Sharkosian Empires

I like sharks. I don't know why. I think it has to do with the fact that they're these brutal creatures that have been apex predators for like a million years and they have those black utterly inhuman and emotionless eyes.

Anyway, so a long time ago I wrote this little bit on the blog here about sharks and dolphins and porpoises and their war for control of the cosmos. Recently I was trying to figure out a race for Jason's campaign and wandered through the Stormwrack 3.5 book to see if there was anything noteworthy in there. There wasn't. However, I did see the...I dunno what their name is, but they amount to killer whale humanoids. This got me to wondering if there was anything shark-like for me to play, something in the vein of the Atlantean from my Inconsistencies Continued story. There isn't. The closest thing is the Sahuagin. They have the ability to communicate with sharks and worship Sekolah the shark god. The problem with them is that in most of the literature they look like a fish with arms stuck on them. Ugly and ungainly. Not anything like the sleek and deadly killers that sharks are. Sometimes they look cool, but yeah, the majority of what I've seen is goofy and unthreatening.

So this thought process naturally led me to imagining an ocean world where many of the aquatic creatures we know and love have evolved (for whatever reason) into a humanoid form. Why after a million years or so a shark would suddenly need legs and arms and opposable thumbs instead of just growing more teeth, I have no idea. Whatever, logic is for other places.

So I imagine we have a bunch of humanoid aquatic races dividing up all the territory of an archipelago style world of water and smallish islands. I imagine this world primarily being populated by dolphins and sharks with the other well known fishies kind of tagging along for the ride. I imagine sharks being the most numerous, because I like sharks.

I imagine the sharks being heavy in the physical stats and light on the mental ones, with dolphins the opposite. I imagine the sharks basically being aquatic orcs, hordes of savagely tough warriors with a fairly binary view of life, you are either a predator or prey and lending their society a might makes right/toughest guy is in charge theme. The dolphins would be more cerebral I guess, kind of the opposite. Maybe they could be wizards, or psions. For some reason I feel that psionics would be more appropriate for this world than magic would. 

If the sharks were not too bloodthirsty, I think I'd have rays being their pals. Kind of a cartilaginous fish alliance or something. The porpoises would be allied with them as well because dolphins will straight up hatemurder a porpoise on sight. Killer whales, whales, eels, and other assorted races would exist, though I don't exactly have a theory about their alliances and whatnot.

I'm not sure how I would arrange the technology and whatnot. I think sharks would mostly rely on their teeth and maybe bone or coral weapon, probably rely on thick hide and Dexterity for armor with the equivalent of armor spikes to replicate their sandpapery skin. Dolphins, being mammals and smart, might have like iron or bronze and live on little islands near the water. 

I dunno, this isn't going anywhere, but it was fun to think about. 

This One's For the Kid In Back With the Ill Periphereal

(The title is a reference to a Facebook profile)

...and so it was that in the beginning the Great Ocean, the Mother Void, the Black Depths Between The Stars did first spew forth the life that was the Dolphinians. They swam to and fro between the stars and did multiply and fill the great expanse of the Mother Void with their numbers. They were intelligent and curious and She did find them to be pleasing to Her sight, but their nature was timid and commical, and this She could not abide for Her's was a destructive womb. In the black expanse of the Great Ocean the light of stars burned with killing radiance and rocks hurtled through the empty void with deadly violence as they were drawn to celestial bodies by gravity's pull. The worlds within Her womb were burned black by deadly stars while others had atmospheres of toxic gases no living creature could breathe.

It was decided by the Great Ocean that She should give birth to a second race, akin to the first but more aligned with Her own violent nature. Thus the Porposians were born. These too she found to be pleasing to Her sight, for they were as intelligent as the Dolphinians, but bore a more instinctual sense of self-preservation. It was soon found that this unstoppable sense of self-preservation made them cowards and turncoats, creatures without honor that could not be trusted or made to wage war. When the nature of the Porposians was discovered, the Dolphinians were found to be as savage and unrelenting as their Mother's womb in their pursuit of the extinction of the Porposian race.

The Mother Void watched on in parental approval as the two children of Her womb slaughtered each other among the stars. This was Her plan, a battle to fill the cosmos with the cries of the wounded and the warcries of the victorious. It did not last though, for it was soon found that the Dolphinians lacked the constitution necessary for unflinchingly savage warfare and the Porposians were cowards willing to broker anything for freedom and survival.

Peace was not a condition the Great Ocean sought for Her children, for peace brought on stagnation. For her children She desired evolution through constant war and never-ending challenges. In their weariness of war the Dolphinians and Porposians met a terrible force, their mother's wrath.

In Her wrath she produced children so violent and savage that they were little more than sentient bottomless gullets. She made a race so deadly and unrelenting that there was little more than unending hunger and mindless bloodlust within their skulls. With eyes as black as the Mother Void itself, the Sharkosians sought out their brother races and brought war and death to them as they chased them from the sky. Finally their mother was truly pleased with Her works and She did smile and sleep as Her children slew each other while they fell to the planets within Her womb.

Thus, in a time before time, began the Sharkosian-Dolphinian War

The Product of Lincoln and Hitler's Civil Union

Its not Reich-5 and its not Dixie, its a bit of both. America became a Socialist state and just as in Reich-5, they were the cronies of Germany. However, the South being the South, was like "Eff this shit." when the North was all like "Everybody is equal and gets a fair share of everything," and they suceeded from the Union for the second time. Just like in Reich-5, many American cities were nuked by the Japanese and the Germans and SS and Werhmacht divisions were still deployed to American soil. The Germans still have an asteroid they yanked out of the sky and a colony on Mars and one on the Moon as well. I guess Chicago wasn't levelled in Reich-5, so that's different and it can join the ranks of places like Omaha, St. Louis, Pittsburg, and several others.

