Generic Bungie Foes for Mothership

 A while ago now, I binged a bunch of old Bungie lets plays
Halo 1-4 (4 was a bad move), Myth 1 & 2, Marathon, Destiny 1 & 2 and Descent into Darkness.
Besides looking at all the hidden references, reused concepts and traces of a connective universe they stopped bothering wiith after a while. I realised that all the scifi games they made used the same pool of enemies.
Now Mothership, the RPG seemed like a perfect place for such an universal set, even if the default setting tended to eschew extraterrestrial intelligence. Ultimately, my work was superseeded by the generic bunch in the back of Unknown Contact Report.

But these guys still can easily sub in for aliens or Human raiders. Comes as 4 enemies + 1 from the higher tier who leads them. 

Smalls: Your Grunts, Psions, Hive Thralls, Drones and Jackals

Page: 1(10) C30 I25 Attacks 1 (1d10)

Squire: 1(15) C40 I40 Attacks 2 (2d10)

Knight: 2(20) C50 I55 Attacks 2 (3d10) AP3

Mediums: Your Fallen, Hive Acolytes and Phor

Page: 1(15) C35 I30 Attacks 1 (2d10)

Squire: 2(20) C45 I45 Attacks 2 (3d10) AP1

Knight: 3(25) C55 I60 Attacks 2 (1 Wound) AP5

Bigs: Your Elites, Brutes, Hive Knight and Cabal

Page: 2(20) C45 I40 Attacks 1 (3d10) AP1

Squire: 3(25) C55 I50 Attacks 2 (1 Wound) AP3

Knight: 4(30) C65 I60 Attacks 2 (1d100) AP7

Heavy: Hunters, Ogres, Hulks

Rooks: 5(20) C50 I40 Attacks 1 Melee (2 Wound) and/or Grenade Launcher (1d5-1 Wounds) AP7

Mystic: S'pht, Hive Wizards

Cleric: 2(10) C30 I50 Attacks 1 (1d10), roll twice on Special Table

Bishop: 3(15) C45 I65 Attacks 2 (3d10), roll twice on Special Table

So, what makes these guys special?

The:

1-3 Leader is replaced with Mystic or Heavy, roll 1d10: Evens Mystic, Odds Heavy

4-6 Common Troops have

7-9 Leaders have

10 Each Individual uniquely has (reroll duplicate results)

2 Smart Rifle

3 Invisible until first attack (cannot be spotted unless an INT Check is passed)

4 1 Frag Grenade

5 +2 AP

6 Sniper Rifle (Combat Shotgun that switches Close and Long Range)

7 Suicidally charge with a primed Frag Grenade or melee weapon when in Short range

8 Melee Damage has [+]

9 Big Hats which give +10 to all stats

10 A Grenade Launcher attachment with 3 Frag Grenades (this is 1 per total squad)

11 Flies now

12 Flamethrower

13 Automatically applies a Stim Pack to ally in Close Range when attacking

14 Rigging Gun

15 Teleports to a location in Close Range

16 Laser Sword, a Laser Cutter with Adjacent Range, cannot be recharged

17 Deploys from unreasonable closed space

18 Deducts 2AP from target before damage

19 Dual wield Revolvers and can attack twice with them if not able already

20 Resurrects with 1 Wound once

And for Mothership 0E

Page: 1(15) C35 I30 Attacks 1 (2d10)

Squire: 2(20) C45 I45 Attacks 2 (3d10) AP1

Knight: 3(25) C55 I60 Attacks 2 (1 Wound) AP5

Smalls: Your Grunts, Psions and Jackals

Page: 1(10) C30 I25 Attacks 1 (1d10)

Squire: 1(15) C40 I40 Attacks 2 (2d10)

Knight: 2(20) C50 I55 Attacks 2 (3d10) AP3

Bigs: Your Elites, Brutes and Cabal

Page: 2(20) C45 I40 Attacks 1 (3d10) AP1

Squire: 3(25) C55 I50 Attacks 2 (1 Wound) AP3

Knight: 4(30) C65 I60 Attacks 2 (1d100) AP7

Unisystem Conversions

 This was going to be a post reiterating the rpocess to convert GURPS 3E into Unisystem. The RPG (like FUDGE) which was designed to cover the percieved flaws in GURPS and had a long line of supplements.

Unfortunately, I cannot find the site for the GURPS conversion anymore and that sort of mirrors how Unisystem can't be found either. it being reliant on you sifting out the zombies from their zombie + genre books and readapting their Buffy game. Unisystem's generic book remaining in development hell and Eden Studios retreating back to just being a games store.

