Here be miniature giant space dragons: Revengeance

I could be a party face. We're using the same races as before, yes? I'm still up to use a Permian. I'd shoot for different skills such as diplomacy and maybe some illusion magic. Earth (or other home planet) ambassador four-armed monkey man.

As James told Jazz earlier, we're not magic users. We are at best magic... accessers. In that I think some of us with the proper training know how to make or at least manipulate artifacts.

We could use someone who knows how to fix things, and is smart. I'm actually semi-decent at the friendliness thing.

Think of magic like electricity. We use it, but not by routing large quantities of it through our bodies and minds. We build electrical devices. Jazz's magical ability is basically fancily crossing wires.

In that case, I could also do engineering and maintenance.

If we call you a "thaumaturge" you can be that, and a minor magic user in that you know how to get magic into things. Which therefore allows you to get magic out.

Actually, a thaumaturge in this setting is to magic what a scientist or technician is to the mundane arts. It's a catch-all term for the specialized magical eggheads.

Ah. Well there we go. As long you're willing Patches. We just need one more person... Though Fate does function fine with a three person group.

What is the fashion like as of now?

User Posts : 322 Join date : 2013-08-13

(regarding captain wolfji, yes, I forgot how good expeditions into the unknown are for getting rid of people.)

K, so for races we have:
turtle-people (Sqamik)
fox-people (Sene?)
six-limbed monkey-people (Permians)
green-skinned boar-people (Orcs)

All these base animals diverged at different times, in Earth history, though tracking down roughly when (and when modern forms emerged) is a bit of a research project. In any case, I'm thinking that sapient forms of each most likely emerged at different times, barring external influence.

'Tis odd that no one race monopolized the human niche by colonizing all habitable regions of the globe upon figuring out boats. Climate incompatibilities? Large, unbridged oceans? (Compared to the pace of natural selection, to my awareness, human society developed large sailing ships fairly instantaneously. But technological progress isn't a given.)

Further, the Permians' arachnid traits intellectually disconcert me. On Earth, we see primates emerge in the Paleocene / Eocene, as mammals fill niches that dinosaurs had occupied. But the tetrapods - land-dwellers, presumably all four-limbed - showed up way back in the Devonian.

So (barring evolution of an extra shoulder girdle in some tetrapods, which is to my knowledge unprecedented) in order to have six-limbed tetrapod-analogues from which primates can eventually develop, we have two separate lineages of terrestrial animals surviving alongside each other (unless continually separated by water, despite continental drift) for a very long time.

The obvious solution is to not worry about any of this, naturally. But I do wonder.
Anyhow.

Clockpunk suggests presence of mechanized novelties and devices. I'm probably going with too much (European-style) plate armor for the Renaissance and too little for a tourney, on grounds of, ah, 'sleevelessness looks cool, as do greaves'.

Otherwise, um, I'm sure fashion varies by culture. I'm under the assumption that anything pre-industrial (or perhaps pre-modern) and post-classical goes. Nonspecific as that is.

(oh, and cool macaw, Jester.)

Calling them fox people was an oversimplication. I just started listing traits, and Eo mentioned it was kinda like a fennec.

I reason most species are all over the world, myself.

Also this being a place with magic, do not discredit pockets of extreme magic mutating an otherwise in line race, to explain the Permians. I know hearthstones are from Exalted, and while I don't know how Eo is rationalizing them here, in Exalted they are congealed stones made of raw magic, and to make them you have to build a fancy structure over something called a demense, which depending on the strength can be a pocket of such intense magic as to induce mutations in life, and alter the world around it.

Most species won't be geography-locked, unless you wanted them to be.

My other stock race was going to be the Golvan, which I shall post here for consideration. They were going to be the caucasians/British of the planet. And each of the races, upon trying to colonize, if they ever did, would have come up against the same thing European explorers did: "Huh, there's already people here." Except that very few of the native civilizations were terribly behind the times with technology, and occasionally some were even more advanced. Though the Golvans didn't conquer everything long-term, they were prosperous enough to have their fingers everywhere.

Spoiler:

Fashion and apparel are whatever seems interesting to you, go for it.

