A Continent of Banalities

Rokap the Great. Rokap the Merciless. Rokap the Khan of Witches. Rokap the enormously frustrated. Rokap is a demonic sorcerer or vice versa. The old stories do not make a clear distinction, nor does he. Every year the Kudiani (witches) of Caucasus would gather at his command, feeding him with human hearts. Thus invigorated he would concoct curses, slanderous omens and cruel plots to unseat the gods themselves.  This went on for uncounted years, but finally even the patience of Heaven was tested beyond capacity, and Rokap was bound in unbreakable chains under a mountain in what is East Georgia today.  Every year Rokap sought to escape, but was foiled by the heroic, the rightly guided, or the plain lucky. Christians, Muslims, and pagans seemed willing to work together to thwart the old devil and his witch minions. The last time Rokap was genuinely active was during the Russo-Persian war. Some even credit him as the instigator, but this is most certainly a poor excuse. Humans nee...

 Name: Maxwell Crenshaw Purview: Family Magic Body: 3 Agility: 3 Mind:.3 Presence: 4 Magic: 4 Luck: 2 Magic Points: 5 Basic Skills Heavy Attack, Constitution & Might – which are tied to Body. Precise Attack, Reflexes & Athletics – which are tied to Agility. Initiative, Willpower & Notice – which are tied to Mind. Charm, Deception & Bargain – which are tied to Presence Advanced Skills  Contacts Insight Intimidation Investigation Spells Curse: Max uses this spell to enforce agreements. He must make clear that failing to honor the agreement is suffering the curse. Max uses family magic, thus his curses fall within that theme. The curse might visit cruel misfortune upon a family member, make their family forget them entirely, or make a demanding and dangerous individual or group consider the cursed person kin.  Dark Side: The Dark Side is a meta-spell which lets a caster empower another spell at a painful cost. Dark Side Curse: Instead of cursing an opponent, ...

Deanna Emmerys, M.D. (for Sigil & Shadow) Deanna always had the gift of Sight. She was a fast learner, and after confiding in her mom at age 6, and netting herself a talk with a child psychologist, she kept shtumm. Sure, it was a bit lonely at night, when spectral moths with children’s voices circled over her bed. But when a tall woman with a hollow back drowned little Jason Becker in the park pond, and everyone said it was a tragic accident, she decided that most people were weak. And the weak need protection.  At Johns Hopkins she studied neurology, but branched out voraciously into ophthalmology and psychiatry, in order to understand why some people can sense a world that others are entirely shut off from. Her personal life was a series of short relationships, ended by Deanna when they became inconvenient or by the other party, when they discovered that she viewed them with some measure of pity and condescension.  All doors were open to Deanna when she graduated, but sh...

 A sorcerous character for Sigil & Shadow Abel started getting interested in magic as a child. Deedee, the lady next door, read tarot cards and helped the unhappy with folk medicine and rituals. It was very interesting, and a little scary. In the end it was all done in service to compassion.  Abel encountered magic again when he went to university. Hoary old sociologists like Durkheim,  Mauss and Malinowski covered magic as a societal and psychological tool, a crossroads of faith, performance and pragmatism. Yet they always treated it from the outside looking in. Abel’s roommate called it “colonialist sociology”.  Abel started attending seances, masses, and esoteric retreats. Most were underwhelming, until he met the Tired Man. His skin was yellow like old newspapers, his teeth were lead-gray, and his eyes were a sky with drifting storm clouds. The Tired Man always dragged his feet to the gatherings, but always left with a kick in his stride.   Once Abe...

  Another KillSector character. This one is based on the cover and title of a jazz fusion single. This guy's a total player character. He even has a katana. An issue when dealing with multi-planet societies across several solar systems, is that of law and order. Whose rules are to be obeyed on frontier asteroids, in deep space, or on exo-planets where corporate agents, neo-hippies and aggro-primitivists clash?  One of the answers is the itinerant Order of Judges, lone heroes (to some) solving disputes where they are needed. They’re often wildly corrupt, idealistic, or volatile lone wolves. Still, apparently better than lawlessness (and cheaper than competing police forces).  Defender Covington is a new recruit, a SubJudge. Before this gig he’s been a retail worker, a freebooter, a mercenary, a hand model, and a sorcerer’s apprentice. His mentor (Raskaphelion the Cerulean) noted his aptitude for ‘retributive magic’ and recommended him to the Judges.  Following a tip t...

Today's character is for Paolo Greco's Mageblade! He's a pregen from a scenario called "Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear". He's kind of a bad boy love interest from a young adult fantasy novel.  Vicens Thraso, Black sheep (and sorcerer) I spent too long in the womb. In those fourteen months I swam alongside the drowned ancients, listened to the echoes of their secrets and the sloshing of their rotting innards. My mother died as I drew my first breath, and I was scorned by my family, but they could not get rid of me, since augurs had blessed my birth. I grew up ignored and often neglected, not that I minded. It gave me time to understand the power I was born with. These days I wander the world, scouring libraries and trading with hoary sages for lore. I spent a fortnight among the maggot-men, meditating in the fane of the undergods. I diced with the Archimandrite of Greybrook for access to his tomes. My family pays me a pittance not to come home. The simp...

 Another space fantasy convict! Name: Anousya Taline  You are a former Void cultist. Yeah, you used to worship That Which Hungers at the Galaxy’s Edge in one of its many manifestations. The cult you belonged to was The Gathering Gloom, a small but quite insidious group working toward ending all light, believing the sense of sight to be a deception. An illusion to distract feeble minds from the Endless Absence. When you’re born on a void planet, that sort of thing makes a lot of sense.  You realized that a short human life doesn’t have to be all about prostrating yourself before inevitable doom. You’ll get there at your own speed. Meanwhile there are colors, shapes and contexts, no less beautiful for being fleeting.  The old gang don’t like apostates though, so you figured it would be best to seek sanctuary among the civilized inner planets. Turns out forgiveness is in short supply outside the cult too. The Coalition militiamen you surrendered to sent you straight to ...

Note: I go through character creation today. Scroll down to the second image if you just want to see the character. For today, and the coming days I’ll be making characters for ARC Doom. The game is about averting a fast-approaching disaster in a fantasy setting. I have written a convention scenario about saving the world by stopping a scoundrel from tampering with the creation of the world itself. Here’s the pitch: Oh no! The Pandemoniac has managed to break into the Prime Cell where the world is being made, and now they will subvert Creation from first principle! That blackguard!  Good thing for the cosmos that there are heroes such as yourselves to stop the scoundrel. Well, you will be heroes if you pull it off. If not you probably have a colorful future as chaos sludge ahead of you.  The pregenerated characters will have something of the mythical about them. They will be inspired by people from fairytales, and just-so stories, I think. Sometimes a bit of randomness is good...

Today's character is made with Troika!, using my Passing Strange hack.  Geras is a god, sleeping in a cave beneath the world. His gigantic body is stooped and bent with age and its indignities. His breath is like the wheezing of punctured bellows.  Hesiod refers to him as “hateful Geras”, and it is true that his modern worshipers do not love him, but rather try to ward him off with prostration and sacrifice.  Terrence Kehinde Morrison is one such worshiper, a priest of some standing in The Venerable Order of Senectus (Geras’ Latin name). He follows the unwritten rules of the Order, almost by instinct. Anyone under the age of thirty is practically a non-entity, and changes in social mores are roundly sneered at. He usually avoids the truly old, while professing his admiration for them and the ‘world they built’. The old remind him of where he is headed. Towards infirmity, irrelevance and death by degrees.  "I wanna talk to you older guys about a religion of bitterness...