Stellar Atlas of the Zauberreich: Verðandi, First of the Norn Stars

 Verðandi

Verðandi is a G-type star, and among the earliest stars claimed by Humanity, most likely during the Second Diaspora.  Settlement on Verðandi’s worlds date back at least to the collapse of the Confederation of the Golden Gate and the rise of the Republic of Mars as the de facto leading world of Humanity.  It’s believed that Verðandi was the first of the Norn Stars to be colonized.  

Unlike the other Norn Stars, Verðandi held no Precursor artifacts or ruins.  Legend says that the Confederation had rules against settling on worlds with Precursor ruins, and that Verðandi had started as an outpost to supply those guarding the worlds orbiting Urðr and Skuld.  However, as the promise of the Confederation proved hollow and the alliances founded in its name collapsed, Human refugees settled on all of the habitable Norn worlds.  

Some of the most famous and heavily populated worlds in the Zauberreich orbit Verðandi, including Odin, Frig, and Thor.  

Stellar Atlas of the Zauberreich: Praxis, Capital System (and World) of the Zauberreich

The capital city of Praxis contains a dozen palaces for the Hexenkönigin (one for each of the Twelve Houses of the Galactic Wheel), the bureaucracy of the Zauberreich, and the most prestigious university of sorcery within the Golden Gate Sector of the Orion Arm.

Praxis is the last of the manufactured worlds; after the destruction of the Sol System in the Dust Wars, Humanity fully embraced sorcery in an impassioned example of the “fight fire with fire” philosophy.  To a degree, it worked; those worlds who refused to join the Zauberreich or embrace sorcery as a means of defense were devoured by the Dust or crushed in the ancillary wars, but the newly-forged Zauberreich survived.  

Even before the Dust Wars were completed, the talisman world of Praxis was wrought upon a lonely brown dwarf.  By sorcery was the brown dwarf tamed, and, to a degree, humanized, but not in the manner of the worlds of the Satya Yuga.

Floating in the upper atmosphere of Praxis is the Comb, a lattice of hexagons fashioned from adamantium incised with orichalcum runes and then covered in gold.  Each segment of the lattice is 12 miles long.  Upon this giant lattice is built the capital city, by turns called Praxis, the Comb, or the Palace of Palaces.  

Looking at only the buildable sections of the Comb, the actual lattice segments themselves, there is roughly 12 million square miles of liveable surface area on the Comb.  The Comb houses something like 2.5 trillion people, giving it a population density of roughly 200 thousand people per square mile.  To say Comb is densely packed is an understatement.  Over 90% of that population is Humans, with a wide range of aliens making up the rest.  Roughly two-thirds of the Comb’s inhabitants are slaves.

The Comb is lit and powered by the hellish radiation of the decaying brown dwarf.  The streets are literally paved with gold because gold is a necessary ingredient in the magic that channels this radiation for the use of the citizens and protects those same citizens from the dangers and heat of the radiation. Attempting to remove the gold, so legends say, removes the protection of the Comb from the one damaging it, meaning they will immediately burst into flame and vaporize.  By that same sorcery, the light rising up through the massive holes in the comb (each over 300 square miles in area), waxes and wanes in a 24 hour cycle that is the Human preference.  Likewise, gravity on the Comb is 0.97 g.  

Sorcery is a matter of daily life on Praxis.  The locals think nothing of it, nor do they question the thousands who get their hearts ripped out and their souls sacrificed to demons every Human year to keep their strange city-continent floating above the throbbing maelstroms of the brown dwarf.  Praxis is the most civilized city in the Golden Gate Sector completely lacking in temples to Astarte.  

Art by Stable Diffusion and JB Murphy (using GIMP).

Melee Weapons of the FUTURE!

Coming up with hand-to-hand weapons for sci-fi games is fun.  You can really let your imagination run wild with options.  While what follows are not the craziest things in the world (nothing on the level of, say, the avern flower from Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer), they are both easy to imagine by the players (most can be represented by pictures of real weapons from museums to give the basic idea) and yet each has a nice little sci-fi or fantasy twist.  

These, of course, are for Machinations of the Space Princess, my current RPG fascination.  I tried to give every weapon its niche, so that any of them would make sense for the PCs or their foes to use.  

Deflection-dagger - powerful deflection field adds +1 to any Defend action.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: 1d6 penetrating or slashing.

Cost: 8 GP

The deflection-dagger is a main gauche with a powerful deflection field in its hilt.  While it can be used to attack, its true utility is in its ability to ward against incoming attacks.  If you don’t use the deflection-dagger to make an attack in the same turn, you may add +1 to any Defend actions (so +2 if Defending with one action and +4 with two Defend actions).  

