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Nevermore:Main Page

2005-11-21T22:36:16Z

Epoch: /* '''''Nevermore Nobilis Campaign Home''''' */ - Changed thread links.

[[Category: Nobilis]]
='''''Nevermore Nobilis Campaign Home'''''=

<center>Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before; 
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." 
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

- "The Raven," Edgar Allen Poe</center>

This is the Wiki home of the RPGnet PbP game [http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=4923967 Nevermore]. (You can see the old [http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=227407 recruitment thread] as well).

The Hollyhock Gods of this game are DannyK and Aincumis.

=Player Characters=

Epoch plays [[Nevermore:Erin_Doucet|Erin Doucet]], a self-reliant sailor who is now the Power of Winds.

Sigmars Nightmare plays [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack Hopkins]], businessman and Power of Shadows.

Sovem plays [[Nevermore:Jake_Keller|Jacob Keller]], family man and the Power of Ties-that-Bind.

Firefly Night plays [[Nevermore:Espejo|Espejo]], a spirit born of an angel's reflection, now Power of Mirrors.

=Cast=

The following characters are named NPC's.

;Rebecca "Becky" Keller
:[[Nevermore:Jake_Keller|Jake]]'s wife and [[Nevermore:Erin_Doucet|Erin]]'s sister.
;Iris Keller
:[[Nevermore:Jake_Keller|Jake]]'s daughter, age 8.
;Isaac "Zach" Keller
:[[Nevermore:Jake_Keller|Jake]]'s son, age 4.
;Henri Doucet
:[[Nevermore:Erin_Doucet|Erin]] and Rebecca's father, as well as [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]]'s business rival.
;Rachel Doucet
:[[Nevermore:Erin_Doucet|Erin]] and Rebecca's mother.
;Amal Kitchings
:A very square African-American vice cop who was blackmailing [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]], and is now his anchor.
;Jenny Hershy
:[[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]]'s ex-girlfriend. She was a fling that turned into more when she got pregnant.
;Ronald Hershy
:Son of [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]] and Jenny Hershy. 17 years old, Ron is almost an adult. Because of the payments he is making for Ron, Jack cannot wait until his son becomes a legal adult.
;Samuel Harris
:Truck driver for [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]]. Dark hair and black eyes, Samuel drives trucks full of gas and other (not neccessarily legal) commodities for Jack. Jack and Samuel have worked out an agreement by which Samuel never knows what his cargo is beyond the invoice, and Jack never forces the issue.
;The Honorable Leila Hansen
:Leila has never gotten along with Amal. Whenever somebody would come to Leila for a warrant against Jack's holdings, she would deny it once [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]] had paid her enough. Amal forced the issue by going over her head.

=Setting=
The Chancel and the Imperator have yet to be determined.

The game takes place in and around New Orleans, and various places in Mythic Reality.

Nevermore:Erin Doucet

2005-11-16T01:21:23Z

Epoch: /* Gifts */ Fixed grammar

= Erin Doucet, the Baronet of Wind =

Erin is a character in the [[Nobilis]] game, [[Nevermore:Main_Page|Nevermore]].

'''Background''': Erin is a woman of 27 years who grew up in the South. She is the younger of two sisters: her older sister Rebecca is only 18 months older than Erin, and Erin was an unplanned birth. For the last ten years or so, Erin has harbored suspicions that she is the result of an affair between her mother and an unknown man.

Erin has always sought a degree of isolation. She never got along well with most people, fighting with other children when she was young and simply withdrawing when she was older. The only people she's maintained a relatively close relationship with over the years are her nuclear family, though others have drifted into and out of her life, including [[Nevermore:Espejo|Espejo]], whom she briefly dated.

In her teenage years, Erin developed a love of sailing which has proven her dominant interest in her adult life. Her pride and joy is a 38 foot yacht, the Wake's Waft. She has an undergraduate degree in marine biology, and has worked in the boating industry since college.

Erin was in the process of moving the Wake's Waft to a new, hopefully safer berth a couple of days before Hurricane Katrina was expected to hit, when she was caught up by something. She's not entirely sure what happened -- she just seemed to forget about the urgency of the trip and got caught up in the fun of sailing, and the next thing she knew, more than a day had gone by and she was overtaken by the storm...

'''Appearance''': A skinny, athletic-looking woman with a skin tone dark enough to suggest either some minor non-caucasian ancestry or a lifetime in the sun. Her short, curly dark-brown hair is usually pulled back away from her face. She could potentially be pretty, but usually looks severe. Her best feature is her penetrating brown eyes. She smiles rarely.

'''Disposition''': Erin is modern in orientation, uncomfortable with her new role as the Domina of Wind, and self-reliant to an extreme. She is charmed by unfeigned altruism, and, while not a terrible person herself, surprisingly comfortable around the dregs of humanity.

'''Design''': Six blue flower petals, free and seperated from each other, blown as if in the wind.

== Attributes ==
: ''Aspect'' 2 (Legendary) [5 AMP]
: ''Domain'' 1 (Baronet) [5 DMP]
: ''Realm'' 1 (Radiant) [5 RMP]
: ''Spirit'' 2 (Incandescent Flame) [5 SMP]

== Gifts ==
: Elemental
: Omniscience of Air
:: (Greater Divination of Wind/Simple/Almost Anywhere/A wide variety of situations/Uncommon = 5 points)

:: Erin can, with a thought, divine a startling amount of information from minor changes in air currents. If a mouse is on the move fifty miles away, the slight air currents it makes are Erin's to read. If someone is speaking at a whisper, the words will still reach the mistress of Wind. Weather is hers to divine for the next day or two at least. The limitations of this ability are mostly those imposed by Erin's still fairly prosaic worldview -- she can not divine any information that could not reasonably be carried by the air (such as color or texture), and anything that happens without an unbroken air connection, such as from inside a relatively airtight building, is invisible to her. The information from further sources may also be slightly out-of-date by the time the wind carries it to Erin, but her range is extremely long -- she has divined the location of a person 1,000 miles away.

