Grimcleaver

So things are getting real in our Malifaux campaign and the Fated have invovled themselves in a plot to kidnap the Governor General. The Hollow Marsh gala to commemorate the new pumping station has just happened (including what everyone thought was an attempt to assassinate the Governor General--so alert level is maximum) and everyone is on their return trip back to Malifaux aboard an incredibly well defended and luxurious train. The kidnappers, led by an escaped convict murderer and insurrectionist called "El Cerdo" plan to blow the tracks under the train as it comes off one of the bridges out of the Footprints canyons and cause a derailment while most of the train is still stuck on a suspension bridge hanging over a grand canyon drop into sharp rocks, man eating cactuses and giant scorpions. So what kind of defenses would the Guild have set up to prevent stuff like this from happening--because frankly it seems like it would happen all the time. Especially with all the loads of soulstone that rumble over these bridges. What would we be seeing them do to insure this kind of stuff wasn't happening all the time. How do you ever get the Governor General out to places by train and make examples of fools who dare attack his entourage? Because as much as this plan seems tight...it's gotta' not be. It's gotta' be like the stupidest plan ever. It's too easy. If it were this simple, someone would have done it already. Still once you've overturned a train going 40 miles per hour and it's turned into a pile of twisted wreckage like something out of Super 8 it's hard to imagine how any kind of real defense would be possible and how most folks won't just be in various stages of dead and mangled...

So far there's a gang of bandits that used it as a hideout, but that's about it. I was just curious because other places like the Observatory ended up being huge set pieces in one of the huge epic storylines that I would have totally missed out on if I hadn't researched the heck out of everything.

No luck there so far, though the Cold Street writeup is really good!

Sweet guys! Thanks. I definitely love the idea of eisengeists. That's just fantastic. As far as the monkeys--I want something with ties to oldMalifaux, Killjoy and (educated guess) probably Titania. I like the idea that they might just be new--reskinned metal dove kinda' things, in this case gargoyles made of metal tentacles (maybe using undead nephilim tots as an armature or not). All the old malifaux constructs we've seen so far seem to be some mix of Kythera style interlocking gears and Doc Ock arms. Just some musings. What do you guys think?

In the Fated Almanac, the spell for conjuring gamin lists a whole bunch of subtypes, after which there's a box section that says how metal gamin are something different and that only a handful of people know the secret of producing them. Looking at their art, it's pretty different too--the other types all look like spunky imp/goblin things made of whatever element, whereas metal gamin have an almost stonelike body and metal masks, almost like tikki masks. So who has the secret of making them? Are they an old Malifaux thing? Are they a Union thing? Associated with the Rider? I'm just curious. The Fated in our game have blasted a big hole in the slums of Riverside with about fifteen sticks of dynamite and toppled a nearby building into the whole, which in turn collapsed that section of sewer into an even older section. Down there in the dark I plan to have them run into this big Pyramid Head kinda' thing called the Organ Grinder, a condemned Nephilim ogre like Killjoy that's borged out with pressure gauges for eyes and chained to an enormous crank that creates creepy freaking music from an enormous subterranean calliope. I'd like him to control some weird monkey like things, but I'm unsure what I want to go with, so metal gamin are one of the things I'm looking into, because they look kind of odd in a cool way. But I want to know more about them first.

Aaand doublepost...

That Dead of Winter story is an absolute gold mine. Thanks a lot you guys. Y'know it occurs to me that it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for folks to set up some kind of a wiki for the story elements of Malifaux so Fatemasters could get up to speed without having to spend weeks in the short story mines with an oil lamp chipping story fragments out of the rocks...

Yeah. I noticed that. When I tried to post it said there was an error sending it, so I posted it again...and apparently both posted. Now I'm trying to figure out how to delete the old one. Heh.

Thanks, I'll see if I can hunt that down!

Obliteration has turned out to be a big part of the game I'm running, so I'm trying to find out as much about it and it's vessel Tara as I can. I know about the write-up on the Wyrd site for Tara, and the Abeittor of Obliteration Advanced Pursuit. What I'm hoping for is to track down any of the fiction that talks about them. I picked up the Nythera module hoping to find out some more about them--as I'd heard that her fate was somehow tied to the resolution of the organized play of that adventure...but couldn't find anything. Anything anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated . Thanks!

