(I received a free digital ARC in exchange for honest feedback.)
So, I read Julie Leong’s cozy fantasy The Teller of Small Fortunes early this year and wanted to do a book review for it, but never managed to find the words for it. This second book, set in the same world, and seemingly shortly after the first one, helped me figure out how to put it.
These books are what cozy fantasy looks like now that the genre has matured into its own identity. Yes, everyone knows Legends & Lattes and that’s certainly the foundational genre (in the modern sense of Cozy Fantasy rather than fantasy that feels cozy like Wind in the Willows, Redwall, The Hobbit, etc). The tropes are still here, of course: a world where magic is somewhat restricted, a rundown building that needs revitalized into a place to stay, a slow-burn lesbian romance, small town environment, etc. (I’ll be honest, the number of cozy fantasy books I’ve read where magic is controlled by a single organization is fascinating to me). With Leong’s two books, and especially this one, the tropes no longer feel like they’re there because it’s what people expect.
In this one, our protagonist is Certainty Bulrush (her parents named their children after virtues they wanted their children to possess), daughter of farmers who has been studying to be a mage for seven years, but simply appears to lack the magical power to become a mage. She can, however, speak to objects, both enchanted and non-enchanted. It makes her invaluable to the Guildtower servants, who are very fond of her, both for who she is and what she can do, but leaves her a failure in the eyes of the Guild and her family (at least, according to what Certainty thinks they think of her).
Unfortunately, a magical accident turns the kitchen staff into cabbages (unfortunately for them) due to unknown magical artifacts being stored in a pantry because the magical storage sections are overflowing. Fortunately, the High Mage recognizes that Certainty can do an excellent job of identifying and cataloging artifacts, so she’s sent off to Shpelling, a village whose natural magic has been long lost (decreasing the chance of another magical accident), alongside Aurelia, another young woman, the youngest ever full-mage, known to be brilliant, but also thought to be stuck-up and arrogant.
So, they’re bundled into two enchanted coaches and shipped off to Shpelling, which is a dying and decrepit village, where they are grudgingly welcomed by the villagers, with no small amount of hostility, no thanks to Aurelia’s being a city-dwelling aristocrat. Thankfully, Certainty is able to ease some of the tension and make amends for her companion’s poor behavior. However, even the rude and suspicious welcome is undermined by the stable and carriage house that was meant to be both house and warehouse being a derelict building.
I liked how this worked, honestly. Usually, in cozy fantasy, the decision to take over and renovate a derelict building is a choice that acts as a big part of the story. Perhaps not the main conflict, but at least the primary structuring of the narrative and character arcs. In proper Stardew Valley fashion, that makes a lot of sense. The journey is the destination, and the journey is about building something good and meaningful and safe (I’m trying to not think too hard about the social commentary of that being a popular fantasy subgenre).
That’s not the case here. Instead, repairing the building is a point of conflict within the overarching storyline, and one that also serves to introduce the primary antagonist of the book, if he can be called an antagonist. He’s the secretary to the lord of the fief to which the village belongs. I’m not entirely sure how the feudal system works here, but it was interesting to see that take more of a role compared to the previous book.
While The Teller of Small Fortunes was relatively distant from the going-ons of the setting around them, due to the nature of Tao basically being on the run from the Guild, this one was deeply tied to the politics of the situation around them. That elevates the stakes compared to most other cozy fantasy books that I have read, but in a way that makes sense for cozy fantasy. Certainty and Aurelia aren’t going to be making huge policy changes or resolving long-standing political grievances. Much of the high-stakes political elements take place completely off-screen and readers only learn of it when the characters learn it from others.
These elements are where Leong’s work really shines in terms of the cozy fantasy genre. There is tension that drives the plot, with real stakes, and the impact of the character’s actions matter. Many of the other cozy fantasy books I’ve read have lacked those elements. As a result, while they were enjoyable, I never felt invested in them and the story felt somewhat half-baked (if you can forgive me for using a baking pun about a genre full of baked goods). The common tropes feel stuck into the story without being well-integrated into the overall narrative. Not the case here.
Leong does an excellent job of integrating the expected genre tropes into both the world and the story, so that they all fit together in a way that feels natural. I really, really like that. Additionally, the characters are excellent, especially the main two. I think they balance each other out exceptionally well with their personalities and narrative weight. And their arcs, I think, are well done. They move in fits and starts, hesitantly, and make mistakes that they end up having to make amends for, gradually changing through the course of the story. The timeline of the story is relatively drawn out, which helps balance the pacing and development with the relatively shorter length of the book.
Overall, I’d highly recommend this book for anyone who likes not just cozy fantasy, but fantasy in general.
The Keeper of Magical Things is out now and can be purchased here (an affiliate link).
(I received a free ARC in exchange for honest feedback)
Cozy fantasy has been all the rage since 2020. Cozy sci-fi seems to have had a harder time getting off the ground (punintended), despite the ultra trendy solar-punk aesthetic being ready made for that exact purpose. (Why aesthetic and not genre? Check out my two post series on dieselpunk- 1, 2).
Sunward, by William Alexander is marketed as “a cozy debut science fiction novel by National Book Award–winning writer William Alexander, this story of found family follows a planetary courier training adolescent androids in a solar system grappling with interplanetary conflict after a devastating explosion on Earth’s moon.” I want to clarify that debut science fiction means this is Alexander’s first science-fiction novel, not his first novel, although it does appear to be his first adult novel and first science-fiction novel.
And to be totally honest, I’m not entirely convinced of the description’s accuracy. It pulls in a bunch of tropes that I don’t really see. The found family is, for the most part, made up of our courier protagonist (Tova) and the androids she raised. They’re not biological family, of course, but that’s not exactly found family either. Nor is there anything that really strikes me as being cozy, except that it does focus on family, and has a relatively small and focused setting (the ship).
A quick side note on androids, because the story revolves around them, their AI, and the data streams they use. Most of the setting is never explained, so you have to piece it together. Basically, when androids are made, they are primarily software that are placed into physical chassis. The software part of them, which makes the AI function, grows and develops over time, basically the same way that humans do. They develop their own personalities, choose their own names, mature in skill and experience, and choose their preferred pronouns. When these androids are young, however, they lack the skill to survive the complexity of the information streams, and the term the people in the book use is that androids will “drown.” Despite having humanlike personalities, aptitudes, intelligence, and creativity, androids do not have the same rights as humans. They are owned by humans, forbidden from writing, and generally mistrusted if they become too humanlike.
That all comes to a head when the massive starships docks on the moon suddenly collapse. Nobody knows how or why, but many, many people are killed, and the androids on the moon disappear. Add in the mistrust of androids and a zealous sun-worshipping cult, and the androids take the blame.
Meanwhile, we don’t see any of this happen, as we’re with Tova in her ship for the entire situation. She’s most concerned about helping Agatha’s ‘brain’ recover, so she seeks out one of her earliest AI children, who pretended to be human to get advanced degrees in robotics and AI. He has also disappeared and Tova discovers she’s not the only person looking for him after being attacked. Finding clues that he had left behind, she then sets out in search of him, which is a journey that takes her to most of her other former AI children. At the same time, the sun cult is chasing her for being a heretic who desecrated a grave and the people behind the initial attack.
Everything else in the description happens off-screen and we only hear about it second-hand. Hence, I’m not convinced the blurb is a good descriptor. I’m not even sure they confirm that the explosion was actually an explosion.
Overall, I did enjoy it. Tova is a refreshingly ordinary, realistic, and down-to-earth (no pun intended) protagonist. She can scrap in a pinch, but she’s not great at it. She can pilot and do the basic repairs essential for her job, but she’s no mechanical wizard. Just an ordinary woman with a deep love for her children, even if they’re not biological in anyway. As a character study and reflection on person-hood and bias, it’s very good. The androids are all deftly drawn, as are the supporting characters, making it a very three dimensional cast of characters. The end was ambiguous, but satisfying. I wouldn’t say it’s spectacular or groundbreaking or defining the cozy sci-fi genre like Legends & Lattes did for fantasy.
It’s a solid little novel. I finished it a while ago and still think about it, so that’s a success.
Sunward can be purchased here from Bookshop.org. (Always support your local bookstores!)
Everyone knows autocorrect causes more problems than it fixes. One time, however, it ended up being a power source of inspiration. I was trying to type the word dynastic into my phone notes for some reason, but between my own mistypes and autocorrect, and up with something more along the lines of “duyrnaric.” I thought it was a cool name, but nothing came of it.
Fast forward… three years? For some reason, I was thinking about the 80s-90s trend of inter-generational sagas, and how we don’t really see stories that span that sort of time frame anymore. I myself don’t particularly enjoy the family sagas that were at their peak, although I do admire and enjoy Ken Follett’s work.
For all of fantasy’s love of great, sweeping epics, they’re usually not not very grand in scope in terms of time. The bulk of The Lord of the Rings (excluding the seventeen year time skip between Bilbo’s 111th birthday party and Frodo departing the Shire) takes place within a single year. A Song of Ice and Fire seems to cover… two or three years? Maybe more? It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of specifics on that (as opposed to Tolkien making sure the phases of the moon were in line with the time needed to travel).
After all that, I decided I wanted to try and do a fantasy version of the family saga, covering multiple generations as through decades as the world changes. I was trying to figure out what that might actually end up looking like.
