Magic and Muskets: Megedagik's War (flintlock fantasy)

[IrishWolf]

Ill news has reached the court of Kingdom of Theula. A long letter to King Henri IV, penned by the Viceroy of the Vridux colonies, Governor General Augustin-Loup. Detailed within it’s pages, were a series of woes. A new spiritual leader seemed to have rose among the Alfin tribes, the native peoples of Vridux, a shaman named Megedagik. This shaman preaches for all the tribes to set aside their differences and drive out the human colonists. He has a strength of voice never heard before, claims to speak prophecies and see the future. He is said to brew a potion, which will make the warrior who drinks it, unkillable and it seemingly works, as it takes a direct shot or blade to the heart, to slay those who assault the human colonists and their allied tribes. Most damningly of all, the shaman seems to be able to summon what the Alfin call Gobelines, humanoid creatures which look like shortened, deformed, grey skinned Alfin, who delight is slaughter and torment.

Scores of settlements, several blockhouses and even a small fort, have been overrun by battle-crazed Alfin and their cruel Gobeline allies. The Governor General begs for aid, more troops and most importantly, one of the King’s mages. If it wasn’t for the shaman, what few regulars he had, the scattered colonial free companies of marines, the militia, his provincial guard regiment and what few Alfin allies they still have, could hold off the enemy. With a few more regiments from the home country, he could see them defeated. But he really needs the mage, to deal with Megedagik. If they cannot stop the creation of the brew, then New Theula will be lost.

Distant from the conflict and not understanding the extent of the trouble, King Henri, nevertheless, has dispatched a mage to the colonies, along with her bodyguard, a full company of Royal Grenadiers, sixty men and officers strong. Not that the King believe the Viceroy needs the mage but there are political undercurrents in the court. While the Royal Mages are oath sworn to the King, some of their small number, do not feel appreciated enough and have begun to support ministers and nobles, who would see the King’s power reined in. Sending a mage to the colonies, is more a power play by the King, to prove to them, they will bend to his will. Although the mage in question, might not be one of those directly opposing the King but a sacrificial lamb, to prove the point.

Greeted by Augustin-Loup, when she landed at the port city of Roubeuge, Capital of New Theula, the mage was instructed to head to Fort Vivien. There she was to meet with guides, to take her over the frontier, to where it is believed that Megedagik, is living and would help find him. However, the soldiers she and her bodyguard meet at the fort, a handful of marines, militia and Alfin allies, commanded by a sergeant Luc Berger, were far from satisfactory, in the mind of the mage and her captain of Grenadiers. They looked rough and savage, hardly dressed in the case of the Alfin warriors and barely uniformed for the Marines. Such a sharp and unprofessional contrast to her own Grenadiers.

Almost at once, as they marched from the fort, the Captain of Grenadiers began to ignore Sergeant Luc, waving away all of his suggestions and advice. The Grenadiers would march in full kit, in column, like proper soldiers. None of this loose, skirmish formation the Marine told him to use. The Alfin were primitive cowards, who would flee from real fighting men. As the days passed, Luc began bring warnings. They were being watched, followed even. A warband would catch them in ambush. Again, he was ignored and sent away with his command to ‘scout’.

Two week after leaving the fort, Luc and his scouts were the only ones not to be surprised when the forest around the column was suddenly filled with arrows and musket shots, followed by whooping Alfin warriors, covered in their warpaint, waving hatches and gunstock or ball-head war clubs. The fighting was fierce, the Grenadiers, although taken unaware, proved their worth as royal guards, even if they were slain nearly to a man. When the gunsmoke cleared,very few were left standing. Most of the scouts made it through, although some of their number joined the broken bodies littering the field of battle. The Grenadier Captain was dead, as were most of the sergeants and corporals.

However, there will be a problem with so few, other then the amount of foes they will face and a lack of backs to carry supplies. It wasn’t just simple arrogance, which made the Captain send Luc and his scouts away everytime he returned to the column. There have always been rumors but its kept a semi-secret in the royal courts back home, that mages, in addition to their great abilities, have powerful hungers and sexual urges. Male mages tend to keep small harems of courtesans, were female mages tend to take lovers from among their bodyguards. Now, she just few, mostly unaware of her needs, to satisfy her, if they can.

Magic
Magic is invoked with the speaking of special words and the right hand gestures. There is no one language of magic, as humans have learned, as they explore and colonize the world of Tirione. However, since they discovered writing, humans formed a single language, for those few graced with the ability to use magic, to conduct their spell work in, with unified hand gestures. A mage from one human nation, knows just what a mage from another is doing, if they can hear or see them. It is well documented, among human sources, that mages always have great appetites, for food, sex and drink. The more powerful the mage, the greater their desires. It is theorized that their bodies are tempting to fill the void, when magic is not flowing through the mage. It should be noted there are few fat mages, no matter their hunger but mages to tend to have lots of children, although said offspring have the same chance of being a mage, as one with none mage parents.

