Rising with the tides

Yesterday's post on Hogintu, themed around 18.

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The age of maturity among the troobloo is 18, for life is hard and short in the cobalt desert in pursuit of the Blootrio. Eighteen months means the first steps will have been taken, and when a speckle - as the extreme youth of the troobloo are known - is able to walk, he or she can learn the dangers and destinations first-hand; learn how to draw skrabs, circle haaks and bow to delves, how to flay stasis tech from the fallen space elevators and see the sacred gyres where a troobloo may live for-never in untime.

Rule: Troobloo are eerily calm, highly focused and excellent learners, as they must be. When the result of a roll made for a troobloo is just one point from success, make a note. When this next occurs, there is a 50% chance the troobloo is in fact successful. If this second instance also results in a failure, the third will be an automatic success.

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If you've just come into this, I'm using the month to fill out a setting I've been building up the past few weeks. The best starting points are probably the Hogintu location index and the recent conspiracy tables, which link plenty and give a sense of current complexity.

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Flash Fearsdelayed & taken over - Haak

A little late, my tale for Flash Fearsday at Lunching on Lamias, at 140 characters.

I'm not prey, I'm predator! At least, I was.

But it watches from its eyrie.

I feel that eye, not meat - mechanism. It wants to improve me...

I got a bit carried away, and worked up a new creature for Hogintu, as well as some background on the time technology and space elevators.

The rules are at the bottom, also using Humanspace Empires.

Deep in the blue

This is a work in progress, linked a little with the Warhammer 40,000 Armageddon ash waste events table posted at the weekend.

It's an index for Hogintu locations yet to be described, and table for generating landing zones, teleportation destinations, waypoints on expeditions and general sites of adventure.

For now the links run back to the creatures, technology and character covered so far, for the information in the background text. As the various locations or location elements are described, I'll add or update destinations.

I've also added in brackets the encounters most likely; these lists should grow too.

1. Habzone   (fline)
   
2. Habzone drifts   (fline, skrab)
3. Dune sea   (skrab, nekrobra)
4. Partially buried complex   (skrab, nekrobra)
5. Spoilscape   (skrab, nekrobra)
6. Fallen space elevator   (skrab, nekrobra)
7. Nekrobra reserve fenceline   (haak, skrab, nekrobra)
8. Sinkhole   (skrab, nekrobra)
9. Crashed orbital   (skrab, nekrobra)
10. Mausoleum   (nochrono, nekrobra)
11. Mids   (haak, skrab, nochrono, nekrobra)
12. Sphinctoid   (skrab, nochrono, nekrobra)
13. Ceremonial arcade   (haak, skrab, nochrono, nekrobra)
14. Broken rhombics   (haak, skrab, nekrobra)
15. Smuggler landing   (skrab, nekrobra)
16. Troobloo sandstead   (fline, skrab, nekrobra)
17. Anedek flock   (skrab, nekrobra)
18. Skrab spawning ground   (skrab, nekrobra)
19. Nekrobra delve   (skrab, nekrobra)
20. Fault zone   (skrab, nekrobra)
21. Volcanic cone   (skrab, nekrobra)
22. Crater field   (skrab, nekrobra)
23. Gyre   (skrab, nekrobra)

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Flash Fearstaken over - Nochrono

Lunching at Lamias is a little behind with this week's Flash Fearsday. Inspiration..?
It's flash fiction of course, with 140 characters and line breaks counting one...

"He's not quick..."

"No, just out of time. Everywhen and nowhen. A nochrono."

"Then we do as we wish."

"No! Don't cross - ... the deadline."

Update: Cometh the hour - this week's is up in time. Got a minute? Have a go.

How about some rules for the nochrono? They ought to be good for any game, and if we keep it simple, making them an alternative form of deployment, maybe they can be.

Here, puss, puss, puss...

Yep - we have bugs of all kinds for the science fantasy game Humanspace Empires. So I've thrown down a gauntlet with a Doctor Who clip, from the late-'80s seventh Doctor story Survival.

Ray Rousell described the cat in the clip as evil and The Angry Lurker is no fan; it's not so often they agree on anything... Cats it is then.

Here, puss, puss, puss...