Now, I’m sure many of you are yelling at me through your screen and throwing copies of Sagas of the Icelanders, Heimskringla, or the Sturlunga Saga at me. And you would be right to do so. It took me a few days before it hit me that the fantasy equivalent of the 90s family sagas would be something very similar to the Icelandic sagas. Not my brightest moment, forgetting that they existed.
But once I remembered that, the project took off in earnest. For inspiration, I went primarily to the Volsunga. The time frame has always fascinated me as does the presence of Attila, creating a synergy between heroic legend and historical memory that I’m leaning into. For the historical side, I’m pulling a lot of inspiration from the Migration Period, with some from the later Vendel period in Sweden and the Frankish Merovingian dynasty.
I wasn’t sure what setting I wanted to put it in, so I slotted it into a different time period and geographic area of Elyssaea, which is where Signet of the Sea King also takes place. Since I’ve not entirely figured out a map yet, I’m thinking it’s northwest from Aerlion—what would be the boundary between Western and Central Europe compared to Aerlion’s South Eastern Europe, essentially.
It does, of course, deal pretty heavily with migrations and exile, so people groups that the Duunaric Saga focuses on do end up moving quite a bit. I think, broadly speaking, they start in what would be relatively similar to Poland and the Baltic, before migrating west, bumping into the equivalent to the Roman Empire, settling there for a time, and then trying to hold together during the collapse of the empire.
That’s not a huge amount of movement, all things considered. Probably only several hundred miles over the course of generations. Right now, I’m looking at either four our five generations (again following the Volsunga), looking, essentially, at the two main branches of the original family, the children of Duunar (Duunarics) and the children of Koand (Koandics), twin sisters who are the daughters of the goddess Kerdís.
Another big influence on the shape of this project, especially this conflict between twins, is Poul Anderson’s novel The Broken Sword, although those two brothers were a human child raised by elves and his troll-born changeling replacement. Duunar and Koand aren’t as viciously hateful of each other as in Anderson’s book,and the conflict isn’t really between them, per se, except for personality clashes.
Drawing of the Ramsund carving from c. 1030, illustrating the Völsunga saga on a rock in Sweden.
I certainly wouldn’t say the monomyth fits the Volsunga or either the prose or verse Eddas. It certainly doesn’t work for the Duunaric Saga because the main characters are all women. Campbell doesn’t think women are capable of undergoing the Hero’s Journey, or even that they have one, because as he infamously said to his student, Maureen Murdock, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.”
Frankly, short of a PhD program, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to unpack all of that. Long story short, Campbell’s theories aren’t very good, either academically or creatively. They might be an interesting tool, but they simplify complex subjects to the point of irrelevance.
Where were we? Oh, right. Narrative structure and casts of characters. I’ve never been good at outlining stories, let alone ones of this scale, but it’s far too large to improvise. There’s also the challenge on the difference in structure between series as a whole and the structure of each individual book. It reminds me of Tolkien describing The Lord of the Rings as a single work published in three volumes, which is part of the reason the books are structured so radically different than every other book to exist.
This also touches on the differences between history, legend, and fantasy novels, all of which have radically different narrative structures. Not just structures, but also different purposes and modes. By mode, I only partially mean the common understanding as depicted in the Wikipedia article, while partly referring to Northrop Frye in his work Anatomy of Criticism (mythic, romantic, high mimetic, low mimetic, ironic). This is another one where I’m still working on expressing.
The three are very different, despite attempts by some to say otherwise. Campbell’s monomyth idea, again to point out that it’s a terrible idea, simply doesn’t work for history and it doesn’t work for most legends. Certainly not even for most folk tales or myths. As a result, my questions look at what distinguishes a legend as a narrative unit? Is it possible to create an artificial legend? To use Tolkien’s term, is mythopoesis possible?
The Duunaric saga blurs the edges between the three and explores the tension between history as events, history turned into legend, and novels that pretend to be legends/history, or invented myth (aka Tolkien’s mythopoesis). People talk a lot about finding the “historical Arthur” or the “real” Robin Hood behind the legends, but I suppose what most interests me is how a person becomes a legend.
I have an outline mostly finished for this project (despite the structural questions) and have started some drafting for the beginning. But yeah, there’s a lot going into this one, so it’s hard to remember everything. But hopefully, as I get the details sorted out and the draft progressing, things will go more smoothly!
(If you’re new to our Genesys setting demo and solo game here, you can check out the earlier posts: session 0, scene 1, scene 2,scene 3. If you want to check out the setting demo for yourself, I have it in this Google Doc.)
Where we left off…
Wind whips through the cockpit, tugging at Jack’s utility suit and whipping his hair in the wind, despite the helmet clasped tight beneath his chin. The air whistles as it screams through the broken pieces of the hull from where the last salvo had torn it open. He blinks away the smoke-tinged sweat that burns his eyes, watching the altimeter needle spin wildly as the gray sky and purple clouds outside are replaced by green-gray moorland that stretches for miles across this part of Alathni Major. Even that begins to disappear as the heat shimmers from the air being compressed against the nose of the shuttle at far higher speeds than safety protocols allowed.
He sets his boots against the cockpit console and shoves with his legs, throwing his weight against the yoke. Creaking and grinding, the shuttle’s controls grind in response, bringing the nose upward from a straight dive into something that more closely resembles a controlled crash landing. Pressure grows on his eardrums as the atmospheric pressure increases rapidly and he clenches his teeth and arcs his back to get every last inch of course correction.
Technically, I should probably roll dice here to calculate the damage both Jack and the shuttle receive. Rereading the crashing rules in the alternate vehicle rules, however, don’t seem to indicate a roll for a ship crashing from high atmosphere into the surface of a planet. I would say that’s generally going to be considered catastrophic— the equivalent of several Critical Hits. We’ve only had one of those so far, and it was the fighter pilots in the previous scene.
In Genesys, critical hits work by rolling a D100 and looking to see the result on a chart. Different Talents, rules, and qualities can add or subtract to that roll. I didn’t bring it up last time because the result on the chart was that the shuttle’s hull was compromised, reducing the armor to zero, but the shuttle has no armor, so it didn’t have much of an effect.
Introducing Story Points
I’ll also introduce a mechanic that we haven’t really touched on yet— the Story Point. For those who played the Edge of the Empire/Force and Destiny/Age of Rebellion games, this would be the equivalent of the Light Side/Dark Side points. Rather than rolling a Force die like in the SWRPG, Genesys gives one positive Story Point to each player and one negative Story Point to the GM. These form a pool that get flipped back and forth as players and game masters use them to create various effects.
Since I am both the player and the GM in this case, I’ve included two Story Points, one for each. As the player, I will now flip my Story Point (giving me as the GM two Story Points to play with). With that, I will say that Jack has a parachute under the command chair, even though it’s not been mentioned or alluded to anywhere else yet. Technically, it’s a ret-con, but in Genesys terms, it’s a necessary narrative development.
Jack flings himself away from the console, stuffing the briefing papers into a large jumpsuit pocket, as the control panel begins to smoke, carrying the tang of burning hydraulic lines, turning the smoke into a thick, choking fumes. He gags and grabs a breath mask from the emergency kit and slips it over his face as he tears open the panel beneath, revealing a carefully packaged parachute that he flings onto his back, pulling the straps tight as they latch into place. Jack staggers momentarily under the weight, and one hand clings to the side of the cockpit as the plane’s dive grows steeper, sending him into weightlessness before he slams against the side and bounces off.
One hand grabs an emergency exit latch, and he pulls on it. The lever creaks, shifts, and then breaks free as the bolts blow the hatch from the hull. The air pressure in the cabin immediately drops in a howling rush and Jack hauls himself to the hatch before flinging himself out the door. The air this high up is cold, but the jumpsuit overalls are well insulated and have heat packs that keep it from being too cold and the oxygen mask protects his face. The parachute flares open and Jack bounces as it slows his fall. Below him, he watches the shuttle continue its dive before exploding far, far below against the surface.
The wind whistles past him, but beneath he it, he can hear the hum of the fighter engines as they circle around and he feels himself very exposed, hanging in the sky from a parachute, when the wind from the storm curls back around and carries him into the dark clouds. The already cold air gets even colder as he falls, falls, falls…
Heading to Ground
I’ll do an Athletics check to gauge how well he manages to land on the surface. Zero successes means that it is a failure, unfortunately. I’ll count that as three Wounds. Unlike Strain, which is more mental/physical stress, wounds are actual injuries.
As you can see, Jack isn’t doing very well. He’s a fourth of the way to his Wound Threshold and almost halfway to his Strain Threshold. I can use Momentum to temporarily cure all of the wounds.That’s not quite necessary yet however, so I’ll keep that in my back pocket.
Jack lands hard on the surface of the ground, feeling piercing pain shoot through his body as he impacts. He tumbles and rolls roughly across the ground and coughs as the air is knocked from his lungs. He lays still for a while, partially conscious, as the storm screamed overhead. Heavy raindrops hammered against him and he can feel his body begin to chill. Fortunately, the utility jumpsuit keeps him warm enough to not worry about dying.
Why had the legionnaires shot him down? How had they known where he would be? He fumbles at the jumpsuit before pulling out the documents. There’s just enough light left for him to read.
