The Empty City

[Kyeudo]

I'm thinking of crossing the Castle Heterodyne with Guilty Spark 343 if my players ever end up poking around Densandsor. Nothing to drive you crazy like a schizophrenic city with an annoying personality and a tendancy to overreact and interpret directives creatively.

 

[cyl]

I mentioned constant looters camps, not constant looters.


IIRC in the 1e setting the city was surrounded was scavenger lords camps using mortals to loot the city, problem being the curse.


But maybe it was my own setting (but I can't imagine it being otherwise... a city full of treasures, it attracts the powerful and greedy... even with a curse)...

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Despite the curse, you must understand that the Guild and the nation the city lies within have economies based on raping that city of all that it is worth. The suburbs are picked clean, sure they PCs can go in, but they'll meet some interesting folks heading inward even with the curse. People will do some weird shit in those few hours they do have to be inside.

 

[RedMantis]

Man, Denandsor has been tempting my Night caste for a couple of years in game. I've just been too busy with the large plotlines the ST has been throwing at us.


However, I think I've finally got my in, the Twilight is tired of spending all his time in our volcano forge and the other twilight is tired of wandering out into the Wyld for stuff. They've been working on a plan for a Factory cathedral for awhile and it'd be so much easier if we could just move into one.


Luckily my bureaucratic skill will be able to keep the Guild, Lookshy, and most of the locals at bay long enough for us to take control of the city. We're politically allied with them and the other Confederates so it's not going to be hard to convince them that we're the best choice for taking care of the city and deciding how to share it's wealth.


I have been avoiding reading sections of the books that my character wouldn't know to limit subconscious metagaming. But I swear, if he robs us of another 5 dot manse like he did in Mahalanka I'm going to be pissed. We've needed one more 5-dot hearthstone to complete an artifact and we haven't been able to get one for TEN YEARS IN GAME. His dodges are really pissing me off.

 

[Ker'ion]

What Artifact is it that you were trying to get running?


That sounds pretty 'interesting'.

 

[RedMantis]

What Artifact is it that you were trying to get running?
That sounds pretty 'interesting'.

It's a flying pagoda. I can't remember what the book reference is for the thing. It's about 15 stories tall, has a ring of essence cannons, 2 hangars for smaller flying craft (it had a working celestial rickshaw on board when we found it), and flies REALLY friggin fast (he admits that he shouldn't have made it so fast). It's a truly N/A level artifact and took us a few years in game to get working at anything near full power. We were very lucky that one of our players enjoys being the mechanic type of character in pretty much any game.


Basically we have to put in 5 5-dot hearth stones to make the thing run at %100 efficiency. It had one stone in it when we found it, and 2 dead stones. We put some lower level stones in at first to get the systems running and figure out what to repair, then when we had 2 5-dot stones (and 3 lesser stones) we managed to get airborne. We had a 5th 5-dot stone but it was an Abyssal manse, due to a side story we destroyed that manse because its existence was not worth the power.


Anyway, He's really stingy when it comes to getting ahold of manses. I know that 4 and 5 dot manses are rare and almost all taken by powerful people but we should have been able to find one SOMEWHERE in creation after 10 years of flying around. It's not like we don't have powerful sorcerers that can see them. He insists that the sorcerers should just spend the time and energy making a new manse instead of just taking an existing one.


It's a sore spot for me.

 

[FluffySquirrel]

All that effort for a house that flies?


They're alright.. .. but.. they're not -that- great.. it's the equivalent of a luxury yacht, expensive, nice looking.. not very useful


Also, I hate to see what the five metal shrike is powered by in his game ^^ Must be plugged into the imperial grid

 

[Ker'ion]

A typical Flying Pagoda (Wonders of the Lost Age, Pp. 45) is only level 5, moves at 40mph, is 20 yards by 15 yards by two stores tall, floats about 3 yards up, uses Essence Accumulators to run, holds six in luxury (with room for a servant for each and an extra room for the Pagoda's steward), is designed with no weapons and is basically a First Age Motor Home.


So, a bigger, faster version with turrets and a flight deck seems to be a fairly good setup for a Legendary Artifact. Though I'd prefer a true flight deck to the two hangars setup.


It's probably around a level 6 IMO, due to the restriction of the Hearthstones which are specifically against the original design due to them being made as a way to gain true mobility without the worry of losing power due to Manse theft. If the Essence Cannons are actually a built in part of the Pagoda (unable to be removed from the ship, like the Glorious Dragonfly-Class Patrol Boat) then it could be a level 7. This only really matters in games where the Legendary Artifact Merit is in play, as you need to keep the approximate power levels of the N/A Artifacts should be balanced out to keep things relatively even (my games require that all N/A Artifacts be level 7).

