The Genesis Man [Solo]

[Kaodi]

(Hopefully, a new name will get a few more entries into the ranks of the hopeful. There are a few good submissions now, but I was hoping for more. There is still five days left until I close.)

My own thread asking why solo PbP games are uncommon has somehow almost convinced me to suggest I may run a game of my own. However, my only PbP experience so far is with conversation over in Living Eberron. Oh, and I've never DMed a campaign before... So, on to the next question!

After my DM heads back home later this year, I am going to try and DM for the two remaining players, if they are up to it. When I was thinking about where I would want to have a campaign, and what kind of story and plot it would have, I came to the conclusion that I should ask them what they wanted, and try to mould it around the character concepts they came up with. So, that is the same kind of strategy I would like to use here... hence the strange, non-committal sounding thread name...

I am looking for character concepts, with enough background and story to have a few good plot hooks. I can tell you right now I am shooting for a 3rd level start (for survivability), with 28 pt. buy, slow exp progression, Core + Eberron books only, +1 LA races (with no racial HD) allowed, and I would prefer to not run a psionics based campaign, though kalashtar and empty vessels may take all of their starting levels in psionics classes if they really want to. Also, I should state that I will be choosing what magic items you receive, after you spend your starting-gold on the non-magical equipment you want. Also, there will probably be the option of owning or renting a home, though for what price I'm not sure, probably based on the prices in Sharn. Also, I hold approval over prestige classes (still Core + Eberron), which is not to say I don't like prestige classes, but just to state that I would like them to be aquired in character, not just magically appear. So, Um, Yeah...

Assuming I haven't driven you off now with images of the most terrible, stifling campaign of your entire lives... Submissions will be open until I see something with a hook that gets the juices flowing, plus a few days, to allow for something even better coming along...

Err, forgot to mention, as pertains to the XPH, feats are allowed, and classes for first levels if Kalashtar or Empty Vessel, but no XPH races. Also, I am looking for people who can post multiple times per day, the more, the better, generally.

 

[Azaar]

Well, this sounds interesting. I hardly would call it stifling, but I am curious about a couple of things: what kind of campaign are you looking to run, for starters? Intrigue and politics? Hack and slash? Granted, if you're wanting to start based off a character hook that we could come up with... well, I could probably put something together. In fact... here's a couple of ideas for you to look at.

1) Dax (CG Changeling Rogue 3: probably take the racial substitution level from Races of Eberron) -- While having the typical penchant for illicit behavior that most changelings possess, Dax always wanted something more for himself. He didn't want to simply be a nameless face in the crowd, although that certainly played to his strengths with his changeling shapechanging abilities -- no, he wanted to be the quintessential changeling. He wanted to be a legend among his own people... a paragon, an example to other changelings as to what they could do if they were only willing to go the distance.

Future Path: If Chameleon from Races of Destiny was allowable, that would be perfect for a valid future pursuit, but I would understand completely if Chameleon wasn't allowed. Another good possibility would be the Cabinet Trickster, especially in conjunction with Chameleon (again, assuming it would be allowable). If not, Cabinet Trickster would still be an excellent choice. Past that point, I am uncertain what path to pursue.

2) Tinker (name subject to change) (NG Warforged Artificer 3: racial substitution levels from Races of Eberron) -- Tinker learned the arts of the artificer before being released from servitude at the conclusion of the Last War and the Treaty of Thronehold. Since then, Tinker has travelled Khorvaire, his curiosity fueling him to learn as much as he can. Hearing of the mysterious lands of Xen'Drik, and how there have been discoveries of warforged components that predate the relatively recent existence of the warforged (at least so far as human history is aware), Tinker is understandably eager to undertake a Xen'Drik expedition of his own.

