Loonook

While I've been crossposting to ENWorld and my Blogger Account, I have just been accepted into the Comment Luv testing of the new WP software. So, if you've enjoyed my posts in the past, or just want to assist in the updating of this killer app, please check out the link provided above and here so that they can see additional numbers on traffic.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

Okay... to prevent spoilers from occurring I'm just going to post this short blurb for now.

I got to go see Terminator Salvation as part of a pre-screening sort of event... and I have to say I'd give it a 7/10.

The movie is a good popcorn film... but there's a reason why it is being released in May rather than during the swing of the Summer Blockbuster season . In comparison to the last film? Much better.

However, it misses a lot of the oomph of Terminator 1 & 2.

I will say that the saving grace of the film is the ridiculous dialogue and some of the forced use of references to the earlier films... You are going to LOVE Christian Bale as Bruce Connor .

Great FX, cheesy acting... good times.

Probably going to get to see plenty of other pre-screenings due to a friend always looking for a +1... so when able I will post here .

Slainte,

-Loonook.

Just writing this up as the beginnings of an adventure arc:

The players serve an elderly adventurer who has taken interest in a specific item from her youth. This item, a fidelia (or loyalty ring), was purloined when she was young. The players delve deeply into her past, finding a tale of love, loss, distrust, bigotry, (in/)justice, and debts long waiting to be repaid. The series of Adventures and sidequests are meant to take players from 1st through 6th level, and will include the following:

-1st-2nd level: The Hazards of Love: Eleanor Walstaff, a talented arcanist and wise woman in the town of Harback, has requested the aid of the players to retrieve a lost trinket of her youth. Using a sympathetic charm placed on the ring, the players are led to a Janilia Foxfend, a young lady of the evening in a city miles from Harback. The lady in question has found nothing but ill luck with the bauble, and the players must track down the lady's affairs and save her from a dangerous situation with a local ne'r'do'well and his lackeys.

-2nd to 3rd: A Heart Hangs: The charm seemingly disappears, and Janilia tells the tale of her father (the man who had given her the ring in hopes that its charm would find her love). The item is traced to its next victim, a man who has taken on too many interested parties. One of these parties, a cruel witchwoman, realizes the player's motives and sets her servants upon them in hopes of retrieving the token for herself.

-3rd to 4th: The Tale of the Rake: Having learned the trickery of the trinket and its fatal consequences, the players find themselves faced with one of its twists; a talented rogue and former acquaintance of Walstaff who is hunted by the spirits of his family. In uncovering the story of his trials, the players are pointed towards the true source of its enchantment.

4th to 5th: To Claim His Due: The story fully unfolds as the players race against the forces following the charm and its creator. The legend of the Walstaff line is uncovered, and the players face off against the true cause of this mess.

Backroads: Modern Druids Pt. 1: The William Westmoreland Memorial Park and Cock-eyed Charlie.

I have been debating writing these Backroads articles for awhile. I figured I would start with Druids as the ideas have been running through my head since I woke up this morning. This will be a series of character sketches of various people who could be found in a game featuring America as its major focus (though we will also probably have a few representatives from other locales over time). This is the first; a mid-level druid in repose by the name of Cock-eyed Charlie. Enjoy.

Yeah... it's tongue in cheek, naming it after that man. But if it hadn't been his damned plan then I would have never found myself. I lost a lot of friends in those days, so I raise a can to ya Westie... I guess I'll see you in Hell.
(ret.) Msgt. Charles Witney Carlson, aka Cock-eyed Charlie.

The old factory town of Darling, South Carolina used to boast one of the highest rates of employment in the US. Out of its 34,000 residents there were rarely a dozen fit, able men and women without a job. Reduced to poverty with the closing of the Essex Glassworks factory in 1959, the town fell into the classic spiral of want and desperation which has passed through hundred such towns over the course of Charles W. Carlson's lifetime. A sharp-minded spry young man, Charles came back from Vietnam with a Silver Star, two fouled legs, and a constantly askew perception. Carlson also came back from the conflict with talents which would lead him to being one of the most renowned spellslingers in his region.

On March 3rd, 1968 Carlson, a well-respected young non-com, found himself in an ambush with his unit just outside of a city near the border with North Vietnam. After two days of exchanged fire, Carlson and his men finally took their objective; a large tactically vital position deep in the town center. After congratulating his men and walking into the building, a Viet Cong demolitions expert exploded several charges inside of the structure, causing its collapse. Carlson was the only survivor of the explosion, and was taken into custody.

For two years Carlson spent his days being beaten and examined. A fellow prisoner, a young Khmer soldier who had attempted to defect to the Americans for assistance in getting his family out of Cambodia, had a faint understanding of English, and the two began a shaky relationship based on their mutual love for baseball and Carlson's budding interest in the religion of the Asian continent. His friend, who he refers to simply as Surin, began to regale him with stories of his own people and their spiritual practices. After awhile Carlson began to guess that his friend truly believed the stories as they were presented, and would ask whether any of these stories had a basis in reality. This question was met with sighs and the occasional near-toothless smile of a weary comrade-in-struggle.

