Unknown Armies Otherspace: The City

ACCESS

Alan Madagascar wrote the equation that created the City, a formula that procedurally generated the world he saw every time he closed his eyes. He was able to transit into the place by simply constructing and solving the equation in his head. As he got older, he had trouble remembering the formula. He transcribed it into notebooks, so that all he had to do was input the final value to reach the other side.

Today, there are two ways to get into the City. Find a written copy of the formula, or derive it yourself. The former is the only hope a normal person has. The latter requires either extreme mathematical skill, lesser mathematical skill and a powerful computer, or a magick school fixated on architecture and buildings.

Either way, just drop a value in for X (the seed) and you’re off to the races. You must be inside a structure for this to work. Leave the building, and you’ll exit into the City.

Leaving the City is as easy as going back through the door you came through.

Unknown Armies Location: Mummy Roads

Beginning with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, and heightening throughout the 19th century as European powers displaced the Ottomans as Egypt’s colonial overlords, European (and American) interest in Egyptian mummies created a vibrant tomb plundering industry among the fellahin, who were more than happy to sell the stupid things to gullible foreigners as quickly as they could exhume them.

While some of the preserved corpses were purchased for legitimate scientific and archaeological purposes, large numbers were acquired by private parties as trophies and decoration, and more still were ground up and recycled into fertilizer for their high nitrogen and potassium content. Still more were consumed in a more obscure and vaguely occult capacity as paint pigments or medicine.

And a few were used to pave roads.

Dune 2d20 Masterpost

I've been running Modiphius' Dune 2d20 system on and off for the last few months. The adventures of House Viracocha and the War of Assassins with House Orlok.

By Stepan Alekseev

My feedback on the game system is that if you want to run a Dune RPG, it's worth using Dune 2d20 rather than hacking another system. Any further praise would have to be counterbalanced with a listing of the game's flaws, both in the rules themselves and the explanation given in the corebook. I might do a full F&F writeup of the game, or a shorter review on this blog if I don't feel like putting myself through the full meatgrinder.

Dune 2D20 - Peripheral Houses

HOUSE AT TAM

House Major

Homeworld: Niushe

NPCs Known: Beg MacAdder at Tam (hit on Tost Viracocha once)

House at Tam hails from the "purple world" of Niushe, whose retinal based ecosystem gives the planet's plant life its distinctive coloration. They have a reputation as honest brutes, fond of violence and self indulgence, yet utterly pious in their devotion to the Horned Mother. They keep trade and communication with the rest of the universe to a bare minimum, out of fear that other Houses and various secret organizations will subvert their culture through the media and send spies into their homes undetected. They keep large parts of their world at a medieval level of technological sophistication. They hate House Orlok for stealing away their beloved priests of House Nuntius after defeating House at Tam in a War of Assassins.

Dune 2d20: Music Post

Music from the Dune 2d20 game. Some tracks were originally slated for one location and used for another. Not all tracks were used.

By Guchi

 

Dune 2d20: Session 7 - THIS IS KANLY

Klamm Orlok, bastard son of Marquis James Orlok, and Kleft, defacto commander of the Sulfur Dragoons,  held Lydia Amaru, Agent of House Viracocha, at gunpoint in Klamm's apartment on the Acid Spit, the Sulfur Dragoons' spar of the aerostat Dhal on House Orlok's home planet Rulag.

 

Lydia convinced them that she was actually Cappy Viracocha, daughter of Earl Alejandro Viracocha and valuable hostage. She didn't have a signet ring to back up any of her outlandish offers in exchange for freedom, so the pair had her confined to the state room next to Klamm's apartment while they decided what to do with her. They hadn't alerted the rest of House Orlok yet, which was good.

Mockingbird the Face Dancer disguised themself as Klamm and told the guards to bring Lydia out. They almost made it off the Spit, but were interrupted by the return of Kleft. Mockingbird changed faces into a random trooper before Kleft spotted them. Disguised Mockingbird told Kleft that Klamm had ordered the prisoner removed. Kleft assumed it was a coup, and ordered the other Sulfur Dragoons to kill disguised Mockingbird. Mockingbird ran out through the pentashield Lydia tried to follow, but didn't have a keycard, and bounced right off the prudence door.

