100 points total (90 if you want to buff real)
Previous world - Albion - Idyllic secret planet 19th century - Contact with the General & colonized. Order stripped world of little magic & nascent tech.
Lives in a world covered in one or two-way portals to the Path and other parts of the world. Citizens of the world are fully aware of Dwight and his ilk. Talking animals, mostly raccoons and small omnivores. Multiple biomes, some of them not entirely friendly to Dormid, or most other humans for that matter. Small towns are the largest "civilization", mostly tavern & general store with a café.
Typical day in This Land - Hunting for components for various projects (weapons, tooling, navigation aids, etc.). Scraps fall from portals, rare items better found on evanescent portals since local scavengers camp out under the permanent portals & are extremely territorial. Materials are a mix of exotic refuse from near future technocracies (Carbon / Titanium composites) & 19th century cast iron off-casts. Dwight sells the expensive / less useful scrap to scrapyards in town, for petty scrip at the tavern. Dwight's building a v2 of his vibro-dagger which is an updated laser machete with a hollow ground edge immediately behind a microfilament edge heated to about a thousand degree Kelvin (local temp) capable of vaporizing base metals. Occasionally he runs into a disoriented dreamer or a teleported local and guides them back into Beaumontagne (BeauMont), usually extracting a beverage or two at the tavern (At inflated prices since Dwight's a regular and gets a sizable kickback from the bartender).
Working on a portal tracker and predictor, so I can get to drops before any other scavengers.
Came back to massive rainstorm w/flooding on This Land, nearly global. Eye of storm 2 steps from the edge of the Path, sends a warning message to other Dreamers in This Land on storm and Path edge.
En route to Tower, there are edges to The Path, but not one inside the world. Edge of The Path is a drop-off near the world, but not in the world. Usually stay close to touching the path even though I'm a Master.
Checking out the console in Pleasantville, find group of officers in different styles of dress in captivity. Garrett (prisoner) knows Peter - He was kidnapped by a man in a black suit of armor. Same set of symbols, different ranks (J,Q,K). Dragon symbol isn't one of the baddies, but of their target. Dropping off officers, & Slain is the last. Dropping off into dystopian precinct just as soulless attack wave kicks off invading underground. L351e is the worm rider! She decides not to attack & joins the party. Searching for the dragon symbol or traits. Search meets a hard blocker, then Dwight is contacted by the Ruler who tells him to head home to This Land. Wants him to intervene for the good of all Dormid, but especially Order. This Land starts to get aquatic. Beaumont is now a lake, edge of the path is now a waterfall. Cara beacon beeps, so she's on a new moon. We have 4 Dreamer pts awarded.
Nova, D, & Salvador travel to the moon to Cara's compound. They run into Mordred (jedi/ blue lightsaber) & the Joker. A winged figure approaches the station, almost looking like Cara. It's another This Land dreamer (Blair) - She's interested in the rainstorm and the Roman battlefield.
Suddenly a Soulless appears to approach the ship & starts to attack it, turning the timbers of the ship back into tree branches. Blair turns some of the branches into a tree monster, which she directs to attack the Soulless
Dwight joins the fight! He leaves the oxygen field to begin dancing around the soulless. The dance & lyrics to the song come easily. Unsuited, but still singing & breathing???. Salvador casts grasping hands and further slows down the soulless. Draugr (Ian cyborg familiar) goes in to collect a sample from the soulless while he strikes the stalker with lightning. Dwight's still dancing in thrall.
Blair is fixing the ship while... Cara and Dwight negotiate a military base of operations in This Land, stopping the downpour and flooding. Camp will be underwater, along with their forage. Lofwyr captures Salvador and takes him to a facility on Mars to fix a soulless. Lofwyr drops a scale, which Salvador picks up & hides.
Cara introduces two Yuuzhan Vong, already morphing into Romans (albeit reluctantly). Salvador fixes the soulless to gauge any weaknesses. Nova and Katswyk steal tools from the workbench. There are armed sentries outside the building that escorted Lofwyr. The soulless are keeping their distance. "S.A.R.E.N" is on the underside of the pod, stamped into the metal. Lofwyr and convoy are leaving and are being followed at a distance by soulless. Lofwyr thought the borked soulless needed pants to appear more human. Nova and Salvador sprint back to the building. Everyone re-enters the Dormid to meet up at the Tower to figure out the leaders's name and get to him IRL. Everyone's on Cloud, Chewy, Nen Yim, Nom Anor (Vong fighters).
