Talk to Me (Lanthanide Horizon Minipost)

The mobile villages of the Walker-Herds tread from the Vault (where, from time to time, they meet Navigators descended from the Hanging Gardens) to the far side of the Thinking Ocean, and further until they reach the Gardener Pillars on the far side of the Spire. Among the pillars they find pasture for their sheep-equivalents (as they are alarm-system transhumance pastoralists - their animals able to eat all manner of textile-plants and organosynthetic plastics grown on the pillars, then leave before the structure's protectors, or the affluent hunter-gatherers of the pillars, come to drive them away), but it is the Vault that is vital, as that is where towns are born. 

In the center of each walker is its genius loci - a block of undifferentiated bismuth computing substrate dredged up from the Vault and taught, like a child, how to speak. These genii are pilots, civil engineers, and objects of devotion - washed with perfumed oils while their dreams are projected on curtains and screens. However, they are not kings - though they sit on the deliberations of the councils of the herds, their decisionmaking power is the same as any other member's, and many times has an errant genius made its pronouncements just to be shouted down. 

🤫 they're sleeping

 

This council representation comes in the form of those who are Crowned with the magnetic interface - people known to fit well with the genius loci, and translate their lights and images into recommendations. This position is voluntary and temporary, and it is common for the majority of adult herdsmen to have experience under the Crown. (Except, of course, for the herd Stones Drifting Over The Edge Of A Waterfall, whose genius asks for errant machines to project itself into.) This is one amulet - the tangled Crown and its long cables stretching back to a niche, sized and shaped for a person, carved into the side of the genius. 

Lesser amulets are omnipresent - the genius must be taught, which requires exposure to information. Herdsmen spend their days whispering to bismuth necklaces, earrings, and diadems carved from the genius - here is what I am doing, here is why I am doing it, careful not to make this mistake, how do you feel today, thank you so much. The amulets respond in buzzing song. Herdsmen are careful with these amulets - it would be harmful to the genius to expose it to dangerous information (whether structure-wrought infohazards or, according to some aniconists, any artificial representative image). There are always stories - cities driven mad teetering off the sides of cliffs, or marching into furnaces.

And, finally, there are stranger objects - fist-sized bismuth blocks taken from machines and taught to speak without connection to the genii, sentient swords with hollow fullers overgrown with substrate, and the self-assembling dream ziggurats and hallucinating fogs of the Thinking Ocean. 

Oh, look at the world - and be joyful, for it lives. 

I have been tearing my hair out over the Walker-Herds for ages, so I used the GLAUGUST "magic amulets" prompt (and 500 word limit) to throw it on a page as a change of pace from working on land-islands. 

Songlines of the Navigators (Lanthanide Horizon)

The sea of Machine Space is dotted with land-islands - humming devices and precarious factories attached to the wall of that great void. The Navigators who sail the black sea use songlines, memorized map-fables, as guides.

Some songlines are common, known by Navigators of all septs.

• The Island of Shrouds, a heatstroke jungle of clear plastic sheeting.
• The Island of the Rivals, where two groups of Firstborn are locked in an endless blood feud. 
• The Island of the Great House, where a few hundred grain farmers live around a tungsten tetrahedron miles wide. They have seen Navigators before, and the people of the Great House scrape up gifts to become passengers on sept-vessels and explore the world. 
• The Island of Clouds, where some mystery fills the air with red mist that corrodes spacesuits - though this does make it a surpassing source of propellant. 

The route to the Spire is also held in common. 

Kiyonori Kikutake's 1970 Expo Tower

Others are rarer, spread across the assemblies but are known mainly by geoglyph painters and historians.

• The Island of the Lotus-Eaters, a winding building whose people dance forever pinned by dangling wires. Their home has been ransacked by Navigators - the lotus-eaters dream only of returning to its embrace.
• The Island of the Captives, whose arcology broke open from the grinding weight of time. Now machines stalk the shores of their false ocean to keep them inside until repairs can be completed.  
• The Island of the Loom, covered by the strings of its vicious guardian's web.
• The Island of the Welder, largely inaccessible without passing through a lethal conduit.
• The Island of Shining Sand, where each grain is perfectly square, glows like a diamond, and is engraved with microscopic shapes.

The routes to the Vault, the Ghostfields, and the Hanging Gardens are also rare. 

Another three are held by the assemblies - one of the last acts of the Imperious before their retirement at the end of the year is to decide which septs are allowed to forage from these more lucrative sites, which provide either multiple trade goods at once or allow more efficient foraging.

Assembly Elegiast:

• The Island of All Colors, where Firstborn tend to iridescent microbes that refine organics into hundreds of specialist chemicals.  

Assembly Cloudspinner:

• The Island of the Monolith, which has been slowly building the same 30-story-high object for as long as the Navigators have known it. 

Assembly Sidereal:

• The Island Paired, where lightning strikes and great cuboid machine-worms crawl from one island-pillar to the other. 

Another eight are fabled - known to exist, somewhere, though the route is lost.

• The Island of the Photosynthetes, whose people cracked their spherical arcology open from within, and now stand proud as kings. It is said they make fine hosts to Navigators - though with little food, as they no longer eat.
• The Island of Secrets, which is invisible to the eye and hides when sept-vessels pass by. 
• The Island of Variegated Limbs, which shift like kelp in ocean currents.  
• The Island of the Fortress, protected by a ceramic shell of surpassing strength.
• The Island of the Broadcasts, which sings a song that metal hears.
• The Island of Itself, which slowly grows across the walls of Machine Space like mold.
• The Island of the Moon, a still-sealed arcology of transparent plastic tunnels under an orbiting white light.
• The Island of the Harbor - Machine Space is haunted by the angular Dreadnought. Antenna-studded splinterer of shields, breaker of axes, scarred by its thousand victories. Surely it comes from somewhere, and returns there for repair and ammunition.

6 Titles of the Oases (Lanthanide Horizon)

A revived Navigator campaign (almost assuredly not a domain game - am i stupid? somewhere between the post about them being evil and the summer i spent pacing around town stressed out over it i should've gotten the hint) will require rather a lot of work on land-islands and other hexes, which has historically proceeded quite slowly.

I've had a tendency to make Lanthanide Horizon games big productions - let's do a domain game! Let's do a second domain game! Let's do a game with an enormous hexcrawl! - that then explode shards of glass into my eyes. Instead, before returning to the Navigators, I have a plan for a shorter, quicker game in the grandest city of the world, Lightning-in-Amber.

An election approaches for the role of Censor Peregrine; a judge-investigator sent to ensure the cooperation of outlying territories, and a very profitable position for its holder due to its sweeping powers of confiscation. One PC is a mid-ranking member of the nomenklatura, and thus in the running - the others are the most useful of their citizen clients. 

To avoid writing another 20 backgrounds (for now), the nomen PC chooses one of the 6 titles below, and the clients gain a particular bonus from their role. (Or I guess I could just do it as a duet game with a single nomen PC, but I like... people.)

"telepathy", the control of emotions at a distance, is ubiquitous - patrons can tune the feelings of their clients, and all can do the same with themselves

Titles

All nomen PCs are granted certain privileges - a preferable list of sentences in the event they are found guilty of a crime, the authority to use official state seals, access to the palace of the Hedrarchs, et cetera. They are assumed to have both a large villa in Lightning-in-Amber and a small estate in the country.

