Darkening Skits

Grey

Grey

Dialectical Hermeticist
This is not an interest check for a full forum game. Read on for clarity.





The world is beautiful in aspect and breathtaking in scope. From the cold majesty of Trollhaven to the scintillating colour of The Wildlands, life thrives in ignorance and bliss.


The Trolls sing and reflect in peace far to the North, overseeing their industrious progeny.


The Arcanoteknical Cult transcends flesh with industrious zeal, deep in the conduits of their City-Engine.


The Sorceror-Kings of the Stormcircle bicker and tax while their children produce innovative manatech ships and machines.


The Treefolk jealously guard the roots of The Worldcap with their Elemental symbiotes.


Pirates and traders, human and rat alike, ply the airways and brave the twisted gravity of Shaydensea, the taxes of the Stormlords and depredations of pirates.


The Vampire-Priests of the Iron Tower are locked in a cold war against the genocidal Necromancers of Kaer.


And through it all the Infernal Houses spread their political and commercial machinations like a grand dance, tangling mortals up in their centennial feuds and intrigues.


But this will not last.


Far to the south, something has broken into the world. Something cold and alien. Something that hates Magic and wants to unmake the world. It is contained, for now, by chance rather than design. Still, shards of its dark power escape into the rest of the world sometimes...


A crisis, they say, is an opportunity, and fortune favours the bold. How will you shape your legend under these darkening skies?


A long time ago, I put forward the idea for a Skit-based game in the Darkening Skies setting. Now, thanks to the recurring characters and recurring settings subfora, that can still happen with impacting my current commitments.


Why?


Well - if I add all my rules adjustments to the Darkening Skies resource, link it in the Recurring Settings with a teaser pitch and a 200 year timeline, people who are interested can make characters. Then, they can collaborate to pick events, or spaces between events, in which their characters can act and meet. They can invent locations or people, use the system for duels (and in this way may not shy away from character death, especially in dramatic moments), and generally play a bunch of connected but not integrated (Silvertongued's character kills a diplomat in Year 40. NPCs at a party with Frixz's character in Year 60 discuss the war that erupted following that death) threads over that span.


I'll be around to arbitrate ruling if called on, but ultimately it's all in the hands of interested players.


I ask here because it'll take a bit of thought to construct a timeline for use, so I want to know there's interest first.


Thoughts?


EDIT: This is now in its own forum, but runs on basically the same principles here: http://www.rpdom.com/forums/darkening-skits/
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I should add some kind of synopsis for people who have no idea what this is about or time to read the Creativity thread.


The world is beautiful in aspect and breathtaking in scope. From the cold majesty of Trollhaven to the scintillating colour of The Wildlands, life thrives in ignorance and bliss.


The Trolls sing and reflect in peace far to the North, overseeing their industrious progeny.


The Arcanoteknical Cult transcends flesh with industrious zeal, deep in the conduits of their City-Engine.


The Sorceror-Kings of the Stormcircle bicker and tax while their children produce innovative manatech ships and machines.


The Treefolk jealously guard the roots of The Worldcap with their Elemental symbiotes.


Pirates and traders, human and rat alike, ply the airways and brave the twisted gravity of Shaydensea, the taxes of the Stormlords and depredations of pirates.


The Vampire-Priests of the Iron Tower are locked in a cold war against the genocidal Necromancers of Kaer.


And through it all the Infernal Houses spread their political and commercial machinations like a grand dance, tangling mortals up in their centennial feuds and intrigues.


But this will not last.


Far to the south, something has broken into the world. Something cold and alien. Something that hates Magic and wants to unmake the world. It is contained, for now, by chance rather than design. Still, shards of its dark power escape into the rest of the world sometimes...


A crisis, they say, is an opportunity, and fortune favours the bold. How will you shape your legend under these darkening skies?
 
I shall think up some characters to be footnotes in history. Slap us wif a timeline. Across the face. Purple headbutt!
 
Sample timeline - open to adjustment, feel free to add events of your own as long as they don't immediately contradict or alter the examples. Run any major conflicts or deals by me first.


YD - Year of Dominion


YD 0 - The War of Three Dragons comes to a close as Djuke Imperus annihilates his two eldest daughters for contesting his throne. Within months, Imperus has formally established the Inquisition and given them the authority to police his peers and the Magi. Even he himself is not immune to this edict. The Houses settle into an uneasy peace, allowing their mortal neighbours to flourish for the first time in a century.


YD 7 - Desolator Olimak Czeslaw is formally contracted by Stormlord Bronwyn to end her war with Stormlord Ollanius. This is the first instance of a House being employed by any but themselves. Ollanius Spire and its line are reduced to ash on the winds of history.


YD 10 - The First Seed. A fragment of the Awakened Wood attempts to spread beyond the Interface. The Burning Marshal and her lover Lybar Katarina destroy it after months of heavy conflict with Elemental guardians.


