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OOC



As was expected, if not common, the denizens of the castle that floated between universes felt the odd sensation of it coming to rest in a new reality, of a sort. There were a few moments of silence before the intercom system crackled to life. "This is Brigadier General Vilhelmiina Aino, hailing from the Castle in the Void. If you're here to combat the Trespasser threat, please respond and we will assist with docking." The pilot's chair in the throne room had a set of out-of-place-looking communications gear, complete with viewscreen.


It might be best if someone replied sooner, rather than later.

Discord Link (required)

In ages long past, gods and man walked as one. Their blessings allowed man to protect his kin and kind, but as always, they were abused. One of these blessings was used to strike at Suha, and thus the gods retreated from their children. Even among those Gifted enough to bear them, the powers they had given faded from mankind, a harsh punishment for a transgression that may never be forgiven.

. . . That’s what the church says anyway. Why are you asking? I shoot lightning bolts out of my face and get paid to do it by the people that made it so I could while I wear the right kind of fancy outfit. What else matters? Not some old-ass story, that’s for sure.

What’s this?

The Wealth of Gears is a character-focused game where you play as a member of a magical race lucky enough to have a good job working for an enormous megacorporation. It’s basically me taking my frustration about the situation around me on whoever decides to play in a tale of the seeming futility of trying to move against immovable forces. It’s a story about the burden of expectations and attempts to meet them while maintaining one’s personhood. It challenges you to find an answer to the cold fact that the vast majority of people couldn’t care less about what happens to you as long as you do what you’re expected to. It will probably be frustrating at times, but the sweetest rewards come after the bitterest of labor.

Sometimes.

Who are you?

A recently hired Gifted who has headed out to a town not quite on the frontier in search of quests to take for their employer.

Setting
The setting of the Wealth of Gears is, for the most part, a bog-standard fantasy setting. Magical artifacts dot the land, adventurers are in high demand for escorting, fetching, hunting, and everything else that one can think of. Swords and sorcery are the norm, but there is one key difference: time has continued to pass. Technology has advanced (with the assistance of magic) and archaic systems have been pushed out or modernized. Kingdoms and empires gave way to republics and, most importantly, corporations.

Adventuring is a heavily regulated industry divided up between a small number of enormous corporate entities that seem to literally have divine power (especially given one of them is the church.) A prospective adventurer is a highly educated and trained individual vying for selection by one of these companies, who will then further train and test them to find where their talents are best applied. More information on that later.

The world is possessed of four different sapient species: humans, dragons, fairies, and the Gifted. The latter, as one might have guessed from the incredibly unique and clever name, are the people around which this story revolves. Humans, dragons, and fairies all have their unique traits, but the Gifted sit in an area somewhere between the three.

Dragons, as one might expect, are few in number and effectively immortal. Several of the most ancient ones are suspected to be the roots of the Ten and other beliefs that have sprung up over the years - or to outright be gods, if one is of a more religious bent. One of them heads Razelow International, a leader in logistics and trade law, as the founder, owner, and CEO.

Fairies are a bit more odd. They exist on a plane of reality at a sort of odd angle to ours: there is an intersection, but that intersection is not always comprehensible. Fairies appear in the material world and disappear for seemingly no reason, sometimes flickering in for a few seconds and sometimes staying to amuse themselves for years at a time. They have a wide variety of appearances with no two appearing exactly the same, but they tend toward avian and specifically corvid forms for reasons unknown.

The Gifted are the divine people, those with the power of gods running through their veins. Or, so the stories say. They have draconian features such as patches of scales on their body and tails. Less commonly, they have avian features instead; said avian Gifted are the most likely to grow wings at some point during their lives (though said wings are almost never enough to get one properly aloft without magical assistance, and are rare regardless.) They also have greater variation in height than humans, but average to around the same size.

The Gifted are not particularly sexually dimorphic and this has shaped part of their society and how it interfaces with human cultures. They appear female or androgynous by human standards and tend to interpret gender more based on mannerisms, which often leads to mistakes and frustrations when (for example) a young Gifted travels to a large city for the first time and interprets his prospective female manager as male and refers to her as such.

