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Creature Preview: Pyronic Sentry
Here's a preview from The Sun Below: City on the Edge, available now on DriveThruRPG.com. While the creature hails from a Numenera adventure, it'd be right at home in The Strange as well.
PYRONIC SENTRY 5 (15)
A pyronic sentry is a synthsteel- and glassteel-cladded automaton whose color changes to match the flames it finds itself in. It looks like a massive armored man with long blades for hands. Motive: Follow orders to guard a place or a thing. Environment: Pyronic sentries are usually found near fires, lava pits, or other hellishly hot environments. Damage Inflicted: 5 slashing and 5 heat. Armor: 3 (100 vs. heat) Modifications: While being almost invulnerable to heat, cold attacks gain an asset and ignore armor. In fact, if a pyronic sentry is removed from a fiery environment and placed in a temperature comfortable for a human, the automaton will become sluggish and have a one-level penalty on all its actions. Should one end up in a frigid environment, it would take a two-level penalty on all actions and take one point of damage a turn until it shattered into pieces. Combat: A pryonic sentry will follow its orders first, and worry about self-preservation second. Usually the orders do not require it to move to cooler locations. Interaction: Pryonic sentries do not speak, but are telepaths. Use: An arch-nano’s synthsteel tower rises out of a lava field. People say the arch-nano hasn’t been seen in years, but the pryonic sentry still stands guard, stopping good folk from taking valuable items from a woman who surely doesn’t need them anymore. Loot: Once cool, the remains of a pryonic sentry can be salvaged for 1d6 cyphers and possibly an oddity.
The Pyronic Sentry's GM Intrusion is designed to challenge any tier party, from tier one to tier six. Stats are presented in three groups, separated by /s. The first stat is for tiers 1 and 2. The second for tiers 3 and 4. The last for tiers 5 and 6.
GM Intrusion: The pyronic sentry teleports an enemy who is at short range or closer to just in front of the automaton. The sentry then attacks as level 7/8/9 with both bladed hands, doing double damage and dazing the foe for one round if it hits. The foe will also take heat damage from the environment if the pyronic sentry is in its usual searing environs.
You teleport into the flames and feel the searing-hot bladed hands of the automaton spike deep into your body. Your flesh sizzles like meat on a spit.
Notice how the GM Intrusion flows from the creature's description? Bring on the searing heat! You can do the same with your own creatures, see Numenera GM Intrusions: Creatures.
Have fun, and there plenty more creatures to be found in The Sun Below: City on the Edge's bestiary!
The Sun Below: City on the Edge – Review on Origins of a Dark God
John-Matthew DeFoggi's review of The Sun Below: City on the Edge: "Well worth the price. The flexibility you get from this supplement is staggering. The setting is weird and interesting, the adventure is flexible, and the creatures are inventive. There is enough material here to continue to bring your characters to the world below even after the main adventure has been completed."
Living for Crits Reviews The Sun Below: City on the Edge
James August Walls has reviewed The Sun Below: City on the Edge and is blogging about GMing the game in his amazing game blog Living for Crits. "Let me say now, very clearly, that this... is... BRILLIANT!"
"The adventure shares a similar layout as the Numenera Corebook, with callouts and pertinent information listed along the edges of the main text, which makes running this adventure very easy. Frankly, if I didn't know already that this was a third-party licensee, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference."
Read the whole review, and an account of his first session playing the adventure, here.
The Sun Below: City on the Edge, Available Now!
At long last, the PDF version of The Sun Below: City on the Edge, is available now at DriveThruRPG.com.
What if I told you there is a world below this one? A world with its own sun? Full of strange peoples, amazing discoveries, and unspeakable horror? Finding your way down to this world is almost impossible.Finding a way back up, well, that’s worse.
The Sun Below: City on the Edge, an epic adventure for Numenera that takes place deep below the surface of the Ninth World. What starts as an investigation into the aftermath of the Iron Wind soon turns to kiddnapping, a strange journey to an even stranger city.
Who will the player characters trust? Will they escape The City on the Edge?
An adventure for any tier party that your players will never forget.
The Sun Below: City on the Edge, What to Expect?
There is an Underground World with its own Sun
Under the surface of the Ninth World is a massive globe-spanning tube, so vast it has it's own sun and moon. Biomechanical airships ply the airways and races unknown have lived and died there for untold ages.
By putting the setting under the player character's feet, it allows the GM to jump to this world from wherever their campaign is set. By making it a tube, it can exist side by side with other underground settings, in case Monte gets a shovel.
Urbamorr lurks on the Side of this World
This is the city, and it really is on the edge, and in more than one way. A city mostly in ruins, with a ruling class that spends its time in dreams, while their city crumbles and mind-controlled slaves toil to keep it going for one more day. Year. Eon.
