Last post, I’ve mentioned I’ve begun revising Otherverse America.
Right now, I’ve been working on the mechanics, and I’m not sure how extensively
I’ll be revising the setting. I’m not sure if I’ll create a new time line or
move the setting’s default era to somewhen other than circa January 22, 2107. In some ways it’s
tempting to do something like Shadowrun does with each new edition, and move
the timeline 20-30 years forward.
One of the biggest changes I’ve made so far is to a certain extent
abandoning the Advanced Classes emblematic of the setting, though not the
concepts behind those classes. If I’m going to make this setting Pathfinder compatible,
I want to do so wholeheartedly, by taking full advantage of the existing
classes. I also really don’t want to create a bunch of new prestige classes… so
what to do? I still want to have Midwives, Ghosts of Babies Past and other
iconic character options.
Well, I’m playing with the idea of cultural templates, which I introduced in Black Tokyo
Legends: Races of the Tatakama, and carried over into Black Tokyo Unlimited and Heavy Future. This way, you still have
Covenguards and Midwives, but you expand the possibilities dramatically. Now,
with this cultural template in place, sure you can have a Fighter Covenguard or
a Caviler Covenguard, but you could also have something like a Covenguard
Sorcerer, or a Midwife Alchemist or Midwife Summoner in addition to the
cleric-like role the character filled in the original draft. I think it allows
for some really fucking odd combinations: what the holy fuck would a Ubasti
Midwife Barbarian look like, for instance?
The cultural templates summarize the core concept of a
particular class (and there are other Choicer templates available, at least 3
more at the time of this writing) and sooner or later I’ll do a similar treatment
of the Lifer iconic classes, as well as add some iconic roles for unaligned,
APEX and Fed-Gov heroes. Players will be able to select traits and feats that
cover many of the class abilities of the former classes turned templates,
available only to those characters who chose the templates, with all their
advantages and disadvantages.
So take a first look at the revised Covenguard and Neo-Witch
Midwife cultural templates.
Later I’ll preview additional aspects of the revised rule
set.
CHRIS
Covenguard
A Covenguard defends the coven and
its priestesses, with his life and soul if necessary. Covenguard soldiers are
modern paladins and questing knights, the chosen champions of technologically
advanced, politicized abortion priestesses and the guardians of an embattled
faith. Like the women they protect, Covenguards enhance their bodies with
extensive cybernetic reconstruction and onboard weapons.
These elite, highly motivated
bodyguards dedicate themselves to the protection of pagan America
and survival of Choicer culture. They can be thought of as warrior priests,
embodying the strength and protectiveness of the male archetype; worshippers of
war-gods and fertility kings who bind themselves, body and soul, to the women
whose cause they champion. Clad in gleaming gold and silver cyber-armor,
Covenguard warriors are main battle tanks in humanoid shape, completely
dedicated to the feminist ideals of the Covenant.
The
Covenguard cultural template produces a superhumanly durable, cyborg knight
committed to the defense of women in both the chivalrous abstract and feminine
choice in the concrete.
Gender
The
protection of the coven and its priestess is seen as a fundamentally male duty
by most Covenant sects. Most prospective Covenguard must be male, though the
Ásatrú sect accepts the service of what
they call valkyries, exclusively
lesbian warriors who serve as rune-etched Covenguard stalwarts.
Ability Score Modifiers
+2 STR,
+2 CON, -2 CHA. Covenguards are durable and indomitable, but taciturn. They
speak little, concentrating on their duties and upon the oaths they’ve sworn.
Arms and Atheme (EX)
During their induction into the
coven, and as they swear their vows of justice and courage, Covenguard warriors
are implanted with collection of innovative nanonic cyber-implants. Unlike the
sleek, blood red bionics of a Midwife, the Covenguard’s knightly arms are heavy
armored, durable combat models. The cyborg limbs are colored in warm oranges,
yellows, golds, brown and metallic grays, and are often decorated with patterns
and acid etched sigils representing the many faces of the God.
The
Covenguard is treated as having the following suite of cybernetics, which do
not count against his total Drain and are described fully in The Polymer Path
(Otherverse Games, 2014). These implants all have the Nanotech tag, and
regenerate at the same rate as the Covenguard’s organics.
·
Advanced Cyberlimb (dominant hand and arm)
·
Dermal Plating (medium or heavy)
The Covenguard can deploy a
masterwork quality version of any one of these weapons from his Advanced Cyberlimb
as part of an attack action, as if he possessed the Quick Draw feat with this
weapon: dagger, kris, shortsword,
warhammer. This weapon may be enchanted normally; once chosen, the weapon
can only be changed by cybernetic surgery.
My Life For Yours (SU)
A Covenguard will sacrifice much in
the defense of their faith and will die to protect the witch-women they love
above all else.
