Brilliant Scales

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Synopsis[edit]

The player characters are servants of the Scintillating Serpent, a major manifestation of the World Serpent. Their main powers are based around prestidigitation and their pulchritude. When necessary they can inflict enemies with a venom that causes xanthosis in the immoral and unclean. The Servants of the Serpent themselves must maintain their rectitude or be stripped of their powers and punished horribly. The main opponents of the Scintillating Serpent and his brood are the Oxocrani, horrible spider-like demons whose main weapon (aside from the usual array of spidery things) is power over fear.

A Tale of Brilliant Scales[edit]

... What?

Why you lookin' at me like that?

... Aw hell, you're new, aren't you? Probably fresh out of the sick-house too. Fa'chrissakes, why do I always find the new ones.

Alright squirt, walk with me here. I'm gonna scare the crap outta ya. Well ya wanna know why you picked me out of a crowd, why you can taste me? Yeah I thought so, so come on. Now, I bet you got into an accident, maybe ODed, young kid like you. And you saw the pinpoint of light gettin' bigger, but'cher not feelin' good you're feelin' scared, and then the light got all rainbowy and you knew that you had a choice, and you decided to come back. All of a sudden you're not dyin', you're actually gonna pull through ok. And at some point while you're gettin' better you realize that you're not the same, you look different you feel different, you're just not the same, and you're pretty sure it's got somethin' to do with that rainbowy light. Course you don't tell no one about any a' that, they'd think you were nuts.

Am I scarin' you yet? Yeah? 'At's alright. It scared me too

Description[edit]

Well alright, so there's this secret war going on. All kinds of creepy-crawlies and supernatural nasties keep trying to maim, munch and manipulate humanity for their own purposes. The only way that humanity could get ahead is if it left all the scary things in the dark, and the only way that was gonna happen was if someone started looking out for humanity. That's where Quetzacouatl comes in. No one knows why him and not Lhung or Niddhogg, hell no one knows why it was one of the snake-gods at all, but he took humanity under his wing, so to speak. So for a long time, longer than recorded history, the Rainbow Serpent and his brood have kept the nasties at bay. Not alone mind you, not every other supernatural is out to get the squishy humans, but alone enough.

The Player Characters[edit]

So sometimes, when someone dies, the Rainbow Serpent will offer them a choice: die, or live and protect humanity. Dunno how many people say "No," I mean hey, who're they gonna tell afterwards? But at least some say "yes," and they become humanity's first line of defense. They become a "Child of the Serpent" and nothing's ever quite the same after that.

The job's got some perks. First off, none of Quetzacouatl's servants are less than gorgeous. Each and every one of the Serpent's Children is physically beautiful no matter how they looked before they were chosen. This beauty isn't a glamer or pheromone-induced illusion, it's a flesh-and-bone change. There are however some Children that learn to use this element of pulchritude to supernatural effect. (Ever seen someone so beautiful they were terrifying, or gotten so lost in someone's looks that you stop paying attention to what you're doing, which may be exactly what they're telling you to do?)

Then there's the real magic. All of the Serpent's Children can perform feats of prestidigitation. Nothing big or real flashy, just little magics to make life easier. But mind who can see what you're doing because these parlorless parlor tricks create a visual "afterimage," like the air over hot pavement or a chameleon changing it's color. Always have a satchel or big coat handy to pull stuff out of. There are other magics in the world, but Snakes rarely learn to employ them.

Quetzacouatl's Chosen can recover from any injury, and will even regrow destroyed organs and lost limbs without scarring. They'll also come back from "death." But that stuff looks pretty weird while it's healing, so it should get covered up. And that isn't to say that they heal any faster than regular humans (most don't, anyway), they just heal more. They're (effectively) immortal (or undead, either way).

The enahnced sense of taste is a blessing and a curse. For one thing, food gets way better (but mind the hot sauce). They can also recognize another of Quetza's Kids from across a swine farm. The down-side is that even though you learn to filter the filthy tastes of pollution and civilization pretty quickly, the scent of the supernatural will always hit them in the back of the throat like a ton of bricks and it's usually about as pleasant as that sounds.

And here we come to the venom. Quetza's Kids are hunters, so they get a weapon. Most Snakes have to spit their venom, but some learn to exude it from their skin (namely their hands), or even to do... other things with it. Enough of it will incapacitate just about anyone with pain for a short while, but it rots the flesh of the spiritually corrupt. Mostly this means bad supernatural things, but there's plenty of humans that fit the bill as well. Now when I say "spiritually corrupt" I don't just mean amoral or mean, what you might call "sinful," I mean downright evil. The kind that you can't define, but you know it when you see it.

Of course all that comes with a catch. The Chosen of the Serpent are human at heart but are more powerful than most humans. It's not absolute power, but it's enough to corrupt. Quetzacouatl holds his Children to a fairly high standard of behavior. New Snakes get a bit of leniency (all of a sudden you're beautiful to make super-models jealous and can pull fifty-dollar bills out of thin air), but those that don't shape up in time (or those that stray from the path later) start having dreams that, well, express Quetzacouatl's displeasure. If the erring Snake doesn't catch on and shape up, the Feathered Serpent can be creative with his punishments. Those that disregard their duties and their patron entirely are crippled, humiliated, and then hunted down by their brethren. Oh sure Quetzacouatl could just kill them, rescinding his blessing and letting them continue on with dying, but what fun would that be?

The Others[edit]

Funny thing about the things that go bump in the night: most of them are connected somehow to the Oxocrani. The Oxocrani are spidery demons, of a sort. They come from another dimension, or maybe the space between dimensions. Either way they're very literally not of this world, and of all the bad things out there they most literally feed on humanity. The weaker Oxocrani, who have to inhabit a corpse of some kind to exist on Earth, feed on the flesh and bones of humanity. Stronger Oxocrani, who can exist incorporeally on Earth or even in their own bodies (towering grotesque monstrosities of chitinous growths and seemingly hairy legs) can also feed on the ephemeral parts of humanity, rage, hope, hatred, but often glut themselves on human meat and blood because it's tasty.

Aside from spider-like abilities and physical "adaptations," the Oxocrani have an unholy affinity with fear. They can sense it, manipulate it and sometimes even create things out of it. No one is sure how they move between worlds, but it must be difficult or else there would be more of them on Earth.

Right?

Wushu[edit]

WUSHU ONE-SHEET
SETTING NAME: Brilliant Scales
SETTING DESCRIPTION: Quetzacouatl's chosen wage a shadow-war in the modern world with supernatural baddies and the Oxocrani, spider-demons with fear powers.
INSPIRATION:
LICENSE TO KICK ASS: The player characters are chosen by a snake-god and given powers to do battle with supernatural evil.
CHI IS: Luck, physical resilience, willpower, the usual.
SAMPLE CHARACTER CONCEPTS:
TYPICAL TASKS:
SUITABLE TRAITS: All of Quetzacouatl's Chosen can use Details involving (supernatural) beauty, prestidigitation, heightened senses of small and taste, and venom.
SUITABLE WEAKNESSES:
MOOKS:
NEMESES:
EXAMPLE DESCRIPTIONS:
OTHER: