The Northern Empire: An Alternate Setting

[Thanqol]

Commentary: Memory Orbs

I love memory orbs. They're an inspired narrative invention. Unfortunately, while they're amazing writers tools for a novel-style story, they're poor tools to have in an at-the-table roleplaying experience. Due to the lack of interactiveness, the GM basically narrates some box text and then people move on.

The key to achieve the same narrative result (echoes of the past in the modern day) in a different medium is to focus on a different part of the memory orbs; rather than focusing on the memory itself, we need to look at the consequences of those memories, and the decisions of the characters who start to define their lives by those memories.

I believe tabletop games are about decisions. Tactical, strategic, moral, personal. Bringing memory orbs into that cycle of decision-making makes them perfectly relevant, which makes them excellent tools for a GM to have.

[Godna]

I realize since this place never fell. It likely still uses Bits for it's economy.

[Thanqol]

I realize since this place never fell. It likely still uses Bits for it's economy.

Oh, good point, I didn't consider that.

As an economist, trying to predict the price/cost ramifications of a market run by a single all-powerful dictator in war footing under the heels of multiple criminal gangs with the only major foreign trading option being a hostile foreign republic is challenging. I scarcely want to get into bizarre inflation and deflation issues that occur when, say, a pre-War bank is looted and a fresh infusion of new money is brought into the relatively small economy.

My honest opinion is that drugs become the international post-apocalyptic currency of choice because they're lightweight, they've got commodity value and there's a stable market of buyers who prize them highly. Puts monetary policy in the hands of the drug dealers, which winds up with some very wealthy zebras. Only problem is the high potential for counterfeiting.

[Thanqol]

Hazard Sites and the Belt

One might be excused for thinking that it might be hard enough to reach the Crystal Empire. After you've walked hundreds of miles through snows and mountains, crossing hostile Republic territory, surviving the worst the Waste can throw at you, you might think you've earned a break. But then you reach the Belt and the Wasteland spits in your eye one last time.

When Shining Armour created his great Shield, and the Megaspells crashed against it, all those explosions, necromancy, blight and radiation didn't just go away. A two mile long, half-mile deep crater ring surrounded the Capital on all sides. While the fires once burned hundreds of feet high, thick with awful green magic, time gradually took the edge off the fire and now the crater merely burns with twenty foot high eternal necromantic pyres. This sequence of radioactive craters surrounds the Capital like a moat - and has actually become a huge strategic asset for the Empire. With the Belt wrapping the Capital, a frontal assault from the Republic of Bear is completely out of the question, meaning Shining Armour is free to cease maintaining his protective spell over the city and even leave the Capital to go campaigning through the wastes.

Rampaging monsters are more of a tactical challenge than a strategic concern.

There are plenty of Arctic races and species, and plenty of fringe suburbs that were outside the shield bubble when the bombs hit. Plenty of these died instantly, but plenty more become ghouls or mutants. The list of monsters is long; Warpwolves, Giant Rams, Bigfangs, so on, but ultimately these creatures are annoyances compared to just how horrifyingly nasty the belt's radiation is. The Belt has it's highs and lows, and no crossing is safe, but there are a two bridges, a few soft spots, or for the truly daring, the subterranean Diamond Dog tunnels.

CROSSING THE BELT

Option 1: HOT SPOT

Crossing the Belt at a radiation hot spot is basically the worst thing you can do to your body. The only possible reason to do it is because you've got an army chasing you - but if you need a way out of that one, then even Sombra won't follow you across a Hot Spot. Crossing at a Hot Spot at full gallop gives a pony 800+20d10 Radiation (modified by radiation resistance as usual).

Option 2: DARK SPOT

The less fucking suicidal course is to chart out a Dark Spot. There are plenty of these, but since radiation is invisible to the naked eye there's basically no way to tell a Dark Spot. In fact, it's distressingly frequent to find what seems like a mildly radioactive part of the Belt, begin a crossing, and then encounter a horrifying radiation spike with all the same effects as a Hot Spot.

To find a Dark Spot, you either need to succeed a luck check with a -5 penalty, get a local guide (either HREC or a friendly ghoul), or have a really good and recent map of the region - Dark Spots tend to move as the wind and water changes. Crossing a Dark Spot is still fucking awful, and can cost a pony 400+10d10 Radiation. You still want to see a doctor afterwards.

Option 3: POPPY BRIDGE

When the Emperor goes marching, it doesn't do for him to have his entire army die of radiation poisoning. As soon as he lowered the shield, his first assigned task to the Empire's loyal ponies was the construction of the Poppy Bridge. A magnificent construction of metal and lead, magically warded against radiation and dotted with pillboxes, anti-aircraft guns, and banks of robotic defences, nobody gets across the Poppy Bridge without the Emperor's say-so.

The Republic of Bear tried once. It was the greatest military defeat in their history.

Despite it's construction, the Bridge is still built over a highly irradiated site and the casing isn't perfect. The interior areas are radiation free, but it's rare to see a pony on patrol who isn't wearing power armour or radiation gear on deck.

Crossing Poppy Bridge at a brisk walk only adds about 50+1d10 rads to a pony without protection. There's a little stall on either side of the bridge that sells Rad-X, Rad-Away or does Radiation Suit rentals. There is also a toll of 100 caps per pony, 200 per non-pony and 500 per cart paid to the Imperial Treasury for crossing in either direction.

Option 4: SHAMBLES BRIDGE

Shambles Bridge is how the Republic of Bear sneaks infiltrators into the Capital. It's not a permanent fixture - it's an armoured vehicle with an extendible bridge ramp that can extend across the Belt. Running across open-air exposed a hazard site like the Belt on the Shambles Bridge is not safe, but it is safer than taking your chances on the dirt. Crossing on the Shambles Bridge costs about 200+5d10 rads.

Shambles Bridge is a secret, and only open to professional Republican soldiers. It is only deployed at night, and stashed in a cave between deployments.

Option 5: THE DIAMOND MINES

If all of these prospects sound awful, then you can try going through the tunnels underneath the Belt. These tunnels are occupied by Hellhounds, monsters, and feral ghouls, and whatever other deranged monsters fill the Game Master's imagination.

There aren't many good reasons to take this path. It's more dangerous and it's not even much safer in terms of radiation poisoning, with the tainted groundwater melting through the cave walls. But if you want to cross the Belt while avoiding everyone's notice, such as if the Enclave is patrolling the sky above the Empire, or you've got hostiles waiting for you on the other side, you might just feel cornered enough to try the Mines.

Option 6: BYPASS

Ponies aren't limited by where four hooves can take you. An advanced casting of Teleportation can carry you across the Belt, as can flight. However to bypass the radiation of the Belt you need to go way up into the sky, almost near the cloud layer, which puts you on the aerial watch lists of both the Enclave and the Crystal Empire Air Force.

The CEAF doesn't begrudge ponies flying into the Empire, and it doesn't have the horsepower to police every incoming flight. However, it makes an exception for anyone with an areal vehicle or power armour. Such ponies are flagged down and, if they co-operate, are detained for twelve hours and asked some polite questions over coffee at the Jousting Ring. The CEAF customs officers have a really good ear for Enclave accents and habits, but if it's just some wastelander pony with salvaged armour, well - there's no law against that.

*

Hazard Sites

MONOLITH DISPOSAL SITE #4

There are a fair few Monolith disposal locations; enormous pits in the ground where Sombra's corrupting influences are dumped. Disposal Site #1 was set up during the early days of the Corruption and was utterly insufficient given the spread and scale of the problem. Disposal Site #2 was an emergency setup to deal with the overflow, piles of tainted crystals piled up in the Equestrian Games Stadium until the entire building was a deep Red Zone. Disposal Site #2 was an unmitigated disaster because the Corruption overflowed into the surrounding neighbourhood, there were a rash of Manifestations, the entire city region fell into a Yellow Zone and HREC came to realise how serious this problem was going to be.

Disposal Site #3 was another temporary site, this one inside the Belt. HREC ponies dumped Monoliths inside the radiation fields on the premise that it wasn't like the Belt was going to get any more dangerous. Disposal Site 3 was probably the most effective disposal site HREC had - the Belt was so lethal that nopony got close enough to worry about the corruption, and King Sombra and his lackeys have no special immunity to radiation. However, HREC couldn't afford to keep pumping radiation supplies to maintain it.

And so they set up Disposal Site #4 - a vast ringed pit, gouged deep into the earth, piled deep with Monoliths. Attached to the pit is a stripping factory that works carving monoliths into small, managable sizes for use in weapons and armour design. Disposal Site 4 is a death trap, guarded by robots and power-armoured HREC elites. It's professionally run and organised, and committed not to take more material than it can safely dispose of.

However, Disposal Site #4 deals with more than just Monoliths. It keeps relics of Sombra, dangerous creatures, and a vast array of terrible and unethical HREC experiments within it's depths. Prisoners of all races, Manifestations, and stranger things are all kept in the dungeons and experimented on as part of the ongoing effort to find a way to kill Sombra once and for all. Disposal Site #4 also adjoins the HREC Headquarters - an old Stable, requisitioned, cleared and staffed entirely by HREC personnel. Stable 63, during it's operation, was designed as an experiment in Unicorn Supremacy, similar to Red-Eyes' Earth Pony-themed Stable, and as a happy result comes well stocked with texts on arcane spell theory.

