IK Game background (will post updates later as needed)

Okay before I post too much on the IK game, I want to get a brief background post out of the way, building the backstory. First off our cast (apologies for anybody whose name I didn't spell correctly):

Prelate Sebastian Redgrave - A battle chaplain of Morrow who is known for being a very capable witch hunter. When he was 5 years old, his family was killed and his house burned by necrotechs. He barely escaped, and through sheer luck found his way to a nearby temple where the church of Morrow nursed him back to health and raised him as a ward for the next five years, when he entered into the priesthood in order to help others avoid the same fate he suffered. He has spent his entire life seeking out and destroying necromancers, witches, infernalists and undead. He is a stubborn optimist, but staring into the shadows for so long has had an effect on him, and he is more quick to overstep some of the bounds of his office, even to kill, when he thinks it will protect others.

Sonja - Former bodyguard of the king, Sonja carries with her a past that forced her to retire early. She is trying to get back to Lhael, where she is a noble, in order to find her family and save them from the Khardic occupation.

Bork - Gobber thief, currently being held in Cygnar's prision block.

Alyssa - Iosian Wizardress, fleeing her country from the Retribution of Scyrah, who are trying to kill all wizards. She is currently hiding in Cygnar and petitioning the Fraternal Order of Wizardry for an audience.

Aleksia Ilyanova - Aleksia was the daughter of a Khardic immigrant to Cygnar who ran a carpentry shop. Three years ago she was orphaned by a fire that killed her father and burned her right arm beyond saving. Inexplicably, two precepts of Cyriss helped her survive her injuries, even replacing her arm with a mechanikal replacement, and then turning her over to a friend of her father's until she was back on her feet. Her interest in mechanika grew, and by the time she was 17, she had become a true marvel at her work. She reopened her father's shop as an Arcane Mechanik and repair shop. After two years of work, she just received her membership in the Steam and Iron Worker's Union, and license to play her trade anywhere their business is accepted.

(Name to be gotten later) Ogrin Mercenary who has worked his way up through various merc groups in Cygnar in the hopes of being a professional soldier second to none.

Calys Menellyth - A Nyss druid who wandered too far away from home in his youth, he was taken by a Cryx slaver party and brought to Cryx to be turned into a Thrall. He had almost reached the city when the party was attacked and he was rescued by a Blackclad and his apprentice who had sensed his power. The price for his life was to learn from him, and he formed a frienship wtih him and his apprentice, a human girl not too far from her primal change. Four years passed with them and he returned home, the only Nyss ever to be inducted into their order, and rejoined his Shard. He has since defended the northern wastes from all who would attempt to do more than just survive there, and travelled the world, occasionally visiting his friend in her own travels. Currently he is en route to Caspia, after his shard was attacked and destroyed by the famous Caspian mercenary commander Garrick Carrde, who also took his claymore and one of the boys of his shard hostage.


Sebastian was ordered by church superiors into the Protectorate of Menoth in order to track down a secret complex they have been taking captured Arcane Mechaniks to in order to force them to serve as slave labor working on something. A previous mission sent by the church failed, and they hoped to avoid any infiltration by using non-church members for this mission. Sebastian was given a list of a group of people who were specialists in their field and desperate enough to do anything for a price. Sebastian gathered them all, promising something to everyone involved. Unfortunately they were already being followed, as protectorate assassins attempted to kill them all at different points and ended up framing Aleksia for the murder of her assistant and they were forced into helping Calys rescue the boy from Carrde's complex, which turned out to be a trap for them.

A post? SURELY NOT!

My level of anger with the world has finally risen to the point where I feel compelled to write again. It amazes me how when I'm generally feeling okay with myself and the world around me that I don't feel the need to put my feelings of goodwill into print.

Do my opinions only really matter to me when I'm cheezed off enough to shake off the apathy and express them? If so, bless my wife and my workplace for giving me the creative juices I need to keep writing. :-)

Okay, a few general subjects here today, then I'm going to post another bit of writing I did the other day...an extremely detailed description of our Iron Kingdoms gaming session I wrote in a series of emails to Ryan/Alabrax. I'll warn you now it's fairly long.

*sigh* I adore coming back to my blog after a month(s) long hiatus only to find a million spam posts waiting for me. Wow. Thanks for all the great comments that have nothing to do with my blog and everything to do with voodoo love spells. I believe Shepherd Book mentioned something about a special level of hell reserved for people that talk in movie theatres? Well you're probably not going there but still....

Actually kudos on it having something to do with my posts. At least a bit more effort is being put into this spam than the general level of email spam I delete droves of every day. All the same, I'd appreciate Blogspot coming up with something to mass delete and still allow comments.

Last month I renewed my World of Warcraft subscription and reentered the world of Azeroth. I can't believe how much I missed it! I'm still in honeymoon mode about it all. I get on and am just smiling for an hour until I need to head to bed. Quests that seemed too much to bother with are now being finished with renewed vigor as I tear through Arathi, Duskwood or Mulgore, depending on what character I'm on at the time. I've also branched out onto another server and another faction, making up an undead Rogue and a Tauren Shaman. Turns out, the Horde isn't so bad. There's certainly more elbow room....

Now you'd think I'd be a smart little boy and cancel my City of Heroes subscription? Well nooooo. Instead I decided to go out and buy City of Villains (and the associated 1 month of service)! I have since made up a brute named Demonblight on the Champion server (once again going with the philosophy of good guys on one server, bad guys on another) and a bunch of us Soulbound guildies have decided to form a villain supergroup there. Thus far I've been dividing my time pretty evenly between WoW and CoV. The ironic part? Thus far I have Grathik (my Tauren Shammy) to level 10. Demonblight? 3.

