Ideas for my new Gothic Horror Fantasy setting

[Dannyalcatraz]

He is One Who Stands Between. A Trickster.

A TN if ever there was one, because he gains nothing if Light OR Dark ultimately triumph- a world with never-ending cycles of aggression and peace are ideal for him.

So he can be a source of good & bad events in your campaign, ally or enemy.

As for "difficult to kill" might I suggest that if struck a mortal blow, he disintegrates into a murder of crows that flies away...and a month later, a new Spirit of Crows arises, coalesced from a different flock, with (possibly) a different attitude and personality, different plumage (perhaps white & black) and/or gender. Perhaps with all of the memories of his predecessor...or not.

And this rebirth will happen as long as a single flock of crows remains alive.

Which makes me think- someone seeking to do away with this agitator by killing all the crows might make for an interesting story arc. Consider the legend of the ravens of the Tower of London...

 

[Rel]

Latest idea:

I feel like I need them to find a talking skull at some point which (perhaps reluctantly) can give them some information. Because talking skulls are just funny and ripe for interesting situations.

One idea I'm toying with at the moment is that the skull was from a soldier who suffered a head injury in combat and had to be trepanned. The surgeon used a hammered gold coin to cover the hole after it was drilled to relieve the pressure. When the soldier died (perhaps due to the same wound) and the necromantic magic later reanimated him, the gold somehow "shielded" him from the worst of it and he retains his memories and personality from before his death.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One idea I'm toying with at the moment is that the skull was from a soldier who suffered a head injury in combat and had to be trepanned.

Talking skulls of note can be found in:

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels: Hrothbert "Bob" of Bainbridge – the old spirit owned by Dresden.

Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away": The Warlock carries a Skull with a leather tongue- it came from one of the Warlock's rivals, and reanimates only when ther is sufficient mana.

Another route you could go is the Phineas Gage path: like Gage, the warrior in question had a metal rod launched through his head, but survived. And like Gage, his personality changed.

In this case, you could use it as a plot device to justify the warrior's spirit to be chaotic in personality, random in his usefulness.

 

[Rel]

Got two of the three characters made last night. Our other friend had some family stuff going on so his will be made by next Monday.

One will be playing a monster hunter with a somewhat didactic approach. He has the Quirk hindrance, which we're calling "I've got a thing for this!" Basically he carries around a book in which he has collected all the monster knowledge that he's been able to gather. He tends to whip out this book in the middle of fighting the supernatural to see if he has any notes about how better to defeat what they're battling. I'm expecting his character to be motivated by gathering more such knowledge.

The other character so far was a Centurion in the Imperial Legion who was sent along with his troops to protect some backwater town from the forces of the encroaching Darkness. As the town came under attack they were quickly overwhelmed. He gave the order to evacuate the town before everything went black. When he awoke his last handful of men, including his second in command, had been transformed into a group of (essentially) werewolves. Unlike the others who had lost any semblance of their humanity, the Centurion could remember who he was before. As they were sent to hunt down the refugees from the town he had no choice but to kill his remaining troops. He fought his second in command, a long time friend, to a standstill and both retreated heavily wounded. He has vowed to hunt his friend down and kill him because he would have hated what he has become.

Not sure the exact nature of the third character yet. From indications he's given so far he might play a person who was planned as a sacrifice to the Darkness through some vile ritual. The ritual was interrupted and he wasn't killed but some sort of a gateway into the Darkness is now inside his body. How that manifests outwardly has yet to be determined.

 

[Rel]

I further note regarding the werewolf character above who retained his personality and memory where his troops did not, I'm going to have that be because of the golden Imperial Emblem on his his helmet protecting his mind. Seems sort of poetic and appropriate that gold, which never tarnishes and remains always bright, should be anathema to the Darkness.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That would also fit in with the gold accented skull- looks like you're tying things together!

Thinking about art history, this reminds me that gold leaf was often used in royal and religious architecture...and sometimes even in sculptures & painting...ESPECIALLY when trying to evoke a concept of divine radiance.

And all those golden crowns, torcs and laurel-leaves suddenly take on a new aspect...