Evolution in this setting is... apply "A Wizard Did It" liberally. As magic flows throughout a planet, it condenses sometimes in lines, sometimes in points. Varying magicks have varying effects on the physicality of creatures that live there, pulling their adaptations one way or the other. The Permians just got a weird adaptation from it is all. These nexuses in magic are the demenses Matt mentioned, and they work pretty much like he said. Hearthstones are basically the Nuggets of Minor Power that demenses produce.

User Posts : 322 Join date : 2013-08-13

Alright, interesting. I have little idea what anyone else aboard the ship looks like, yet, so I'm looking forwards to charsheet submission.

Some species should at least be using cultural adaptations instead of biological ones in certain environments, but I suppose there's no need for that to be a barrier.

So long as a natural force is, um, causing a bunch of sapient humanoid species to arise and whatnot, that's probably better than pure 'a wizard did it' great-person style justification. Maybe a single global event started all of the races off at roughly the same time. Although that doesn't account for roughly even global tech levels come the imperial age. Very even natural resource distribution (and serendipity) might, though.

Assuming the 'four arms' trait is heritable and beneficial: either an entire population acquired the same mutation, or it is a dominant trait and no unlucky fluke killed all the bearers at some point. Alright.

Bird people, then. I assume flightlessness is for game balance, as I'd be surprised for dextrous appendages (perhaps feet, or even hands, depending on just how delicate wing anatomy is) to be mutually exclusive with flight. Could tool use entirely moot flight as a means of travel and fleeing danger?

Perhaps another demense mutation did it, skipping past messy intermediate forms. Or the tribes of flightless birds outcompeted the tribes of flying birds, and... by magic, the phenotypical variation between bird species reappeared within a single one? Bah. Now golvan evolution bothers me. Mildly.

Seems like they've an interesting position-distribution in global society. I'll... think about orcs and their positioning more tomorrow. Or maybe just how I should justify picking a water Hearthstone.

Well, we're part of an international NASA type program. Your hearthstone likely stems from the government that backed your being on this voyage.

It might be wise to stick with "a wizard did it" for now. It'll make things simpler, and I'm sure Eo has an actual explanation for later.

Yeah, lack of flight is for balance. When one PC can fly, and everyone else can't, especially in an environment like this, it's not terribly fair.

I imagine this planet to be a sort of New Zealand, where birds evolved wings to get to, then promptly got rid of them.

So where can I go for those Fate skills? The site/wiki presumably?

Last edited by Jester on Thu 22 Aug 2013, 9:59 pm; edited 1 time in total

Alright, I found the file in my downloads. Skills for the EngineeroPermian.

4: Athletics
3: Crafts, Notice
2: Investigate, Drive, Lore
1: Shoot, Fight, Will, Physique

Well statistically I guess the party won't fail to notice anything.

I just figured it made sense for a monkey hybrid with good eye-sight that repairs things for a living would be generally pretty good at noticing things. Especially with primal instincts still being well tuned for the most part.

I suppose at least the applicability is different. I took it to help illustrate an advanced sense of hearing.

User Posts : 322 Join date : 2013-08-13

The race associated with water is the Sqamik, but 'god of progress' seems more like a Golvan thing to my tastes. Then again, with regard to aspects, I could probably argue for such a vague domain as pertinent to any of them. So I guess I'm wondering how rare hearthstones are, to gauge how limited the church's presumed stocks would be.

Whoops, so there's a biological precedent for flightless birds even without tool use. Absent mammalian predators to nom on the eggs, at least, though I'd expect those to be an issue in this setting. Hrm.

Yay, we have someone who can sail the ship. And, hopefully, help with investigations. I just figured Notice would be important for not getting ambushed and stuff.

Important buildings are often manses, provided they're situated on a demense. Low-power hearthstones are fairly common among the wealthy, but the more power they get, the rarer, almost exponentially. The high church is likely a decent demense, and if the high priest isn't carrying its hearthstone, good chance you are.

Don't worry about elemental associations, I'm going to redo/throw out those somewhat. They're mostly to give you an idea of what a hearthstone of a certain element will be related to.

To be honest, what aspect means what is something he copied from the exalted source book. It also doesn't really matter to much, from what I understand.

So, curious, what WOULD the hearthstone do according to the element its correlated with?

Hearthstones are just a free stunt we're starting play with that comes from an artifact rather than our own skill.

Whatever aspect makes sense with what you're doing, I'd say.

So I made some changes to my character, so there'd be less overlap between Jazz and I. Now I'm the shoot focus of the party instead.

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