The RPG Homebrew Extravanganza Thread

[Quirk]

Actually, I'm unsure of how much I like virches at all, because I don't see that they'd get much play. Each one is a self-contained setting, so there's no point running a campaign solely in one, and it doesn't seem like something a party could stumble into in a non-contrived way.

Yeah. Going to have to re-evaluate those.

I think the biggest problem at the end of the timeline is that the distances are simply too great. There are such enormous voids of time and space between everything that interaction (and thus delicious, meaty crossoveryness) is impossible. Metroid and Wakfu and TTGL are so far apart that they may as well be operating in their own universes. I'd suggest crunching down the time and space drastically. Also, In my opinion, when you get millennia away from the present day, things can start getting weird and less relateable

Over the past few days I've completely re-written everything from 10k on. Era 7 (old Era 7 was deleted) now looks like this:

show spoiler

hide spoiler

7th Era – The Empire

c. 10000 – The Reapers arrive from dark space after considerable delay and begin their sweep of the galaxy. However, given the loss of the Citadel and the near complete destruction of the Mass Relay system thousands of years earlier, the effort is not nearly as swift or efficient as it had been in the past.

10168 – The Space Pirate hierarchy collapses under the Reaper assault. Within three years all of the pirate homeworlds have been harvested.

10275 – The Federation leadership is killed during the fall of Capitolia. With the loss of the bureaucracy, the Federation falls into shambles.

10339 – Serena Butler rallies the remaining worlds capable of fighting the Reapers under her banner and religious fervor. The Bene Tleilax engineer the Orks and join them to her cause. The Butlerian Jihad against the Reapers begins.

10432 – The Butlerian Jihad ends with the Battle of Corrin, where the Great Reaper Harbinger was finally destroyed. House Corrino gains the throne, crowning Haddar Corrino the Great as Padishah Emperor. An empire wide ban on “thinking machines” and other high technology is enacted. The galaxy is brought to a period of peace, if also a period of technological and cultural stagnation.

The remaining Reapers, denied their most important recourse, are forced into hibernation on tomb worlds scattered across the galaxy.

10540 – The Spacing Guild is founded, forming a monopoly on space travel.

c. 11000 – Arrakis is discovered, along with the spice mélange. The Spice revolutionizes space travel, as it allows individuals saturated with it to navigate slipspace with accuracy comparable to pre-Jihad navigation systems.

20733 – Dune – The planet of Arrakis passes from the possession of House Harkonnen to that of House Atriedes, in a ploy to eliminate the Atriedes family. The Fremen natives of Arrakis rebel against the Empire, killing Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV and placing their messiah figure Muad’dib (Paul Atriedes) on the throne.

20759 – Leto II, son of Paul Atriedes, ascends to the throne, declaring himself God-Emperor.

24268 – God-Emperor of Dune - Emperor Leto II is killed in an assassination plot of his own design. The Empire, left without a leader, is stricken by famine, chaos and a massive diaspora.

c. 24270 - The Eliatropes flee the starving Empire in their generation ship Zinit. They travel from planet to planet in a bid to escape the chaos, draining those worlds of their spiral energy to power their ship’s primitive spiral drive, for the next thousand years.

c. 25300 - Islands of Wakfu - The Eliatropes settle the planet that will eventually be known as Duodecon, the World of Twelve. Here they forge an alliance with the native Dragons (a neogenic clade that had arrived on the planet ages ago), establishing a council containing six members of each species, with pairs bonded at birth, and reincarnated (via mental backup) through their eggs. This civilization collapses following an attack by the Anti-Spiral Orgonax, allied with a traitor on the Council and reinforced by the denizens of a planet drained by the Eliatropes for power centuries prior. The eggs of the Council survive as artifacts of great power.

25740 – The Lost Ones of the Scattering return to the handful of worlds that could still rightfully be called the Empire. Among them is Lord Genome, an individual claiming to be the true God-Emperor of mankind. Using the Honored Matres and ghola legions he brought with him, Genome quickly claims the remnant of the Old Empire, and transforms it into the Imperium of Man. He takes an uninhabited garden world as his seat of power, naming it Holy Terra for the long-lost Earth of old, and builds the great fortress-city of Teppelin. The Imperial Remnant is transformed into a military and industrial powerhouse over the course of the next two millennia.

c. 28000 – The Great Crusade – With his preparations finally complete, Lord Genome mobilizes a massive effort to retake the shattered Empire with the help of his twenty Primarch sons and their legions of Spiral Knights. Without access to the Spice, Genome’s fleet instead makes use of the first S1 Spiral Drives, giving him a massive advantage in the campaigns to come. The Crusade will not only eventually retake almost the entirety of the Old Empire, but it will push the Imperium’s borders even further, to worlds that had not been contacted since before the War and thousands of never-before-found worlds.

c. 30000 – The Horus Heresy – With the Great Crusade drawing to a close, the Primarch Horus is led astray by the whisperings of An’srew. Horus manages to turn at least seven other primarchs to Chaos, and then begins a strike against the Emperor. Thousands of worlds are shattered over seven years of civil war before the Traitor Legions are finally at Genome’s doorstep above Holy Terra. Watching the battle from the bridge of the mighty Cathedral Terra, Genome is approached by the Anti-Spiral King, the most powerful and last of his kind. The King reveals to Genome the Spiral Nemesis: that the universe will be destroyed by uncontrolled spiral energy, regardless of where it has its origins in Chaos or the Imperium’s own Spiral Engines. Genome, driven half-mad by the revelation, slaughters both his own forces and those of Horus before killing his favored son. Genome is greatly wounded and only half alive, but manages to make his way back to the Golden Throne of Teppelin. The throne sustains him as the Great Dark Age begins.

c. 35000 – A human civilian fleet thrown off-course by the Warp finds and settles the World of Twelve. Shortly thereafter, a pantheon of twelve transhuman “gods” arises, and sets about reforming the World of Twelve according to their designs. Each “god” modifies their human followers in their own likeness, forming the Twelve Clades.

c. 35800 - The World of Twelve suffers a cataclysmic flood after a massive meteor impact. A watchmaker named Noximillien recovers an ancient Eliatrope artifact, and is driven to madness by the object. He vows to use it to reverse time and save his drowned family.

c. 36000 - Wakfu - The Eliatrope King and his Dragon brother are reborn. Noximillien completes his plan after draining several nearby civilizations and races of their spiral energy to amass power, but is only able to rewind time by twenty minutes, and is defeated by the reincarnated King.

c. 40000 – Warhammer 40k – In the grim darkness of the forty-first millennium, there is only war. Lord Genome still sits half-alive on the Golden Throne at Teppelin while his empire rots around him, a shadow of the glory it once was. The Imperium is entrenched in endless wars with the Children of Eden, the Orks, the Tau, the Fanal Ternians, the Necrons, the Tyranids, and Chaos.