1. Castellan

A Castellan patron begins the game as manager of the Green Arsenal, one of Lightning-in-Amber's state arms factories. Additionally, they may inspect the depots and military roadways of the Oases at any time. Castellan patrons are under the auspices of the Seat of Warfare, and thus its leader, Nadeja Banner-Holder Lightning-in-Amber.

The clients of a Castellan patron are allowed to carry weapons in the city to defend their charge - as is the Castellan themselves. Others must content themselves with deniable clubs and concealable knives.

2. Calendrist 

A Calendrist patron has the authority, in part, to determine the date of civil festivals. One of these, the March of the Effigies, soon approaches, but has not, quite, been nailed down. If you force the issue, you can choose the date of the March at any time and paralyze the city with feasts and parades for a day. 

Calendrists are placed under the Seat of Conduct, and thus its leader, Kodri Preceptor Lightning-in-Amber. 

The clients of a Calendrist are well-known and well-liked due to their work in state resource allocation - they enjoy a +2 bonus to reaction rolls from citizens of the Oases.

3. Iudex

An Iudex patron is empowered to make verdicts in legal cases - both civil suits and criminal actions are resolved by a single judge, with no jury. Unlike a censor, you have no investigative role, and nomen are able to appeal your verdicts - though you have some influence over which cases are brought to you, and lesser citizens have few protections from your whims. Iudex patrons are under the auspices of the Seat of Administration, and thus its leader, Pokorinu Invigilator Lightning-in-Amber.

The clients of an Iudex have picked up a few facts from your interminable conversations - they begin the game with their choice of skill in Law, Resisting Intimidation, or Bald-Faced Lying.

4. Messenger

A Messenger patron is empowered to manage the sending and receiving of mail. It is illegal, though not particularly difficult, to use this position to read everyone's letters. Messenger patrons are under the auspices of the Seat of Works, and thus its leader, Cestisla Aedile Lightning-in-Amber.

The clients of a Messenger are letter-carriers, trained for long-distance running and just a little bit of megastructural mountaineering. They begin the game with their choice of skill in Climbing, Endurance Running, or Navigation.

5. Engraver

An Engraver patron supervises one of the city's mints (uniquely among the cultures of the megastructure, the Oases use nine-sided coins to track allotments of goods as part of their palace economy), and its connected mine. Engraver patrons are under the auspices of the Seat of Revenue, and thus its leader, Siemowit Exchequer Lightning-in-Amber.

The clients of an Engraver are census-takers, and thus authorized to intrude on people's homes and otherwise trespass for the purposes of information-gathering. 

6. Intendant

An Intendant patron begins the game as patron of Wheat Fields, an outlying village. The state leaves some of the profit of an intendency to its manager - Intendant nomen begin the game with double the standard starting wealth. 

Intendancy is not directly under the auspices of any Seat - though like all things your holdings were granted to you by the Hedrarchs.

The clients of an Intendant patron grew resilient from their time in Wheat Fields, and begin the game with +2 HP.

Navigator Domain Procedures Part 4 - Who Decides Such Things 2e

This is probably the last of my rulesposts, following the intro, where I looked at the errors made in my first edition, a post on the new domain economy, a generator for islands of Machine Space, new troupe play, and updated backgrounds. 

The completed player's document, containing 20 backgrounds, 18 treasures, 18 sept-vessels (now mapped on a grid as part of the new shipbuilding system), starting gear, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, can be found here. There may be minor changes as I find all the asset prices are wrong, or something - a changelog will be kept if necessary.

Next on the agenda is building Machine Space - one or two dozen islands (now with Arcologists, micro-cultures seeded by the Structure in tiny controlled environments, for the Navigators to meet and trade with) at varying distances from the Volume, then a huge random encounter table to torment the septs with as they fly. Maybe those will be posted, or maybe I'll hide them from the eyes of my players. We'll see.

Sail away, Navigator - let your ship be loud with song, and come back rich beyond imagining. 

Navigator Backgrounds v2 - Navigator Domain Procedures Part 3.5

While running Libra and, now, prepping for Not My Destination, I'm still trying to keep up at least a once-a-month cadence for posts about my 2nd edition domain rules, to prove to my players that we're just on a, uh... extended hiatus... and surely the game will restart any minute now...

Last time, I mentioned updating the old Navigator backgrounds to come with delta template-style bonuses, as another angle of character progression. 

Each of the 20 now have these bonuses, along with updated abilities and a couple changed names. Additionally, the Comms Operator, Ropemaker, and Salvager backgrounds have been replaced with the new Chemist, Austringer, and Geoglyph Painter.

1. Land-Islander 

Your sept-mates hover near the sun, and their feet never touch the earth unless they wish it. The taller the tower, the more weight on the foundation.

Skill: one of Animal Handling/Climbing/Mimicry

Starting Equipment: two dozen livestock birds and an electric, propeller-driven ultralight.

Perk: each night, ask one of the following questions and receive an answer:

•         Where is the closest drinkable water?
•         How do I avoid the most dangerous creature in the area?
•         What is the most fortifiable defensive location around?
•         Is something hidden from me here?
•         Am I being tracked, followed, or watched? 

Achievement: make a newfound land-island safe for human habitation.

Reward: while you are Select, add a die to your sept's foraging rolls.

2. Pilot 

Some septs eke out scorned lives on the Volume's surface, their ships irreparable or lost. Count yourself lucky. 

Skill: one of Singing/Language: Semaphore/Weather Prediction

Starting Equipment: an extra barrel of fuel and oxidizer (in case of emergency) and a grainy black-and-white thermal monocular.

Perk: While you are at the helm, you have Advantage on all checks of sept-vessel speed or agility. If you find traces of a sept-vessel or structure-born ship of Machine Space, you can track it unerringly.

Achievement: Meet the Dreadnought and escape.

Reward: You may reroll Machine Space encounters. When you are involved in a chase, after both  players bid propellant you are told if you bid higher or lower, and can change your bid if you wish.

Sidebar: Hypothetical Ship Rules

Ten Blade Demigod-style domain stats are Out. Under the new system sept-vessels will be made up of particular components (some of which, like reliquaries and weapons lockers, line up with earlier stats, but others are more similar to TBD's assets). These include main engines and reaction control systems, which determine vessel acceleration and agility. 

Sept-vessels will now also face checks, like characters - these will not check any pre-set list of stats, but instead gain a bonus from relevant components. Sometimes this will be obvious (a test of the ship's agility benefits from its number of RCS nodes), other times it will be not (I'm sure my players will figure some way to argue that their greenhouse is relevant for some check or another). 

I am also going to make the players track propellant now. They deserve it. The Prepare the Engine Array Imperious action will now provide players some quantity of propellant, and a new season action will be added to collect it yourself.

In cases of pursuit between sept-vessels both sides bet a certain amount of propellant to spend - the higher bid accomplishes its goal (to flee or to catch). These bids may be limited by some multiple of your vessel's thrust.  

3. Ship-Tender

When the pilot pulls a backflip under gravity with a broken engine, it's your sworn duty to hit them upside the head. 

Skill: one of Electrical Engineering/Fleeing/Weaving

Starting Equipment: a wrench set, a set of screwdrivers, a corded power drill.

Perk: you have a finely developed sense for bad luck. If something terrible is about to happen (RFNA geyser, gravity switch, infohazard projection) you get a split second right before it happens to do something.

Achievement: recover your sept-vessel after it was destroyed or immobilized. 

Reward: while you are Select, sept repairs and Assets cost half.

4. Foil

You can't remember who started it. 

Skill: one of Painted Dueling Knife 2/Drinking/Intimidation

Starting Equipment: a pair of painted dueling knives, a tin of paint-powder, a shield painted with a snarling face. 

Perk: a member of your Assembly feuds with you - if you meet, there will be blood. When you are attacked in melee, you may riposte, reducing the incoming damage by 1d6+[to-hit]. If this reduces the damage to 0 or less, your opponent is disarmed.

Achievement: defeat your rival in a fair duel.

Reward: you make fill one of your inventory slots with Fatigue to perform a feat of agility (make a scrambling 20' leap, skitter up a wall, et cetera) - in combat, you may do this even if it is not your turn.  

5. Espatier

A practiced hand with the axe and rifle, a survivor of koryos rites of passage (and thus, a full adult), but not yet awarded with steel mask and feather cloak.

Skill: one of Acrobatics/Demolition/Boarding Axe 2

Starting Equipment: light armor (spacesuit), a boarding axe (medium), a cutting torch (15 minute supply of fuel and oxidizer).

Perk: you move at a flat sprint in zero-gravity, and never lose your (hand-and-)footing.

Achievement: raid a rival sept alone and take five captives.

Reward: recognition as one of the ulfheðnar, and the recipe for their moxibustion compounds (doubled movement speed, two attacks per round, immunity to pain, injury, fear, & unconsciousness, chance of stroke, amnesia, blown blood vessels). 

hat :)

6. Shrine Keeper

A carved procession of floating figures winds across your ancestor's shrine, nearly hidden under tied offerings of rakija and foil. 

Skill: Theology, plus one of Oratory/Knowing Your Neighbors/Diligence

Starting Equipment: 1 slot each of fine incense and ephedra tea.

Perk: for ritual reasons, you are inviolable. Assuming you keep your pious reputation, and haven't struck first, Navigators must Save with Will in order to harm you.

Achievement: get the chance, whether from artistry, piety, or nepotism, to lead work on the shrine of your assembly-ship.

Reward:  you, personally, count as an extra shrine for the purposes of Glory generation and attracting heroes.

7. Lawspeaker 

An honorable Navigator will not permit themselves to be slighted. It takes caution to silence their feuds without blood spilled.

Skill: Law, unsurprisingly, plus one of Intimidation/History/Wrestling

Starting Equipment: a stone wrist-guard badge of office, in pure sapphire. Worn by you, and none other.

Perk: once per Season, when presented with a social situation, you may ask one of the following questions to the GM directly - they will answer honestly. 

• Who is really in control here?
• What is about to happen?
• What trait rules this person?
• What here is not what it appears to be?

Achievement: Bring a blood feud between two septs to a peaceful end. 

Reward: If you've spent more than an hour with someone, you have a 2-in-6 to predict how they would react to something. This increases by 1-in-6 for spending a week, season, or year in their company. This does mean you have a 5-in-6 to predict the actions of your septmates.

8. Gunsmith Aspirant

The power to kill at a distance, and to make the tools that provide this power, is hidden. Initiation to the gunsmith's society requires both practical skill and spiritual tuning. You are not yet ready.  

Skill: one of History/Air Rifle 2/Trajectories

Starting Equipment: lead ball bearings and your tools: forge, barrel-reaming machine, hammers & mandrels, anvil, etc.

Perk: you are immune to Imperious commands. Members of the society will not harm you under any circumstances, and you can expect hospitality from them even if your septs bare their teeth for war.

Achievement: build a rifle that fires further and more accurately than any member of the society. This will require strange technology - hydrogen gas-pistons, subverted computerized targeting systems, etc.

Reward: with a week's effort, you may build a rifle. You are trusted to give rifles as gifts.

9. Foreman

The great Assembly-Ships will, someday, sail to the next world. But there is so much work to be done. 

Skill: one of Architecture/Wire-reading ("green plastic tubes with yellow chevrons are filled with molten salt")/Mining 

Starting Equipment: 60 feet of PVC pipe in varied lengths, 30 dim LED status lights, an arm-sized bundle of rebar, four tubes of caulk, and a full set of stick welding equipment (twenty rods of consumable electrode, mask, gloves, power supply). 

Perk: under your instruction, each person engaged in labor (tearing up walls, repairing a ship, building a bridge, et cetera) counts as two.

Achievement: obtain a treasure the size of your sept-vessel, and send it away to your assembly-ship.

Reward: with your cooperation, the Imperious would be able to take an extra action per Season. You may Build an Asset on the assembly-ship. 

10. Katabatist

On the surface of the Volume, like the pupil of an eye, is a six-mile wide hole, and a ten-trillion-mile long tunnel. No one has, yet, made it to its end (apart from the spirits of the dead, of course) - but you've gotten closer than most. 

Skill: one of Endure/Tracking/Logistics 

Starting Equipment: sixteen apotropaic icons, to cast out your pallidness and your empty eyes, and a red plastic keycard from wherever you went. 

Perk: you are beneath notice. Passive machines (those built for noncombat purposes) don't notice you unless you attack them, and you will always be attacked last by combat machines and Firstborn.

Achievement: see the teal light.

Reward: there is something wrong with your eyes. Look into someone else's and they are forced to make a Morale roll. If they fail, they are rooted to the spot until you break eye contact. They may still defend themselves. If they pass, they notice nothing amiss.

11. Lictor 

Guards and enforcers for the Imperious, pulled from the warriors of the septs. 

Skill: one of Greataxe 2/Authority/Wrestling

Starting Equipment: a heavy greataxe - an executioner’s tool - and a set of beautiful (+1 to Reaction) clothes patterned with processions of floating figures in spacesuits.

Perk: You are forewarned of any decrees of the Imperious. All doors are open to you. You will not be challenged to duels (though people will plea to the Imperious for aid if they must) - if someone had the temerity to try, you would be entirely within your rights to cut them down where they stood.

Achievement: display exceptional loyalty by punishing your sept, or the sept of one of your allies, at the command of the Imperious.

Reward: Humans must check Morale to begin combat with you - if they fail, Navigators surrender and all others flee. Your allies have Advantage on Morale checks, saves against Fear, and Discipline checks. In mass combat, units you lead have +2 to-hit and damage.

12. Legalist

Why should the law be secreted away in the minds of lawspeakers and selectmen? Why can I not see it before me? 

Skill: Language: Spiraling, plus one of Foreign Lands/Oratory/Fleeing

Starting Equipment: a pot of ink, 20 sheets of pressed paper, and a multi-jointed mechanical limb from the foreign Spire, currently attached to no one. Sometimes it twitches.