Future Path: Oddly enough, I'm not certain there is a prestige class that would bolster an artificer -- as such, I'd likely leave Tinker (assuming that name isn't changed, because it's a spur-of-the-moment name and I don't really like it much) as an artificer, and take all the racial substitution levels for a warforged artificer from Races of Eberron. However, it would be interesting to pursue a future goal of having an airship built, to give Tinker a mobile base of operations -- that, obviously, is going to take a long time to come to fruition, given the funds required. Still, though, an interesting idea.

There's a couple of ideas, anyway. Let me know if either one strikes your fancy, and I can try fleshing either character out more fully.

 

[Kaodi]

Type

At worst, it will probably be a lot of hack and slash, and at best, hopefully a mix of combat, intrigue, mystery and maybe even borrow a little from horror at appropriate times. Like I said, I am new, so I don't want to give anyone the impression that there will be rivetting storyline, though I hope I can accomplish that.

Also, I should note I would prefer the Five Nations (or Four Nations), though once I get a grip on the role of DM, I would likely be happy to go anywhere in Khorvaire, and to Xen'drik. Sarlona and Argonnessen too, though I wouldn't be able to guarantee survival of more than five minutes there, hehehe... If a concept is really good though, I could start in other places in Khorvaire.

While I personally kind of like the idea of a changeling chameleon, I am going to stick to the Core, XPH, Eberron for now. I'm not trying to dis the concept, but just try to enforce my own rules, which I think is important when DMing, to be consistent.

 

[Azaar]

Not a problem. I was figuring I'd hear a 'no', at least on the chameleon part, and consistency is a good thing. That doesn't bother me, though. Although now that I look at Five Nations, I see something that might be interesting for a changeling rogue: the Dark Lantern PrC (p. 69). Something interesting to work into via story, if you're interested -- a changeling rogue in Breland who opts to serve his nation. That might be more fun from a story perspective than trying to be an uber-changeling chameleon, actually.

I'm taking it that you seem to prefer Dax to Tink -- not that this bothers me, since I'm preferring Dax myself. Tink, however, might be more well-rounded and self-sufficient, since as a warforged artificer he'd be able to heal himself, do a few roguish type things (mostly the trapfinding), and ought to be able to sufficiently defend himself. But I'm certainly not going to complain, especially as Dax seems to play more to what you want to try and run.

 

[Jdvn1]

Also, I hold approval over prestige classes (still Core ...

You're referring to the DMG PrCs here? By "core" some people refer to the original three books and some people refer to all WotC books.

 

[Azaar]

I'm assuming he means the three core books, myself, as he mentioned that he wasn't accepting Chameleon from Races of Destiny as part of Dax's intended build. Pity, since it means that it would also leave out the Mindspy PrC from Complete Warrior. But after looking at what he intends, I have to think that perhaps re-tooling Dax to fit in more as a potential Dark Lantern, assuming he was noticed enough, would be more fun. I still have to wonder if Tink the warforged artificer might not be the better choice in terms of self-sufficiency. But the more I think about Dax, the more I like the idea.

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

I have myself an idea or two, lemme lay them out:

Flummerfelt Turngastle - A gnome illusionist of exceptional skill, he has become one of the youngest to join the ranks of the Manifest Spellshapers. "It was rather funny how it all fell out, you know. Da was a magewright... and Ma... and both brothers and all three sisters. Practical people; Da and Ma were tinkers, tin makers, Tullfarim and Gelthiamia made metal jewelry, copper and brass mostly, and Vivianna, Querna, and Probokot were jewelers and gemcutters.

"Now me, I was the youngest, and that stuff drove me to distraction. I liked looking at it and using it, but taking the time to make it and getting all the little fiddly details right each and every time... boring! I like the magic part of it all fine and dandy. That was exciting, and each time it was new, even it if was the same spell! But I didn't care to be shackled to a shop the rest of my life. What can I say, I was born with a broader mind. Da and Ma, bless their hearts, didn't insist that I stay. They apprenticed me to Great-Uncle Bluebottle, and that was the start of a beautiful friendship!