Ghostwalkers an area of interest for the majority of the faction leaders, possibly including the Monster - a hidden 6th leader. The Rebel warns team dreamweaver that the Artist wants the team dead. Possibly due to the Artist's love for unreality. The Scholar stopped the Artist from openly trying to kill the team. Talking to the Rebel turns out neither Blair nor Cara turn out to have any of the original code that belongs to them. Someone or something is "wearing" them. It's not advisable to visit the Tower, as it would disrupt the detente between Scholar & Artist. Kara's code and the Card's code are similar, but hers is much more advanced. Rebel hasn't ever woken up to the Real.
Cloud lands on Albion in the water near coastal town, past a local fishing ship onto shore and into town, party makes it through security cordon and into city center. Console is still there in old college building, rundown and heavily guarded. It looks like a trap, so we moved on. Rioters lit the banners on the gate to the path as the party was leaving Albion.
On the path to the Capitol, Dwight upgrades the vibro/pugio to a gladius. Ian sneaks a banner and uses wrighting & naming to discover the banner's directly connected to the Ruler and is created by him. Arriving at the capitol, the architecture is gorgeous and amok with a diverse cast of human & non-human beings. The whole place looks like a paradise. But it all looks too good to be true. Katswyk notices a grain tax collector (Dreamer-Frumentarii) who beckons us over via a legionnaire. He welcomes us and asks what are we selling. "We're selling a lie". He beckons us to a semi-permanent tent setup, which has heavy sides and a strong tie. We're tied in and he confronts us as Dreamers. Ian confronts him about the Soulless and our desire to track them through the Capitol. The Count (not real name), extracts a promise to not cause trouble and to leave ASAP. He points us towards the palace as the place with secrets to uncover, although it's more suicidal than our original mission. The planet continues onward forever. There are farms, but not enough to support the population of the Capital. The palace is warded against Soulless, it's using some mix of chaos and wrighting (odd)! Suddenly there's a Soulless on the planet. Turns out the Soulless were buried under the palace & there were >100 of them. Katswyk starts excavating the ruins and finds vine encrusted stones in a lunar henge. Turns out it's the console for the Capitol. Katswyk's console is the closest functionally. Questions to answer- 1. Code for the world 2. What is the source of the Soulless on this world The console is odd, it's got more folds and powers than an ordinary console, it's got a path-like interface, everything is upside-down. There's a small, frail man with a high voice, leaning on a cane. Nova asks "Are you the Ghostwalker?" "Careful, that name isn't spoken of around here." His name is Gairn. He can share good stories, but not objective truth. According to a tapestry, the Ghostwalker is a composite being of the different faction avatars (Rebel, Ruler, Artist, etc). Ghostwalker capable of "breaking out" of the cage of 1s & 0s. On exiting the tapestry, there's an iridescent being in the console arch, in he process of leaving. When the party pulls, it back to IRL, it's a soulless! Kat tries to convince the Soulless to stick around and not attack. Katswyk starts to rip out the Order code that is convincing the SL to be aggro. The SL could have been unique, nearly human until they're corrupted. By whom? "Lofwyr" he spits out in disgust. Order is a crutch, only focused on limitations. He starts humming a song - softly singing in the same chaos language as Blair's. It's not as aggressive, song evokes a boat rowing through a forest. It's very calming and the "water" is dreams. Almost like a lullaby. There's motion at the end of the tunnel, the other SL!!
Known Dreamers to recruit on the mission to fight Lofwyr (L) & free the Ghost Walker (GW).
Leonie - Space Templar from a world of demons and space travel, leader of the Knights of Order; with (unsurprisingly) Order There are six other members of the order Guy - friendly unassuming social chameleon of unknown origin; with Shapeshifting - He's spent some time on This Land, but Ian knows him better and is being evasive Captain Pan - Explorer from a world much like Ancient Greece but with floating islands and airships, leader of the Cartographers; with both Wrighting and Invocation Zhagala - caveman huntress/tamer from a world of dinosaurs; with lots of Creatures Hjoln - Half-giant craftsman and enchanter; with Wrighting and lots of Artifacts Majo - paranormal investigator from a world very similar to modern day earth; with Sorcery Barnaby - Victorian werewolf and “champion of the downtrodden”; with Order and at least minor shapeshifting Chord - Rock punk technomage from a cyberpunk world; with Sorcery Sheptat - Nova knows him; with Chaos not a Dreamer
Whip count 9 Total - 4 on board, 3 on the way, 1 actively avoiding party (Guy)
47 arrives, he's a friend of Pan's - exosuit that limits him to his IRL persona. Zhagala arriving on a flying creature of sort, with a retinue of critters.