So I'm going to reiterate a different site instead and hope anyone who still cares about Unisystem goes through and downloads anything nthye find useful before time erases it.

https://patchlord.com/patchworld/unisystem/index.html

For a site that hasn't been updated since 2020, it has had quite a life of constant updates since 2001. I particularly enjoy using this site to compose mash-up properties where I can use the adaptions as extra enemeis or as translation keys to mix system.

And while I am under no delusion that boolstering this site on my blog will bring it no more traffic than punching in "Unisystem to BLANK conversion" into Google, I hope it inspires someone else.

I especially like mashing Star Wars with other settings as the used-future meets fairy-tale fantasy nature of the Galaxy is flexible enough to include anything so long as you can sufficiently obscure it's origins.

Stormbringer Wolves Upon the Coast Session 12

The session was short by the standard of normal sessions, with people late or having technical issues.

The party celebrated their success in Blulach and got ready to take Glas and his offer of a free snekkja for killing what he tried to explain were iron-blooded corpses, hungry for flesh and iron. He also called them orcneas and saying their blood corroded iron. Buying from and bargaining down an old woman selling betony to 5sp per ten springs. The party contemplated how to fight the iron-men then realised that if it rusted iron only, the bronze weapons of the undead would assist. A POW x 3 roll was needed to find a bronze axe for Sigmar. A fumble would bend a bronze weapon on top of a roll, requiring a turn to restraighten.

They sailed south, Sigmar managed to summon a Virtue but was unable to bind it into her armour. She did get better, rising to INT x 2 when communing with one when meditating. Passing into the river, through the miserable town of Killucan in 04.14, night began to fall as the karvi slowed. They decided the undead who were marching below the karvi could push it from below during the night. Passing through 03.12 at night, they heard a dog on the west bank and the sound of marching feet on the east bank. They stayed the course, and in the morning, they saw amid the fog on the moor that the marchers had kept pace with the boat. All while a squat tower seemed to loom out of the fog.

Like how Glas described the, they had black veins running through their bodies, greying skin and teeth the colour of rust as much as black iron. The party chewed their betony and ordered the dead pushers to run the ship into the bank.

Leaping off, only Althrow Tams passed an Ambush roll, but half the orcneas failed their sight roll and were stunned for 2 rounds. Leading to a fight where it was Althrow Tams, 7 iron-blooded, some of the party and then the rest when they stopped being stunned. The orcneas must not have been expecting the boat to ever change after a night of ceaseless drifting.

The melee was a hard fight indeed, the orcneas could parry not well, but in Stormbringer and other BRP games, parrying at all gives an edge on top of random damage vs AP (Armour Points). Half of the orcneas wore only leather armour (1D6-1) and the other half wore a mishmash of that was about as effective as chain (1d8-1). Yrestor and Milas Domonkos were hacking away, with Althrow Tams and Sigmar cutting down some, they had not seen that there were 14 orcneas in the fog but they were making good progress.

But it was the three javelins that were the most dangerous. A javelin does 1d8+2, a pip higher than an axe, so when a critical hit struck Yrestor, it did 18 damage and slew him outright. Sigmar’s player seeing this was unfair, wanted instead to impose her in front of the shot. I said make a POW roll and it was done.

Sigmar could take 18 damage and live, unfortunately for her, it severed her right arm, the iron head cracking the bone of her forearm almost completely in half and cutting the flesh and muscle. She fought on for the remaining two turns, a benefit of being a champion of Law.

It is fortunate that Hrafnkel had woken up (got to the session) a little before and was still gathering his wits. Seeing the fight, he jumped from among the rowers on the boat and began to swing his terrible axe, dealing critical and even his normal hits snapping weapons and slaying outright. There was a scary moment for him when he parried another critical hit and I had to explain how even demon weapons can break if a CON roll isn’t made. But he passed and knew to be more careful.

After the battle Sigmar received first-aid but the arm could not be saved. Sigmar had a brilliant idea, she prayed for some form of divine intervention, to sacrifice a working eye for restoring her lost arm. She prayed and they were answered, her vision growing uneven as the eyeball dried up and fell out and her flesh and bone reknitted. She put in the Pearl Eye and was deeply annoyed that it could not be seen through, merely granting visions to her mind. Somewhere in the higher planes, the gods laughed.

Sigmar went from -4 DEX to -2 CHA and -2 DEX, but could still use two-handed weapons, so something worked out.

Hrafnkel’s axe began to cough up the corrosive blood, it not being bronze but probably not being iron either. The secret, if there ever was one in-game was out. The constant Strength draining had made the axe power indeed.

