New Fantasy Setting Seeds.

[Astromancer]

Living your Mask

We are the Ogri. Called Ogres by outsiders. Blessed by the Night Mother. But times are against us. Once we could rule openly. Now we must hide even from others of our own kind.

Still, we are blessed by the Night Mother. We used to be able to feast in secret upon those whose ships we lured onto the rocks. Now the king's men hunt us even here in Cornwall.

We must hide, maybe for generations. We must abstain from eating manflesh. But we must preserve the sacred rites of the Night Mother until we can once again walk openly.

Basically, the PCs are descended from groups of Ogres that swore off cannibalism generations ago. You still venerate the Night Mother (a form of Hecate) and benefit from enhanced abilities. Dropping cannibalism, murder, and crime, has been great for the Ogri. Ogres are stronger than humans, also healthier, somewhat longer lived, and normally a bit smarter too. Most Ogri are also better at magic as well. Mind you those Ogres that eat manflesh regularly are much more powerful. But who wants to be a cannibal? Hiding in the shadows never knowing when the police will find out the truth. Ogres have secrets enough to deal with.

Of course those Ogres that give in to power lust and eat manflesh aren't just a problem for the common men. They also like eating Ogres. To maintain their powers and longevity, those Ogres that eat manflesh can eat either one human a month or one ogre a year. Even the Ogre cannibals can do math.

We are going with the Breton/Cornish Ogres here. These Ogres look like normal humans. They are different stronger, more agile, healthier, tougher, smarter, better looking, with keener senses, and a gift for magic. However, those Ogres that eat manflesh are much more powerful. They also gain a limited form of Remarkable Luck that only works to help them get away with murder ( literally, their luck advantage only works to keep them from being discovered to be murderers and cannibals).

The PCs are normal late Victorian Ogres trying to live a respectable life in Britain. Avoiding being eaten by your crazy relatives is a worthwhile goal. Though not always easy.

Note: Magic in this setting is Path/Book. Ritual Aptitude is available to PCs. The more powerful Ritual Adept abilities are only available to cannibal Ogres.

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Living your Mask


The PCs are normal late Victorian Ogres trying to live a respectable life in Britain. Avoiding being eaten by your crazy relatives is a worthwhile goal. Though not always easy.

Note: Magic in this setting is Path/Book. Ritual Aptitude is available to PCs. The more powerful Ritual Adept abilities are only available to cannibal Ogres.

That is wonderful.

OK. Another addition to the long list of campaigns I'll never have time to run.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by dcarson

That is wonderful.

OK. Another addition to the long list of campaigns I'll never have time to run.

These are also great creatures for any Cabal campaign.
I'll keep them on the back-burner, as part of the menagerie the players in Facets never bothered to look into. 😉

[dcarson]

Yeah. Might put them in my current Monster Hunter campaign.

[Varyon]

The Hero fell. The Hellmouth opened wide, and the hordes of the Demon Realm poured out, conquering the human world. The great kings have either bent the knee to the might of the Demon King or died in futile combat. Only a few scattered city-states remain under the control of humanity.

... but it turns out life under the Demon King is an improvement. The demons brought with them the agricultural technology that allowed them to grow food in the inhospitable Demon Realm - and in the fertile human world, this allows land to produce unheard-of yields, yet without depleting it of the necessary resources to grow further generations of crops. Demonic craftsmen can work wondrous devices out of steel, bronze, and wood - and are more than willing to share knowledge with their human peers. Slavery has been abolished, and former serfs have been granted rights over the land where they live and work (limited rights, but far more than they had as serfs). People have never been more free and equal in any of written history, and the human world is experiencing a golden age.

Aside from those few scattered city-states mentioned above, where Lords rule over their populace with an iron fist. That's where the PC's come in. Disguised as refugees from another city-state that has recently "fallen to the demon horde," their objective is to find some way to loosen the Lords' control over the populace, allowing the city-state to be incorporated into the greater Demon King-ruled world, ideally with minimal loss of life. How they do this is up to them. Will they infiltrate the military forces and stage a coup? Rouse up the downtrodden masses so they rise up and overthrow their cruel masters? Secretly spread word of the outside world, helping the workforce to escape and draining the Lords of their resources? Perhaps they will instead assassinate key officials, weakening the Lords' grasp over the city-state and allowing another method of overthrowing it... or work completely outside the box, befriending the local Lords and convincing them to cede power, perhaps in exchange for some goods and/or services.

... or perhaps the PC's will begin to question their saccharine memories of abundant food, freedom, and happiness. Might they themselves be ensorcelled, led to believe they are liberating this city-state, when in reality they are delivering the population to the hungry maws of literal demons? When they arrived, they spun a horror story of demons overrunning their former home - raping, pillaging, and burning their way through it. What if that were the truth? What if they are condemning this new city-state to the same fate?

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Varyon

... or perhaps the PC's will begin to question their saccharine memories of abundant food, freedom, and happiness. Might they themselves be ensorcelled, led to believe they are liberating this city-state, when in reality they are delivering the population to the hungry maws of literal demons? When they arrived, they spun a horror story of demons overrunning their former home - raping, pillaging, and burning their way through it. What if that were the truth? What if they are condemning this new city-state to the same fate?

If I ran this, I'd want to time things just right such that I add a demon PC (a shapeshifter or something to justify why they weren't caught at the gates) just as the players reach maximum paranoia.

Then again I always want to turn RPGs into social deduction so...

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by TGLS

If I ran this, I'd want to time things just right such that I add a demon PC (a shapeshifter or something to justify why they weren't caught at the gates) just as the players reach maximum paranoia.

