[Sorcerers] Angels of the Abyss: Sorcerer and Space Opera

[Erik Weissengruber]

I meant "keep the whole ensemble from collapsing"

[Please, Ron, edit out "keep the whole ensemble from working".]

[Erik Weissengruber]

Only had 2 players to run some of my ideas by.

Humanity Checks:

General was a a mass public spectacle celebrating the New Year. He was participating like everyone else, except he was standing near a striking diplomat and the two were trying to catch the Emperor's eye. Normally that wouldn't be a Humanity gain roll. But because a little crystaline/insectile alien was there under the protection of the diplomat, a check was made because Faith in the system was displayed to an outsider. That the General was conniving to get close to the Imperial presence didn't matter. The act cemented a kind of social order and the internal state of the actor did not impede the social significance of the act.

The sheer oddness of the situation made me aware of how deeply wedded I am to notions of authenticity and self-expression.

I like how the game makes you explore Humanity in a way that doesn't boil down to being "humane" or "a good egg." I suppose running Day of the Dupes might convey a similar experience.

The Pontifex had a choice between Humanity gain or loss. "Loss" is threatened when established rituals are profaned or discredited or disparaged. "Gain" comes from instituting a public ritual that could cement a new kind of faith. One of the Arkhans -- the guiding intelligences of the huge Arks that carry humanity through the Void, had manifested itself at a meeting between two sorcerers. A Pontifex's duty is to ensure that only those in the right internal and external state enter or exit the Eternal City. Arkhans NEVER bring ancient relics into the City or share them with ordinary humans. Except this one. The player was offered the choice of conducting a private or public performance of the new ritual that would allow the Arkhan to cross over in a way none had ever done before. The player chose public, and a crowd of people were present at what might be the advent of a new relationship between humanity and the Arkhans. That made is a humanity gain check.

New attention to demon possibilities: demons can do what they want! They are not sluggish zombies waiting for orders from the master. The General's "Right Hand Man" was getting all antsy about the incriminating gore inside the General's private vessel. "Screw this attempt to weasel into the palace, I'm going back to clean up the mess that could get both of us in trouble" he said. The demon had a +3 edge in Binding (!) and the player let him go. I was all "ha, ha, ha Mr. General is afraid of the swaggering demon." Turns out the player WANTED the demon out of the way so the competing sorcerer diplomat would not get hip to the fact that The General was a sorcerer! Well played Mr. Player, well played. He counted on MY overconfidence in the demon's ability to resist Punishes to manipulate me.

The Pontifex's player was surprised when the Linked demon came back without being commanded. I just thought to myself "If the Right Hand Man could storm off to cause trouble, then the mysteriously persistent flowing holy water could squish its way on back to headquarters without being called." The Lustration could always signal that it had become aware of some danger to its master and having, happily for demon and sorcerer, satisfied its Desire by getting new knowledge, would make its way back home.

Much creepy finger licking and spraying of fluid around old Lustration.

Along the way we had a giant Ark bursting into normal space at the edge of a Dyson ring, a super pointy space vessel floating above a celebration at a traditional-looking palace (thank you Ian Banks), multiple monorails (at different heights for different classes), and a terrorist attack blessed by a planetary Angel.

The knowledge, corruption, and disorientation abilities of the demons really assisted the intrigue colour I was going for.

When necromantic Tokens are in play there is a lot of smashing and grabbing.

[Erik Weissengruber]

So, Diamond gives the East-West axis of the Eurasian continent as the major contributor to that biome's success in subjecting the rest of the planet to its progeny: gun-, steel-, and germ-wielding farmer/settlers.

Is there any differential distribution of some resource -- some hydrogen isotope, dark matter, a plethora of white dwarfs -- that might make one region of the Milky Way more fertile for a conqueror culture than another?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Erik,

Maybe I missed it or forgot it, but what is the venue and player-composition for this game? Meaning, are they random people on the internet, old friends of yours in person ... et cetera.

[Christoph]

Hi Erik

While wary of "hard-SF", I'm liking your setting quite a bit!

Regarding strategic advantages, I have some half-way supported ideas:
- Gold. It's the shiny thing people have adored for ever, and always will, right? Theory has it that supernovas create elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, but apparently nowhere enough to explain the gold abundance we observe. A plausible explanation seems to be the explosive merger of two neutron stars! Neutron stars are the end-stage of massive stars (but not massive enough to end up as black holes), so you'd need an "old" region of the galaxy. The denser the star population, the less you have to travel to find candidates. So I'd say the inner regions of our galaxy sounds cool.
- Diamonds. There's a possibility of "carbon planets", which could contain lots of diamonds. A system with such a planet would have to be fairly rich in carbon to start off, so you'd need to form it from a carbon rich cloud, which would be the result of a previous star exploding. So, the older, the better? If you don't get gold, you get diamonds? As above, you'd want to be in an "old" region of the galaxy.
- Dark matter. Very speculative, but it could be, since it's basically added mass, that it'd help in containing the classic matter in stars, and even make the nuclear reactions more efficient (and rapid). Dark matter is apparently more prevalent as you go to the centre of the galaxy. Combine with the above?
- Tritium, a radioactive hydrogen isotope. You fuse it with deuterium (another hydrogen isotope) to get helium, and loads of energy! The half-life of tritium is very short, so it's hard to stock. Plus you need cosmic rays interacting in the Earth's atmosphere, or shoot neutrons at lithium (quite rare itself) to actually get some. I've no idea if there are any regions in the galaxy where this is more abundant than others, but to get a large scale equivalent of cosmic rays interacting with an atmosphere, the best I can think up of would be some large molecular clouds with a star or two in it. Of course, the stars would tend to blow the clouds away or absorb it, so this would rather happen in star nurseries, on relatively short time spans, in rather "young" (as in: not too many cycles of stars going supernova and generating heavy elements) regions (I'm not sure where these would be). But that's pure speculation on my part.

An easy axiom would be: energy from young regions, complex matter from old ones.

[Erik Weissengruber]

Player composition:

2 medium-length gamer/friend pals -- one who did short Apocalypse World & Sorcerer series, and long Heroquest & Trail of Cthulhu series. The other is a fellow with a game design and research slant who dipped into some of those and ran Do: Pilgrims, AW, and Shock things.

Was looking forward to playing with a friend who dropped off of my radar for a while, but her background includes board game and RPG play testing, and with whom I did some play testing for ToC, and did some fun Donjon and other little bits here and there (a dipped into a Burning Empires game but the arrival of my child scotched a lot of my gaming a few years ago). She was also into the FUDGE community and that's how I learned about that. She didn't make it out.

A small group but one  I find cordial for the game.

[Erik Weissengruber]

Christoph, thanks!

The science is there as pretext for conflict. That is the kind of stimulus I need.