41250 – Every Necron tomb world in the galaxy wakes simultaneously with the arrival of the Anti-Spiral C’tan. The Deathwatch is instituted, and all sapient races are either purged or reduced to primitivism within ten years.

c.50000 - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – Simon the Digger, a young boy living in one of the many primitive villages under the surface of Holy Terra, stumbles across a functional Crusade-era ganmen. His close friend, Kamina of Jeeha, promptly recruits Simon and his machine to his gang, the Dai Gurren Dan.

Need to write more here.

With Dai Gurren Dan now under Simon’s leadership, the rebellion grows in strength exponentially, eventually defeating the Four Heavenly Generals and making a surprise attack against Teppelin itself. Simon confronts and defeats Lord Genome.

Need to write more here.

Dai Gurren Dan plunges headfirst into the Warp, and it is there that they defeat not only the Chaos Gods, but the Anti-Spiral King.

I'm considering that the Eliatropes end up placing a sort of lock on the Necrons, keeping them from rising for quite some time. They still could use some more tying in.

I think we should also try to get the beginning end of the setting a bit more filled out too, because I'd love to play in a historical setting stuffed full of crossover stuff. For that, the "x histroical figure was actually []y[/i]" format works well, but this is where the setting's focus on sci-fi really hurts - no cool nonhumans and only anti-spirals and scips to cause shenanigans.

Yeah, beginning needs a lot. I'm not big on historical fiction, so hit me with what you got.

Potential meat: Mario, fuck it lets add some nonhumans anyways, "gods" and their shenanigans, wandering doctors of the bizzare (Mushishi, etc.), some other major "setting element" (on the level of Pokemon, smaller than the Foundation or alchemy), more alchemy shenanigans

Okay, I see a pretty good possibility for a new (technically expanded) setting element: We do have John Dies at the End in there, so having all these weird things that make no sense would just be a matter of seeing them. In JDaTE, they have to take the Sauce to see it. Maybe we can have a lesser form of it just be something you're born with?

The only alchemy shenanigans I have off the top of my head are 1) Ben Franklin was an alchemist and 2) Hitler had the mannequin army from FMA.

Though for untapped resources in the pre-modern period, we still have Assassin's Creed, which I have done little with, and some bits and pieces of the Cthulhu Mythos.

There's also the question of how much "window dressing" you want - setting that is interesting and builds history/versimlitude that you couldn't really run anything in. The "here be dragons" on the edge of the map, as it were.

I'm already planning adding notes to that effect for later eras. Also, I'm planning that each era is going to have a list of things that could be added as the DM wishes.

EDIT: Aha! Abdul Al-Hazred writes the Necronomicon and fathers circle-based alchemy in 858.

[thunderheadSeeker]

I noticed that Doctor Who/Doctor Whooves were elaborated on a bit before the document was locked, but my main problem was having the Doctor and Doctor Whooves as the same character and only having Derpy as a companion. I can't really think of how to really integrate Doctor Who into the timeline (too many important things from the series and other fun issues there), but that would add all sorts of opportunities (Daleks, Time Lords, Gallifrey, etc...). Also, for the actual Doctor, any regeneration so far should be usable, as should any of the companions. Also, Whooves and Derpy should be the result of some shadowy project (Bei Fong, Crockercorp, Torchwood (if Doctor Who gets seriously added)...)

[Quirk]

I noticed that Doctor Who/Doctor Whooves were elaborated on a bit before the document was locked, but my main problem was having the Doctor and Doctor Whooves as the same character and only having Derpy as a companion. I can't really think of how to really integrate Doctor Who into the timeline (too many important things from the series and other fun issues there), but that would add all sorts of opportunities (Daleks, Time Lords, Gallifrey, etc...). Also, for the actual Doctor, any regeneration so far should be usable, as should any of the companions. Also, Whooves and Derpy should be the result of some shadowy project (Bei Fong, Crockercorp, Torchwood (if Doctor Who gets seriously added)...)

The Doctor and Derpy are basically in there as a joke. Nothing from the rest of the universe was planned to go in, he was just there for shenanigans. The incarnation was also supposed to be random: he could appear as Whooves, Doc 1, Doc 11, and Human Derpy at different times all within the same campaign.

I did figure out a plan for Era 5. It'll be cut down to the most major events, and then a list of sources for inspiration will be put in the Things of Note section. Major events I have so far are:

Dissolution of the Covenant Writ of Union
The SEEDS Project and Proxy Program start, eventually turn into large-scale terraforming and a sort of core worlds.
Re-establishment of an interstellar communication network. (The ComHub)
Re-establishment of major trade routes (The Bones)
Contact with the To'uh'l
Contact with the Alternians

[Wiwaxia]

Over the past few days I've completely re-written everything from 10k on. Era 7 (old Era 7 was deleted) now looks like this:

show spoiler

hide spoiler

7th Era – The Empire

c. 10000 – The Reapers arrive from dark space after considerable delay and begin their sweep of the galaxy. However, given the loss of the Citadel and the near complete destruction of the Mass Relay system thousands of years earlier, the effort is not nearly as swift or efficient as it had been in the past.

10168 – The Space Pirate hierarchy collapses under the Reaper assault. Within three years all of the pirate homeworlds have been harvested.

10275 – The Federation leadership is killed during the fall of Capitolia. With the loss of the bureaucracy, the Federation falls into shambles.

10339 – Serena Butler rallies the remaining worlds capable of fighting the Reapers under her banner and religious fervor. The Bene Tleilax engineer the Orks and join them to her cause. The Butlerian Jihad against the Reapers begins.