== Bonds ==

: Her family (Her sister, Rebecca; her father, Henri; and her mother, Rachel): 4
: The sanctity of her estate: 2
: The conception of her estate: 5
: Her sailboat, the Wake's Waft: 4

(The sanctity of her estate is the sense of "people besides natural forces, Erin, or Erin's Imperator don't get to mess with Winds." The conception her Estate is, "winds purify and cleanse, blowing away corruption -- sometimes at great cost." So it doesn't really bother Erin a whole lot if someone else horns in on Winds if they do so in accordance with her thematic sense of what wind does. If she's brought face to face with the fact that winds aren't always as purifying as she thinks, it bothers her a lot. If someone else is messing with them in order to mess with her conception, it bothers her a ''whole hell of a lot''.)

== Code ==

Erin has a personal code which is strongly based on the Code of the Wild.

:* Freedom is the highest principal.
:* Always allow someone who seeks self reliance to succeed or fail on their own merits.
:* Give in kind a gift received.

----
Back to [[Nevermore:Main_Page|Main Page]]

Nevermore:Erin Doucet

2005-11-16T01:20:29Z

Epoch: /* Erin Doucet, the Baronet of Wind */ - Added background.

= Erin Doucet, the Baronet of Wind =

Erin is a character in the [[Nobilis]] game, [[Nevermore:Main_Page|Nevermore]].

'''Background''': Erin is a woman of 27 years who grew up in the South. She is the younger of two sisters: her older sister Rebecca is only 18 months older than Erin, and Erin was an unplanned birth. For the last ten years or so, Erin has harbored suspicions that she is the result of an affair between her mother and an unknown man.

Erin has always sought a degree of isolation. She never got along well with most people, fighting with other children when she was young and simply withdrawing when she was older. The only people she's maintained a relatively close relationship with over the years are her nuclear family, though others have drifted into and out of her life, including [[Nevermore:Espejo|Espejo]], whom she briefly dated.

In her teenage years, Erin developed a love of sailing which has proven her dominant interest in her adult life. Her pride and joy is a 38 foot yacht, the Wake's Waft. She has an undergraduate degree in marine biology, and has worked in the boating industry since college.

Erin was in the process of moving the Wake's Waft to a new, hopefully safer berth a couple of days before Hurricane Katrina was expected to hit, when she was caught up by something. She's not entirely sure what happened -- she just seemed to forget about the urgency of the trip and got caught up in the fun of sailing, and the next thing she knew, more than a day had gone by and she was overtaken by the storm...

'''Appearance''': A skinny, athletic-looking woman with a skin tone dark enough to suggest either some minor non-caucasian ancestry or a lifetime in the sun. Her short, curly dark-brown hair is usually pulled back away from her face. She could potentially be pretty, but usually looks severe. Her best feature is her penetrating brown eyes. She smiles rarely.

'''Disposition''': Erin is modern in orientation, uncomfortable with her new role as the Domina of Wind, and self-reliant to an extreme. She is charmed by unfeigned altruism, and, while not a terrible person herself, surprisingly comfortable around the dregs of humanity.

'''Design''': Six blue flower petals, free and seperated from each other, blown as if in the wind.

== Attributes ==
: ''Aspect'' 2 (Legendary) [5 AMP]
: ''Domain'' 1 (Baronet) [5 DMP]
: ''Realm'' 1 (Radiant) [5 RMP]
: ''Spirit'' 2 (Incandescent Flame) [5 SMP]

== Gifts ==
: Elemental
: Omniscience of Air
:: (Greater Divination of Wind/Simple/Almost Anywhere/A wide variety of situations/Uncommon = 5 points)

:: Erin can, with a thought, divine a startling amount of information from minor changes in air currents. If a mouse is on the move fifty miles away, the slight air currents it makes are Erin's to read. If someone is speaking at a whisper, the words will still reach the mistress of Wind. Weather is hers to divine for the next day or two at least. The limitations of this ability are mostly those imposed by Erin's still fairly prosaic worldview -- she can not divine any information that could not reasonably be carried by the air (such as color or texture), and anything that happens without an unbroken air connection, such as from inside a relatively airtight building, is invisible to her. The information from further sources may also be slightly out-of-date by the time the wind carries it to Erin -- but her range is extremely long -- she has divined the location of a person 1,000 miles away.

== Bonds ==

: Her family (Her sister, Rebecca; her father, Henri; and her mother, Rachel): 4
: The sanctity of her estate: 2
: The conception of her estate: 5
: Her sailboat, the Wake's Waft: 4

(The sanctity of her estate is the sense of "people besides natural forces, Erin, or Erin's Imperator don't get to mess with Winds." The conception her Estate is, "winds purify and cleanse, blowing away corruption -- sometimes at great cost." So it doesn't really bother Erin a whole lot if someone else horns in on Winds if they do so in accordance with her thematic sense of what wind does. If she's brought face to face with the fact that winds aren't always as purifying as she thinks, it bothers her a lot. If someone else is messing with them in order to mess with her conception, it bothers her a ''whole hell of a lot''.)

== Code ==

Erin has a personal code which is strongly based on the Code of the Wild.

:* Freedom is the highest principal.
:* Always allow someone who seeks self reliance to succeed or fail on their own merits.
:* Give in kind a gift received.

----
Back to [[Nevermore:Main_Page|Main Page]]

Nevermore:Main Page

2005-11-16T01:03:23Z

Epoch: /* Cast */ - Corrected spelling mistake.

[[Category: Nobilis]]
='''''Nevermore Nobilis Campaign Home'''''=

<center>Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before; 
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." 
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

- "The Raven," Edgar Allen Poe</center>

This is the Wiki home of the RPGnet PbP game [http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=227407 Nevermore].

The Hollyhock Gods of this game are DannyK and Aincumis.

=Player Characters=

Epoch plays [[Nevermore:Erin_Doucet|Erin Doucet]], a self-reliant sailor who is now the Power of Winds.

Sigmars Nightmare plays [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack Hopkins]], businessman and Power of Shadows.

Sovem plays [[Nevermore:Jake_Keller|Jacob Keller]], family man and the Power of Ties-that-Bind.