Read the fiction. Most games have goshawful fiction. Not this one. There's no better way to get a feel for the kind of stories you're going to want to be telling than to start with the 1.5 Core book and just read all the fiction in all the books. Malifaux doesn't have a lot of variety of antagonists. You have zombies, Neverborn (which can look like anything, but most of the time look like big demons), big mutant animals and gremlins (basically hillbilly goblins) but the last two you really only run into outside the city. Other than that it's all humans. That's really not a huge canvas, and you run out of new stuff surprisingly fast, so you really have to make the game about people--because if you're just doing missions throwing the PCs against the monster of the week, you're going to run out pretty quick. Thus the setting's history and mythology is a *big* deal, and you can't really find most of it on a wiki or anything. It's just not out there anywhere yet. It's pretty much exclusively in the fiction. The good news is the fiction is amazingly good and readable. Most of it has even been turned into radio plays you can listen to on breachsidebroadcast.com. You really will want to understand the different factions, who their leaders and major characters are, and how to present them right. The mood and flavor of Malifaux is a touchy thing and you'll want to immerse yourself in it. Plus there's a lot of secret lore you won't even know exists until you start reading.

South of Riverside is an area called the Howling Slums. It's clearly marked on every map of the city, much like other areas like Kythera and the Observatory that end up featuring big-time in the fiction. The only references to the Howling Slums I've been able to find is that they used to wail with this loud yowling screech from deep underground and that recently an inexplicably it just stopped--unnerving folks as much by the fact that it just went away as it ever did when it was happening. So has anything been said about this? Any fiction about it? Anyother references to it? An opportunity has come up in our game to tie into it and so I'm trying to research everything I can about it. Thanks folks!

There we go! Thanks.

So I finally got a hold of a copy of Under Quarantine. Still can't find the section on the Grave Spirit. No luck at all. Can I get a page number from someone? I might just be looking in the wrong parts--it's a decently thick 200 page book. Thanks.

That custom icons feature is fantastic. There's now a little me on the map instead of a red pointy. That's awesome. Thanks!

Awesome! So the answer is that there's a 25% chance of casting a spell only if you're in a non-caster pursuit. Otherwise the pursuit negates the requirement. Much better. And the fact that there's a Talent that adds a suit no matter what really cinches it. As far as Rasputina, I guess I was going more from the "if she was a player in a game" perspective. It seems in the fiction like her response to any situation is powering up a blast of cold and hucking it at the guys who are getting ready to attack her. If her spells only went off one in four times, she'd have gotten killed a lot. The answer I was looking for that her Dabbler pursuit (or...December cultist?) pursuit makes it so she doesn't have to worry about suits. But yeah, as a Non-Fated, her always drawing a 13 with any suit she wants would do that too. Definitely. That said, thanks a lot for the super fast reply. I have a game I'm running later tonight and had a player ask this. I didn't have a good reply. Now I feel like I have a good handle on things. So yeah. Thanks!

As much as I like the cowboy elements of Malifaux, they have always felt like trappings. The heart of Malifaux, for me, has always felt much more like Jack the Ripper's White Chapel mixed with Tim Burton steampunk. So yeah, city.

So if I'm reading the magic system right, any time you cast any spell you must not only beat the difficulty to cast it, but you also need to draw the right suit of card or the spell fails? So without cheating the draw, you never can have more than a 25% chance of any spell you cast actually working? That's harsh and doesn't seem to fit the feel of magic in Malifaux at all...I mean Rasputina would be dead by now. Super dead. Then there's the Additional Suit Immuto--which I'm not even sure how you can get two different suits in one flip, which would make it seem like for a little lower target number, you're now making your spell certain to fail--which CAN'T be right. I don't get it. I feel like I'm misunderstanding something here...

Okay then. I know what I'm picking up next!

Mason: What do we know about Franko Marlow? Was he a FPC or the Guild pregen? Any info about him you can share?

I am kind of in the same boat. I really don't do wargames at all, but I've been reading the short fiction (as much of it as I can get my hands on) and listening to the Breachside Broadcast radio shows as fast as I can to prep for the Through the Breach game I'm running. Now it turns out everyone is getting really into the fiction and mythology so much we're tempted to buy models not to wargame with, but just to have them because we like the signature characters from the stories so much. So I can see the appeal of getting product you aren't going to use as intended, just for sheer enjoyment value. Another thing we're looking at is possibly getting the kit for making roleplaying character figures and making figures for everyone's characters in the game. Again, no wargaming application, but it would be fun to have minis for all our folks.

Sweet! Thanks.