Sigmar took advantage to see the tower more clearly and described the many holes in the drystone, covered in vegetation and filled with yellow eyes, at least a 100 individual orbs. The party debated retreating. Hrafnkel declared that 2 weeks ago, hew was a washed up drunk moping about killing his brother, now he is a mighty warrior and charges the tower across 200 metres of open ground. Google Dice were erratic, there were 4 critical fumbles from among the orcneas bows, 4 regular hits and 1 critical hit. Hrafnkel dodged them all, even scoring the critical Dodge.

He ran up to a vegetation-covered doorframe that might have been a postern gate. Athrow Tams shot a Melnibonean bone bow from 200ms away and hit someone through the mat. Hrafnkel decided to not just charge in, but hack the mat away, revealing some 30 orcneas awaiting him. Seeing how they recoiled from the dawn light, he used his axe to reflect the light, confirming it was the light itself they feared. He did not enter as he had to dodge a rock hurled from above. The challenge this, he attempted to scale the walls, but could not dodge the next rock which stuck him down to the ground (1d6 rock 1d6 fall and 1d6 from falling with banded armour). When the session ended, he was lying there while the party debated charging forth to help.

More Mutants

 Just a grab-bag of mutants from other RPGs, many of these are just not really tested.

Blue Planet

Bad Mojo

Enhance SPD END DET GOO-P: +35

Size Rating: 10

Basic – Otherworldly (Piscimilis) Finned, Carnivore, Movement: Aquatic, Respiration: Water-Breathing

Major – COMPOUND SLIGHT (5), NATATANOID (FREE WITH MOVE: AQUATIC) AGGRESSIVE (5) SWIFT: SPRINT SWIMMER (2) PREY SIGHT (5)

Minor – Camouflage (Ocean Surface), Pack Hunter, Specialised Predator, Saltwater Tolerance, Teeth (Pursuit), Spurs (Skull)

Diving Strike - (Swift: Sprint + Spur + 5 GOO-P): You can increase your MOVE bonus to 100% for a turn and maximize your size or weapon damage dice (your choice) for any maneuver performed that turn, starting from a higher depth. You gain Strike - Melee as a supported maneuver for Spurs.

Basilisk (Lacerta Infucatus var.)

Enhance AFF PRO PER GOO-P: +30

Size Rating: 7

Basic – Otherworldly (Dacondonta), Facultative Herbivore, Hexapodal

Major - ENHANCED SCENT (5) PREY SIGHT (5) TOXIC (GAM TETRO) (10)

Minor – Aposematic, Claws (Climbing), Languid, Teeth (Insectivore), Toxin Digestion, Long-Neck (Ambush,) Distasteful, Flamboyant

Sweet Smell (Toxin Digestion + 10 GOO-P): You possess a sweet-smelling saliva used to attract insects, when you make a dramatic roll for social interactions to get something from a human or fruit/nectar-eating species, you gain A and skip one step.

Borderlands

Spiderant

Enhance AFF DET PRO GOO-P: +25

Size Rating 10

Basic: Otherworldly (Pandoran), Carnivore, Quadrupedal

Major: AGGRESSIVE, BURROW (10 GOO-P, SUBTERRANEAN +5 GOO-P), HEADSHIELD (5), ROYAL DIMORPHISM (4 GOO-P WITH NO WINGS, KNIGHTING + 4 GOO-P) SPIDERSILK (10) ROPING (5)

Minor: Communal: Hive, Pheromone Language, Rot Digestion, Territorial

Choose one caste ability from below.

Fight with the Hive: (Headshield + 2 GOO-P): If you are in melee with allies that also have Headshield or Shell, you gain Resistance 3 and Armor 3 against all opponents, not just one.

Gyro (Headshield + 2 GOO-P): When charging, gain +A on knockdowns, and treat them as a supported manoeuvre for your fighting style when using unarmed weapons.

Fallout

Snallygaster

Enhance: STR, END, DET GOO-P: 18

Size Rating: 10

Basic Traits: FEV Mutant (Cryptid), Omnivore, Movement: PERIOPODAL, Prehensility: Grasping

Major: AGGRESSIVE (5 GOO-P), CATCHING TONGUE (5 GOO-P), COMPOUND SIGHT (5 GOO-P), DORSAL PLATES (5 GOO-P), FEARLESS (5 GOO-P), MUSK (10 GOO-P) SMELLY (-5 GOO-P, UNIVERSAL), SCYTHE (3 GOO-P), SPLAY (5 GOO-P), TOXIN RESISTANCE (2 GOO-P): UNNERVING VOCALIZATION (3 GOO-P), VENOM (10 GOO-P): (TOXUNGEN +5 GOO-P)

Minor: Claws, Long Neck, Nearly Human, Rot Digestion, Teeth (Crushing), Toxin Digestion

ABOMINATION OF MAD SCIENCE (6 GOO-P): When in combat, spend 1 Will to make a Bully Maneuver on every opponent in the fight regardless of range. Outside of combat gain +A on social tests invoking violence or fear

Gorezone Rework

Trying to reinterpreted Gorezone for the smaller SLA Industries 2nd Edition setting.