Alfin however, do not. The words vary from tribe to tribe, as do the gestures. They also have a great deal more magic users then humans do. However, these mages or shamans as the Alfin call them, as far far weaker then their human counterparts. In fact, when humans first landed on Vridux, they did not think the Alfin had mages and thus no human kingdom has invested in studying Alfin mythods.

Where human mages make grand displays of their power, hurling fire and lightning or rise up walls of earth or tearing open the very ground beneath an enemy’s feet, Alfin magic is far more subtle. Shamans pour their energies into grinding herbs and plants in just the right way, chanting the words their teachers told them, to make health salves or more importantly, the body paint used by warriors. The warpaint can make a warrior stronger or faster or even luckier, in small ways. Just enough to overpower a bigger warrior or to make a long shot or run away. It is said that humans once used magic like this in the far past, druids painting warriors with woad but as writing evolved, so did their magic.

The new paints and the strange brew being made by Megedagik and his followers, are far far more potent then any Alfin magic seen before.

Royal Grenadiers

The Theulian Royal Grenadiers are a special formation. Almost every regiment of foot, including the four infantry regiments of the King’s Household, has a grenadier company. The largest and most powerful men in the regiment, they form an elite flank company amd are used to spearhead assaults. The use of grenades has fallen out of favor but the usefulness of grenadiers has not. However the Royal Grenadiers, are not attached to any regiment but are independent companies, serving the King. First raised simply to provide the monarch with more tall, powerful looking soldiers, to impress visiting dignitaries, the Royal Grenadiers now serve as bodyguard for the King’s Mages. Modern warfare has proven more deadly for mages, in in past eras.

The Royal Grenadiers are also among the least corrupt of the Royal Household. While the other regiments, both of foot and horse, are filled with the sons of nobles and rich merchants, who bought their way into the prestigious posts, the Royal Grenadiers are not. They recruit from new men from other regiments in the army. To join the Grenadiers a man must be under thirty and served at least ten years, five years if they’ve seen combat or have survived being part of a Forlorn Hope. There is also a height requirement, all Grenadiers must be at least five foot ten inches tall. Moustaches are also required.

Grenadiers are uniformed and equipped with the following;

Bearskin cap
Royal blue Coat with silver buttons and scarlet facings
Royal blue waistcoat with silver buttons
White shirt
Royal blue breeches.
White stockings
White woolen gaiters
Black leather shoes

Land pattern musket
Triangular bayonet
Hanger (short, slightly curved sword)
Cartridge box with thirty rounds
Powder horn

Colonial free companies of Marines

All of the Theulian colonies, scattered across newly discovered lands, are under the supervision of the Navy Ministry. To provide them with regular troops, the Navy raised scores of Colonial free companies of Marines. These men under arms, were never intended to serve aboard ships, despite being called Marines. Mostly recruited from port cities and their surrounding areas, many of these men are criminals, given the choice between the King’s Justice or the King’s Crown (a silver coin). Others are men who for one reason or another, need to leave the country. Some of young men looking for adventure. Colonial recruitment is discouraged, as most colonies have labor shortages.

Upon enlistment, each Marine is given the following;

Black felt tricorne hat
Grey-white and blue forage cap
Grey-white coat with copper buttons, blue cuffs and turnbacks
Blue long-sleeved waistcoat
White shirt
Blue breeches
Blue stockings
White woolen gaiters
Black leather shoes

Sea pattern musket (ten inches shorter than Land pattern)
Triangular bayonet
Hatchet
Cartridge box with thirty rounds
Powder horn

However, the Marines on the frontier are on the end of a very long supply line. Often they don't receive new uniforms for years. In the Vridux colonies, those uniforms are often intercepted by the Viceroy, to use them for his provincial guard. Not to mention, a good Theulian made woolen coat and tricorne are worth a good deal on the frontier, to the barely paid marines. Often the marines in the Vridux colonies, sell their coats or keep them for winter and use the waistcoat as their uniform in the warmer months. Those marines, who did not save their coat for winter, often wear a locally made coat called a capot, which is made of wool, hangs down to the knees and has a hood. Their tricornes also get sold and most marines wear either their forge caps or locally made knit caps. The woolen gaiters and leather shoes wear out rather quickly and tend to be replaced with Alfin style buckskin leggings and moccasins.

Their muskets, which are not sold, under threat of a flogging, do break, get lost or stolen. Sometimes there are extra sea pattern muskets for a marine to replace their longarm with but often those in the frontier garrisons, have to replace their weapon with a locally made musket, which will be of the same caliber but can’t take a bayonet. Other times they are replace them with the longer, more accurate but smaller caliber and longer to reload, hunting rifles made in the colonies. In some cases, the best one can do is a blunderbuss or fowling piece. Marines also tend to add fighting knives and pistols, when they can get them, to their personal armaments.