The Covenguard may elect to place
himself in the path of danger to protect a single ally, who must either be a
woman (of any faith), or a pagan (of either gender). Once per round, if the
Covenguard is adjacent to an eligible ally who is targeted by a direct attack,
including spells or psi-talents, (though not an area effect) the Covenguard can
subject himself to the attack in the ally’s stead as an immediate action. If
the attack hits the Covenguard, he suffers damage normally. If it misses, it
also misses the ally.
The Covenguard must declare his
intention to place himself in harm’s way before the attack roll is made. The Covenguard
may select a new eligible ally to protect each round.
Oaths Spoken (SU)
A Covenguard is knighted with
great ceremony, inducted into the role of protector and witch’s champion before
the assembled coven and the watching Lords and Ladies. The Covenguard is under
a permanent geas/quest effect, which
cannot be dispelled or removed. He is sworn to protect pagans of any gender, or
women of any faith, to act chivalrously, and to defend the Covenant and its
citizens against Lifer terrorism and oppression.
Neo-Witch Midwife
Neo-Witch
Midwives undergo one of the most comprehensive medical training programs in
human history. In the Covenant, girls with both aptitude and passion for
medicine, and the mental strength necessary to be a leader and protector to
other women, are identified early. The most gifted of these children begin
Midwife apprenticeship while in their early teens. Using a mid of traditional
classroom learning, on the job training and apprenticeship, and psi-based
learning, by the time her counterparts are entering high school, prospective
Midwives have a medical education equal to that of a first year surgical
intern, back in the first years of the 21st Century.
With their clinics protected behind
military grade force-screens and their tattooed bodies enhanced by subdermal
armor and integrated weapons, Neo-Witch Midwives accept the duty of fighting
for choice in the abstract, and carrying out abortions when they must.
Neo-Witch Midwives can best be thought of as obstetrician / social workers,
cybernetically enhanced healers with a uniquely pagan world view.
Midwives
skew young. Far too many experienced Midwives were slain during the War, or
shortly after, in ‘isolated terrorist incidents’ that no Choicer believes are
truly isolated. Their replacements are young women in their early 20s, leading
covensteads, running the day to day operations of clinics and serving as the
face of the post-Christian, transhumanist Covenant.
The
Neo-Witch Midwife cultural template creates a passionate young
physician-priestess, identified by the unique, blood-red bionic arm that is her
badge of office and chief medical implement.
Gender
The Covenant
will only allow women to tend the medical needs of other women. The Neo-Witch
Midwife cultural template is restricted to female characters. A handful of
exceptions do exist, products of unique training streams, as transgender
medics, or increasingly rare veterans of a time before the Covenant
consolidated gynecological training in women’s hands, but they are one in a
million oddities.
Ability Score Modifiers
+2 WIS.
Neo-Witch training emphasizes the spiritual aspects of medicine, and sharpens
the student’s will and compassion.
Feminist Medicine (EX)
The Neo-Witch Midwife sees herself
as the last line of defense for a woman’s rights, and a bastion of medical care
for needy women. The Midwife adds half her total character level as an insight
bonus on Heal checks (maximum +10) made to treat female creatures, or assist in
reproductive care.
Heal is always a class skill for
Neo-Witch Midwife.
Obstetric Nanonics (EX)
During apprenticeship, young
Midwives are implanted with revolutionary cyber-systems that are her badge of
office: the Ipas-VII Obstetric Nanonics cyberlimb. A nanonic
infection and integrated micro-tech power-supply are knitted into the flesh of
her arm. Over the next few weeks, the priestess’s dominant arm and hand is
transformed by the cyber-infection from human blood and carbon into a sleek
shape-memory polymer replacement.
The Neo-Witch
Midwife is treated as having the following suite of cybernetics, which do not
count against her total Drain and are described fully in The Polymer Path
(Otherverse Games, 2014). These implants all have the Nanotech tag, and
regenerate at the same rate as the Midwife’s organics.
·
Advanced Cyberlimb (dominant hand and arm)
·
Olfactory Complex
·
Onboard Computer
·
Onboard Tool, Shapememory
Demonized (EX)
Neo-Witch Midwives are demonized
as babykillers and worse among the Lifers. When interacting with any character
with a Lifer patron deity, the Midwife rolls 2d20 on Bluff and Diplomacy checks
and takes the worse result. All Midwives have performed abortions, and are
always detected as such by a Neverborn’s extrasensory aura.
Nuremberg Data-Piracy (EX)
The
fearsome, continent-spanning Nuremberg AI compulsively gathers data on the
activities, careers and mental weaknesses of the abortion providing Midwives.
Characters with a Lifer patron deity receive a +1 trait bonus per five
character levels the Midwife has obtained on Computer Use checks made to find
intel about the Midwife or hack her cyber-systems.