10432 – The Butlerian Jihad ends with the Battle of Corrin, where the Great Reaper Harbinger was finally destroyed. House Corrino gains the throne, crowning Haddar Corrino the Great as Padishah Emperor. An empire wide ban on “thinking machines” and other high technology is enacted. The galaxy is brought to a period of peace, if also a period of technological and cultural stagnation.

The remaining Reapers, denied their most important recourse, are forced into hibernation on tomb worlds scattered across the galaxy.

10540 – The Spacing Guild is founded, forming a monopoly on space travel.

c. 11000 – Arrakis is discovered, along with the spice mélange. The Spice revolutionizes space travel, as it allows individuals saturated with it to navigate slipspace with accuracy comparable to pre-Jihad navigation systems.

20733 – Dune – The planet of Arrakis passes from the possession of House Harkonnen to that of House Atriedes, in a ploy to eliminate the Atriedes family. The Fremen natives of Arrakis rebel against the Empire, killing Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV and placing their messiah figure Muad’dib (Paul Atriedes) on the throne.

20759 – Leto II, son of Paul Atriedes, ascends to the throne, declaring himself God-Emperor.

24268 – God-Emperor of Dune - Emperor Leto II is killed in an assassination plot of his own design. The Empire, left without a leader, is stricken by famine, chaos and a massive diaspora.

c. 24270 - The Eliatropes flee the starving Empire in their generation ship Zinit. They travel from planet to planet in a bid to escape the chaos, draining those worlds of their spiral energy to power their ship’s primitive spiral drive, for the next thousand years.

c. 25300 - Islands of Wakfu - The Eliatropes settle the planet that will eventually be known as Duodecon, the World of Twelve. Here they forge an alliance with the native Dragons (a neogenic clade that had arrived on the planet ages ago), establishing a council containing six members of each species, with pairs bonded at birth, and reincarnated (via mental backup) through their eggs. This civilization collapses following an attack by the Anti-Spiral Orgonax, allied with a traitor on the Council and reinforced by the denizens of a planet drained by the Eliatropes for power centuries prior. The eggs of the Council survive as artifacts of great power.

25740 – The Lost Ones of the Scattering return to the handful of worlds that could still rightfully be called the Empire. Among them is Lord Genome, an individual claiming to be the true God-Emperor of mankind. Using the Honored Matres and ghola legions he brought with him, Genome quickly claims the remnant of the Old Empire, and transforms it into the Imperium of Man. He takes an uninhabited garden world as his seat of power, naming it Holy Terra for the long-lost Earth of old, and builds the great fortress-city of Teppelin. The Imperial Remnant is transformed into a military and industrial powerhouse over the course of the next two millennia.

c. 28000 – The Great Crusade – With his preparations finally complete, Lord Genome mobilizes a massive effort to retake the shattered Empire with the help of his twenty Primarch sons and their legions of Spiral Knights. Without access to the Spice, Genome’s fleet instead makes use of the first S1 Spiral Drives, giving him a massive advantage in the campaigns to come. The Crusade will not only eventually retake almost the entirety of the Old Empire, but it will push the Imperium’s borders even further, to worlds that had not been contacted since before the War and thousands of never-before-found worlds.

c. 30000 – The Horus Heresy – With the Great Crusade drawing to a close, the Primarch Horus is led astray by the whisperings of An’srew. Horus manages to turn at least seven other primarchs to Chaos, and then begins a strike against the Emperor. Thousands of worlds are shattered over seven years of civil war before the Traitor Legions are finally at Genome’s doorstep above Holy Terra. Watching the battle from the bridge of the mighty Cathedral Terra, Genome is approached by the Anti-Spiral King, the most powerful and last of his kind. The King reveals to Genome the Spiral Nemesis: that the universe will be destroyed by uncontrolled spiral energy, regardless of where it has its origins in Chaos or the Imperium’s own Spiral Engines. Genome, driven half-mad by the revelation, slaughters both his own forces and those of Horus before killing his favored son. Genome is greatly wounded and only half alive, but manages to make his way back to the Golden Throne of Teppelin. The throne sustains him as the Great Dark Age begins.

c. 35000 – A human civilian fleet thrown off-course by the Warp finds and settles the World of Twelve. Shortly thereafter, a pantheon of twelve transhuman “gods” arises, and sets about reforming the World of Twelve according to their designs. Each “god” modifies their human followers in their own likeness, forming the Twelve Clades.

c. 35800 - The World of Twelve suffers a cataclysmic flood after a massive meteor impact. A watchmaker named Noximillien recovers an ancient Eliatrope artifact, and is driven to madness by the object. He vows to use it to reverse time and save his drowned family.

c. 36000 - Wakfu - The Eliatrope King and his Dragon brother are reborn. Noximillien completes his plan after draining several nearby civilizations and races of their spiral energy to amass power, but is only able to rewind time by twenty minutes, and is defeated by the reincarnated King.

c. 40000 – Warhammer 40k – In the grim darkness of the forty-first millennium, there is only war. Lord Genome still sits half-alive on the Golden Throne at Teppelin while his empire rots around him, a shadow of the glory it once was. The Imperium is entrenched in endless wars with the Children of Eden, the Orks, the Tau, the Fanal Ternians, the Necrons, the Tyranids, and Chaos.

41250 – Every Necron tomb world in the galaxy wakes simultaneously with the arrival of the Anti-Spiral C’tan. The Deathwatch is instituted, and all sapient races are either purged or reduced to primitivism within ten years.

c.50000 - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – Simon the Digger, a young boy living in one of the many primitive villages under the surface of Holy Terra, stumbles across a functional Crusade-era ganmen. His close friend, Kamina of Jeeha, promptly recruits Simon and his machine to his gang, the Dai Gurren Dan.

Need to write more here.

With Dai Gurren Dan now under Simon’s leadership, the rebellion grows in strength exponentially, eventually defeating the Four Heavenly Generals and making a surprise attack against Teppelin itself. Simon confronts and defeats Lord Genome.

Need to write more here.

Dai Gurren Dan plunges headfirst into the Warp, and it is there that they defeat not only the Chaos Gods, but the Anti-Spiral King.

I'm considering that the Eliatropes end up placing a sort of lock on the Necrons, keeping them from rising for quite some time. They still could use some more tying in.

@_@ wow.
That's much better.

For the Eliatropes, there's the entirety of Wakfu season 2, which I didn't have a chance to add, and which goes a long way towards tying them in.

WARNING! ACTUAL SPOILERS! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.

