Monday, 16 May 2011

Shadows beneath the suns

Yesterday's post on Hogintu, themed around 15.

- - - - - -

The sandscapes of Hogintu are - and have been for many centuries - scattered with sigils, signs and symbols. These are to be found on tablets, facades and floors, in and around the mausoleums and mids, along the arcades, written into the very lie of the sands themselves and even high aloft on the glowing surfaces of the three moons.

Were the struggle for subsistence to allow it, exploration might yield the discovery that these conform to 15 main types, and that many use the three-sided normal magic square, the magic number of which is also 15. The educated offworlder or well-informed native may recognise this as the number of major families pre-Bluing, the Cinquodecet.

Without a doubt Hogintu lives on in the long cold shadow of their failings, but more chilling still is a fact few realise: their tenacious grip on power was never quite broken...

Rule: I've been working on a system for constructing conspiracies for solo play, since I want the new game eventually to be as suitable for this as possible. In the meantime here are some tables to inspire GM-managed conspiracies set on or around the blue planet as it stands now. Just roll a D20 once on each, for protagonists, act and detail.


      Protagonists
  1. a prospecting consortium
  2. concealed AI subsystems
  3. cultists
  4. demobbed special forces
  5. descendants of a ruling family
  6. dehumidifiers
  7. dune picaroons
  8. followers of a mysterious figure
  9. haaks
  10. habber-on schemers
  11. interstellar monitors
  12. itinerant merchants
  13. nochrono
  14. offworld collectors
  15. reactivated devices
  16. sixers 
  17. smugglers
  18. tenzers
  19. the great powers
  20. troobloo dustings, or older youths

      Act
  1. are auctioning scavenging rights to offworld corporations
  2. are bribing troobloo drifters, or elders, for access to sacred spaces
  3. are harvesting imaginations
  4. are performing illegal experiments on one of the stars
  5. are preparing an invasion
  6. are manipulating markets for essential goods
  7. are constructing a mysterious and arcane facility
  8. are selling habbers-on into slavery
  9. aim to complete the rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb
  10. aim to create the perfect Hogintuan
  11. aim to instigate a new civil war
  12. aim to resurrect a former ruler
  13. have begun talks to establish Panazuria
  14. plan to recreate the world in a vast supercomputer
  15. plan to reoccupy one of the moons
  16. plan to reveal the secret of the gyres
  17. plot a good old-fashioned rise to power
  18. plot to introduce a single planetary currency
  19. seek a legendary figure lost in untime
  20. wish to complete the Epoclipse

      Detail
  1. at the bidding of a bizarre new form of safider
  2. by accumulating data storage units
  3. by commercially mining the fallen space elevators
  4. by radicalising and arming a faction
  5. by intensifying seismic activity
  6. by genetically engineering a new kind of skrab
  7. by greening the blue
  8. from a heavily-defended secret location
  9. having discovered an ancient experimental technology
  10. supported by offworld backers
  11. through excavation of the deep caverns and transit tunnels
  12. to coincide with a rare conjunction
  13. to increase tourism
  14. to open up a new interstellar trade route
  15. to win the favour of a malevolent entity
  16. using an unexploded sulphur bomb
  17. using the secret of the nekrobra delves
  18. via a network of agents
  19. with pyromid, cryomid or gyromid fuel
  20. with the aid of the heksoks
_

6 comments:

Judie said...

OMG! I'm not quite sure, but I think this just might be brilliant.
Thanks for the comment on "Maddy"

Porky said...

My pleasure. I'm not quite sure either, but I hope it is..!

The Drune said...

I second the nomination to brilliant.

Porky said...

Thanks! That's persuasive. Must keep head from expanding...

C'nor (Outermost_Toe) said...

Offworld collectors, having discovered an ancient expiremental technology, plan to reoccupy one of the moons.

They are led by Issilus Granonpa the III.

Porky said...

I realise we don't know for sure what they're collecting. There's plenty to find, but that mystery adds menace.

The name fits right in too.

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