sladethesniper

Striking Into Darkness Part One

The 15 elves of Strike Team 144 joined hands inside a ritual circle. They were members of the Veid Krusus, the feared Black Hands. Standing in their midst was Sar'Than Valanthian, a wizard who specialized in the creation of portals and teleportation. His eyes shown with an electric blue light, otherworldly in origin and frightening to behold. His power was absolutely palpable in the room. His melodious voice chanted the ancient rites of the Lanthian sages; rites as old as the world itself and more terrible than the gods.

Flinging his thinly muscled arms outward from his body, Sar'Than called down the mystic energies that began to coalesce around the circle. Light burst forth from him and filled the inside of the room, painting the damp, stone walls a pale aquamarine. His eyes were shining bright, though his pupils and irises were lost in a blinding sea of blue power. The voices of the other elves in the strike team were suddenly deafened by a loud, snapping and crackling boom. Everyone instinctively ducked their heads as if a blow were about to fall and their eyes flinched shut. Only their training kept them from answering the fearful desire to run or to draw weapons. Instead, they clinched their teeth hard and held tight to one another's hands. The circle could not be broken or the spell would be lost.

The sharp odor of ozone like the smell of the air after a thunderstorm assailed their noses. The nauseating sensation of warped time and the whooshing feeling of trans spatial travel filled their heads with spinning waves of vertigo. Their stomachs lurched and threatened to bathe everyone in the meal they had last shared. Someone briefly wailed in dismay for what seemed like an hour, but was merely a millisecond in magic space and twisted time. Teleportation was wearing on the soul, hard on the mind, and worse for the inexperienced or the very old.

Though the spell probably lasted only a minute, it seemed an eternity before the screaming sounds of hurried time and flying space was finished. The darkness that replaced the blinding blue light and the silence that met the aching ears of the travelers was almost as horrible as the spell had been. It was a sudden stop that allowed the inertia of moving spirit to continue while the body no longer moved at all. The head wheeled. The heart beat erratically in the chest. The soul desperately reached out to cling to something familiar.

This is why it was not completely unknown for healthy individuals to drop dead after a teleportation of this magnitude. It was, also, why it was so very important that the Strike Team hold tight to one another's hands. Those hands were the lifeline. No one lost his or herself in the time void as long as their brethren had hold of their hand.

Saemael opened his eyes, though his body demanded to keep them shut. He knew very well that danger could be lurking just on the other side of the darkness shield that had been magically constructed to protect them from prying eyes. The darkness couldn't hold the danger away for long. It simply allowed them a moment's respite to recover from the teleportation sickness.

He forced his labored breathing to slow and using the techniques taught him by ancient masters, he slowed his own heartbeat to a more gentle pace. He did all of this in less than a minute's time and yet, he still felt that it had taken too long. He needed to make it second nature. He chided himself for a second as the veil of darkness fell from around himself and the other Strike Team members.

Nuatha, his new bride and fellow member, blushed for a moment when the darkness dissipated and realized she had been clutching harshly to Saemael's hand like a fearful child. She composed herself quickly and Saemael smiled inwardly for it. Whenever she was most vulnerable was when she was most beautiful to him for it happened so rarely. She was known as an ice maiden for more than just her ability to cast terrifying spells of freezing might.

Saemael looked at the other team members. His eyes had already adjusted to the natural darkness of the valley that surrounded them. He quickly checked his own weapons, instinctively fingered his amulet of magical might that hung about his neck, and ran his hands over the long tail of his white hair that hung down his back. His blue eyes scanned the fourteen other elves of his team as they all followed the same type of routines themselves concerning preparation for battle.

Nuatha reached over and placed a hand on his shoulder. Saemael turned suddenly, realizing his senses were already razor sensitive. He knew he needn't fear her. Her eyes were closed and her dark lips formed silent words of magical might. A cold ache filled his arm where she touched it. The new power coursed down Saemael's arm and into his hand. He smiled again. .

Saemael accepted his lover's power into himself. Nuatha opened her eyes and grinned.

"It will allow you to call forth ice, Saem. Simply reach your hand out and touch the enemy and they will freeze." She whispered the instructions to him and pantomimed the motion.

