>Set after The End War >Other Humans survived The End War like The Hunter, others could have made deals with different Demons (including Vulgrim, Samiel or the Chosen), Angels (like Uriel), or one of the many Old Ones (like Ostegoth or Ulthane), allowing Heroic Human characters. >All the Horsemen appeared during the end war and were accused of starting it early. Stay have since gone on the run to prove their innocence and may have even split up to cover more leads / make harder to track.
The Charred Council are recruiting capable and power warriors from across the realms, Angel, Demon, Old One, Undead. >Hunt down the traitorous Horsemen. >Find this mysterious Destroyer, determine how it was able to turn the Horsemen against the balance and lead the hordes of the Abyss to crush the armies of the White City. >Patrol Earth, stop the depredations of the Demons and unceasing fury of the Angels, find any surviving Humans and protect what's left of the Third kingdom.
List of known realms: >The First Kingdom: Heaven, including the outpost of Lostlight. >The Second Kingdom: Hell, including the outpost Shadow's Edge. >The Third Kingdom: Earth. >The Veil, realm of the Crowfather. >The Abyss, primordial darkness from before creation, home to countless monsters. >The Far Fields, realm of the Horsemaster and Phantom Horses. >The Forge Lands, realm of the Makers and their Constructs. >The Kingdom of the Dead, realm of the Dead Lords who shepherd the deceased to be cleansed of their past lives so that they may return to the Well of Souls, also home to a variety of Undead. (may include Argul's Tomb, but it greatly resembles Crowfather's Veil) >The River Styx, A place existing between the Three Kingdoms, the Styx is a river filled with wrathful souls that became lost rather than making it to the Well of Souls and thus to the Kingdom of the Dead. >The Charred Council's Realm, from this unknown place the Charred Council uphold the balance and send their enforcers to carry out their will.
Dead worlds: >Eden >Kothysos >Ravaiim
Know methods of traversing the worlds: >The Tree of Life/Death (exists in every realm except for earth) >Serpent Holes, can potentially connect to every realm, requires powerful entity to manifest them (Vulgrim, Azrael, Samael, Crowfather, Archon Lucien, The Charred Council)
Carson Watson
Possible characters concepts: >Angel >Demon >Maker >Maker-Construct >Undead >Abyssal Creatures >Human that has somehow survived the Apocalypse >One of the many types of unnamed Old Ones (Crowfather, Ostegoth, Kargon)
Daniel Sanders
...
Samuel Perry
Hi user(s).
I've got a really important deadline coming up for this time next week, so I doubt I'll be able to help out much, but I'd love to still help out if I can. If you've got an email or some other contact address you'd be willing to share here that'd be really helpful, otherwise I guess I'll just hope I can find a thread whenever I can find the time.
Anyway, knocked out another faction and had a go at a slightly more in-depth introductory text.
Faction: NAME: Samael’s Gaolers POWER: 1 (1d6) COHESION: 1 FEATURES: A small, elite group of Demons led by the Phantom General. They are charged with guarding The Scalding Gallow and ensuring that the Demon prince Samael does not escape. PROBLEMS: Samael’s still has a few followers who periodically try to help him escape (1). Entities seeking Samael’s advice, favour, or death occasionally try to free him (1) TROUBLE: 2 INTEREST: The Destroyer’s Kingdom (6), Tiamat’s Demesne (3), Silitha’s Brood (3), Samael’s Host (2) DOMINION: 6
text Since the dawn of time, the armies of Heaven and Hell Have waged an endless war. Drawn to the conflict was the Charred Council, an entity bound by ancient laws to preserve order and balance. It held that any great power, unchecked, threatened the very fabric of the universe. In time, Heaven and Hell came to honour the Council and its laws, for none were beyond the swift and terrible justice of the Council's enforcers - a fearsome brotherhood known as the Four Horsemen.