Then again I always want to turn RPGs into social deduction so...

If going the "paranoia" route, my inclination would probably make this a non-option - I'd have the PC's discover the city-state has some sort of secret barrier around it that makes demons unable to enter, and also discover that whichever method they've come up with to liberate the people is one that will also destroy the barrier. Almost as though the idea was planted in their minds, and they only had the illusion of choice...

The reason for the "probably" qualifier there is that it may that what they've already done has weakened the barrier enough that, while a demon army can't just march in and raze the place, a few weak demons (like the shapeshifter that just joined them) can get through.


All that said, my headcanon for the setting would be that the characters' memories are accurate, and things really are better under demonic rule. However, this softhanded treatment of the humans doesn't actually sit well with a lot of the demon horde - the high-ranking demons went into the war wanting to take the humans' lands for themselves, and the low-ranking demons lost a lot of friends to human opponents in the war - particularly to the Hero. What they themselves are unaware of is that the Demon King's apparent change of heart on how to deal with the humans is on account of a secret alliance between said Demon King and the human Hero (who by all accounts perished in their fight). So there would be plenty of intrigue for the characters to potentially work their way through, even then.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Living your Mask

We are the Ogri. Called Ogres by outsiders. Blessed by the Night Mother. But times are against us. Once we could rule openly. Now we must hide even from others of our own kind.

Still, we are blessed by the Night Mother. We used to be able to feast in secret upon those whose ships we lured onto the rocks. Now the king's men hunt us even here in Cornwall.

We must hide, maybe for generations. We must abstain from eating manflesh. But we must preserve the sacred rites of the Night Mother until we can once again walk openly.

A few extra notes. The non cannibal Ogres have leveraged their looks, intelligence, health, and longevity (aided by magic) to play the marriage markets. As there is always a surplus of daughters over sons in an Ogre family, marrying up was a good strategy.

Male Ogres almost always marry female Ogres though. The gifts of the Night Mother's Blessing can pass down from mother to daughter, from mother to son, from father to daughter, but never from father to son. If a male Ogre wants his sons to be Ogres, he needs to have his children with a female Ogre.

The Cannibal Ogres on the whole don't try to marry up. That would bring too much attention. So although the Cannibal Ogres are more powerful than the non cannibal Ogres, they are generally less socially prominent and connected.

If a Cannibal Ogre fails to eat either one human a month or one Ogre a year, their extra powers and abilities can't be used. If a Cannibal Ogre has a strength of 25 which he increased from 16, and hasn't eaten manflesh or Ogre flesh within the required time, he can't use the extra strength. The same goes for all other heightened abilities except longevity.

If a Cannibal Ogre is multiple years older than they look, and they fail to eat either manflesh or Ogre flesh in the required time they begin to age at the rate of one month a day. This takes them to their actual age. And then goes back to the normal aging rate.

If a Cannibal Ogre ages into the part of the life cycle where they take aging rolls, then they take them on the twelve days equals a year schedule.

Cannibal Ogres will generally do anything to avoid this fate.

Given the social setting of most Victorian educational institutions Cannibal Ogres almost never pursue higher education and don't go into the skilled trades often. So, although most Cannibal Ogres are far more intelligent than average their skill sets aren't always impressive.

The non cannibal Ogres have applied themselves to education and the skilled trades. Thus they have advantages in general knowledge.

[Astromancer]

The Sky Brothers

I've been a witch for many long years. I've long outlived my youngest sister's great grandchildren. But this was new.

It was round and made of metal. It glowed softly and floated and soared with no visible (even to witch sight) means of propulsion. It was large enough to contain a manor house of a wealthy lord.

Men came out of it. Or things like men.

No, I have seen elves. Beded one or two. These were strange men. Men from beyond the sky.

Basically, witches, faeries, wizards, maybe a dragon or a giant, have to deal with spacemen! As written, assume the technology and social backgrounds suggested by the movie Forbidden Planet . But with a more progressive take on diversity.

The PCs are the magical beings and are interested in discovering who these strange visitors from another planet are.

Note: Different factions among the local supernatural folks might have differing agendas in relation to the spacemen. Some may seek friendship, others potion ingredients.

[Astromancer]

The Sane Wizards of Mars

It takes a lot to keep this all hidden. We'd have made other choices but who knew science would work so well. Or so quickly.

It's like a Bradbury story. Or, maybe it's like the Twilight Zone put Mayberry on Mars!

Your metaphors are getting out of hand. These are actually rather normal mid-20th century Midwestern American towns.

On Mars and run by Wizards!

I suppose that is rather dramatic.

Basically, wizards foresaw cataclysmic events they couldn't understand in the 17th century. The Wizards of Oxford and Cambridge had found the way to travel to Mars from a temple of Nodens. Mars is drier and smaller than Earth, but livable. The Wizards have obscured this since the 1890s. Lowell got too close.

Mars was picked as a garrenteed safe haven. Smuggling large numbers of people to a far world and keeping it a secret was never going to work from Britain. So passages to Mars were set up in America. First in Pennsylvania, then in the Midwest and California. The great depression and the 1960s were particularly easy times for people to disappear.

But now as the long predicted cataclysm grows near, it suddenly seems unsure. As if humanity might yet avoid disaster. This joyous news is also scary. Keeping the true nature of Mars secret won't be possible soon. Keeping NASA's rovers busy was hard enough. But if humanity avoids disaster, then the population on Mars will be discovered and the Wizards that created this community will face the fury of their enraged peers. Furious at magic being exposed as real.

These bitter magi could create their own cataclysm and guarantee no survivors.

You must protect two worlds from the mad vanity and insane paranoia of the other Wizards.