Tag: srlm
Appraising
Posted on December 9, 2024 in D20 iCore Skill
With Appraising, the character is conversant with the production, value, cultural knowledge, and use of goods. This is only academic, approximate knowledge – to a degree reflected by the skill level they possess related to the item they are appraising. The character has an understanding of the general value and availability of goods, and can test them to assess their item properties. Note that having skill related to the item may alone may be enough to assess physical properties exclusive of value. Assessing mystic items requires an applicable phenomenology skill: Occult, etc. This could be used (instead of Perception) in some circumstances to detect traps by noticing anomalies on normal features and items.
Accomplished Activity: – Lore Subjects, Object Types, Object Period (historical)
i20™ Skill Details
i20 Skills REPLACE d20 skill proficiency: Add the skill level + modifiers to the check ( Proficiency Bonus not used).
A single Result Check to assess Success or Failure AND quality which may be impacted by conditions which indicate a Lack of Capability (Unfamiliar, Unproficient, etc.). The GM can { } Narrate it, and players may request an appropriate impact when anything other than a basic outcome is indicated. Character Points are Rewarded by the GM to improve Skills (and other Features).
iCore™ Skill Details
Story-Telling
Posted on December 3, 2024 in D20 iCore Skill
Frame of Reference: All Skills are bound by the character's Setting (physics), and the details that their culture/society's Science (gathered by Technology), direct experience, and/or collective Records are capable of revealing. A character may not be able to apply their full measure on a different world, with different species and tools. With a common frame of reference, multiple specific Lores can stack.
Stories are verbal records of information, specifically tales meant to be passed on as a form of knowledge. Stories can be used to pass down information as a reference work, verbal records of true events and/or static information. Stories are often told about real world places and people and events as a means of passing on hard won information and factual news. Maybe embedded therein in memorable fashion are measurements of distance and time, position and details, flora and fauna that are important for the hearer if they are to travel through a certain region.
i20™ Skill Details
i20 Skills REPLACE d20 skill proficiency: Add the skill level + modifiers to the check ( Proficiency Bonus not used).
A single Result Check to assess Success or Failure AND quality which may be impacted by conditions which indicate a Lack of Capability (Unfamiliar, Unproficient, etc.). The GM can { } Narrate it, and players may request an appropriate impact when anything other than a basic outcome is indicated. Character Points are Rewarded by the GM to improve Skills (and other Features).
iCore™ Skill Details
Story in Myth: At the heart of myth is the story, and it is often formed through the natural evolution of telling stories and passing on what resonates deepest. They turn into mythic tales or fairy tales of morality through the application of religion and/or history. Oftentimes they are then localized and so you have a large variation of the same basic themes that has been inflated with hyperbole and localized elements to make it memorable and applicable for one audience and another and so on. Myth is usually a long tale of epic scope or impact, or collection of tales that was once intended to teach, to preserve, and to inform. Time, translation, cultural meaning, and true elements that have no reference point any longer, can swerve to turn information into myth.
Ultimately, stories are what bind things together across vast gulfs in The Pattern.
Preserving: There are many things that can be done to stories to assist in their preservation. Using memes, structuring (such as Iambic Pentameter used in epics), Menomonie tricks. Localizing references also make them more relevant and easier to remember.
Changing Nature: Like written records, stories change and transform over time. Some of the things that help preserve them are the same elements that lead to change – changing references to local events, figures, and places. Variations such as regional accent, affectations, ethnicity, social class, and context evolve over time and serve to confuse in translations over time. Language structure and evolution can also transform the text of a record as it is passed along.
- Many stories have had real figures, places, and events changed in name (for various reasons), but are clearly referencing a more well known version.
- Association: Orders, institutes, businesses, faiths and cults, in addition to making their own, will often use common or popular stories and impose their own vernacular to claim legitimacy or credibility in the association to the common story. They also use it in an attempt to encrypt information and make it for a specific audience.
- Oftentimes news is embellished with story elements to make it more memorable and for it to be passed on so that the core elements are part of a larger pageant and for the discerning listener they may be able to discern the original intent and elements.
- Not only that, but the intent can often blur original details, where entertainment purposes make details irrelevant or even distracting from the entertainment value and so they are substituted or omitted.
Mystic Uses
Formulae, rituals, etc.
Elan is bound up in memes and myths and those figures tied to the stories they represent.
Signs and Omens are sometimes communicated through stories. The vagueness of their delivered form often becomes revealed as something the subject of or in parallel to well known stories. Revealment may be interpretive or obvious, though either will point to the importance of having known the story and its true meaning. This interpretation can also be transformative of a story – showing its true context and lending credibility to the teller and or subjects and objects within the story.
The Legend of the Questone Gateway
Posted on November 20, 2024 in Steel-Realms
A pair of adventurers – Rogahn the Fearless, a warrior, and the magus Zelligar the Unknown – discovered a path leading to the Dark Lands. They kept its secret, whether it was a physical tunnel or some sort of mystical portal, and made forays over years. They built a fortress into the hillside nearby as a permanent base, and a tower where they could see the cave complex in which was the pathway. They explored for decades successfully, but one day the Orrish followed them home.
The Legend of the Questone Gateway is a Steel Realms Timeline Event; recorded knowledge.Chronicle of The Legend of the Questone Gateway
Information Sources: Mundane Reference | Associated Phenomenology Only | Specific Lore
Knowledge is broken down by ease of discovery/availability; Any attempt to know more than what's Pervasive will require a reference, source, knowledge, check, or access to someone who can get or provide either of these.