He studies the weather charts and patterns carefully, scrutinizing them. The forecast, allegedly regarding a past storm, had been identical to the one he heard on the radio. His head spins at the implications. They had pulled a future forecast, forged it to be from before, and then sent him that way.
There was no shuttle crash. He was supposed to be the crash. The entire thing was a set up. But why? And how hadn’t he anticipated that? His face burns at the thought that he’d been had and he forces himself up, staring at the sky, looking for the glow against the horizon that indicated Athena Proxima. He sees it and starts walking….
That is our Call to Adventure as well as our Motivation, using the Structured Mode from the Unmastered Play Guide. Since it’s the Call to Action, we can go ahead and reduce Entropy by two. That drops it down so that Momentum and Entropy are equal. If this was 5e, I might go through the entire journey and check for random encounters.
This is Genesys, however, which is not designed around having between six and eight encounters per long rest, so we can skip right ahead. Plus, Iron Horizons isn’t set up right now for wilderness survival or exploration. Also, I’m going to swap to past tense, because writing in present tense is not something I enjoy, even though it makes more sense for TTRPGs when played in person.
Athena Proxima
After a long slog through the soaked, but otherwise pleasant, landscape, the glow of Athena Proxima finally turned from light on the clouds into a sight of the massive city itself. Jack paused to rest his hands on his knees. Air traffic traced contrails across the sky and a few heavy trucks rumbled across the landscape The glass dome barely protruded over the lip of the canyon, but he still made out the intricate iron structure that girded the dome.
The lights of the city below lit up the framework and turned it into a light show that rivaled any theater marquee. With a deep sigh, he pushed himself up and forward until he trudged into the edge of the shantytown that spilled over the top of the canyon. The landscape here was flat and wind-scrubbed by the storms, so this part of town was cheap and often rebuilt from scrap.
Hard eyed men and women watched him as he paused next to the lift. The Scar dropped hundreds of feet to the bottom of the rift valley. As far as the eye could see, from below him to sprawl across the vast width of the canyon, and glittering on the far side, the city of Athena Proxima revealed itself.
Sleek towers, curved and graceful, emerged from the dome’s iron frame, interlaced with it and each other by countless walkways. Warm yellow lights glowed in hundreds of windows and, even from here, the faint strands of music reverberated beneath the yards-thick glass of the dome.
The official capital of Alathni Major and the center of Aldottorai control over the system, Athena Proxima had more money flow through it in one night that he’d seen in his entire life. And somewhere in there, there would be answers as to why a powerful Aldottorai merchant princess and a high ranking officer in the foreign legion double crossed him…
(We now take a short break from the Iron Horizons demo because it’s been a very busy week and I’ve not managed to get through the next scene yet.)
As someone who has been writing and worldbuilding a wide array of projects for a very long time, I’ve ended up with lots of ideas that found themselves without a world to call home. The longest-lasting of these ideas what that of a sea-kingdom, an archipelago of mariners with white ships that gleamed in the sun. I’ve called this one Aerlion in a few different contexts— two separate RP forums (one called Kingmakers and one called Chronicles), moved it to Laeonesse, and then decided to make a setting where I could plop all these ideas, as well as my favorite fantasy tropes, into a single world. Signet of the Sea-King was the result.
It focused mainly on the Sea-Kingdom of Aerlion— an archipelago ruled by Princes who elect a High Prince to serve as regent for the Sea King, the sea god from whom the princely families claim descent (I guess that technically makes it an elective theocratic monarchy?). Now, this is heavily inspired by Numenor and Dol Amroth. There’s a definite Italian/Greek/Byzantine vibe to the whole thing, with the
castles being built into the side of the archipelago’s cliffs like some of the Greek monasteries. They have a religious order of knights, the Knights of the Gulls, who are mariner-knights rather than cavalry-knights. They can definitely ride, of course, but they primarily operate at sea rather than on land.
Hozoviotissa Monastery in Greece, from Wikipedia
Our protagonist is Cyran, son of one of the only princes who holds to the old ways from before the archipelago was annexed by the neighboring (now-fallen) kingdom. Cyran is a poet, musician, duelist, and wine connoisseur. He’s very clever, but not one for expectations or responsibility. He is, quite frankly, a swashbuckler, in the original meaning, as he does in fact carry a buckler. As such, he is also a disappointment to the family.
After a particularly embarrassing incident, Cyran’s father reclaims the signet ring before departing on an important sailing journey to consult with others of the old ways regarding recent astronomical alignments, but he never returns. Cyran is left disinherited and the family holdings and resources taken into trust by the High Prince until either Cyran’s father returns in person or the signet ring makes a reappearance.
So, this begins Cyran’s quest to trace his father’s steps to try and find his father, his father’s rings, and whatever happened to him. I was always a little fuzzy about what actually happened, so I can’t really even spoil that for you. Never really had an outline for any of these plot lines, so I was writing based on vibes and instinct rather than any sort of plan. That’s my guess as to why I won NaNoWriMo for this project, but couldn’t tell you the main plot line despite writing more than fifty thousand words in a month.
The second plot line follows Myrda, heir to the throne of the kingdom that once annexed Aerlion before later collapsing into city-states after plague and civil war between twins that left Myrda’s line hiding in the mountains among the shepherd people of the border. She was on her way to the same meeting as Cyran’s father, based on an ancient religious text that dictated when and where meetings should occur based on the positioning of stars and planets.
Chazhashi Village, Svaneti, Georgia, from Wikipedia
Myrda, of course, was inspired by the Dunedain Rangers after the fall of Arnor, but with a distinctly Georgian (as in the country) twist. Much of the mountain settlements are inspired by my own own visit to Georgia, especially Uplistsikhe and the towers of Svaneti and Ushguli. Additionally, unlike the (probably) sedentary (when not rangering) Dunedain, Myrda’s people are transhumance pastoralists, meaning they move between grazing grounds according to the seasons.
That’s actually one of the big connection point across the book, because the third group supposed to go to the meeting with Cyran and Myrda are the Wind Nomads. These are another of the concepts that I’d had floating around without knowing what to do with them, from a really weird dream that basically involved people who lived on wagons that looked a lot like the Strandbeest sculptures made by Theo Jansen, except they used sails to direct them.
Strandbeest in question, from Wikipedia
I ended up going with wagons rather than the many-legged walking sculptures, but the idea is pretty similar. For the Wind Nomads themselves, they’re essentially priests of the old ways, who keep the old knowledge and traditions alive, while acting as neutral parties during conflict between the various groups.
My idea for their origin as Wind Nomads (more than a head-canon, but I’m not sure it’s canon yet) was that they once used horses, but during the civil war, the victorious usurper seized all of their horses, both for his army and to prevent them from following the ancient custom, which led to them turning to the people of Aerlion to learn how to design, build, modify, and sail their wagons.
What are these old ways that the Wind Nomads are priests of? Sky-Whales. Yes, another idea that I’ve always wanted to play around with, which I think comes from early love of The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddel, which had sailing ships in space, lifted by floating rocks or buoyant wood, and all sorts of strange creatures living in the sky.
They never fit in any of my other worlds, so I put them in here. They migrate around the planet and sometimes they prey on dragons like how whales prey on squid. Otherwise, they’re still very nebulous. I’m not entirely sure what role they play in Signet of the Sea-King or even if they play a role at all. I’m leaning toward them having something to do with the astronomical alignment that signalled it was time to have a meeting. Why, specifically? I’m still not entirely sure.
You can see why I’ve been stuck on this for a while, I think. Lots of ideas that haven’t quite coalesced around each other. Which, in all honesty, is one of the challenges for building a world around a bunch of unrelated concepts.
Part of it is because I haven’t settled fully on a central antagonist. The one I used for the NaNoWriMo draft was a woman who married and purchased her way into the Council of Princes because she wants to consolidate the archipelago with her as its single ruler so that she can use it as a base to consolidate the mainland city-states with herself as empress.
This leans more into the intrigue and political conniving aspects of the setting, sort of a Three Musketeers vibe. Which is good, because I was leaning more low fantasy or heroic fantasy? I’m not sure how the story would unwind in this case, but I suspect it would use something more akin to a thriller structure.
Another option, which I probably won’t do because they’re a huge feature of the Duunaric Saga (same world, different part of the continent, close to eight centuries earlier), is something to do with the Wither-Men. I’ll talk more about them when I discuss the Duunaric Saga, but essentially, they’re the result of Ylfael (Fae/Elves) trying to fulfill human’s request for immortality with catastrophic results.
That would be your more traditional high fantasy/end of the world/evil sorcerer concept. And to be honest, I’m kind of tired of those sorts of stories. Tolkien did it incredibly well. Everyone who followed then did the same thing, but poorly, and it’s feeling very stale at this point.
The third option is to use what I call the Empire Across the Mountains, which I envision as being inspired by the Timurids, as a multi-ethnic empire of horse nomads. This idea is still very fuzzy and may happen simultaneously with the first one? That would really shake things up in terms of scale by escalating it from a relatively small conflict within a single polity into a conflict between nations. I suppose it could work well in the background, again like in Three Musketeers having the events of the Anglo-French war occurring in the background.