On May 5th 1970 the prison camp was said to have been overrun by vermin. Guards were seemingly eaten alive, and two men claiming to be prisoners of war were picked up by a group of American GI on leave in a safe zone 150 miles from the border of North Vietnam. Carlson and Surin made it out alive, but both were extremely beaten. Carlson's eyes, never returning to their original focus, became a symbol of quiet ridicule amongst the men in his newly adopted unit, and his limping gait earned him a medical leave to the States. Carlson was jounced around to several different locations until he was finally honorably discharged in 1976 with disability.

Carlson's newfound talents made him a party of interest to several groups who studied esoterica; indeed, the so-called Rainbow Companies (groups of Servicemen (and women) who used their mystic talents to stem the tide of Shadow influence in the US) attempted to recruit him to their ranks. A quiet retirement followed for the injured veteran, and he now keeps a modest memorial park at the site of the former Essex Glassworks.

Cock-eyed Charlie, as he is known in the bars and roustabout areas in the region, is a quiet, gravely man who is a renowned horticulturist. He is involved in veteran's causes, and goes on 'tours of duty' gathering money for 4H and agricultural interests in the South. Wolfish in a clean suit that shows the man who once wore the uniform of the Service, Charlie spends most of his time in personal exile in a small cottage just outside of the Memorial. The Memorial is dominated by a large tree native to Vietnam, and a statue of Westmoreland in repose beneath the tree, seemingly contemplating his life and all that has passed.

The Memorial serves as a stop for many esoterica scholars. Charlie has great talents in plant and spirit-based magics; he has served in roles as varied as the author of Spirits of the Indochina Peninsula, and a talented mentor to a dozen hedge wizards and conjure women who live in the state. Charlie is also a member of the Circle of Thorns, a group of mystics who protect the Americas through the creation of great workings. The Grove is a healthy, vibrant place, and the weather within 50 miles of Darling is considered a microclimate all its own; calm, warm, and quiet.

Charlie would like to keep it that way.

Cold grey walls, long unadorned corridors, and the sounds of children weeping. Slow moving bundles of rags, servants dressed in shifts of heavy wool and arms wrapped in silvery chain... this is the Hospice, the home of the Prophet of Sucur.

The Hospice, born out of a treaty formed after a battle between Imperial forces and outsiders long hidden behind the Veil, is the home to those beings known as the Children of Sucur. Born of the tomb and living lives of renunciation, the Children and their leader provide a vital service to the Empire and the Prime: they are observers, recorders, and keepers of secrets found deep within the halls of the dead.

Ashy gray skin the color of gravestones marks these children, who are raised from the age of five in the cold corridors of Hospice. Their leader, the child Prophet, rules this place and takes in those who have been changed by the forces of death. Those who have fought the curse of undeath are given a choice; serve at the Hospice, or be driven before stake and sword.

Skinwalkers, men who have tasted blood but not taken on the Cloak of Midnight, and the occasional walking dead serve the Prophet and his Children, helping to preserve the protective wards which sit in a cave deep beneath the Hospice.

---

The Prophet of Sucur has survived war, peace, and a dozen attempts on his life. The living embodiment of the divine will, the Prophet has served in his position since he was a young 'demon-tainted' horseborn in a Mescari encampment thousands of miles from the heart of the Empire. The Mescarin religion is based around a structure of meritocratic ancestral worship; indeed, many attempted to kill the boy known as The-winds-Speak for the betterment of their tribe.

The-Winds-Speak could call forces, speak to shades in the abandoned temples of the Kulna Plains, knew the names of spirits and called them to his aid.

From The Tenets of Sucur

He was an outcast amongst his people, and thus took to his ministry. A wandering priest, seeing his talent, brought him to a young warrior-poet in the far West, a brutal man who had never spoken of the Preserver.

With the light of Sucur he called forth the man's true spirit, and in it dwelt the strength of the lion twined with the will of the bull.

The Prophet and his Warden walked the paths of the world before coming to the Imperial Host. They had gathered a following ten thousand strong when they came into the city... and their people were granted asylum there, and dwelt within the heart of the Emperor's grace.

The Prophet has held that grace through many Emperors and their reigns. Small concessions to his will keep the Imperial Host in the grace and provenance of the Prophet, and though many would grant Sucuran worship exclusive purview of worship in the Empire, the Prophet has never made such a request.

---

The Prophet of Sucur, and the Children of the Hospice, are living constructs of faith and essence. A step between humans and Outsiders, they are Neutral parties to the goings on of the world. Their true power, however, comes from the admixture of their talents. Each has a pervasive calming aura, and their talents manifest themselves in a raw show of eldritch force or a deep contact with the mind.

Those who bind themselves to the hand of the Prophet are treated as Warlocks, and serve as the Hands of the Prophet. Those who guard the secrets of Hospice are Psions and Wilder, using their unique talents to bind the strengthen the Paths which lie within the Hospice's shallow planar depths.

For a further discussion of Hospice... next post :-p.