Threefold: Rivals in the Metacosm

Over a number of Threefold articles, we looked at the Sodality, who explore this Modern AGE setting’s countless planes, and Aethon, who deal with threats to the progress of Earth’s history. These groups are especially suitable for Player Characters but aren’t the only possibilities. More to the point, they don’t operate without opposition. While potential adversary groups can come in many sizes, today we’ll look at rivals who rule great clusters of planes: the tyrannical Divine Empire, and the warlike Nighthost.

The Nighthost gathers. Composed of many peoples, the Nighthost discriminates only on the basis of martial strength, and unites to liberate Netherworlds, and conquer Otherworlds.

The Divine Empire

At the end of the great Fellwar for the Metacosm’s souls, most of the Hierarchs, gods who’d instigated the war, went into exile, while mortal survivors founded the Vitane, an interplanar government. Many members of the Vitane were Optimates: half mortal children of the Hierarchs, akin to demigods and legendary heroes. Under the old order they were used to privileges and formed the Imperial Party to argue for their renewal. Meeting with little success within the Vitane, Dyraza, a thunder and sky Optimate and leader of the Imperial Party, masterminded coups on over a dozen planes, declaring herself the Empress of the new Divine Empire. Under her direction, the Empire built an Optimate aristocracy of Prefects, a ruling council called the Pantheon, a Curia of worshipful mortals, and other institutions over 199 years of rule. This period of rapid expansion was significantly slowed by her death. In apparent retribution for campaigns ranging into the Netherworlds, Dyraza was assassinated by Avakim, Alastor Lord of Dust, in an incursion into the Empire’s capital plane of Alatum.

Now entrenched by the following centuries, Divine Empire is ruled with an iron hand by Optimate aristocrats. These include the planar Dominii who populate the Pantheon, and regional Prefects and Subprefects. The Empire demands mortal worship of the Optimates and their Emanate ancestors. This is overseen by the Curia, an assembly of priests and anointed arcanists. Where they fail to sway the commoners, a vast network of spies informs the authorities of disloyalty and intimidates everyone they might report for impiety or treason. The mass of mortal commoners is divided among true believers who tolerate their inferior position in the Empire, and small revolutionary cells. The Sodality is often assumed to support an anti-Imperial insurgency, but few are can verify or deny these allegations.

The Nighthost

Born to fight and blooded in the endless battles of the Fellwar, the predecessors of the Nighthost were the terror of the planes. As the Fellwar ended, many Netherworld warriors fled their masters, conquered Otherworlds, and founded an alliance of warlords and mercenaries ruled by thanes who can only be overthrown by sufficiently honorable challengers. As the Nighthost, these rebels founded a new home plane. This is the Fetter, a liberated Netherworld, where they built tribes, cities, and nations under the leadership of the Unchallenged, elders renowned for their deeds. Some say the Nighthost is secretly ruled their old demonic gods, who are marshaling their forces for a final war. But as their forbears were twisted and tormented by these Alastors, the Nighthost bears no love for their ancestral masters. Their ethos is founded in freedom through strength.

The Nighthost has never forgotten how in the aftermath of the Fellwar, the Otherworlds’ inhabitants branded their kind beasts, monsters, and craven slaves of horrific gods. Former soldiers of the Alastors were outcasts on nearly every plane. Only the Nighthost accepted and trusted them. And once given, trust should never be betrayed. To a warrior of the Nighthost, honor is everything, instilled from the moment of birth to their dying breath. Therefore, even as their armies conquer plane after plane and install thanes to rule the defeated natives, they moderate their cruelty with an ethos that grants power to the deserving.

Sodality members most often encounter the Nighthost’s warbands: small groups of soldiers who fill the same strategic niche as the Sodality’s Missions. Warbands have primarily military aims but are neither ignorant nor aimlessly violent. Their members are often as learned and clever as their Sodality counterparts.

Speculative Fantasy?

Oh right! Last time I said I’d talk about that. Well, I changed my mind; it’s coming next time. You can preorder Threefold now with the PDF add-on or get it in PDF to read about the concept in detail yourself or wait for its street date: September 3rd!