He groaned and rolled his eyes. "I know that already," he quietly snapped at her, "How many times do we have to do this before you stop telling me that? You act like I'm still new at this...or like I'm an idiot."

She shook her head and turned away from him. He knew he had been unnecessarily harsh, but he knew, also, that she would likely forgive him after the battle was done. He swallowed hard and simply hoped she'd forget. Apologizing was not his strong point. Most would've said that the more "gentle" arts were completely out of his grasp. He accepted that this meant he would not be invited to many parties at court, but he definitely would be leading the armies. That's all that mattered to him most of the time, but when it came to Nuatha, he wished fervently that his tongue could be left in its scabbard as easily as his sword.

Solva Pe'Rial Osmet motioned with one arm for everyone to come forward to where he stood. Saemael moved silently and quickly to join the semicircle in front of Osmet that had formed out of the other members. He noticed that Nuatha did not come to stand next to him and it bothered him only for a second. He had to force her from his mind. He had to force his mind into a place of battle; a place where soft and worried thoughts of his lover could endanger his ability to survive. Nuatha would be doing the same.

Osmet's dark armor did not shine in the night. His eyes were old, though his body was still strong and muscled. His short swords hung at the ready on his slender hips. His hair was kept very short cropped, which was unusual for Lanthian males, and a magical helm covered his head.

With a simple set of signals, Osmet gave them a quick battle formation and marching order. It was nothing new to Saemael. Only Ivben seemed unaccustomed to it which was not surprising considering his young and inexperienced nature. Osmet simply took the young Elf under his own tutelage and decided Ivben would be traveling next to him in line even before they had teleported here. Ivben took it as an insult. Osmet knew this, but considered it a necessity. He, also, knew Ivben would eventually mature enough to realize it had been the best decision. It would likely save many. One inexperienced soldier could inadvertently kill them all.

The first team lifted themselves out of their kneeling stances and began to quietly creep up out of the valley. Saemael waited until the first team had moved about one hundred paces. He then stood and motioned for the rest of his team to do likewise. They did, even though he noticed that Nuatha's eyes were still narrowed at him as she stood. As she moved away, he noticed her expertly scan her sector for enemy. Saemael looked back at his team every ten to fifteen paces as they made their way through the dense jungles. Wordlessly, he communicated with each of them through hand motions, as well as Osmet. Then, Osmet communicated with Sar'Than Valanthian back in Lanthas with a ring of telepathy he wore upon his hand.

They made good time in the cool jungle night despite the sopping wet and extremely thick vegetation and the swarming of infuriating wing infested vermin that tormented their every step in the dark. Lamman Kievan Ghen, the leader of team one, was exceptional at effortlessly navigating through any terrain. The team had teleported into a valley a mere two hours past sunset and started traveling within two minutes to their intended destination. They halted every hour for ten minutes to verify their location, their route and to relay this information to Sar'Than, even though all of this was known. It was standard operating procedure to scry on any official operation that took place in the confines of the dangerous and abyssal jungle of the Emerald Empire.

Five hours of hard marching under load was negligible, but with the physically enhancing magics the team were currently bestowed with, there was no issue of strain or fatigue. The team was just as capable as they were five hours ago. They crested a ridge line and the city of Shera'vien spread out before them. This was where the operation became much more risky.

They began the descent into the rugged valley floor. They knew that their target was in city, and with a fair degree of certainty which building. The issue was that the infernal Ss'Vash's power grew more intense nearer his temples. The entire realm was coterminus with his planar home which made magic extremely difficult within his borders and simple scrying almost impossible. For this reason, only special operations teams and exitus class mages could operate within those lands. Sar'Than was an Exitus class mage and was able to breach the misty veil that surrounded the Emerald Empire from prying eyes, yet even his power was spent uselessly when attempting to scry within several thousand yards of one of Ss'Vash's temples. Rings of telepathy were also affected and for this reason, the team knew that once within the perimeter there could be no emergency teleportation.

The outskirts of the city began to form in their range of sight; the peculiarly arched and faintly luminescent Imperial architecture starkly contrasting with the blackness of the jungle. Saemael saw the first team begin to break into pairs and alternate advancing with pulling security for their opposite number. Halting his members to allow the first team to infiltrate into the city, he signaled for his group to split into their pairs. They did and Nuatha came to his side. Her dark eyes still betrayed her low simmering anger towards him. She had not yet forgotten.

