"HC VP Cu Graves Found Dead, Soon After Floor 300 Peak Corner Office Explodes"
HC Spokesperson Franz Vogel Lays Blame on Labor Terrorists Before He Disappears
For the first time in this reporter's memory HermitageCorp seems to be off balance and not fully in control of events here in The Enclave.
First their head of PR, the popular gadfly of Enclave upper social circles, disappeared for weeks. His dead body was found atop a malfunctioning and wrecked reztower in a penthouse apparently registered to no one. EPD attempted to suppress the report of his death, but we got the leak[encsecret-coroner-report].
Then, almost immediately after, something happened up on the 300th floor of HC's HQ The Peak. An explosion large enough to be visible from walltop went off around the area of The Peak where we understand major executive offices to be.
Then, the posh asshole Franz Vogel, who lead up the press response--after giving us a paltry official statement--disappeared with no report on him or word under his letterhead for weeks. No one has seen him since.
Meanwhile, with all this going on, HC CEO John Dyer remains in a weeks long cone of silence.
"None have voided HC's ICE for 40 years. Whatever is happening gives us who aren't HC corpo to stand up and speak out. Now's the minute to melt the walls HC programmed into the Virtual and klep back the city for ourselves." -Kit Pek, OEM organizer and housing coordinator.
Doubts have started to rise about HC's effectiveness in contributing their fair share to the running of The Enclave. The OEM has been contributing more to the overall day to day lives of many residents. The Walls have apparently started being repaired without HC's help. A benefactor who has yet to step into the light is funding serious work by the Rescue Org for Sunken Environments to repair drowned neighborhoods. A new refuge has opened for the unhoused run by the seemingly beneficent religious group The Temple of Open Doors.
The future of The Enclave seems less and less dependent on an apparently flailing HC, and perhaps that's for the best.
Archives on rising new powers in The Enclave follows
Final Campaigners for Local and National Office Selected
Refugees and Flood Victims Shift the Balance of Power
The Spin's effort to re-register the displaced has turned out very positive results with flood refugees from the drifts and Wallies displaced by flooding settling in to regions all across The Enclave.
The displaced were not expected by officials to be registered in time to vote, but numbers have far exceeded initial expectations. The result as the local primaries come to an end is an unexpected majority of Crat Party candidates aligning with the anti-corporate arm of the party and local OEM movement.
Meanwhile Presidential primaries have yet to conclude, since The Superior Tools for Americans Beset by electoraL Emergency (STABLE) act of 2045 moves presidential elections to sit in January.
There's still time to join our vote observer and defense group, a joint project with OEM, The Concerned Citizens Social Club, and the Small BCorp Coalition. Weapons training starts in two weeks.
Here's how it works:
Add +1 to a rating : You can mark permanent changes to a specific rating, though your profile should note a limit beyond which you can't go. Consider what each rating can do for your character and choose carefully. You can't go beyond your registered limit.
Take another Move from those available on your profile : Everyone's profile has a variety of moves you can make. If you're going up a level you can take one of the moves that you haven't already marked as having.
Take a Move from those available on another profile : All the profiles we've supplied show what they can do under the Moves section. You can learn something new and unusual though! If you do you can take a Move that describes your new skill from any of the other profiles below, just check their Full Descriptions to think about what you'd like to do.
Gain an Ally/Gain a Team : You can gain some support staff that will be registered as working with you! You may already have some people you know that you're picking out, or just putting it out there that you're recruiting and getting some folks to show up. Allies and teams work similarly, they both are organized around a single motivation, even if a team comprises of 2 to 6 people. However, members of your team may have their own motivations outside of the team's requirements.
The motivations you can register for your new Ally/Team:
- Subordinate (motivation: to follow your exact instructions)
- Lieutenant (motivation: to execute the spirit of your instructions)
- Friend (motivation: to provide emotional support)
- Bodyguard (motivation: to intercept danger)
- Confidante (motivation: to give you advice and perspective)
- Backup (motivation: to stand with you)
Ally/team members should have names registered along with what their background is too, how they look, and any special skills they bring.