The strategy is to try and break the Dormid or take it over. Since GW couldn't break free, but perhaps a larger group of Dreamers could break out. The control panel on the Capitol is something different, it's involved w/ creating Hunter Soulless.
Dreamers coming back off of the end of the Path have been replaced in a sense. Sheptat knew Cara in the past, but she didn't recognize Sheptat.
Leonie and Heinrich arrive shortly after bringing news of the cards & CarBlair attacking & causing bad chaos.
Next up: Contacting the playing cards, Ace is with The Rebel. There are 4 free J, K, Q, & 10
Planning to reunite the Ghostwalker (GW, there's a taboo). Possible plan is to edit them from the Roman Capitol console, the ripple effects should draw them near enough to each other. Gairn came to investigate the last time we were there & we had to GTFO. Andrew gets a call from the Tower (Medieval era, magic). It's the Scholar and a brightly colored griffin, which turns out to be the Artist. Hjoln is seated in the background, visibly uncomfortable. We're invited to make our case in person to the Artist & the Scholar. Talking to Queen, since she's familiar with the concept. Queen knows about the data that makes up the Dormid. It's visually similar to the 'Net. Gairn is critical to getting the GW, except he's in a briefcase metaphysically handcuffed to suited jailers(?). We talk to Guy about untethering Ace. He implies we've been doing what he's wanted.
Going to a bar to talk with the agents (Croup & Vandemar :-)) He love it at the bar planet, says he's enjoyed it for centuries. Nova looks at Salvador with concern. At most the path is ~30-50 path years (2-5 IRL years) old and all worlds are no more than twice that. Apparently any of us could leave at any time, provided we didn't leave too big of a hole on the exit. Ian would like to collect the Gardener (Gairn) - They want us to capture Blair & Cara. Agreement is drawn as a blood pact with a third vial, which Salvador agrees to sign. Katswyk studies the dagger rapt, the item is unmistakably magickal, on further inspection, the knife has a form of naming. As the blood enters the vial, the topper erupts and out emerges Gairn. He immediately turns to his captors and unleashes a torrent of insults in multiple languages. He would love an update, probably elsewhere. As a final act, Katswyk requests a sip of the cocktail. She immediately begins slowing down, seeing the wrighting and order better. Her magick senses are enhanced with a commensurate drop in magick abilities. Turns out everyone in the bar is normal except for each have a coin. Katswyk asks the bartender about it as she orders another drink, he's defensive and ornery about the coin. Dwight notices the commotion and steps away from the billiards table to fetch Katswyk. On the way out the door, he spots a mark near the door with a loose coin in a pocket. He uses chaos to open the seam in the pocket. Katswyk bumps into him, dislodging the coin, which Dwight silently kicks out the door. He palms it, hearing some commotion in the bar, tells Katswyk to keep going & not look back. Gairn talks to the party about maintaining the Heart of the Dormid. The Heart is dead, she's been gone before the Queens (CarBlair) arrived.
According to Gairn, the Dormid is a liminal world similar to Gairn's home-world (Fae) and the Real. The Ghostwalker created it alongside Lofwyr, as two dragon type beings, who are older and aligned with the Fae, but originated in the Real (or something the preceded it). Lofwyr's trying to force order upon the Dormid, using a computer as the method of creating and tracking all the rules to maintain order in the Dormid. Gairn is a caretaker of stories from the Fae since stories often become beings in their own right. The Base level world on which the Dormid was created is like a forest (called the Grove). Cara & Blair are the Queens of two opposing courts (Seely & Unseely). They've joined forces since the closer their world gets to the Real, the more order enters the Fae. Consequently, more magic enters the Real as well. But the effects are much more pronounced on the Fae than the Real. Magic exists in the Real, but it's been suppressed somehow. Could we unblock the magic? Turns out Gairn is more interested in maintaining stories in the Fae than saving the Real. Ditto for the Ghostwalker, we may have conflict with them immediately after beating Lofwyr.