I’ve mentioned Dumas’ work quite a bit, but the other inspirations are Cyrano de Bergerac and Captain Alatriste. This project in particular is a definite case of tinkering with the swashbuckler genre, with a definite fantastical twist. Sebastien De Castell’s Greatcoats might be a good example, although I’m not sure I want to go quite as grim and gritty as that one, or perhaps a less city oriented Lies of Locke Lamora. For Signet of the Sea-King, I am definitely leaning more heroic tone and style than either De Castell or Lynch went for. **
Anyway, that’s a lot of talking out loud (writing out loud?) about a project that’s still not ready for drafting. But, hopefully this will give you some ideas about my style and extra-chaotic writing process. Next week, we’ll either talk about the Duunaric Saga or we’ll return to the Debts of Jack Quincy, depending on how much solo game time I manage to get.
(If you’re new to our Genesys setting demo and solo game here, you can check out the earlier posts: session 0, scene 1, scene 2. If you want to check out the setting demo for yourself, I have it in this Google Doc.)
Flashback to Last Time
We return to the adventures of Jack Quincy as he tries to pay off the family debt to the Jets and purchase his own tramp freighter!
His first job is to retrieve some fallen cargo from Athena Proxima, dumped by a high ranking Aldottorai Colonial Trading Company merchant because of mechanical failure in her shuttle and she can’t be bothered to retrieve it. When we last left off, Jack managed to lose someone who was following him through the maintenance corridors, got a shuttle started, and left Forlorn Hope Station, where we’ll pick up once again.
If you remember from last time, we had an uncancelled Threat that took our Entropy to 2, meaning it’s time to do a System Move. This System Move is transitional, meaning we move to Act 1- The Call to Adventure. Isn’t the job already a call to adventure, you may ask? Not really. Up until now, other than being followed, it’s a typical job for a freelance pilot. So now that we’re in Act 1, we also shift the focus to a Flaw. In this case, Jack’s flaw is Pride.
Time for Space Travel!
Jack leans over and pulls the radio headset toward him from the empty copilot chair before placing it on his head, glancing at the documents on the table indicating the ship’s registry number.
”Forlorn Traffic Control, this is ACTC shuttle 7961, requesting departure slot.” Jack says while watching the temperature and pressure gauges slowly climb up to takeoff levels.
”ACTC Shuttle 7961, your course has been pre-approved and prioritized,” the reply came back instantly through the radio, still clear, although interference would get stronger as he moves further from the station. “You may depart when ready.”
Jack raises his eyebrows in surprise, but manages not to say anything, except to confirm and start the countdown. In less than a minute, he finds himself out of the station and adjusting the navigation computer controls on the table beside him. It’s usually the co-pilot’s job to handle navigation, especially for planetary entry that needs to be gradual enough to avoid burning up.
A quick increase to the thrust sends the shuttle arcing away on the departure vector given by traffic control and Jack sets the autopilot before getting up and adjusting the dials and knobs on the navigational computer, watching as the clicking of the computer parts is mirrored by a course sketched on a loose map of the system, mirroring as closely as possible the recorded route of the earlier flight.
He nods in satisfaction and returns to the pilot’s seat, adjusting the angle of the navigational plot with a foot-lever so he can see it clearly. It will take a few hours to match velocity and vector, so Jack shuffles through the papers until he finds the weather records, perusing them.
They show the radio forecast transcripts and a weather chart indicating one of the major storms that often surge across the northern hemisphere of Alathni Major. Bad and severe, but to an experienced local pilot, not usually an issue, so perhaps the pilot was new or from out-system.
First, we need to have the vehicle statistic sheet, which I made and you can view here. Yes, this is a new starship added for this adventure, as it’s not (currently) included in the demo.
Jack leans back in the chair, one hand resting lightly on the controls, and the other hand flicks the switch on the radio, adjusting the dials until the jaunty sound of starswing fills the cockpit. Time passes and Jack guides the shuttle into the upper atmosphere, where a radio bulletin announces an approaching storm.
First Structured Encounter
I’m actually going to make two rolls here- one for Piloting and one for Vigilance, both of which will be Hard difficulty, meaning they have three of the purple Difficulty Dice. Two rolls in Narrative/Non-structured play means we also increase our Momentum.
First up is piloting! Our first Triumph result of the campaign as well. That means the next roll is Vigilance, for reasons which will come clear shortly.
Still a Success, but no Triumph, and that’s because there’s no yellow Proficiency die. Now, because the two also have uncancelled Threat, we increase Entropy by one for each roll. I’ve been using a Notion set up to keep track of the campaign, both text and the mechanics. Here’s my makeshift Momentum/Entropy tracker .
As you can see, the two are neck and neck so far, which helps keep things a little balanced. I haven’t done much yet with the Unmastered Play Guide mechanics for these yet, but Momentum can be cashed in for rolls, while Entropy affects rolls, especially oracle and NPC rolls.
Jack feels the controls begin to shudder under the wind and he looks back and forth between the cockpit canopy and the weather forecast charts, trying to gauge the best way to respond. But then lightning tears through the sky and momentarily blinds him and sends an electric shock racing through his body (Using the Threat from the piloting check to give Strain).
He falls limp in surprise, but quickly shakes his head and grits his teeth to push through, half-closing his eyes and relying on instinct more than conscious thought. The ship rattles and groans under the onslaught of conflicting forces- gravity, the antigravitic fields, the wind, and the engines. But Jack gets the rhythm of it quickly and follows the winds, letting them guide the course, quickly dropping through the layers of the storm, until finally popping out into clear sky with no real harm done, and at his destination quicker than the given course allowed (The result of the Successes and the Triumph).
With the sky now clear, Jack frowns as he spots two distant dots racing in on the horizon. There’s only a single small signature on the radar and nothing on the radio indicating who they might be. He squints at them and uses the shuttle’s magnification lens to get a better view of them
Fighters! And they’re coming straight for him, and the flash of muzzles indicating that they’re firing at him! He can’t make out any markings on the gray hulls. Jack is caught off guard and finds himself moving more slowly than expected (Result of the two Threats is to give Jack a black Setback die on the next roll). He realizes, however, that the storm was a blessing— without that extra speed, he would have landed right in their crosshairs without ever seeing them.
Dogfight!
Right, now we move into the first Combat encounter, a Structured Encounter meaning we increase Momentum again, and one using the Alternate Vehicle Rules from the Genesys Core Rulebook. If you’ve played Edge of the Empire, you’ll know the Vehicle rules used to be a little questionable, but I’ve heard that they fixed them with Genesys. Jack is flying the Shuttle, of course. If you looked at the sheet, you’ll notice that it’s unarmed. Not an ideal situation for Jack Quincy. He’ll be going up against a Multirole Fighter from the setting playtest document. (Jack isn’t expected to win this one, in case you were wondering.)
So, I’m going to roll Vigilance for the enemy pilots, as Jack already rolled his. Normally, they would be rolling Cool, but the Triumph negated that and caught them off guard. I’m basing the pilot stats off the Airship Pirate minion block from the CRB. Their initiative score is one Success and two Advantage. That means Jack moves first. The shuttle was moving at Speed 1, so he’ll take the Accelerate maneuver and Dangerous Driving action, which is a hard Piloting check, with a Setback because of the shuttle’s poor handling and another for the Threat on the last roll.
And that’s not good. It’s a failure, and Jack takes a Strain in addition to not passing the check.
Tracer rounds cut through the still-gloomy sky as bullets hiss past the shuttle while Jack desperately hauls on the controls and pushes the throttle all the way forward. The ungainly shuttle lurches forward and he throws his body into the controls, trying to twist away. Sweat beads on his brow and one hand flicks the radio switch, only to hear nothing but static. There’s no one to call for help and the sudden maneuvers send the shuttle plummeting toward the surface.
Now, we move to the other pilots. They’re a Minion, so they act as one group. Their fighters are moving at speed 3 and take the Reposition maneuver to move one range band closer, followed by the Attack action, using their Air Attack Rockets. They get two Failure as their result, because the rockets are Inaccurate 2, which adds two Setback die. That’s it for their turn.
Jack hears an aggressive hiss through the air and cranes his neck to look out the front and sees four attack rockets hurtle past where he would have been. The shuttle still plunges through the atmosphere and the fighters are diving after him, closing the distance fast. With a massive grunt, Jack pulls back on the yoke to try and ease the dive.
That’s another piloting check, with only one Setback this time. The result is one Failure and two Threat. This time, the Threat will inflict System Strain on the shuttle.
The speed is too great still and the shuttle still plunges downward, cutting through the lingering storm clouds and the ground grows clearer and clearer with each passing second. Jack can see the Scar now, lit here and there by the lights of settlements in the gloom. The vessel rattles and shakes around him and a siren pairs with a flashing red light in the cockpit.
Fighter Design by E Wo Kaku Peter I’m torn on this one, as it almost has too much of a Cold War/1960s look rather than a 1930s-1940s style?
And back to the fighter pilots! They repeat the Reposition maneuver to get into Medium range, moving at speed 3, and they attack with their heavy wing-mounted machine guns. Again, no successes.
The fighters are behind Jack now and he can’t see them, but he can see the barrage of tracers snapping through the air above him, meaning they’re haven’t figured out the leading distance yet. That gives him a sigh of relief, but sweat still pours down the back of his jumpsuit. He gives up on trying to stop the dive and instead tries to angle the shuttle away.