Perk: you have a contact in the Spire. Choose one:

• Gneyvu Proxy Kodri Lightning-in-Amber - a high-ranking member of the nomenklatura, legally identical to Kodri, the city's Preceptor (charged with public morality, state festivals, and auspicious dates). Sees you as an interesting piece of art. You are, presumably, acquainted with her Navigator house-guard client, Pursuant Hiurma Solange.
• Czcibor Jiva Lightning-in-Amber - veteran of the wars against the painted men. Not one of the augmented Sworn, just a (now retired) professional. I'm sure the goods he keeps asking you to carry for him are perfectly above-board.
• Lisu Pre Lightning-in-Amber - a squire-prosthetist to the cruel and overbearing armiger Azuolas Sworn Trajati Lightning-in-Amber. His skills could, potentially, prove useful - more importantly, unlike the other options he truly sees you as a friend.
• Premysl Lonici Lightning-in-Amber - an acclaimed novelist and philosopher. Ok - to be fair, you haven't actually met her, but you've read enough of her work that you may as well have, or so you think. 

Achievement: spend a year under the tutelage of a Spiral philosopher.  

Reward: you have taken the first steps up the path of knowledge. Whenever you gain a new unanswered question, record it. When you have access to an archive, library, sage, or so on, roll 1d6. If the result is less than or equal to your number of questions, choose a question and it is answered.

There are other hypothetical goals for a Legalist (or just legalist) PC - the agricultural revolution, telepathy, writing, etc., but the benefits (and drawbacks) of those are clear and obvious. And in some cases include "you are now playing a different domain game". It'll be great.

13. Stowaway

Desperation claimed you.  

Skill: two of Foraging/Disguise/Climb

Starting Equipment: Nothing. That's the point, isn't it?

Perk: You take 1 damage per round of exposure to vacuum instead of 1d4. 

Achievement: become lost from your sept and make it back. 

Reward: wherever you are, you always know the nearest and best hiding place. Even dedicated searchers will not find you. 

14. Former Imperious

Just a year ago, your words rang with the unquestionable tone of a monarch. But power waxes and wanes, and now you are a man like any other.

Skill: one of Authority/Artwork/Knowing Your Neighbors

Starting Equipment: a set of jewelry, each displaying a particular Vibe to your fellow Navigators:

1. Sapphire diadem: aura of legal authority.
2. Four extremely dense bluish-white rings: aura of occulted knowledge.
3. Tangled bismuth necklace: aura of courage.
4. Bracelet of wound aluminum thread: aura of surplus.
5. Titanium cylinder of a cord: aura of piety.
6. Copper earrings: aura of military skill.

Perk: you still hold some fragment of weight. You are always the most prominent member of a group, and your presence can be tuned to inspire awe or fear in foreigners - though your fellow Navigators would scoff at attempts to use this power among them.

Achievement: return to your prior position as Imperious.

Reward: power comes easily to one experienced with it. You may take an extra Imperious action each round.

15. Merchant

Why spend blood unless you must?

Skill: one of Logistics/Painted Dueling Knife 2/Smuggling

Starting Equipment: a pallet’s worth of scented purplish lumber, four beautiful tapestries, and a crate of dried ephedra tea.

Perk: When looking at someone, you can tell what they most want. When looking at something, you can tell who would most want it.

Achievement: Make 50 Surplus in a single trade. 

Reward: The distance bonus for trade is doubled for you. (Navigators can barter for specific goods, but also for Surplus food or for household goods to distribute for Glory - the value of goods often scales based on the distance between their source and your destination.) 

Red Cloud Confrontation in Landscape

16. Chemist

A sept-vessel has breath, and life, and rushing blood.  

Skill: Chemistry, plus one of Mathematics/Brewing/Wire-reading

Starting Equipment: a small scale, eight round metal bottles, a hand drill.

Perk: when you spend a domain action foraging for fuel (see the Pilot) you also immediately collect or synthesize two of the following:

• An extra slot of fuel (if you're boring).
• A vial of the dissociative mead of poetry.
• A canister of fuel and oxidizer for cutting torches or firebombs.
• A simple sedative, for use against pain and to aid sleep. 
• An ill-tasting poison (2d6, save for half).
• A glass ampoule of metal-eroding acid.

Achievement: Learn secrets of chemistry not known to Navigators. 

Reward: your list of possible syntheses expands to include:

• A block of modern plastic explosive. 
• Actual working antibiotics. 
• A canister of metal foam that rapidly expands and solidifies on contact with air. 

17. Exorcist

Sacrifices in the present world turn into pure springs and beautiful orchards in the next. Shirk your responsibilities and the dead of the next world crawl back to this one, spreading malfunction and disease. 

Skill: one of Medicine/Theology/Vigilance

Starting Equipment: eight honey-soaked antiseptic bandages, eight doses of anesthetic injection, a pair of drums. 

Perk: at a glance, you can see someone's current and maximum HP, if they are ill, and (if they are) whether or not they will recover. +2 on reaction rolls with Navigators - they often recognize you from your travels from before your Selection.

Achievement: save the life of the Imperious, a Spiral noble, one of the Crowned of the Walker-Herds, et cetera. 

Reward: with an hour's examination you can determine the cure to any ailment. You automatically pass checks to remove Fatal Wounds from others. While you are Select, the Care action improves the injuries of your septmates as if three seasons had passed. 

18. Austringer

Both of us built for the sky.

Skill: one of Tracking/Fine Motor Skills/Animal Handling

Starting Equipment: either a 0g-adapted actual, literal bird of prey (with hood, food, et cetera) or a drone control sphere and its pair. 

Perk: knowing how to use the above. The falcon can track unerringly and harry targets at long distances (fatal to small creatures, quadcopters, and so on, but only severely inconveniencing and slowing to humans), while the drone has a light, a camera, and a small two-fingered grasping hand. 

Achievement: catch and tame a great beast or vast machine.

Reward: along with the obvious, your example makes falconry common among your septmates - when any Select raises NPCs to join them on an adventure, one may come with your choice of bird or drone.

19. Skald 

Navigators are, with the exception of the Imperious, fiercely egalitarian. It is your responsibility to insult the great and the good. Drag them back to earth with you.  

Skill: one of Poetry/Sleight of Hand/Fleeing

Starting Equipment: a clattering horn, a vial of the mead of poetry, a jaunty hat. 

Perk: each season, either choose to receive an unkind rumor on a certain topic, or add a rumor of your own into the ecosystem.

Achievement: insult the Imperious to their face and get away with it.

Reward: you can hold the attention of any crowd as long as you keep talking. Watch them hang on your words. Even if they’re here to kill you, they can’t help but listen. 

20. Geoglyph Painter 

Glowing geoglyphs cover the inside of the Volume. Each is a visual aid for a songline - a map-fable.  

Skill: one of Foreign Lands/Memorization/Artwork

Starting Equipment: 50 pounds of glowing glass chunks (to be powdered and used for geoglyphs) and your choice of songline to a distant hex region:

• the Spire, favored-city and greatest of the oases. All septs have a songline to the edge of the Spire, to enter through its airlock - yours places you inside it, without their notice.
• an endless expanse of columnar joints, each made of house-sized metal cubes. The foreign men of the Vault carve their walking cities out of these blocks, and set them to wandering among them.
• a maze of black glass tunnels hidden in the lands of the dead, where faces of pointillist light dance and whisper behind the walls.
• cenote chambers, past the Spire, where the city’s enemies mass for war. 

