Revision as of 00:36, 6 April 2010

Modern Transplants to Creation

A game about what would happen if four people from modern industrial society were yoinked and shoehorned into Creation. This is something I'd run for my RL group, hence the UCS yoinking four souls as opposed to five. :P

The Games of Divinity is a giant tool for building worlds, worlds just as real as Creation but self-sufficient, self-contained, and very short-lived. Within the Jade Pleasure Dome, entire universes are born and die over the course of centuries, with the Celestial Incarna and those deities lucky enough to be invited to play a move or two determining the course of nations, natural disasters, and even the play-by-play of human relationships.

A few years ago, troubled by the course that Creation was taking and seeking to attract the attention of the thoroughly addicted Celestial Incarna, a cabal of gods managed to get one of their number invited to make a move in the current Game of Divinity. The god set in motion a series of events that lead to the tale of Creation being written as a story within the Game's world; the idea was to attract the attention of the Unconquered Sun by using the very thing he was obsessed with. It was a desperate plan, almost foredoomed to failure because of the sheer odds against success.

Imagine then, the surprise of the cabal of gods when their plan did succeed.

Unfortunately, so addicted was the Unconquered Sun to the Games of Divinity that even his mighty will could not bear to be parted from it for more than the merest of moments necessary to direct an Exaltation. The other Incarna were in a similar position, and the Unconquered Sun did not wish to give away his moves in the Games of Divinity and so did not inform the Maidens or Luna of this development. The only course of action he could foresee any success in was to appropriate souls from the current Games of Divinity and use them to temper the souls of his Chosen, hopefully ameliorating their wild passions.

And so it was that four souls were plucked, unawares, from the current Game of Divinity, a world so warped it was a sphere that spun at a fantastic rate, with the cities of man and the forests of nature sprawling over its surface, yet never being flung off into the great Void that surrounded it. So odd was this world that, no matter where one stood on its surface, the center of the great sphere always represented down. Great were the powers of the men of this world; though they had no magic to speak of, they had mastered the very forces and powers of nature, forging weapons of such destructive potential that, for a time, the very survival of their world was threatened. Yet, these men were as strange as their world; the name they chose for their warped and misshapen home was not some fittingly unpronounceable mishmash, but rather the simple sobriquet “Earth.”

And so it was that four souls woke up one morning in lives not their own, in what was to them a very strange world...

Location Thoughts

I'm thinking somewhere in the Scav Lands is probably the best, if only because they're slightly less likely to get ganked by the Wyld Hunt before they figure out what's going on. I'll probably invent the actual village/city they show up in from whole cloth but a general idea is a must.

(Feel free to pop suggestions/comments/ideas etc here)

Comments? Suggestions? Vitriol?

My brain immediately thinks of El Hazard, in which four people are yanked from our world to a fantasy world and immediately gain powers as a result (Mr. Fujisawa gains superhuman strength if he abstains from alcohol and tobacco, Makoto gains the ability to synch to the ancient lost technologies of the world, Nanami gains the ability to see through the illusions of the Phantom Tribe, and Jinnai gained the ability to talk to the Bugrom, a race of insect men. In Exalted Terms, Dawn, Twilight, Night, and Eclipse (a rathe warped and crazy eclipse, but...))

Three of the people they meet would make good Dragon-Blooded--the three priestess of the Elements: Shayla Shayla (Fire), Miz Mishtal (Water), and Afura Mann (Air).

And the Eye of God would make a great first age war machine.  :--JohnBiles

Oh man. I clearly need to get around to seeing that. :/ I thought I was only ripping off of Fushigi Yuugi, Inuyasha, and some recent anime that rips off both of those and several others besides. - Konpeito

Heh, interesting idea... especially if it can get the legendary Biles of the ancient FFML fame to speak of it. Why not make it a 'perfect' circle of 5, rather 4... the fifth member landing elsewhere. Some place far, far away... and is slowly going mad. You might also want give them an automatic language so that they can speak a local tongue.^_^
~ Haku who thinks that SIs need to think on the language barriers before going SI.

I considered the language barrier problem. My solution is to have Riverspeak, for seemingly no detectable reason, be virtually identical to English. Hey, if Miaka can go back to ancient China and find people speaking Japanese... I do like the idea of the poor bastard who landed somewhere else and is going nuts, though. Might have to yoink that. :) - Konpeito

Heh, keen... the mad bit is... more in line of a mysterious enemy / end boss type turning up as... y'know... their former friend. Only he's sold his name / soul / allied / slave to the yozi/neverborn or some suitable horrify evil of Creation.

Just remember NOT to tell your players that the fifth is out there and he's doing all sorts of nasty evils. Just have tales of this nasty villian showing up and doing bad-ass stuff... things like being at a head of a massive invasion force armed to the teeth with First Age / Demonic / Necromatic / Fae weapons and is using unconventional tactics (to the natives of Creation) and kicking much ass... capturing of poor helpless Immaculate Monks in their temples and converting them to his or her vile ways and slaking his or her lusts on the appropiate gender. In short, make the 5th a credible threat, and a show-case of what YOUR players could have done in different circumstances.
~ Haku the Unbelieved!

OH MAN. YUO = TEH GENIUS. :O Seriously, I love screwing with my players but that takes the cake. Oh man. Hehe. Reminds me of a Star Trek episode I saw the other day. - Konpeito

Thank you for your praises... but -yes-, your players are there to be screwed with (but in a nice way). Besides, if You have god-like power (solar-ish), a megalomania complex, and you land amongst people who give you an edited version of how things are (their point of view).

I don't see why you can't have a solar SI NPC turn evil and go Necromancer or Infernal or even willingly aiding the fae. And you just go absolutely insane, as your mind would also be one of the things co-opted by your 'allies'.
~Haku

That's pretty much what happens with Jinnai in El Hazard (off on his own, hooks up with conquering Bugrom Army). Something which might be useful also for something like this is to watch Vision of Escaflowne, where Isaac Newton ended up on another world and basically built his own Loom of Fate and becomes the master villain of the series :) --JohnBiles

Pretty much, yeah... that's what happened to Jinnai. But it's cool, thou. After all, if your players have to make a decision, side with their former friend or stick to their guns and help save the day.
~Haku

Hmmm... I would suggest someplace where there is a Wyld zone nearby... and have the natives they encounter -assume- these poor sods got monkeyed with in the Wyld by some fair folk bastards or they're insane fae. A small village outside of Nexus might be an idea. Or some place in the Hundred Kingdoms.

If you want to... just, outright rip from your classical fantasy novels for villages or cities they stumble into at the onset of their adventures.
~ Haku who is getting flashbacks of various SI fanfics and Guardians of the Flame by Joel Rosenburg.