Firefly Night plays [[Nevermore:Espejo|Espejo]], a spirit born of an angel's reflection, now Power of Mirrors.

=Cast=

The following characters are named NPC's.

;Rebecca "Becky" Keller
:[[Nevermore:Jake_Keller|Jake]]'s wife and [[Nevermore:Erin_Doucet|Erin]]'s sister.
;Iris Keller
:[[Nevermore:Jake_Keller|Jake]]'s daughter, age 8.
;Isaac "Zach" Keller
:[[Nevermore:Jake_Keller|Jake]]'s son, age 4.
;Henri Doucet
:[[Nevermore:Erin_Doucet|Erin]] and Rebecca's father, as well as [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]]'s business rival.
;Rachel Doucet
:[[Nevermore:Erin_Doucet|Erin]] and Rebecca's mother.
;Amal Kitchings
:A very square African-American vice cop who was blackmailing [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]], and is now his anchor.
;Jenny Hershy
:[[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]]'s ex-girlfriend. She was a fling that turned into more when she got pregnant.
;Ronald Hershy
:Son of [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]] and Jenny Hershy. 17 years old, Ron is almost an adult. Because of the payments he is making for Ron, Jack cannot wait until his son becomes a legal adult.
;Samuel Harris
:Truck driver for [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]]. Dark hair and black eyes, Samuel drives trucks full of gas and other (not neccessarily legal) commodities for Jack. Jack and Samuel have worked out an agreement by which Samuel never knows what his cargo is beyond the invoice, and Jack never forces the issue.
;The Honorable Leila Hansen
:Leila has never gotten along with Amal. Whenever somebody would come to Leila for a warrant against Jack's holdings, she would deny it once [[Nevermore:Jack_Hopkins|Jack]] had paid her enough. Amal forced the issue by going over her head.

=Setting=
The Chancel and the Imperator have yet to be determined.

The game takes place in and around New Orleans, and various places in Mythic Reality.

2005-07-11T18:44:20Z

Epoch: /* Sample PC's */ Added Lise Atsdotter

{{Magipunk_Template}}

This page will eventually house a bunch of example characters for Magipunk, ranging from the characters who are important in the various [[Magipunk:Organizations|organizations]] to samples of each of the [[Magipunk:Species|species]] to some example PC's and antagonists.

However, for the time being, it's pretty bare-bones.

= Canonical Personalities =

== The Glassmaker's Alliance ==

=== Baron Mek Scarsen of Telomay ===

The founder of the Glassmaker's Alliance, a brilliant and ruthless tradesman, now in his mid 90's and much less sharp than he used to be. He's still influential, though he no longer has direct control over the alliance.

=== Sir Edam Scarsen ===

Mek Scarsen's only son, born late in the Baron's life. Edam is in his late 50's, and, while certainly smart, he doesn't have an innovator's spirit. He works consistantly to maintain the Glassmakers hold over Atathorn, but doesn't really know how to handle the increasingly sophisticated lower classes or the competition that the Spinners Alliance brings to the city.

=== Jinn Brooksmill ===

One of several Alliance members who report directly to Edam Scarsen, and far and away the most capable of those at his level, Jinn is the voice in the Glassmakers for innovation and changing from Mek Scarsen's original plan of acquisition. Jinn and Edam resent each other fiercely.

== The Roget Alliance ==

=== Duke Alamar Roget of Etersbruh ===

The founder of the Roget Alliance, Alamar Roget is now in his late 70's, and can no longer keep up with the day-to-day affairs of the massive economic machine of his Alliance, but, though officially retired, he keeps a tight hand on the reins. He relies heavily on his niece to keep him informed about the fast-changing world.

=== Count Deran Lauriel of Liom ===

The titular head of the Roget Alliance, Count Lauriel has little intelligence and less ambition. He's content to do as he's told by Alamar Roget, Jallion Nerie, and Kevin Cartson.

=== Baroness Jallion Nerie of Usker ===

Jallion took her husband's name, but she remains a Roget at heart. She's the favored advisor of Alamar Roget, and, thus, in many ways the most powerful person in the Roget Alliance, but she's frustrated by the levels of indirection between her and the leadership of the Alliance, and by the influence of Kevam Cartson. Her goal is to replace Count Lauriel as the leader of the Alliance, but for now, Alamar Roget keeps that out of her reach, as a way to control her.

=== Sir Kevam Cartson ===

The most influential person in the Roget Alliance from a common family (though, below the highest levels, the rest of the Alliance is heavily dominated by commoners, as are most Alliances), Kevam is the major check on the influence of Jallion Nerie. Though Jallion is probably slightly superior to Kevam in pure business sense, Kevam is incredibly persuasive and has a gift for turning the worst disaster into a gift in disguise. He and Jallion compete fiercely; if they ever reconciled with each other, the Roget Alliance would become nearly unstoppable.

== The Spinners Alliance ==

=== Sir Zustin Estman ===

Zustin Estman was a rising star in the Spinners Alliance in its home territory in Bessia, and the ruling oligarchy of the Alliance, feeling threatened by this young (in his early 40's) genius, shunted him to control of the Atathorn division, a move designed to cripple his career, as conventional wisdom had it that the Glassmakers and Roget Alliances had Atathorn unshakeably under their control.

Instead, Estman made steady gains in Atathorn until even the conservative rulers of the Spinners were forced to see that giving Zustin their full support paid incredible dividends. As the Spinners organization in Atathorn has expanded, Zustin has occaisionally made a misstep by being unable to delegate truly effectively, but as long as his tireless work remains focused on the Alliance's growth, its gains remain steady.

== The Royals ==

=== King Ropert V ===

A strong ruler in his 60's, Ropert has been unable to cope with the rapid societal changes of the modern generation, and still tries to rule the kingdom of Branmir through the strategems of his ancestors which no longer function. On some level, he realizes that his influence is waning, but he lacks the courage to really try what's new.

=== Queen Sira ===

The Queen is not un-intelligent, but she is intensely egotistic, caring only about herself, her close acquaintences and family, and the petty intrigues of her court. She could care less about the modern world, and would be happy to play her games until the kingdom falls down around her ears.

