ForBen

KirinDave: Okay\\ KirinDave: Well...\\ KirinDave: It's kind of Rifts-ish\\ KirinDave: Once, there was a great war. Almost 1000 years ago.\\ KirinDave: And in that even, as most of the world became uninhabitable, people began to discover they could turn back the tide of corruption.\\ KirinDave: Society almost shattered, but the discovery of these new mystical abilities in humans (which became more common every day) and most of the lost technology scavenged allowed 3 major players to redominate the world scene in just 300 years.\\ KirinDave: The Empire Brittania, spanning all across Europe, africa, and some of Russia.\\ KirinDave: The Triumvirate of the Magi.\\ KirinDave: Which started in Canada and eventually took all of north america (and maintains outposts all the way to the isthmus of panama).\\ KirinDave: And the Union of Equals, which hundreds of small Eastern dictators formed to unite all of China, India, the Middle east, and the Pacific isles.\\ KirinDave: It was then that the Empire Brittania began developing Technomagical weapons.\\ KirinDave: Weapons that combined the science of old weapons (even the dreaded "Dirty Bomb" that caused the last holocaust) and augmented them with magic.\\ KirinDave: I'm sure you can imagine, a Dirty Nuke combined with Meteor is probably not a happy thing.\\ killedshadowrun: ouchies\\ KirinDave: Yeah\\ KirinDave: So, of course everyone else was doing it too.\\ killedshadowrun: did S. America just kinda disapper?\\ KirinDave: America was subsumed by the Triumvirate.\\ KirinDave: But...\\ KirinDave: America was hit really hard by the war.\\ KirinDave: And South America is a hellish wasteland\\ KirinDave: So they took up what they could.\\ KirinDave: Anyways, so everyone began to team up, and a huge war got waged in Africa. KirinDave: Right when it looked like another apocalypse was on the horizon, something happened.\\ KirinDave: Huge airships (ironclad, magically enhanced, and generally impervious to magic or weapons) entered the fray. Their warriors were disciplined, aggressive, and they had an advantage\\ KirinDave: They had giant robots! :-)\\ killedshadowrun: evil...\\ KirinDave: They called them gears. They were magical in nature, nigh indestructable, and had incredible power.\\ KirinDave: Brittania refused to surrender (the other two fled from horrific losses).\\ KirinDave: So the Empire of Brittania was shattered.\\ KirinDave: Basically, these newcomers claimed to be the World's Consciousness. They said they were from Below, and that they had come to keep the world from being destroyed by man's arrogance again.\\ KirinDave: They proclaimed themselves the world's police force.\\ KirinDave: of course, no one would just let that happen. :-)\\ KirinDave: Immediately, everyone else began to develop their own gears.\\ killedshadowrun: go go gadget mech of doom\\ KirinDave: The World's Consciousness was an organization that basically reduced all land disputes into tournaments.\\ KirinDave: The Union of Equals kinda fell apart, and now it's the "Million Nations"\\ KirinDave: People in it still call themselves the UoE, although most don't know what that menas.\\ KirinDave: The Empire Brittania was shattered, but lots of its structure still exists.\\ KirinDave: It has no real millitary, instead developing duelists to play off the new world order.\\ KirinDave: The Triumvirate of the Magi, being on another continent, is largely unperturbed by this event. They are the one to watch right now.\\ KirinDave: That's the setting in a nutshell\\ killedshadowrun: now are these duels in mechs or in person?\\ KirinDave: Well...\\ KirinDave: Some people have mechs.\\ KirinDave: Some don't.\\ KirinDave: Magic in this world takes a few forms.\\ KirinDave: First, people naturally manifest it.\\ KirinDave: A strong willed person will become stronger\\ KirinDave: A tough minded person becomes tougher.\\ KirinDave: Basically, people slowly move towards their ideal conceptions of themselves.\\ KirinDave: Some people do this more than others.\\ KirinDave: Now, the Triumvirate of the Magi believed, back at the beginning, that Magic was an end unto itself and they called it the "Gate of Atma"\\ KirinDave: Claiming that they could become gods with it if they trained hard.\\ KirinDave: So they've developed a kind of hermetic tradition.\\ KirinDave: it's VERY hard to learn, but its powerful and utterly generic.\\ KirinDave: It's also fantastically expensive to learn, it's a way that the Barons of the empire keep the peasants (who are forbidden from developing their natural abilities on pain of death).\\ KirinDave: The Million Nations calls their traditions "The Way of Atma"\\ KirinDave: They have a very holistic and internal approach.\\ KirinDave: A cross between Indian shamanism and martial arts.\\ KirinDave: They also have developed unique Gears that are very mechanical in nature, and immensely strong, although not very portable.\\ KirinDave: The triumvirate has developed light, fast, and very confusing Gears they called "Higher Gears"\\ KirinDave: They tend to disobey what you expect a mechanical giant to do, and they can be banished to a ring, which the owner wears.\\ KirinDave: It's HELL to repair though.\\ KirinDave: And not nearly so tough.\\ KirinDave: The other variety, used by those from Below.\\ KirinDave: They split the difference, and they're good at just about everything. Some can become more compact, some can't. They're personalized affairs.\\ KirinDave: Now, the World's Consciousness actually recruits from what's left of Brittania. \\ KirinDave: These folks are called Rangers, and they kind of have a Sheriff style thing.\\ KirinDave: They intern on one of the roving airships of the World's Consciousness.\\ killedshadowrun: hmm... so many character concepts coming ot mind\\ KirinDave: Yeah\\ KirinDave: The last person I ran in that setting made an insanely cool character.\\ killedshadowrun: what parameters would you be looking at?\\ KirinDave: He was this British guy who was basically a scavenger. he had an old biplane and he flew around hunting for treasure.\\ KirinDave: His primary armament was these two magical handguns that the Empire Brittania had been developing\\ KirinDave: Reason and Malice.\\ KirinDave: Reason was a white and gold plated .45 automatic.\\ KirinDave: It naturally could emit a shield of holy light and gave a decent bonus to any non-fatal shot made, but gave a penalty to all fatal shots.\\ KirinDave: Malice was a black and silver .666 caliber 3 shot revolver. Fucking huge.\\ KirinDave: This was a hand canon.\\ KirinDave: It could emit a smoky shot of hellfire, and the bullets themselves could penetrate defenses (armor and forcefields) easily.\\ KirinDave: When he held them both, they began to fight for control of his mind.\\ KirinDave: This let him use them in tandem... he was uniquely suited to the task (high spirit stat).\\ KirinDave: He was a super fun character to watch, because he got some natural abilities that involved really fast movement and some sound-based illusions.\\ KirinDave: And he had the "Double Trick Shot"\\ KirinDave: Think of an X-wing flying by letting go with all barrels in unlinked mode.\\