Sacred Band: Nisaba Press Acquires “Kirkus’s Best Indie Debuts, 2017” Series

Nisaba Press Acquires “Kirkus’s Best Indie Debuts, 2017” Series, Sacred Band

The alchemy between the characters’ chemistry, the story’s action, and the world’s pressing—and sometimes painful—similarities to our own make the book nearly impossible to put down.

An engaging story that punches, kicks, and takes flight, just like its heroes. – Kirkus Reviews (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joseph-d-carriker-jr/sacred-band2/)

Author Joseph Carriker’s LGBTQ+ superhero series has been acquired for 2020 rerelease by Nisaba Press. Originally published through Lethe Press, Sacred Band received much critical acclaim and named one of the “Best Indie Debuts” of 2017 by Kirkus Review, and received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly.

Sacred Band tells the story of a team of LGBTQ+ superpowered individuals set in a post-superheroic world. When no one in charge is taking the disappearance of queer and other marginalized folk from around the world seriously, this team bands together to do it themselves. They find themselves facing down official scrutiny even while racing against the sinister conspiracy that is steps ahead of them and closing in on their goal.

Sacred Band will be released with a new cover, and will be followed by its sequel, Terminal Venture, in 2021. After the very public revelation of the Band’s existence the year before, they’ve found themselves watched carefully, both by suspicious governments and by adoring fans. Struggling with both sides of this scrutiny, the team is about to discover the sinister means that have kept other superhero teams from forming in the past. Are they up to the challenge, and does anyone have their back?

“Nisaba’s dedication to exploring worlds that are not only full of adventure, but also very diverse, makes them an incredible fit for Sacred Band,” author Joseph Carriker said. “I’m very grateful for the faith Nisaba has expressed in Sacred Band, and look forward to working with them to bring these stories of a team of queer superheroes to readers.”

About the Author

Joseph Carriker has been playing roleplaying games for over thirty years now, and making them professionally for almost twenty. He has also written Shadowtide, a tie-in fiction novel set in the world of Green Ronin’s Blue Rose, which follows a band of adventurers rooting out the evil threatening their homeland. Joseph lives in Portland, Oregon with his poly constellation family, and likes to think he does his part in helping to Keep Portland Weird.

https://www.patreon.com/oakthorne

About Nisaba

Nisaba Press is the fiction imprint of industry veteran Green Ronin Publishing. Founded to bring to life fiction set in the vibrant worlds of Green Ronin’s original and licensed IPs, Sacred Band is Nisaba’s debut into non-IP fiction. Current Nisaba titles include Shadowtide, Height of the Storm, Tales of the Lost Citadel, and the short fiction digital quarterly, Nisaba Journal.

Sacred Band Lethe Press edition cover. Right-click to download larger version. [Image Description: Stylized words SACRED BAND above two men, one in blue and silver skin-tight superhero suit, the other in red and black superhero suit with round lens, red glass welding goggles on forehead and spinning small, glowing red spheres around upraised left hand.]

Sacred Band Lethe Press edition cover. Right-click to download larger version. [Image Description: Stylized words SACRED BAND above two men, one in blue and silver skin-tight superhero suit, the other in red and black superhero suit with round lens, red glass welding goggles on forehead and spinning small, glowing red spheres around upraised left hand.]

Nisaba Journal Issue 3 (PDF, mobi, epub)

Nisaba Journal Issue 3Nisaba Journal Issue 3 is now available for purchase and download. For $6.99 you get three formats: PDF, epub, and mobi.

Nisaba Journal

Open the Nisaba Journal and immerse yourself in original fiction gathered from your favorite worlds. Issue 3 collects five tales from two of Green Ronin’s most popular settings—Blue Rose and Mutants & Masterminds—and offers ideas for incorporating the heroes, villains, and adventures from the stories into the ones you tell in your own campaigns.

Featured Stories 

Blue Rose:

“Nearly Perfect,” by F. Wesley Schneider

Whoever said your lover should never change you might not have had flesh-shaping arcana at their fingertips.

