FWIW, “magister” is also used in Pathfinder to refer to a head wizard/court wizard type, particularly in their Kingmaker Adventure Path.
Well then, in light of the valid points raised by @The_Justifier and @Jeysie, I will concede that Magister could be an accurate title for this Dawn. However, my mind remains unchanged, as I simply personally prefer to call her Magus Dawn.
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In that case I hereby copyright my own original character, Magister Swan, plz no steal kthx.
a humble suggestion about Ra when you get to him
In standard "modern’ continuity, he is a little out of place being an Avatar of an ancient god.
In a world with wizards, where Thorathia and Wagner base are across the sea, I would suggest Ra gets his power from Aliens from the stars with fantastic technology
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Well, @Sea-Envy, I actually did already get to Ra. He was in the Prime Wardens/Warriors Prime post (third paragraph).
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Graham was the Lord of the House of Pike, and also the chairman of the City of Rooks’ premier Alchemists’ Guild. But, unknown to all but a select few, Lord Pike was also the boss of the city’s largest Thieves’ Guild, which was known simply as “The Guild.” The Guild controlled all crime in the city. The organization’s ranks include corrupt guards, assassins, burglars, sellswords, and informants. Lord Pike himself is a skilled unarmed-combatant. And, unknown to everyone except his right-hand aid, Pike is also an immortal, undead being.
Sophia was Lord Pike’s right-hand assistant and operative. In her youth, she was a student at Sifu Robert’s martial arts dojo, where she learned to become a skilled martial artist, as well as a practitioner of her sensei’s signature elemental styles, before betraying her master to the Guild and slaying all of her fellow students.
Randy was an infamous smuggler who operated in the subterranean catacombs underneath the City of Rooks. But, due to the amount of time that he spent in those ancient tunnels, he was slowly warped by the arcane and mysterious energies that permeated that primeval realm. He was transformed into a monstrous beast: the first Were-Rat. However, his condition only afflicted him while he was in darkness. Nonetheless, he came to the surface during the dark of night, to terrorise the inhabitants of the city.
Jack the Mad was a ruthless killer, but he was eventually apprehended by the City Watch and sentenced to execution. However, the Pike Alchemists’ Guild’s corrupt city officials arranged for Jack to instead become a test subject for their less ethical experimentations. Jack was pumped full of magical elixirs that had killed all other test subjects, but he thrived. He escaped to once again plague the city. But now, he had developed an appetite for magic of all kinds. Whenever he had a chance, he devoured arcane elixirs, drained the energy from magical relics, and even absorbed the magical power of mages.
Gabrielle was part of a family of nomads. But after a disastrous end to a courtship, she decided to run away, taking her family’s ancestral artefact with her. She shortly discovered that she could use said talisman to perform luck magic, and twist the strings of Fate itself. She could cast hexes and banes upon others, while granting herself and her allies blessings of good luck. She soon found work as a mercenary-mage.
The Terror Tower was a gigantic siege machine that mysteriously appeared in the countryside one day and began destroying it. Luckily, though, the machine was defeated by some chivalrous heroes, although its operators got away without being questioned. After the tower’s defeat, the Order of Revocation offered their services to clean up its destruction. But unbeknownst to anyone, the Order themself had constructed the mecha-machine, so that while they were “restoring the land,” they could really harvest the arcane crystals that had been buried underneath the countryside.
Sir Ansel was a famous actor who was renowned for his breathtaking performances in plays and theatres. But acting did not suffice to satisfy his ego, so he began hunting magical creatures. However, that, as well, was not enough for him. Ansel went to the Order of Revocation, and had an enchantment placed upon him which allowed him to set ablaze anything he could touch. Armed with this magic, Ansel set his sights on the one challenge worthy of him: the champions who defended the Alliance of Kingdoms, especially the savage Aata.
On the plus side, “The” Guild sounds way better than “The” Organization. I get what C&A were going for with that name, but it has absolutely never worked for me. The cover of the Sentinel Tactics expansion illustrated it best; swapping “The Guild” in on that cover would instantly make it way more intimidating.
Other than that, though, Rook City has a rough transition to try and fit into a medieval setting. Points for effort, and some of these are probably decent, but my brain just kind of slides right off them the second I look, just because of how obvious the genre mismatch is.
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The City of Rooks makes me think of what you’d get if you had Ankh-Morpork without Vimes or Vetinari. (Or rather, evil versions thereof.)
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That’s a great comparison! : )
I see Carl the Wolf King - I mean, Apex - isn’t on this list. I take it’s because there’s not much practical difference between this version and the main timeline?
(Likewise for Nightmist & Alpha, I imagine)
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And Gloomweaver! He’s kind of a given to fit right in this setting.
Also, Allcastle/Terror Tower team-up plz!