Gorezone - Live In Your TV, Live In Your Street, Live In Your Livingroom!

What is Gorezone?
In the over the top and dystopian SLA Industries, Gorezone was a TV show where they sealed off a sector and opened all the hatches to the sewers and maintenance tunnels, letting all the monsters up and out. While also sending in Contract Killers (murderous gameshow gladiators) and promient criminals turning up. The players could participate, help manage the chaos or be doing set up or wind down. The problem with this idea, is as the giant city of Mort Central has shrunk from Earth-sized to Germany-sized to about the size of Belize (but denser and taller). The idea you could just ruin and kill off a whole city/neighbourhood-sized region as a regular TV show became more farfetched. The vague notion was the the population either fled or tried to ride it out, but there was no indications for or against warnings.

I tried reworking Gorezone from clearing out a sector no one will miss to a last-ditch effort to squeeze every drop of evil out of a sector they've given up on, with the twin rollers of fame and violence. Thinking back to a line in the corebook about how a sector or a few had actually ejected SLA Indutries and was some locked-down nightmare.

My version of Gorezone is not a frequent event, it's a purge of a sector dressed up for television. Designed to exploit all the psychos' desire to be recognized that SLA Industries has implanted in the populace. A Gorezone involves baiting every idiot and monster out and killing them while flashing lights are going off to make other people want to do the same.

Technically correct and publicly listed; Gorezone is a combination of a standard mass-combatant deathmatch with a hunting match-up. Contract Killers arrive in a sector with the express purpose of scoring points by eliminating each other (Life After Death on standby) and killing hostile threats that reside in the sector. Needless to say this brings all the crazies out, encouraged by broadcasts showing serial killers, props, gangs and Darknight agents running into the street to do battle. Most of these have been unwillingly flushed out of their holes by Contract Killers going down Shiver hit-lists or Op teams feeding intelligence to media managers, but it's had the desired effect of getting the reprobates to emulate TV and charge for the 5 minutes of fame. Darknight even has made it policy to try and show up the corporation when it happens with it's own media stars. Carrein, carnivorous pigs and other monsters also emerge more because the streets are awash with blood. Ops get the awful job of flushing the out or baiting them to the street-level if they won't come on their own. 

Shivers concentrate on keeping the violence contained to the sector, protecting assets and maybe rescuing people if there is time. Ops and Contract killers can make goodwill by valiantly stopping all the violence from breaking into the residences and businesses while on camera. 

Gangs are a problem because they are often considered a lethal plague (so Gorezone kills them) but at the same time are local kids (It rates bad with armed locals). It ends up that the kids with homes just hide like the rest of the civilians and the homeless (because SLA in always unfair) or crazy ones step outside for their 5 minutes. 

Pendragon 1st Edition as a Supplement for Runequest 2nd Edition - Adjustments

When I made an analysis of Pendragon 1^st Edition as a sort of domain-level sourcebook for Runequest 2^nd Edition, I assumed that each hide had to be producing £2 to equally split it between landlord (the knight or professional warrior) and the tenant. Since there was a floor to the amount a tenant could be earning before they couldn’t even afford gruel and beer around 500L. As gruel and beer were sold in Pavis for 2c each and should make a profit of 50% and so cost a household 1c to make each. And therefore, £1 was 500L.

But what I hadn’t accounted for was the lands worked in Pendragon would be the private demesne of the lord, with the tenants working their own strips of land as well independent of the lord’s hides and so the £1 per hide was not being split. And the single mention in the money section that a family eats about £1 in food per year.

This threw out the calculations, but I still had the floor since a family getting 50% of the produce in the Orlanthi system, would need around 500L. If that’s 50% of a hide, I was back to £1 being 1000L.

But a peasant family eats 2 ½ d every week and eats well. The amount eaten is either 10L (if 500L) or 20L (if 1000) depending on which value, because in Pendragon 1^st Edition, £1 is equal to 125d (1d equalling 4L or 8L respectively). 2 ½ d every week comes 42 x 10 or 42 x 20, 420L or 840L.

Both don’t work with £1 being a nice round number like because they can’t take into account the 20% of taxes paid to the Earth/Air temple, which match well to Church/Liege taxes and fees and pushes then to 504L and 1008L.