YD 13 - Rat Heartwright and native of Carandus Hold creates the first Constructed Intelligence outside The Awakened Wood.


YD 15 - Dellebron Castor inadvertently murders most of the elders of the House in an elaborate series of double-crosses gone horribly right. Djuke Imperus names him outlaw.


YD 16 - Dellebron Sarkaan instigates the War of Tears, murdering Djuke Leopold. Dellebron Castor claims it to be reprisal for naming him outlaw.


YD 20 - Hulbrad Noros presents proof that Sarkaan acted alone. Dellebron is saved on the brink of extinction. Meanwhile, the City-Engines opens trade with Trollhaven.


YD 21 - The Curse begins consuming communites in Eastern Imeria. Carandus Hold is the first to go dark.


YD 24 - Houses Olimak and Lezek establish The Bulwark to contain the Curse, with the assistance of Hulbrad Noros.


YD 27 - Hulbrad Noros presents a metaphysical sympathy between the Infernal Houses and the Priesthood of Vasnok.


YD 28 - Hulbrad Noros dies in a freak gardening accident and his library mysteriously burns down.


YD 32 - Djuke Mandalthraxus retreats into Shaydensea. Meanwhile, The Second Seed lands south of the Wood. Bodhisattva Irenicus and the Deepswell Enclave band together to destroy it.


YD 38 - The philosopher Huron Long calls this the most peaceful period in known history.


YD 40 - The Gaurish Massacre. Heartwright Skepsis compels the inhabitants of Gaurish town to commit mass suicide.


YD 41 - The War of Flat Notes. The City-Engine inadvertently provokes the Trolls by teaching a Goblin to sing.


YD 43 - The War of Flat Notes ends with the assistance of House Lybar. A series of negotiations opens to ensure hostilities do not resurge.


YD 48 - The Communer Jessup Fink breeds Panacea Fruit. This is immediately stolen by Djuke Mandalthraxus and Jessup killed. Only one tree remains, in the possession of the Inqusition.


YD 50 - High Energy Research Facility AXON is lost in a mysterious accident, high in the Hell’s Teeth Mountains. The area is quarantined, later to be known as The Valley of the Fallen Sky.


YD 54 - The Storm War. The lords of the Stormcircle break the peace in a catastrophic conflict that will last ten years.


YD 64 - The Storm War ends. The Stormlords begin the method of intermarriage and warding that will turn them into a cartel.


YD 67 - Lezek Hideo returns from an expedition to the far South. Leads some of his siblings and many warriors on a war of conquest. They are never heard from again.


YD 70 - The Third Seed. Djuke Imperus personally intervenes and begins negotiations with th Awakened Wood to end this.


YD 75 - A prototype skyship is completed by the Sandus Brothers - Ivan, Sergei, and Artyom. A complex combination of Conflagrant, Stormlord, and Guardian techniques.


YD 77 - The City-Engine begins trade with The Spire Cartel.


YD 80 - Hulbrad Una performs the first Infernal tattoo, learning from Shadow Lina Vera.


YD 82 - The Rat Ernesto Juervo composes ‘Music of the Sphere’, and the symphony - involving magical instruments such as galvanic guitars - sweeps the ballrooms of the elite.


YD 86 - The Kromsian Offensive. Forces from the Iron Tower attempt to subjugate the lands of Ironheart Spire. They are driven back within two years.


YD 90 - The Midnight War. House Hulbrad and the Conspiracy of Ravens - a cabal of Shadow Magi - devastate Eastern Imeria in a series of clandestine skirmishes that leave the surviving non-combatants mentally broken.


YD 93 - The first skyships begin to be produced in the Spires. Rare and expensive, the Stormlords use them to coerce surrounding lands under their rule. This is tolerated.


YD 100 - Gold’s Folly. House Yrva attempt to invade the Awakened Wood. The conflict continues for three years before they are driven out.


YD 105 - The Spire Cartel attempts to circumvent City-Engine traders and deal directly with Trollhaven using their Skyships. A fiece diplomatic debate rages for years under threat of war.


YD 117 - Dryad Matriach Zia uses her Heartwright powers to goad Vyrs Spire into war with House Yrva. The Heartwood Council proves that she acted without their knowledge, but the casualties are steep.


YD 120 - A Skyship is shot down over the City-Engine. War is narrowly avoided.


YD 126 - The War of Sun and Bones. At the pleas of the Hierophant of Vasnok, Djuke Imperus commands House Lezek to force an armistice from Kaer.


YD 130 - Commercial skyships become available. The Stormcircle immediately conspires with all allies to present Djuke Imperus with a trade agreement. Imperus imposes rules enforced by the Inquisition, and allows them their tariffs and tolls.


YD 135 - Yrva Lelka’s ex-lover, Garett von Curze, and his associates reveal the first manatechnical implants.