Cats were common to a majority of homes on the world of Hogintu before the Bluing, across the strata of class, caste and clade. There were breeds of all kinds, many purely ornamental or engineered with a calming, charming psychic aura. When the civilisation dragged itself down into the dust a number survived, reduced to eight lives perhaps, their residual instincts seeing them good in the harsh new circumstances. The large feline creatures now stalking the dark nights of the Cerulean Sphere keep their own pets...

They call him Swarm Breaker

So we now have snakes, beetles, spiders, ants, gigapedes and worms, both large and small, and some of these not even fully in our reality.

Humanspace really isn't looking like a space for humans who are squeamish.

Unless, born of a stray NetherWerks comment at the home blog ix, you find the man they call...

Suwár 'Debugger' Tar, 'Swarm Breaker'

An arachno-mutant turned from the hive, now a renowned underworld hire.

Born on the post-apocalyptic world of Hogintu, Suwár was adopted young by nekrobra smugglers when he showed an exceptional talent for charming. He was attacked on a run by space spiders and partially transformed, serving his arachnoid masters loyally before a dimensional distortion brought about by an unrecorded weapons test severed the connection. Discovered by a super-scientific explorer team, he was interned in a research establishment, before escaping into the underworld with other test subjects.

Do the skrabs scrabble?

The response to the nekrobra was encouraging so here's a second creature of blue Hogintu, or the Cerulean Sphere as it will now be known thanks to the ever-inventive Justin S. Davis.

I've statted this one using Humanspace Empires too because I like the approach, but it would suit any generic sci-fi or fantasy setting, and is easily converted to other OSR systems.

Hush! Do the skrabs scrabble?

The skrab is a small blue insectoid creature apparently unique to Hogintu, and swarms wherever the cobalt sands drift, even deep within the ruins. It is an aggressive creature with a lightly-armoured, bulbous body and scurries rapidly on a dozen spindly legs, the forward three of which are needle-like and used for skewering its prey. A swarm brings down larger victims through the individuals attaching themselves and using their weight to topple and pin, all the while stabbing at vulnerable points until the victim succumbs.

The creature is of relatively recent provenance and in the short time since its appearance skrab populations have fluctuated dramatically for no clear reason. The skrab is seen as a mixed blessing, for when the skrabs are scrabbling, the nekrobra is rare...

Skrab

No. Enc.: 1D6+6

Alignment: Neutral

Move: 150' (50')

Armour Class: 6

Hit Dice: 1

Attacks: 1

Damage: 1D6 + pinning

Morale: 12

A skrab making a successful attack will also attach itself to the victim, who must then pass a force test or be brought to the ground. At the Referee's discretion, larger potential victims may require multiple skrabs to achieve this. If additional skrabs are in combat with the victim, all but one will now pile on. The victim has its armour class increased by one point for each multiple attached and the combat continues as normal, with all participants fighting. The victim may attempt to free itself in each subsequent round by making one force test per multiple; if any are failed, the victim remains pinned by all.
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The Cobalt Cobras of Hogintu

The new miniatures in the Warhammer Tomb Kings range haven't been universally well received. Again, technically superb models have arguably less than superb concepts.

There's a flavour here at Subject to Stupidity of the case against, and also in potentially offensive language here at FightingFantasist. At Musings of a Smurf, here, there's an argument against even the detail on the latest GW minis, or maybe against the major games in their current form. CounterFett is doing his best here to find uses for the new parts in 40K, and Dark Future Games here has Thousand Sons space marines in mind.

I want to help too, and I have something in mind for the necropolis knight build, i.e. the cobra-like snakes with skeleton riders. By doing as little as removing the rider, there's something to work with. Filing off or filling in detail would also make them less obviously ancient Earth culture and more fantastical or alien. The heads are not very snake-like, but that could be fixed with greenstuff, and a compromise would be keeping the basic head structure and going wide and flat over it. They are pretty good giant serpents all in.

But I'll assume you don't want to make too many changes. Here's a possible use almost as is, riffing off the silliness and references, with one or two more thrown in; no prizes for guessing. I've statted them for Humanspace Empires by The Drune at ix with ideas from this post and inspiration from Mutant Future. The idea isn't aimed specifically at the Humanspace setting, but should suit generic pulp sci-fi or fantasy.

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