The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice, Aikiko’s Search, Prelude I

The Solar Guardians have been active for a number of years – and most have been a good deal more conspicuous than Charles has. That’s good – because that’s the only thing that gives Aikiko a chance to find them. On the other hand, they’re young – and are not inclined to build empires, overturn [...]

Residents of the Ars Goetia, Part II

The “Demons” of medieval tomes were mostly the creation of fevered would -be demonologists and “scholars”. While they might be loosely based on a few genuine mythological fragments, those tattered threads are pretty thoroughly lost in a sea of wild conjecture. For our purposes this is good; it provides a lot of room for turning [...]

Eclipse – Building the Possessed

Today’s request is a character loosely styled after Jason Blood / Etrigan (DC Comics) or Naruto (Anime) – a youngster who’s had a mighty demonic force that some magician couldn’t handle or kill directly imprisoned in his or her body, so that it will die when he or she does. That provides the character with [...]

Eclipse d20 – White Necromancy

Today it’s a request for a mildly unusual Eclipse d20 writeup – a Wood Elf Spiritualist / Necromancer who DOESN’T dabble in negative energy, and thus is free to be a gray – or heroic – figure. This isn’t really likely to be the version the player finally uses – the backstory is severely abridged [...]

Residents of the Ars Goetia

When it comes to source material, it’s hard to get much more authentic than going medieval – and the list of “demons” in the Ars Goetia offers quite a lot of inspiration. Of course, when you read that list you don’t find a lot of game-style “demons”. You don’t find much in the way of [...]

Exalted – Elzeard Lifeshaper, Aden’s Fourteenth Soul

Well, now that real life isn’t demanding all my time again, I can get back to posting things… Elzeard Lifeshaper, Treeherd, Lord of Totems, Guardian of the Survival Imperative, Apostle of Gaia, Fourteenth Soul of Aden. While Elzeard takes many forms – whether anthropomorphic beast or tangled mass of vines and leaves in the shape [...]

Legend of the Five Rings – Kasumi Neko, Cat Clan Samurai

The Cat Clan plays a very minor role in Rokugan; it’s tiny, obscure, has no major school of its own, and mostly operates under cover. Their general role is to appear as the mysterious shadowy figure who passes on some important information to the more active and combative types – such as most PC’s. They [...]

Viva Le Revolution! Realms of the Banefire

Life… isn’t fair. A sizeable chunk of the population winds up holding the short end of the stick in early childhood, continue to hold it all their lives, and ultimately die with it jammed in some very uncomfortable place indeed. The promise to make it fair lies at the base of many faiths. “It will [...]

“Ghost”, Level Two Shadowwalker

Here we have the level two version of “Ghost” from the “Chosen Ones” campaign. That’s a rather high-powered setting that casts the characters as heroes who were being given a variety of special boosts and equipment to carry out some quite specific missions. Sadly, the process was interrupted and the mystics who were providing those [...]

Exalted: Aden, the World-Body

Aden is Charles’s semi-private internal world – a realm which currently consists of 98 Waypoints or nearly 70,000 square miles of territory. That’s still actually a relatively small world – about the size of Ireland or of a middle-of-the-run US State – but it’s still six times the size of Hawaii and could (with his [...]

Indexing Updates; Player Blog Links

Here we have a selection of crosslinks to articles by one of the player/game masters who is currently involved in the Federation-Apocalypse (Eclipse d20), Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice (Exalted), and d6 Star Wars campaigns. As they say, better late than never – and this is definitely somewhat overdue. Exalted – The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice: [...]

Coran Mordant, Level Three Thief of Scrolls

Magic attracts many youngsters. For most, the dream is simple. learn a few magical phrases and gestures and live a life of leisure and luxury! The optimism of youth never wonders why – if it’s that simple – the world isn’t filled with magicians. It’s true that the rewards of magic can be far, far, [...]

A Feat full of Tricks, Part III – Fighters and Wizards

Fighter Tricks A true fighter is a creature of training and discipline, far beyond wild bar-room brawlings, random flailing, and crude berserker tactics of lesser warriors. For those with eyes to see, the grim beauty of combat is a choreography or death, with opponents not foes but fellow supplicants at a shrine of blood – [...]

Assorted Eclipse Builds by Christopher West

Christopher West has been putting up a fair number of Eclipse character designs over on his RPG Blog over the past month or two – and I thought I’d set up some links here. His notions of how to build things tend to be very different from mine – and that’s a very good thing; [...]

A Feat full of Tricks, Part II – Clerics

Cleric Tricks are kind of awkward. After all, most of the other classes have clearly defined roles; Druids, Paladins, and Wizards are may use a variety of tactics, but we know what they do. Clerics… not so much. Are they the Spanish Inquisition? Laid-back Universal Unitarians? Holy Men? Demon Worshipers? Cultists? Hermit-Philosophers? Military Heroes? Wise [...]

A Feat Full of Tricks

The writeup for “Ghost”, and her Shadow Mastery ability, has produced a special request – some as-cheap-as-possible “signature” power packages for other types of low-level characters. That’s actually pretty easy; the Witchcraft system was designed to flatten the d20 magical power curve – offering small-but-versatile abilities to start, hitting the most potent abilities in the [...]

“Ghost”, Level One Shadowwalker

For today it’s an optimized version of “Ghost”, a character from the “Chosen Ones” campaign. That particular setting casts the characters as heroes who were being given a variety of special enhancements to meet the demands of a particular set of missions – and hopefully accomplish them easily. Unfortunately, the process was interrupted and the [...]

Exalted – Exaltation Research

“Lesser Exaltations” are one of Charles’s research projects – and the techniques involved may or may not have anything to do with actual Celestial or Terrestrial Exaltations. What they do involve is bonding a mortal or god-blood character to three especially-designed and augmented five-dot Manses and twelve dots worth of artifacts – a Soul Sheathe [...]

Orin Markala – Level Two Upgrades

Here we have an example of leveling an Eclipse character – although, like most of my examples, it’s a fairly extreme case. Orin is currently the only magical support for the party he’s in – and so must handle healing, defensive casting and counterspells, and offensive magic. This isn’t easy… Thus Orin is – at [...]

Aberrant to Trinity – Magnus Varr

And here, for Aberrant and Trinity, we have Magnus Varr – an Olympian Undercover Agent. As befits someone extensively augmented by Nova technologies, he’s extremely powerful compared to a normal human, and quite powerful compared to your basic psion – but he’s no match for a high-powered Aberrant or Nova, while a psion is far [...]