Perk: whenever you Wander to a new land-island or hex region, you automatically record it as a songline. (Characters can take routes to known land-islands, or choose to explore Machine Space to see if something turns up. Non-geoglyph painters have to spend domain action to codify and memorize the songline to their new discovery so it can be repeated and transmitted. Traveling over recorded songlines lowers your random encounter risk.)

Achievement: venture to the Spire, the Vault, the Ghostfields, and the Cenotes.   

Reward: if you ever hear the name of a location, you immediately know exactly where it is.

the Atacama Giant

Troupe Play & Character Progression - Navigator Domain Procedures Part 3

This is both the least useful and most potentially divisive of my Navigator mechanic posts (intro, domain economy, island generator, troupe play, full document) - I am fully "recreating Runequest by accident" here. The goal is to specialize PCs enough that choice of player character is relevant, and to support troupe play as the Navigator septs elect new leaders.

1 - Progression via XP

At the end of a turn, this season's Select gain Experience Points equal to the amount of Glory collected by their sept this turn. This counts penalties to Glory (a sept who collected a vital resource at the cost of two deaths gains 5-2-2=1 Glory, and thus the Select gains 1 XP) but unlike Glory XP cannot be lost.

XP can then be spent on benefits for the Select who earned it: 

Skill Improvement

New characters begin with one skill from their Background, then [1+WIS bonus] (min. 1) skills of the players' choice. Skills provide a +4 bonus to relevant checks, and also increase the scope of tasks you can complete with no check. 

A new skill costs 15 XP.  

Combat Skills

"Melee Combat" and "Ranged Combat" are skills a player can choose to improve, providing a +1 to-hit with their associated attacks. 

Individual weapon proficiencies ("Navigator throwing darts", etc) can also be bought, providing +1 to-hit with that weapon and unlocking its weird bonus (cleaves, disarms, free throws, whatever). 

Both of the above can be bought twice per entry, and stack (so you may have Ranged Combat 2 and Darts 1, for a +3 to-hit).  

Sidebar - Standard Navigator Weapons

Throwing Darts - light (1d6), must be thrown - proficiency: after rolling initiative, you may choose to go on Init 0 to treat your initiative roll as an immediate thrown attack roll with a dart (stolen from a Discord post by Grackle Court).

Painted Dueling Knife - light (1d6) - proficiency: you may sacrifice 3 damage on a successful hit to disable a human target's limb for a round with stinging pigment.

Boarding Axe - medium (1d8) - proficiency: gain an extra attack if you just entered melee range with your target.

Spear - medium (1d8) - proficiency: anyone approaching you with a shorter weapon is immediately attacked.

Air Rifle - heavy (1d10), +2 to-hit - proficiency: a maneuver spent aiming grants advantage to-hit and to damage.

Greataxe - massive (2d6) - proficiency: damage dice explode. 

HP   

PCs begin with [6+CON bonus] HP. You can spend 15 XP to purchase another 2, up to a maximum of +6. 

2 - Progression via Background 

Later, in part 3.5 because it will be very long and take forever and I was supposed to post this a month and a half ago, an updated list of Navigator backgrounds will come with a single delta template to earn that enhances your background's effect. Some of these are easy (Gunsmith Aspirant, Espatier), some of them will be a bit more troublesome. 

3 - Becoming Imperious 

At the beginning of Black Season, list three of your upcoming accomplishments - I will put a town of the Spire to the torch, I will bring down a towering machine, I will clear an isle of Machine Space, et cetera. Your assembly will add conditions to these - do it without casualties, do it alone, do it unarmed, and so on.

Complete all three and in the next Blue you will be eligible for election - a simple plurality of septs. In case of tie, the last Imperious chooses.

When you become Imperious, a new Select is chosen for your sept. Play both of them for the Blue Season. 

The Imperious PC is expected to live inside their Assembly-Ship, surrounded by finery and courtiers (caught by their authority like a fly in a spider’s web). They are provided the use of a beautifully-decorated ultralight in order to reach sept-vessels.

They have six Lictors - capable combatants (+2 to-hit, heavy weapons) sent from your Assembly to act as bodyguards and police force. They are always available.

Each turn, the Imperious may make a single Decree:

Prepare the Engine Array - 5 points are added to the tally of your Assembly-Ship. Surplus fuel gives each sept of your Assembly gains one slot of a trade good, Pressurized Hydrogen (which can also be expended to run away, pour cryogenic liquid on something, or whatever else you'll do with a tank of liquid hydrogen).

Prepare the Sensor Antennae - 5 points are added to the tally of your Assembly-Ship. A new route is revealed to the septs of your Assembly. Describe one feature of the island, as the antennae sweep over it.

Prepare the Ecosystem - 5 points are added to the tally of your Assembly-Ship. All septs of your assembly gain 3 Surplus.

Self-Aggrandize - floating 0g wine-spheres, lapis lazuli furniture, big murals with your face on them, the whole nine yards. Gain 3 Glory for your sept - other septs may spend Surplus to give you 1 Glory for each 2 Surplus spent. The Select may also arrive at your council to speak to each other and so you can harangue them face-to-face.

Declare Judgment - arrive at a sept and lay down the law. Your lictors are empowered to perform executions, mutilations, exiles, and other tortures as long as you are personally present.

Entrap Advisor - summon and host an NPC of your choice. They are not permitted to refuse.

4 - Diagetic Improvement 

Look, I'm not leaving all these electromagnets and volatile chemicals lying around for no reason. You want a higher attack bonus? Homemade railgun.

Maybe there'll be places and things that let you spend XP for new weird feats. That sounds like something I'd write down and then forget to ever put in. 

like this, from Rise Up Comus's Middle-Earth hexcrawl.

5 - PC Rotation  

Wounded characters take turns off to be cared for, during which you play another PC. Sure, this is a reason to have a second one lying around, but it's not really much of one. 

So, I'm considering one of these:

1. Characters must take a season off in order to spend their experience. 

2. When you choose a returning character as Select you lose Glory equal to 1/4th their total experience. Repeat Select are seen as harmful. It is expected for you to do well and get out of the way so someone else can soak in the benefits - taking up the mantle again goes against Navigator leveling mechanisms, and raises both fear ("perhaps they are sliding into tyranny") and pity ("is their sept so bereft that no one else could be found to acclaim?") in your neighbors. This one is true to the setting, but it's also the most blatant use of the rules to make the players play the game a certain way, and I assume there's a theoryposter ready to kick down my door if I use it.

So. I will use... one of them. The 2rd is the most interesting to me, as you can tell from it being 7 times as long as the other, but I can see plenty of reasonable players going "it costs me a FINE? to play MY CHARACTER?" and hitting me with stones.

Postscript

Someone, I think Prismatic Wasteland (on an old newsletter?), would end posts with links to posts on other blogs, for that good ol' cooperation and collaboration thing. I saw this, went "wow, I should do that", and then never remembered to.