Register a Haven Feature : Have you got a serious home base to operate out from? Are you intending to improve it? Then you need to add that information to your profile! Select a new haven option from the list in the Expert profile. You have added this facility to your haven.
Don’t bother trying to register a new feature if you don’t already have a haven!
Incite
Conflict brews in The Enclave and people are taking sides. Roll 2xCharm+1 with any character who is not actively hostile to try to enroll them into the popular front protests and OEM organizing. Each successful roll gives you an opportunity to make your pitch to the character. #quinnForTheWin
Pill
The degenerating state of stable life in the Enclave has a depressing impact. Roll 2xCool+1 with any character who is not actively hostile to try to send them into a spiral that will assure they have no impact on anything of import ever again. Each successful roll gives you an opportunity to try and crush the character's hopes and dreams. #EnclaveOmnicrisis
Recruit
As more citizens of The Enclave become Clued In you can recruit them to become active fighters for your cause. They will join you to support or become engaged with the invasion of The Peak that you are planning. Roll 2xSharp+1 with any character who is not actively hostile and who is Clued In to try to enroll them against HC and into direct action. #OneWayUp
Not So Unlucky
Time and experience have given all players the following ability:
Any negative effect that results from a failed roll can be negated by spending a luck point.
Advanced Moves Unlocked
HC has been studying arrivals and changelings as they've been acquiring power throughout The Enclave and beyond into the Sunken States. Now that you've convinced Cu Graves that John Dyer needs to be defeated, he's opened this database to you.
This means a lot of medium-sized magic, quick but more powerful stuff that allows you to do more, but at a cost, the abilities require some time and focus, making them harder to pull off in a fight and more time consuming. Some of them include components as well. You'll be sorting through them for a while.
New Abilities
Walk in Darkness
Given a minute to focus with no enemies looking directly at them, the user can slip into the shadows, magically moving from one to another in perfect silence. +3 to any rolls involved in staying hidden for as long as you are in an environment where shadows exist. The minute the user steps out of the shadows the effect is gone and time must be spent on focusing again to regain that state.
- 11+ choose 1.
- 7-10 choose 2.
- 6 or less the Keeper chooses one.
Choose:
- +3 effect works as described.
- You must roll Weird to exit the shadows, if you fail you cannot interact with the real world until you make a successful Weird roll.
- Take 1 harm as the darkness seeps into you.
- You can only stay in the shadows for one round or five minutes out of combat.
Marginamania
You've been studying for a while now, reading books, learning new spells, meeting elder gods. You've noticed that sometimes the answers just come to you now, maybe you read them in the corner of some book. Or maybe you spent a little too much time knowing an unknowable god-thing.
- 11+ Not only is the answer to your strange question in your head, but an idea about what to do with it is now on the tip of your tongue.
- 7+ The answer to a strange question that could not possibly be reached through exploring the situation around you is suddenly in your hands. Choose one:
- You summon the reference material and can act on it but the very act will make you forget and you'll not be able to act on this in the future.
- You can get this knowledge, but there is a price to pay--in blood. Take harm between 1 and 3 depending on the question.
- Your subconscious makes a deal it's sure you'll get around to paying off some day. You owe Someone Something.
- 3-6: You know nothing new.
- Less then 3: You've spent too long scribbling strange spells and calling on the etheric forces, choose one:
- Pay the bill: All your previous deals have come due. Something bad is about to hit you hard.
- Take 3 harm instantly.
- Lose an ability of your choice. You can relearn it later.
- Spend a point of luck.
Lockdown
Bring down a barrier at will, in any area visible to you. You can be inside or outside the target area. No communication, no random wandering in to the fight, no reinforcements, mystical or otherwise.
- 11+ You and your team can still get messages out.
- 7-11: Success anyone inside the barrier is just as cut off from the outside world as your enemies. If you are outside the barrier you can't enter without dropping it.
- 6 or less: Your attempt fizzles and you experience some form of blowback.
Soul Shout!