The team head to the tower to talk to the Artist & the Scholar - They make the case to A&S about saving the Dormid by re-uniting the GW.
The inner sanctum is a massive tower-spanning room at the top of the tower.
The Artist wasn't originally a fan, but given current events, he's more amenable. Just as their about to join up the Scholar flourishes a small statue, it's an image of the Artist. As the Scholar disables the Artist, the Artist uses Writing to turn the Scholar. At that point there's a whisper of music carried up the Tower to the sanctum.
Soooo Blair's coming up to seize the A & S. The song's raising the ire of the room. Ian bars the door w/Order. Salvador readies offensive spells. The Scholar, under musical influence, approaches Dwight. He's glances at a stack of papers on the floor while trying to throttle him. D slips out from the grip and snags the papers. It's a refillable notebook filled with squiggles and what looks like musical notation. It's a songbook, probably the same one Blair uses for controlling others. The sounds of combat fill the air as Blair's music grows louder. Dwight starts skimming the songbook, the pages start to blur for others looking over his shoulder. He finds a song that looks like its the right one, but the current rage song is in a major key. Dwight hums a few measures of the minor version of the song, it's immediately calming. Ian starts a vortex to drain the Tower of magic, feeding in on itself. It's time to GTFO. The Scholar mentions that we need a few things to properly evacuate and remedy the current issues. There's his staff and some materials in a lower level of the Tower. Dwight opens a Path P2P to the lower level. It's not pretty, but it'll work.
The last item to grab from the tower was an icon of the Ruler on a lower level of the Tower. Salvador, Nova, and Ian are going to recover the icon. With Katswyk, Ser Peter, and Dwight are staying at the top of the tower. Salvador handed the Blair-catcher to Katswyk. Blair starts singing right at Dwight. Chord slaps Dwight out of his trance, pulls up a microphone and screams into the mic. Dwight has a backup singer! Dwight stays in a minor key to counteract Blair's major key. Katwik pulls on a massive pair of 70s era headphones and slaps them on, using the misdirection to pull out the BlairCatcher. Ser Peter tries to wrestle Blair to the ground. Blair starts fighting both Dwight and Ser Peter, dancing to avoid Ser Peter and singing to combat Dwight. Meanwhile, lower in the Tower... Salvador, Ian, & Nova recover the icon of the Ruler in the Treasury. Ian picking up the icon awakens a Guardian. The huge phantasmal snake creature rises up from the floor and follows the crew back up through the Path up to the top of the Tower. Just at that moment, Blair notices Katswyk with the vial and turns her whole ire on K. At that moment Ser Peter tackles Blair as Katswyk successfully traps Blair in the vial. Shortly after, the rest of the crew shows up closely followed by the Guardian. Tower evacuation now can commence. The statue of the scholar, the icons of the Ruler, the Wanderer, and a partially finished, frustrated one for the Monster.
Party just go an extra 20 pts! Salvador prays to Sta. Muerte - who appears and takes Salvador away.
Kara started invading the Core, using a variant of the Path.
New stats:
Strength (0)
Endurance (3)
Agility (0)
Cunning (3)
Luck (4)
Singing negation 10 pts
Coin minting 18 pts
On the way to the Core, everyone is prepping for the assault. Ian recommends we contact the Playing Cards on an exit strategy after reassembling the GW. Salvador is attuning the dragon scale in an attempt to catch Lofwyr unguarded. The Wanderer offers to do the navigation and asks if we can take the scenic route, to say goodbye to the Dormid. They take us past an incredible series of worlds, some of which none of us has seen. The Core world is a desolate ultra-high desert. The main town has been taken over by our allies Leone and the Knights. The robots corp have set up in town center. The high amount of order prevents the robots from expanding out much since the Ruler is anti-tech. The console is currently hidden and we need to find it. The Console is located deep in a insectoid nest. As Ian starts messing with the console, the console starts to react to Ian's messing. They grow a second set of limbs to continue the manipulation. An older insectoid Dreamer dressed in Centurion garb appears, "You have to go". Salvador responds "Sorry, we're not going anywhere." Casts Gates of Hell, the devils grab him and catch him off guard. Katswyk smacks him with a shovel, blocked by the shovel. The devils take the Dreamer into the gate. There's about 40 other insectoids on their way, armed with sword and javelin. Salvador takes out eight of them. He and Katswyk take out another eight. She catches a javelin and accidentally kills one with a swing of the javelin and her shovel. Salvador casts more spells in order to drop the number to 6. Salvador shouts encouragement to Katswyk, who's haphazardly poking them with the javelin.
