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Passing Through The Veil
By Corvus | October 19, 2006
I’m now running two campaigns on the Tawak’sigh. Well, it might be more accurate to say that I’ve run two character creation sessions in anticipation of running campaigns on the Tawak’sigh. The first session took a very long time as the group consists of eight people, each of whom were treated to a solo introductory session. Each of the eight were very engaged in the process, asking questions and thinking carefully before making decisions.
The second group took considerably less time. First of all, there are only three people in the group, one of whom, Ms. Knittiot, also participates in the first group (and has gamed with me before). By spending a little more time with all three of them in the first phase of character creation, I gave this group a stronger sense of the meta-game before going into character creation. This, I believe, was one of the factors which led to much quicker decisions in the second, and longer, stage of character creation. The other major factor is that I structured the narrative so that each player did not receive a solo session.
The Meta-Character
Although I never clearly laid this out for the players, there has always been a meta-character at play in my system. A handful of NPCs have frequently become confused when players re-encounter them with a new character. Now, for the first (and second) time, I’ve started character creation with the creation of the meta-character. After being exposed to a short history of the universe (links: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4) players are asked to choose one of the four Drachurae Houses, with allowances for having switched allegiances at least once depending on their influence.
Speaking of Influence, Drachurae have a single stat. It’s a measure of age, social standing, and raw power. That number is called Influence. Eventually, as their Drachurae mature and grow in Influence, players may divvy up their Influence among multiple characters. for the moment, however, each player has only enough influence to produce a single character on the surface of the Tawak’sigh. Physically, the Drachurae are floating heads with decorative, translucent, bodies and glowing white eyes. Individual Drachurae may adorn their bodies with external or internal bands and spots of color, spikes, tendrils, and other decorative features. The greater their influence, the more elaborate their individuality.
Players are given a few specific details about being Drachurae. The politics, the rather academic nature of the culture, the complete lack of a concept of time, and without my coming right out and saying so, a deep sense of isolation. After a whirlwind introduction to life as a Drachurae, during which some quick role playing is done as they meet a contact or two, players are asked to perform a mission on the Tawak’sigh, an important mission, naturally. After their patron, at great risk and/or with great cunning, has secured permission, they are to pass through the only entrance point on the outer shell of the Tawak’sigh, which is guarded from within by Sissladta and several other young idealistic Drachurae. “Remember who you are. Remember why you’re there. The Tawak’sigh will try and take it from you. Remember who you are. Remember why you’re there,” is the advice repeated to Drachurae when they first enter the dreaded Tawak’sigh.
Translation
Upon entering the Tawak’sigh, the players find themselves in a featureless void for some time. Even their bodies are gone – nothing exists beyond their self-awareness. Then, sensory vibrations bloom around them, each exerting a slight pull. Each vibration can be perceived on multiple levels, from color, to taste, to touch, to a more emotive and intuitive understanding. The players choose a spot to move towards and find themselves in a plane consisting of just that vibration, gaining more information about it as they are drawn through it. Then, four spots bloom around them and they choose again. The process is repeated one more time, as two spots bloom around them.
The spots removed after the first choice are the spot chosen by the player and it’s balancing spot on the opposite side of the circle. The second choice and it’s balance are removed after the second iteration. Each spot is associated with a few things – an element, an attribute, and a race. When describing the spots to the players, I obviously take all that they represent into account, but a description of that will warrent at least it’s own post… better yet, it’ll be in the GM guide for the system. Also, the players’ perspective of the spots will change, once choices have been made.
The black (Vitae/Life/Control) and grey (Vae/Energy/Craft) spots are representative of the Sphere Animus and players choosing those first will be strong magecrafters, influential social forces, or both. The brown (Terrae/Earth/Strength) and light blue (Aerae/Air/Agility) spots represent the Sphere Corpus and players choosing those first will be excellent fighters, theives,. acrobats, or any other physical profession. The dark blue (Hydrae/Water/Lore) and red (Pyrae/Fire/Wit) spots represent Sphere Sententia and players selecting these first will be scholars, psychics, adventurers, and the like.
With each choice, the players roll a d10 which determines how well they hold on to those two critical piece of information – their identity and their mission. Only a 9 retains everything. A 0 results in a complete removal of awareness. Everything in between is decided based on the character and information involved.
The order in which the players move into the spots determines their elemental stack and the level of each element in their character. the first choice sets the chosen element as the primary element, which means it can eventually be increased to 12, 3 points higher than the cap of 9 for the other elements. It also determines the race (which depends upon which continent they’ll end up on). The balancing element takes the fourth spot in the stack. The second choice sets the 2nd and 5th elements in the stack and the third choice sets the 3rd and 6th elements. The maximum level of any given element is one third of the total elemental pool (i.e. the total amount of influence passed on to the character). So, for the moment, I’ve assigned 1/3 of the total pool to the first element in the stack, and successively smaller values for the remaining choices. For example – with an elemental pool of 18, I assigned values of 6, 4, 3, 2, 2, and 1 to the stack. For the characters with a pool of 9, I assigned values of 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, and 0.
The First Stage of Life
After the final choice, the characters’ world goes completely black. I then guide them through their time in eutero, their birth, and the first years of their life until they reach the age equivalent of their elemental pool (one year for each point). At this point, this is a pretty dense stage of the character creation, as the players are not familiar with the world. As they spend more time in the world, become more familiar with the system and the narrative, the entire process will speed up dramatically.
Final Thoughts
Now, this is not how I would require players to design character using the Honeycomb Engine, although it would certainly be possible. I imagine that once my current players have gone through this process a time or two, I may even allow them to decide on a target character and set its elemental levels themselves… maybe. It occurs to me that this is an ideal character creation process for people who are completely unfamiliar with the narrative environment they’re about to enter, much less the particulars of the system itself. We’ll see how willing people are to participate in this sort of system once they have a better handle on the end results of the character creation process. Although I can think of one player in particular who might have a lot of fun trying to reverse engineer the process. Of course, getting authorization to return to the Tawak’sigh might be difficult if you keep failing your missions due to suicide!
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