“Those Who Wait, Part 4,” by Rhiannon Louve

Marn and Kiyn continue trying to unravel the corruption spreading through Aldis while dealing with their feelings for each other.

“The Price of Mercy, Part 2,” by Clio Yun-Su Davis

Family and obligation continue to clash even beyond death and freedom.

“The Rhy-Horse,” by A. B. Neilly

A lonely young rhydan, burdened by the expectations of his herd, finds his bonded companion, but deadly trouble is brewing.

Mutants & Masterminds:

“A Great Day for Trepidation,” by Eytan Bernstein

Kevin’s built a team, and now the bad guys are coming for them.

Pick up Nisaba Journal Issue 3 today!

Height of the Storm, A New Mutants & Masterminds Novel

Height of the Storm cover imageHeight of the Storm by Aaron Rosenberg is a new Mutants & Masterminds novel from Nisaba Press, available for preorder and in three formats of ebook (epub, mobi, and PDF), in our Green Ronin Online Store.

Lindsey’s life changed the night she saw her beloved grandfather in his superhero guise for the first time. It changed again the day she got caught in a strange storm, and she took up her grandfather’s mantle as a protector. Diagnosed at a young age with a rare chronic illness, she must balance her family’s protectiveness against her desire to carry on their legacy and prevent a bitter genius from taking revenge on those who slighted him.

Height of the Storm is the first novel to explore Earth-Prime, the setting of the hit superhero RPG Mutants & Masterminds.

 

About the Author

Aaron Rosenberg, authorAaron Rosenberg is the author of the best-selling DuckBob SF comedy series, the Dread Remora space-opera series, the Relicant epic fantasy series with Steve Savile, and the O.C.L.T. occult thriller series with David Niall Wilson. Aaron’s tie-in work contains novels for Star Trek, Warhammer, World of WarCraft, Stargate: Atlantis, Shadowrun, Eureka, and more. He has written children’s books (including the original series STEM Squad and Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles, the award-winning Bandslam: The Junior Novel, and the #1 best-selling 42: The Jackie Robinson Story), educational books on a variety of topics, and over seventy roleplaying games (such as the original games Asylum, Spookshow, and Chosen, work for White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast, Fantasy Flight, Pinnacle, and many others, and both the Origins Award-winning Gamemastering Secrets and the Gold ENnie-winning Lure of the Lich Lord). He is the co-creator of the ReDeus series, and a founding member of Crazy 8 Press. Aaron lives in New York with his family. You can follow him online at gryphonrose. com, on Facebook at facebook.com/gryphonrose, and on Twitter @gryphonrose.

Nisaba Press

Nisaba Press is the fiction imprint of Green Ronin Publishing, under the leadership of Editorial Director Jaym Gates. Nisaba publishes novels, anthologies, and nonfiction tied to the rich and varied worlds of Green Ronin’s tabletop roleplaying properties and the larger world of tabletop gaming. With the release of Joseph D. Carriker’s Shadowtide and Aaron Rosenberg’s Height of the Storm, Nisaba Press brings a new facet to Green Ronin’s award-winning worlds.

Getting Started with Threefold

Threefold, which premiered at Gen Con and hits stores September 3, is a new setting for Modern AGE, allowing characters to explore numerous worlds connected to science, magic, and psychic forces.  It’s very, very big—one universe isn’t enough to contain it! Reviewer Jeremiah McCoy says it feels like a TV show with ten seasons of lore. This is intentional. I didn’t develop this to be a diversion, but a setting even an experienced gaming group could hang the majority of their play on for years. Talking about it, I called it a return to “Big Setting,” like those from 25 years ago and more which offer deep immersion and a variety of stories.

But this begs the question: Where do you begin? Fortunately, Threefold itself provides answers in its text. I want people to play it, after all. Unlike many of the great settings of yesteryear, it isn’t designed to just sit on a shelf.

Earth, Otherworld, Netherworld—each suggests different stories in the wider Metacosm.

Root Factions: The Sodality and Aethon

Chapter 4 of Threefold presents our default focus, split into characters from the Sodality, a transplanar agency devoted to exploring the Metacosm and defending its diverse peoples; and Aethon, who protect Earth’s prime timeline (primeline), meddle in the affairs of alternate worlds, and often accompany Sodality characters.