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When the Eliatropes were attacked, they managed to hide their children in a pocket dimension with the Eliacube (the same artifact Noximillen finds later), and imprison the traitor Qilby in a different pocket dimension. After the defeat of Nox, the resurrected King Yugo accidentally frees Qilby, who tries to free the Eliatrope children and take off in the Zinit (which would incidentally destroy the World of Twelve). The upshot of it is that Qilby is defeated and the Eliatropes return.

The Eliatropes could actually be the ones to wake up C’tan. After all, nothing says "spiral nemesis" quite like erasing twenty minutes of history universe-wide (yes, I know that's not how relativity works, shut up). Hell, they were a big enough threat that Orgonax wouldn't try to take them on alone (and eventually got vaporized by a single one).

Alternatively, if you move all the Eliatrope stuff up about a millenium, they could be potential allies to the Dai Gurren Dan, especially against Chaos and the Warp.

Yeah, beginning needs a lot. I'm not big on historical fiction, so hit me with what you got.
Okay, I see a pretty good possibility for a new (technically expanded) setting element: We do have John Dies at the End in there, so having all these weird things that make no sense would just be a matter of seeing them. In JDaTE, they have to take the Sauce to see it. Maybe we can have a lesser form of it just be something you're born with?

I... haven't actually read John Dies at the End yet. Can I get the 1 paragraph, minimum spoilers rundown of what exactly you're referring to?

Other ideas:
I stuck Madoka in there as kind a one-off, but we could make the Incubators and Puella Magi more of "a thing" in the pre-modern era.
Advantages: Grimdark magical girls, plot/campaign hooks, random historical figure tie-ins, covers you all the way back to Egypt
Disadvantages: Another form of psuedo-magic

Random uncontained SCPs. Prior to the establishment of the Foundation, you'd have a lot of frauds and magicians and cults running around with SCPs. If we go with your theory that looking for them makes more of them, then things like the Inquisition and Victorian Britain's penchant for collecting weird stuff from the colonies could lead to a lot of this. I'm thinking something like the book Kraken, with massive supernatural underworlds full of rival apocalyptic cults and "magic" mafia, with supernatural institutions that are too weak to keep a good hold on anything.
Advantages: did you not read the bit about massive supernatural underworlds?
Disadvantages: more psuedo-magic, risks playing out scips &c.

Steampunk
Advantages: Steampunk
Disadvantages: Steampunk, requires major timeline overhaul

Dream world leaking into real world (like Zimmy, who I mentioned earlier). Also faeries, bogeymen, &c.
Disadvantages: Yet more psuedo-magic (most good stuff for this time period is fantasy)

More characters from incompatible settings as political figures, like what you did with Avatar.


Tesla

The only alchemy shenanigans I have off the top of my head are 1) Ben Franklin was an alchemist and 2) Hitler had the mannequin army from FMA.

Though for untapped resources in the pre-modern period, we still have Assassin's Creed, which I have done little with, and some bits and pieces of the Cthulhu Mythos.

I like those, but I haven't got much more (other than a laundry list of real alchemists).

[Quirk]

Aha! Vunderbar! Now let's see...

Eliatropes - Hmm...maybe there was a sort of long term plan. The children were only one part: the other part was a way to cripple the Anti-Spirals and the Necrons. Some of the Eliatropes learn of the Anti-Spiral's motives through Orgonax, and of the current situation (with the Reapers effectively gelded and the Necrons in their tombs). They manage to put a sort of lock or delay on C'tan's arrival (Have to adjust the timing on this. The ASK's original plan was to institute the Deathwatch right after the Horus Heresy, so it has to be something to delay C'tan for a fun ten thousand years), so that it would arrive on their terms. When it did come back there would be a reborn Eliatrope civilization to combat and defeat it. Of course, that doesn't happen, but perhaps some Eliatrope artifacts (along the line of ancient texts or something, or maybe even the children) make it to the DGD.

John Dies at the End - Basically, there's this stuff called Soy Sauce. And if you take it...hm...well...it's described as having high-powered microscopes welded to your eyes, but instead of seeing the germs on everything, you see all the monsters and demons and weird shit that normal people can't see. To put it in Foundation terms, Scips are what leaks over so that everyone can see them. Sauce allows you to see everything else.

Incubator - Could you explain this? I sounds like something could be done with it.

Uncontained SCPs - As Picard says, make it so. I don't think this will play out SCPs, because it allows for Scips before the founding of the Foundation, and playing around with all the secret societies will keep things fresh. And it's a perfect time to thrown in some Marshall, Carter and Dark. (look on the SCP site under Groups of Interest)

Steampunk - Maybe it's just styles in fashion and aesthetics, rather than actual technology change. Or maybe its the Church of the Broken God holyshit the Broken God could be the Omnissiah who is rumored to be under the surface of Mars (and might be C'tan). That's it! Someone smuggles out 882, 217, and 271 during the Fall and eventually Mars becomes a gigantic clockwork planet yes. Ooh! Maybe the Broken God is sort of the gestation period for C'tan, like a planet-sized mechanical egg. Perhaps the Eliatropes manage to find Mars and sabotage the Broken God so C'tan won't hatch on time.

Yes. This will work.

Leaking Dream World

You know, I'm thinking that a tiered reality might be a good idea to institute, as such.

Alternate Universe
^
Base Reality > Slipspace > Scipspace (unofficial title)
^
Dreamworld

Now everything is leaking, and no magic to be seen.

[Wiwaxia]

Incubators:

Attention! Every single goddamn plot twist in Puella Magi Madoka Magica is under this spoiler!

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So basically we have a cute little dog-cat thingamawhatsit [fig 1], which gets preteen and teenage girls to make contracts with it in exchange for a wish (by ripping out their soul and putting it in a gem). They then become "magical girls" to fight witches [fig 2] [fig 3]. The witches live in trippy pocket dimensions [fig 4], and lure unsuspecting humans there, and make them kill themselves. The girls harvest "grief seeds" from the witches in order to keep their souls clear (overuse of magic or high emotions darkens them). If their soul turns black, they die and become a witch themselves, to be killed and harvested by other girls. The whole thing is a ploy by the Incubators to harvest emotional energy from the girls (originally they were aliens fighting the heat death of the universe, but they might work better as some manner of scip). As a lot of important historical figures were magical girls, the Incubators clam responsibility for guiding and developing human history (probably an overstatement)

Basically, its a possibility for parties or characters up until the 21st century (not if you're looking for a happy ending or a cheerful game, though), gives an alternative to alchemy for "cool things to do" in that time frame (and is possibly sometimes slightly less unpleasant than using scips!!) and is a good way to bring in real-life historical/mythological figures.