There are rumors that some of the men in the Colonial free companies of Marines, are not men at all but women in disguise. Young women who have made themselves up to look like boys, so they can enlist for adventure or to escape marriage. Some rumors say that these women are the wives of soldiers who died from disease or combat, taking their husband’s place, with the officers looking the other way, due to manpower shortages.

Such rumors, might be based in truth but are always denied.

Alfin Warriors

The Alfin are the native people of the Vriduxian continent. They resemble humans to a great degree, with long, tapering ears and a slightly darker skin tone, with black or dark brown hair. They live in villages, grouped into large tribes and even form confederacies or alliances, normally base around language. Like humans, there is no one Alfin language but families of languages.

The Alfin warriors or at least those of the tribes living in or around the human colonies forming New Theula, go into battle covered in warpaint. The face or even whole head, chest and arms are colored in patterns of black, red or blue, each unique to warrior with overlapping style by tribe. The greater amount of paint, the more skilled and experienced the warrior, although the sons of chieftains often get more paint then would another warrior of equal skill. These paints, made by the tribe’s shaman, are said to enhance a warrior’s skill. It is believed that an enemy must be able to see the warpaint for it to work and thus most warriors go into battle in little more than moccasins, leggings and breechcloth. Most warriors also shave the sides of their heads, leaving a strip of hair running over the top or shave most of their head, leaving only a knot of hair at the back of the skull. Their hair is then styled with tree resin and feathers. Piercings, of bone or those trading with the humans, gold or silver, are common.

It is uncommon but not forbidden for Alfin women, to take the warriors path. Most of the time, Alfin women only take up arms for a short period, in harsh winters, when the tribe needs as many hunters has they can get or in times of war, when the warriors are away and the village is attacked. However, some find they like the warrior life and remain as much. Others take up weapons for revenge and live only to fight their enemies. However, female warriors who get pregnant, are not allowed to fight or hunt and when the child is born, must give them up or stop being a warrior to raise the child.

Alfin warriors have a large variety of weapons;

Bows, with arrows tipped with bone, stone or steel
Lances, long spears again tipped with bone, stone or steel
Hatchets, stone or steel
Knives, stone or steel
Warclub, a one handed club with a rounded hardwood or stone ball at the end
Gunstock club, a two handed weapon, shaped like a musket stock, if far more flat
Muskets and rifles, either trade for, given as gifts, stolen or taken off the dead
Smallswords, again either trade for, given as gifts, stolen or taken off the dead
Some Warriors have had human blacksmiths make them custom weapons

It should be noted, that the warriors following Megedagik, almost all from the tribes, which are the traditional enemies of the tribes who have done the most trading with the humans, have not given up their firearms or steel weapons.

Militia

Hunters, trappers, farmers and townsmen, the Militia is made up of all able bodied men in the Vridux colonies. Some groups are more than willing to defend their homes but not to leave them. Most of the militia around Fort Vivien, are settlers forced to flee their new homesteads, which had pushed out west, beyond the line of forts in the region. Although it should be noted, there are more then a few bands from the east, either eager for the glories of war or because they don't want their homes or towns to burned to the ground, like so many of those already attacked.

There is no uniform along the Militia or standard arms. Each man wears his own clothes, ranging from the jacket, waistcoat, shirt, breeches, stockings and shoes of the farmers and townsmen, to hunting shirts and even full Alfin garb. Weapons range from hunting muskets to rifles, blunderbusses, fowlers and pistols, with hatchets, woodaxes, knives, hammers and all manner tools, pressed into service.

Gobeline

Until the rise of Megedagik, the Gobeline had never been seen in living memory of the Alfin. Mostly, they were just myths mother use to frighten children into doing their chores. Spirits living under the mountains, which will eat people, welding shinny weapons. Humans, those few to survive Gobeline attacks, claim the creatures can die and bleed black blood. It is reported that the weapons are copper spears, axes and swords. The appearance of the Gobeline, caused several of the Alfin tribes, who had been allied to the humans, to switch sides.


So, I am looking for players to take on the role of the scouts, Marines, a few of the Militia forced to join in and allied Alfin warriors, surviving Royal Grenadiers or the Mage, as they attempt to avoid warparties of Megedagik's followers and complete their mission, of killing the shaman and making it back alive.

Character Sheets

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[b]Player:[/b]

[b]Name:[/b]

[b]Age:[/b]

[b]Gender:[/b]

[b]Race:[/b]

[b]Faction:[/b] (Marine, Grenadier, allied tribe or Mage)

[b]Rank:[/b] (Marine or Grenadier)

[b]Appearance:[/b](pictures are welcome, please also give a written description)

[b]Sexual Preference:[/b]

[b]Equipment:[/b] (weapons, trinkets and gear)

[b]Backstory:[/b]


Current Roster

Luc Berger

Player: IrishWolf

Name: Luc Berger

Age: 33

Gender: Male

Race: Human

Faction: Marine

Rank: Sergeant

Appearance: Luc is a man of average height, standing around five foot six. He normally keeps his black hair trimmed short, forgoing the soldier’s queue and has grown a moustache, both of which would have gotten him punishment duty, back in Theula. His light brown eyes are wary and watchful, in his weathered face. Dozens of scars dot his hands, arms and chest, some are old and fading, from his less then lawful youth and some are more recent.