Ian starts to pull the different GW personages using the console, shapeshifting to reach into the glyphs and through the doors to the console. The Ruler and the Rebel, brought to the console by Salvador. The Ruler raised his fist and raises the console to ground level, surrounded by Romans. Salvador raises the platform further, tipping over the statue and setting off a flurry of spores. Salvador hamstrings the Ruler by slashing with the fourfold knife. Suddenly Salvador sinks into the ground. He's pulled into the Real, possibly to be killed. Salvador is nearly executed by an armed guard. He stabs the guard in the armpit, which causes the guard to nearly drop the gun.
Ian, Nova, & Salvador have gotten the upper hand in the room. They start to move out to the source of the fighting, they turn the corner and Ian tackles a soldier. Nova confronts the second engineer. Back in the Dormid, the Devil is on Cloud. Katswyk talks him down out of continuing the fight with Blitz. Call me Luci, he says. I'm Kat. What are we doing here? It's a prison break, Kat tells Luci. A prison break? Sounds like you need to come to the other side. Luci offers to help, for a price. Kat shakes and the Devil enters her head. The Wanderer walks out of the confusion, he's a full centaur. The Wanderer tries to convince the Monster to unify, the Monster refused and is dropped into lava. No, the Wanderer drops the Monster onto a lava-covered planet. As the Monster starts to rise up out of the lava, the Wanderer starts entombing their foe in rapidly freezing water. Dwight is agog. The Path fully used as a weapon instead of a trap was only a theoretical in the past. Seeing a Maester at work humbles Dwight, so much so that he's distracted.
Getting through to the GhostWalker's capsule campaign, Nova & Salvador and Ian-Bot get into the antechamber
Albion: Low Magic
This Land:
High Magic
Albion: Low Awareness
This Land: High Interaction:
Common ground: 2
Albion: Control of contents None?
None
Not really: (free)
Li "Dwight" Kwon - Korean-Mexican youth (19-23 y.o.)
35 points total (+5 from Dormid PC at a cost of 10pts)
No memory of past self. Studying to be a marketing executive.
40 pts total
Rogue-type with a checkered past and a history with the Order and rejected it's tenets of the Dormid as the future of humanity.
Wants to find the capsule for This Land so as to cut final tie with Albion.
World is a mass of buildings, with a unmoving light source that dims and grows over time. Lights go out shortly before dawn and rat-like cleaners scurry over the building and clean all non-biological matter away.
3 NPCs
- Peter - Janitor - Dormid character is a knight with a lizard mount!
- L351e (Leslie) - Dormid native, possibly cybernetic or android - Construction
- Robot worm rider (alà Dune) in Dormid
- Sarin of Earth (Roman CE 1313) - Bit of a homebody - Inscrutable & taciturn - Definitely in Order and 1313 CE Rome
Wedge (Benjamin) - Hyde - Has an alternative personality Nova (Emilie) - DR / Biochem Ian (Andrew) - ME/Aerospace Katswyk (Ella) - Mortician Salvador (Chris) - Maintenance worker
Pod schema: Building # - Floor # - # Grid position - 6 numbers additional of unknown
Building is uninhabited, except for top floor, our floor (near the bottom), & a floor in the middle.
Stabby McSpike is Ti - Rough end, as if it is torn from something - wires coming out of the broken end are Ag.
Pods are made up of something unknown, stronger.
Shamblers - IRL Soulless - port-less and sketchy looking skin that snaps back into place - aggressive toward humans.
"Child, you appear to be lost, let me help you" after dropping a building chunk on a Shambler
There's a "door" in the building's basement, un-openable from the outside.
- [] Come up with spells and cantrips for Dwight.
- [] Leveling up goals
- Getting strength up to positive
- Vibro-dagger v2
- Low density, short duration power source for edge (<60 sec) for low magic worlds
- High density, long duration power source for high magic worlds
- Portal tracker
- v1 direction to nearest portal
- v2 pings on putative portal w/direction and TTL
- v3 adv. portal prediction w/ longer range
- Ranged weapon
- Caltrops launcher
- Low tech (pointy)
- High tech / magic traps and gravity mines
- Caltrops launcher