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loneknight2024-08-11 03:41 am
taichara) wrote in loneknight2024-08-11 03:41 am
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RPGaDay 2024: the Bloodless Tide (invasion + describe a monster)
These relentless automatons are the advance forces and shock troops of the expansionist, colonial Seven-Stars League, which prefers to send in such proxies whenever possible rather than dirty their own hands directly.
(that said, if the Tide is on the move, there will always be one or more League lordlings stationed in a beachhead somewhere, issuing commands to Tide "officers" and pulling strings.)
Within the League and their conquered territories, these troops are known as the Argenti -- at least, in public.
The means to sabotage -- or, better yet, subvert -- the Tide is a stealthily researched subject in the lands surrounding the League and even moreso in those places where the League is actively attempting to assert false authority. The latest suggestions and discovered weaknesses are passed along in ciphered portions of letters, coded artworks, spell formulae, and nearly anything else one might think of, a constantly cycling and evolving samizdat.
Claiming one or more fragments of Tide carapace is a badge of honour and righteous resistance; enough, sewn to sturdy cloth, functions as medium armour. 1d4+1 useable fragments can be salvaged from a destroyed Tide, 3d4+3 from an officer; 40 make an armour jack.
Bloodless Tide: An anonymous automaton of glass-smooth, porcelaineous carapace over mirror-bright steel frame, its face a barely-detailed mask with grey glass eyeslits. Pitiless and tireless, carrying out the instructions given it.
HD 1, AC 15, +2 melee strike (1d6) or bolt caster (1d8, ranged, 6 shots before recharge), ML 12, construct, half-damage from slashing or piercing, veil: the Tide can cloak itself in a flesh and blood appearance, usually human
Bloodless Tide, "officer": A rarer and more powerful Tide variant, capable of decision-making and leading swarms of common automata as so instructed by a League master. Larger and more imposing, with backswept "fins" on the porcelain of the head.
HD 3, AC 16, +3 heat blade (1d8+1) or bolt caster (2d6, ranged, 8 shots before recharge), ML 12, construct, half-damage from slashing or piercing, veil: the Tide can cloak itself in a flesh and blood appearance, usually human, field control: issues commands to up to 30 Tide troopers, 1-in-4 spell resist
There are new and terrible whispers that the League is experimenting with -- somehow -- turning living beings into the Bloodless Tide ...
(that said, if the Tide is on the move, there will always be one or more League lordlings stationed in a beachhead somewhere, issuing commands to Tide "officers" and pulling strings.)
Within the League and their conquered territories, these troops are known as the Argenti -- at least, in public.
The means to sabotage -- or, better yet, subvert -- the Tide is a stealthily researched subject in the lands surrounding the League and even moreso in those places where the League is actively attempting to assert false authority. The latest suggestions and discovered weaknesses are passed along in ciphered portions of letters, coded artworks, spell formulae, and nearly anything else one might think of, a constantly cycling and evolving samizdat.
Claiming one or more fragments of Tide carapace is a badge of honour and righteous resistance; enough, sewn to sturdy cloth, functions as medium armour. 1d4+1 useable fragments can be salvaged from a destroyed Tide, 3d4+3 from an officer; 40 make an armour jack.
Bloodless Tide: An anonymous automaton of glass-smooth, porcelaineous carapace over mirror-bright steel frame, its face a barely-detailed mask with grey glass eyeslits. Pitiless and tireless, carrying out the instructions given it.
HD 1, AC 15, +2 melee strike (1d6) or bolt caster (1d8, ranged, 6 shots before recharge), ML 12, construct, half-damage from slashing or piercing, veil: the Tide can cloak itself in a flesh and blood appearance, usually human
Bloodless Tide, "officer": A rarer and more powerful Tide variant, capable of decision-making and leading swarms of common automata as so instructed by a League master. Larger and more imposing, with backswept "fins" on the porcelain of the head.
HD 3, AC 16, +3 heat blade (1d8+1) or bolt caster (2d6, ranged, 8 shots before recharge), ML 12, construct, half-damage from slashing or piercing, veil: the Tide can cloak itself in a flesh and blood appearance, usually human, field control: issues commands to up to 30 Tide troopers, 1-in-4 spell resist
There are new and terrible whispers that the League is experimenting with -- somehow -- turning living beings into the Bloodless Tide ...