"He was a good master as well as a good uncle. Great sense of humor, that man, and that's saying a lot coming from me! I'm a fun-loving guy, and Great-Uncle knew what I was looking for with my magic. There's plenty of us gnomes that are fine and dandy illusionists, and I took to that like an airship to the sky. The good kinds of airships I mean, not the kind that crash and burn. I can't even tell you the mischief we got into; phantom food, pretend ghosts, illusionary horses and sheep, and bother knows all what else!

"But my great-uncle is a practical man too, in his own way. He started showing me a rather different branch of illusions, the ones that people can't disbelive; shadow magic. I tell you, it's kinda nice to know that you can back up your spells with a little force if it's warrented! I rather liked it, but Great-Uncle wasn't finished with me yet. He had this old book he had hidden away in his wagon, a copy of one written by a wizard who learned the secrets of magic and the planes together. The Arcane Congress doesn't like that too much... or at all. The author is probably dead or in such deep cover you wouldn't be able to pry him out with a crowbar. And those few others that know his work have to be a circumspect about it.

"But what's life without a little danger? And who better to keep a secret than a gnome illusionist? Secrets are gnomes' stock-in-trade, Zilargo is built on them! And illusionists are nothing but secrets, let me tell you. I swore myself some terrible oaths to my great-uncle to get to read that book, but it's worth the trouble already, I can tell. Of course, now that I'm on my own (Great-Uncle said I needed to be), I need to find myself some gainful employment. And performing magic for money without revealing what I know is going to be a delightful challenge!"

~~~

I also have another idea, one for a Cannith scion, an artificer that has a great suspicion about his superiors. He worries that the creation forge in Sharn is not yet shut down, as it was supposed to be two years ago. Unfortunetly, he has not the slightest idea of how to broach this, because in his heart he doesn't want it to be. He adores the warforged and would consider it a great honor to be privvy to the secrets of their making. So for now he bides his time, learning the secrets of crafting that he can, striving to improve himself, hoping to make himself so indispensible to the house that they'll have to let him in on it. I would also see him possibly taking the Leadership feat later in his career, and having a warforged cohort.

 

[Kaodi]

I'll Go Exhaustive...

I'll make the complete list, to clear up any confusion:

Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, Monster Manual, Expanded Psionics Handbook, Eberron Campaign Setting, Races of Eberron, Sharn: City of Towers, Five Nations, Explorer's Handbook, Magic of Eberron, Player's Guide to Eberron, Secrets of Xen'drik and Faiths of Eberron.
Dragonmarked, Secrets of Sarlona and subsequent books when I get them myself.

Also, I like the way you presented your first concept, Isida, making it more flavourful. I'll note however that gnomes in Eberron have different naming conventions to other settings. They have their first name, there family name, and their house name. To give you a couple examples from Races of Eberron, Hasal Syrralan Adredar or Elymar Kan Davandi.

 

[Velmont]

It's been a time I wnat to try to play a solo game. I am running one and like it. I have a concept of character I've been trying to play since some times. It is a changelling Warlock. He knows how to defend himself, but he is heavily social character, a kind of character I like to play, as I see it more appropriate in PbP than pure figther, as combat have a tendency to be slow.

Here the background I had written for him. That happen some times ago. It is a letter the character have written and finally have never posted and kept for himself. Since that time, he is in exile in another region (might be Sharn), trying to hide and start a new life, but it is seldom hard to get ride of his past.

[SBLOCK=Letter]Dear Eloïse,

I understand your reaction of yesterday. I couldn't expect less of you. If I write this letter to you, it is not to ask forgivenessmyself of what I have done. I betrayed your trust. There is no forgiveness possible. If I write you down this letter, it is because I think I owe you the truth.

I'm borned in the region of Darguun. At that moment, my father was already death. He was not a good man, and he happen to have large debt. His creditor decided to pay themselves by making my mother there slave. So when I was born, I was already the pawn of someone else.

