Barbarians of Lemuria: The Breath Of A Demon God

This is a tale of a distant time, a time that may be long gone or yet to come, when the cities of Lemuria stands as bastions of rough civilisation in a world of savage wilderness, haunted by strange beasts and filled with the buried secrets of a past long fallen into ruin. It is the age of Parsool, city of high masts, its dominance of the seas challenged by the crude pirates setting sail from the hidden Port of the Sea Lords; of Lysor, where the days are filled with light and learning but the nights haunted by madness and fever dreams; of Zalut, bloated with the poisonous legacy of the Sorcerer Kings, and Tyrus, whose men are grim and vengeful and sworn to slay any magician who comes within a longbow's shot of their high walls. But greatest of them all is Satarla, the Jewel of Lemuria, with its libraries and its tall towers, whose fleet of flying silver ships soars through the sky through the sciences of the long-lost Golden Age...

The Breath of a Demon God is a play-by-post campaign for Barbarians of Lemuria (Legendary Edition), Game Mastered by Baeraad.

Links

• Recruitment thread

• IC thread

• OOC thread

Player Characters

• Neave of Valgard, played by scorch

• Tambourlane of Parsool, played by Tophocles

• Talathlan of Shamballah, played by Space Cowboy

• Oohlot of Zalut, played by JeStor

• Eadwin of Oomis, played by Dorsai

• Enok of Shamballah, played by Zolock

Origin summary

Axos Mountains - you are one of the fair, rangy barbarians from the Axos Mountains. You are tough and hardy, but unfamiliar with life outside of your mountain home.

Beshaar Desert - you are one of the fierce, wiry nomads from the Beshaar Desert, suspicious of outsiders and capable of thriving in climates that would be death to others.

Halakh - you come from Halakh, the City of Assassins, where the night is full of secrets and blades, and only a quick wit survives.

Lysor - you come from Lysor, the City of Healing, second only to Satarla in civilised refinement but haunted by madness and strange addictions.

Malakut - you come from Malakut, the City of Thieves, whose people are fierce in battle but ill-regarded by other Lemurians for their dishonourable ways.

Oomis - you come from Oomis, the City of Merchants that lies at the edge of the plains of Klaar and trades with the diverse non-human races there.

Parsool - you come from Parsool, the City of Mariners, whose trade empire is built on the toil of hearty sailors but threatened by piracy and staggering beneath high taxes needed to pay for efforts to root out the pirate menace.

Port of the Sea Lords - you come from the Port of the Sea Lords, hidden deep among the uncharted waters of the Pirate Isles, where every Captain is a King and savvy seamanship and strength of arms is the measure of any man.

Satarla - you come from Satarla, the Jewel of Lemuria, most civilised, wealthy and powerful of cities, whose people have a reputation for being overly aware of this fact.

Shamballah - you come from Shamballah, the savage city standing above the jungles of Qush, whose people are the most keen-eyed hunters in the world but regarded as bumpkins and near-barbarians by other city-dwellers.

Tyrus - you come from the city of Tyrus, that is home to the best archers in the world but currently brooding over its recent defeats in war and looking for sorcerous betrayal to explain its defeats, leading to a place of distrust and inner strife, but also to the place whose warriors are most capable of fighting off magic with steel.

Urceb - you come from Urceb, the Forgotten City, built on the ruins of an older civilisation and full of treasure-hunters digging through the ruins for its spoils.

Valgard - you are a barbarian of the Ice Wastes, stout of limb and artless of speech, believing beyond all things in the honest power of steel.

Zalut, the City of Magicians - you come from Zalut, the City of Magicians, where sorcery is commonplace and power is everything.

Rule summaries

The basic system

When you do most things, you roll 2d6+relevant attribute+relevant career (if any)+situational modifiers (if any). If you roll 9 or higher, you succeed. If you roll a natural 12, you always succeed, and if you roll a 12 and the roll would have succeeded even without that rule, you've rolled a Mighty Success. If you roll a natural 2, you always fail, and if you roll a 2 and the roll would have been a failure anyway, you've rolled a Calamitous Failure. Both of those are, obviously, fancy barbarian-talk for critical successes and botches.

When trying to hit someone in combat, you roll 2d6+Agility+Brawl/Melee/Ranged (depending on the type of attack)+situational modifiers (if any) - the target's Defense. Sometimes, you might also add a career to the roll - for instance, you might add Assassin when trying to stab someone in the back, or Pirate when boarding an enemy ship. Otherwise, it's the same as for regular actions.

You also have a store of Hero Points - 5, per default. I'll explain their uses later - for now, it's enough to know that you have them and that they're handy to have.

Now then, Boons and Flaws. These are extra strengths and weaknesses you can take. Every character automatically gets to pick 1 Boon from his origin. He can get one more Boon by also choosing a Flaw from his origin as well. You can only take one extra Flaw for one extra Boon - after that, you can't get more Boons that way. In addition, you can pay 2 permanent Hero Points per additional Boon (so in practice, you can get at most 2 extra Boons that way).

Boons and Flaws have a variety of effects, but most commonly they describe some situation in which you "roll an extra die." That means that you roll 3d6 instead of 2d6 when doing something in that situation, and then drop the lowest (for a Boon) or highest (for a Flaw) die.