Gyro-stabilized Cutlass - adds +2 to the attack roll, but skilled warriors eschew the correction for greater damage potential.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d6 + bonus +2 on attack rolls.

Cost: 20 GP

The gyro-stabilized cutlass is a single-edged fighting blade crafted with the neophyte warrior in mind.  Internal stabilizers guide the wielder’s hand, keeping the edge aligned with the target and promoting proper follow-through on draw cuts.  

While the guidance of the cutlass is a boon to the inexperienced, it aggravates experienced warriors who find themselves fighting against the weapon to perform anything but the most generic attacks and parries.  Because of this, the gyro-stabilized cutlass cannot be used to perform any Combat skills.   

Grav-mace - for pounding through armour.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d8 Impact + 2 levels of Armour Defeating

Cost: 40 GP

The grav-mace uses gravitic pulse technology to deliver crushing blows on impact while allowing the wielder to recover quickly and prepare for their next strike.  It’s a favorite among boarding parties who are likely to face heavily armoured opponents but don’t have the room to wield two-handed weapons.  

Kālakūṭa Stiletto - a dagger fashioned from poison.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d8 + concealable + make a Toughness save every round or take an addition 1d4 damage until they succeed on a Toughness save.

Cost: 250 GP

The kālakūṭa stiletto is fashioned from a mysterious dark stone whose depths absorb all light, though the edges are translucent and smokey.  The stone is inimical to nearly all life and beings not immune to poison often take additional damage from any wound caused by such a blade.  Mere cuts can lead to death if the wounds are not swiftly treated.  

As the stiletto has no mechanical or technological components, isn’t made of any sort of normal metal or composite, and must be sheathed in lead to be carried safely, it is completely invisible to most scanner technology, and a carefully hidden kālakūṭa stiletto is nearly impossible to detect.  

Power Hammer - generates ball of energy to cause destructive harm to target. 

Two-handed close-combat weapon.

Damage: d12 energy + 1 level of Armour Defeating or d8 piercing + 2 levels of Armour Defeating

Cost: 280 GP

The power hammer resembles the ancient lucerne hammer.  The spikes on the top and back are fashioned of the same stuff the smallsword is, while the tines of the hammer head can encase itself in a destructive sphere of energy that’s released when it strikes a target.  The wielder must pick before swinging the weapon which they wish to hit with, and may only use one side per target per turn.  

The power hammer is considered the best weapon for cracking heavy armour.  When the wealthiest powers go to war, hulking juggernauts lay into each other with power hammers, battering each other back-and-forth across the battlefield.  

Rondel Dagger - diamond-bladed for punching through armour.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d6 penetrating + 4 levels of Armour Defeating 

Cost: 32 GP

The ultimate in piercing through armour, the triangular “blade” of the rondel dagger is fashioned from nanocomb-reinforced diamond.  Don’t actually try to cut anything with it, however; that “blade” is actually more of a spike, ultra-specialized in punching through resistance and getting at the soft, squishy body hidden inside armour.  The big round disks at either end of the grip protect the hand from sparks, jagged bits of shattered armour, or ablative defenses, while also giving you a good grip in case the dagger gets stuck.  

Scissor Katar - diamond-edged plus it opens up to do more damage!

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d10 piercing/slicing + 1 level of Armour Defeating.

Cost: 45 GP

The scissor katar takes the reinforced diamond of the rondel, uses it for the edge of a broad blade, then adds a motorized scissor-action to open the blade up once it’s inside!  While nasty enough in the hands of most combatants, a skilled opponent can literally use the scissor katar to peel your armour right off you; when using the Armour Eater skill, the wielder of a scissor katar only suffers a -3 on their attack roll.  

The scissor katar continues to be favored by infantry and marine officers of the remnants of the Urlanth Matriarchy.

Shock-cestus - electrified gauntlet.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d6 volt + shocking (Toughness save or unable to act on your next turn.)

Cost: 3 GP

The shock-cestus is the calling card of the thug and slaver.  While its power cells and metal framework make it impossible to hide from scans or a professional search, it’s easy enough to veil by a cloak or coat.  In certain regions, thug and gang fashion is dominated by long, loose left sleeves designed to conceal a shock-cestus from casual glances.