My mother tried to hide her heritage the best she could, but the baby I was could not do the same, I was too young to understand the situation I was in. So the creditor discovered I wasn't a human, but a Changelling. When they saw through the decption, they forced my mother, by threatning my life, to reveal all about her nature. She was the child of an old lineage of sorcerer. Herself wasn't one, she wanted to broke this tradition who have brought doom on us. The creditor then decided to take my education into there hands.

One of them, Farnok, an half-orc, was a wizards. He decided to teach me the mastery of arcane art. Instead of doing it itself, he summoned a minor demon, a quasit, to do it. So since I was four yeas old, I had for mentor a Quasit. One aspect of these demon, it is they are not faithfull follower, even less when they are bond to do something by some magic. This Quasit decide to teach me some dark arcana that I could one day turn upon my master. It is how I became a Warlock instead of a wizard like Farnok. He also helped me to master the magic within all magical items. That way, I would be less scare to use it and I could bring more trouble to the demon's master who was also mine. The Quasit wanted his vengeance for his captivity.

Farnok found the trick the Quasit was playing on him, but it took him years. My training was too advanced to start it from scratch. Illiewyn was the other creditor, that name might sound familiar to your ears. He was a dark elf, a member of the house of Valenar who has turned upon his house. For that, he has been cast away. He decided to take his vengeance. He was the one who had my mother. He trade it for me when he saw the potential I was for his vengeance. He completed my training, teaching me the ways to infiltrate an organization, using my dark arts to my advantage, or should I say, to his advanatge.

Once my training was finish, he sent me to you. He heard you were searching for a new maid. So I had to use my powers and my skills to become that one. It wasn't hard to convince your father. Illewyn knew exactly what your father wanted, so he told me what to say, how to act. I started to work for you. I was expecting to continue my life of slaves under your rules. I didn't expect to be serving someone so kind and so generous. It took not long before I fall in love with you. I would have liked, from the start, to reveal the sword that was hanging over your head, but sadly I had my own. Illewyn threaten me that if I failed him, my mother would died. At that moment, I had only two things that was counting to me, my mother and you. I couldn't give up my mother, so I played Illewyn's game.

But things changed this week. Two events have changed all the rules of the games. First, following an experimentation of Farnok, my mother lost her life. Illewyn lost his only hold on me. Second, he was about to make his first big moves in his plan of vengeance, one that would wounded deeply your father, something that would torture him for all his life, and it was your death. I was suppose to be the one who would have put the poison in the drink you take each night before going to bed. The poison would have killed you during the night, and your father wouldn't had been able to saved you. As the sun would have gone up, your soul would have long been away from your body.

I choosed to turn upon my master. I came to you last night, and reveal my true self. But when you saw I wasn't the maid I pretend to be, when you shout and attract all the guards, I couldn't do much than leaves. I just hope you heard my warning, that your life was in danger, that Illewyn wanted his vengeance. I don't know if I'll have the courage to gives you that letter, who reveal to you my past and my heart. I would also need to be able to reach you and gives the letter to you. But if it ever reach your hand, I would like you to keep it for yourself alone, and reveal to your father only Illewyn's goals.

For me, Illewyn will want my hide, and Farnok his not his only ally. He has many goons that would be please to kill me to have the favor of Illewyn. So I'll use the same skill he teach me and I'll go far from this land and I'll start my life anew.[/SBLOCK]

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

Kaodi - Glad you liked it. And in the case of the naming conventions, I shall have my gnome be Flummerfelt Turngastle Obershine. Because gnome names rock!

For further fun, here's my artificer in individual form:

"My name is Roth d'Cannith, and I think I'm afraid. All right, I know, you're saying 'How can you think you're afraid? You're either afraid or your aren't.' Well, that's true enough. But what if you don't know if you should be afraid or not? That's the situation I find myself in.

"Sharn is, without a doubt, the finest city in all the world. I haven't even been to any other cities and I know this is true. How can you improve upon something as vast, interesting, and magical as the City of Towers? War never came here directly, though there was always the threat of sabotage. The Glass Tower came down well before I was born, and I never was sent to the front lines because the House felt we were safe here.