This time, we have one Success and two Threat. Jack stops the dive, but the strain is beginning to show on the shuttle.
The shuttle slips sideways with a deep groan through the hull as the resistance slams into the side of the shuttle rather than being deflected around the nose. Something behind Jack crackles and pops, sending a cascade of sparks spraying across the cockpit.
As this happens, he hears what he fears most: the crackle of bullets slamming into the shuttle, tearing through the hull, electronics, and hydraulic systems. Instantly, the controls begin to go stiff and unresponsive, but he still has some control through dead stick flying. With one hand, Jack tightens the chin strap on his helmet. Smoke pours into the cockpit from behind.
That was the next attack from the pilots and this time they hit. Not a bad hit, only two Success results to add to the default damage of four. The shuttle has a Hull Trauma Threshold of 12 and it just took 6 damage in one round, so that’s half of its physical integrity. Jack needs to pull some fancy flying now, so he’s going to take the Decelerate maneuver, taking two System Strain on the ship to reduce speed to zero. That should mean the fighters will overshoot.
Jack cuts the engine entirely and rams the throttle all the way back to full close. The engine’s shrill scream goes silent in a heartbeat and the two fighters scream past him. They’ll have to circle around as they rapidly shrink into dots. That buys him enough time. Jack grabs the magnification lens and stares at the landscape below. There’s not much. The only water he sees is at the bottom of the Scar, but he’s not sure he can fit the crippled shuttle into the relatively narrow entrance to the massive canyon.
Ahead and below, the turrets on the fighters swing upward and fire at him from Long Range. The smaller bullets smack into the hull but do no real damage, despite him hearing the hull be shredded beneath the impact. He leans forward and nudges the throttle forward again and the engine chokes back to life, helping generate a little more lift to ease the fall.
The fighters have swung around now and he can see the fire from the thrusters of their rockets as they fire another volley. These rockets skim just past the shuttle and explode in the distance.
Jack pushes the throttle forward again, regaining what he can of his speed, still speeding across the ever-approaching landscape, and tries to push the craft down closer to the surface at a gradual angle. The metal creaks and shrieks, but he drops down much closer to the surface now where he can identify specific landmarks.
The smoke billows out thicker behind him and he coughs, slapping a mask over his mouth. He’ll have to crash land. The fighter engines roar above the sound of his poor shuttle’s own struggling engine as they come up close behind and the throaty chatter of the machine guns tear through the ship. He heard the vessel die, its engine giving a few last gasps before coming to a grinding halt. Silence fills the cockpit and the ground races ever closer….
I think we can jump to scene two. This one I’ll jump to the end of the Unmastered Play Guide to use the Scene Mechanic, which again uses a deck of cards to determine what the scene should be. I drew the 3 of Spades, which gives the result of an Easy Skill Challenge and Adversarial. An Easy skill challenge typically uses one Difficulty die (the purple one) and Adversarial means it’s opposed by another character. I think it’ll be a Streetwise challenge against the Mysterious Stranger from the previous scene.
Remember, you can check out the first post, which has the demo play test and campaign set up, here.
Jack stands, waiting for Clyde to stagger his way out from behind the table. Ruby and Adeline remain sitting, pouring their next glasses of wine. Clyde and Jack make their way through the crowded bar, floating down the side of the bar in the low gravity before stepping into the old airlock, wheeling the hatch shut while the pressure adjusts between the bar and the main station. After a few minutes, the other indicator flashes that the pressure is stabilized, and they make their way into the main corridor.
Our hero, Jack Quincy
The hall is narrow and cramped, with iron bulkheads extending from the hatchways every ten yards or so, with garbage and detritus piled along the walls, scribbled with graffiti and makeshift addresses. Some promise a good time, other promise a bad time. Clyde cringes as he walks, flinching away from everyone they pass, but Jack presses forward, tipping his helmet to the women as they pass, and nodding to the men. The hair on his neck prickles. Something feels wrong.
“Clyde,” Jack whispers, “Something’s wrong. I’m not sure what. Slow down a bit and let’s stop at the next vac-garden.” The other man freezes and almost bolts, but Jack rests a hand on his shoulder. “Stay calm.” He guides the gambler down a side corridor into a wide open room with thick glass windows facing the distant sun. Plants hang from trellises and curl through raised, wrought-iron beds as Jack glances behind them.
Well, that’s a relief compared to our roll from the last scene. Two Successes, plain and simple. It’s a very straight forward roll. It also increases our Momentum by one. Now we’re starting to make some process.
Jack recognizes the strange figure as it ducks back behind one of the bulkheads, but not fast enough to escape notice. The trench coat and scarf are distinctive and he remembers seeing the man enter the Angel Red shortly after himself.
“We’ve got an amateur on our tail,” Jack murmurs to Clyde. “Take the scenic route.”
Clyde goes pale and sweat drips down his forehead as he chews on his lip, but weaves through the plants to a service hatchway with a rusted, dog-locked hatch that he throws his entire weight behind. It creaks, shifts, and then breaks loose, revealing the small maintenance passageway behind. Clyde steps in, followed by Jack, who heaves the door hatch shut and reseals it. Dim emergency light flickers through the gloom and their boots echo on the walkway. Spider-webs hung in the corners, their inhabitants scurrying away into the recesses at the sight of the two men.
”How’d you get involved with this lot?” Jack asks after several moments. Clyde turns to look behind him, his face pinched.
”Needed to repay a debt,” the man growls, voice low and gravely. “Got an offer that would clear the debt if I found someone to do a job for them.” Jack raises his eyebrows in surprise.
”Not like you to lose big time,” Jack notes, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “Find someone who knows all the card shark tricks?” “Ruby,” Clyde grunts. “She seems all dainty and lady like, but she’s the best damn gambler I’ve ever met, with both the cash and the guns to back it up.” ”Adeline?” Jack asks, remembering the woman in the officer’s uniform.
”She’s the one,” Clyde grunted. “Not sure which of them is running this show, but Adeline runs a dragoon battalion in the Foreign Legion. Nastiest bastards I ever ran into.” That made Jack whistle. Silence fell as they wound their way through the warren of passages snaking through the station, connecting the original station to the dozens of ship hulls welded, riveted, and bolted atop each other. Heat radiates from the pipes running along the wall and the metal creaks as it expands and contracts from the ever shifting temperatures.
Let’s make another Streetwise check here, to see if they managed to successfully lose the tail, and if they know they did so. In this case, we’ll make it an Average check, with two of the purple Difficulty die.
That gives us two Successes, with one Advantage and two Threat. Advantage and Threat cancel each other out at a one-for-one ratio. That means we find ourselves with a final result of two Successes and one Threat. So, like last time, the roll is a success, ensuring that Jack and Clyde do lose the person following them, but there’s a negative outcome. Because there’s not a lot risk right now, I’ll take the easy route and use it to inflict Strain.
We’ve not talked much about Strain yet, but it’s a type of resource pool that is primarily non-physical. Characters can “take Strain” to get a second Maneuver in combat, for example, or if something is difficult and dangerous, they accumulate Strain to indicate the emotional and mental toll. Plus, since we are doing the UPG’s Structured Play, we add one Entropy for the Threat, as well as one Momentum for making the roll at all. Some Talents use threat for their activation, especially Parry (Improved). Jack doesn’t have any of those Talents (or any Talents at all), so we don’t need to worry about that for the moment.
Jack frowns as he feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Did they lose the man in the coat and scarf? He keeps glancing over his shoulder as a knot of unease begins to grow. Something about this job was off, but he can’t tell what.
After winding through the maintenance corridor and passing through numerous airlocks between what used to be ship hulls, they enter one of the smaller, private hangars, this one reserved for the Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company and their representatives. The access to this hangar is guarded by two Aldottorai Foreign Legionaries rather than the usual company security team, who glare at them after assessing the pass shown them by Clyde.
Something like this for the Aldottorai Foreign Legion
Inside the hangar sits an assortment of ships: several Aldottorai officers’ gigs, a cutter in for maintenance before returning out-system to the asteroid mines, a few interceptors, and in one shadowy corner, the shuttle. It wasn’t a large vessel, just large enough to carry a group of people, luggage, and emergency supplies from ship to ship or from orbit to the ground. Clyde leads them through the hangar to the shuttle, which has its hatchway open and ramp extended.
Clyde passes him the access key, a heavy steel key on a ring, before backing away. “I’m done now. My debt’s paid. The rest is on you.”
“Where am I taking the cargo? Or letting them know when I retrieve it?” Jack frowns as he speaks. The other man just shrugs.
”It’s in there waiting for you.” With that, he turns and hurries away. Jack frowns and scrathes his head in thought, before heading into the ship.
Its oily, mechanical smell stings his nose compared to the charcoal and ozone filtered air from the station. He pulls a lever and the hatch seals shut, its hydraulics echoing through the small vessel as they slam shut. The atmospheric system kicks on noisily, with the sound of a small generator running below the deck.
Jack passes through the cargo section and climbs through the hatch into the passenger section and into the cockpit, with its two pilot chairs and control panels. His eyes range across the controls, taking in everything’s location and the manila folder laying haphazardly on one of the chairs beneath a seemingly forgotten pilot’s jacket.