A sub-level of Stable 63 contains texts relating to Megaspell theory, and several Megaspell casting chambers. These can only be opened with the Overmare's password, much to HREC's frustration. This password was lost to the world when the Stable opened and unicorns dispersed amongst the Crystal Empire, and despite endless searching HREC has been unable to find whoever took it. HREC would dearly love to be able to cast a Megaspell or two - it believes that if the sub-level were open it would be able to launch a Megaspell offensive directly on Sombra's realm.

If none living remember, though, a central StableTec hub would have backup passwords. Or alternatively, qualified StableTec scientists, such as one of the elder bears in the Republic, might know of override codes.

[Godna]

Only problem is the high potential for counterfeiting.

Which in turn drives up the cost and value of the ingredients to drugs and devalues drugs made with readily available materials. Which is definitely workable a pain in the flank to implement but a fascinating thing to consider. A bullet economy would be much easier to implement and makes sense for much the same reason while adding difficulty to counterfitting as well as adding potential for different regions favoring different currency. Such a places near by military surplus favoring 5.56 and places with lots of small arms favoring such.


Anyway perhaps another solution might be for at least this economy would be a trade or debt based economy where services are bartered for each other and values are brokered in those terms. Since favor with important ponies has definite notable value.

Hazard Sites and the Belt

Wouldn't Teleportation or Flight be an option for those that have such options available to them?

[Thanqol]

Which in turn drives up the cost and value of the ingredients to drugs and devalues drugs made with readily available materials. Which is definitely workable a pain in the flank to implement but a fascinating thing to consider. A bullet economy would be much easier to implement and makes sense for much the same reason while adding difficulty to counterfitting as well as adding potential for different regions favoring different currency. Such a places near by military surplus favoring 5.56 and places with lots of small arms favoring such.

Metro 2033: Fallout is optimistic and naive!

Wouldn't Teleportation or Flight be an option for those that have such options available to them?

Teleportation at Advanced level, yeah sure - you're burning like 90 Strain to carry a party of 6 across and that's a big deal with Sombra's curse. Flight is more viable but puts you on the air defence radar; I should make a note of that.

[TyrannisUmbra]

Those numbers for radiation should really be listed in rads/second. Considering a turn is 6 seconds long, an average sprint speed of 15 yds/15AP, 70AP/turn, and the belt being 2 miles wide, a player with 5 END/AGI will take 352 seconds to /sprint/ across the belt with no distractions or interruptions. Walking takes twice that time. Considering the party would move at the pace of the slowest player, times can be expected to be longer when moving as a group. With an average of 850 rads for a hotspot, 450 for a darkspot, 55 for Poppy Bridge, 225 for Shambles, the rads per second should be roughly... 2.4, 1.3, 0.15, 0.6 respectively. Which is... pretty low for a radiation field, but it /is/ 2 miles across.

Which means lethal times would be: 416, 770, 6667, 1667 seconds respectively. Even running across a hotspot for a slower character would be lethal, walking across a dark spot would be lethal for all but the fastest characters, you could hang out on Poppy Bridge for about an hour and 45 minutes before you died (Though you'd get sick long before that), and make sure you don't stop to dawdle on Shambles, because roughly 25 mins is your limit there~

[Godna]

Teleportation at Advanced level, yeah sure - you're burning like 90 Strain to carry a party of 6 across and that's a big deal with Sombra's curse. Flight is more viable but puts you on the air defence radar; I should make a note of that.

True enough, but I'm sure there would be some inscrupulous Unicorns willing to sell entry into the city under the counter. To avoid notice. Hell might even be possible for them to make a living of it settling outside the City or in places (relatively)free of Corruption at least...might be a solution for a PURE to do it as well...

[Viewing_Glass]

Teleportation at Advanced level, yeah sure - you're burning like 90 Strain to carry a party of 6 across and that's a big deal with Sombra's curse. Flight is more viable but puts you on the air defence radar; I should make a note of that.

Actually, having teleported a bunch of ponies with advanced teleport, its a MUCH higher cost than 90. Even Zen casting every teleport and having a 5 versatility, you are looking at a strain cost of 150. If you only have a versatility of 4, that increases the cost to 190 Strain.

[TyrannisUmbra]

Teleportation at Advanced level, yeah sure - you're burning like 90 Strain to carry a party of 6 across and that's a big deal with Sombra's curse. Flight is more viable but puts you on the air defence radar; I should make a note of that.

Actually, having teleported a bunch of ponies with advanced teleport, its a MUCH higher cost than 90. Even Zen casting every teleport and having a 5 versatility, you are looking at a strain cost of 150. If you only have a versatility of 4, that increases the cost to 190 Strain.

All the more reason to charge a premium!