Motivations to Explore this world: Discovery and Rescue
A whole new world provides endless opportunities for exploration and discovery. And to make it personal, the player characters are also presented with a kidnapping they can solve. Twin grandchildren of a prominent Aeon Priest have been spirited away to Urbamorr. What's the best way to rescue them, diplomacy or confrontation?
Choices Abound
Once in Urbamorr, the player characters have to make choices. Who can they trust? Is the enemy of my enemy really my friend? Is the enslavement of mind-controlled races really so different from the shackles of slavery on the surface?
Some groups will approach this as a leadership and diplomacy challenge. Others will leap into action. Still others will mix the two, and the adventure gives the GM the tools to make the adventure fun and exciting regardless.
The Sun Below: City on the Edge -- available late September
When I started this project I had a vision of a much smaller adventure. Instead I have over 35k words and a lot of wrangling to do to make it a product I can be proud of. I want it to be an adventure you'll be proud to own. It just kind of grew. So, to let that happen, we're moving the ship date to late September.
As a consolation prize here's a picture from GenCon, featuring The Sun Below: City on the Edge lead artist Reece Ambrose (in the red circle).
If you own a copy of The Strange (and you should), you'll see Reece is one of the artists. GenCon is where Numenera won Product of the Year.
And speaking of art, check out the new Art Gallery.
See Reece's experiences at GenCon here.
And, of course, The Sun Below: City on the Edge, is available now.
The Race is On! Like Donkey Kong!
I just got back from the National Poetry Slam in Oakland, where I had a blast. My mom and I got to see my son compete. He made it to the finals in group pieces! (Poems with more than one poet performing them.) Those slam poets can do so much in so few words. They get 3 minutes to recite their poem and it's over.
This is great inspiration for me, as I'm in editing mode for The Sun Below: City on the Edge right now.
The final art is coming in. Here's the Throne Room:
Here's the first sketch Justin sent me: The Throne Room.
But what about the race? I am attempting to ship in August, and the project is still in editorial, and hasn't even started layout. But August 31st counts, right? Fingers and toes crossed!
Of course, quality first. If it's not ready, it's not ready. I'll have a better handle on the time required to ship this epic adventure soon.
Numeneraish and Numeneraocity
Like many of you, I've played a ton of different role playing games. I find it easy to make new stuff up. What I'm learning now is how to make stuff up Numenera Style.
It's all about the KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. Numenera has simple clean rules. A Numenera adventure should follow suit. Over and over in the editing phase of The Sun Below: City on the Edge, I find myself simplifying. I don't have to create a simulation. I just have to make it fun to play. And fun to GM.
For example, I have a race of blood sucking plant people, the slithik. I have different kinds of slithiks. Do I need so many? No, cut. They all have two attacks a round, one melee, one ranged. Does that make sense? No, cut. The top leader can have two ranged a round, that works.
Sometimes its a matter of making new rules feel Numeneraish. Is that a word? Of course it's a word. Or will be in 1 billion years. :)
I created an artifact where I wanted it to have special effects, but not every time. I could say if you hit with a natural even number, then "tada!" the effect goes off. But that doesn't feel very Numeneraish. What does feel Numeneraish? Ah, if you hit with a natural 17+, then it goes off. Numenera players are already used to cool stuff happening when they roll natural 17s or better.
And so on. Got to get my Numeneraocity on.
The Sun Below: City on the Edge -- Cover Art
Here it is, the adventure cover by Reece Ambrose. We see Princess Duophrene gritting her teeth above a plant-like slithik and a purple dh'lann, all behind a floating stone head of a Praithian. In the background is Urbamorr, the City on the Edge. It's unlikely that the city, or your player characters, will survive the adventure unchanged. Will they survive at all?
Dh'lann of the lands under The Sun Below
Editing while you wait: The name of the purple hermaphrodite humans is Dh'lann, not Flann. This is an example of how the hive mind of the internet catches my naming mistakes. No, they really are not made out of custard.
Dh'lann -- Humans of The Sun Below.
Asking a dh'lann if they are a man or a woman will give you at best a temporary answer. They spend most of their time as neither, or as potentially one or the other. Then, once a moon (and yes, there is a Moon Below), they change and transition into a gender. They don't know which gender ahead of time, and a parent might be a father of one child and mother of another.
While this makes their family structures interesting, dh'lann are as human as you or I. More so, perhaps. I have heard rumors of a mental power they share, but they will not speak of this openly.
In any case they are often receptive to the Truth, and our order has had an even greater impact on them then on the alien slithik. If only we had a secure way for the dh'lann to travel to the surface of the Ninth World, I believe we would have dh'lann training as Aeon Priests in no time.
– Charis Kos, Aeon Priest
More information on dh'lann will be found in the upcoming adventure: The Sun Below: City on the Edge.
