"Power Returns to the Enclave's Walls"
Ongoing Flooding in the Wall regions seemingly pauses, but is it a temporary cessation or an end to the outages of service to Wall filtering systems?
For quite a while now, assessments of the Enclave's lower walls have indicated that they were losing power and efficiency. This has been one of the major reasons we've seen some Wally sectors flood.
While the walls are powered through systems provided to the Enclave by HC, the corporation's leadership could not provide any explanation as to why the failures and power outages were occurring.
However, some time early this morning, increased power levels have been restored to the Walls of the Enclave, restoring flood-water processing, and various active defense systems that keep the City's Wall regions dry and un-flooded.
With refugees from SoWeWall the South Central wall district has been overwhelmed and under-resourced.
"That we still have no indication why almost all the Western wall regions flooded is a terrifying prospect to those in the under-resourced camps in South Central Wall's streets. However, at least we can rest easy for now." - Alyssa Thomson, borough council candidate, OEM.
The restoration of active flood defenses to the whole Enclave means that no further sectors will be subject to flooding. Auto repair systems have been making safe those walls in WeNo and SoCent that were in danger of failing.
Representatives from the flooded districts are still calling on aid from the city in returning their constituents to their homes.
Work with the Rescue Organization for Sunken Environments has continued to secure more humane conditions for those left in camps after having to evacuate in the face of flooding.
Borough Council Primaries Settled
For the first time multiple parties are represented in each district
Borough races in November will be exciting for the first time in decades! The Spin is seeking an increasing number of volunteers to help report on an unprecedented number of eligible candidates for Borough Council. Previous experience is absolutely appreciated.
For the first time, we will also see new parties participating in the Enclave's election, with representatives from OEM, the Temple of Open Doors, The LU, and a number of independent social organizations all having viable candidates.
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 Playbooks
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Standard Playbooks
FAIR FIVE
Five at a time the Enclave turns
LU Gains Affordable Housing Concessions from EastNoUpper | The Free Battalion can no longer serve as strike-breakers. As a result battles with ColCorp and the EPD have turned in favor of The Laborers Union, who has been bolstered by the OEM and additional support provided by the Temple of Open Doors. As a result LU organizers have successfully secured housing concessions from ColCorp HR, making them the first to acquire corp-funded housing on the Upper levels. EastNoUpper apartments were aquired by ColCorp and are administered by the Enclave Housing and Rental Board.
WeNoMidsCity Stands Still After Bombs Close Major Streets | Bombs have shaken WeNorthMids-city closing down huge swaths of the streets. No one has been hurt, yet. The source or reason of the detonations is still unknown.
New Religion Gains Recognition, Secures Underground Refugee Center | The Temple of Open Doors has resolved its conflict with the EPD over taking up residence in the Floodzone under Central. The group has secured a promise that they will be left alone, in part on the strength of their numbers in the area, but also thanks to last minute bargaining where support by OEM helped them gain tax exempt status.
OEM Rises (Literally) | In the Central Mids the Open Enclave Movement have continued to gain power from the bottom of the region to the top. For the first time in Enclave history the SoCent stack has candidates nominated successfully for the upcoming runoff election that identity in the same party for all three neighborhoods. Whether the OEM can win SoCentUpper is yet to be seen, but it is impressive they've even managed a chance.
NorthWest Enclave is Mobbed | Northwest Enclave regions have increasingly seen movement from organized crime. WeNo now has reports of crime figures in almost every level of borough organization, almost all from local "social clubs" who seem to have mostly defeated their Russia-based rivals in that area.