=== Crown Prince Ropert ===

The Crown Prince is a man much in the mold of his father. He is smart and perceptive, but unwilling or unable to look outside of the heavy trappings of tradition that bind his family. He idolizes his father and the family's history.

=== Princess Elin ===

The King's younger sister, Elin, in her early 50's, is a realist who understands the modern world, but has been frustrated in her attempts to open her brother's eyes to the world. She is married into the Roget Alliance, and has recently considered turning her attention to gaining power within that institution, rather than continuing her frustrating quest to shake up her family.

=== Princess Saphia ===

Ropert V's oldest child, Saphia is a woman of little intellect or capability.

=== Princess Pola ===

Ropert V's youngest child, Pola is in her 20's and is a child of the modern world. Currently, she's more interested in the wonders of the modern than the plight of her family, but if she ever turns her attentions to reversing her family's fortune, she could be a powerful voice for change.

=== Duke Wran of Edver ===

Elin's older son, Wran is a realist who understands the need to loose the shackles of tradition and accept the modern world if the Royal Family is to regain its former glory. Thus far, he, like his mother, has been frustrated in his attempts to get the more influential members of the family to see this.

Wran has a wife and three children, the oldest of whom is only 14.

=== Duke Usker of Velaria ===

Elin's younger son, Usker is an alcoholic and drug addict whose occaisional lucid moments are less productive than his week-long drunks.

= Sample PC's =

=== Lise "Ninefingers" Atsdotter ===

Lise is an ambitious young thief and pickpocket who has lived in Atathorn all her life.

;Appearance
:Lise is a slim woman with shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair. She's relatively attractive, but not stunning. True to her nickname, she's missing her right ring finger after the first joint. She has mystical tattoos above and below her right eye, and leading away from both eyes towards her temple, plus some on her upper arms, collar bones, and shoulder blades. When she's working, she'll pull her hair back into a pony tail and wear functional, dark shirts and trousers. When she's at play, she leaves her hair down and wears whatever the fashion of the moment is.

:Lise wears power tokens in the standard ring form, and often wears gloves over the power tokens when she's doing anything the least bit sneaky. She usually puts her first token on the stump of her lost finger.

;History
:Lise never knew her father, and grew up with her mother and grandparents in a tiny apartment in Atathorn. Her mother has always worked to support her, and when she was a child, she ended up running a bit wild without a parent to rein her in, and became a child pickpocket. By the time she was 8 years old, she started working herself, and in an industrial accident, lost her finger (and extensively damaged her hand). Her mother was able to gather up enough money to get Lise the attentions of a competent medical sorcerer, but by the time she could arrange it, her finger was beyond saving, though Lise otherwise made a complete recovery.

:Unfortunately, Lise's mother was fired from her own job, as she had to take considerable time away from it to tend her injured daughter. When Lise's mother went back to work, the only place she could find employment was at the Church Mills. Now, some ten years later, Lise's mother is starting to show the degenerative effects of Passion use, and Lise is desperate to get enough money to allow her mother to stop working. However, her good intentions on that score are undermined by her young, irresponsible criminal friends, who encourage her (with a fair amount of success) to blow her money on the same frivolous luxuries that they do.

:Since her accident, Lise has decided that honest work is a fool's game. In her teens, she reconnected with the underworld that she was a part of in her early youth, and she moved from petty pickpocketing to more risky and lucrative theft. She's very talented at the various skills of a second-story woman, and has thus far picked partners, backers, and fences for her crimes that haven't betrayed her.

;Abilities
:In pseudo-game rules, Lise both dextrous and agile, and relatively intelligent and perceptive. She's not particularly strong, strong-willed, or enduring.

:Skills-wise, Lise is a very accomplished pick-pocket, and her stealth skills are superlative. She's a good climber, and has learned the basics of lock-picking. She's been in enough scraps to know the basics of fighting, but she prefers to avoid combat rather than win at it. She's not an assassin, and doesn't know anything about the assassin's arts. She's extremely street-wise.

:Lise's magical skills are pretty limited. She knows a few counter-divination charms, and the very basics of everyday magic (she can create lights, and make enough heat to warm a room, for example). She's been learning to capture images in a mirror or crystal, but can't do it reliably yet.

:Lise carries a dagger that's got a basic damage-enhancement spell (Obsolesence 1) engraved on it, and she has four magical tattoos: The one above and below her right eye is a spell that allows her to see heat, but it's rather obsolete (Obsolesence 3), and most modern invisibility spells will counteract it. The spell on her shoulder-blades and arms is a good quality (Obsolesence 2) armor spell, and the one on her collar-bones is a camoflage spell that helps her stealth (also Obsolesence 2). The spell on her temples is her replacement for her now obsolete heat-vision spell, though this one simply lets her see normally even in total darkness. It's brand-new, Obsolesence 0.

= Sample Antagonists =

To be created later.

= Sample Non-Humans =

To be created later.

----

[[Magipunk:Main_page|Back to the index]]

Magipunk:Campaigns:Characters

2005-07-11T06:47:38Z

Epoch: Added placeholder for the antagonists section.

2005-06-30T21:48:55Z

Epoch: Created beginning of the page.

{{Magipunk_Template}}

So, great. There's this neat place called Atathorn, and it's in a world that's changing, and there are all these Alliances and gods and sorcerers and whatnot. But all that can feel a little empty, right? How do the players get involved? What do you do in Magipunk?

This section is dedicated to helping you answer those questions, and if you actually play in Magipunk, it's absolutely the section that you should contribute to, because here's the dirty secret: I haven't played it yet. So right now, we're talking theory.

= The Protagonists =

A first big question is, who are the PC's?

Of course, the ultimate answer to that is "whomever the group decides on." If you've got an idea for playing King Ropert V and the [[Magipunk:Organizations#The_Royal_Family|Royal Family]], go ahead and do it! But the default answer to this question -- the thing that the game was designed for -- is that the PC's are people who are lower-class, high-potential, and good at crime. To see why, start below:

=== Lower Class ===

Why are the PC's from the lower social classes? There are two big reasons:

First, it gives them some built in motive. The state of being poor in Atathorn is a pretty unpleasant one. It's easy for the players to see that their characters are doomed to unpleasant, un-improving lives if they just sit around. There are wonders to be had in the world of Magipunk, but the poor are generally cut off from them. And it gives the GM a good way to start the group off -- they can be employed to do something.

