Craft Genesis war machines.

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

We all know the fun we can get with Necro- and Magitech. What about shit that's grown? Can anyone help me think up some heavy hitting races bred by a mad Solar with way too much Craft: Genesis and too much time to kill? I'm talking races. Hell, add in unique toys if you wish. I've already got an organic fleet on the mind for air and water. Plus your typical human super soldiers. But I need bigger and better.

 

[Persell]

Just top of my head, and it's early, so go easy on me.


Earth: Crystallines, the end result of trying to introduce crystal-like features into human beings, be it for war purposes (increased armor/hardness) or sheer beauty (because who wouldn't like having gorgeous servants with precious stones and shimmering crystals growing naturally along their bodies?).


Wood: Different breeds of treants, a la Warcraft III's ancients.  Depending on what type of ancient they are, they have different roles: training aerial assault units, training ground troops, training general workers, as living quarters, border guards, lorekeepers, etc.  They can also be corrupted and twisted by wild magic or demonic energies. Might be Warcraft, but certainly sounds viable for Exalted to me.


Fire: Lava dragons (a refinement of river dragons enabling them to live in lava flows and volcanoes)

 

[Jukashi]

If you wanted to go for somethin more alien-ey, why not a race of ferocious crab-people? Chitinous armor, huge claws, breathe underwater. If you wanted to mix and match a little, you could even give them an ant-like society, with small worker-types who help build fortifications and trenches and so forth.

 

[Haku1]

Take a look at the Guyver manga or anime and not the Live Action crap.


Think mutations that are available to you and what a solar with hax-level skills in bio-genesis could do...


Heavy armour is available as a mutation, along side built-in ranged attacks (think bio-lasers from the Dragon's Breath mutation or a customer mutation to get a bio-missile barrage). Flight is possessible as is aquatic races.


Heck, I had mer-people that were bio-engineered in one of my games. Granted, they weren't designed for war... but you get the idea.


But those are soldier types from human templates.


No... what a Solar whose mad with power, he'd get flying whales that can do energy attacks and are armour plated like no one's business. He'd get Godzilla, a giant tyrant lizard with thermo-nuclear breath, super-thick hide, massive regeneration, and supersized.


Think Giant Monsters from the various japanese movies... yeah.

 

[Chaka]

I want a biological warstrider.

 

[Sherwood]

When looking at the vegitative creations of the Dragon Kings, I would be very surprised if one could not find a Warstrider that incorporated their crystal and plant materials.  Bolt throwers that make their own ammo, vine whips, Essence Blasts, et cetera.

 

[Flagg]

Like this?

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Take a look at the Guyver manga or anime and not the Live Action crap.
Think mutations that are available to you and what a solar with hax-level skills in bio-genesis could do...


Heavy armour is available as a mutation, along side built-in ranged attacks (think bio-lasers from the Dragon's Breath mutation or a customer mutation to get a bio-missile barrage). Flight is possessible as is aquatic races.


Heck, I had mer-people that were bio-engineered in one of my games. Granted, they weren't designed for war... but you get the idea.


But those are soldier types from human templates.


No... what a Solar whose mad with power, he'd get flying whales that can do energy attacks and are armour plated like no one's business. He'd get Godzilla, a giant tyrant lizard with thermo-nuclear breath, super-thick hide, massive regeneration, and supersized.


Think Giant Monsters from the various japanese movies... yeah.

Eh, Godzilla can blow me. Good idea nonetheless, just not a great fan of the films. Knee-jerk reaction. I'm thinking the flying whales wouldn't be too bad, kind of a fuck you to the northern Fae and their own flying whales. And as for living warstriders, technically, the Abyssals have those. At least in First Ed when they could be possessed by highly trained Nemessaries.


Good ideas all around.

 

[Jukashi]

When looking at the vegitative creations of the Dragon Kings, I would be very surprised if one could not find a Warstrider that incorporated their crystal and plant materials.  Bolt throwers that make their own ammo, vine whips, Essence Blasts, et cetera.

*cough, cough*

Eh' date=' Godzilla can blow me.[/quote']
Personally, now, just me, but I wouldn't give my permission for that.

 

[Quchu]

I don't know why but I think a Solar genegineered bioweapon should be a plague. A plague with a patch of the Wyld woven into it, inflicting terrible mutations on those who oppose the Solar (or the hapless innocent mortals who are ruled by them.) The disease melts and lacerates the victim's bodies, causing blood and innard to pour out of their bodies within a few hours after contact... But because of its nature, the plague sooner or later loses its biological structural integrity and collapses upon itself, mostly a few hours after an entire city is killed off.