But, 2 1/2d x 52 gets 130d, which is 5d over £1. Meaning there’s some extra money for food coming in that Pendragon is not accounted for and we can simply ignore the same for RQ. Maybe Easter/Sacred Time has a collective pooling of resources from the rich to the poor or something.

Household Knights sustain themselves on £1 as unmarried warriors living on their lord’s largess. The price list lists 125d (£1) for staples for peasants and another £1 as annual cost of living for Peasants. It seems obvious these are the same as no where else does a Knight have to buy their own staples unless buying more than what their estates give them.

Going back to the Pavis food price lists, and assuming a family of farmers can make the food and drink at half cost, 6c is a Cheap Wholesome Meal and a Mug of Ale is 4c, total of 10c per member per day. Half that, is 5c per family member for 7 days, to get us 17.5L, or just enough to be covered by 20L with 2.5L summed up for feasts or buying meat animals. Which means 2 1/2d is 8L and so £1 is 1000L.

A farming family in Glorantha makes 1000L in a year, eats or trades 840L (105 being used for purchasing) and pays 160L in tax.

We must reevaluate how each culture handles land ownership and their warrior class. This supplants the specifics in the previous blogpost.

Now an Ordinary Knight requires £2 per year to maintain himself and his family for his station. That’s still 2000L per year.

Western Culture works exactly like the default culture of Pendragon, Prince Valient- esque. The lord has his fields, the peasants have theirs and work his as well.

Orlanthi Culture needs to split the farmland up more. Since each knight is getting only 50% for each hide. But fits more

An adventurer in Orlanthi culture can farm their own land of 1 hide and get £1/1000L per year from it, but they can only train for a maximum of 2 hours a day, 4 hours daily during Dark and Storm Seasons. These people are called Carls, and if they are called to fight, they fight as Poor Knights. Carls do not have a penalty to Horse Survival Rolls but also only own 1 horse, if they own more they start rolling with a penalty for being Poor Knights.

As Orlanthi need twice as many Hides or (x2 -1 Hides if also self-farming) to support themselves as a knight, each Tenant family must be working half a hide or 40-60 acres on their own. This is reasoned by the notion in pendragon 1^st Edition that a Landed Knight lives on a simple homestead with two hides and 1 hide supports 1 family. So, there are probably two other peasant in the Western tradition farming their own two hides and coming to do the extra labour. But for Orlanthi, the ownership of all four are split between the lord and the tenants.

Any odd Hydes or Hyrds (Pendragon 1^st Edition) must be passed off to Carls, who do count towards the minimum number of Knights for higher ranks.

So, each Hide split with a tenant also produces 1 Footman/Man At Arms free of charge. But Orlanthi must pay for any extra. Those coming out of the Cottars class, who form the basic labour pool for the Carls and landed warriors. This does incentivise the Orlanthi to either raid to obtain the £s needed to maintain extra warriors like Humakti and warbands of Household Knights, or to invest into more rules-ethereal money-generating ventures that produce Goods and Tolls.

Praxian Culture is fine as it is, if a little one note for how much they care about their herds.

Pelorian Culture, I wrote that the landlords own all the land and hand it out to the Knights and farmers as non-hereditary grants or pay them wages. This statement means that each landlord must have a lot of land available and a lot of wealth. Based on what I wrote before, each rank needs twice the minimum requirements of wealth to count. But half goes to the peasants, so it is immaterial except for advancement/bookkeeping purposes.

40K System - Matastelsel

Bawahayat - Ag World suffering from racial tensions

The only planet of any note in Matastelsel is Bawahayat and it's the sole planet that is life-sustaining, despite it's inhospitable atmosphere. With a frozen and airless surface covered in with large crystalline structures. These are the equivalent of photosynthetic organisms, but they pump oxygen into the soil and not the air. This has allowed the evolution of massive fungi-worms, slowly crawling through the tunnels and chasms below the permafrost.

The planet is in an uproar because of racial and religious tensions between the surface (Mataknecht) and underground dwellers (Gelapknecht). The Mataknecht man the few spaceports and crystal-harvesting operations, they live in sealed and buried domes under the machinery and so see light more frequently. They tend to be the Emperor's Divine Specter Sect like those on Hiveworld Chiron.

Gelapknecht traditionally harvest and process the enormous fungi-worms into high-quality tallow (candles) and lower-quality protein-starches (food). They live in the dark tunnel-cities and don't use light beyond the faint glows of machinery, fire and bioluminescent. They have a few cults about the Emperor being the source of light and the Emperor speaking not just for or through Humanity but the worms as well.