Pervasive Knowledge / Very Easy Difficulty
A pair of adventurers – Rogahn the Fearless, a warrior, and the magus Zelligar the Unknown – discovered a path leading to the Dark Lands. They kept its secret, whether it was a physical tunnel or some sort of mystical portal, and made forays over years. Zelligars last name was Questone – hence the name “Questone Gateway”. They built a fortress into the hillside nearby as a permanent base, and a tower where they could see the cave complex in which was the pathway. They explored for decades successfully, but one day the Orrish followed them home.
In CY 8857, A pair of adventurers – Rogahn the Fearless, a warrior, and the magus Zelligar the Unknown – discovered a path leading to the Dark Lands. The pair somehow found a path or method of accessing the Dark Lands from deep in the Heartlands – in the Grand Duchy of Dunstrand. They kept its secret, whether it was a physical tunnel or some sort of mystical portal, and made forays over years. They built a fortress into the hillside nearby as a permanent base, and a tower where they could see the cave complex in which was the pathway. They repeatedly came back with fabulous riches from ancient ruins of The Fallen East. Although they were gone for months at a time, they never seemed to have been equipped to travel that distance, leading to many rumors and much speculation. They had their own select group of followers – one time mercenaries that had become permanent soldiers in their ranks, and shared in their wealth (also keeping their secrets). They explored for decades successfully, but one day the Orrish somehow followed them home, beginning a time of strife and violence for those nearby. During this time, they seemingly remained uncaring, defending only their own base of operations.
Common Knowledge / Easy Difficulty
Over time, the name has been corrupted/morphed into “Quasqueton“.
The Orrish either tunneled into their passage into the Dark Lands or found a way to use some portal and they began to raid locally from the cave complex. It became a game of tit-for-tat; They would raid, and then the Orrish would raid back. For decades this went on, and the pair grew older and took more and more with them for protection. Each time they sealed the cave complex, the Orrish would dig it out. Their reputation began its decline, and the locals blamed them for the ill fortune of the raids. The pair drifted apart. One time, the magus went to the Dark Lands on their own with mercenaries and his apprentices. The Orrish must have somehow known, they attacked their fortress and killed the warrior while the magus was raiding their own homeland. The magus never returned, while the warrior fended off the Orrish as best as he could and closed the passage. By now, the main entrance had collapsed, though many exits had repeatedly been dug out of the hillside. It seems they shared the same fate, though not together – the magus was never heard from again. Their fortress was attacked and overrun by the Orrish, everyone was killed to the last.
Uncommon Knowledge / Average Difficulty
Thus began a period of time of raids by the Orrish and tunnels collapsing by the locals. Every excursion deep into the complex resulted in dead ends – the connection to the Dark Lands was never found. For nearly 300 years, the Orrish have tunneled new breaches out of their main complex. They have fought light dwellers to standstill and even collapsed the tunnels and caves themselves in order to protect the true source of their escape back into the Dark Lands only to resurface years later in nearly the same area. Dwarves have been enjoined to seek the source and were violently repulsed. Then the Long Summer of Elancil came and for 40 years all was quiet. Then, over the last 30 years, the quiet has ever so slowly been rolled back. Mostly just small raids, striking far and wide to spread terror, but in small numbers. Now the time of peace is over. An ever increasing amount of goblins raided, and Neplanthe Keep was built to hunt and kill the raiders. Then in 9168 the Orks began to show up. Then strange things began to happen in the hills and riverlands nearby. Larger and larger raids began to happen.
Runel Rats
Posted on November 20, 2024
The Runel Rats in the North Merchant Cities is less an official sect and more of a tradition. It is not a formal institution, nor does it have any universally recognized authority or hierarchy. About 20% of the independent magi in the region participate in, usually the ones with association of the criminal elements. The river rat is the symbol of cunning and capability, and they are the giants among their own kind. This symbolism is what its members present. Without a formal institution or organization to back them up, the tradition serves to augment their powers to make them competitive, but keep them free of high visibility political entanglements.
Control: Many die seeking it out. The mighty Beyne River has remnants of the Sea King experiments dwelling in it – giant water rats in this case. These beasts are favored by the rat spirit of Irrigi as top level predators in their environments. They are survivors and have a reputation with their presence along the river – especially partnering with smugglers that move goods along its length. They are known to be able to lead rats to sever ropes, move packages, spoil goods, and other ‘tricks’ that infuriate inhabitants.
Joining: The area around Karolak has the most ‘followers’ of this tradition. Priests of the rat god seek out their initial training by adopting a colony and learning to use them to survive – often killing existing followers and usurping their colony. The prospective follower of Irrigi enters into a river nest or into the sewers of one of the cities on the river that they are assured to be found in. With an open wound, they find a giant rat, capture it, and mix their blood into their own open wounds. The disease and infection kills many, but those who survive the ritual can call themselves Runnel Rats (of Irrigi). The wound will scar to roughly shape like a rat, known simply as the ‘rat mark’. Irrigi is not known as a truly attentive principal, and looks to the survival of the strongest as a guiding principle. Those who survive are often seen as having a multitude of rats as pets and watchers.
It is said that most of the leaders of the Mud Vipers in Richfield are Runel Rats.