With Lydia in captivity, the rest of the Agents considered their options. They had a squad of Watchers and another of Free Shooters ready to deploy to the aerostat, a Face Dancer who could change their appearance at will, and a dissembler keycard that would let them into the prudence door protecting the base. A military operation would rescue their operative and give them a chance to capture the Sulfur Dragoons' leaders and destroy their base of operations, all while looking stylish.

Unknown Armies Cabal: All the World is Green

Artemisia Culpeper (formerly Gordagina Smollet) has a vision. A world swept clean of humans, the works of civilization covered with green, growing things. A world of exquisite beauty and perfect solitude, where she could wander forever. Walk city streets under a canopy of trees. Climb overgrown viaducts and watch chunks of skyscrapers calve off and tumble into urban canyons below, slowly collapsing under the weight of the ivy.

Why does she want this? She has no strong environmental sentiments. She doesn’t hate other people, at least not enough to want them exterminated. She wants this because she has a vague memory of the place, the world without people with the ruins still standing but overgrown and wild. She doesn’t know if this is a memory or something she saw in a dream, or in a picture that convinced her it was real. It’s beautiful and she would sacrifice anything to go back there. Including every other person in existence.

Unknown Armies Sandbox: Poolside, FL

No art, print friendly version here.

Poolside, Florida. Founded by Dan Poolside in 1925 during the boom. While everyone else was busy inflating real estate bubbles, Poolside bought water rights and built infrastructure, obsessed with his dream of a Mediterranean resort town in the Everglades. It sounded insane, but it’s not that different from how Naples turned out. Today, this city of 3,991 people boasts a “thriving” upstairs/downstairs economy of wealthy retirees and a rotating cast of service workers scraping by at subsistence levels.

Poolside is built on an island of rock and concrete fill, piled up around a truly massive boulder. The top of the rock outcropping is the highest point in South Florida outside Miami. The stone mound is crusted with buildings, hanging gardens, and decorative water features. Down to the waterfront, a facsimile of a Neapolitan tourist village.

Surrounding the town are the florida Everglades, a flooded morass of freshwater forests and “wet prairies”. The Everglades were acquired as a National Park in 1934, Poolside was spared eminent domain by smart legal maneuvering on the part of the founder. The entire Poolside incorporated area encompasses a couple square miles of swamp outside the town, which is not fenced but clearly demarcated as the “City Limits” by buoys and signs.

All public lighting in poolside has red lenses, to protect the elderly residents’ night vision and avoid generating light pollution. The town has blackout laws restricting open windows at night.

Dune 2d20: Session 6 - THIS IS KANLY

The House Viracocha counselors sent three agents to House Orlok's home planet Rulag:

• Lydia Amaru the Disguise Specialist
• Marcus the Mentat Spy
• Zak Vezas the Hypnotist

Their mission: to collect information about House Orlok and its servitors, infiltrate The Sulfur Dragoons mercenary army, and find secret information that could be used to embarrass or destroy them.

The trio of Agents arrived at the spaceport on the Aerostat Dhal. A helpful Guild agent listed them as pilgrims and got them tourist visas in exchange for some information about House Runasimi's plans for the war.

by KhairulHisham

The aerostat was a floating city filled with breathable air. This allowed it to float in the heavier-than-air atmosphere of the planet's upper cloud layer. Marcus suspected the city also had suspensors carrying some of the weight. The shuttle bay was on the top spindle of the hab, with an elevator that went down to the main habitat "bowl" inside. This enclosed space was filled with bridges, mezzanines and concentric rings of terraces, going from the rim of the bowl down to the lower levels. Everything was decorated in colorful banners. Everyone carried weapons. Massive screens advertised House Orlok's military might and their impending victory over House Runasimi. And a strange abstract warning, where a dancing figure with a sword was "stomped out" by a giant boot.