 

[Requiem of Forgotten Lore]

...basically a First Age Motor Home.

So you're saying it's the First Age version of living in a van down by the river?

 

[Ker'ion]

...basically a First Age Motor Home.

So you're saying it's the First Age version of living in a van down by the river?

Yes. It's slumming for Solars.

 

[RedMantis]

The reason I say "N/A" is that for most of this game there was no access or information on level 6 and 7 artifacts. It's not like the pagoda is in the background section of the Dawn caste's character sheet. It's more of a gigantic plot device.


As a place to live it's not glorious, no. It's got crew quarters not luxury suites. Pretty spartan. There was debris and remains (armor and weapons) that led us to deduce it was crashed and buried during the Usurpation. The Storyteller made it sound like there was hundreds of these things flying around in the First Age so we couldn't find any record of it in ancient texts. Even the animating intelligence on board couldn't tell us, then again she couldn't really animate anything either. She is really just a holographic Majell Barett for the ST to talk through. Though it was pretty neat the first few sessions when we thought she was a ghost, the single working hearthstone and damaged systems kept shorting out the projection system that made her visible.


We checked for records of it because according to the documentation there's a major component missing. The pagoda is named the "Hammer of Dawn" and we are supposed to have the "Anvil of Noon's Fury" on board but even the Twilights haven't figured out what that even DOES yet. There's more to this thing than we know about but he's NEVER given us any clues no matter how well we've rolled in our investigations.


Oh, and when I say it has two hangers, I mean that two whole levels of the fortress are hangars with openings on the North and South sides for each. Those levels are bout 50 feet tall so many vehicles could fly straight through if we opened the doors on both sides. Like the hangars on the Deathstar. They make it very easy for us to load up loot and deploy our troops (flying, flamepiece-wielding bugrom a la Craft Genesis). At this point one is a cargo bay and the other is for the troops and vessels to launch from.

 

[Requiem of Forgotten Lore]

The pagoda is named the "Hammer of Dawn"...

:shock: So the pagoda is a weapon satellite in Gears of War? That's awesome!
Seriously though thanks for the idea. I've been trying work on different ideas where the player is playing a character in (roughly) the present where he keeps having long flashbacks with savant - unfortunately he they almost always come out of it, dazed and confused, right into a hairy firefight; which are being fought for many reasons but one is the old "relics" (aka artifacts that can win wars). Basically the gods "fell asleep" and are now slowly starting to wake up and people are starting to Exalt again (amongst a slew of everything else) in the midst of this huge war. Basically the game splits between two storylines (past and present) and everything they do in the past exaltation affects the present.


It's been a slow and somewhat daunting task, so you have no idea how much that idea has just helped me.


Thanks RedMantis! :mrgreen:

 

[RedMantis]

The pagoda is named the "Hammer of Dawn"...

:shock: So the pagoda is a weapon satellite in Gears of War? That's awesome!
................


Thanks RedMantis! :mrgreen:

:shock:


*blink blink*


You're welcome!


...what'd I say....?


My ST has always admitted that he's very bad at coming up with unique names so we let things like that slide. Almost every character he's played in a modern game is named after some friend of his from high school or a coworker.


On a somewhat on topic note, I'm going to make a presentation in my game tonight to sell the other player on going to Denandsor. Luckily I'll be able to use a ton of ways to get information on the city in game so that I can read up on the basics in the book. In addition to my spy network (contacts 5 established literally everywhere in creation and a little in Yu-Shan), we have strong ties to the Guild and local kingdoms, I have a shiny new Ranging Eye of the Dragonfly (4 dot remote viewing artifact with very long range), and a hearth stone that lets us get a sort of top-down, google map effect on a 200 mile radius and can zoom in to show us and area about 15ft wide. With this we should be able to park about a half mile from the city and do a lot of intel gathering before we make our move and head inside. It also helps that we've been needing to stop by our manse in that kingdom for awhile.


I have a good feeling about this.


EDIT: MY STORYTELLER IS A DICK!


We made it through the city and got into the palace and resisted the effects of the Miasma long enough to destroy the generation device (mmmm... Crucible of Tarim distilled Adamant Circle Counter Magic) and we find that, Oh the 5 dot manse?


They turned that into a power center for a unified Guardian control system so you don't get a hearthstone. :evil: I hate that fucker so much. :evil:


It's a small consolation that I can annoy him by insisting our scarab Lunar is King of the South every time I refer to him.