Tiered reality is good. I'm assuming "Alternate Universe" refers to separate pocket dimensions and the like?

The Eliacube should really get an entry of it's own in the Things of Note, given that it can open pocket dimensions, reverse time, power starships, and contains the history of the Eliatrope race (in addition to possible sentience and its unfortunate tendency to drive people mad)

That plan seems like something Chibi (one of the Eliatrope council) might come up with, so it's plausible. I'm not sure how much destructive force they could leverage against Mars and C'tan, though. Maybe portal in some big, fast moving asteroids? Mars would have to be sustaining life at the time, or they couldn't drain it and take off (or they could just wreck Earth. again.).

So, it goes like this:

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Eliatropes encounter Orgonax, heavy casualties, and flee.
Chibi figures out what Orgonax is/is up to, and the location of C'tan.
Eliatropes sack Mars.
Eliatropes piss of people by ruining their planets, Orgonax recruits sympathizers.
Eliatropes arrive on the World of Twelve, ally with dragons, settle into a low-tech pastoral existence
Chibi plots ambush, Qilby goes nuts, wants to keep exploring the stars forever
Qilby kills King Yugo to try to force the Eliatropes to leave and continue their wandering
Chibi's ambush is wrecked, adult Eliatropes killed by Orgonax, children and Qilby exiled, Nora blows Orgonax into little bitty bits

...
stuff
...

King Yugo reborn, beats up nox, gets eliacube, beats up qilby
eliatrope children freed
ally w/ dai gurren dan???
???

[Quirk]

Incubators - First thing that comes to mind? Dr. Faustus. That's going in there. Second thing is that their motivation jives with the Anti-Spirals, and overusing that will most likely not be a good thing. So then, options:

1) Obviously the Incubators aren't going to go tell their plot to everyone, so it could just be that they're stealing souls for kicks and giggles. Or maybe they feed off of them. I'm thinking that they came from an alternate universe and feed off of concentrated spiral power i.e. souls.
2) Witches and their pocket dimensions sound like Soy Sauce Shit (TM) to me. Not that they involve Soy Sauce, but it's the same type of incredibly weird, creepy shit.
3) We can put in the Ghost Merchant from the Legend of Zelda
4) 0_0 so that's how Hyrule sank...

Alternate Universe - This would cover anything from a pocket dimension like a witch's domain, to a full-blown universe like Shit Narnia (it's a John Dies at the End thing). The main difference is where these universes are located. Pockets are little bubbles inside our own universe. Full AUs are separate bubbles.

Eliatropes -I was thinking that the Eliatropes wouldn't directly attack Mars: the Machine God will repair any direct damage done to it. The Eliatrope plan would be something along the lines of messing with key components in the clockwork, not to break it, but to throw off the timing in a way that the Machine God wouldn't notice that C'tan wasn't hatching on schedule. It'd effectively be a suicide mission, as the entire planet by this point is thoroughly infested with the clockwork virus (217). Draining it would be pointless, because the entire planet is mechanical at this point.

Perhaps Chibi and a few other volunteers break off from the refugees to hit Mars while the other settle the World of Twelve. That sounds like it could work.

Also, I can see Qilby's motivation as being more "Why are we stopping they are right behind us." Maybe he could be the one who puts the children into stasis: whoever was supposed to do it before was killed or whatnot.

EDIT: Pandora Gates seems to becoming a redundancy. Remove?

EDIT EDIT: Who wants to help me re-name some Spiral Knight Legions and their Primarchs? Right now almost all of them are the vanilla 40k names. So many opportunities for references and jokes here.

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The Spiral Knights - While there are hundreds of Spiral Knight chapters, they can all trace their histories to the twenty original legions of Genome’s Spiral Knights. This list contains those twenty legions, their primarchs, and their current status.

1. Dark Angels – Lion El’Johnson - Loyal
2. Desert Fangs/Angry Marines – Rachnus Rageous – LOYAL AND ANGRY!
3. Emperor’s Children – Fulgrim -Traitor
4. Iron Warriors – Perturabo - Traitor
5. White Scars – Jaghatai Khan - Loyal
6. Space Wolves – Leman Russ - Loyal
7. Imperial Fists – Rogal Dorne - Loyal
8. Night Lords – Konrad Curze – Traitor
9. Blood Angels – Sanguinus - Loyal
10. Iron Hooves – Ferrus Equus - Loyal
11. Gene Hammers – Sigmar - Unknown
12. World Eaters – Angron - Traitor
13. Ultramarines – Roboute Guiliman - Loyal
14. Death Guard – Mortarion -Traitor
15. Thousand Sons – Magnus the Red - Traitor
16. Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus – Horus - Traitor
17. Word Bearers – Lorgar -Traitor
18. Salamanders – Vulkan - Loyal
19. Raven Guard – Corax - Loyal
20. Alpha Legion – Alpherius/Omegon - Contested

EDIT EDIT EDIT: I just had a wonderful idea for the Incubator's motivations. So they're called Incubators, right? What are they incubating? Universes. They steal souls to create their own universes within themselves. Kyubey is only in the "gatherer" stage of their life cycle. Thoughts?

[Wiwaxia]

Incubators - First thing that comes to mind? Dr. Faustus. That's going in there. Second thing is that their motivation jives with the Anti-Spirals, and overusing that will most likely not be a good thing. So then, options:

1) Obviously the Incubators aren't going to go tell their plot to everyone, so it could just be that they're stealing souls for kicks and giggles. Or maybe they feed off of them. I'm thinking that they came from an alternate universe and feed off of concentrated spiral power i.e. souls.
2) Witches and their pocket dimensions sound like Soy Sauce Shit (TM) to me. Not that they involve Soy Sauce, but it's the same type of incredibly weird, creepy shit.
3) We can put in the Ghost Merchant from the Legend of Zelda
4) 0_0 so that's how Hyrule sank...

Congratulation, you have correctly identified the primary influence/inspiration for Madoka!

