Chronicles of the Fifth Cycliad
Scenario Overview
A motley crew of mismatched adventurers wandering the fifteen-millennia-year-old Venerable Autocracy of Sakara
Helpful Resources
Mechanical Game Information
Active Characters
| Player | Character | Race | Essence | Refresh | Stress | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glyptodont | Radan Aratta | Human | Inexperienced young student from privilege ready to put theory into practice | 2/2 | Physical [][][][]; Mental [][][][]; Status [][][][]; Wealth [][][][] | |
| NightGoblyn | Stasia Valoren | Human | Orphan raised by the Swords of Dawn, a warrior cult of Lord Regos | 4/3 | Physical [][][][]; Mental [][][][]; Status [][][][]; Wealth [][][][] | |
| Caiphon | Tuja Alza-Balde | Human | Qali Alchemist Practicing Medicine and Dialectics | 3/3 | Physical [][][][]; Mental [][][][]; Status [][][][]; Wealth [][][][] | |
| Astronocky | TBC | Human | TBC | 3/3 | Physical [][][][]; Mental [][][][]; Status [][][][]; Wealth [][][][] |
Important Places
Please note: Many place names refer to canonical locations in the Fifth Cycliad, but details may vary... considerably.
Andalas
A peaceful farming and lumber town of five thousand people on the banks of the Lower Timosia River, little happens here beyond the regular arrivals and departures of the barges of the river people tracking up and down from distant Typhon. Under the watchful eye of its Manumarch, Andalas still seems remarkably successful at ignoring the great political events happening elsewhere in the Empire.
Korudav
Great City of Korudav, this ancient metropolis predates the Time of Snows and even the Empire of Splendid Tlan, and is said to feature in several key myths of the Armageddon of the Gods. Its sky-scraping spires and towers and its leviathan walls of unfathomable smooth grey material, neither metal nor stone, give Korudav perhaps its most famous sobriquet – “The City of Leaden Walls”. At the Citadel’s heart stand the exotic Botanical Gardens, the miraculous spires of the Autarchal Palace, and the mysterious Syleen Monolith, said to control the fabled Palace Shield.
Or did - because much of the city now lies in ruins after the catastrophic Firefall. Its shattered, once mighty precincts are now the dwellings of squatters, and death traps for foolish fortune hunters.
Sapedra
Affectionately known as The Great Whore of the North, this city of ten thousand souls has the dubious reputation of possessing the largest provincial slave market outside the city of Korudav. The principal city of the Plutarchy of Sapedra, its wharves and markets deal with transporting the produce of all of the slave plantations of the Timosian Properties via the Grand Sapedra Canal to the Provincial Capital and also downriver into the Provincial Heartlands of the Lower Timosia and thence to the city of Typhon, as well as the crucial caravan trade over the Jeneset Wilderness to Amadorad. It’s a thriving mercantile center with a pronounced mean streak, and like many places in Hivernium currently teeming with mercenaries. Certainly not a place to be without friends and money – “Sell your soul to Sapedra” say the Sakari, and throw away your guilt and conscience forever.
Timosia River
The Timosia River is the principle riverine traderoute of western Korudav, navigable from the town of Sapedra down to Great Typhon at the river’s mouth. Huge slave plantations stretch the length of the Upper Timosia River as far as the Tower of Virigu. These “Timosian Properties” are a byword for grasping, thieving merchants, pitiless slavers, and cruel plantation owners. The Properties produce a large proportion of the Hivernian ketel grain consumed by the Autarchy. Few people linger there longer than they have to.
Typhon
The poet Macabrial, writing in 2500CV, called Typhon the “Smoke-belching father of Monsters”, a description which is just as appropriate today.
The city contains some of the very few still functioning mines in the Autocracy. The principal lodes were exhausted millennia ago, but traces still remain deep underground and in hard-to-extract ores. The Artificers of Khosht, strong in this town, know secret techniques to extract the priceless metals from the very rocks, and Typhon is one of the few producers of metal in the entire Middle Sea region (the Ing Shu have other techniques, and claim to even produce metal from sea water!).
As dark and grim as Calamis is pleasant, a large proportion of the Korudav slave trade passes through this city en route to the Timosian Properties far upriver in the fabled and dreaded “Black Ships of Typhon”. Calamis and Typhon are often referred to together as “the Twins”, and are also the names of two noticeable stars in the night sky.
Important People
- Enessi XXI, Avatar of the Venerable Autocrator, eternally re-incarnating ruler of Sakara and living god
Story Episodes, Leads
- Buswhacked in the Ring: Arlo Vann's light freighter the Easy Money is ambushed as you attempt to retrieve a mysterious cargo from a derelict space yacht in the Ring of Jibal II. Evading your pursuers, you take refuge among the Ring's derelicts.
- It Dread inna Dreadnaught: Escaping to a vast wrecked Republican-era dreadnaught in the Ring, you find yourselves the guests of the Dreadnaughters, a motley tribe of indigenes and castaways. Your mysterious booty turns out to be a suspension pod containing Kam Limmer, heir to the Third Board Seat of the House of Ororo Transportation, a rich feckless playboy. The Dreadnaughters are only too ready to accept you as the embodiment of their ancient prophecies.
- Move the Mountain, Mash the Monster: Your best chance of survival and escape appears to be to move the vast derelict and destroy the gigantic Verminoth patrolling this Ring segment. As you prepare for your heroic task, you encounter BRN-626 (Bernie), an unusually capable and occasionally truculent droid.
- The Bubble Cities. Afloat above the clouds of Jibal II, oases above a hell-world.
- Pressure Cooked. At the bottom of the baking, crushing atmosphere of Jibal II, you're crawling like bugs on a griddle to find the lost wreck of an escape pod belonging to your betrayers.
- Palace Panic. Welcomed at the magnificent floating palace of House Limmer, you're treated to the spectacle of it plunging to its doom, as your patroness perishes amid the wreck of her family fortunes - or is it? Time to high-tail it out of the system in your new ship and evade this relentless, merciless pursuit.
- "Time is short and the list of people who want to kill us is long." Racing against the clock, you've got to pick up your stash of loot from the dreadnaught and exit Jibalian space before your pursuers can catch up with you. Shame about that tracker beacon in the engine room...
- Big Bid on the Booty. Unexpected developments in Drayhar's Cantina during an auction of your gravmat booty from the Dreadnaught leads you back into the sphere of House Limmer, and perhaps with powerful new patrons.
- Setup at the Station. With Slugs. An expanded team seeks to infiltrate a Ugnaught-controlled mining station and hijack a strategic mining shipment.
- Rather Risky Rescue Run. With your luckless Ortolan buddy held captive by Imperial Intelligence, it's time to bust him out before he spills the location of your secret base.
- Messin' in the Mud. Courtesy of your discourteous new buddy Beep Weebit, it's off beyond the Outer Rim, to a mud puddle of a planet with interesting secrets stirring in its depths.