Saemael growled inwardly and rolled his eyes as he had anytime he remembered his hastily spoken stupidity from earlier in the night. He also wondered for the millionth time why he would have insisted that she continue to work with him. Why hadn't he pressured her into retiring for family life? Once again, the answer came to him unbidden. "I love her and because when the going is tough, I know she can take care of herself...and me. Besides, she'd learn to hate me if I took this from her. Nothing thrills her so much as taking an enemy down. Even my love is no match for that,", he thought. Running a hand through his long hair, he forced the thoughts from his mind once more. This was no place for such things. Thoughts of this nature would only distract him from his job and potentially undermine their mission.

The mission. Saemael's face formed into a flat frown. This mission did not meet with his approval, nor Osmet's. The mission objective was simple, assassination. The reasons for the assassination were also simple. The target was responsible for the recent spate of cult activity in the Second Founding, and the Council of Purity would brook no interference in the affairs of the Second Founding. Political destabilization and cultural manipulation required a fine touch and any sort of random factor could wash away decades of work. That was not to be tolerated and so Executor Silesia had spoken, and now it was being done, by Strike Team 144.

First team was stealthily maneuvering along both sides of the road. Like shadows, they glided against soundlessly near walls of the buildings, ducked below windows and peered down alleys. They left no place unscanned. These elite soldiers, magically enhanced and superbly trained, were fast blurry predators, marvelously deadly and hungry for the kill.

They slipped into the city and avoided contact. Their presence would be revealed soon enough. Early discovery would result in death, failure and disgrace; none of which were acceptable to them or the A'Lanthan government. They arrived at their objective, the Temple of Ss'Vash Val'Harish, which meant The Temple of Ss'Vash the Benevolent, in their hated tongue.

Thallis and Khuva, the first team snipers, broke off and began to scale the walls of a building facing the temple. Saemael looked over his left shoulder and made eye contact with Kir and Ayaen, and signaled for his sniper pair to follow suit. They nodded and went off vertically into the night.

Hi all...well here is a small synopsis of my new Steampunk-ish BRP setting...

606 pages w/o artwork

over 60 playable races

11 continents/landmasses with 6 regions and 42 nations

8 explanar/extraterrestrial locations

over 50 NPC's

15 different magic/technological systems

15 organizations

It has high tech, fantasy, Cthulhu Mythos and a lot of culture specific skills. Right now it is being edited for the second time and undergoing it's second playtest. The setting is fine, everyone seems to like it, but the width/breadth of skills seems to give some players pause... there are 173 pages of skills and powers so I might have to cut that down a bit :ohwell:

What follows is a short story that was published previously as a teaser, so see if you like it:

Hope you like it. I can put some more generic stuff up if there is any desire for it...and as always, if I am out of line, let me know and just delete it.

-STS

Greetings Lupercal.

As for opening a thread about my game, it seems a bit of a self promotion, doesn't it??

I guess I can open a thread about it, but if it appears a bit unseemly, feel free to remove it friendly moderator :innocent:

-STS

Not really sure where this goes, so if it needs to move...

In answer to a lack of gamers, I have now added two more acolytes to the BRP goodness. My homebrew game is off to a wonderful start...until they got to skill selection.

It took them over an hour to decide what to play out of the 50 races available, but finally decided on a anthro lion bounty hunter and a snow elf elementalist.

Stats and gear went well enough, but they were a bit put off by the skills (house rules: No base skill for anything, you have to buy everything with INT and EDU points).

The character creation took a longer time than I thought, but I forget that they are only now learning multiplication so I shouldn't be too hard on them when they look at 1550% of skill points and give me the blank eyed stare...

Pre-gen characters from now on, I think.

Characters should be complete tomorrow and play should commence next weekend (4 day, woo hoo!) with the family. So far the group consists of a nymph elementalist mafioso, a lion anthro bounty hunter and a snow elf elementalist...I think I might have a goblin PI as an NPC that travels with the group.

Anyway, just wanted to say that I am doing my part in creating tomorrow's geeks today

-STS

These are books that I want to see in print: I have lots of PDF's and homebrews already.