Witches and their familiars are invisible to normal people, but Soy Sauce might let you see them (although you probably couldn't combat them effectively).

Alternate Universe - This would cover anything from a pocket dimension like a witch's domain, to a full-blown universe like Shit Narnia (it's a John Dies at the End thing). The main difference is where these universes are located. Pockets are little bubbles inside our own universe. Full AUs are separate bubbles.

Eliatropes -I was thinking that the Eliatropes wouldn't directly attack Mars: the Machine God will repair any direct damage done to it. The Eliatrope plan would be something along the lines of messing with key components in the clockwork, not to break it, but to throw off the timing in a way that the Machine God wouldn't notice that C'tan wasn't hatching on schedule. It'd effectively be a suicide mission, as the entire planet by this point is thoroughly infested with the clockwork virus (217). Draining it would be pointless, because the entire planet is mechanical at this point.

Perhaps Chibi and a few other volunteers break off from the refugees to hit Mars while the other settle the World of Twelve. That sounds like it could work.

Also, I can see Qilby's motivation as being more "Why are we stopping they are right behind us." Maybe he could be the one who puts the children into stasis: whoever was supposed to do it before was killed or whatnot.

It's Qilby's canonical motivation, though, and I don't really see a reason to mess with it. Hell, he's implied to be the one that tips Orgonax off to their location.
Chibi actually might do the suicide mission on his own, he has the power and technical know-how.

EDIT: Pandora Gates seems to becoming a redundancy. Remove?

Yeah.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: I just had a wonderful idea for the Incubator's motivations. So they're called Incubators, right? What are they incubating? Universes. They steal souls to create their own universes within themselves. Kyubey is only in the "gatherer" stage of their life cycle. Thoughts?

Hmm. I'm not sure how much I like this one, but it does preserve their almost Lovecraftian indifference to humans in pursuit of a "higher goal". Any other ideas?

[Quirk]

Hmm. I'm not sure how much I like this one, but it does preserve their almost Lovecraftian indifference to humans in pursuit of a "higher goal". Any other ideas?

I see your point here. Explaining what they're incubating could take away from the creep. I do like the idea of multiple life stages though, and now I can't shake the idea that when the incubation is over they end up something like Shub-Niggurath.

Or maybe they never get an explanation at all, maybe even to the point where the Anti-Spirals don't know what the fuck is going on with them.

I did have another idea for the Eliatropes in exile. Nox has the Eliacube, right? Would it be conceivable that he manages to lock the Brotherhood of Tofu in one of the cube's pocket dimensions, and the cube is eventually recovered by DGD?

Timing with those guys is presenting an issue. Basically, C'tan was supposed to wake up right after Genome went insane and slaughtered everyone. Chibi's seal was already in place at that time, in order for us to get ten thousand years with no Deathwatch and the King is too busy dealing with Chaos to notice (and there wasn't a whole lot of spiral power in the post-crusade imperium anyway.) So that emans that orgonax sends them fleeing before 30,000. Problem is, we still have a 12k chunk between Nox's defeat and TTGL, as it stands, if we want to get the BoT of kids to the endgame.

As far as other stuff, do you have any good historical ideas/people/tidbits? (Or legion names) And I was considering adding some quotes/little fluff bits to the lore or timeline, just to break things up and do a bit of more direct stage setting, so if you have any of those, hit me.

[Wiwaxia]

Or maybe they never get an explanation at all, maybe even to the point where the Anti-Spirals don't know what the fuck is going on with them.

This, I think.

I did have another idea for the Eliatropes in exile. Nox has the Eliacube, right? Would it be conceivable that he manages to lock the Brotherhood of Tofu in one of the cube's pocket dimensions, and the cube is eventually recovered by DGD?

No. That messes up the whole show's continuity, and cuts out Qilby and the return of the Eliatropes. It would be easier to cut into the 10000 year gap you mentioned, or to move everything from the arrival of humans on the World of Twelve up.

[Quirk]

TNo. That messes up the whole show's continuity, and cuts out Qilby and the return of the Eliatropes. It would be easier to cut into the 10000 year gap you mentioned, or to move everything from the arrival of humans on the World of Twelve up.

Okay, humans arriving later it shall be.

You know, right about now I am convinced that the Incubators could be the best thing added in in a long time simply because they are just that fucking terrifying.

Now, some lines of through that may be good to pursue:

*Historical figures who made contracts/were alchemists/etc. etc.
*Tracing where the Pieces of Eden went.
*Some Victorian England shenanigans involving Marshall, Carter and Dark, Sherlock Holmes, and an Incubator and holy shit this is an awesome idea.
*A list of all the major organizations of paranormal study/interest, pre and post Foundation

[Wiwaxia]

Dee and his "shew-stone", and trying to talk to angels/ possible philosopher's stone shenanigans.
Joan of Arc, Cleopatra and Marie Antoinette are all listed as having contracted in Madoka canon.
Isaac Newton was and alchemest.
Gotta have Flamel.

Harker Institute of Super-Natural Studies: Nice n' happy, Victorian England proto-Foundation. Important, but pretty damn ineffectual.

Also, did you mean to delete everything after 1999 in the doc?

[Quirk]

Also, did you mean to delete everything after 1999 in the doc?

No, I was trying to update the timeline but I had to do it in chunks and Google docs is infuriating.

[Wiwaxia]

No, I was trying to update the timeline but I had to do it in chunks and Google docs is infuriating.

Tell me about it.

More real-life alchemists:
Maria Prophetissa 1st-3rd century AD, first Western Alchemist
Jabir ibn Hayyan - c. 800, really important
possibly developing alchemical theory, limited/specific transmutation circles for certain substances before Al-Hazred comes up with the general theory?

More contracts: Sieglinde, Irene Adler, if we want to get poor Sherlock tangled up in this
Moriarty might be a "magic" crime boss - he's probably too smart to get tangled up with scips himself, but he'd probably have lackeys packing them

-Grisamentum - nice and friendly towards the Institute and the police, the "good mobster", actually trying to rewrite reality in his image with some nasty scips he's hoarded

[Quirk]

More real-life alchemists:
Maria Prophetissa 1st-3rd century AD, first Western Alchemist
Jabir ibn Hayyan - c. 800, really important
possibly developing alchemical theory, limited/specific transmutation circles for certain substances before Al-Hazred comes up with the general theory?