This time I finally have because of ALLUVIUM, a Lanthanide Horizon mini-hexcrawl by friend of the blog Primeumaton (whose hexes are always a delight). Maybe I'll remember to again. Or I won't.

Machine Space Exploration - Navigator Domain Procedures Part 2

Part 2 of my four part series on fixing mistakes in my spaceship-hunter-gatherer domain game. See part 1 (on economy and domain actions), and later part 3 (troupe play and character advancement) and 4 (new players' document).

The megastructure is crossed by Machine Space - thousands or millions of miles of airless tunnels that twist around the structure's hexcrawl regions. Navigator sept-vessels travel through this place - a great black sea for the Volume's sailors.

spaces between spaces

Machine Space is handled in the same way as Phlox's wonderful Acmori - known routes through its halls, recorded in songlines, are handed out as a type of loot. These routes have a couple static pre-rolled encounters (it is known, of course, that this route is haunted with constant sensor sweeps), a couple descriptive landmarks (the geyser, where the broken air pipe sprays condensation into the vacuum), and a couple spaces for newly-rolled random encounters (on a list that I do not, uh, have yet). 

Many of these routes lead to the "islands" of Machine Space - humming devices, precarious factories, and other adventure sites. Septs can reach one of these islands, explore it, and move on in the course of a season. While exploring an island, characters can still communicate with their sept-vessel using light-semaphore (so you can do Fun Problem Solving with your giant tow cables and big saw and so on). 

Some routes lead, instead, to hexcrawl regions - the beautiful Spire, the distant Vault, the Hanging Gardens, et cetera. Exploring these regions takes two seasons - the first spent reaching the site and breaking it open, and the second exploring the hexcrawl. 

If you are inside one of these regions during a change of season, you are given the option to flee immediately into Machine Space. If you do not, gain 1 Glory as the structure notices the damage done to its region and sends its Dreadnought for repair and sterilization. 

Island Prompter

The island itself is a hexflower or a tiny pointcrawl or something. Because I'm already in the hex-keying mines for this project, the button below provides concepts for islands of Machine Space. Thanks to Slight Adjustments for their list-to-HTML-generator tool. 

The Sept-Vessel Economy - Navigator Domain Procedures Part 1

This system is a complete ripoff of Sofinho's excellent Alone in the Wilderness, except for the parts that are a complete ripoff of Phlox's beautiful Ten Blade Demigod. This part one of 4 where I work through my previously identified problems with my Navigator spaceship-nomad domain game rules. Later parts will go over new rules and generators for the "islands" of the endless halls of Machine Space, new troupe play and character advancement, and a complete "second edition" rules document.

Navigators divide time into two seasons - the Blue, where their home cylinder of the Volume is filled with breathable air, and the Black, where it empties and Navigator sept-vessels spread out through the megastructure. Each of these seasons is then divided into two turns, the Waxing and Waning. 

At the start of the turn, determine the amount of food foraged by your sept - in the Volume during Blue Season this is [population/6]d8, collected from the grasslands of the cylinder. In Machine Space this is [population/6]d4, from cracking water lines and looting transport rails. In the Volume during Black Season, this is [population/6]d2 - unsurvivable.

It is a bright day in the waxing half of Blue Season - under the linear sun, sept Certifier (population 36, so rolling 6d8) rolls 18 - really just startlingly bad.

Each member of your sept is assumed to eat 2 meals a day - this can be increased to 3, improving the morale of your sept and letting you roll sept members' HD twice and take the highest result when relevant. It can also be decreased to 1, granting disadvantage to HD rolls and leading to general whining and complaining. 

Your sept's food consumption is also divided by 6, to fit with food production. 

Certifier's population of 36 means they eat (36/6)*2 = 12 units of food by default. This leaves a surplus of 6. 

Having a surplus means that your sept has time left over after collecting enough food for the group. This extra time can be spent on sept projects. Surplus time can be added to a project over multiple seasons - improvements do not need to be completed in a single turn.

Improve the Vessel's Holdings

• Sept-vessels have 4 stats, called "holdings": Weaponry, Trade Goods, Reliquaries, and the rare Mysteries. Starting sept-vessels have 1-3 points spread through these stats.  
• The level of a holding can be increased by putting 15 points of time into the project per target level (15 to go from no holding to level 1, 30 from 1 to 2, et cetera). 
• This can be halved if a relevant item is included in the construction of the holding (if you recover your ancestor's gold-plated skull you can stick it in your reliquary, and so on). Any single item may only be used for this purpose once. 
• Improving the level of a Mystery requires use of a relevant item, and still costs the full price. 

Build an Asset 

• A catchall for the construction of other sept-vessel additions - gardens, spotlights, tow cables, et cetera.
• Asset prices are negotiated - they may gain a discount from, or require, access to a relevant item.

Craft a Treasure

• If you have a Mystery of at least level two, you can attempt to craft treasures based off of it at a cost of 15 surplus per property of the treasure. 
• Each turn you put surplus into this action, roll 1d20 + the crafter's Intelligence + the level of your Mystery. If you roll below a 20, a complication arises that must be resolved before the treasure is completed.
• The cost of the treasure is decreased by 1 for relevant rare substances or valuable objects used in the crafting, and by 2 if the crafter has a relevant skill. The roll for complication gains an equal bonus.  

Preserve

• By default, all surplus time is lost at the end of a season. 
• 2 points of time can be spent to provide a free point of time on the next season, as your sept works to preserve food and lower the amount of forage needed.
• (i.e. if sept Certifier spent 6 surplus preserving food, next season they would roll 6d8+3 for forage.)

Host

• You may host a particular character, or choose to open your doors to any number of other septs. This is used for any type of hosting activity - political councils, weddings, et cetera. 
• In the Blue Season, you may host another character in your assembly-ship instead of on your sept-vessel - this is seen as politely distant, while hosting on your own vessel is seen as extremely close. 
• On weddings - remember that all weddings are political alliances, and that they are only permissible between left-handed and right-handed septs. You may be expected to host twice - once for the discussion of the spouse-prices and placements, and again for the marriage.
•  Hosting costs at minimum 3 surplus, with increased spending striking awe in your guests.

Care

• Each wounded member of the sept costs 3 surplus to care for - if this is not spent, their wounds do not improve.

Work on the Assembly-Ship

• This can only be done while you have access to the assembly-ship (presumably this is in the Volume during the Blue Season, but if you move it or something I guess it's there now). 
• Spend any amount of surplus, plus any amount of rare resources. Gain surplus/2+resources Glory and add that many points to the tally of your assembly. Someday it will be finished. 

Attract Heroes

•  Roll 1d6+[reliquaries] on my secret table of weird freak heroes. The rolled result will arrive for your next adventure, piloted by another player, and then wander away. 

Adventure 

• Sending characters out from the sept-vessel costs 1 surplus for each character sent. Adventuring NPCs are equipped as you choose, with available loadouts based on the Weapons level of your sept. 
•  Further rules for adventure in Machine Space will be presented in part 2.

Raid 

• Sending characters out from the sept-vessel costs 1 surplus for each character sent. Adventuring NPCs are equipped as you choose, with available loadouts based on the Weapons level of your sept.  
• Roll (1d20 - the target's weaponry - 1 for every raider you bring with you) / 3. This is the number of turns you have before the defender is able to organize a response. 
• Further procedures for raiding are not relevant to the topic of this post. Hurt them and steal their things. You get it.