A GOOD wild west book (no supernaturals...The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) I am in the process of cutting up Spellslinger D20 and Werewolf:Wild West to get something useable.

Aliens Universe (I have the Cyberpunk mod, though and having made changes it is nice to use, but just...ugly)

Star Trek (that lasts for more than a year or doesn't use some weird, hard to convert system)

Resident Evil (if it had a more Mythos flavor and other stuff to fight besides zombies)

Hellboy (the GURPS version is like 45 USD!!)

Hammers Slammers!

*possible threadjacking*

I have (over the past 19 years) converted just about everything to BRP...including everything D20...and mashed them all into a MetaCampaign that I call Deep Black...which now occupies 6 binders with names like "Pulp Fiction: 1920 to 1950", "Dark Ages" and "Near Future", "Sci Fi" and of course "Modern", with the largest one labelled "Fantasy Worlds".

As such, I currently have the following turned into BRP (usually by changing character creation and importing/exporting weapons and gear):

Robotech (all of them, and as soon as Shadow Chronicles shows up...oooh, I can't wait)

RIFTS

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Dungeons and Dragons (2nd Ed and 3rd Ed...along with all the settings: Dark Sun, FR, Greyhawk, Spelljammer :eek: , and OF COURSE Ravenloft which is handy for Call of Cthulhu: Dark Ages!!)

Chill (remember that one?)

Traveller (three versions...)

World of Darkness (about 45 books all told of old WoD, and of course the Dark Ages versions...new WoD is bland and cheap by comparison)

Star Wars (WEG and D20)

Star Trek (FASA Trek, LUG Trek and even Prime Directive!)

Marvel Super Heroes

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Warhammer 40K (Inquisitor and Dark Heresy)

Jovian Chronicles

Stargate

Babylon 5

Farscape

D20 Modern

Renegade Legion

In Nomine

Lord of the Rings

Cyberpunk - 100% pure awesome!

Shadowrun

BattleTech (Classic and the new Dark Ages)

Various GURPS books (Cthulhu Punk, Supers)

Mekton (about 5 books in there)

Species (I totally suck)

plus my home brew steampunk setting...

All of those get put in the same "universe" and allows my games to freely (though rarely, with the exception of Star Wars) travel between them.

Everytime I find something nifty (such as DUNE, which is kicking my butt...still), I just add it in...usually with a bit of timeline tweaking.

The new settings that I am working on (and may eventually make it past the "notes" stage):

CoDominium Universe

Dune

ConSentiency Universe (Jorj X. McKie rocks and so do the Calebans...those are mythos beings if I ever saw one!)

Apocalypse Troll (really it is only 2 characters and an alternate timelines so I am just being lazy)

Converting the entire DCU...but that is hard because so many of the characters just suck.

:focus:

-STS

One where the players face and interact with each other, do not require on-line sources and have one individual who directs the action via rules interpretation.

OK, yeah, that is fading a bit...that stuff needs time, and from what I can see, this generation and the next don't want to "slow down" in the least.

-STS

So, yeah...CT into BRP...I'd like that ALOT. My own forays into big Mecha and BRP usually scare people when they roll out with hundreds of HP and weapons that do thousands of points of damage...

A more...sane...approach would be nice to see. Apparently borrowing from Palladium, adding physics and cooking with BRP gives me 120mm cannons that do 300 damage with HE warheads, and that just doesn't *seem* right, ya know??

So, when it comes out, I'd be more than happy to see it.

-STS

A Robotech campaign set during the Invid invasion

-Matt

With BRP or using a kitbash of Palladium and BRP (they are very similiar...)??

My next game is a steampunk/fantasy/high tech BRP game...starting tonight with the kids and wife, hopefully...of course the kids are going to want to play something other than the 68 races I have :confused:

Why are they so difficult to please??

I'll see how it goes.

On the Robotech idea, I am fairly sure that my son is going to want to play an orc with a VF-1S tonight.

-STS

Thanks everyone for the welcome. This is probably one of the nicest forums I've ever been to...

Welcome bartmoss

As for the game, I am desperately looking for some beta playtesters since most folks I know play D20 :mad: and don't want to learn a "new" game or they are involved in long term games...