Second, the powers-that-be in Atathorn are pretty scummy. The Alliances combine the worst features of modern corporations and old-style aristocracy, and they're the upper classes. Magipunk is a game where nobody's lily-white, in terms of morality, but the Alliances are darker than usual. So by starting off seperate from them, you give the PC's a chance to become the heroes of the game -- or sell out and join the bad guys, if that's the kind of game that appeals to you.

=== High-Potential ===

In some ways, this is a nice way of saying, "Not really all that powerful... yet."

The PC's are usually going to be people who could someday become influential, rich, and powerful, but aren't yet. That means that we aren't looking at just Joe Random off the street as a PC -- they may appear to be that to the casual observer, but they've got some kind of edge, something going for them. Maybe it's just that they're smarter, faster, stronger, or all three than most folks, or maybe it's something else.

This gives the PC's a reason to believe that they can succeed in a setting that's pretty grim, starting from a position that a lot of people have failed at.

=== Good At Crime ===

The PC's may not be criminals, but they could be pretty darned competent ones if they tried.

Swords and sorcery gaming has traditionally focused on fighting people or monsters and finding cool items. Cyberpunk gaming has traditionally focused on espionage or theft. It's no surprise that Magipunk, being a fusion of cyberpunk and swords and sorcery, goes pretty similar routes. The PC's should expect to engage in some illegal or quasi-legal activity (maybe for the nobles of causes!), and be able to excel at it. Skills like breaking and entering, roughing people up, and fencing stolen goods are likely to come in handy.

= The Action =

So now that we've got the idea of who the PC's are, what are they going to do?

The section on who they are alludes to the answer. Basically, the world of Magipunk is changing too rapidly for anyone to cope with in a systematic way. The Alliances have a lot of power, sure, but they're also big, creaky bureaucracies, and situations are going to arise that they need to deal with in a fast and efficient manner. Similarly for every other power faction, from the Royal Family right on down to a dockside gang/New Cult. That's where the PC's fit in -- they're the kind of capable people, maybe not adverse to breaking a few laws, that you turn to when you've got a difficult problem that you need solved.

What kind of problem?

Maybe an independent tradesman is getting pushed around by an Alliance, and wants to push back. He might hire the PC's to protect him or his store from the Roget Eagles, or to get some dirt on whatever Alliance guildmember is the one pushing him around. Or if he's less scrupulous, maybe he just wants the guildmember bumped off.

Maybe the Glassmakers and the Spinners are both starting to manufacture the latest hot good (it could be anything from a new drug to a new suspension system for heavy carts), and the Glassmakers want the Spinners production to be held up for a few months. A little sabotage would do the job, if it was done discretely...

Maybe a local crime boss is trying to bootstrap himself up into a real position of power. To do that, he needs mana, and plenty of it. What better way to get it than a daring theft of power tokens! But you don't just hire any old thugs for that, you need people with subtlety.

Maybe a young man was seduced by an Elven woman and has gone to live in the Elvish quarter. His family is convinced that he'd never do it of his own accord, but he's cut off all ties with them, and they want somebody to go and drag him back (and, incidentally, figure out why the Elves are so interested in him in the first place).

Maybe there have been a series of murders in the Slums. The City Watch doesn't have the manpower or expertise to investigate, and the Alliances don't care because it's not in their territory. The locals don't have much, but they're willing to give what they have to find the culprit and stop him before he kills again.

== The Long Term ==

If you're just running a one-shot game, pretty much all you have to do is pick some kind of problem for the PC's to solve, hire them, and go to town. But if you're looking at a longer game, something to consider is what kind of changes the PC's are making to the world.

It's been a tradition in cyberpunk gaming to make the PC's lackeys of the Man (the Megacorps in traditional cyberpunk). That's reasonable in a bunch of ways -- the Megacorps (or the Alliances, in Magipunk) have all the money and power, so why not? But most cyberpunk games aren't so concerned with establishing a dynamic setting.

In Magipunk, the Alliances are currently at the top of the pile, sure. But that could change. And it's worth considering whether you want your characters to be all about perpetuating the current situation, or helping overturn it. Consider the possibility of having the PC's work for employers other than the Alliances, and of having a real effect on the Alliances.

One thing that Atathorn really doesn't have right now, and has a demand for, is someone to solve crimes. The Alliances don't do it, unless they're the victims of the crime. The Watch doesn't do it. The Royal Guard certainly doesn't even think about it. That's the kind of business that the PC's could easily find exciting enough to game with, suited to their talents, and yet doesn't leave them as nothing more than another tool for the Alliances.

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There's not much here now, I know, but it's a start. Fee free to add onto it.

2005-06-29T17:30:45Z

Epoch: Added the Government section & Crime section placeholder.

{{Magipunk_Template}}

Power in Atathorn is held primarily by the Alliances, secondarily by the old government, and tertiarily by crime figures. Here, we discuss each of the major organizations in Atathorn.

= Alliances =

Before the introduction of Passion into human society transformed the economy, wealth and power resided in the hands of the Nobility, the origin of this wealth and power being real estate. A very small middle class of tradesmen existed, and trade guilds protected their prerogatives from Nobles. The balance of power was fairly stable, as the tradesmen never had sufficient sway to steal power from the Nobility, and the Nobles didn't like to dirty their hands with trade.

Passion upset that balance of power. With Passion, it became possible to manufacture, transport, and sell goods in volumes that were thousands of times that of the previous status quo. Money poured into the hands of the first tradsemen to harness industrial magic, and the very creation of the magic-rich economy created demands that had not previously existed, and thus rewarded those tradesmen who could meet those demands. The Nobles abruptly found that they were no longer dealing with a small class of humble tradesmen, but business tycoons able to buy and sell them a hundred times over. The Nobles did what any threatened government would do: they tried to legislate the tradesmen back down into their place.

