum score of 9 is required; a score of 13 or greater results in a 10% bonus to all earned experience.

 

RESTRICTIONS: foragers use a 4-sided dice for hit points. It is possible they could wear armor, but nobody makes any for them. The forager’s natural AC is 5(14). Foragers produce speech by vibrating their antenna-horns. Foragers may use any weapon.

SPECIAL ABILITIES: Foragers receive a +4 to hit and DOUBLE rolled DAMAGE when they strike an unaware opponent from behind. Foragers can CLIMB most surfaces regardless of angle without difficulty. SECOND HEART: Foragers are very difficult to kill. When a forager reaches 0 hit points for the first time, its second heart activates, resulting in a healing surge of 1d4+2 hit points. This ability resets after the forager has had time to heal ALL damage. Second heart hit points heal at 1/2 the rate of normal hit points. If the character reaches 0 HP before this healing is complete, death is the result.

 

SKILLS

At first level the forager may CREEP; SPOT; STEAL; JIMMY (See Below) on a roll of a 1-2 on a D6.

With each level attained, until 10th level, the forager may increase the chance for success of any one skill by +1. When the forager reaches 10th level the referee should create new, campaign specific skills for the forager.

 

CREEP: Move silent; hide; spy.

SPOT: Find; detect; observe.

STEAL: Shoplift; pick pockets; cheat.

JIMMY: Pick; breach; hot wire; rig.

 

WEIRD: Foragers are asexual and reproduce by dying. Mites gestate inside the forager throughout its adult life. The forager’s demise triggers the rapid completion of this process. Four to five days after death, hundreds of mites will eat their way out of the forager’s corpse. It’s rather unseemly.

 

PROGRESSION: As thief

SAVE: as dwarf

 

 

State of the Empire and the leech (class)

I have gotten quite a few questions about this stuff, especially considering comments are off. In order to avoid discouraging interest I will share a little as I go along. The art is all placeholder shit, at this point, so be kind.

I can be reached at themetalearthATgmailDOTcom. You must of course, replace the caps with the appropriate powerglyphs.

Data-Map of Karkul, province of Empire

Below, Outpost 17

STATE OF THE EMPIRE:

Everything is broken and dirty, but somehow things keep moving along. Most machines are patched and repaired, often with parts from other machines. Structures and fortifications exist more as products of accretion, modification and erosion than architecture. Everything is old, drafty and haunted. The feeling on the mainland is that the real empire has shifted to the deepwater islands and beneath the sea. Almost all inland settlements have been abandoned. Beast and worse overrun the food-caves. A few coastal settlements remain, but are squalid and under populated. The movements of citizens, even aristocrats, are restricted or the coast would be empty too. Endemic corruption and shortage remain facts of life. Loyalty to the Emperor is always in question. You are being watched. On clear nights you can see the Wurm.

Winter is coming.

 

 

LEECH: (Princess, Prince) Officially the Emperor’s personal slaves, leeches have managed transform thralldom to power in the millennia since their subjugation. Leeches are the healers of the empire; everyone living requires their service. Nobody, aside from the leeches, perhaps, is very happy about it, though. Unlike yeti, leeches may move from place to place unimpeded- although they must carry papers like everyone else. Leeches view each other as social equals. Many are known to extend this courtesy to commoners, seemingly unaware of, or too polite to acknowledge, the superstitious hate often given in return.

Leeches are slight, pale white-green skinned, humanoids schooled in blood magic. Leeches are not quite undead, nor are they completely alive; they exist in a liminal state known as half-death. According to rumor, a leech’s heart beats but once an hour and they are said to be without feelings. The former is true, or mostly so; the latter is a slur. Leeches exist in the present as vestiges of a vanished pre-imperial culture. Due to their healing abilities and power over the undead, leeches occupy an important niche in imperial society. As a group they are both revered and despised.

The leech's prime requisite is intelligence; a minimum of 9 is required; a score above 13 result in a 10% bonus to all earned experience points.

RESTRICTIONS: The leech uses a d6 for hit points. A leech must feed upon blood to draw upon his powers (eg, spell casting, turning the undead) and to survive. Each keeps what might best be described as a small external organ, or tumor, known as a kaul, upon which he must feed once a day to maintain access to spells and other special-abilities. The leech must feed once weekly (more or less) to retain its half-dead status. Failure to take a bloodmeal for ten consecutive days will drive the leach into a full dead state until he is force fed the fresh lifeblood of a living beast. Leeches may use any weapon and wear any armor. However, the spilling of blood is considered to be unseemly by most; as such, they tend to reserve the use of edged weapons for duels, and use blunt or energy -weapons in most other circumstances. This is not a hard restriction, merely a societal norm, violation of which will not go without notice or remark, however. Leeches must cover their skin out of doors in the daytime, and traditionally wear a moon mask while in the company of others, day or night. During the day they suffer 1pt of damage/turn if caught outside (even when it is overcast; which, indecently, is always). Once inside, the leech heals all damage so incurred at a rate of 1hp/round.

SPECIAL ABILITIES: The leech exists at the threshold of life and death, and draws energy from the necrosphere, whilst feeding from his kaul and gains spell-casting ability and power over the earthly dead as a result. The leech has access to cleric spells and turns the undead as a cleric of equal level (X5,X7). At 5th level the leech no longer has to carry his kaul; it levitates beside him.

Below: kaul, owner unknown.

 

Karakul, province of Empire

 

 

 

Grim Danger in a Lost World

Jongor of Lost World

I fucking love Archive.org. Whenever I am kind of bored, I start poking around and really it is an embarrassment of riches. Here is today's winner- an ERB pastiche from 1940. It has all the problematic social elements you would expect for this kind of story from this time. There were two sequels written but, I can't find them on Archive. They are avaialble for the kindle, however.

As far as gaming goes, I'm pretty sure whoever wrote HEX, drew heavily from this story.

Anyway, check out that crazy dinothing.

 

 

Skarn, in the Sea of Night

 

 

[Map] Karakul Province

For the thing, which I am calling Age of Lead.

I am about done with the player text, and have a number of images done. Everything that has come before here, exists now as an idea farm, so some things may be familiar, but I assure you the final product is like nothing you have seen before. I could probably release next week, but I have ideas, see, and I may go all summer.

Here is the inkiest map you likely to see this morning. Comments are closed, but shoot me a mail if you have something to say.

 

 

 

 

B/X Cosmonaut.pdf and what is next...

I had hoped to get this out a bit earlier, but whatever:

B/X Cosmonaut

Feedback would be nice, but don't get worked up about it.

 

 

And this will probabaly happen next.