The only issue is that I would eventually like to get it published, but failing that, it will be placed under creative commons and able to be freely downloaded. To be honest the only reason that I would like it to be published is to offset the costs of the artwork I want to put in it...I am a big believer in artwork setting the "mood" of the game...

-STS

I agree that it appears that there seems an imminent demise of our hobby...but...

My two children love gaming...though their level of "involvment" is still strictly dungeon crawls and battles...they lack the experience to do heavy role playing that CoC requires, so for now it is dungeon crawls...but they do love it and they will be very happily tossing cash into the gaming monster's gullet for years.

I think the new generation is being "grown" by old gamers plus there is good ol' WoTC creating new gamers with it's vastly popular D&D line, add in WizKidz with HeroClix and of course the massive amount of computer RPG's and MMORPG's...there are more than enough gamers...that isn't even counting the hard corps mini-crowds that old Wahammer/WH40K gamers are making out of their kids, and the thousands of CCG players out there...

So we have plenty of gamers, but instead of just pen and paper gaming, they have a choice of playing CCG's, MMORPG's, miniatures, computer games or table top...

And frankly, all of the other types of gaming take less investment in time, and time is the one thing that nobody has enough of...so while there isn't a lack of gamers, there is a lack of gamers with time, and when given a choice between playing a game that takes a bit of time but still scratches the gaming itch or reorganizing your schedule and the schedule of 1 to 5 other people to play a game...and repeat that schedule fixing on a weekly or bi-monthly basis for months or years...that just isn't going to happen.

There are two forces at work here. One is that there is not enough time. I know lots of gamers...and they all have the same problem, no time to game. I live in a house with 3 other gamers and we still have trouble finding time to just sit and game for 4 hours a week. When faced with school and work, bill paying and errand running, and of course extended absences up to a year...gaming, as much fun as it is, falls to the wayside. It is much worse for other people.

The other force here is divisiveness...I like to call it the false division...between gamers. Gamers are gamers...whether you play Magic, or D20 or BRP or World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIII or Warhammer 40K...all gamers. Each of those focuses on different aspects of gaming, but they all share the same focus...taking the gamer to a different more exciting place/reality as an active participant.

It would be nice if D20 gamers did not see Warhammer40K gamers as the enemy, but rather people who are gamers and play something different and just enjoy being a "geek".

On the subject of PDF's...I love them and I am happy I have a few gigs worth of them, but I like paper...I can sit down with an old CoC supplement for hours and be happy, but staring at some PDF for more than 30 minutes irritates me. I am happy that I have them as opposed to nothing at all, but I do much prefer hardcopy, but that is just me (as a dinosaur) speaking of a preference. My kids are trained to read off computer screens for hours and have no difficulty switching between electronic and hard copy. I am told that is due to the new "easy reading" fonts that are being used, but be that as it may, I still prefer to flip pages.

Just my opinion on a few things.

-STS

Since 3-d space could be be much more efficiently utilized underwater, there might be some sort of layered appearance to interior structures, and if the aliens are travelling horzontally much the time, it might give the visual impression that the city appeared somewhat porous as there could be multiple openings to different areas of dwellings and sections of architecture.

This might have cities "growing" vertically at the same rate as they grow horizontally.

Just a thought.

-STS

Greetings all.

I got here by following links and looking for more stuff to fill my gaming library with. My wife and I are long time gamers. I started off in 1989 with Palladium Books ROBOTECH. My wife and I have three bookshelves and several bookpiles filled with all sorts of gaming goodies (Elric, Chill, Star Wars, CoC and 30+ supplements, 2 ed. D&D, about 50+ D20 books, Traveller, MegaTraveller, and on and on...) but at this point (19 years of gaming) we pretty much only play two systems BRP and D20...everything from all other books is quickly converted to those two systems and that is all that we play (well, that and Magic:the Gathering )

My wife and I write a lot of CoC stuff and are just about finished with a 600+ page steampunk game using BRP...

Anyway, I am hoping that this can be my BRP home...there seem to be few places online that seem to appreciate it... many are far more concerned with making complicated rules than in memorable settings and enjoyable games.

"Rules should be invisible to players, or at least not a constant obstacle"

-STS