Smallsword - favored by Urlanth nobility.  Can attack twice.  Also comes in a concealable cane version.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d8 + 1 levels of Armour Defeating + Double

Cost: 30 GP (80 GP for the sword cane version)

At first glance, the smallsword appears to be a rondel on steroids.  While the blade is the same shape, with its triangular cross-section and no real edge to speak of, it’s of completely different manufacture. The sandwich of memory-ceramics and harder alloys gives the smallsword impressive flexibility without sacrificing much of its penetrating power.  The blade can take a shocking amount of punishment, allowing it to parry attacks from even a sonnenbalger without snapping or melting.  The grip molds to the hand of the wielder, and the active balance gravitics in the pommel give unparalleled accuracy and speed in the hands of a skilled combatant.    

The smallsword is favored by Urlanth nobility and naval officers.  It is the default weapon for settling duels.  Note that while the prices listed represent the bare-bones options, few nobles can resist decorating their weapons in the latest styles.

The sword cane version of the smallsword is popular among well-to-do merchants and uppity middle-class sorts who might not be allowed to wear a sword everywhere they go, but feel the need for a solid self-defense option in a pinch.  Due to its lack of directly offensive tech housed in the weapon itself, a properly crafted sword cane can sneak past even alert security forces.  

Sonnenbalger - plasma-edged arming sword.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d10 heat

Cost: 20 GP

The ubiquitous sonnenbalger is the sidearm of choice among mercenaries and non-coms.  The sturdy weapon with its distinctive s-shaped handguard and heavy “fishtail” pommel is seen by many to be the badge of the “true” soldier, and so is affected by many who aspire to that status.

Such posers run the risk of setting their pants on fire.  The sonnenbalger projects a wave of superheated plasma along both edges of the blade, hot enough to burn through all but the heaviest armour.  The waves occasionally interrupt each other where they meet, making the sonnenbalger mediocre for thrusting.

Wailing Katana - edge shrouded in sonic wave that cuts finer than obsidian!

Two-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d20

Cost: 300 GP

While there are many warrior and combat societies that swear by the deadliness of the wailing katana, there are just as many who will tell you that the weapon is over-hyped.  There are recorded instances of wailing katanas cutting off an arm or a leg from a juggernaut armour suit, but these are the acts of extremely skilled masters of the martial arts, and even they rarely get to do it twice if they’re not also heavily armoured themselves.

The cutting power of the wailing katana comes from the sonic wave it projects around its edge, allowing it to slice finer than even some monofilament weapons.  While the weapon's warbling moan isn’t so loud as to make stealth impossible, it does require an atmosphere to work properly, making the weapon useless in vacuum.  

Machinations of the Space Princess: What it Is

For reasons I don’t really recall, I was recently reminded of Machinations of the Space Princess, “Grim” Jim Desborough’s science-fantasy remake of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess RPG. 

So that makes it a remake of a remake?  Yeah.

First off, this would not exist but for Raggi’s attempt to do a shotgun spread of new projects on Kickstarter lo these many years ago.  Originally, Machinations was intended to be a single adventure.  But the shotgun spread idea backfired; with so many cool projects, I think only two got funded.  The rest diluted the pledges too thinly, and Machinations was one of those that didn’t get funded.

So Desborough teamed up with Satine Phoenix and took his tin cup to Indiegogo where he asked for a cool kilobuck US to make it happen.  He got over $4k and so we got a game full of full-color art by Phoenix.

I heard something about this via the G+, but I didn’t pay it much mind at the time.  Partly because I didn’t really realize what Desborough was up to.  While I wasn’t expecting a one-to-one port of LotFP to sci-fi, with lazer swords and plasma crossbows and psion-elves, I was at least expecting MotSP to keep what I saw as the coolest innovations and themes of Lamentations.  This included the character-sheet based encumbrance system, the strong focus on human characters, the weird and disturbing magic, and a general theme of survival horror that is the hallmark of LotFP adventures.

That is (mostly) not at all what Desborough and Phoenix created. 

I was expecting Saturn 3 and ALIEN and Pitch Black and the ’72 Soviet Solaris.  Not really my bag beyond one-shots and the like (though I do rather enjoy the Free League ALIEN RPG, much to my shock).

But that’s not what we get.  What we get is something more like Buck Godot: Zap-gun for Hire meets Barbarella meets Flash Gordon meets The Sword’s Warp Riders. 

And that is totally my thing.