He has managed to keep or replace his issued shirt, waistcoat, breeches and forage cap. His coat and tricorne are long gone, as are his shoes and gaiters, which he replaced with buckskin leggings and moccasins.

Sexual Preference: Hetero, dominate

Equipment: Sea pattern musket, bayonet, hatchet, knife, cartridge box, powder horn, clay pipe, wooden canteen, oxhide pack with extra shirt, moccasins, extra thirty rounds, spare musket flints, tinderbox, bottle of applejack, tobacco pouch, mess kit, small brass spyglass, haversack with hardtack, dried beef, salt pork, dried peas, corn meal.

Backstory: Luc was born a bastard. His mother was a prostitute and who his father was, was a mystery, could have been a sailor or a merchant or a lord. His mother did her best for him, what little that was and tried to keep him safe. However, by the age of six, he was running with other street children and by the age of ten, had learn to pickpocket and beg. He did his best, when his mother grew sickly, to support her but when he was twelve, he was an orphan and homeless. His skills kept him from starving and when he was fifteen, he had joined a gang. Learning how to burgle, he became a housebreaker and killed his first man at sixteen, when a house he broke into wasn’t empty, like he thought.

By the age of twenty-two, he had a rather long list of crimes, including a few more murders. However, he was caught in the middle of a burglary, when the boy he was teaching that skill, gave them both away to the police. Capture, with no willing to pay for his release or able to break him out of prison, Luc found himself facing a judge. Given the amount of silver and gold on her person, when he was captured, he was looking at a hanging, until the judge offered him a way out, to join the Navy’s Colonial free companies of Marines. Better then swinging for a jeering crowd, he took the deal.

Marched straight from the court to the garrison, he was equipped to be a soldier and within the month, was sent across the sea to Vridux. His skills at moving quietly and his wary eyes would save him, within a year. While out on patrol under the command of a lieutenant, then private Luc survived his first encounter with the Alfin. His lieutenant, a man more interested in surveying the land with a spyglass, so it could be divided up, did not notice the warriors from a raiding band. Luc did however and raised the alarm. The marines were able to see the warriors off but not before the lieutenant took an arrow in the back, as the man started to berate Luc.

The next ten odd years, his growing woodcraft and his other skills, made him a good scout and got him promoted to Corporal. Six years ago, during the River War with the Brudian colonies to the south, over the Wáhta Valley, he made sergeant. Put in charge of a detachment of scouts, both human marines and Alfin warriors, his detachment was among the first to exchange fire with the enemy. Cut off from the main Theulian army, although it was a grand name for a handful of Marine companies, some of the Provincial Guard and the Militia, he led his scouts in an Alfin style war, until the Brudians were forced back.

Sonacia Lepruneau

Player: Kit

Name: Sonacia Lepruneau

Age: 27

Gender: Female

Race: Human

Faction: Mage

Appearance: She is of noble blood as shown clearly by her appearance. Her general beauty is transcending, her body proportion matching trait by trait the golden ration described by Hesiod, an author from the civilization before our own, which features largish hips, a full chest and a flattened stomach. The visage also embodies the ideal of perfect symmetry of the ancients. But this impeccable allure is surely helped a great lot by illusionary magic ointments, harmful for one’s health but devishly efficient.

She wears sophisticated gowns made from smooth, silver and white taffeta and ornate brocade, covering enough while still leaving a bit to imagination. Completed with its fair share of complex jewelery decorating her neck and forehead, adorned with rare, magically infused stones. Her delicate feet wear high-heels, only wearable by the nobility (men included) as means to assert their superiority to lower classes, translated in their augmented height. The drawstring around her belly acts as a corset, slimming her waist as to appeal to the current ideal of beauty. Around her forearms, elongated bracelets intricately carved with symbols, secretly magical runes to ease the movements necessary for spellcasting. Finally, her originally blond lengthy hair is knotted and ended in an upward tuft. Surprisingly done by herself, clearly showing her mastery of hair styling and grooming she was able to pull up in the New World despite the obvious lack of proper hygienic products.

Due to the latter circumstances she was forced to clothe herself with a blue hooded cape ungraciously given to her as a means to keep herself warm. The fact it was made from local simple cloth is simply insulting. She is a mage for the maker’s sake, she can keep herself warm. But it is best to not tarry on such details, and it wouldn’t be advised to aggravate already cold relationships between the old and new continents.

Sexual Preference: She pretends having no kinks whatsoever, being pure at hearth as she likes to say. But it is well known that a mage’s lust goes far beyond any personal limits. Thus, she has a soft spot for both men and woman, of all ages (literally all ages), of all origins and of all beauty. She even attended some private orgy balls once, where bestiality and other foul sins were at play.