The tradesmen, having had a taste of power, didn't back down. Instead, they bought influence in the government to protect their wealth -- there were always Nobles who needed money enough to compromise their class loyalty, and soon the tradesmen who were the richest were also Nobles themselves.

All of this happened over the course of less than two generations. Most tradesmen, and most Nobles, couldn't adapt. The innovators were able to buy out other businesses, force other Noble families into marriage alliances. The most powerful tradesmen ended up controlling guilds, and becoming Nobles. Their political economic empires became known as Alliances (as, to the common people, they were alliances between tradesmen and Nobility).

The Alliances are the dominant forces in the modern age. They largely control the government, and they utterly control the economy. Only the smallest, least consequential businesses can survive being more-or-less independent of the Alliances (they aren't worth the time). If an independent grows succesful, the Alliances will either buy him out, force him out of business, or even physically attack him.

== The Glassmaker's Alliance ==

=== General ===

The preeminent economic and political force in Atathorn is the Glassmaker's Alliance. Though the Royal Family rivals it in pure wealth and political influence, and the Roget Alliance has nearly as many agents and distribution channels, in the sum of its parts if not any individual one, the Glassmaker's Alliance is unmatched. Shrewdly managed and not afraid to innovate during the formative years of the modern age, the Glassmakers now struggle to remain on top of the pile. As the current dominant group, they are a force fighting to prevent change of all kinds.

The Glassmaker's Alliance is the child of Mek Scarsen, who, some fifty years ago, was a tradesman dealing mainly in glass products as Passion was coming into common use in Atathorn. Scarsen was an early innovator in using magic to speed his various business practices, and he quickly realized its potential to shake up the old order of things. He had been living a comfortable life for years (one of the very few non-Nobles who was moderately wealthy in the old order) on the proceeds of his glass business, and he saw that threatened. Scarsen's biggest fear was that someone using magic could create a business that would rival his own in a matter of a few days by shortcutting past all of the skilled aspects of work. His solution to this problem was to use the large profits he was reaping from his own magical business enhancements to vertically integrate his business – he figured that nobody could undercut him in the glassmaking business if he controlled all of the major businesses which wanted glass, and could lock them into buying only from him.

Scarsen was already a powerful figure in the old Glassmaker's Guild, and as he grew in wealth and power, he drew the other glassmakers in the city closer to him, or drove them out of business. Before long, he was the Glassmaker's Guildmaster, and he used the Guild basically as a front for doing his own business.

Though glassmaking is a fairly dedicated industry, Scarsen quickly found himself in the center of the city when he became the not-so-silent partner of several of the city's biggest cartwrights. Cartwrights were some of the biggest buyers of glass in the city, as the carriages that nobles preferred to travel in usually featured glass windows. But once Scarsen was into the cartwrights, he realized that they dealt with everyone, from the lowest farmer yokels to the most powerful peers in the city – everyone needed carts for various sorts of hauling. Scarsen simply followed his strategy of integration where it took him, with characteristic attention to detail and ruthless supression of any competition. And he found, somewhat to his own surprise, that eventually all of the businesses in Atathorn dealt with each other through some chain of transactions.

In many ways, Scarsen pioneered the principles of the Alliances. His model of vertical integration of every related form of business was much copied by other entrepeneurs of the time. When Alamar Roget, the Duke of Etersbruh put his hand to it as well, Scarsen became aware of the need for political as well as economic clout. By that time, his Glassmaker's Guild was enormously wealthy, and he was able to buy several impoverished Noble families' influences without ceding much, if any, control. Scarsen eventually wed a woman much younger than himself and became, approximately twenty years ago, the Baron of Telomay.

In present-day Atathorn, the Glassmaker's Alliance is an omnipresent fact of city life. It has several insignia, from the Barony of Telomay's coat of arms (an upside-down red rose on a field of yellow) to the old Glassmaker's Guild symbol (a representation of a stained-glass boar) to the miller's windmill. But its employees are always referred to by the common people as Glassmakers, and its yellow-tabarded guards are instantly recognized by everyone in the city. The Glassmaker's Alliance is strongest in the areas of raw materials production and transportation – if you need to move any significant amount of material, you'll almost certainly end up dealing with the Glassmakers.

Baron Scarsen is still alive, though he's in his dotage, now in his mid-90's, and does not take an active role in the business. The Alliance is now principally controlled by Scarsen's son, Sir Edam Scarsen, and Jinn Brooksmill, who married into one of the carter families that maintained a powerful position in the Alliance when Scarsen entered into the transportation business. Of the two, Jinn is the more capable – Edam, while competent, lacks his father's raw brilliance. Jinn is still subordinate to Edam, a fact which irks him to no end, and he is the force in the Glassmaker's Alliance most likely to enter into some risky gamble in order to increase both his own and the Alliance's prestige.

The Glassmakers have a ponderous bureaucracy, and there are many opportunities for a middle-level executive to have personal projects and engage in fief-building, often at the expense of others within the Alliance. It is entirely possible for two different sides of the same conflict to ultimately owe their loyalty (and their funding) to different parts of the Glassmakers. Jinn Brooksmill hates this costly in-fighting, and is constantly working to root it out, while Edam Scarsen tends to put his own energy towards expansion through the acquisition model his father pioneered.

=== Gold Guards ===

The Glassmaker's Alliance's security forces wear a distinctive yellow tabard, and are referred to by the general populace as the Gold Guards or, derisively, the yellow-bellies.

The the eponymous tabards of the Gold Guards are embroidered with a low powered protective spell (obsolesence varies from 1 to 3 – older tabards are retired), and the guards use a particular, and slightly odd, magically enhanced club. The club, which is about three feet long and fairly slim, has two long grooves on opposite sides in which slats can be inserted. These wooden slats hold the actual two spells that the clubs use – one spell designed to stun/put to sleep the victim of a hit from the club, the other designed to kill. The theory of these clubs was that the modular spells would allow the Gold Guards to flexibly respond to threats, while keeping costs down, as if one spell became dangerously obsolete, the other need not be replaced at the same time. In actual fact, the cheaply-made wooden clubs often fail to hold the slats properly, and having one slat fly entirely off the club is a not uncommon result of using the clubs in combat. The spells for the stunning and injuring similarly vary from obsolesence 1 to 3, and they are frequently of different obsolesence ratings from each other.