Now, this is not some giant stops-bullets book like Lancer.  This is a “mere” 240 pages in a 6” x 8” paperback format.  This is a construction-set of an RPG, very much like Star Siege or GURPS.  However, unlike those two games, Machinations doesn’t really give two flips for balance.  MotSP doesn’t pretend to know what your games are going to be about.  Your game could be about blaster-slinging space cowboys, a team of highly skilled mercs taking on the most challenging jobs in a galaxy dominated by heartless megacorps, swashbuckling radium-cavaliers living and dying for honor and love, tomb-raiders cracking open the trapped vaults of the Elder Races, or super-powered psions staying one step ahead of the Psi-Pstasi.  MotSP isn’t here to tell you how to play your game.

And so Machinations doesn’t lose much sleep in crafting a fully “balanced” experience.  It’s very Old School in this respect.  Sure, there are some nods towards niche protection, echoes from B/X D&D in what your character is good at and how quickly they go up levels and stuff like that.  But there’s nothing stopping you from cobbling together a Frankenstein’s monster of abilities and powers. 

Take, for instance, race creation.  There are dozens (maybe over a hundred) options for racial characteristics you can use to build your character’s race.  The list of race traits you can pick is 20 pages long and might be the longest single section in the book.  They’re organized by theme, but you don’t need to stick with the theme; there’s nothing to stop you from taking the blob-creature’s ability to rip off chunks of itself and send them scurrying about as miniature versions of you, and combining that with the ammonia-based life’s slow metabolism ability and the reptile’s scales. 

If you love lots of character options, this is your game.  Want to craft a team of bizarre creatures who band together to bring peace to a fractious galaxy?  Want the flexibility to build a tentacle monster with poor understanding of personal boundaries or a Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirl who carves said tentacle monsters up into calamari?  Want the challenge of crafting the ultimate mechanical bad-ass by pushing the rules to their limit and then hurling your creations into the deadliest dungeon the GM can devise to see who emerges victorious? 

Machinations can do that.

And it doesn’t stop at race-building.  While there’s relatively little customization in the four classes (Killer, Specialist, Scholar, and Psion), everything else oozes with customization options.  For instance, each weapon category, from Small, One-handed Close Combat Weapons to Rifles/Shotguns is further divided in what amounts to a Small, Medium, and Large category.  On top of that, you can pile on the added modifications, from concealable to larger magazines to a selector for different damage types to “vicious” levels of damage.  In short, there’s no list of races with pseudo-clever names like Ignians and Reptiliods, or guns like ARES Predator Mk II or AK-97.  What we get instead is a fun tool kit you can use to build your own universe.

Want to build the ZF1 from Fifth Element with the net launcher, poisoned arrows, rocket, flame-thrower, and “all new ice-cube system?”  Yeah, Machinations can do that, too.

As you’d expect from something built on the LotFP chassis, the mechanics are a mish-mash of stuff.  We’ve got D&D 3.x’s d20-roll-higher for attacks, LotFP’s d6-roll-under for skills (of which there are many more in this game) 5e’s a-save-for-ever-stat and your choice of roll over or under for saves.  Your poor dice won’t know which way to go!

And on top of that we’ve got psionics (complete with a randomly chosen “witch’s mark” that can either be a (usually pretty weird) boon or bane), a wide array of cybernetics (which can cause psychosis if you take too many), and vehicles ranging from one-person bikes up to space battleships. 

What surprises is the stuff left out.  Most especially, encumbrance.  Not even mentioned.  Ditto for logistics; ammo is managed by saving throws (you need to reload when your weapon fails its save) and most tech doesn’t appear to need recharging of any kind.  The cigarette-pack standard-energy-clips of Star Frontiers are nowhere to be found here.  Because it’s Desborough, we do get some rules for dealing with exposure to vacuum or radiation (that doesn’t include a mutations table), but the guidelines for generating planets are all about what sort of adventures you can have on them, rather than orbital radius or axial tilt.   

The result is a rules-lite, cinematic game that you could go beer-and-pretzels with but has enough heft to it for long-term campaign style play.  Don’t play it if your group isn’t united in their goals; munchkins can craft real curb-stompers from the race options while your story-gamers will devise original and shocking personalities that are mechanically incoherent.

But do play if you’re looking for something flexible and not very demanding.  You can pick up all the mechanics in an afternoon and you can craft your first adventure over a lazy weekend (be sure to give yourself time to create gear and aliens and maybe a ship or two).  If you and your players love sharing world-building responsibilities, you’re going to love all the options available to you.  And if you instead want to keep firm control over the setting and factions, it’s easy enough to build a cheat-sheet for the players and some pre-made races and go to town.

In short, it’s as flexible as B/X and possibly even more rules-lite.  Character creation isn’t as quick but offers greatly expanded variety.  If you’re looking for a science-fantasy rules set to craft your own fun on, check this game out.