Amid the turmoil, the first humans emerged. The Council foretold that these weak, but cunning creatures would someday be integral to the Balance. Thus a third kingdom was named - the Kingdom of Man. By order of the Council, a truce was forged between Heaven and Hell. The great pact was bound by Seven Seals, to be broken at the appointed time - when Man's kingdom stood ready for the Endwar - a battle that would bring balance, and determine the ultimate fate of the three kingdoms.
Adam Cooper
But the Third Kingdom was betrayed. The Endwar was begun before the Seven Seals were broken and humanity, still ill-prepared for the Apocalypse, was obliterated. In the ensuing conflict it was Hell that ultimately triumphed over Heaven, some say thanks to the direct intervention of the Horseman War. Now the Earth is the Destroyer’s Kingdom and home to the demons of hell, monstrous creatures of the Abyss, and other, stranger beings. Heaven’s army, the Hellguard, who were exiled from the White City for their part in the Endwar, continue their doomed crusade, hoping that the last of the White City’s shame might die with them. And, in the ruins of the Earth, the last, desperate humans cling to survival on the periphery, knowing that Man will not see out another century.
The Apocalypse touches the realms far beyond earth: The Kingdom of the Dead is overrun by billions of lost souls but suffers under a ruler who cares little for his subjects; The Forge Lands teeter on the brink of destruction, threatened by the engulfing power of the Abyss beyond and unholy Corruption within; and from the Shadows ancient beasts and mad lords emerge to exploit the chaos. At the centre of creation The Charred Council sees all; it still sends forth its most fearsome agents to find those responsible for destroying the Balance and punish them, be they Sons of Man, Lords of Heaven, or the Dregs of Hell. Perhaps the Horseman still stand with them, perhaps they do not. Few would dare ask, even if they knew where to find them...
The first two paragraphs were taken from the opening cinematic of DS1, but the rest was mine. The grammar could probably do with checking over at the very least.
Brody Parker
I'm actually re-formatting the faction entries right now. What would work best to share? Google drive maybe?
Eli Lee
Speaking of, I noticed I messed up the opening text of the Ice word slightly - where it says > More subtle miracles may invoke Ice’s ties to grip of anxiety and despair, clawing at the hearts of others or causing the emotions to spread to others like the spread of hoarfrost.
should read like this. I've capitalised changes
>More subtle miracles may invoke Ice’s ties to THE grip of anxiety and despair, clawing at the hearts of others or causing the emotions to TOUCH others like the spread of hoarfrost.
There's a line break in Engulfing Glacier which shouldn't be there between "tomb of ice" and "and cannot escape"
Really could do with renaming one of the Glacier entries, I hadn't realised I had two of the same. Can't think of an appropriate cold-type word right now, unfortunately.
You might also want to change the name of "Walking In the Air" to "Swimming in the Frozen Sky" so the joke is ever so slightly less obvious.
Jace Watson
Maybe? I'm open to suggestions. If I ever had a google account its been years since I've used it, but it can't be that hard to set up a new one. I think I've got a dropbox as well. I've also got one of those receive-only email things, but that doesn't really help much right now.
The other slight fly in the ointment is that I'm fairly certain we're on different timezones, which might complicate things a little bit.
Adrian Davis
Did the minor text fixes, and changed the the gift names.
Brayden Jenkins
I like cryonic entanglement, the other doesn't quite work for me. It doesn't seem to have the same kind of rhythm that the Gifts for other Words seem to have, if that makes any sort of sense. Plus you've made Aled Jones very sad Never mind!
I'm off to bed now, hopefully the thread will live till tomorrow.
Lucas Butler
Re did the formating, I think it made it easier to read.
Matthew Robinson
Should I count the Ashworms and Silitha's Broodling as Demons or Abyssal Creatures?
Ryder Brooks
Did you guys go through the old Godbound threads on the huge problems this fucking game has?
The ones with the 2hu sperging.
Hunter Lewis
I've looked through some of them, the only thing that stood out was some sperging over gift interactions. Was there more to it than that?
Thomas Turner
Hopefully better?