More contracts: Sieglinde, Irene Adler, if we want to get poor Sherlock tangled up in this
Moriarty might be a "magic" crime boss - he's probably too smart to get tangled up with scips himself, but he'd probably have lackeys packing them

-Grisamentum - nice and friendly towards the Institute and the police, the "good mobster", actually trying to rewrite reality in his image with some nasty scips he's hoarded

Ah, this is good. Hayyan could go in there for starting the development of the alchemical circle, which Abdul finishes a century later.

Flamel's going in as the founder of the world's first alchemical college in 1385.

[Quirk]

THOUGHTS OF THE DAY

I am going to include a section on different multiverse structures (with diagrams) that GMs can use.

Other alchemists: Nostradamus, Leonardo Da Vinci

Other contractees: Vlad Dracula, the Beetles?

IDEs for Era 6 - Trade War, War of Secession, work towards the end game.

Also, Megas XLR is a thing either during the Dark Times or the Jihad. Coop is an Ork Warboss.

Also, maybe adding some Invader Zim background details ( though not Zim, at least not until later)

Thoughts?

EDIT: Okay, I've done some finagling with the Eliatrope timeline. now it's something like this...

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c. 24270 - The Eliatrope homeworld of Elias is attacked by the Anti-Spiral Orgonax. While the majority of the population is killed and the planet itself is destroyed, during the battle Chibi, a member of the planet’s high council, learns of the Anti-Spiral Deathwatch, the Machine God, and the slumbering C’tan.

The survivors of the attack flee in the generation ship Zinit. The refugees travel from planet to planet draining those worlds of their spiral energy to power the Eliacube for the next thousand years. Chibi take a shuttle for himself and breaks away from the Zinit’s course in order to cripple the Anti-Spirals.

c.24900 – Chibi lands on Mars, the Machine God. He manages to successfully place the Seal of Ages, which would prevent the emergence of C’tan until the Eliatrope civilization was rebuilt and could conceivably defeat them. Chibi then commits suicide rather than allow the Clockwork Plague to take him alive.

c. 25300 - Islands of Wakfu - The Eliatropes end their exile on the planet that will eventually be known as Duodecon, the World of Twelve. Here they forge an alliance with the native Dragons (a neogenic clade that had arrived on the planet ages ago) and establish a lo-tech, pastoral civilization. The new planetary council contains six members of each species, with pairs bonded at birth and reincarnated (via mental backup), giving the planet its name.

c. 27000 – Orgonax returns, bringing with it a race whose planet had been drained millennia prior. It is revealed that the position of the Eliatrope safe haven was given away by the traitorous councilman Qilby. The Eliatropes are wiped out, but not before several thousand children were put into stasis within a pocket dimension maintained by the Eliacube. Qilby was exiled to another such pocket. Duodecon is left fallow, dotted with artifacts, including the Council eggs.

c.35000 – A human civilian fleet thrown off-course by the Warp happens upon and settles the World of Twelve. Eliatrope artifacts are recovered soon after, leading to the rise of a pantheon of twelve transhuman “gods”, who set about reforming the planet according to their designs. Each “god” modifies their human followers in their own likeness, forming the Twelve Clades.

c. 42800 - Duodecon suffers a cataclysmic flood after a meteor impact. A watchmaker named Noximillien recovers the Eliacube from the wreckage, and is driven to madness by the object. He vows to use it to reverse time and save his drowned family, and begins draining several nearby civilizations of their spiral energy.

c. 43000 - Wakfu - The Eliatrope King, Yugo, and his Dragon brother Adamaï are reborn. Noximillien initiates his plan, but is only able to rewind time by twenty minutes. He is then defeated by Yugo and his band of companions, the Brotherhood of Tofu. A very short time later, the Brotherhood accidentally releases Qilby, who in a blind panic attempts to steal the Eliacube and flee the planet in the long-buried Zinit. He is unable to do so, as the Anti-Spiral Deathwatch arrives en mass (over three-fourths of the entire force), led directly by C’tan, all mere hours after the time shift. The planet is vaporized, but not before the Brotherhood manages to slip into stasis alongside the Eliatrope children.

The Eliacube, now operating under its own power, spends the next seven millennia making stealth warp jumps towards Holy Terra, outside of the notice of the Anti-Spirals

I hope this works better. I just love the idea of Qilby popping out of stasis, all panicked and ready to flee, and then he looks up and sees that the Anti-Spirals were already there.

[Wiwaxia]

Couple nitpicks:
The Zinit in't buried, it's disguised as a mountain.
The World of Twelve is canonically flooded by an ogre that get's it's hand on the councils' eggs. We could try and incorporate this somehow, or go with just the meteor, or just leave it unexplained

Also, Yugo would probably run around stuffing as many people as he could into stasis while the "gods" were fighting the deathwatch.

I think Dracula works better as his own thing, but the image of the Beatles fighting witches in magical girl style clothing is too good to pass up. Maybe also add something about their mysterious disappearances as they are killed by/turn into witches?

Awesome idea: Elvis as a puella (puellus?) magi.

We need something special for Tesla, too. (maybe his death ray actually worked?)

[Quirk]

Couple nitpicks:
The Zinit in't buried, it's disguised as a mountain.
The World of Twelve is canonically flooded by an ogre that get's it's hand on the councils' eggs. We could try and incorporate this somehow, or go with just the meteor, or just leave it unexplained

I think Dracula works better as his own thing, but the image of the Beatles fighting witches in magical girl style clothing is too good to pass up. Maybe also add something about their mysterious disappearances as they are killed by/turn into witches?

Awesome idea: Elvis as a puella (puellus?) magi.

We need something special for Tesla, too. (maybe his death ray actually worked?)

Under mountain = under ground

Just so I have this right, the gods survived the flood, right? I had presumed that they didn't, or at by this point didn't care about the affairs of lower sapients.

A slight change (which should have been in there from the start): the deathwatch arrives right after the twenty minutes have been regained. Everyone has maybe thirty seconds to realize that OH SHIT ANTI SPIRALS EVERYWHERE before explosions.

Also, another idea: the Eliacube was the result of thousands of years of work by several species (like the Crucible in ME3). The Eliatropes were the ones that finished it.

EDIT: Elsewhere, historical tidbits!