Speaking of Soulbound, I recently helped give the site a redesign along with Ryan and the admin, Tonelock. It's not anywhere close to what anybody wants it to be yet, but take a look if you're interested. It's certainly the first time I've ever worked on a PHP site in any form, though I'll admit other than initial research all I did was create and design the graphics for it. Still, I like how it looks a lot more than it was...an opinion I think is universal across the guild.

In pen & paper RPG news, we've been damnably busy. Aaron and I finished playtesting Jerry's latest book in the Godsend Agenda series, and Jerry said he'd be good enough to send us each a copy of it for our troubles as well as get our names into the front cover. We're waiting for the Earthdawn Classic book to come out with rabid fervor (well my fervor is rabid). Earthdawn is the dream game for me to playtest, and having my name in the book in any form is an honor the likes of which I cannot convey.

Beyond this, we've been looking at a slew of new games, and playing a few of them. I'll give you the two-penny reviews:

• Zir'an (which Aaron has some upcoming artwork in). Are you a fellow Final Fantasy Freak? Ticked like me that they have not put out a game for it yet? Here is the closest thing you're gonna get. They have PICTURES OF FRIGGIN' CHOCOBOS in the book! I could stand for there to be a bit more detail in the history beyond "there is a large and varied history in this world", but the Fane rock, the technology is interesting, and the system, while upon first glance seeming to be a bit bland, is actually quite quirky. Now I don't know that much about the system's ins and outs yet, but I cannot conceive of why these guys didn't go with d20!
  
  Oh yeah, one note of warning on this. While RPG.net is exploding with good comments and reviews of Zir'An, it may be a dead game soon. White Wolf, in their perpetual bottom line watching, has decided Zir'An was not making them enough money, so they cut the funding for it. I know Chris and some of the guys up there are shopping it around, but haven't come up with much yet. Good luck guys. We hardly knew ye.
  
• World of Warcraft RPG. Okay that should fall into the realm of "'nuff said", but in case I need to say it.... If you play D&D, if you play WoW or are interested in it, at least give it a looksee at the local FLGS. If you don't play WoW, still give it a look. Too many people forget that there is a years-long series of video games that came before WoW. You might be surprised at just how detailed this video game's world histroy is.
  
• Serenity RPG. *sigh* If I was independently wealthy, I swear I'd give a monthly stipend to Joss Whedon for continuing to do something with this series. Friends, this is Babylon 5 all over again. It's the show everybody saw in the beginning and hated, and a few of us kept watching (this is not a self compliment....I admit I'm an idiot) and realized this show was freaking awesome. It had the humor, character development and dialogue of Buffy/Angel, and the dreaded "old west" elements of the show really didn't hurt it like people seemed to think it would. Okay...rant over.
  
  The game itself, being released by Margaret Weiss's production company (dammit Eden...why the hell didn't you take this and incorporate it into Unisystem with Buffy??) has been long awaited in our circles. I wont' kid you...Serenity is a small book. It's a small book and it's not an existing system, so it's got to cover its own rules set in that low page count. That being said, it's a fun game. The text is funny, easy to read, and the rules cover a LOT of stuff in the show and movie. Things such as Kaylie's ability to "talk" to Serenity are there. Rules for ships include abilities you can buy that will make your ship perform better if you love it like a member of your family. This game captures the show very well, and while I would have liked to have seen more examples of ships and other setting elements, I think first and foremost you need to capture the setting in a game, which the Serenity RPG has done quite well.
  
• Iron Kingdoms. Someone finally got Steampunk right. This is put out by Privateer Press and is based upon their miniature game called War Machine. The Iron Kingdoms are a gritty fantasy setting (much lower tech than Zir'An) where everything runs off steam power, most of the world isn't explored yet, and political rumblings abound. There is a lot I can say about this game....but as far as the setting, people are always dirty and usually scarred. Everybody smokes and everybody wears dirty goggles and has leathery longcoat armor. Everybody's kind of pissed off. It's absolutely great!!! And most importantly they don't cross the one major point of fantasy Steampunk that I consider crucial.
  
  They don't take magic out of the equation.
  
  Mechanika (magitech machines) actually require magic to work. The engines collect magic energy and channel it into etched runeplates that function like renewable scrolls and give a magical effect over and over again. The good guys are as often anti-heroes as they are GOOD guys, and the bad guys are reeeeeeeaaaaly bad. Pure magic is looked upon with suspicion, the gods put heavy restrictions on their clergy's spells, the druids are pissed off at everybody and sorcerers are killed on sight as often as not. Humans have racial bonuses depending on their area of origin, the elves are screwed on a level unheard of thus far, Ogres, trolls and goblins replace gnomes and halflings as additional races....
  
  What else can I say? This setting rocks. As I mentioned above, we played it for our Halloween game this last Saturday and my transcript of the game will follow.

Not much else going on. Been following the Jack Thompson debacle with interest, going almost daily over to Penny Arcade for their latest scoop. I gotta say I was impressed by Tycho and Gabe for donating $10,000 to charity in Jack's name when he revealed his entire statement was a joke. I aspire to that level of class someday. Ironic that fart and poop jokes so often accompany it. :-)

Gotta head or I'll never get to posting about our IK storylines. Laters.