Obliteration really feels like the Grave Spirit, down to pretty much representing the same stuff (Void, Undeath, the End of Everything) to such a degree that if the Grave Spirit is such a foe of the Neverborn to have stalked and killed them one by one and the Neverborn hate and fear him so much, they should hate and fear Obliteration just as much, right? Are they the same thing? Certainly when you get a glimpse of the Grave Spirit it's all black goo tentacles. Then Tara, well Tara pretty much IS black goo tentacles and is the Herald of Obliteration. Then there's the Avatar of Entropy, the Crow Headed angel thingie that briefly flies around carrying Lady Justice around during the last bits of Shifting Loyalties and then drops down with some Grave Spirity things to say to Seamus just when all his power seems to be going away...stuff that seems a lot like what the Grave Spirit was saying back in Book One...all the Til Gran Kythera Dow type stuff... So are they all the same thing? Is the Grave Spirit just another Tyrant? That doesn't seem to be what Viktoria's Doppelganger has to say when she's stargazing with them. As far as she's concerned he's the manifestation of the Plane of Death and the arch nemesis of all Neverborn everywhere. But then why is Obliteration cool? Also if necromancy is such a bad deal that the Nephilim Heyreddin gets exiled and branded a race traitor for doing it...how come there's a whole Tyrant devoted to it?

There seem to be a few rival theories out there, and some facts fit better with some than with others, but as far as I've heard there hasn't yet been a big reveal. Who are the Neverborn? Who are the First (pre-human) Inhabitants of Malifaux? Who are the Tyrants? The Neverborn variously seem to be either the First Inhabitants themselves, twisted into monsters to avoid extinction once the Grave Spirit entered and destroyed their world. This is the version that we get from Viktoria's Doppleganger as she looks up at the night sky of Malifaux on their trip to Kythera. According to this version, the Tyrants are immortal magic users among the First Inhabitants who style themselves gods and begin taking out their fury and sadism on their more mortal-level kin. Another version I've heard, kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, is that the Tyrants are humans, I've even heard the idea (and I kind of like this) that they're the mighty sorcerers who originally fled Malifaux after the power clashes among the original inhabitants--that they used the principle of soulstones that converts life force to magical energy to strip nearly all the life from the world in order to nearly rise to godhood, using their amazing levels of power to mold Neverborn armies for themselves out of nothing--which helps explain why most of them look like stuff from the human imagination (pretty girls, demons, killer teddy bears, etc.) and setting them first against the original settlers, then against each other until the Neverborn rose up and bound them. There's another version I've heard that Malifaux is a extraplanar prison, to hold the Tyrants who like General Zod from Superman (or the Ogdru Jihad from Hellboy) were imprisoned in their home plane and then cast off in a demiplane to float through the nothing between worlds--until Malifaux got caught in Earth's cosmological gravity well. The First Inhabitants in this version of things were the wardens set in the old city of Malifaux to watch over the prisoners and make sure they stayed put--but as time went by the various Tyrants were able to extrude bits of themselves "through the bars" of their prisons so to speak, which were the Neverborn masters, mimics who can look like whatever they want. In this version Neverborn are just reflections of what people are afraid of, feeding off the fear they embody and out to free their Tyrant lords. The Neverborn slew most of the First Inhabitants and took over the cities. The rest scattered into the swamps and over time degenerated into the various tribes of gremlins, getting smaller and stupider over time. There's a number of other theories. But there's questions none of them really seem to solve, and bits of lore that even the best of them seem not to be able to reconcile. There's this big city, a hodgepodge of different Earth archetectural styles with businesses that seem very human, down to hanging shop signs outside, albeit written in a language that takes some work to interpret. But there's whole tomes of history, whole undercities of sewers that were once surface cities, but got built on top of. There's mining towns on the outskirts for mining soulstone (what the First Inhabitants called Ethar). All of Malifaux's life seems to mimic stuff from Earth history or myth--even the Tyrants are like Medusas, Wendigos, Dragons and the like. Yet when you actually get to talk to the Neverborn, they don't seem to be just acting out roles--they're these really deep fun characters (especially Viktoria's Doppelganger whose account of Neverborn culture is just really fun... How have people managed to put the bits together. There's stuff that I hope is true, ideas I like, but I have yet to be able to pull it together into a whole that really works and fits all the data. I like the idea that the gremlins are the descendants of the First Inhabitants (and hate the idea that the First Inhabitants were human...that just bother me). I like the idea that the Tyrants are humans, but have now read enough lore that I can't imagine how that would work without just ignoring a bunch of the backstory. I also like the idea that Malifaux is a giant extraplanar General Zod prison. So...yeah. What do you guys got?

Awesome! Thank you thank you. So is each Book (Rising Powers, Twisting Fates, Storm of Shadows) set about a year apart? Do we know a year on Shifting Loyalties? (Is there a series of other "adventures" like that one? It was pretty mind blowing...) Do the Penny Dreadfuls happen in any particular order in relation to each other or era in relation to the other books (Nythera, obviously, would be 1906, but the others?) Thanks!