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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Velenne" data-source="post: 974579" data-attributes="member: 1856">In this thread I'll be posting the main protagonists for  <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&forumid=19" target="_blank">Arbiters Apostate</a> as well as the major NPC's (when I get the chance).  Right now, I'll try to succinctly explain how the story came about.  Originally I desired to run a game into the upper levels of power in order to provide new challenges to myself and the players in our group.  Thus, I desired a way to start a campaign at 10th level, going against many of the wishes of my players who take issues with creating characters that don't have stories fleshed out with game time.  In answer to this, I came up with the idea of characters with no histories at all.The idea was a "wetworks" team that does the dirty work for the story's main antagonists, the Crystal Council, a cadre of epic-level wizards that represent each of the sub-branched schools of magic.  In order to assure their place of power, and to display that power, they created the Arbiters to sniff out any threat to their power and stamp it down...efficiently.I knew that no god would answer the prayers of such a creature.  The Arbiters were not meant to be free-thinkers, people, or anything that could truly worship gods or nature with their own free will.  So I placed the restriction on my players of no divine ties whatsoever.  This became a major point of contention but ultimately they were willing to trust me and for that I'm grateful.Then came the problem of equipping these characters.  While it's certainly within the power of the Crystal Council to create any and every magic item under the sun, they needed a way to ensure that the Arbiters' gear could not be stripped from them.  They also needed a way to make their creations as self-sufficient as possible.  Thus they created the Arbiters' Skins.  The Skin is actually a part of the Arbiter, taking up all of his/her/its (the latter, as the Council refers to them) magic item slots.  The Skins grow with the Arbiters, gaining new abilities and/or evolving the old ones.  To put it in gamespeak, I equipped the Skins according to a GP value appropriate to the PC's total ECL -2.  This was to adjust for the Arbiters lack of need for sleep, food, or water, and for the fact that no part of the Skin can be dispelled, disjoined, disarmed, or sundered.  (They do not, however, function within Antimagic Fields).This served two functions.  First, the intended function of equipping 10th level characters appropriately.  Second, we no longer need to spend hours of game time "shopping" for magic items and dispersing "loot".  The players are also happy because it means they're no long confined to creating things you can find in a magic item.  If they wanted to add the Shadow template to their characters, for example, we might devise a numeric gp value and assign it to their Skins.  When the characters leveled, they would "spend" this illusory gp on that template.  As you find out in the Story Hour, the Arbiters are set free long before they are completed.  As such, they are only half of what they should be- incomplete projects that are still evolving.  How they evolve now will be determined by their experiences and interactions.  Slowly, they'll begin to understand and appreciate their free will, as well as use their abilities for whatever cause they happen to fall in with.More to come later.</blockquote>

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