The Cast
The Story
A Guide To City Terms
[sblock=Once Upon A Time]It is just called The City.
Once, it had a name. It wasn't in tatters, barely clinging to life. Once, there was light.
After The Great End, all races came together here, to found The City, to stem the unrelenting dark of the world and survive when it seemed impossible to do so. Man, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, and all their cousins tried to piece back society, brick by brick, seed by seed. The City grew but progress was slow. It was difficult. Survival was achieved only by breaking the backs of the many and killing off the weak through the labor required.
Then came The Magi, powerful beings wielding strange arts and abilities, magic far beyond that of any other that came before them. A wave of their hand and an entire harvest would ripen. Their eyes could guide buildings to rise into a new skyline. Walls were constructed by their very will, and powerful Golems were created to safeguard The City and her people, to do the heavy lifting so that none more would suffer. The generations that had witnessed such hardship, such loss, saw these Magi as benevolent angels from on high. As the Magi came more and more into control of the expanding City that they crafted to their whims, none contested giving these saviors everything.
None, save the next generation. A generation that did not recall The Great End, that knew only The City and her wonders, but also her sterility. How the Walls that protected felt more like a Cage. How the Golems took those away who criticized the Magi and were never seen again. How the natural magic of Elf or Gnome was slowly disappearing while the gifts of The Magi only grew as they erected their massive Tower over the heights of The City, a Tower that served as the conduit of their power. This younger generation saw these saviors as tyrants, their constant questioning only being met with further opposition until a few brave (or foolhardy) souls attacked that Tower and brought it down in a conflagration of fire and rubble.
The response was swift. The Golems hunted and killed any and all connected to the bombing and the Walls sealed themselves entirely, cutting districts off from one another. With a threat revealed to their power, The Magi revealed that the younger generation had been correct the entire time: they truly were tyrants, set to control the destiny of whatever was left after The Great End. The destruction of one Tower did little to slow them: more materialized as if from the ether, hidden for just such a moment as this.
A generation learned to keep quiet and accept this new fate, but there were still some who could not accept this prison. The Magi opened the walls to the horrors outside of The City: to the goblinoids and other monsters that bowed to their new masters and took the lands of man, dwarf, and elf. The situation was becoming untenable. To strike a blow for freedom and light, a group of great heroes rose to try and defeat The Magi and their underlings, wielding magic and power as had not been seen in generations outside of The Magi. They fought bravely, running a battle throughout The City until finally they were cornered. They implored The City to rise up, to take hold of its destiny again and fight for its freedom.
It did not. In cowardice and fear, The City watched as its last heroes were finally overwhelmed and slain. With that, The Magi assume their control is all but absolute: the "free peoples" are anything but, their constructs and minions roam the streets to enforce their dark will, and the age of Heroes, true Heroes, is gone and buried.
And yet.
No matter how dark The City gets, there is always Light.[/sblock]
I want to run a game about loss and hopelessness, and the experience of those who are themselves a source of hope in such a setting.
Drawing heavy influence from the Midnight D&D setting as well as the work of The Protomen and various post-apocalyptia, this will be a fantasy setting where evil has won, but that does not mean good is just gone.
So, the details in my normal rundown.
WHO: Three Extra players, joining @Foxbytes, @Queenie, and @Fenris as our protagonists.
Characters are created with the following rules:
1.) 27 Standard Point Buy
2.) Race, Class, and Background options from the Player's Handbook, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, and Volo's Guide To Monsters
2a.) The Revised Ranger is available as a replacement for the Core Ranger. No other UA Options are available.
3.) 2nd Level
4.) Minor Caveat: You cannot benefit from the Folk Hero's Rustic Hospitality feature. Even if you choose this Background, use another Feature to flesh out your character.
WHAT: A Dark-Fantasy, Low-Magic game set within 1 City, The City, which contains what seems to be all that is left after a great cataclysm rocked the planet.
- Low Magic means that this game will probably not go beyond 5th or 6th level. If we do, I'd be looking at doing an "Epic 6th" style of gameplay. Aside from that, do not expect access to magical healing and magical items will be rare to unheard of. Even the typical magical powers of most species (that are not PCs) are nonexistent
- Dark Fantasy means that good objectively has completely lost in its fight against Evil. The Tyrants known as The Magi and their servants control The City and brutally hunt and stamp out resistance to their authoritarian regime. The people of The City are terrified at resisting: only a handful even attempt to do so and even then many accept that there is no "victory" possible.
WHEN: Three Generations after The Tower Incident, the first act of rebellion against The Magi.
- The PCs more than likely do not recall The Great End nor what The City was like before The Magi came, so they know nothing of the struggle of their people prior, but also may have known of the golden age of The City with the aid of magic.
WHERE: The City.
- The City is massive. It is widely considered to be all that is left. Its many districts all serve different purposes, with some sectors just massive fields to be tended to for food, or building after building upon steel refineries and smithies and brick-makers. Most districts are residential and commercial in nature. All are rundown and constantly patrolled by Golems and the other lackeys of The Magi.
- The City is all the PCs know of. They know nothing of what may be outside The Walls. They don't even know the name of where they live: it is just 'The City', as it is reportedly the only one left.
- The City houses all the major and minor races that are left in the world. Assume similar demographics to most fantasy worlds, in that humans are the most numerous and oddities such as Tieflings, Dragonborn, Aasimar, and the like are much, much rarer, though still present.
WHY: Because I've had this idea kicking around in my head for some time, and I want to explore it. I wanted a setting where the PCs are literally the last hope for the world, and even then that hope may be nothing more than just that: hope.
I will flatly state that You Cannot Win. Yes, Yes, there is the whole "What is winning in a Tabletop RPG anyway", but I mean this in that there is no overthrowing The Magi. There is no "saving" The City from its fate. The City is as The City is, and the PCs are too few and nowhere near powerful enough to affect lasting, major change. Their stories will be much smaller and personal: they cannot rescue The City, but they can save a family, or stop a tragedy here and there. They can keep the spark of hope alive, but they know that ultimately their struggle is ineffectual and meaningless.
Naturally, this means I'm looking for very specific kinds of players. You are making People stuck in this horrible circumstance who, by virtue of what they are (that is, they have Classes), are Heroes in a world that crushes and kills heroes. Whether or not they want this attention, this is what they are, for better or worse. Whether they rise to that challenge or are killed like those that tried before them is, obviously, up to you, the players.
I am looking for true characters, with motives and goals and fears and wants, not just statblocks and the basic Ideals/Bonds/Flaws. Posting here does not guarantee admittance, save for the three mentioned earlier whom I have already spoken to about this project.
So. The forces of darkness have suppressed and oppressed your people for years. You have first-hand witnessed their tyranny kill those close to you, destroy any semblance of a normal life for the entire City. You, however, have Power. You have true magic, skill at arms, or even faith in gods long-forgotten. You can do something when nobody else will even try. You know that even in the dark, This City is still there, just waiting to be illuminated.
Are you ready to Light Up The Night?
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