From deep inside the depths of your body you summon up the will to yell and bring forth the beast. All rolls are +Tough and will alert enemies to your presence and any nearby allies to your need for backup.
- 11+ You knock over every enemy around you, bowling them to the ground and dealing them +1 harm.
- 7+ You knock over everyone around you, leaving you the only one standing.
- 5-6: You yell really loud. People look at you funny.
- 4-: You blow out your vocal cords. You can't speak for the rest of the day.
New Rituals
These medium-sized rituals can be executed during normal play or doing legwork, but you must have the materials on hand and the needed time and quiet to focus.
Lucky Margins
By scouting an area in advance and using the detailed formula to mix up a strange glowing clay you can, during the legwork phase, set a circle around a location or building. (You can also set the clay in the corners of a building floor) You can then perform a complex ritual at any time within the border to sacrafice a luck point and give extremely bad luck to anyone not in the casting circle with you. The result will be severe, for those inside, guns will misfire, people will trip, spells will go awray. Spell maxes out at three stories high.
Dirty Hands
For as long as you choose to fight open handed you can focus the power of an hour long ritual into them. By focusing on a single person over the course of the ritual and giving them twin carbon rings the spell lays a significant power on to them, +1 physical +2 magic. But the minute the user has those hands pick up anything in anger, with the intent to use it as a weapon, they lose focus and the bonus is gone. The power leaving them may attract some attention.
Push Your Luck
New ways to spend your luck points. All the normal negatives of spending luck apply. You can choose these for your sheet, the same way you would a normal move.
Someone to Watch Over Me
Magic can be tricky, especially with those not born to it. But you've become a master of the weft and wield of the etheric energies of The Verdant. If they are not a changing and not born of The Verdant they can have power attached to them. But it has to be your power. Expend a luck point and any humans in the circle gain protection from magic (+2) for a year.
Esoteric Materiel
The Virtual has become a thin barrier between the The Real and The Verdant and that barrier is more thin every day. What can be done but exploit it?
Sacrafice a luck point and bring forth features of the corresponding Verdant location with the place you are in The Real (or visa versa). The barrier is thin, and so this can be done by the player without a roll. The player describes the features of the other side and manifests them in place, the only rule being that they must be nature-based if you are pulling through The Verdant and technology-based if you are pulling through The Real. You can pull through many features of the area of the other side or just one and retain a connection with that object for as long as it is in the new dimensional plane.
Roll to exert control over those objects through force of will.
- 7-10 will allow you to move the objects or plants or whatever however you like within your field of view.
- 11-12+ will allow you to not only move these objects at will but deform them as you'd like and prescribe them a pattern (like a circle) that they will continue to move in.
- 6 or less and the object stays in place.
Critical Role
At will spend a luck point to keep yourself alive no matter how much harm you take and give yourself +2 to all rolls and +1 to all rolls by your team. However, if anyone rolls a 1 - 3 at any point the resulting blowback will not kill you but be epically severe. The effect lasts until dismissed or the sunrise.
Networking Certification
Spend a luck point and be able to summon any allied group you wish instantly to this location in the form of a leader and a gang of 10 members. They will be instantly psychically informed of the situation and act as an Ally and a Gang together under the player's control. All effects of spending luck apply.
TILT!
Spend two points of luck to rewrite the power of any district in favor of a present group of your choice. If you are currently active in that district, everything members of that group attempt will suddenly be easier, +2 to any rolls. The effect will last until that group has claimed control of the district.
Throw the Board
Spend two luck. All harm for your group and its allies is reset to zero, all negatives are eliminated. Any bonuses and carry-forwards are retained.
Epic Levels
When you have maxed out advancement on normal checkboxes on your sheet, you may begin to take Epic Levels. Epic Playbooks are now accessible to you, but after your first pull from an Epic Playbook your future levels are 10 xp instead of 5.
Epic Capabilities
Hardened
You can mark an extra harm. Unstable starts at 5 harm.