The Gold Guards actually constitute the single largest police/military body in Atathorn, a fact of which the paranoid old guard of the Glassmakers' Alliance is painfully aware. As such, supervision of the Gold Guard is fairly tight. The Alliance forbids the Gold Guards from collecting or using their own weaponry or other sorcery on-duty, so a Gold Guard encountered by the PC's is actually likely to use his club and tabard. Gold Guards are issued two power tokens at all times (a testiment to the incredible wealth of the Glassmakers), but accounting for those power tokens is tight – if a Guardsman thinks he can get away with using just his physical abilities in a situation, he probably will, as it's a huge headache to explain the discharge of a power token to the Glassmakers' suspicious accountants.

Gold Guards are decently paid, but almost universally despised in Atathorn, as the Glassmakers use them to squeeze the city tight. As such, most Gold Guards have a chip on their shoulder and something to prove, being used to the scorn of most of their peers. As such, brutality by the Gold Guard is unfortunately commonplace, particularly "forgetting" to use the lower-power settings on their clubs and going straight to the kill setting.

== The Roget Alliance ==

=== General ===

If Mek Scarsen created the concept of an Alliance as an integration of trade guilds and craftsmen -- the Alliance as an economic institution, in other words -- then Duke Alamar Roget is responsible for the Alliance as a fusion of political and economic power. The Roget Alliance, while lacking the sheer wealth and economic power of the Glassmakers Alliance, has absorbed within it an incredible amount of the political sway of the old Nobility.

Duke Roget of Etersbruh saw what the Glassmakers were doing more than three decades ago, and recognized it as the wave of the future. Determined that his family would remain at the top of the social order even in these rapidly changing times, Roget quickly decided to construct his own proto-Alliance, not as a means of enriching tradesmen, but of tying them to his family's power. The Roget Alliance emerged as the first major group to manage to stand up to the Glassmakers Alliance in the economic arena.

Roget's vision of tradesmen controlled by Nobles did not remain pure, as the Nobles found it increasingly necessary to defer to the better business sense of their tradesman vassals in order to compete with the Glassmakers, especially once the Glassmakers started essentially buying up political power, and were thus able to block Roget and his lackeys from regulating them out of existance. In the end, while the Glassmakers began as tradesmen with pretentions of real power, and the Rogets began as nobles protecting their political power from tradesmen, both have grown towards each other, and now the two Alliances are more similar than they are different.

The Roget Alliance is a bit more hierarchical and blue-blooded than the Glassmaker's Alliance, and is most heavily concentrated in the manufacturing sectors of the economy -- the most plentiful and cheapest worked goods are sold under the auspices of the Roget Alliance's striking eagle embelem.

Today, Alamar Roget has officially retired from active leadership of the Alliance, but in practice, he is still the most powerful figure behind the scenes. The titular head of the Alliance is Deran Lauriel, a Count of impressive pedigree, but no particular intelligence and weak will. Lauriel frequently turns to Roget for "advice," and Roget in turn relies heavily on his neice, Baroness Jallion Nerie, and Sir Kevam Cartson, who are themselves powerful officers in the Alliance. Roget has long since given up on his goal of protecting the privileges of the Nobility, and is now concerned almost solely with increasing the power of his own family and of his Alliance. Kevam and Jallion are both ambitious sorts in competition with each other to take Lauriel's place as the chief officer of the Alliance.

=== The Roget Eagles ===

The Roget Alliance employs a large body of men to protect their assets and enforce their interests. These guards wear the striking eagle emblem of the Roget Alliance, and are called by the common pople the Roget Eagles, simply the Eagles, or (never to their faces) the Pigeons.

Until only five years ago, the Eagles wore conventional boiled-leather breastplates, a startling anachronism in the face of modern weaponry which made such armor useless, and both these armors and the more formal metal breastplates that officers sometimes wore are still gathering dust in large warehouses, occaisionally brought out for formal purposes. However, Eagles in the line of duty now wear wide sashes, color-coded to their rank, that have protective spells on them of fairly modern design (almost all are obsolescence 2 -- the Roget Alliance likes to replace their gear in single huge generations, in contrast to almost everyone else's practice). Eagles are also issued solid wooden truncheons with stun spells inscribed on them (also obsolescence 2), which are much better thought of by most knowledgeable people than the Gold Guard-style slat-clubs, even though they lack a kill setting. In cases of emergency, the Eagles have small stores of spears with kill enchantments on them, meant to be handed out when there's a particular need, but the stores are rarely dipped into, and there don't exist enough such spears to supply more than 10% of the Eagles in any case.

The Eagles are generally considered the best trained of the regular police forces in the city, the legacy of various Noble generals and actual war-men who were tapped to create the guard. An Eagle on patrol is equipped with one fully charged power token, and the men are not as loathe to use them as are Gold Guards, as they tend to be both cooler under pressure, and have commanders who are understanding about legitimate uses of the tokens. Veteran Eagles will often supplement their duty-issue sashes and clubs with innocuous secondary weapons, defenses, or utility magic, but Alliance policy prevents them from carrying obvious non-standard gear.

Like all Alliance guards, the Eagles are reviled by the common people of the city that they must draw their ranks from. As such, the ranks of the Eagles are rife with social misfits, bullies, and sadists -- if better trained ones than the Gold Guards could boast -- and brutality and corruption is endemic across their ranks.

== The Spinners Alliance ==

=== General ===

Unlike the Glassmakers Alliance and the Roget Alliance, the Spinners were not founded in Atathorn. Rather, they come from the more southern province of Bessia, a largely rural region famed for its textile production. The provincial capitol of Bessia, Erdestern, lagged only slightly behind Atathorn in changing to adapt to the modern age.