He leaves that for now and slides into the primary pilot’s chair, inserting the access key into the control panel before giving it a hard, steady turn. The compression cylinders at the heart of the shuttle begin to grumble as they start turning over and then ignite. The shuttle comes alive with that, vibrating and shaking under the engine movements. He watches the oil pressure gauges as they stabilize, seeing if any stick.
But the ship is in pristine condition and soon settles into a smooth purr. Jack nudges one of the side thruster controls, giving the shuttle a slow rotation on its landing gear, crawling along the hangar floor into the departure chamber. Sirens sound as the interior hatches seal shut behind him and the air is depressurized back into the station.
An alarm sounds while a light goes from red to green and the external hangar slides open, revealing the vastness of the Alathni System. He sees both Alathni Major, massive in the sky, as well as Alathni Minor, far smaller than the planet it orbits. The distant lights of ship thrusters leave glowing trails across the system as he nudges the thruster forward to launch the shuttle out of the hangar. His stomach drops as the gravity drops away, but the safety harness keeps him in place.
One final nudge on both thruster controls and sends the shuttle darting forward while Jack opens the folder and spreads the papers across the seat next to him. The journey will take several hours to get to a safe approach vector to land on Athena Proxima, so he adjusts the ship’s course and activates the autopilot, setting the calculating computer to work in maintaining a steady velocity and and course. With that accomplished, he turns his attention to the documents from the Manila folder…
I think that’s enough for scene two. There’s not really anything more needed from this scene. Technically, I could do a piloting check to get to Athena Proxima, but I don’t really see a point. Have to say, I’m really enjoying diving back into the Iron Horizons universe. It’s been a while since I’ve done any proper writing, so it’s great to get back into it.
Right, returning from last time when we did the pregame set up, it’s time to start the actual adventure. Let’s be cliche and start it at a bar aboard Forlorn Hope Station, the Angel Red. If you missed the last post, which includes both the Iron Horizons demo and campaign set up, you can read it here.
Scene 1
Jack enters the Angel Red through the hatch, waiting for the half-functioning airlock to finish its cycle, despite the hulk of what was once a freighter being welded to the side of the station for an expansion. He rotates himself ninety degrees to adapt to the different gravitic direction, half-floating/half-walking through the crowded room, which stinks of alcohol, sweat, air filters overdue for replacement, and the ever-present lingering scent of oil and diesel that emits from the body. The bartender, Callahan Gibbs, nods and gestures to a table corner. Jack returns the nod and saunters, as much as he can in the direction of the table, at which sits….
Let’s roll for some NPCs here, these will be our quest givers. I’ll just grab a random name generator that does dieselpunk-sounding names and then I’ll use the Stars Without Number NPC generator for the details.
In the corner of the table sits Adeline Yates, an elderly woman wearing a finely-tailored and highly decorated Aldottorai Foreign Legion uniform that seems sad and neglected despite its pristine appearance; Clyde Potts, a sallow, shrunken middle-aged man, well known aboard the station for cheating at anything that could be cheated at, but pitied for his synthetic heroin addiction; and Ruby Mullen, a much younger woman in an elaborate, vibrantly colored evening gown accentuated by a pearl necklace, and a cape whose brooch indicates a high-level Aldottorai Colonial Trader.
Let’s fancast Ruby as Joan Crawford from 1928.
That’s a good start. We have ourselves two representatives from the Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company, either working for them directly or their subsidiary, Alathni Company, as well as a locally known criminal, suggesting a conspiracy or collusion between the two for some mutual benefit, especially since they’re basically on neutral ground.
The parties introduce themselves as Jack takes a seat, shaking hands with each in turn.
“This is the lad I told you about,” Clyde explained to the other two, “Honest, dependable, quick on his feet, decent enough at piloting for someone without a ship.” Jack grins and puts his helmet on the table, running a hand through his hair.
“Clyde’s always dependable in his judge of character,” Jack replies. (I considered making a roll here, but decided against it, since Jack is technically telling the truth.) Ruby merely laughs politely and adjusts her dress to be further away from the table. A bottle of wine sits in front of the three of them, but only Clyde seems to be drinking.
“Marvelous,” Adeline replies, fingers interlaced and resting on the table in front of her. “We need someone with those abilities to do a job for us.”
“Why not the Legionaires?” Jack asks, resting his own hands on the table and leaning foward.
“Too indiscreet,” Ruby replies instantly, tracing the rim of her still-full wine glass with one gloved finger. “The Legionaire’s are famous for their heroic deeds. As soon as they leave the base, the press are after them.” That draws a dark glower from the miners at the closest table, and Clyde wipes his brow with a stained handkerchief, smiling weakly at them.
“What sort of job is it?” Jack asks, lowering his voice.
“We need you to go to…” Adeline responds.
I’m pausing here to put together a suuuper basic oracle. The demo document has 6 regions, so I’ll roll a D6 and let that determine where the job takes place at. I rolled a 1, which gives me Athena Proxima (because it’s the first one in the demo). That’s an interesting twist because Athena Proxima, the continent, is run by the Alathni Company on behalf of the Aldottorai Colonial Trading Company. That means whatever is going on is something that Adeline and Ruby don’t want their bosses to know about.
“Athena Proxima,” Ruby interrupts. “Because there is something we need retrieved, but are unable to get it ourselves.”
“Because of the danger or because of the legality?” Jack asks.
Here, Jack is going to need to make a Vigilance check. Ruby is also, essentially, a Trader, meaning she likely has the same career skills as Jack, but more experienced. So I’ll say it’s a Hard check, meaning there will be three Difficulty dies (the purple ones). I could give Ruby her own character sheet, as she’s probably considered a Nemesis (an NPC that uses the same mechanics as a PC). I’m not quite ready for that yet, so I’ll just do the one sided roll right now.
Oof. That’s a painful one. Now, referring back to the Unmastered Play Guide, because we made a roll, we increase Momentum by 1. Additionally, because there’s an uncancelled Threat, we also raise Entropy by 1. Neither of these are significant enough to have a major impact on the campaign yet, but it does mean that Jack doesn’t realize Ruby is lying, and then there’s an additional negative consequence.
Jack considers this and nods, “Fair enough. I understand Athena Proxima isn’t the most pleasant place to be outside on.” None of them notice this, but another man, trench-coated and scarved, slips inside the bar, moving to a table at an angle from their own and facing away. They don’t see it, but this person is carrying some sort of eavesdropping device.
So, you can see the results of the check there. Jack doesn’t know that Ruby was lying, which will be an interesting twist later on. Additionally, a currently unknown NPC is eavesdropping on them after having followed Jack to the bar. This will tie into the mysterious and enemies, complications, and/or rivalries roll results from the adventure set up process.
“What am I retrieving?” Jack asks, leaning closer across the table. “And what’s the payout?”
“One of my shuttles suffered a mechanical failure and had to jettison cargo over the Scar,” Ruby answered. “It was a bad storm and we’re not sure where it ended up. Someone has to go up over the lip of the Scar and track it down, preferably someone familiar enough with piloting to guess at where the shuttle was and how the cargo may have fallen. And depending on how much cargo you recover, we’ll pay you five thousand Aldottorai dollars. Not Company scrip, true dollars.”
Jack lets out a low whistle. “I’ll need an identical shuttle to understand the feel of the atmo and flight plan.”
“Completely acceptable,” Ruby replies without hesitation. “We’ve fixed the one that suffered the failure, so you can take that one. Clyde can show you the hangar with the shuttle.”
Let’s go ahead and end scene one here, as that wraps up the point of this introductory segment quite well. Keep it nice, contained, and a manageable length. For Structured Play from the Unmastered Play Guide, we’re currently at Entropy 1 and Momentum 1, so just getting started in Act 1.
Join us next week as we return to The Debts of Captain Jack Quincy: A Genesys Solo Game & Iron Horizons Demo! More dieselpunk space opera action will be on its way!
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Now that we finished the setting creation process and worksheet from the Expanded Player’s Guide, it’s time to start putting the material to the test! You can view the completed RPG demo (as a Google doc) here. I’d love to hear what any of you think of the material and for any feedback you have for the setting. I’m not going to put it on the Foundry quite yet, because it really isn’t ready. Once this material gets tested, then I’ll make it an official demo for the Foundry! Until then, feel free to share it with people.
I don’t have a regular group to play Genesys with, sadly, so I’ll be starting off by doing a solo play test using the Unmastered Play Guide, which can be purchased at a PWYW price here (DTRPG Affiliate link to support the Unmastered Play Guide authors and Iron Horizons’ future development). We’ll be using the Structured Play Mode.
The first step for any TTRPG is to create a character. I’ve gone ahead and done that, using the material from the play test material, the UPG, RPG Sessions for dice and character management, and Hero Forge to create some images. Our main hero will be Captain Jack Quincy, whose character sheet can be seen here. His archetype is Average Human, from the Genesys Core Rulebook, and his career is Trader, which I put together using skills from the play test material. There is an official Trader career in one of the official source books (Secrets of the Crucible, I think? I don’t have it, however.)
He’s a trader, which, in game terms, primarily blends piloting with social skills. So, the Career skills (which are cheaper to improve), are Astrocartography, Cool, Discipline, Piloting, Streetwise, Ranged (Light), Negotiation, and Knowledge (Commerce), which you’ll remember as being a skill I invented for this one. I fudged the standard rules on starting money, going with 1000 starting monies rather than the default 500.