Sept Certifier chooses to spend all 6 of its surplus to Work on the Assembly-Ship, along with a beautiful set of malachite-and-cobalt plates they pulled from the Hanging Gardens. They gain 6/2+1 = 4 Glory and add 4 points to the tally of Assembly Elegiast.

The population of a sept-vessel comes from their Glory - acclaimed septs attract new marriages, adoptions, and hangers-on, while failing vessels soon split. At the end of each turn, Glory is tallied:

• +1 for each of a vessel's Reliquaries
• +1 if the sept defeated a significant enemy
• and another +1 for victory against all odds 
• +1 if the sept befriended a significant character
• and another +1 if they were an enemy when the turn began 
• +1 for succeeding in a raid despite making contact with the enemy
• +5 if a member of the sept was acclaimed Imperious
• +5 if a source of a rare resource is discovered and brought back to the assembly
• +∞ for the completion of your assembly-ship 
• -2 for each death among the sept 

Glory may also be lost as a consequence of raids, as part of weregild, or as a result of unpleasant events, general chaos, or other GM meddling. Glory begins at 0 - it can become negative.

At the end of a season, roll 1d10-(9-Glory) for the number of new sept members. This cannot be negative. 

Sept Certifier's prior Glory was -3. They gain 1 for their Reliquary and another 4 from their work on the good ship Elegiast, bringing them to 2. They roll 8 on 1d10-7 - a single person comes to join the sept, bringing them to a total population of 37. Time ticks on in the endless structure.

It's Better to Learn From Other People's Mistakes (Navigator Domain Game Retrospective)

A while ago I saw a post on the OSR Discord (I think it may have been Jenx's Zandan megadungeon retrospective) that talked about how useful it was to talk about failures. Disastrous campaigns and ill-formed systems that can serve as a warning for others.

This is, in part, that. A few weeks ago I talked about my dubious experience with "Ten Blade Demigodlikes", a domain game system originally by Phlox popular in the GLOG sphere (you can read its rules here and the rules I've been using so far here). 

The actual rules of the game went largely without mention there, but they've caused no end of issues themselves. So, in the spirit of talking about failure, the worst parts of my old system and some half-formed plans for the new edition I'll be using when the game comes off hiatus in 2026:

1 - The Economy

In Ten Blade Demigod and its imitators, the economy is simple enough. Each year your domain produces taxes based on your Level and Trade holdings, plus some randomization. Then, in each season, you can make one domain action - building things, hosting people, et cetera, which usually costs some money.

This is a perfectly functional system - if you happen to have things like "taxes" and "money". Navigators have neither - instead, I tried to experiment with a system based off of Luke Gearing's Reputation Tables, to simulate the soft power and persuasion inherent to their social structure. Each domain leader had a 20-entry table, half-filled at the start of the game and filled further through XP-generating-style activities like arranging profitable marriages, resolving disputes, and so on. 

When they attempted to perform a domain action, they made a number of d20 rolls on that table (varying by the action's "cost") and needed all of those rolls to hit a filled table entry. If any number of actions missed, the people of their domain said "sorry boss I'm busy making textiles" and the player must choose a different action for that season. 

This was the worst idea I have had in my life. It was meant to be unreliable, but this was shocking - 25% or less chances to accomplish basic tasks and a complete lack of control over the domain. It is the only mechanic I have ever had or seen that fully got a player to just Quit. I patched it - ways to pass failed rolls at varied costs, the addition of trade goods as a second track, and so on, but while that made it work (ish), it also made it a towering inelegance spread throughout the handbook with no organization.

My plan for 2e is to, instead, rip off Sofinho's genius new hunter-gatherer townbuilding rules, which use surplus time left over after hunter-gatherering as their base currency - renewed every season, impossible to save, and scaling off of population and local terrain. His recruitment and reputation system may also find use. 

2 - Exploration

Originally, Ten Blade Demigod had winter set out as its adventure season. The unnavigable seas froze to ice, allowing PCs to march out to the isles of Acmori. Later domain games generally abandoned this structure, though mine kept it - with the airless Black Season as the Navigators' venturing period.

However, despite this being (essentially) a naval game, I forgot to have a sea. The exploration rules were strange and exceedingly specific to constrain the PCs to single adventure sites when they had a spaceship and the nearest adventure site was a couple hexes of walking away. 

In 2e the focus of exploration will be ventures into Machine Space, tens of thousands of miles of vacuum-filled artery filled with Acmori-like "island" sites and ship-scaled random encounters. The larger hexcrawls will still exist, but be a rarer, difficult-to-find option where Navigator PCs will still be constrained to shock raids: sawing holes into the map from Machine Space, running around, and returning to their getaway ship before the megastructure notices the intrusion and sends an automated dreadnought and repair team.

3 - Player Characters

Prior domain games of this type have been set in autocracies - players had A Character, who ruled with an iron fist for life. Unfortunately, as with the economy, I decided to make my life difficult. Navigators are largely egalitarian, except for the position of the Select, a judge elected for a single year to resolve disputes and act as clan representative in negotiations. 

My solution to this problem so far has just been to ignore it, trapping the players in a flickering superposition between "actually their character" and "the mood of their clan" depending on what was more convenient on a gameplay level. This works, I guess, but is also boring and not particularly intuitive.

In 2e I want to fully detach the player from a character - more like Crusader Kings than D&D, Select drifting in and out of power and the player generating new PCs as needed when the time comes to play a character. 

I do not know how I'm going to do this yet. Legacy: Life Among the Ruins does something similar with a switch between long-term play as a faction and adventure play as a single-use specialized PC, but on a shorter timescale of seasons instead of generations it's more difficult to get rid of already-used player characters.

Re-specializing the Select as a judicial position would also permit the players to pilot PCs with other roles (similar, perhaps, to the roles given to newly-made Legacy PCs), but at a certain point I've started trying to do troupe play with a constantly shifting cast of possible characters, which sounds like Hell.

This is the system I'm furthest from knowing what to do with. We'll see.

6 Navigator GLOG Classes (Lanthanide Horizon)

This is an experiment - Lanthanide Horizon has always been classless, so I was interested in what would change if I replaced its backgrounds with more standard GLOG progression. No idea how I feel about it. 

Koryonos
A: Warband, +1 to-hit
B: Hunter-Gatherer, +1 skill
C: Houses Like Torches, +1 skill
D: Pack of Wolves, +1 attack per round

A: Warband
You lead half a dozen of the koryos - the youth-band, those not yet ready for the responsibility of full sept membership. Unbound by propriety, you live in the wilderness through the Blue season, then attach yourself to whichever sept deigns to take you in the Black. 

Warband members are 4 HP, 10 AC, 1 Discipline, and deal 1d6 damage with hatchets or 1 with thrown rocks. “Stop ransacking the town and stealing silverware and throwing people out windows” is a maneuver requiring a successful Discipline roll. 