The Sodality received slightly greater support for play, as it’s integrated into the Vitane’s government of many planes, and characters’ service branches—Emissary, Protector, and Searcher, suggest the social, action, and exploration aspects that define Modern AGE itself. Characters follow the Vows of the organization, and supervisors called Magisters supply them with orders and goals. This makes a Sodality focused game the easiest one when you want to explore the broad setting.

Aethon suits a more conservative approach to the setting. Aethon characters have supervision and objectives to keep them focused, but primarily operate in Earth’s primeline or, using devices called quantum arks, in alternate worlds. They protect Earth from the dangers of alien planes, as well as homegrown sorcerers, psychics, renegade scientists, and miscellaneous strangeness. Aethon is the way to go when you want to gradually reveal the setting. Characters can eventually visit other planes working alongside Sodality members, or on clandestine missions such allies might not approve of.

While these factions are the easiest to start with, nothing in Threefold demands you stick to them. If you want to play Krypteia gangsters or Nighthost warriors, go for it! The Sodality and Aethon are the most approachable options, but not the only ones.

Picking Your Planes

Another way to narrow your focus is to look at different slices of the Metacosm, and decide what sort of worlds you want characters to visit. Threefold is designed to give each of the three major types of planes a default genre. Otherworlds suit classic fantasy adventure, where magic saturates the land. Netherworlds are keyed to dark fantasy and horror. Earth and its parallels lead to stories about the Singularity, transhumanism, and even time travel. Limiting your initial explorations to one of these types of planes can help focus the game. It’s also perfectly possible to run entire adventures, and even campaigns, without stepping through a single gate. This is best supported on Earth, where psychic guilds, rogue scientists, warlocks, and AI-directed criminals provide numerous challenges, but surviving a single Netherworld, or exploring one Otherworld, can occupy players for some time.

Speculative Fantasy

Beyond the core factions and planes, Threefold bases its default play style on “speculative fantasy”—that is, fantasy stories using the story patterns of classic science fiction. Next time around, we’ll talk about that. Until then, remember that while any story is possible, your story, and the focus you give the setting, is paramount, and will define your version of Threefold.

THE DELUXE GAMEMASTER’S GUIDE: ADVENTURE TO THE MAX

In our last Mutants & Mastermind’s Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide preview, I showed off some of the new faces populating the game, including my beloved Jobber villain archetype. But the Deluxe GMG is more than just a new gallery of rogues! One area I’ve struggled with the third edition of Mutants & Masterminds has been adventure design. The original Gamemaster’s Guide delved deep into villains and plot and motivations and challenges, but never provided a chapter on stitching them all together into a full adventure.

So for this newly revised reprint, I added a chapter on exactly that! The new Adventure chapter provides some practical advice on planning an adventure, involving the heroes, and stitching together various scenes to help make compelling adventures with more to do than throw punches and busses. Mutants & Masterminds has roughly broken out the action into various “scene” types—Conflict, Challenge, Investigation, and Roleplay—for years in our official adventures without expanding much on what each of those scenes mean or how to make best use of them as a GM. Now each scene type gets a spread on how to write it, how to use the rules, and when to dish out Hero points, as well as a helpful random chart to help out if you get stuck.

The Adventure chapter also includes a half-dozen pre-built scenes for you to grab and drop into your own adventures on short notice. Anyone who picked up the Basic hero’s Handbook will be familiar with these, but if you haven’t, a pre-built scene has everything you need for an hour or two of interesting heroics above and beyond the beloved superhero slugfest. The scenes also show you how to use the Mutants & Masterminds rules in unexpected ways to play out some fan-favorite comic book tropes. The new scenes in the Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide include shrinking your heroes down to insect size, handling massive invasions, and waging battles in the psychic realm, but my favorite is detailing how to play out a fun, high-speed chase!

 

You can download a PDF sample of the High Speed Chase right here! 