This is maybe within the tolerances of the Ecclesiarchy/Adeptus Ministorum for the Imperial Cult, though some of the Mataknecht think the later may need to be checked. As the Emporer speaks for the holy human form and only at a stretch should cover terran animals, let alone xenos. An attempt to request a synod on the matter from Vito has gone nowhere, due to more important matters.

To forestall recruitment tithes for Warworld Ajax. The governor (Mataknecht) commissioned a genetics report that the Gelapknecht may be progressing into a Nightsider abhuman type and should therefore be exempt.

This started the riots. The Gelapknecht have long been told the tallow they make is for the benefit of humanity and it's their duty to labour in the dark. Now they demand they also get a share of the candle shipments to forestall their degradation. This also fuels the preexisting violence and mistrust between the two communities. Lynching of Voiddwellers as mutants has prompted the system's Chartist Cartels to demand action be taken or they will slow shipments of candles first, then food.

Also 5,000 years of intensive biomass extraction means new critical nutrients are needed. Asteroid bombardment or guidance is best option. This is naturally the purview of the Chartists, who feed off the asteroids and comets while also supplying crews for the few spaceships used as system patrols. But the risk is for the govenor, that such life-bearing asteroids could "slip" and strike a settlement or area of the Cartel's choosing.

Decimal Lancer

 Alternate Setting - Lancer 10% or Decimal Lancer

This was some brainstorming from years ago, while sitting at a stop, typing on my phone and waiting to ride to university. Just trying to turn Lancer into a more conventional FTL-based Sci-Fi universe and aliviate some issues people were saying with the scale.

Removing the hundreds column from all the dates shortens time and makes its so every year there is something happening. Maybe cultural evolution on isolated colonies is time compounded by remoteness.

This also requires dividing all travel times in the book by 10. Maybe even populations too if you really want a frontier setting.

This really changes the tone of the setting. If populations are the same, the birth rate is really high or fewer people died during the Fall. Most planets look somewhere between Nigeria and 50s America in terms of people vs economic growth. If only 10% of the popualtion of the default setting, the sin of the 2nd Committee was spreading humanity out too thinly in a rush for territory.

This also changes the dynamics of Lancer deployment, a Union battle group will deploy Lancer battalions to the most effective location even when they will consist of a very small fraction of the armed forces. When a planet’s population is 300 million and not 3 billion however, the number of vital strategic locations and opposition forces decreases, making Lancers more effective for their size.

Much more of an anime/Battletech vibe when 5 mecha suits are enough to conquer a planet.

Union politics will probably play a greater role in a campaign since it is happening much closer in time and travel to the game location. Since it has only been 500 years since Union emerged and with life-extensions and time dilation. Effectively, the entire Cosmopolitan population from the 2nd and maybe the 1st Committee is active somewhere. This increases internal tensions within the Union between those who were positive or negative towards the 2nd Committee’s methods. The 2nd Committee Cosmopolitans outnumber the 1st Committee ones, but the alive 1st Committee were able to join up with the 3rd Committee ones to oppose them.

Regardless of time dilation and increased speed, the amount of time to travel to and from a problem on top of solving it is huge. So most Union bureaucrat probably will spend a significant part of their careers on several subcommittees at once with each subcommittee focused on one hotspot and resolution. Creating a gameplay opportunity for all kinds of bureaucratic mix ups and farce, though probably not to PARANOIA levels of incompetence.

This requires a new intermediate form of FTL travel. Skipping, where one moves 10X faster than .99c in overall bursts but still suffers time dilation.

Witha new lore framing like this:

Used since before the Fall, Skipping costs a lot even to a post-scarcity civilisation. First the exact movements, slowdowns and energy must be calculated by AI or batteries of NHP, then a tremendous amount of energy and Para-Casulity infrastructure (the Launching Frame) must be used to “skip” the ship towards the target. Get anything slightly wrong and the fatality rate is 10%, with ships dissolving into subatomic particles and at best, suffering severe material stress. This was fine for the “Glorious Ascent of Mankind to the Stars” under the 2nd Committee but modern authorities prefer the safer and faster option of Blink Gates.

For a Union fleet, the amount of calculations for every individual ship, to keep them grouped together, undamaged and maybe to return is so great that GALSIM must be temporary put on hold for the 5 Voices to do the calculations. This is a blindness that the Union is loathed to have. So it has been enacted only thrice: twice for the 2nd Committee to deal with the Karrakin and Hercynia and now by the 3rd Committee for Cornucopia.