Equipment: Staff of Magi, bronze runic bracelets, magic-infused jewelery, silver gawn, gold-colored high-heels, side-satchel, illusionary magic ointment, alchemy set, hair-combing tools, potions of Magi.

Backstory: Sonacia was a born an only-child of the Lepruneau family, a long prestigious lineage of proud court nobles, dating back before the dark times of the Black Plague. She was destined, already at birth, to be wed of to a rival family as to better relations, to become the wife of boy born the same day. But things quickly changed when she began to manifest magical prowess at the young age of 4. Thus, she was sent away and taken over by the elite mage group known as the Illuminated, by order of his illustrious majesty Henry III. Composed exclusively of female mages, she was now destined to become a powerful mage. There she learned the art of spellcasting, alchemy and enchantment. Next to this group, she also had a foster family, where she could choose the different skills a proper aristocratic lady had to learn such as table manners, music, poetry etcetera. She was extremely privileged, already attending private court balls at the age of 10, being offered anything she desired by her foster family, financed by the royal treasury.  It resulted in her learning instead of aristocratic values, the delicate arts of lying and deceiving, of cheating and stealing. She was a spoiled brat and she knew it, regularly abusing of her powers on others, and never getting caught doing so thanks to her uncanny fictious innocence.

But then came a backlash to the overwhelming power she was used to abuse of, when around the ripe age of 16 she began to feel extreme lust when not using said powers. It was well known that mages always have great appetites, for food, sex and drink, but in her case the repercussion was particularly severe as her usual bratty self, if to long without usage of magic, would transform into an unstoppable force of sexual lust, a genuine succubus that was only driven by pure primal instinct. And as she became older, the duration before her other self emerges would diminish by the day. Hence, she was forced to apply a special illusion-magic brewed cream that would secretly postpone the symptoms while evening out her traits to perfection. However, this cream has side-effects as it drastically shortens the lifespan of the user. To how much is always a matter of luck, which means she could suddenly die at any given moment. On top of that this cream is awfully expensive to make and smells/tastes like cat piss.

She was always a bother among the royal court, but now with her high cost, to the expense of the treasury, she was a downright inconvenience to be disposed of as soon as possible. And that’s what the new royal successor Henri IV did. In a strategic move to prove to dissident Royal Mages that they will bend to his will, he dispatched Sonacia to the colonies.

Sinopa

Player: Apple of Eris

Name: Sinopa

Age: 19

Gender: Female

Race: Alfin

Faction: Ally

Rank: Scout, native ally

Appearance: Sinopa is quite lovely once she is washed and cleaned up though via the grime of her travels she manages to often hide it quite well. Her well toned body is typically hidden under whatever combination of furs and leathers she managed to piece together, though this usually leaves enough of her medium brown skin showing to entice onlookers. She stands about five and half feet tall, with dark hair and greenish eyes.

Sexual Preference: Bisexual

Magics: Unlike human magic, the magic of her people is subtle. Sinopa’s main skill with the paints is to draw symbols that ease her passage through the forest. Her outline seems to blur, her footsteps quiet, and she becomes a part of the forest. Though she always seeks to learn more from shaman of friendly tribes, she has only mastered this.

Equipment: Wears mostly fur and cobbled together hides and Sinopa carries a musket and bow. Generally she uses the bow as it more silent than the musket and gives off no smoke to expose her position. When not expecting trouble, the bow will be unstrung and tied to her pack for ease of travel. She has a sturdy pack that she bought from the human settlers and is generally filled with the majority of her belongings, from the paints she uses to cover her body to various trinkets she picked up in her travels.

Aside from the basics she carries with her, she has a hatchet and a pair of long knives that she brings with her when traveling.

Backstory:
Sinopa’s family was from a tribe that had decided to ally with the human invaders. Though their customs were strange and their manners brutish, her tribe realized that fighting the humans was pointless. This was hammered home when as a young girl, she travelled with her father and a handful of others to one of the ‘old’ human settlements along the coast. She had never seen so many people in one place, and there were dozens of ships unlike anything she or her tribe had ever seen before, able to carry hundreds of men at once. With such numbers and power, fighting was pointless.

Unfortunately, not every tribe felt the same, and in her early teens, her tribe was attacked by a rival confederation. Many of her people were killed or ‘adopted’ into the new tribe including her parents. Sinopa herself fled, chased by two warriors of the enemy tribe. Deep in the forest, she caused one to fall into a ravine where he struck his head, allowing Sinopa to take his weapons. The second was ambushed and eventually gutted by Sinopa who looted them and then returned to her former village to gather what she could before embarking on a new life.

Without a tribe, she lived on the edge of human civilization, eventually befriending a human farmer and his family who would occasionally care for the young Alfin and offer her trade for the animal pelts or meat she would catch. There she learned the human language and some of the customs and became “Partially civilized” as her human family would say jokingly.