YD 140 - Orcish rifles are deployed, for the first time, against the pirate Osric Aubert.


YD 142 - Djuke Imperus overrules pleas from Magi to outlaw firearms.


YD 146 - The Necromancer Morticia leads a cult of follows into the World Without Sun.


YD 148 - The Cryolyte Annette Deepswell murders Olimak Tarantus. House Olimak descends on Deepswell Arcology with the force of an angry god. No one is spared.


YD 150 - Olimak Patricia is executed for giving the kill-order on Deepswell. A fanatical Olim suicide bombs Inquisition HQ. A generation of Olimak children are warded to other families in penance.


YD 153 - The Chronomancer Edward Magnusson accidentally erases himself and the town of Haffenstar from history. The only record remained in the Hulbrad Library, and it took months of confusion before it was found.


YD 160 - Trollhaven opens consideration of a Foreign Quarter.


YD 162 - Using Orcish rifles, a community of mortals rises up against their Stormlord rulers. Djuke Xiang and Lezek Nuala commend their bravery and ambition.


YD 167 - Graffen & Sons Shipwrights build a skyship that will carry them to the moon. The source of their funding is of great interest. Two years later, the maiden flight is sabotaged.


YD 170 - Tollet Spire and Yrva Richter become embroiled in a bloody feud when Voivode Rose Tollet breaks up with him for Dellebron Tatiana.


YD 171 - Yrva Richter and Dellebron Tatiana end a duel in their mutual death. Everyone’s family blames everyone else.


YD 175 - Lezek Andrea and her close friend Eoin Lightshield lead a second war of conquest South. They are never heard from again.


YD 177 - The Celestine and her crew are declared outlaw.


YD 180 - The Ghostspeaker Rebellion plunges the Iron Tower into crippling internal conflict.


YD 184 - The eccentric and outcast Djuke Rashid dies on the steps of the Eotran Temple with the blood of a hundred monks on his claws, blaming them for the rebellion that claimed his Savaan lover.


YD 186 - The first Dark Shard is encountered on the north-western coast. Only rumours make it out, but the are terrifying if true.


YD 190 - Rat watchmaker Stefan Hawke publishes A Brief History Of Timekeeping. It is immediately suppressed when the first copy inspires Hulbrad Ventus to build something terrible.


YD 194 - The Heartwright Jared Toulon comples The Mindweb, a complex collection of arcane links between population centres that allows them to share knowledge and communication through purpose-made terminals.


YD 199 - The Darkening War.
 
LMAO 2character concept.


One is a mutant, a man whose potential to be a mage was stillborn, leaving him with the hunger and capacity to shatter and devour magic. His weapons of choice are the rifle and the printing press, as he calls for greater freedoms for the peasantry in the Stormcircle, daring the Stormlords to come for him, highlighting their hypocrisy. His mutation makes him a born answer to any magus who comes to try to silence him, meaning that to date, the rulers have had the best chances by sending normal mortals against him, the same class of normal mortals whom they exploit. Mercenary, soldier, Inquistorial asset, and now revolutionary.


YD 163, a year after the uprising.


The other is a Guardian mage, whose talents tie her to earth, stone and metals. In YD 151, she's setting out into the mountains with a small party of followers, determined to build what she can only think of as the Holdfast, a fortress and storehouse of knowledge, with all the lore of the age inscribed indelibly in immortal plates of steel, a library which will outlast the civilisation that built it. Together with her band of engineers and loremasters, she intends to stand on the battlements and tell the apocalypse to fuck off, because she believes that within a century, civilisation is going to fall.
 
[QUOTE="The Dark Wizard]Why not make a submission for this :tongue:?

[/QUOTE]
Because I thought skit-based games were now integrated into Thread Roleplays, and it would thus be disallowed? I mean, if I can make a submission...
 
Grey said:
Because I thought skit-based games were now integrated into Thread Roleplays, and it would thus be disallowed? I mean, if I can make a submission...
Click to expand...
The only skit based game that is not allowed is something like Pensilc and Crayons where people kept submitting more and more settings to it(aka brand new games) and circumventing the entire site process.


If you make a darkening skits game. It better be about that setting only and not any of your others..
 
[QUOTE="The Dark Wizard]The only skit based game that is not allowed is something like Pensilc and Crayons where people kept submitting more and more settings to it(aka brand new games) and circumventing the entire site process.
If you make a darkening skits game. It better be about that setting only and not any of your others..

[/QUOTE]
That's all it was going to be about. I just though this way spared you guys any trouble - especially at this time of year.
 
Grey said:
That's all it was going to be about. I just though this way spared you guys any trouble - especially at this time of year.
Click to expand...
You can go ahead and submit a request if you want forums for your game.
 
GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE


I bring you the gift of games.


Which is to say a forum has been secured and should be up in the near future. CONTEMPLATE CHARACTER CONCEPTS.
 
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