Your warband has two advantages, and one disadvantage:

Advantages

1. Your warband is armed not only with stones and axes, but with Navigator throwing darts (1d6 damage, can be thrown 50’, or further with a -1 to-hit penalty for every 10’ feet).
2. Your warband carries shields, raising their AC to 12.
3. Your warband is doubled in size - its other segment led by a lieutenant you promote.
4. Your warband follows you loyally, increasing their Discipline to 5.
5. One member of your warband is betrothed to a sept - as long as they live, this sept is a safe haven.
6. Your warband carries a device with it - something halfway between a chariot and a shotgun. 2d8 damage in a 120’ cone, though you move terribly slowly as you pull it.

Disadvantages

1. Two members of your warband fight for the affections of a third in a way that is certain to eventually blow the whole thing up.
2. You are followed by something - the lights of some machine shine on the edge of your firelight.
3. A sept considers you in their debt.
4. Your band is young and still untested. They have -2 to-hit.
5. Your band is impatient, chafing against even successful orders to halt an attack or abandon loot. 
6. Your band has become known for impiety, beyond that expected of the koryos - outsiders find you offputting, if not a potential magnet for curses.

B: Hunter-Gatherer
As long as your warband never spends more than a night in the same place, they collect enough food to survive. 

Each night, ask one of the following questions and receive an answer:

•     Where is the closest drinkable water?
•     How do I avoid the most dangerous creature in the area?
•     What is the most fortifiable defensive location around?
•     Is something hidden from me here?
•     Am I being tracked, followed, or watched?

C: Houses Like Torches
What a beautiful light. With a shout, your unit moves and attacks once again. You can’t do this again until you’ve done one of the following: revel in the ruins, land a critical hit, or slay the leader of an opposing force. 

D: Pack of Wolves
Units you lead have +2 HP and +2 damage. Enemies you face have disadvantage on Discipline rolls and rolls on the Failures of Discipline table. When they rout, roll 2d8 instead of 2d6.

Espatier
+1 to-hit per template.
A: 3D Mindset, +1 attack per round
B: Saboteur
C: Turn Against Them All
D: Ulfheðinn 
Δ: Lictor

A: 3D Mindset
You move through 0g as if you were flying.

B: Saboteur
The torch is your tool - the axe is just to get people out of the way. With appropriate tools, you can cut a door-sized hole in a wall in a single round, or perform other acts of property damage.

When applicable, your list of combat maneuvers now includes “hack a hole in the wall and see what comes flying out”. 

Many stop here, and turn to peaceful arts.

C: Turn Against Them All
Before taking this template, you must seek a hero of the Ulfheðnar, the breakers of men.
You sit in the airlock, breathing. In, out. In, out. The smoke fills your lungs, the moxa burns round scars into your skin. In, out. In, out. Think about what you have done, and what more you could still do.

The airlock opens. Your spit boils on your tongue in the moment before you fall unconscious.

You wake with four points of rage.

D: Ulfheðinn 
Before taking this template, you must complete the task given to you by your teacher.
You will be sent out to do something none could. Raid your hated rival alone, and return with five captives. Duel a towering machine and bring it to the earth.

With this complete, your teacher presents you with the demon-face mask and the feather mantle. Nothing separates you. 

You know how to make the same moxa that turned you into this - if you are prepared in this way before a fight, when you rage you automatically attack anyone who attacks you in melee, and ignore the effects of wounds and death until your rage ends. 

It will not be long until you have a student of your own, hoping to walk the killing path.

Δ: Lictor
Abandon your sept, and pledge yourself wholly to the service of the Imperious.
All doors are open to you, and tyranny shrouds you like a cloak. Human foes must check Morale to begin combat with you.

Gunsmith
A: Someone Else’s Child
B: Calming Voice, Modification 
C: Journeyman, Breathe Easy
D: Master

A: Someone Else’s Child
You are immune to the decrees of the Imperious. Let them howl and scream all they like. You are the most prominent member of any group - perfectly still in the midst of them. Navigators must save or be unable to bring themselves to harm you. 

You can expect to be hosted in any sept-vessel that harbors the Society. Members of it will approach you, expecting the same - even if they come from your greatest enemy, and your sept hungers for their blood.

These protections are lost if you show greater loyalty to your sept (or to yourself) than to the Society.

B: Calming Voice
You may attempt to calm all listeners with soothing words. Intelligent creatures get a save, though those with fewer HD than you fail automatically. When a creature fails the save their emotions dull to grey outlines, anger drains, joy becomes hollow, battle-lust fades.

After using your Calming Voice you can't use it again until you have done at least two of the following: get a full night's rest, drink a dose of wine, consider the mysteries of the Society for two hours.

C: Journeyman
With an evening’s work you may make modifications to firearms, at the cost of weight and misfire chance, or make 3d4 rounds of specialized ammunition (tungsten-core AP, hypergolic magnesium, et cetera).  

C: Breathe Easy
You are meant to use them, sometimes. Each round you spend aiming before firing provides you +1 to-hit and allows you to roll an extra damage die, keeping the highest 2 (or however many your chosen gun happens to roll).

D: Master
Before taking this template, you must build a weapon that fires further and more accurately than any Master’s.
With a week’s work, you may make a rifle.

Lawspeaker
A: Judge of Character
B: Prediction OR Code of Hammurabi

A: Judge of Character
Once per Season, when presented with a social situation, you may ask one of the following questions to the GM directly - they will answer honestly. 
    Who is really in control here?
    What is about to happen?
    What trait rules this person?
    What here is not what it appears to be?

B: Prediction
If you've spent more than an hour in someone's company or read sufficient biographical information you have a 2-in-6 to predict their reaction to any given event (increases by 1-in-6 for spending a week/month/year in their company). 

B: Code of Hammurabi
You have forsworn the common law of the Navigators to spread the commands of Spiral tomes and steles. You learn the language of the Spire, if you did not know it already. 

When writing a contract, you have a 2-in-6 chance to slip in clauses the other side misses. If someone breaks an oath sworn in front of you, you know immediately.

Skald
A: Leveling Mechanism
Δ: Jester’s Privilege

A: Leveling Mechanism
If you tell a tall tale, people will believe it and pass it around. Your tales are attributed directly to you. Those you slander will hear of it, and may pay you a visit if thoroughly incensed.
If a tale you’ve told is proven false, save vs. a tarnished reputation. Once tarnished, those who know of you will still pass around your tales, but will not believe a single word without clear proof.

Δ: Jester’s Privilege
Insult the Imperious to their face and get away with it.
You can hold the attention of any crowd as long as you keep talking. Watch them hang on your words. Even if they’re here to kill you, they can’t help but listen.

Katabatist
A: Beneath Notice
B: Follow Me
C: Apotrope
D: Alone, Alone, Alone

A: Beneath Notice
Passive machines (those built for noncombat purposes) don't notice you unless you attack them, and you will always be attacked last by combat machines and Firstborn. 

B: Follow Me
There is something wrong with your eyes. Look into someone else’s and they are forced to make a Morale roll. If they fail, they are rooted to the spot until you break eye contact. They may still defend themselves. If they pass, they notice nothing amiss.

C: Apotrope
Machines roll Reaction when meeting a group you are in. On a positive roll, they blink lights at you. They hope you will understand.

D: Alone, Alone, Alone
Those who fail morale rolls caused by Follow Me are knocked unconscious.