For a few years she enjoyed this life, until an Alfin war party marched. Sinopa warned her human family who evacuated to the nearby fort, while Sinopa helped evacuate several other human farm families from the area, and provided warning to the human militia that gathered to defend them.

For her actions that undoubtedly saved many people, the fort commander gave her a musket with powder and ammunition as well as offered her a place in the ranks of the fort. Sinopa wasn’t a soldier but took a role as a scout and allied troop. Though she doesn’t hold a formal rank in the structure of the fort, she has become a common enough sight that most humans there know and trust her, even if they look down on her and her people as savages. Sinopa trades information and pelts at the fort, and also trades with other allied tribes for the inks that she uses to decorate her body.

The coming of the human mage and her guards has been an interesting change of pace, even if the expedition ended much as she had predicted, in shambles. She is glad though that the mage survived, human magic is fascinating to her and she hopes to be able to watch the mage perform enough that she too can learn some of how they wield these mystical forces.

[Apple of Eris]

This looks really well thought out and an interesting setting. If a few more people sign on you can count me in. Probably would want to be an alfin ally.

[IrishWolf]

Thank you very much. I hope a few more people like the setting.

[Lustful Bride]

*plants flag* I claim this post in the name of the Alfin people!

[IrishWolf]

Woot!

Can't wait to see what you come up with.

[Kit]

This looks really neat. You must have had a boost of inspiration when writing this it's so detailed I love it ! I suspect there will be some erotic elements though knowing that the mage may be quite lustfull...
Then it's decided, I am fully interested in this ,hoping to play a royal grenadier or the mage.

[IrishWolf]

A lustful mage and some eastern woodland Native American inspired elves running around, justifiable, nearly naked, seem like good starting points for erotic elements to me.

And I would love to see either a grenadier or the Mage herself.

[Kit]

Player: Kit

Name: Sonacia Lepruneau

Age: 27

Gender: Female

Race: Human

Faction: Mage

Appearance: She is of noble blood as shown clearly by her appearance. Her general beauty is transcending, her body proportion matching trait by trait the golden ration described by Hesiod, an author from the civilization before our own, which features largish hips, a full chest and a flattened stomach. The visage also embodies the ideal of perfect symmetry of the ancients. But this impeccable allure is surely helped a great lot by illusionary magic ointments, harmful for one’s health but devishly efficient.

She wears sophisticated gowns made from smooth, silver and white taffeta and ornate brocade, covering enough while still leaving a bit to imagination. Completed with its fair share of complex jewelery decorating her neck and forehead, adorned with rare, magically infused stones. Her delicate feet wear high-heels, only wearable by the nobility (men included) as means to assert their superiority to lower classes, translated in their augmented height. The drawstring around her belly acts as a corset, slimming her waist as to appeal to the current ideal of beauty. Around her forearms, elongated bracelets intricately carved with symbols, secretly magical runes to ease the movements necessary for spellcasting. Finally, her originally blond lengthy hair is knotted and ended in an upward tuft. Surprisingly done by herself, clearly showing her mastery of hair styling and grooming she was able to pull up in the New World despite the obvious lack of proper hygienic products.

Due to the latter circumstances she was forced to clothe herself with a blue hooded cape ungraciously given to her as a means to keep herself warm. The fact it was made from local simple cloth is simply insulting. She is a mage for the maker’s sake, she can keep herself warm. But it is best to not tarry on such details, and it wouldn’t be advised to aggravate already cold relationships between the old and new continents.

Sexual Preference: She pretends having no kinks whatsoever, being pure at hearth as she likes to say. But it is well known that a mage’s lust goes far beyond any personal limits. Thus, she has a soft spot for both men and woman, of all ages (literally all ages), of all origins and of all beauty. She even attended some private orgy balls once, where bestiality and other foul sins were at play.

Equipment: Staff of Magi, bronze runic bracelets, magic-infused jewelery, silver gawn, gold-colored high-heels, side-satchel, illusionary magic ointment, alchemy set, hair-combing tools, potions of Magi.

Backstory: Sonacia was born an only-child of the Lepruneau family, a long prestigious lineage of proud court nobles, dating back before the dark times of the Black Plague. She was destined, already at birth, to be wed of to a rival family as to better relations, to become the wife of boy born the same day. But things quickly changed when she began to manifest magical prowess at the young age of 4. Thus, she was sent away and taken over by the elite mage group known as the Illuminated, by order of his illustrious majesty Henry III. Composed exclusively of female mages, she was now destined to become a powerful mage. There she learned the art of spellcasting, alchemy and enchantment. Next to this group, she also had a foster family, where she could choose the different skills a proper aristocratic lady had to learn such as table manners, music, poetry etcetera. She was extremely privileged, already attending private court balls at the age of 10, being offered anything she desired by her foster family, financed by the royal treasury.  It resulted in her learning instead of aristocratic values, the delicate arts of lying and deceiving, of cheating and stealing. She was a spoiled brat and she knew it, regularly abusing of her powers on others, and never getting caught doing so thanks to her uncanny fictious innocence.