Epic Classes
Type: The Water Walker
Bio: A wanderer of the Sunken States the Water Walker has spent their lives traveling from small town, to water-logged abandoned site, to ocean-walled city collecting friends, information and picking up a grab bag of skills along the way. More than anything though, they are a walker and folktale teller. Their travels have also taken them through areas of dire disease, flooded contamination, and broken radioactive storage, and they have acquired a few troubles as a result. Their travels have given them particular quirks and abilities, but the tall tales are almost too much to believe.
Type: Six String Swordmaster
Bio: Elvis-loving, Dolly-worshiping, guitar-toting master of music and sword combat. The Six String Swordmaster has come to make his fortune amongst the ruins of the Northern Sunken States. He has enthralled stadiums of people with his hard rock and killed hundreds with his sword. Now a change has come and they have found new power in themselves, the strange power of Killer Riffs.
Type: Conductor
Bio: The Sunken States, oddly enough, have a more persistent and stable system of cross-country transport now than they ever did before the great flood. Great currents of water have formed in the new ocean that sits above what was once land that people fought and died over. These currents are incredibly dangerous, but also great accelerators for the boatswain who knows how to navigate them. The Conductor was once one of those elite before she found herself awake to the powers within her. A lifetime of navigation and tending boats has given her an immensely powerful connection with water and, usefully, water is everywhere.
Type: The Solar Tender
Bio: When the world sunk, some of the tallest places became newly habitable and centers of civilization, but for some, even changing climate could not make them truly habitable, only… more easily reachable. Climbers, mountaineers, gadget geeks, weird techies with a fetish for loneliness, the isolated by choice, and the isolated by accident of the great flood, all these types ended up becoming the masters of these uninhabitable peaks and began to mount solar panels on them that would become the core of the world's new electric grid. The Solar Tender was such explorer, regularly picking peaks to become the base of gigantic solar panels that steadily improved as more people brought materials, made suggestions, brought tech and shared information gleaned only through the maintenance of such systems.
Type: Trainee
Bio: It turns out that young changelings and empowered kids have access to a lot of power but not easy control. They’ve been training up on the moon, but they’re not always ready for prime-time.
FIVE ON FIRE
Burning news in The Enclave
MCorp: A B Corp Lends Funds to Free Enclave Media | Independent Enclave Screamsheets, is the fundraising and grant-gifting coalition non-profit founded by all independently owned and operate Enclave media. The fundraising of IES has been quite down for an election year and fundraising has always been tough. However, a surprise gift by relatively unknown corp MCorp (a Benefit Corporation) has floated the coverage costs of all members this year.
HCSec Reinforces ColCorp in East NorMid, Recruits Strikebreakers | HCSec normally isolates their activity to the Uppers where their most valuable employees live. However, they've come down to lend guns, armor, and men to the command of ColSec protecting the main chicken manufactory in EastNM. AI-controlled bots and strikebreakers come in under the HCSec protective wing to run the genomepools and fry-lines. Strikers baffled as HC somehow recruits people right off the line.
Hail TOD, Floodzone Saints | Deep into the Floodzone, an area abandoned by HC after the Enclave was constructed, refugee camps grow into small, well-built, towns secured by tech from flooding and cold. The work of ROSE and The Temple of Open Doors has made the dark expanse into a cozy home for both flood-displaced citizens and the steady stream of arrivals from the drifts.
AI Assistant Annie Frequently Fritzed | The ubiquitous HC AI Assistant Annie has been somewhat slow to respond and malfunctioning as of late. The tool was released at a vast discount for years in order to get it in almost every home of the Enclave where it keeps an ear out for commands (and perhaps HC keywords). Unverified reports say it has occasionally spouted "Quinn for the Win" to the surprise of owners and, no doubt, HC Customer Support.
RyotGuurls Rise, Likely to Join Borough Council | Lacey O'Ryan, one-time striker for RyotGuurls, the roller team out of SoCentWa, has won the primary for SoCentMid. The RyotGuurls also sponsored OEM-backed leaders in a number of other districts and acted both as canvasers and makeshift security for those candidates, with every person they backed winning the primaries. B. George, spokesperson for the community organization and team, has rallied many citizens with their massively successful Virt posts.