Well, I'm finally putting Heavy Future together as a
cohesive setting. It had its origins as a cobbled together, make it up as you
go along sourcebook for Galaxy Command, which was equally improvisational.
Spurred by some fan interest that was basically generated by accident (a thread
about Tournament of Rapists over on theRPGsite.com mutated into a discussion of
Heavy Future, and once I joined in, I think I earned some new fans)....I've
decided I'll be revising both Heavy Future and Black Tokyo. I want to put out
nice shiny new race books first, as I did with Black Operators earlier
this year, followed by tighter setting books and core sourcebooks like the
eventual POD version of Enchantments of Black Tokyo.
Right now, I'm sitting on a very tight manuscript for what I'm calling Heavy
Races Revised. This massive sourcebook will consolidate most (but not all)
the player races from the various Galaxy Command and Heavy Future sourcebooks,
including a lot of my Legion of Superhero homage races from Action Galaxy in
one place. There's a few races I left out, just because they don't really fit
the Heavy Future/grungy late 70s sexy sci-fi aesthetic I want to keep. For
example, I left out the Neuros, because the race is very staid, very
law-abiding and pragmatic, and the Proximites fill the 'genius alien' niche in
a more genre appropriate way. If I decide to 're-include' the Nueros, I can do
so with them as NPCs. Same for the Hiawathans form the original Galaxy Command-
the Tal-Anon fill the 'space Native American' niche in a more interesting and
fun way, so I just deleted the excess.
One thing I did do was break out several of the cultural templates:
Pacificians, Leather Clones, ect into their own neo-human races. These races
are genetically compatible with baseline homo sapiens, more or less, but have
such radically different cultures, I figured I'd make them stand alone races.
Plus, it gives me an opportunity to riff on late 70s/early 80s identity
politics.
So today, take a look at the chapter header for the Neo-Humans section of the
sourcebook, and a look at the Afro-Futurist player race, which should be pretty
fun. I'll preview some other stuff later.
CHRIS
It’s the Stellar Year 4,576.
The future’s a dirty, all-analogue place. Technology got
more advanced, but the culture and politics of this fucked-up future still stinks
like 1976. The galaxy’s equal parts grunge and glam, polyester and leather.
It’s a place where billowing Afros never went out of style, where the heroes
spark up joints the size of a baby’s forearm and blast off for the Frontier.
It’s a galaxy of stoner nomads cruising the galactic backwaters at FTL speed,
banging cute alien spacers with only a cheap-ass Dr. Youp’s Condom to protect them.
It’s a place where the smuggler always shoots first, and the Cosmic
Televangelists of the Imperial Church
of the Galaxy are always tryin’ to get their cut.
It’s a Heavy Future, where futurism takes a back seat to
pulpy, retro-futuristic, blasphemous kick-ass adventuring.
That’s all you really need to know. We’ll make up the rest
as we go along.
Who’s Who in the
Dirty Future
The galaxy’s a crowded place. Just about every star has a
sentient race living beneath it. Humans are everywhere, but they share the galaxy
with a myriad of other races. Some of them, like the Synths or Pacifians, the
humans created, either by their technology or through their deeds. Other races
evolved without any human involvement, but that’s not to say their evolutions
weren’t tampered with.
Once upon a time, a race of psionic manipulators called the
Psyren ruled every part of the galaxy worth ruling. They fucked it up, though,
and they lost it all. Ruins of the once great Psyren Empire can be found all
across the universe, including in some secret places on Old Earth itself.
Treasure hunters seek out Psyren ruins, because even though the ruins are
perilous in the extreme, a single scrap of old Psyren tech can turn a salvager
into a merchant prince.
Beyond the ruins, the Psyren left strange species behind.
Races as diverse as the Testorites, the
Tal-Anon and many others can trace their lineage back to some Psyren experiment
or the other.
Neo-Humans
The following species come from human stock, and are
products of evolution or design. Neo-Humans usually can breed with baseline
humans and have some kind of evolutionary or cultural connection to the mother
world…no matter how tenuous.
|
Species
|
Size, Type and Subtypes
|
Summed Up In One Sentence….