But only if you make gold a mystical insulator as opposed to mystical anathema. By that I mean that it acts, not as a ward or toxin to beings of the Dark- like silver to lycanthropes or cold iron to fey- but like a barrier.

Thus, a being who was tainted by the Dark could touch, handle, wear, or even work gold, but could not cross a line made of fine gold wire. Gold would be used in the runes entombing powerful Darktainted foes, to ensure they could not escape.

...And a Darktainted ruler wearing his crown of gold could not have his Drkness expunged/exorcised as long as that crown were on his head; the Darkness being unable to pass that small barrier. Perhaps he'd be immune so long as he wore a necklace or ring of the material as well.

 

[Rel]

Consider further that the cathedrals of the Empire are not simply religious structures but, given that the Church also controls the government, they are the centers for tax collection. "Holy Ground" may take on a whole new meaning.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And, of course, there is the question of just how common the knowledge is about gold's effect on the Darkness. As things stand right now (given descriptions about how fold saved certain beings from the full effects of the Daek) not even all of the Darktouched would be aware of gold's properties.

Hey...you might want to dust off your Magic of Faerun for the rules in gold weapons & armor!

 

[Rel]

I'm still chewing on the "gold vs. the Darkness" thing. I kind of like it but on the other hand I don't want to make it too much of a "now there's a really easy way to make Darkness Slaying weapons!" I need to think on it a bit more.

What I'm pondering at the moment is how to apply a certain house rule to the known couple of characters at this point.

So this is going to be Savage Worlds and in Savage Worlds there are Bennies. Bennies are basically like "Action Points" that you can spend to re-roll the dice and do a few other things. One of the hallmarks of SW is that Bennies sometimes work slightly differently in different settings. To highlight the way the Light v. Dark theme in my setting I've instituted this house rule for Bennies:

"Bennies for this campaign will be poker chips colored white on one side and black on the other. When you spend a Bennie then you may opt to spend it as a Light Bennie, a Dark Bennie or a Chaos Bennie.

If spent as a Light or Dark Bennie then the Bennie obeys all normal rules but you will also gain a Light Point or Dark Point respective to whichever way you spent it.

If you spend the Bennie as a Chaos Bennie then you gain an additional +2 to the dice total after the re-roll. You will also 'flip' the Bennie like a coin. Whichever side it lands on, you will gain two points of that color.

Thus you will accumulate a pool of Light Points and Dark Points as the campaign progresses. At various milestones the accumulation of these points will result in events happening to your characters as they proceed further down the paths of Light and Darkness."


So first of all I find this rule to have a few interesting implications. One is that a character is generally in total control over what sort of points they accumulate. Because they get a choice to spend the Bennie as Light or Dark, they can choose to always pick one color or the other. Or they can spread the points as evenly as possible. Or anywhere in between.

If they opt to spend them as Chaos then they'll get an in-game benefit for doing so. But they'll also have no control over which path they are moving down and they'll be moving down the path faster.

As for exactly what happens when along these "paths", I honestly haven't decided anything concrete. My thinking at the moment is to have "complications" take place at increments of 10. So when a character has 10 Light or Dark Points then something happens to reflect that they have moved further along that path and the same thing happens at 20 and 30 and so on.

Exactly what those complications are I have not decided. This rule isn't there to punish the players or to favor the Light over the Darkness. It's there to make things interesting.

I think at the moment I'm inclined to wait until we're actually playing and see how the personalities emerge to decide what the effects will be. But if anybody has ideas in the mean time then I'm all ears.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Superweapons schmooperweapons!

Again, treat gold as a barrier, not anathema. With that kind of mechanical underpinning, it can bar the Dark from acting directly on someone- it cannot flow; cannot corrupt- but you can't use it to make a golden mace that does extra damage or a golden shield that repels.

In your campaign, gold would still behave like a normal material...soft, heavy. Perhaps it's uncorruptability extends to magic in general- it cannot be enchanted, so a gold weapon may be nice against a creature of Darkness, but will still bend when striking steel.

Which would mean a Darktouched warrior in armor would LAUGH at a golden sword wielding foe (just like everyone else)...while still being unable to pass through a portal covered with goldleaf.