Tesla made a working death ray in 1937. Two dozen prototypes were deployed in the European theater during WWII, but they were so exorbitant in cost both monetarily and energy wise that it became far easier to send in an alchemist. The technology was ignored until the arrival of the Poleepkwa, and even then was not truly revived until 2030.

The use of alchemists in combat was greatly reduced after the revising of the Geneva Conventions in 1949 (And for good reason). Most alchemists in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East were medical personnel. Homunculi were and still are commonly used as support units, though after 1950 they could no longer be permanent conscription.

The creator of a homunculi is legally treated as the parent until the homunculi in question has passed the LAST (Language-Academic-Social Training) Packet. When this is passed, generally a year or two after creation, the homunculi is treated as an adult under law. This is all post-1950. Pre-homunculi were generally treated as property (some variations), though more in the way of an extremely valuable piece of machinery.

[Namboto]

Since this is a general homebrew thread I feel that it's ok to hijack it a little bit

I'm considering turning one of my settings into a tabletop of some kind, but am not really sure how to go about this (and will probably need help doing so). I tried to use it in a minimal mechanics game (meaning some general stats and dice rolls for events, but not much else) a while back, but that died and I noticed a lot of problems with the system (or lack thereof).

Basically this is the "can I hijack this a bit?" post.

[Quirk]

Basically this is the "can I hijack this a bit?" post.

Ayup.

So to start with your project:

1) What's the setting like?
2) We need to decide a dice roll style: roll over, roll under, and target number. Roll over is D&D, roll under is Call of Cthulhu, and I can't place target number.

Also, single roll v dice pools.

[Namboto]

1) In genre, it's Fantasy (although there exists touches of sci-fi when you look into it)

the setting itself is a bit hard to describe. Rimcast is the name for it, seven worlds in seven different realities (slash alternate universes slash whatever you want to call it) that exist in the same spatial location (or at least in corresponding ones, given differences in universe sizes between realities and other such things). The barrier between these worlds is thin, and, at points where realities cross, you get portals, gateways between the worlds. Each world follows a general sort of trope related to its geography.

Dulme is your generic earth like world, with all the sorts of things you'd expect from earth. While humans call it home, it's the most racially diverse of all of the worlds, and plays home to two of the three largest cities in Rimcast.

Draknell is your lava/fire world, with little vegetation and lots of volcanic activity. The least racially diverse of the seven (barring the seventh, but more on that later), the Drakonians (dragon people) have their empire here, and allow few immigrants. The largest city in Rimcast is here, and it houses the immortal dragon emperor.

Cragnon is a desert, with a single supercontinent. Orcs are from here, and it's shaped them into a violent, nomadic race (with the exception of the 'capital city' Agark, which is a center of learning and commerce, ironically enough).

Tannal is a world of mountains and valleys. It plays host to the two most innovative races: the dwarves (who live in the mountains) and gnomes (who live in the valleys). Dwarves are excellent smiths and builders, while gnomes are tinkerers and scholars. There's a lot of bad blood between the two.

Ulqueon is a water world, with 13 islands of varying sizes. Each island houses a unique species of Fey, except the thirteenth, which floats high above the ocean and is nigh unto unreachable. Of the few that have gone there and come back, nobody's saying anything about what's up there.

Elraen is your elfy forest world, complete with elves. It's largely untamed and has some of the most dangerous areas in Rimcast, such as groves of dreamer trees, carnivorous monstrosities (monstrositrees?) that lull unwary travelers to sleep in order to feed.

The seventh world doesn't have a name and, as far as anybody knows, might not even exist. Its existence has only been theorized by scholars of magic who claim it as the source of that wild energy.

The playable races are humans, orcs, dwarves, gnomes, elves, drakonians, and three fey subraces: faeries, pixies, and changelings (half animal people). "Classes" are so far undefined, although there are six schools of magic (three of which require props, while the other three are either innate talent or rigorous training) and some assorted stats. Otherwise I have piles and piles of lore that I'd like to do things with.

(Also yes I realize it's a bunch of fantasy cliches. That's sorta the point)

2) It's the mechanics that I'm least sure of, but I think it'd vary a bit, at least with the amount of die used. I guess DnD would be a good base though.

[Quirk]

Hmm...from the looks of that, I think you'd be good just using straight D&D rules, with some tweaked magic and a bit of homebrew, perhaps. So that makes this a lot easier: you can focus on fleshing out the setting rather than the mechanics, unless you really want to spend the effort of making a new system.

Also Rimcast is a great name.

Edit: I also adding it to the OP.

[Nocturne]

Tesla made a working death ray in 1937. Two dozen prototypes were deployed in the European theater during WWII, but they were so exorbitant in cost both monetarily and energy wise that it became far easier to send in an alchemist. The technology was ignored until the arrival of the Poleepkwa, and even then was not truly revived until 2030.

In keeping with Tesla's position as the Engineer in Blutarch Mann's original team of nine mercenaries (second from left), both Redmond and Blutarch Mann would obtain prototypes of Tesla's earliest death ray attempts that instead induced rapid cellular regeneration in their targets. This "medi-gun" would later be modified further by the modern Medic, adding an alchemical-tech temporary invulnerability.

[Quirk]

In keeping with Tesla's position as the Engineer in Blutarch Mann's original team of nine mercenaries (second from left), both Redmond and Blutarch Mann would obtain prototypes of Tesla's earliest death ray attempts that instead induced rapid cellular regeneration in their targets. This "medi-gun" would later be modified further by the modern Medic, adding an alchemical-tech temporary invulnerability.

Brilliant! I'll have to tweak where the RED/BLU war starts and add a bit on the origins, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Timeline time! Life extender built in 1894. TF2 takes place, by extension, in 1954. Rivalry begins in 1850. That's before Tesla's time, but he's definitely in as a BLU scientist. Edison was RED.

EDIT: More steampunk! Dr. Grordbort and Lord Cockswain seem like good choices: bump them up to the future and it'll work quite nicely. I'll get working on that.

[swampmist1142]

Hey, so i read the OP, and can I post the stuff for my homebrew tabletop RPG here and get it critiqued (and possibly play tested?)
EDIT: Also, Nam, isn't that the setting for the game you ran a while ago? The one where i was a Half-Sjhark that never got to do anything becuase it ended?