Carson Perez
Got some demons done.
Daniel Hill
...
Benjamin Clark
Bump.
Luis Rivera
...
Nolan Brown
...
Nicholas Hall
I'm hoping the other user shows up before this thread dies.
Tyler Phillips
Assuming you mean me, I'm about, sort of. Wrestling with my own writing and research and getting very frustrated with it.
I'd say Abyssals. There's a conversation with Uriel in DS2 where she seems to indicate that the The Destroyer's chosen and primary agents are all creatures from the Abyss. That makes some sense given who the Destroyer is, how a lot of the powerful, named Demons fall out with him quite quickly, and how Abyssals all seem bound to obey their summoner (Argul's got a dragon that supposed to be from the Abyss, so its clearly not just a demon thing). If its an Abyssal creature's spawn, or even just a littler version of one, you might as well call it an Abyssal creature.
I personally liked the idea that Demons could be all sorts of horrible shapes and sizes, but DS2 put a lot more detail about things like that out there
I've read some of them when I've found the time, and there's definitely some problems to address. Its not entirely clear whether you can use Gifts and miracles in downtime or whether that sort of thing is rolled into Influence and Dominion (I would assume it's the latter, but I can see it both ways). It does seem a little odd that a mighty Empire and a tiny village don't have that much difference in terms of the number of actions they can do a "turn". There are also clearly some sub-optimal choices if you want to make, say, a properly murderous character. Not quite trap choices, but Might isn't as good as I thought it would be, for instance. To me it does seem as if there are some GMs who allow certain players to get away with far more than might be reasonable, but (a) I wasn't there for those, so that's not fair, and (b) its a sign of weakness in the system that that's possible.
I think its still worth having a go with it for this project, mind you.
Sebastian Myers
That is one of the problems with a rules-lite system. The onus is on the GM to exercise common sense or at least consistent rulings on what is and isn't allowed.
So as for the Abyssal Creatures in The Destroyers employ that would include Silitha and her Broodlings, The Griever and his Spawn, The Stygian and his Ashworms, and Tiamat and her Duskbats. Does this include Straga?
Anthony Murphy
Not sure about Straga. On the one hand, if he's an Abyssal creature it would explain why he's basically half-castle and forms the core of the Black Throne - he was summoned specifically to be an anchoring point for Hell's forces and will be content to sit back and build / occasionally smite. On the other hand, he's on Earth long before the Destroyer becomes, well, the Destroyer, apart from a lack of obvious wings or wing stumps he looks fairly similar to most demons (probably a biped, developed upper body, skull-like face, crown of horns, pointed goaty ears) rather than the more animalistic Chosen, and the Black Throne is mostly inhabited by demons and demon-tainted undead.
Could go either way, really. I'd just call him a "Straga", on the basis that anyone in a position to ask him will be told "I am Straga!" and be splatted. It's only really relevant for Facts, anyway, and so long as he knows exactly what's going on in the Black Throne it should be fine. It might even be an in-setting point of contention.
On a kind-of related point, it did occur to me that one way to deal with the relatively small differences in the number of actions each faction type has is to assume that larger ones are made up of progressively larger minor ones, and they all have Interest in each other. A village has to rely on its 6 or so actions, maybe some more if an ally lends it some of its own as a favour, but an Empire can tell its own cities, cults, villages and religious denominations to do things in its name with their Interest points AND the composite factions can give their Interest to the Boss one if they're not using it that turn. It seems quite logical, although I'm not sure if that's spelled out obviously in the text.
Charles Campbell
Oh, and supposedly the Griever's bugs are heavily mutated insects like locusts, like animal equivalents to the Wicked. There was concept art for other mutant animals too, like crows and snakes. I don't see why we can't just call Grieverspawn a type of Abyssal though, for consistency if nothing else.
Cameron Cruz
Really the only reason I need to differentiate between demons and abyssals is for special effects that rely on creature type. Like the talent my human survivor has.