|
|
Afro-Futurist
|
Medium Humanoid (human,
psionic)
|
Proud technologists
inspired by the glory and achievements of Old Africa
|
|
Free Spacer
|
Medium Humanoid (human)
|
A motley crew of human
spacers serving with a variety of libertarian space fleets
|
|
Jesus Clone
|
Medium Outsider (human,
native)
|
Mass produced clone
Messiahs with potent healing nanites in their blood
|
|
Leather Clone
|
Medium Humanoid (human)
|
All male race of muscled
gay clones from a hotly radioactive Frontier system
|
|
Pacifician
|
Medium Humanoid (human,
Pacifican)
|
Nanite blooded adventurers
from a perfect planet of love, sex and peace
|
|
Pulsa
|
Medium Humanoid (human,
psionic)
|
Race of twin-born farmers
who were once great warriors with natural force blasting powers
|
|
Testorite
|
Large Humanoid (human)
|
Nerdy 20th
Century kids brought to the future and transformed into barbarian adventurers
|
|
Trius
|
Medium Humanoid (human,
psionic)
|
Skilled martial artists capable
of conjuring duplicates of themselves from psionic energy
|
|
TV Head
|
Medium Monstrous Humanoid
(human)
|
Conformist cyborgs with
bulky television screens for heads
|
Afro-Futurist
Medium Humanoid
(human, psionic)
Afro-Futurists are a proud and sometimes arrogant breed of
mankind- the sons and daughters of Earth in general and Africa
in specific. In contrast to the Corporation Command, which gets paler and more
xenophobic with every passing decade, Afro-Futurists live free among the stars,
aboard dark-skinned colonies built upon the ancient traditions of the
Motherland.
Appearance
The difference between a brown skinned baseline human spacer
and an Afro-Futurist is a matter of style, attitude and worldview rather than
genetics. Though fully human, Afro-Futurists have engineered a new definition
of humanity out among the stars.
Afro-Futurists gird their burnished black skins in colorful
armor based upon Zulu warrior garb, or augment themselves with lean, angular
cyber-systems inspired by Moroccan sculpture. Afro-Futurists favor vibrant
colors and intense eye-catching patterns handed down along family lines for
millennia. While some soldiers favor energy weapons or slugthrowers, most
Afro-Futurist warriors prefer to prove their courage with an assortment of
ultra-advanced melee weapons. They wear massive Afros or proud Jamaican dreads
or intricate Bantu knots masterfully knit by their droid servitors.
Homeworld
Afro-Futurists might hail from any of a dozen major
settlements, or a hundred smaller stations or arc-ships. Most hail from the
high-tech and orderly world of Medicoake, known for its excellent cybernetics
engineers and galaxy-class medics. Others hail from rough and tumble New
Kingston, renowned for the artistic soul of its people and the quality of its
native Glow. Afro-Futurists hailing from the semi-legendary Esperanza colony,
which often drifts out of phase with the rest of the galaxy, are mysterious,
sultry and soulful galactic nomads, exploring the cosmos on their own enigmatic
missions.
Sex, Drugs and
Violence
Despite what the Command’s educational streams would have
you believe, many of the innovations that allowed humanity to reach the stars
had their origins in the Old Earth continent of Africa.
Afro-Futurists draw strength and inspiration from the old ways of
pre-starflight Africa, in faith, in dress, in style. The
soulful funk playing on Outlaw Sex Station 09 has its origins in African
rhythms, and the equations that allowed the first hyperspace jaunt evolved from
algebra first calculated on the Arabian Peninsula and no
Afro-Futurist will ever let you forget either.
While some Afro-Futurists are staunch racial separatists,
only romancing other dark skinned human spacers, others are polygamous and
sexually adventurous in the extreme. To
the citizens of the wider galaxy, the dark, driven and ultra-confident
Afro-Futurists are an attractive mating prospect. When it comes to expanding
their consciousness, Afro-Futurists view the Glow as a sacrament rather than a
recreational high. Few have much taste for harder drugs, sticking to tried and
true local Glow strains or other native psychedelics.
Politics &
Culture
Afro-Futurist worlds reject the stifling conformity and
hard-line ICG faith of the Corporation Command. Those nearer to Command Space
do business with the Command when they must, but often on their own terms.
Medicoake, for example, provides top quality medical care to Command citizens
with the creds to pay for it, but refuse to be bound by the trillion plus pages
of Command medical authority regulations. Afro-Futurist worlds are decorated in
African styles, with faiths inspired by pre-Christian and pre-Islamic
tradition, or syncretic forms of either faith, that bear little resemblance to
the strict, soulless ICG.
Most of the Afro-Futurist diaspora is on good terms with
Free Spacers, and in many ways the two populations are interchangeable. There’s
a lot of strong black hands at the controls of Free Spacer star-haulers. The
one exception is New Kingston’s long standing feud with Treant, a blood feud
over control of the galactic Glow trade that dates back more centuries than the
inhabitants of either world can really count.
Names
Afro-Futurist names are drawn from pan-African culture,
often modified slightly over the millennia. Some Afro-Futurist worlds do not
use surnames, while others do, and these surnames are often unique and
original, coined terms drawn from the star-flight era rather than the European
surnames the African diaspora were labeled with two millennia ago.
Example Male Names: Ayo
Twospectrum, Kwame Atomspinner, Mosi Genescribe
Example Female Names: Ekua
Darkstar, Nia Starglide, Uhura Lightstep
Languages
Afro-Futurists begin play speaking Galactic Common and one Earth language of choice, most often an
African, Caribbean or Middle Eastern language. Afro-Futurists with high INT
scores can choose any language as a bonus language, except for secret tongues
like Druidic.