But then came a backlash to the overwhelming power she was used to abuse of, when around the ripe age of 16 she began to feel extreme lust when not using said powers. It was well known that mages always have great appetites, for food, sex and drink, but in her case the repercussion was particularly severe as her usual bratty self, if to long without usage of magic, would transform into an unstoppable force of sexual lust, a genuine succubus that was only driven by pure primal instinct. And as she became older, the duration before her other self emerges would diminish by the day. Hence, she was forced to apply a special illusion-magic brewed cream that would secretly postpone the symptoms while evening out her traits to perfection. However, this cream has side-effects as it drastically shortens the lifespan of the user. To how much is always a matter of luck, which means she could suddenly die at any given moment. On top of that this cream is awfully expensive to make and smells/tastes like cat piss.

She was always a bother among the royal court, but now with her high cost, to the expense of the treasury, she was a downright inconvenience to be disposed of as soon as possible. And that’s what the new royal successor Henri IV did. In a strategic move to prove to dissident Royal Mages that they will bend to his will, he dispatched Sonacia to the colonies.

[IrishWolf]

And we have the mage added to the roster.

[Apple of Eris]

Player: Apple of Eris

Name: Sinopa

Age: 19

Gender: Female

Race: Alfin

Faction: Ally

Rank: Scout, native ally

Appearance: Sinopa is quite lovely once she is washed and cleaned up though via the grime of her travels she manages to often hide it quite well. Her well toned body is typically hidden under whatever combination of furs and leathers she managed to piece together, though this usually leaves enough of her medium brown skin showing to entice onlookers. She stands about five and half feet tall, with dark hair and greenish eyes.

Sexual Preference: Bisexual

Magics: Unlike human magic, the magic of her people is subtle. Sinopa’s main skill with the paints is to draw symbols that ease her passage through the forest. Her outline seems to blur, her footsteps quiet, and she becomes a part of the forest. Though she always seeks to learn more from shaman of friendly tribes, she has only mastered this.

Equipment: Wears mostly fur and cobbled together hides and Sinopa carries a musket and bow. Generally she uses the bow as it more silent than the musket and gives off no smoke to expose her position. When not expecting trouble, the bow will be unstrung and tied to her pack for ease of travel. She has a sturdy pack that she bought from the human settlers and is generally filled with the majority of her belongings, from the paints she uses to cover her body to various trinkets she picked up in her travels.

Aside from the basics she carries with her, she has a hatchet and a pair of long knives that she brings with her when traveling.

Backstory:
Sinopa’s family was from a tribe that had decided to ally with the human invaders. Though their customs were strange and their manners brutish, her tribe realized that fighting the humans was pointless. This was hammered home when as a young girl, she travelled with her father and a handful of others to one of the ‘old’ human settlements along the coast. She had never seen so many people in one place, and there were dozens of ships unlike anything she or her tribe had ever seen before, able to carry hundreds of men at once. With such numbers and power, fighting was pointless.

Unfortunately, not every tribe felt the same, and in her early teens, her tribe was attacked by a rival confederation. Many of her people were killed or ‘adopted’ into the new tribe including her parents. Sinopa herself fled, chased by two warriors of the enemy tribe. Deep in the forest, she caused one to fall into a ravine where he struck his head, allowing Sinopa to take his weapons. The second was ambushed and eventually gutted by Sinopa who looted them and then returned to her former village to gather what she could before embarking on a new life.

Without a tribe, she lived on the edge of human civilization, eventually befriending a human farmer and his family who would occasionally care for the young Alfin and offer her trade for the animal pelts or meat she would catch. There she learned the human language and some of the customs and became “Partially civilized” as her human family would say jokingly.

For a few years she enjoyed this life, until an Alfin war party marched. Sinopa warned her human family who evacuated to the nearby fort, while Sinopa helped evacuate several other human farm families from the area, and provided warning to the human militia that gathered to defend them.

For her actions that undoubtedly saved many people, the fort commander gave her a musket with powder and ammunition as well as offered her a place in the ranks of the fort. Sinopa wasn’t a soldier but took a role as a scout and allied troop. Though she doesn’t hold a formal rank in the structure of the fort, she has become a common enough sight that most humans there know and trust her, even if they look down on her and her people as savages. Sinopa trades information and pelts at the fort, and also trades with other allied tribes for the inks that she uses to decorate her body.

The coming of the human mage and her guards has been an interesting change of pace, even if the expedition ended much as she had predicted, in shambles. She is glad though that the mage survived, human magic is fascinating to her and she hopes to be able to watch the mage perform enough that she too can learn some of how they wield these mystical forces.

[IrishWolf]

Sinopa looks great!