Skipping is still used, mostly by Colonies and Corpo-States which have not yet been upgraded to a Blink Gate and persist in years long, second-tier networks linking to a Blink Gate enabled system. Modern Skipping is far safer as the ship is able to coordinate via the Omninet between the NHP at each end and onboard to ensure that the calculations are accurate and fast. However it still requires tremendous output in energy to achieve. Manna is still valued in these networks as currency since the cost and time of travel keep the economy material focused. (Think Traveller or Alien).

Worlds years beyond even this network are reliant on a few unattached traders who can afford the social costs of spending years if not decades objectively, separated from home and who hold a monopoly on off world goods. A tactic many employ is the change crews at their destinations, using a NHP at each end or even onboard to keep track of essentials and effectively making each voyage a working passage to a new home.

However expansion to new colonies requires either dangerous single-end Skipping or a relatively slow crawl at .99c. And while the Union can afford to spread out at a measured pace, many states wish to expand faster and hav the capacity, if not the accuracy to do so.

Stormbringer Wolves Upon the Coast Session 11

Saling south from the monastery island in 07.05, next to Flodaigh, though they don’t know the name). The weight of the undead clinging beneath the hull counterbalanced the strong winds they had. They wisely remembered the warning of their dead indentured and beached one hex to the north of 06.12.

Sigmar begins the process of meditating as they sailed, trying to gain a Virtue of Law.

The next day they sail into the harbor of Blulach. To the fort that guarded the harbor and docks, Sigmar unveils her wings and commands the lord’s presence. Taking advantage of being Myyrrhn. Glas is right down, Sigmar still does not speak Ruis or Bythonic, but Althrow Tams can translate. Good rolls.

Glas’s cousin, Guaire, the Bishop of Blulach arrives. He immediately offers 1000sp for them to remove the mud-immortal coven, even as the party were not entirely sure why they hated them besides religion and eventually decided it was because the coven was impeding traffic.

They further offered the Glas and Guaire another 1000sp of treasure. Selling four of the five rare perfumes from Donashoe and the religious icons. The bishop thought he could rework them into depictions of Faith triumphant over paganism. They didn’t have another 1000sp handy to give the party. So, instead they offered a 1000sp town credit. About buying a new boat, the town only had a couple of karvis and would part with them for 3000sp. They players wanted a snekkja as it could fit the entire crew (living and dead). They found out they did not like Druids here.

Hranfkel tried to ransom Yrestor/Yrestar (forgetting he is not a smaller SIZ). The player made all sorts of claims that Yrestor was a noble (right), heir to a fortune built on steam engines (false) and that great riches could be extracted from his family (on another plane-false). A Viking local to the plane making these claims, I let him ramble for a bit before Glas cut him off with a an unimpressed, “No”.

In an afternote, I looked up a snekkja and it’s not much bigger than a karvi, just broader while a karvi can be longer but thinner.

The rowers were paid, for they had landed in a town and the credit was spent on fireproof gloves (10sp) so Althrow Tams could wield the fire elemental as a flaming weapon. Many other supplies were bought, most perishable.

Setting off without the rowers, south to the ford. The mud-immortals thickly coated in the grey stuff, with heavy limbs and only a few small eye and breathing holes in the faceless mass. Yrestor decided to walk up and pull the hardened mud off one. STR vs STR resistance, roll he yanked the mud off the unexpecting immortal to reveal the aged and raw face beneath. The immortal started to scream.

The immortals were slow with their limbs cacked and the edges/weight painful, but Hranfkel leaped upon one, not ambush, it faltered and weakened. The battle was another slog, with the hardened mud being as good as plate armour and the blows being 1d6 + 1d4. Yrestor was beaten so badly, he fell to 0 HP with a critical hit (scar only). This prompted a debate about whether death was beyond or at 0 HP. I decided on a roll of POW x 5%, which he passed.

Althor Tams fire elemental was able to immobilise for a turn by baking the mud. Slowly each was felled, though Hranfkel’s axe did the best. Weakening, hitting critical more often and great damage.

Afterwards, a successful First Aid roll meant Yrestor did not die. The party inquired about the axe. Miklas Domonkos, being a weaponsmith, tested the blade with a finger. The player suspicious were confirmed when we had to hurriedly go through the Strength draining rules, but luckily found the rule that it was an ability that could be active, so Hranfkel did not wish it.

Returning, they rested for 2 weeks, noting that was as long as they had spent since arriving on Ruislip itself.

Still looking for more money, Glas and Guaire offered to build them a snekkja in repayment for finding and ending the iron-blooded corpses from up the river. The party liked the idea.