Afro-Futurist
Racial Traits
All Afro-Futurists share the following racial traits.
Size and Type
Afro-Futurists are Medium Humanoids with the human and
psionic subtypes. As Medium creatures, they receive no bonuses or penalties due
to their size.
Normal Speed (EX)
Afro-Futurists have a 30 ft base land speed.
Ability Score
Modifiers
+2 to any ability
score of choice.
Afro-Futurists hail from a diverse array of homeworlds,
stations and experimental utopian habitats, and are as varied and versatile as
any other sapiens.
African Excellence
(EX)
Afro-Futurists take enormous pride in their skills and the
way they raise their precious children. The Afro-Futurist gains Skill Focus in
one Craft or Perform skill of choice as a racial bonus feat.
Human Blood (EX)
Afro-Futurists count as Human for all effects related to
race.
Naturally Psionic (EX)
Afro-Futurists gain the Wild talent feat as a bonus feat at
1st level. If the Afro-Futurist takes levels in a psionic class, he
instead gains the Psionic Talent feat.
Psionic Aptitude (EX)
Whenever the Afro-Futurist takes a level in a psionic class,
he can choose to gain an additional power point instead of a hit point or skill
point.
Raised Fist (Ps)
As a standard action, the Afro-Futurist can raise his fist
above his head, unleashing slow pulses of gold and green light. All
Afro-Futurists, including the character within 30 ft gain a +1 morale bonus to
saving throws for as long as the Afro-Futurist continues to hold his fist
aloft. The Afro-Futurist can use this ability at will.
Afro-Futurist
Alternate Racial Traits
Afro-Futurists from distant worlds- especially the lost
colony of Esperanza- often display startling powers.
Confident
Brother/Sister (EX)
Replaces: Naturally Psionic and Psionic Aptitude
The Afro-Futurist is confident in the strength of his limbs,
and the power of his fists, when the situation calls for them. The
Afro-Futurist receives a +1 morale bonus on unarmed strikes and on STR
checks.
Hyperspatial Song (SU)
Replaces: Raised Fist
Esperanzan
Afro-Futurists have mastered a kind of sound based magic thanks to their long
sojourn in hyperspace. As a full round action, an Esperanzan can unleash an
eerie, somewhat musical cry that offers a variety of mystical effects. An
Esperanzan can use Hyperspatial Song a number of times per day equal to 3 + his
CHA modifier.
The
possible effects of a Hyperspatial Song include:
·
Healer’s Song: Heal a wounded creature within 30 ft who can clearly
hear your song for 1d4 HP per five character levels (max 4d4 HP).
·
Warrior’s Song: Inflict 1d6 points of Sonic damage per five
character levels (max 4d6) against all targets within a 30 ft cone (REF DC 12 half).
·
Worker’s Song: Acts as a Mending spell cast on a single object of
size Large or smaller within 30 ft, with a caster level equal to the
Esperanzan’s total character level.
Liberationist (EX)
Replaces: African Excellence
Your distant ancestors were enslaved, and you refuse to
allow other sentients to suffer in bondage, regardless of their skin color or
species, or even their status as AI! You receive a +1 morale bonus on attack
and damage rolls against any known slave owner, slave captor or trader, or
bounty hunter.
Medicoake Medical
Training (EX)
Replaces: African Excellence
Medicoake is known galaxy wide as possibly the best
hospital-station in existence, and its Afro-Futurist physicians and
cyberneticists are without equal. You receive Skill Focus (heal) as a racial
bonus feat. You may choose one particular medical specialty, such as
cardiology, neuro-science, genetic engineering or similar callings; you receive
a +1 competence bonus on Heal checks made within that specialty.
Psyren Blood (EX)
Replaces: Human Blood
The Afro-Futurist counts as Psyren for all effects related
to race (and likely has hair in a distinctive, non-African shade such as
silver, azure or green.)
Soil of the Motherworld
(SP)
Replaces: Raised Fist
The Afro-Futurist wears a ceremonial vial around his neck
containing soil from the heart of terraformed Africa.
This vial is considered to be a holy symbol; if it is lost, the Afro-Futurist
must make a pilgrimage to Earth to replace it.
If the vial is emptied on the corpse of an Afro-Futurist
slain within the past hour, it acts as raise
dead. Only the Afro-Futurist who owns the vial of soil can use the magic in
this manner.
Well, I just got the flat colors for the racial illustrations that I'll be including in Culture of Choice. These are Vic Shane's flat colors (he'll be adding shading and highlight layers later) of the Ubasti, Fluxminx and the new Demi-God species.
Expect the final art, and the finished Culture of Choice probably next week sometime. After that, some you'll be seeing some Heavy Future and Black Tokyo content.