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Gloomweaver is actually surprisingly out of place in a fantasy setting; all the pieces work, but the general vibe of a Louisiana-style bayou voudoun cult just feels like it should exist as a deliberate anachronism among the malcontents of the modern era. I would suggest refluffing him as more of a lich-king type, substituting “swamp” for “ice” as his milieu, with open servants rather than a cult, and renaming the Relics to Phylacteries or something.
Apex, on the other hand, yeah not much needs to change. Alpha will take some thought though, as “reporters” weren’t really a thing in the middle ages. A royal herald or town crier is about as close as you can get.
Correct on all accounts.
Well, if I ever decide to tell any stories in this setting, I’ll keep that in mind. ; )
I respectfully disagree. Just replace bayou and voodoo with swamp and dark magic, and Gloomy would work just fine. Sure, he’s less unique in a more magical setting, but there’s no way around that. And changing him into a lich king actually removes his main defining feature: that he is practically omnipotent, but is stuck in another realm.
Agreed. Hmm . . . I’d probably go with an inquisitor or a scrivener with her, depending on what I wanted to emphasize. I suppose both might work?
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I would suggest making Gloomweaver a living mortal wizard.
Who would then “comes back” as a lich in the information age future of this world just like the evil wizard(s) from Marvel Connan/Red Sonja comics that showed up to fight Marvel superheroes.
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That concept has never really worked for me (at least not in EE; the new version seems a little closer. If Gloomweaver is in another dimension, then why can Legacy punch him? Even on Advanced he’s still vulnerable to nine of the eleven damage types. Maybe the idea of a non-target villain hadn’t yet occurred to C&A when he was designed (particularly given that he was a guest character from another designer), but if he’s meant to not be here until summoned, then it seems obvious he ought to work like Miss Information or Kaargra Warfang. Instead, with the mechanics he has, it fits for him to just be some wizard looking for ultimate power.
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Hmm . . . interesting, I suppose. My concern is that it still leaves him rather bland in the medievalesque age. Additionally, I don’t think that this timeline will ever actually get an information age. In my mind, this world is much more attuned to magic than to science and technology, so the closest it would get is perhaps some sort of magitech Eberron-esque setting.
You do have a point. However (if I may borrow your schtick for a brief moment) I think that I could justify it. The GloomWeaver HP pool could represent lots of other things, like the enchanted idol that it does in DE, for instance. Or it could be a portal or altar that the heroes have to destroy. Or, Gloomy could be only partially manifesting on the Prime Material Plane — half here, but also half still in the Realm of Discord.
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No, see, what you need to do is fight the Terror Tower in the Ruins of Allcastle environment, with your lead hero being King Aldred (who is actually an enchanted suit of armor which originally sat on the throne at the Allcastle’s heart, but came to life and believed itself to be King Aldred reborn after the Castle’s original defeat).
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You know, I said it in this thread but I wouldn’t mind hearing a canon story of something like the Terrorform being corrupted by Omnitron code or controlled by Chokepoint. I don’t know if there was opportunity for either of those to happen. Really just any story with the Terrorform at this point.
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I like the concept, but I’m not so sure about the name.
If my memory is serving me correctly, the Terrorform debuted in the ‘00s (or maybe the ‘10s?), which I believe is when Omnitron-IV and X/U are the only active versions, but I think that Chokepoint could work.
Well we can’t exactly call him Allcastle-X, now can we? Time travel in general is very off-theme for a fantasy setting, so rather than having the hero associated with the Allcastle be an evolved future version of it, it is instead the magical “heart” of the castle, which was initially expected to rule the kingdom (“if King Arthur did not exist, we would have had to invent him”). In fact, it would make a lot of sense to reverse the causality behind King Aldred’s guilt, and say that the Allcastle didn’t rise and go on its rampage until after the “golem” who sat on its control throne, and was crafted by the Aldred Order wizards for the purpose but was never intended to be sentient, woke up and went off by itself, leaving the Allcastle as essentially a hungry beast with no conscience to guide it. The animate armor, with its false memories of being a flesh-and-blood king named Aldred, wandered like Frankenstein’s monster in the wilderness, but eventually learned of the Allcastle’s attacks and went back to stop it. When he sat on the throne again, however, he had changed and grown so much that he could no longer fully control the castle, and could only disable it for long enough that it could be destroyed, and him along with it. Alas, the heroes didn’t fully understand how the wizards had designed it to rebuild itself; the ruins were thought haunted for a while, but eventually the castle rose again, stronger than ever, having absorbed much of the King’s mind. Only an expert golem-crafter could recover the shattered armor from the ruin site and rebuild King Aldred, so he could again go and confront his other half.
I think that’s the best I can do to tie together Omnitron, Cosmotron, O-X, O-U, and O-4 without using any science fiction tropes.
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