Iron Horizons is a very technologically heavy setting, so characters need a lot of gear to thrive in it. Most of the money went for the handheld computer, which cost 400 monies, followed by a portable medkit, and spacesuit. All of which seem pretty critical to an independent trader in the Diskward Marches. His armor is a utility jumpsuit and his weapon is a light pistol, both of which are pretty cheap and serviceable. The book describes the light pistol as being the equivalent of a 9mm or .38 caliber, so I went with a 1911 frame, basically in .38 caliber.
That leaves him plenty of encumbrance to carry other things, while being decently enough protected against the low-level issues we’re likely to see in the Alathni System. I gave him a worker’s hardhat in the picture, because I thought it would make sense to have that while working aboard a ship or on a space station (he’s raised on Forlorn Hope Station).
If you’ve played the Star Wars RPGs from Fantasy Flight Games/EDGE, you’ll remember the Obligation/Duty/Morality mechanics, which helped create character-driven plot. Genesys has replaced these with motivations broken into Desire, Fear, Strength, Flaw. Each character gets a minimum of one of these. For Jack, his Desire is Wealth, as he desperately wants to get away from Alathni. His fear is Poverty, because that was how he grew up. His Strength is Adaptable and his weakness is Pride. I think that should give him plenty of interesting personality dynamics.
The Plot
For the Unmastered Play Guide, the first step is to generate a Campaign Goal. This is the overarching goal for the story line, which is broken into smaller Adventure Goals. To generate a Campaign Goal, there’s a very handy table to roll on. Now, as the authors point out, unlike in a standard Genesys roll, the symbols will not cancel each other out this time around. The primary pool is a green Ability die and a purple Difficulty die. So, we pop that into good old RPG Sessions and get the following result:
For those not familiar with the Genesys dice, this result includes one Success, one Advantage, and one Failure. In a normal game roll, this would end up being a single Advantage and an overall failure. For a Campaign Goal, this instead gives us some key results: The character must become something and an entire organization stands in their way. Additionally, the one Failure includes a suggested number of steps to accomplish the campaign goal. In this case, it ends up being 14.
Now, that is a fantastic goal for a campaign. And there’s a lot of different ways we can run with that based on our worldbuilding in combination with Jack’s motivations. He wants wealth, because he’s terrified of poverty, but he’s proud and adaptable, so he won’t ask for help.
He’s a trader by career, so let’s say the goal is to become a Free Trader, someone who owns their own tramp freighter and is beholden to no one. So, for this, he definitely needs to get a ship, most like a Tramp Freighter. Referring once again to the Iron Horizons setting demo, we can see that a Tramp Freighter costs 62,000 monies and has a rarity of 4. Not rare, but not easy to acquire.
Probably something like this from www.shapewright.com. You can’t really see from this angle, but there are two loading ramps on the bottom in the middle of the ship that look like it would be easy to drive cargo aboard.
For comparison, Jack currently has… 60 monies (Technically it’s probably Aldottorai Dollars, but Genesys is abstract). So he needs to multiply his net worth by a thousand. Plus, he needs to hire a crew, buy a cargo, and then find a buyer for that cargo. And there’s an entire organization opposing him in this. He’s from Forlorn Hope Station, so let’s say it’s one of the gangs on the station. For simplicity sake, let’s call them the Jets.
They probably sell illegal substances, extort local businesses and inhabitants, and smuggle people into the system and onto the planet, bypassing the Alathni Company’s procedures to charge people to live on Alathni Major.
My guess is the Quincy family came to Forlorn Hope Station with the dream of living on Alathni Major, but were never able to afford the cost, or able to indenture themselves to the Alathni Company. So, for several generations, they ended up living on the station, trying to scrape up enough money to pay either the Jets or the Alathni Company.
In the meantime, they’ve probably also become deeply indebted to the Jets for not being able to pay. Again, Jack’s fear is Poverty, and it’s part of what makes his desire Wealth. He wants to escape the Forlorn Hope and create a new life for himself.
Yes, I know we’re basically just playing Han Solo at this point. It’s fine. Han is a classic. We can run with this. And unlike lots of people, I really enjoyed Solo. We’re kind of re-enacting that opening part of his story with this anyway, so let’s just lean into it.
That gives us a few steps on the journey:
Pay off the family debt to the Jets.
Start earning 75,000 monies to cover all the ship essentials.
Turn a profit.
That’s roughly a three act structure, at least one we can start working with. The UPG has its own system for working with story acts which we haven’t gotten to yet.
The Adventure
With a campaign goal in mind, we can now move to the next stage, which is the Adventure Goal. Again, we can use the provided table for this. This time, however, we’re rolling a Proficiency Die and a Challenge Die.
This gives us two Success and two Threats. That result gives us the following:
Recover something valuable and/or dangerous from a force of nature
Oh, we really are going full Solo on this, aren’t we. No coaxium fuel, I promise. Additionally, there’s a table to determine the kind of reward gained from the adventure, using a simple d10. Back to RPG Sessions for that roll and I get a 10, which gives me a result of Roll 2x. Two more rolls result with a 5 and a 2. For the 5, that means the first reward will be Assistance and the second reward will be Treasure.
So, upon completion of this goal, Jack will have someone who will help him later in his journey as well as some sort of treasure. I suspect that will be either what he recovers from a force of nature, or in the same place.
These are the fundamental elements necessary for the UPG’s pregame preparation, but it then goes into the Oracle section. The first one is the Theme Focus Deck and uses a deck of cards, with both numbers and card suits having an impact. I don’t own a deck of cards, so I went over to random.org and used their playing card shuffler, drawing the nine of clubs. The nine gives the result of Mysterious while the Clubs carries a result of Enemies, complications, and/or rivalries. This section also has a random event table, which I don’t we need at this point.
Let’s combine all of our results and see what we end up with:
Jack’s story is about how he needs to become something, but an entire organization stands in his way, and the first step of this process is to recover something valuable and/or dangerous from a force of nature, while dealing with something mysteriousas well as enemies, complications, and/or rivalries. Upon success, Jack will receive Assistance and Treasure.
This will take me a bit of time to get up and running, and I’ll draw in other resources to supplement the Unmastered Play Guide. I own the newest edition of Stars Without Number, as well as several digital copies of the older supplements, which have plenty of tables and such I’ll likely use.
We come now to the end of our journey. This is the sixth and final step on the Genesys expanded setting creation sheet and focuses on the game mechanics in the setting. That’s right, we’ve gone through more than ten thousand words of material without touching on a single game rule except for how planet sizes affect certain rolls. That’s it. It’s entirely separate from when I first started making Iron Horizons a TTRPG setting.
Genesys RPG Mechanics
At the time, I was trying to use the 5e SRD to make Iron Horizons, and it did not go well. Setting material and mechanics were inextricably intertwined because of how 5e functions. It’s a very structured, black and white, rigid system. Anything that uses the traditional d20 system is going to be similar in that regard, as its resolution mechanic is, at its most basic, a Yes/No system. Either a character’s attempt at something succeeds or it fails. There can be critical successes and critical failures, but those don’t change that the core question is a Yes/No binary. And here at Faerspell, we don’t buy into binaries, especially not in terms of narrative experiences. If you’ve ever played or run a 5e game where a failed roll brought the story to a standstill, you can see how that can be problematic. We’ll take a bit of a digression here to touch on the underlying resolution mechanics of 5e and Genesys to understand the differences in worldbuilding/mechanical integrations.
Everything in 5e is built around increasing the chances of a Yes result or avoiding a No result, the mechanics become critical. Classes, backgrounds, and species (replacing the super sketchy idea of ‘races’) are ways of increasing the chances of a Yes. As a result, they are tied into the mechanics from the beginning. This leads to the classic RPG categorizations of Tank, DPS, Healer, and Crowd Control, in which characters are built to fulfill specific roles within the party. The “fluff,” as I have sometimes seen worldbuilding information called, is built around the mechanical goals.
Genesys does not use a binary resolution mechanic. It uses a pool of dice, split between three sets of paired positive and negative dice, with different symbols representing types of roll results:
Ability Dice & Difficulty Dice
Proficiency Dice & Challenge Dice
Boost Dice & Setback Dice
The symbols on paired dice cancel each other out, with the results including success/failure, advantage/threat, and triumph/despair. The success and failure dynamic are the most foundational since they determine if the action succeeds or not, essentially filling the same role as a D20 roll in 5e.
The advantage and threat results are a separate resource, basically, that determines if there are any additional positive or negative effects. This means you can have successful rolls with negative consequences, failed rolls with positive consequences, and all variations of those two dynamics.
The final set of symbols, triumph and despair, are similar to the critical success and critical failure of 5e, except they are not dependent on a successful or failed roll. That gives us three axes of results for any dice roll: did it succeed, were there positive or negative consequences, and were there extremely positive or extremely negative consequences. Additionally, Advantage can be used to activate certain effects, while extra successes add to the value of the success.
You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned anything regarding classes or species. The reason is because they don’t exist in Genesys. There are Careers, which help determine the cost of improving various skills, and Archetypes, which determine starting characteristics, but that’s about it.