Or some kind of retrovirus. A plague that turns everyone into cows would be amusing.

 

[Decurion]

Eh' date=' Godzilla can blow me.[/quote']
Personally, now, just me, but I wouldn't give my permission for that.

Bad touch!  Bad touch!

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Cads!

 

[Sherwood]

Yes, of course.  I remember now seeing some entrys on Lore 5 for the DK's of crystal and plant tech that Jukashi submitted, including the WS.  I've mentioned this before, but I feel that the DK's are a sorely underused resource that White Wolf has shoved to the back of the closet.  I would like to see more stuff about them, their history, culture, motivations, technology, the whole nine yards.

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Book of Fallen Races is for you then. And me. I want it!

 

[Nightmare of Fallen Kings]

I had semi-developed but never finished fleshing out a race of creatures for just this sort of thing. Basically, what I had come up with is that a reclusive Solar set about trying to create the "perfect" life-form on a remote island in the far south-west. The creatures were a resounding success, beautiful (at least in his eyes), intelligent and completely self sufficient, they viewed their creator as a god and he spent the remainder of his life on the island with them, dying of old age shortly before the Usurpation of the Solar Deliberative. Neither the Dragon Blooded nor the Solars were aware of this Solar hermit and his work so the Usurpation never came to the remote, tropical island.


Basically what he had created was an entirely new race of sentient life. The creatures ( I still haven't come up with a name for them) resemble a cross between a salamander, a human, and a centipede. It's skin is a thick, slimy gray membrane similar to that of a salamander underneath which lies a system of small, bioluminescent organs that run throughout the creature's body in the same way that nerve endings run throughout ours. The upper body is humanoid, with two sets of arms, the topmost pair being powerfully built and ending in hands bearing  four powerful digits (the two outermost being opposable) that end in exceptionally hard hooked talons. The lower pair of arms are almost vestigial, like that of a tyrant lizard, but end in a pair of slender, dexterous, human-like hands, each with 4 normal and 1 opposable digit, though the fingers posses an extra joint than those found in humans. The creature's head is shaped like that of a salamander save for that it lacks an apparent mouth, and that it bears 2 sets of eyes, a bulbous luminescent pair where a salamander's eyes would rightly be, and a second, smaller but no less brightly glowing pair slightly below and in front of the large pair. The lower body curves into a long, thick thorax which bears 4 pairs of legs, each ending in gecko-like padded feet.


The creatures don't communicate by sound , but by sight. The bioluminescent organs beneath their skin can produce lights of nearly any color and in varying brightnesses. The resulting cascade of colored lights that courses over their bodies is actually their language and only means of expressing themselves. The creatures have no apparent mouths because they feed on ambient essence, and thus are drawn to potent sources of essence to feed. The island itself is home to the Labratory-Manse of the first age solar, and 2 additional naturally occurring, uncapped demanses. One of the demanses lies in a large lake near the center of the island, the other is located in the series of volcanic caverns beneath the island. The creatures (being amphibious) live both in the lake, and in the tunnels beneath the island, drawing in the ambient essence as nourishment.


Due to their reliance on essence as a source of sustenance, the creatures have the ability to exert that essence in a few possible ways:


-  By channeling their essence reserves through the large, specialized    photocells in the palms of their large hands, the creatures can expel concentrated bursts of light and essence capable of searing flesh and, if used repeatedly, even melting stone. The Creatures use this weapon, coupled with their powerful upper claws as their main form of defense.


- The creatures can also expel a large burst of essence through the bioluminescent organs throughout their bodies, resulting in a shockwave of essence and a blinding flash of light. This shockwave is used to blind and stun attackers so the creatures can make an expeditious retreat.


Either form of essence defense draws upon the creature's natural essence reserves, which means that the longer a fight goes on, the more the creature literally starves itself as it expends its essence reserves trying to protect itself.


This race has been living by themselves since the death of their creator pre-Usurpation, with no contact with humanity or Exalts. The creatures could react any number of ways to the arrival of a group of characters, depending on the character's reaction to them. The creatures are generally peaceful, but are as intelligent as humans and will fight to the death to defend their homes and families if they are threatened.


As I said, I've yet to flesh these critters out as far as numbers on a character sheet. I've only fleshed out what they are and where they came from so far. Feel free to use them if you like, or to use them as a basis for something of your own design. At some point Ill probably try to draw them, but I haven't been so-inspired as of yet ;;

 

[magnificentmomo]

That is a neat race, would they be rating 5 or N/A in your opinion?