Hero Points

You can use Hero Points to affect the outcome of a battle or situation and swing the odds to your favour. The following options are available to you:

• A Twist of Fate

• The Luck of the Gods

• Mighty Success

• Legendary Success

• Defy death

• Shake off wounds

• Other

A Twist of Fate

Where the narrative of a scene has not clearly defined a certain piece of information the player might suggest something that sounds reasonable and make that suggestion become fact. Use of a Hero Point in this manner should be at the discretion of the GM and shouldn’t be to effect major changes in a scene and can’t be used to change something that has already been ascertained. For example, if the characters are locked in a dungeon cell, one of them could use a Hero Point to find a loose stone in the wall, that he can pry away, maybe to use to bash the guard over the head when he comes in to serve their slops. A magician could use a Hero Point to account for one of his spell requirements in this way – for example, if the time of day hasn’t already been established, he could state “ah, the hour is perfect for my conjuration”.

The Luck of the Gods

You can spend a point to roll the dice again whenever you make a task resolution roll (even if you roll a 2, which would otherwise be an automatic failure). If you do this you must use the result of your second roll. If you have a boon that allows you to use three dice instead of two, you use all three dice the second time as well.

Turn a success into a Mighty Success

Whenever a player succeeds in combat (or even in non-combat situations), he can turn the success into a Mighty Success at the expenditure of a Hero Point. The results of a Mighty Success depend on what the character is doing.

Note: This is effectively the same as rolling 12 on your Task roll, where 12 would normally have been a success. You can do this even if you spent a Hero Point rolling the dice again.

Turn a Mighty Success into a Legendary Success

If you roll a natural 12 when making your task roll that would have been a success in any event (a Mighty Success), at the expenditure of a Hero Point, you can turn that into a Legendary Success. You can do this even if you spent a Hero Point rolling the dice again (as long as you got 12 on the second roll). However, you cannot make a Legendary Success unless you roll 12 on the dice. (In other words you cannot bump up a normal success into a Mighty Success and then spend another Hero Point to make it a Legendary Success).

Defy death

Hero Points can always be used to keep a Hero alive where he would otherwise be killed. If you have taken sufficient damage to put you below zero LB but above -6, you may spend a point to put your LB to zero: alive but unconscious. If you have received sufficient damage to put you below –5 LB, you may spend a Hero Point to stabilize and remain alive. You are still unconscious but will recover with several days rest.

Shake off wounds

When a hero has just suffered damage, he can take a momentary pause (using his next action) to shake off some of the effects of that wound. In other words, somehow the wound wasn’t quite as bad as it first seemed. Roll a d6 – this is the number of LB he gets back (but he cannot exceed the LB damage he just took).

Other

Anything else your GM allows.

Sorcery

Briefly, there are two kinds of magic you need to worry about - cantrips and spells of the First Magnitude. There are spells of great Magnitudes, but those require extensive preparation, so you don't need to worry about those just yet.

Cantrips are minor special effects - flickering lights, phantom sounds, levitating coins, that sort of thing. If you have the Magician career, you are assumed to be carrying around a bunch of amulets and trinkets that you can use to cast cantrips, and they have no other Requirements. They generally cost 1 point of Arcane Power to use and do not usually require a roll. If you are trying to use a cantrip to directly affect someone else (like creating a noise in the other direction that you hope a guard will go and investigate), or you are for some reason trying to cast a cantrip without having your equipment handy, they require a roll of 2d6+Mind+Magician and cost 2 points of Arcane Power. A roll of 8 or 9 will generally be a success.

Spells of the First Magnitude can achieve anything that a single man could achieve with the right equipment and training. They can't let you fly through the air like a bird, but they can let you levitate up a castle wall. They can't smash a wall to rubble, but they can unlock a door. They can't turn someone into your mindless slave, but they can make someone positively disposed to you that has no pressing reason not to be. This also applies in a meta sense: spells of the First Magnitude can be used to conjure simple items out of thin air, since the rules of BoL are pretty lax about what equipment a character is carrying. They can be used offensively, to fling a fireball or similar, in which case they automatically hit and do 1d6 damage. A spell of the First Magnitude requires a roll of 2d6+Mind+Magician and costs 5 points of Arcane Power. A roll of 9 or 10 will generally be a success.

Here's the somewhat tricky bit. A spell of the First Magnitude must meet at least one Requirement - something you must do or have handy in order to cast that spell. If you meet more than one Requirement, each one after the first lowers the casting cost with 1 point of Arcane Power, to a minimum of a cost of 2 points. The possible Requirements are:

• Special Item: An ancient tome, heavy tablet or delicate scroll is required but is relatively easy to come by (some bartering, a short journey or a minor expenditure)

• Line of Sight: The caster must be able to clearly see his or her intended target

• Casting Time: The spell will take at least 1d6 x 30 minutes of meditation, chanting, dancing etc. to correctly execute

• Intimate Materials: A personal item of the intended target (or a tile from the target building, for example) is required

• Special Knowledge: The caster must conduct lengthy research before he or she has the necessary information to cast the spell

• Obvious Technique: The caster must gesture, chant, dance or make strange sounds during the brief casting process

• Hour Power: The spell may only be cast at a specific hour of the day

• Ritual Cleansing: The caster must bathe in clean water and essential oils and shave all bodily hair from his or her body

• Wounds: The magician suffers d3 LB of damage when the spell is cast

Magic can not be used to heal wounds in living creatures, though it can be used to repair broken inanimate objects.

Any cantrip or spell that tries to mess with someone's mind or perception, directly or indirectly, takes the target's Mind stat as a penalty to the Mind+Magician roll.