Most notably, however, are that Gifted are the only ones capable of taking Oaths. Oaths and their resulting powers are the primary reason they are treated distinctly from humans in many social capacities.

Oaths and the Ten

Oaths are what allow a Gifted individual to activate their full potential. They are a set of promises tied to a particular set of powers, each of which has been painstakingly cultivated by the organizations controlling who takes them and when. A proper Oath requires a fair amount of ceremony and ritual. As long as one keeps their Oath - which means, of course, doing your job as you’re told to - one can retain and advance one’s powers. Break the Oath, and one risks not only earning the ire of one’s manager, but a reduction or outright loss of the powers with which one makes one’s living.

Alongside the powers generally associated with one’s Oath directly, each Gifted gains their own innate power that is more or less unique to them known as a Genius. The Oath must still be obeyed when using this power; someone in a healing class might find their abilities fizzling when trying to use them to smite evildoers. Each Genius is said to relate to two of the Ten; whichever god in the Extrinsic and Intrinsic one finds oneself closest to in the depths of their soul.

Extrinsic Gods

The Extrinsic Gods represent how people influence the world around them, and how it influences them. They are associated with the elemental aspect one’s Genius manifests as.


Intrinsic Gods

The Intrinsic Gods represent the forces that occur within a person. Rather than how an individual affects others and is affected by them, they govern how an individual affects themselves with their attitudes, drives, and beliefs. They are associated with the underlying effects of a Genius.


Corporations
The world is dominated by corporate interest, whose influence has crept into virtually every aspect of daily life. In particular, six companies have accumulated a majority of influence, in large part due to their monopoly on Oaths. Virtually every Gifted not living in an isolated village is employed by one of them, and most humans are as well (though these are more often via holdings and subsidiaries rather than directly.)

The Church of the Ten

The Church is an ancient organization that has been accumulating wealth and influence since long before the concept of a corporation properly existed. Working for them means working for an employer that has centuries of experience in managing their employees, and knowing that you’ll be doing the right thing. The Church of the Ten is a premier supplier of escorts, supplies, and other necessities to those in need; good hearts are always welcome.


Razelow International

A specialist in logistics both physical and legal, Razelow International welcomes any and all employees aboard. With holdings across the globe and an unmatched network, Razelow promises success to anyone willing to put in the effort. They do not discriminate against those with different lifestyles and beliefs; everyone will be treated equally.


Gearing Industries

The leading supplier of heavy equipment in the world. Gearing Industries offers the same thing to its employees as it offers its customers: tools to put in the work. They have a reputation as an excellent employer, with numerous anonymous testimonials from management mentioning their upward mobility and rewarding benefits.


Wealdere Entertainment

Wealdere is a name beloved in every household, being responsible for many of the cherished childhood characters that today’s adults have grown up with. They continue to produce enchanting tales for children and adults alike to this day, never giving up on their mission to bring the spirit of adventure into the family home. Only the best of the best work at Wealdere, as anything less would be failing their many adoring fans.


Unity Security Agency

Unity is not subtle or evasive about their products. They offer security and stability, and will go to great lengths to ensure they both exist. Of the megacorporations, Unity is the one most often acting as a vendor to the others; it’s hard to visit a building of any importance and not catch a few Unity personnel out of the corner of your eye. Work at Unity means high standards and reliable coworkers, no more and no less.


Ascension Ltd.

Ascension offers a different spiritual path to the Church of the Ten. It values each of its employees deeply and offers them great amounts of freedom in their paths. They focus on letting their workers build their own careers, and sharing further knowledge with them when they have proven themselves to be sturdy enough to handle it. Ascension’s turnover is almost unheard-of; virtually nobody has ever left the corporation’s employment once they began.


Character Creation
There are two steps to creating a character for this game. The first is filling out the character sheet below:

The second step is creating a resume for your character. It should have all the standard parts of a resume, giving a summary of their educational and work backgrounds and cleanly presenting why their employer might have hired them. No template will be provided, but the GM will provide assistance. This is intended to help become more familiar with the world and establish backstory at the same time.