 

Of course, we wouldn’t leave you hanging with only a few sample scenes. Your group needs to save the day in more than just one scene at a time, so the Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide includes two new Mutants & Masterminds adventures. In “Power Play,” a new criminal organization is taking over the streets of your fair city and threatening to bring one of the most dangerous supervillains of the previous generation back into play to secure their hold. In “The Isle of Dr. Sersei,” you must infiltrate a mad scientist’s island full of monsters to stop her deadly “salvation” of mankind. You can run each adventure as it is, drop in some of the sample scenes from Chapter 6 to bulk it out, or just use each adventure as a whole pile of extra sample scenes to drop into your own adventures. Maybe you’ll never run Power play at home, but knowing how to run the PCs infiltrating an underworld meeting or battling atop speeding tanker trucks is always fun to have in your back pocket!

 

Threefold’s Aethon: Working for the Righteous Machines

For the last two weeks I’ve written about Threefold’s Sodality (Part 1 | Part 2), one of the two leading factions for Player Characters in this new Modern AGE setting. The Sodality’s focus is outward, across numerous Otherworlds. Earth is a matter for its allies in a secret global state, the Peridexion. And of the Peridexion’s five divisions, one deals in words, blades and data flows to protect Earth’s primeline. That’s Aethon.

Aethon’s current symbol, fitting its name, which comes from the eagle that tortures Prometheus daily. Imposing consequences for rash innovations is part of Aethon’s mandate.

Aethon Operations

While the majority of Aethon’s operations are limited to Earth and dealing with threats to the worldlines, coordination with the Vitane is common. Operants (fully initiated agents) often travel the planes alongside Sodality Missions. When Aethon acts alone, however, Earth’s Alts—parallel worlds—are the most frequent exotic destinations, if a team must leave the “real world,” or primeline. Operant teams form Sections: a thousand groups given three-digit designations and occasionally, informal names, such as the augmented shock troops of Team Bear. On Earth or another worldline (accessible via standard quantum ark, a vehicle which is also a definitely computable object reprocessed into its target reality via esoteric mathematics), Sections perform the following missions:

  • Commit: Once properly analyzed, Sections impose desired changes on the status quo, altering the politics, technologies and other critical factors of a worldline, including the primeline.
  • Fork: With the aid of insights from Aethon’s patron, Section operants set specific actions in motion to create branch timelines.
  • Monitor: The most common mission involves keeping watch over the various aspects of Earth.
  • Push/Pull: Defending worldlines against unauthorized change is a task divided into pushing away extraplanar threats such as incursions from the Nighthost, or pulling Earth-based problems, from rogue scientists to warlocks, out of the equation.
  • Delete: For reasons barely understood by Aethon, the transcendental intelligences that rule it sometimes demand the deletion of an alternate universe, typically accomplished by eradicating sapient life on its Earth. The worldlines are gardens, and one must weed.

Such missions may lead to detours to other planes, contending with unauthorized supernatural forces, and avoiding alternate-universe instances of Aethon itself.

Aethon Personnel

Section operants (so named as an indication of how they’re handled) are the epitome of Earth’s potential: highly trained and gifted experts further augmented by swappable posthuman enhancements. These somatic and noetic technologies run the gamut from combat capable artificial limbs to altering probability by remodeling the mathematical substrate of reality. Operant gear ranges from slightly improved ordinary equipment to the reconfigurable MAW weapon system, Panoply-class powered armor, and cantors: cannisters of cloned psychic brain tissue imprinted with a bias toward science, which helps stabilize natural laws in planes where they operate more loosely.

Below the Sections, the Pool provides a steady stream of temporary agents and informants, many of whom don’t know who they work for. Above them, Management interfaces directly with the directors of Aethon and the Peridexion as a whole: the Machinors.

Aethon Leadership

It calls itself Lucifer, but the leader of the Peridexion uses many names and faces, communicating through any electronic devices—and even other machines, sometimes—to command it as the head of a council of six supremely intelligent AIs. Such beings are called Machinors, and not all help Aethon. In fact, a rival cabal, including an uncreated future intelligence interacting with the past, guide the Krypteia, an interplanar criminal conspiracy. In fact, it isn’t exactly certain that the Machinors are really AIs at all but appear this way as contemporary personifications of ordered knowledge. Aethon serves the Peridexion, which honors these six. Loyal subordinates point to the numerous occasions these instructions have saved Earth from catastrophe, but are the world’s other problems signs of flaws, subtle enemy action, or a plan that might leave humanity itself behind?