Also looking at the Genesis portion of WotFA all of the examples have different backgrounds listed. Lodestar is Followers, while Beasts of Resplendent Liquid are resources. Some make sense, like Builder Bugs being Artifact because you attune to them and they directly rely on your control, but why Lodestar being Follower instead of Ally is beyond me.


I wish the Genesis rules, and artifact rules in general, were a little more layed out like Necrotech, instead of being so nebulous.

 

[Nightmare of Fallen Kings]

They'd probably be categorized under either followers, or cult, depending on how you got them to follow you. The problem is that unlike Loadstar, these things don't have a directive programed into them to follow solars, so recruiting them would be no different than recruiting any other sentient being, assuming you could figure out a way to communicate with them of course  

 

[magnificentmomo]

The mechanics for and descriptions of the process of Craft: Genesis are nebulous and vague. I would really love to have a Genesis Crafting PC, but the process escapes me. What existing charms and spells are useful for this craft? Which ones would you make? I wish the rules were similar to Necrotech, well laid out and versatile.

 

[Persell]

Some make sense, like Builder Bugs being Artifact because you attune to them and they directly rely on your control, but why Lodestar being Follower instead of Ally is beyond me.

Then you didn't read the entire entry.  p126, right hand column, about halfway down:  "As a testament to the arrogance of its creator, Lodestar has no imperative beyond its conditioning.  It truly lives and loves the serve and cannot conceive of independent existence."  Not good Ally material, if you ask me.

 

[magnificentmomo]

I know, I went back and reread the entire Crafting Life section, there is a paragraph at the start explaining those listings  ops:


I still can't find a way to make Genesis as viable as Magitech or Necrotech. Especially if the dot ratings are so incongruous. E.G. the Minion of Deadly Touch on page 106 of WotFA is only rating 3, while a comparable Genesis construct would easily be 4 or 5.

 

[Persell]

I still can't find a way to make Genesis as viable as Magitech or Necrotech. Especially if the dot ratings are so incongruous. E.G. the Minion of Deadly Touch on page 106 of WotFA is only rating 3, while a comparable Genesis construct would easily be 4 or 5.

Have you taken into account the fact that most of the time, lifeforms created from Craft: Genesis (as long as they're not uniquely singular forms like Lodestar) breed true, and thus don't need an assembly line to make more of them?  That would make it pretty viable to me.  Self-repair, self-perpetuation, self-sufficient, as opposed to needing teams of sorcerer-savants to keep them repaired, fuelled and in production.

 

[magnificentmomo]

I did take that into consideration. In the rules for Craft Genesis it says increase whatever artifact level it should be by one if it can breed true and doesn't need any upkeep. So what is a Magitech craft consciousness artifact three would most definitely be Genesis 5 as per the described rating levels for Genesis.


I am still missing a step or two in the actual actions involved in making Genesis crafts. Is it just breeding? Some sort of magic gene therapy? Is it mixing a bunch of funky stuff in a pot and giving it the spark of life? To just up and make a machine is an easily understandable process, but making these creatures eludes me. I really wish the example creatures descriptions included what the crafter did to make them beyond just "First Age Solars made it". I know in the section on the super duper craft Genesis factory cathedral analogs it talks about the Frankensteiny laboratories, but I am still falling just under the mark for fully grasping the entire process.

 

[Haku1]

I think it's however YOU want it to be.


Myself? I see giant tanks that look like vials or tubes filled with bubbling liquids. Suspended in the liquid are the unnatural results of gene-engineering and grown from a single cell that were engineered.


Of course, you could always have spells involved. With cross-species mating under the influence of spells and craft charms.


That is assuming you don't simply use charms and spells to outright warp a normal creature into a monstrosity that is mated with another abomination to birth the desired result. (assuming no elemental, or demons were involved in this process)


In short, think creatively. The primordials know the Solars did.

 

[Persell]

Twilights were the undisputed masters of genengineering in the First Age.  They're also the ones with the Charms and spells designed to give them protection, outright immunity and partial control over the Wyld.   On top of laboratories with gene banks and growth tanks and artificial insemination rooms, they could have a field generated by Wyld engines to help when they don't want to brew something from scratch: cross-breeding a cougar and a mammoth, for instance.

 

[magnificentmomo]

Now mechanically, would it work just like making a regular artifact? Once you obtain the necessary components you make your craft rolls? It just seems like a facet of Craft that hasn't gotten much love.