(For a complete collection of all CRB and EPG mechanical items used for Iron Horizons, check out my World Anvil article which includes all Genesys-specific elements necessary to play.)
Archetypes
Iron Horizons is an all-human setting right now, so archetypes will be different versions of humans. That both simplifies things, but also makes it challenging to ensure every player has something that can represent what they want to play.
I appreciate that Genesys uses the term Archetype because it avoids so many of D&D’s problematic elements, but also captures the essence of the idea better. These archetypes are universal, familiar ideas that serve as the foundation for a character. The CRB and EPG have archetypes including laborer, aristocrat, trickster, intellectual, and average human, while different settings add archetypes to represent their genre— including Elves, Dwarves, Revenants, Aliens (of various types), and so on.
I have some ideas for Iron Horizons archetypes. I don’t think they’re necessary at this point, however. Again, we’re focusing on a minimum viable setting, what are the bear bare necessities? While the core archetypes may not be as closely linked to the setting as some might like, they are enough to play at least a short campaign with. When I revisit the project for a full campaign setting, then I’ll create some more specific archetypes.
But for now, let’s not add more to our plate than we already have.
Skills & Careers
Skills and careers are tied together in Genesys. In Genesys, a career, essentially, is a pre-made package of skills and a small ability (???) that gives the character something distinctive. There’s nothing like class features in 5e, as character progression is based on increasing skills rather than unlocking new abilities (which fall under Talents). Particularly interesting observation is that careers don’t even make it onto the sheet. It’s only skills.
Genesys has a fairly extensive list of skills and a decent number of career options. I will be using the Careers from the CRB and EPG to put together a list of skills and careers with small tweaks. I won’t talk much about careers because they are relatively minor at this point, but I’ll include the list of careers for clarity.
Career List
Entertainer
Explorer
Fighter Pilot
Hacker*
Healer
Leader
Mad Scientist (Swap alchemy for Science skill)
Scoundrel
Socialite
Soldier
Starship Captain
Tradesperson
This sheet specifically has spaces to create new skills.
I won’t create any major new skills for this project, but in the future, I can see this being useful. For the minimum viable setting, I might make some adjustments to the Knowledge skills to make them fit the setting, but nothing beyond that. Sadly, knowledge skills are some of the most difficult ones to parse out. Partially because I’m not the most knowledgeable about Science Things and I certainly haven’t created a comprehensive Encyclopedia of All Knowledge for Iron Horizons.
My next TTRPG project will be a fantasy setting, either in Genesys or Legends in the Mist, and if I do the setting I’ve been considering, then I would be dealing with more archetypes and skills. For now, let’s take a look at the Genesys skills. Fortunately, these are relatively simple—name, description, what is covered by the skill, and what is not covered by the skill. If you’ve run any of the Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion/Force & Destiny games, you probably ran into a circumstance where you had to figure out which skill to use (Cool vs Vigilance, anyone?).
For the most part, the Genesys book covers all the skills I can imagine using. I might add Knowledge (Commerce) in a more complete setting guide considering how important trade is, and perhaps Knowledge (Home Sectors), Knowledge (Free Colonies), Knowledge (Diskward Marches). Maybe even further ahead, a skill touching on strategy or military leadership if I go the route of first edition Stars Without Number and include campaign sourcebooks based on different themes.
I did include the Mad Scientist career, but changed out the Alchemy skill for one more relevant to the setting, just because that seems apt for a setting in which people decided that bending space-time to traverse dimensions without some sort of shield was an appropriate decision. Plus, it pays homage to the early space opera and pulp sci-fi that I really enjoyed in the past (and played a not-insignificant role in influencing Iron Horizons).
*A Note on the Computers skill and Hacker career: If you read the earlier post on technology and tropes, you’re probably wondering why I included Hacker as a career option and Computers as a skill. Iron Horizons is an analog setting with no internet or digital technologies. Analog computers are the primary device within the setting, including both electric and mechanical computers.
I don’t really understand how these computers work (I barely understand how digital computers work). My understanding was that computers needed to be coded manually, they lacked access credentials because access was physical, and that they didn’t use code like digital computers. However, Iron Horizons has an additional four centuries of analog computing development, so I expect the machines are quite complex and can have issues.
I see no reason why there wouldn’t be some version of hacking, and analog computers do need skill to use. In a fuller version of the setting guide, I might enhance the hacker career with skills like stealth or skullduggery, since hacking would require physical access to the machine (I imagine it would be something like from the original James Bond or Man from U.N.C.L.E stories and involve a variety of methods of gaining access to a secure facility).
Talents
Talents are one of my favorite parts of Genesys but, in this case, also the most complicated. As mentioned earlier, I view these as the equivalent to feats (both individual feats and class features) in D&D 5e. What these all have in common is that they are an option that gives players a mechanical bonus for specific actions, generally making them better at (usually) some aspect of their character’s role. In Genesys, they can add Boost die for higher chances of success, making skills count as career skills (and thus making them cheaper to improve), modify the outcomes of rolls or mechanical processes, or even sometimes allowing for an automatic success at what would otherwise require a roll.
There are a lot of them across the various Genesys sourcebooks. The list I’ve been looking at has 342 separate talents spread across all the books and, unlike 5e, they are not locked behind character class. Instead, talents are acquired by spending experience points, with cost determined by the talent rank (how powerful it is). Unlike Edge of the Empire’s talent trees, which created a very structured experience for the many career specializations, Genesys uses a more free form talent pyramid in which higher tiers of talents can be only added once a certain number of lower tier talents have been met. This results in needing more low-level tier talents to gain access to the higher-level ones (which also have higher experience point ranks).
Lots of player choice here, which I appreciate, but also lots more GM prep if you decide to change things around or make new ones. For that reason, we won’t dive into this too deeply. I’ll point out what the sheet includes for it so that you know what you’re getting into it, but I’ll otherwise be relying on the talents from the CRB and EPG.
So, you can see there’s five elements to a talent. The first is the talent’s name, followed by its tier (1-5).
Then, it has its Activation. I didn’t touch on the combat system in these posts, because this isn’t meant to be a Genesys system mechanical exploration. In Genesys, there are a variety of types of things a character can do on their turn while in initiative: Action, Maneuver, Incidental, and, for Talents, Passive. Passive simply means the effects of the Talent are permanent and are always in effect.
An Action is the biggest thing a character can attempt, usually something like attacking an enemy or trying some complex task. A Maneuver is less intensive than an Attack, and typically includes something like moving or activating a talent.
Generally speaking, players only have one attack and one maneuver per turn, but there are exceptions to this and mechanics that adjust this. An Incidental is something even less extensive than moving. These are going to be very basic, quick, and easy things. For Talents with incidental activation, these are going to be very easy roll modifications, or changing which skill a roll requires. Not usually something done by the character, per se.
After that, it asks if the Talent is ranked or not. By ranked, in this case, it means the benefits stack. So if a talent is ranked, taking it multiple times will increase the effects on a roll. Individually, these are pretty small benefits, but with two or three ranks, that can make a huge difference.
Finally, we have Description. It’s in this box that the effects of the talent, a description of what actually happens in the narrative, and any prerequisite requirements are listed. Not overly complicated, as far as a TTRPG mechanic goes, but there are a lot of elements that go into it. What tier does it go into (changes the experience point cost), how often can it be used, what does it cost to use? That’s a lot of balancing on the mechanical side that I’m trying to not mess with for a minimally viable setting.
Conclusion
So, yeah. That’s it. We have completed the expanded setting creation sheet from beginning to end. It’s not that complicated, other than at the end where it begins to involve game mechanics, and I think it works nicely for a minimum viable setting. It has the meta elements of the world (tropes, theme, technology), the geographic and social contexts, as well as the mechanical elements.
I probably wouldn’t want to do a long campaign with the information included on this sheet, but for a short campaign of four or five sessions, I think there are enough hooks for me to put together a strong story without having to leave the star system.
Even if you’re not using Genesys, I still think you could get a lot of value from going through this worksheet. Its full potential definitely comes from the explanations in the Genesys Expanded Player’s Guide, with all of the associated tables. Using those tables, you could probably cook up a setting in an hour at most. It wouldn’t be a very big setting, but I think it could even work well for an OSR-style game that has a smaller scale world built into it already. It wouldn’t hurt to use it for a West Marches either, I think. One region in the “Building a World” step could be the starting town, with the other regions essentially being the equivalent of surrounding hexes.
Exploration would be a little more difficult to do with only this information, but that can be fleshed out later on, I think, as the initial hexes get fully explored. I would perhaps not use this sheet if you’re doing a space opera or sci-fi setting, unless you’re content with the single biome worlds and hopping between planets. Since Iron Horizons is a bit grimier than the typical space opera setting, it finds itself awkwardly situated between the smaller settings of hard sci-fi and the grandeur of traditional space opera, which makes it difficult to fit it into a worksheet designed to be generic and universal.
I found this process to be helpful in understanding how Genesys approaches worldbuilding as a game system and the interaction between mechanics and narrative. I appreciated how it started with the narrative elements and only included mechanics at the end, rather than trying to fit narrative into the game mechanics.
Definitely give it a go if you haven’t! I’d be curious to see what you come up with and I’m always looking for more Genesys material. There’s a pretty decent r/Genesysrpg community as well as a solidly active Discord community. Stop in and chat with everyone sometime!
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