Hopefully we can get another character or two soon and get started on this romp

[Apple of Eris]

Awesome, thank you.

Guess we just need a colonizer or two who is willing to take arms against those vicious Alfin savages! Hey! Wait a minute...

[Cirus]

I’ll bite, give some time to review the setting and play your typical minecrafter colonizer.  Idea: shipwrecked!

Bookmark: pic pending. Consider this an idea. Everyplace needs a baker/brewer no?

Angus Templeton



A burly rough man, muscled by a harsh apprenticeship of baker and fermenter. Brown hair and beard contrast his angular features and unkempt hair.

A common forger of wood and yeast taken by the allure of golden feels and sweet water canyon promises in new Theulia. Nothing could be further from the truth. Templeton lives on the frontier between two worlds, forever diving from one to the other to scrap a living from this savage land. Luckily his skills have given Templeton a good bit of freedom from the metropolis- for his yeast is always in demand in some form.

His only companion is a small cask of yeasty dough from which all his creations arise. A sort of alchemist, adding it to local honey he gets mead, adding it to local flour, out comes bread. With time Angus has even wondered if he can begin to make a still.

For bread and spirits are always in demand, no matter the land or sovereign.

Post-script: Damn serious world building you got there. If I may, is this something you may be publishing?

[IrishWolf]

Now there is an interesting character idea. I assume he'll be in the militia faction, someone the good Sergeant Berger managed to strong arm into his scouts, to swell the ranks of people who know how to move in the woods.

[Cirus]

If you wish, but is there a colonizer faction? The brunt of the body, the swelling of the territory with "civilized people" I saw him more as a baking Grizzly Adams than a warrior, but I have room for wiggle. A curious slice of backwoods cabin living?

[IrishWolf]

Well, any human in New Theulia, is a colonizer.

And he doesn't have to be a warrior per se. The scouts weren't suppose to be the main fighting force of the expedition, that was suppose to be the Grenadiers. Someone used to living rough, beyond the line of forts, who would know hidden paths, catches of supplies, camping spots, local tribes not picking sides, ect, would be very useful to Luc. The Milita are anyone who isn't a Marine, Grenadier or an Alfin ally.

[IrishWolf]

And double post.

Reading your post script Cirus, I don't have plans on publishing anything at the moment but who knows. I love this setting and I've had people tell me I should write a book before.

And more world building, which I'd like some input from my fellow writers on. So I was thinking, North American east coast inspired fantasy setting, what kind of creatures could our characters run into/tell stories about/have hunted in the past. I wasn't thinking anything OP like dragons (in this story). Just something that could ruin a persons day, without the need for a party of heroes, armed to the teeth with magical swords and the like, to deal with.

I was kinda of considering Griffins to be a large predator to give our characters some trouble but as I was looking around for a good picture, I found these


And I fell in love with the idea of tiny griffins.

So my search for a big fantasy predator continued, when I remembered that owlbears are a thing, a very underused thing and something I could see in a North American forest. Maybe we wont call them owlbears.


I also know in Native American myths, there is something called a Mishibijiw, which translates into the Great Lynx and is also called an underwater panther. The body of a wild feline, often a cougar or lynx but is covered in scales; the horns of deer or bison; upright scales on its back. Mishibijiw were said to live in the deepest parts of lakes and rivers. Some traditions believed the underwater panthers to be helpful, protective creatures, but more often they were viewed as malevolent beasts that brought death and misfortune. They often need to be placated for safe passage across a lake.


And when I found that great picture of an Underwater Panther, the same artist had this drawing of a sturgeon inspired Ogopogo, which I thought could be great for a species of freshwater sea serpent.

[Cirus]

Oh yeah, that's Angus, he knows the lay of the land (as soon as I do) and his attitude is just let me work and bake. Let's see how the frontier treats him.

[Kit]

Came back to see everything advanced quite a bit. Only one other player left and we could begin this splendid adventure !
And I would love to interact with the hardened Angus and the hidden beauty Sinopa, as well as battle wathever fierce creatures hide in the untamed wilds.

[Cirus]

Consider Angus most hospitable, his hearth always ready and waiting to give sanctuary. Not to mention...

By the way, I have brewed and I have baked. So my posts may include recipes!

[Apple of Eris]

Oh dont worry, it'll be hard to keep Sinopa away.

So it sounds like we're looking for just one more insidious colonizer who is helping destroy the indigenous civilization, or another heroic Alfin ally. 

[Cirus]

Oh, no bias, by any means.

[IrishWolf]

I may just start us off tomorrow, even if we dont have another character lined up yet.

On that note, Cirus, could I get a character sheet for Angus please?

[Apple of Eris]

Oh, no bias, by any means.

Of course. Totally dispassionate analysis.   

[IrishWolf]

Alright, we have an In Character Thread and an Out of Character threads open. Kit and Apple of Eris, feel free to hope right in. Cirus, as soon as you post a character sheet.