Skags Mutants

 As part of my tinkering with the Mutants in the Now ruleset, I settled on creating some fictional speices, some from Blue Planet and some from the Borderlands video-game franchise, due to both settings' focus on the violent ecology of their planets. Violent creatures being surpisingly easier to make then trying to specialise herbivores and more normal animals. A legacy of being based on Palladium's RPG and hence AD&D.

I made skags first but never really had an idea to fix their growth. Species in Mutants in the Now (in the Mutants in the Next book) can metaphorph to adult forms and age, but nothing suggests changes after they achieve adult forms. Skags get bigger and more armoured the older they are, with the largest types developing a laser beam. But they don't morph shape very much. I could just discount Skagzilla as a one-off creature had not another giant, aged but apaprently normal skag done the same in Borderlands 2.

I ended up truncating some of the changes and tied them to the aging rules, leading to the odd situation where they get weaker as the reach their monstrous final forms. This may all be edited later after feedback.

Dinopithos latro Skag SR 11 Enhance DET STR END GOO-P: +20 Basic: Gugiformes, Carnivore, Quadrupedal Major: Aggressive (5) Burrow (10 GOO-P, Slow -5 GOO-P) Enhanced Scent: Rotting (7) Exoskeletal Defences (15) Swift: Sprint (5) Minor: Abrasive, Claws (digging), Heat Tolerance, Hibernation, Longevity, Mandibles (piercing), Pack Hunter, Prehensile Tongue, Rot Digestion, Territorial Leaping Slam (Swift: Sprint +2 GOO-P): If the Charge attack hits, the target is also Grabbed.

Spitter Skag SR 9 Enhance PRE END PRO GOO-P: +27 Basic: Gugiformes, Carnivore, Quadrupedal Major: Aggressive (5) Burrow (10 GOO-P, Slow -5 GOO-P) Enhanced Scent: Rotting (7) Spines (15) Swift: Sprint (5) Toxin Resistance (2), Toxic: Lead-Acid Pollutant (12 GOO-P, Toxungen +5 GOO-P) Minor: Claws: Digging, Heat Tolerance, Hibernation, Longevity, Mandibles: Piercing, Pack Hunter, Prehensile Tongue, Rot Digestion, Territorial, Corrosive Mucus (Toxic: Toxungen +3 GOO-P): The ranged attack with Lead-Acid Pollutant reduces the damage by only one step, reduces Armor by 1 per hit.

When a skag reaches shifts from Adult to Middle-Age, it follows the rules established on p.41 of Mutants in the Next with the following exceptions from Species Shifting: It must immediately increase its Size Rating by 1, even if this causes a negative GOO-P value. If you have a negative amount of GOO-P at the end, you must take as much GOO-P as you can as a milestone to offset this (Now, pg. 94). If you still have a negative GOO-P value, you must continue to do so at every milestone until your GOO-P total reaches 0. The skag becomes known as an Alpha Skag and may purchase the Extra minor traits: Spurs (Heel, Legs)

Spitter skags are known as Elder Skags and cannot.

When a skag shifts from Middle-Age to Elder, it undergoes the same process with new effects: It must immediately increase its Size Rating by 2, even if this causes a negative GOO-P value. The skag refunds the Major Trait: Sprint if not yet refunded. The skag may purchase the Extra Major Traits: Exoskeletal Defense and Stable. Special: Exoskeletal Defense costs 5 GOO-P for you instead of 15 GOO-P. If Exoskeletal Defence was already present, the GOO-P difference is refunded. If Spines is present, the trait may be replaced with Exoskeletal Defense and the GOO-P difference may be refunded. They gain the Unique Trait: Resistance 4 (5 if you have Exoskeletal Defense) You may refund your unique species trait if present and purchase the replacement Psychic Power: Ergoplasmic Lance (15 GOO-P) [Thank you LV0 Console Peasent] A beam of mysterious, luminescent psychic force streams forth from your hands or mouth as a ranged strike, obliterating all in its path. It doesn’t disappear once the attack hits or misses, traveling forwards until its energy has been expended. When performing this attack, you may use +DET instead of +PER or +PRO; this attack does double your Determination dice on a successful hit against Defense. Before you can use this power, you may spend a moment to charge up energy. If you do, you add your Determination dice again to the attack’s damage, for three times your Determination dice of damage in total. You may only charge Ergoplasmic Lance if you have less than two statuses. If you use a charged Ergoplasmic Lance for two turns in a row, you gain and reinforce the tired status and don’t recover from it at the end of this scene unless you spend 1 WILL. Boost: Ignore any Resistance and Armor of non-boss foes have when inflicting damage with this ability, or reduce the Resistance and Armor of boss foes by 3.