Some forty years ago, a merchant whose trade was bringing fabric from Bessia to Atathorn saw the changes that the Glassmakers and the Rogets were making in Atathorn, and copied that template back in his home province. A less sophisticated environment allowed the fledgling Spinners Alliance to survive initial misteps, and it rapidly grew to become the dominant force in Bessia. Now it has turned its organizational attention to the huge markets of Atathorn, and the great city's ports (Bessia is land-locked), and it has turned its massive resources to establishing a foothold in Atathorn.

The Spinners Alliance are very much the newcomers to Atathorn. Only in the last decade have they had significant interests in the city, and both the Roget Alliance and the Glassmakers Alliance are fighting the Spinners tooth and nail to keep them out. However, thus far, the Spinners have accomplished fitful growth, to the point where even Atathorn's native two Alliances have to grudgingly agree that the Spinners are here to stay. Still, they have less than half the market share that the Glassmakers do.

The Spinners are controlled by a complex, shifting oligarchy back in Bessia, but in Atathorn, the entire organization is under the ruthless control of one man: Sir Zustin Estman. Estman is the son of a tradesman-cum-baron back in Bessia, and is himself primarily a businessman. He's a workaholic who inspires devotion from his subordinates, and he has thus far prevented significant infighting among the Spinners. Estman's downfall is that he tries to take too much work for himself, and whenever he doesn't pay personal attention to a portion of the Spinners' business, it tends to founder, as he's not good at finding competent subordinates and allowing them to work in their own ways.

The Spinners are concentrated in the soft-goods businesses, and both lower and upper classes alike often buy groceries and clothing exclusively from the Spinners. The symbol of the Spinners is a spider on a web of multi-colored thread.

=== The Spiders ===

The small guard force maintained by the Spinners are mostly used to guard caravans and stores, as the Spinners don't have large factories in Atathorn proper. The Spiders, named for the Spinners insignia, enjoy a reputation of being mildly less brutal than the other Alliance guard forces, but also of being clueless yokels from out in the sticks. This reputation was better-earned a few years back -- recently, the Spiders have been recruiting more heavily from within Atathorn, with the result of becoming more like the Gold Guard or the Eagles.

The Spiders use a blue tabard enchanted with high-quality (Obsolesence 1 or 2) protective spells and, in the city, clubs with low-quality (Obsolesence 3-4) stun spells. On the road guarding caravans, still a significant part of the Spiders duty, they tend to use un-enchanted crossbows, and those are available for duty in the city which warrants it. Spiders carry a single power token each, and are given reasonable leeway for using them.

== Minor Alliances ==

There are several other Alliances, mostly of origin outside Atathorn, that also operate in Atathorn, albeit at a level an order of magnitude smaller than the big three. Eventually, brief descriptions of these secondary Alliances should go here.

= The Government =

Though the governance of the entire kingdom rests in Atathorn, that government has been made largely ineffective by the Alliances. Before the modern era, the government was a feudal model -- that is, the balance of power was between a rich King and his close family and friends, and poorer but more numerous and, in aggregate, more militarily powerful minor lords.

The entire concept of an Alliance was to wed the newfound wealth of the merchants with the governmental power of the minor lords, and they did this quite effectively. Now, most of the old government model is subverted towards Alliance goals, and the only bulwark of power left is the Royal Family. However, they're out of touch with the modern world, and, while rich, generally not very effective.

Still, the government wields a fair amount of power, mostly in areas where it doesn't compete with Alliance interests.

== The Royal Family ==

Here we'll put a description of the current king and his extended family. Someday. Not today.

=== The Royal Guard ===

The Royal Guard are the personal bodyguards of the Royal Family. They guard the Royal Palace and occaisionally do police-work around events that the Royal Family attends.

(More later.)

== The City Watch ==

The beleagured civil police force of Atathorn finds itself, in the modern day, only the third largest police force in Atathorn -- both the Gold Guards and the Roget Eagles are larger in manpower, and the Spiders aren't much smaller. Further, all three Alliance guard forces are far better funded than the City Watch. In an era of shrinking government budgets, the Watch has to choose their battles.

The most important thing to understand about the Watch is their mandate: they keep the peace. That's all. Notably, they do not "solve crimes." Their purpose is not to track down criminals or identify suspects; rather, they are charged with keeping the streets from becoming warrens of crime. If a crime happens in view of a Watchman, they'll tend to give chase. If a crime notably disturbs the public peace (like a brutal murder or a fight in the streets), they'll ask around and post pictures of the suspects. But if your home is burgled, or your child kidnapped, and you go to the Watch, they'll simply tell you that they don't have the budget, expertise, or manpower to track down the culprit and bring him to justice.

In the modern day, even this moderate goal of keeping the peace is beyond the Watch. They've withdrawn all but the most token patrols from areas that are heavily patrolled by the Alliance guards, and similarly they keep out of the worst areas of the Slums. The Watch restricts itself mainly to Uptown (which is a low-crime area to begin with, and the patrols there are primarily a political manuever), and the more sedate areas of the Slums and the Wharf, where they can make a real difference.

The Watch is not so much corrupt as it is absolutely open about being buyable. The wages earned by officers of the Watch are tiny in comparison to what Alliance guards earn, and it's not just expected but frankly necessary for the Watch to earn additional moneys on the side by taking bribes. Ironically, though, for all the corruption that the Watch displays, they're somewhat better liked by the people than the Alliance guards, who are less open to bribery, but more inclined towards random brutality. That's not to say that the members of the Watch are angels, and there have certainly been many cases of the Watch abusing their powers, ranging from bullying to outright attacks, but the very ineffectiveness of the Watch tends to reduce some of the tensions between it and the common people.

Officers of the Watch are technically given spears and tabards, both with magical spells on them, but they're so ridiculously obsolete (Obsolesence 4-6) that most Watchmen don't bother to use them or, in the case of the heavy spears, even carry them. The Watch follows a policy of looking the other way when a Watchman relieves a criminal of any armor or weapons that that criminal may be carrying, so in actual fact, most Watchmen have far more useful equipment in various non-standard configurations. The Watch being poor as it is, the men aren't reliably issued power tokens at all -- they have to individually request them from extremely limited stores, and so most Watchmen are extremely stingy with actually activating their gear.

= Crime =

Criminals are the third major powerbase in Atathorn, but that's a topic for another day.

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