The Judges of Tehom

This is a Setting in progress by RPGnet user Nick the Nevermet.

Parameters

I am making this with a (weak) assumption that I will be using Heroquest to run it. As such, I am going to describe the game & setting as Robin Laws suggests one does in the "Parameters" section early in the book.

Premise

The characters are Heroes who will either use their public personas for public and personal benefit, or become consumed by fame and the Tide's Eye.

Genre

Superheroic celebrity-aristocrats rule high tech city states in a world with supernatural forces reminiscent of "Lost".

This needs to be unpacked a little. This will be done by taking a bit of the above, stating what it is not, and the defining what it means.

Superheroic rulers

• The PCs are not assumed to be Conan or a wandering adventurer.
  • The PCs are connected to a location, a group, or an institution. In classic legends, the king of one city is a great hunter, the princess of another is a sorceress, and a baron two kingdoms over is unbeatable in single combat. The PCs will decide what to defend, what to exploit, and what to disavow. In-setting, the PCs are Cerenim, or "lords", and they have been chosen to wield immense power.

Celebrity-aristocrats of high tech city states

• This is not a low-tech fantasy setting.
  • The world of Tehom is one of cosmopolitan cities built in the archipelago of a vast ocean, and the Cerenim are the center of not just the political system, but a public sphere dominated by social and mass media. Adoring fans follow the every move of the Cerenim, and this fixation is woven into the political structure of the cities as well. While a bureaucracy exists, the masters of society are those with personality, name, and power.

Supernatural forces

• This is not a fantasy setting where magic is a stable tool under the direction of people.
  • In the TV show "Lost," The Island appears to have an agenda and it manipulates events and coincidence to slowly have it happen.
  • So too on Tehom. The Tide's Eye has several names, but the world of Tehom seems to take an interest in humanity as a whole. Certain cities have weather patterns that are improbable, some sea lanes are calm whereas others become stormy as soon as a ship comes close. The Tide's Eye only works on an environmental level, however, unless a Ceren is involved. Cerenim are often saved from death by improbably coincidences, for example, above and beyond the powers they wield.
  • The Tide's Eye is known by many names, and there are many debates about what it is. To the degree there is religion found on Tehom, it often is involved in trying to explain what the Tide's Eye is or wants. For some, it is a purely accidental force that aggregates psychic energy, focusing on commonly thought about topics (celebrities, weather, war, etc.). For others, it is a conscious mind actively moving humanity toward some state of affairs for its own reasons. Those who specialize in trying to interpret the actions of the Tide's Eye and decipher Tehom's will are Mystics, and they range from con artists to truly otherwordly individuals.

Setting

• Tehom is a world that was settled and terraformed generations ago. The project (and the colonists) were abandoned when the world's psychic consciousness took notice of humanity and began to resist terraforming efforts.
• Society has since stabilized, though the Raquiya System and the planet Tehom are still cut off from interstellar human civilization.
  • A thin band of ocean and islands near the equator have been fully terraformed, though the colder reaches of the planet are a hybrid of the planet's original ecology and the Terran one engineered by humans.
• Tehom has a "world mind" that amplifies and aggregates psychic energy. A population's conscious and unconscious desires effect the world.
  • The primary effect of this is that entities gain tangible benefits (or problems) from reputation. Some places are "cursed" while other cities just seem to be cleaner and healthier.
  • This can happen to people (and lineages of people) as well. Heroes gain power with their renown, pushing well beyond what is "normally" human. Overtime, these heroes, called Ceren / Lords and Shoftim / Judges, have become the political elites of society.

Mod

This game will be a hybrid of some degree between 3 modes:

• Epic: a sweeping tale of heroism, against a backdrop of great historical events
• Chronicle: the lead characters manage the economic and political affairs of a community (or other unit, such as a corporation), often over a large span of time.
• Procedural: as part of their job, highly competent professionals solve a succession of problems, perhaps interspersed with ongoing stories of their personal lives.

Links

History of Tehom

System information

• • System: Raquiya
  • Technology: 1/-1 (“Cerentech” vs. standard society)
  • Environment: E0 – 1 garden and several barren worlds
  • Resources: Rich

Primary Actors

• • Ceren – the Lords
  • Shoftim – The Governors – leaders of the Lords
  • Tehom – the world of Raquiya IV
  • Mevakeret Tavul– The Fascinated Traveler, Steward of Tides, the world mind or psychic aggregator of Tehom

Political entities

• • The Ten Horns – The ten great cities of humanity
  • The Little Horn – The Commune, aka, the Communal Republic
  • The Seven Crowns – the Seven great Shoftim