I'm not sure what year it is, it might still be 1953 like the initial spark of the story, or it could be 2010 like in the Reich-5 information I read in Infinite Worlds earlier today. The first piece is vague enough that it could be either.

Why hasn't anyone just nuked the fucking shit out of the South? Mutually assured destruction is why. Japan and Germany got off their initial salvos of nuclear devices, but MacArthur and Patton were savy enough chaps to decide that it might be a good idea to get their hands on some nuclear devices of their own, so now it is a bit of a stalemate with an unspoken agreement to keep the radiation out of it for now. The South (at least the land) is an asset and the North is reluctant to consign the whole southern portion of what was once it's territory to nuclear oblivion. The bosses in Germany probably don't give a shit, but at the moment they are content to let America handle its problems in house. Imperial Japan doesn't tell anyone anything so they could very likely have tenshi wandering around down South super-soldiering the fuck out of MacArthur and Patton's boys. That means killing them. With guns, or karate.

Its a weird, wonky, place and I guess more of it will be exposed as the story continues. I make no promises about where it will go or how long it will go for.

Let me know if you figure out what the Vampire is, I tried to make it obvious, but I'm not sure if I was heavy handed enough.

Music: Survivalsim - Nine Inch Nails

In The Mouth of Madness (And The Shitting Therein)

If a shark ever tries to eat me, I'm going to shit right in its mouth. If I have the presence of mind to think of this, I am going to bring along a Big Fuck Knife if I ever travel into open water in the hopes that I can not only shit in its mouth, but cut its face open and shit in the wound as well. Ideally this will lead to an infection and kill the fucker. More than likely it is going to lead to the shark going "I'm a fucking shark! Rawr! Nom!" and I'm going to experience what bots experience when you enable the instagib mutator on Unreal Tournament. God I love that game. Maybe I should install it on my laptop and use Heather's camera to take some pictures at work. Might be fun for Tony and I to play some old school multiplayer with all of the bots skinned as our boss Arnie, co-worker Alan, and a carevan driver Tony loves to harass named Steve. Hmmm, I wonder if I can track down that mod that lets you skin yourself as a Dark Angel, Crimson Fist, or Ultramarine. While we're on the topic, I believe that when sharks evolve they will scour the Earth and instagib the entire human race, then they and the dolphins will have an epic war that will drag the very stars from the sky. Some people believe in God and Revelations and The Rapture, the sharks and dolphins and their wars in the far flung future are my mythos.

I should write that shit down.

I wrote a wee bit of Traith's tale last night, roughly eight hundred words, ends up as maybe a page in Microsoft Word. I got to the scene I've had stuffed in my head and I think it went ok, although I think I need to get into a bit more detail when I describe what Traith sees in the soulless' chest as well as write something that flows a bit smoother when Traith blows the back out of its skull with his revolvers. What comes next involves a crazy electricity obsessed scientist named A'lst, har har. It was either A'lst or F'enstein and A'lst sounds more non-Earthian. I haven't decided on it for certain yet, but it may allude to elements of history involving Doc's people, Kaleshmar, and slavery in general. Incidentally I think I figured out how to incorporate the Githzerai and Githyanki into my campaign (because why the fuck not?), not by those names though. I've always liked those races and their history and ties to the mindflayers (Which I've always kind of wanted to play, a mindflayer that is. The list of things I've wanted to play is rather robust and eclectic). Hmmm, I may want to start considering the impending doom of Kitchen Sink Syndrome and start to eyeball myself a little more carefully as I begin to fully flesh out this weird little world of mine.

Once upon a time I wanted to play a halfling (that means hobbit ala Frodo or Bilbo) barbarian. A halfling barbarian whose main method of making people bleed from holes in them was a sling and the appropriate stones for such a weapon (that means sling stones). The most ridiculous thing was that on paper, it worked. It was definitely not an optimal build for a halfling or a barbarian or anyone intending to kill shit with a sling, but it worked. Maybe it sucked balls in-game (never got to use it), but on paper it seemed decent.

This one steampunk device per DnD related post thing I've been doing is working out nicely. It forces me to think about the technological aspects of my campaign more thoroughly. I think I've figured out a way to incorporate steampunk devices as loot without screwing over PCs who choose not to bow their heads in prayer at the brass feet of technology. I think each device will provide a constant benefit for anyone who uses it, but if you are trained in Technomancy you can "fine tune" your whirring gizmo or whosit (which will inevitably be covered in vacuum tubes and bare wires) and get a once per day ability out of it. I obviously have to figure out how to believably (in the context of a world of screwball magic, demigods, and dirigibles) power this technology in a relatively miniaturized form. Adventurers and mercenaries are not well known for the wagon trains of clunky steampowered devices they carry behind them. I do have some plans for wireless transmitted energy/electricity, but that involves the PCs A) tracking down that A'lst guy and B) aiding him in his war with a guy whose name will inevitably be a most cunning (and possible reversed) anagram of Thomas Edison (maybe Edward Thomas?). They'll also probably have to kill a bunch of shit too.

Steampunk Device of the Post: Phrenoaccelerometer. It makes you harder to daze or put to sleep.

Music: Future Soon - Jonathon Coulton