Aethon and the Sodality

The bond between Aethon and the Sodality dates to the end of the Fellwar, when the Machinors helped refugees from the Otherworlds but an end to it. Earth is said to be the seat of natural laws across the Metacosm, and sacred for it, and even in prehistory, its guiding figures wishes it to remain autonomous. As the Peridexion rose, it negotiated a number of treaties, such as those allowing people with extraordinary gifts and origins—arcanists, arvu, and others—the right to maintain secret communities on Earth. Aethon and the Sodality eventually developed a framework for lending agents and forming common teams, typically in the form of Aethon members joining Sodality Missions.

Through the Gate beyond Gen Con

Threefold is available to pre-order now in our online store, and will start showing up in retail gaming shops in early Sept. Until then, take a look at this preview about primeline Earth (with flashes of other planes on each side to tantalize you)—and see you through the gate.

 

 

Green Ronin To Publish The Fifth Season Roleplaying Game

Green Ronin to publish The Fifth Season Roleplaying Game. [Image shows the three novel covers from N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy. The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky.]

 

GREEN RONIN TO PUBLISH THE FIFTH SEASON ROLEPLAYING GAME

N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy Comes to the World of RPGs

August 2, 2019—SEATTLE, WA: Green Ronin Publishing announced today that it has signed a licensing agreement with N.K. Jemisin to create a roleplaying game based on her critically acclaimed Broken Earth series. Each book of the trilogy—The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky—won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, an unprecedented achievement in speculative fiction.

“The world building in the Broken Earth Trilogy is incredible and ripe with roleplaying possibilities,” said Green Ronin president Chris Pramas. “More than that, the books are searingly relevant to the current state of our world and we hope the game gives people the opportunity to explore the issues and themes the novels handle so deftly.”

“I’ve heard from many of my readers that they’re fascinated enough by the world of the Broken Earth that they’d like to visit it (nobody wants to live there tho!) and now they’ll get their chance,” said N.K. Jemisin. “I’ll be working with Green Ronin to try and make sure the spirit and feel of the books is rendered successfully in this new form.”

Green Ronin will publish The Fifth Season RPG in the Fall of 2020. Tanya DePass (I Need Diverse Games, Rivals of Waterdeep) and Joseph D. Carriker (Blue Rose, Critical Role: Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting) will co-develop the game. The Fifth Season RPG will use a revised and customized version of Green Ronin’s Chronicle System, which powered the company’s long-running Game of Thrones RPG, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying.

More information and previews for The Fifth Season RPG will appear on greenronin.com in the coming months.

 

About Green Ronin Publishing

Green Ronin Publishing is a Seattle-based company dedicated to the art of great games. Since the year 2000, Green Ronin has established a reputation for quality and innovation that is second to none, publishing such roleplaying game hits as The Expanse, Dragon Age, and Mutants & Masterminds, and winning over 40 awards for excellence. For an unprecedented three years running, Green Ronin won the prestigious GenCon & EnWorld Award for Best Publisher.

 

About N.K. Jemisin

N(ora). K. Jemisin is an author of speculative fiction short stories and novels who lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. In 2018, she became the first author to win three Hugos in a row for her Broken Earth novels. She has also won a Nebula Award, two Locus Awards, and a number of other honors.

Pre-Order and PDF: Threefold and Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide

It’s the first day of Gen Con, and visitors to Booth 929 are finding our latest releases and advance copies of our upcoming books for sale. But even if you’re not at Gen Con, you can get in on the fun, too! When you pre-order Threefold and the Mutants & Masterminds Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide through our Green Ronin Online Store, you’ll be offered the PDF version for just $5! If you prefer to spend your money at your local store, make sure they know about our GR Preorder Plus program. If they sign up, you can get a coupon for the same $5 PDF deal through them!