I grew up privilaged, working in the Cannith enclave in Sharn since I could toddle. I was sorting parts, holding things, and doing simple repairs on anything I could understand since forever. I fell into the artificer's role fairly easily, not that I was unhappy about it! I knew, mostly in the abstract, from what the House said and from the Inquisitive and the Chronicle wrote that the war was a horrible thing. But I also knew it kept the House moving forward. The first warforged were put out a few years before I was born, and I often scold my mother for letting me miss such a momentous event. Well... she thinks it's funny at least.

"They don't let young kids down into the creation forge, as much as I wanted to, so I spent a lot of time enchanting weapons and armor, and once, as a special birthday present, I was able to aid my older brother Davo do some permanent magical alternations to one of our warforged commanders. Fantastic beings, the warforged! I was up and eager to help make them from the minute I helped empower Shield (that was "his" name).

"I was a very lucky man, or so my father tells me. I was supposed to go to the creation forges in Cyre not two days before the Day of Mourning. I had been ecstatic, but nearly fainted when I realized I could have just be vaporized with the rest our House there. I tell you, the whole House wore black for a month, and I had never seen Baron Merrix so dejected. But in an odd way, it was also good for me. I know it sounds ghoulish, but with the Cyre branch of the family gone, they actually needed me in the creation forge.

"I spent what were probably the two happiest years of my life in the Forge. I never learned so much as I did then, though I perhaps learned the most important thing of all; I don't know nearly as much as I think I do. The sheer amount of genius it took to get the creation forges up and running, the creativity it took to tweak the individual warforged to what the customer specified, was amazing. I never got to run the forge, obviously, but I was able to help with maintenance and aid with their learning. The awesome responsibility of imprinting a new warforged with their morals and ethics still makes me shake a bit when I think about it.

"And you know, I thought I would be horrible disappointed when the Treaty of Thronehold happened and they told us to dismantle the forges. And I was, don't get me wrong, but I was happy to see the warforged free. They never did officially say whether or not the 'forged have souls, but I always thought they did. We could have two of them, built for the same purpose, given the same training by the same teachers, and they would still be shaped differently by their experiences. Those can't just be explained away by quirks in the creation process. I think we weren't just creating bodies, somehow we were creating souls, or causing them to be attracted to our warforged. That makes me shake when I think about it too hard.

"But why am I afraid? It's not because of the question of souls. It's not because I lost my position at the creation forge; all of us did. I just went back to the foundary and construct floors. I spend my days repairing constructs, weapons, and armor, while working on making my own. But I wanted more.

"I wanted to know what Baron Merrix knew about the creation forges. I wanted to make my own constructs. And I wanted the secret of warforged creation. The second I might get, the first and third might see me dead before enlightened. But then again, I wasn't the only one of us that thought that way! I'm afraid because a couple times I have tried to return to the creation forge. It's blocked up, the way it was when we sealed it. But there's something there.... I think it's working again.

"I do some work in the Cogs, and more than once I would spy warforged walking around with the blank curiosity of those engaged in their 'learning mode.' Now, there hasn't been a warforged in that mode since the creation forges were ordered destroyed. No warforged can activate that on their own; it disables itself once a pattern of behavior is established. Indeed, it's only used by new warforged and no other time! That's not all, more than once our wand adepts in the old forge area, and once I spotted the Baron around there. I fear and pray they've reactivated the forge.

"I think if they discover I know, one of two things might happen. I might be killed. That's the scary part, that's why I'm afraid. The other thing is, I might be brought in to help. And that's what I want. I don't know too much about my field yet, and I'm too weak in magic; that I know for sure. I'm hoping and praying if I can learn enough, I will be too valuable to kill and they'll have to bring me in. Die or thrive. That's why I think I'm afraid."