Mahnomen, Columbia
Customs and Excise
Operational Crew: Kagura, Aquarius, Headbanger, Fox, Espresso, Hooch
Time: 7:00 AM

Hooch's crew arrived just in time for the morning rush hour to hit. After a thorough prodding for concealed weapons (of which they had plenty) and licenses (of which they had few) and a hurried exchange of words and a letter indicating Roar Nightclub had cleared the red tape for them in advance, they made it out of customs with their dignity mostly intact. Their contact wasn't set to meet with them for another two hours or so, which left them with the seemingly simple task of navigating the city.

Mahnomen, however, was not the easiest to navigate. Formed of smaller cities that had banded together some years past, it showed a staggering variety of people and architecture, and the locations through which it roamed made it a prominent point of exchange between Columbia and Kazimierz - which is why they were there, of course. The various districts blended together and separated seemingly at random, and most of the locals were more concerned with getting to work on time than helping a group of eclectic mercs apparently on the edge of killing one another get to a meeting.

Hooch's cell buzzed. A notification: Roar Knightclub had helpfully sent them an annotated map. It covered the entire city and had markings indicated as "incident sites," as well as small notes mentioning whether areas were generally safe to travel through or not. They could cut through the Infected slums to get to their destination - a high-class cafe - faster by cutting across the meandering district it resided in, or simply try to squeeze into the public transit system.

Venturing through the strange portals appearing in Gensokyo, the Weatherlight, and the Castle brings one to a strange location that seemed to be some blend of all three. Traditional Japanese decor and bonsai trees dot great stone tables blending seamlessly with a living metal hull. The area itself consists of a large main hall, not dissimilar to the banquet hall of the Castle, and four side rooms, one of which hummed with unknowable energy as incomprehensible machines worked at mysterious purposes within - perhaps to stabilize this liminal space.


(Trespassers V2 OOC)
(Director's Cut OOC)

A set of smaller chambers meant to house the staff that kept the castle maintained when it was inhabited. The bedrooms are functional, but not quite as spartan as the barracks, and unlike the former are individual; there's also a dining room that the servants likely used to take their meals when this was the seat of some feudal power.

OOC Thread

Thread Rules:
Your character may only occupy one IC thread at a time. You must make a post clearly indicating that you are leaving the area this thread governs to move to another.
Post clearly that you are entering this area as well; one of these posts should be made for every active character during the travel phase.
Moving between areas during a travel phase is discouraged, and should be discussed first.
Before posting in ANY IC thread, characters must be approved by the GM.

A few luxurious bedrooms that housed guests of high standing; they have borne the brunt of time's assault on the castle, with many of the furnishings mostly dismantled or carried off a long time ago. Still, what was left behind speaks to great wealth, and the party has managed to patch up a few of the rooms into serviceable states. One of them has been converted into a garden with a variety of odd plants, most of which are useful.

OOC Thread

Thread Rules:
Your character may only occupy one IC thread at a time. You must make a post clearly indicating that you are leaving the area this thread governs to move to another.
Post clearly that you are entering this area as well; one of these posts should be made for every active character during the travel phase.
Moving between areas during a travel phase is discouraged, and should be discussed first.
Before posting in ANY IC thread, characters must be approved by the GM.

The main event center of the castle, it consists of a massive room with a dance floor and fine engraved decor about the walls, connected by side doors to the main kitchen of the place, in order to make serving food to the esteemed guests faster and more efficient. A few remnants of the party's activities mark parts of the floor; odd alchemical spillage, the occasional scorch mark, and an odd contraption consisting of a large glass bowl and a *very* smelly spider creature just sort of scraping around happily.

OOC Thread

Thread Rules:
Your character may only occupy one IC thread at a time. You must make a post clearly indicating that you are leaving the area this thread governs to move to another.
Post clearly that you are entering this area as well; one of these posts should be made for every active character during the travel phase.
Moving between areas during a travel phase is discouraged, and should be discussed first.
Before posting in ANY IC thread, characters must be approved by the GM.