Reece Ambrose is the Lead Artist for The Sun Below: City on the Edge, and his work can be found in many other games, including The Strange™, from Monte Cook Games.
I changed the name from flann after I got feedback from the gaming community that they sounded like custard.
The Throne Room
In a scene from The Sun Below: City on the Edge, we have a preliminary sketch by artist Justin Wyatt. We see our first glimpse of King Umbral and his knights.
Things are heating up in the lands under The Sun Below.
A Terrible Journey Part II
See Part I here.
Are you paying attention apprentices?
Let the gatekeeper do her work. She will insert an egg shaped object that will graft onto your spine. Do not fight this, the egg is necessary.
At this point she will open the black door. Enter the door without a word. Walk a hundred paces and keep your hands in front of your face. Yes, they will be cut, but better them than your face. You will feel a fetid breeze from your left. Turn right and find the latch. Pull the latch and fall into the chute.
Lie on your back as you slide in total darkness. Fold your arms across your chest and ignore the voices. Especially your own.
The end of this trial is almost over. You will drop down into a terrible pit and the egg will spout dragonfly wings from your back. Up, you must fly toward the violet cavern.
After this, there are more trials. Could it be any more difficult to find your way to the world below? To bask in the light of the white sun?
I myself have searched for easier ways down. We combed the Westwood of Navarene, the Plains of Kataru, and outside the city of Uxphon, in the Black Riage. No luck.
For now, class dismissed. I fear even speaking about Hidden Naresh stresses my old mind.
– Charis Kos, Aeon Priest
A Terrible Journey -- Part I
Order of Truth apprentices, pay attention. Today I will share a secret. How does one travel to the lands of the Sun Below? It’s not pretty, not safe, and not sane.
For over a century, the Order has used a most difficult path, through the fell city of Hidden Naresh. Our scholars have found dozens of references to other entrances, but when we look for them, we find nothing. Take heed and you will know why the Order keeps seeking for other portals to the lands below our feet.
In Hidden Naresh the world is torn and reality drips away. There is nothing for a mind to hold onto. An Aeon Priest will forget their own name, their purpose, and all that came before entering the city. One must hold on. A talisman is a necessity. Hold tight and stay focused.
Then, under the Temple of a Thousand Terrors, enter the lowest basement and find the red door. Not the blood door, but the door made out of red flesh. Enter this door and step into the pit.
Your fall will be gentled by a thousand clinging tendrils. Each will make an offer that you must not acknowledge. Do not give in. Keep falling, down, down, down, until you meet the gatekeeper.
Do not stare at her eyeless face. She will know if you do. Face away, but direct your speech to her. Ask for passage. She will open your back. Be glad you cannot see.
-- Charis Kos, Aeon Priest
Meet the Slithik
Here we have a work in progress by artist Reece Ambrose. This slithik just wants to be your friend. Or does she?
The slithik is one of the races unfortunate enough to have been enslaved by the Praithians. In many of the lands under The Sun Below, the slithik run their own affairs. But in Urbamorr, the Praithians still hold power, and the slithik, despite their many advantages, are all mind controlled slaves.
Well, maybe not all of them...
For a look at more art by Reece, check out his portfolio.
More slithik goodness will be found in the adventure The Sun Below: City on the Edge.
Finding Illustrators
One of the best part of working on roleplaying games is getting to work with artists. I admire great illustrations, and when they come in through my email transom, I just can't love it enough.
I have some great art already, but need more to finish up that side of The Sun Below: City on the Edge.
Here's a peak on what I'm asking illustrators:
I’m looking for more art to finish up a Numenera adventure. I have the cover art and some other illustrations already underway.
The Sun Below: City on the Edge is a licensed Numenera adventure set in The World Below, a giant tube buried deep under the surface of the Ninth World. A slow moving white sun floats along the tube near the ceiling.
Under the light of the Sun Below, the characters encounter the Praithians, psychic mummies encased in levitating stone heads. The Praithians have two slave races ripe for revolt: the Flann, androgynous purple humans and the Slithik, a nightmare cross between the Lovecraft’s Shuggoth and the Great Race of Yith. All are featured on the cover, so illustrations that include them should use the cover art as a starting point.
Numenera has a post-apocalyptic look with an important twist – the ruins and artifacts of previous ages are mind bogglingly advanced ultra-tech. This is set a Billion years in the future. If you think Star Trek, the leftover tech isn’t Federation, it’s the Q Continuum. For the people living in the rubble, it’s magic.
The Sun Below: City on the Edge
City on the Edge
The first game from Dread Unicorn Games will be The Sun Below: City on the Edge, a licensed adventure for Numenera™. The adventure scales from Tier One to Tier Six and drops your players below the surface of the Ninth World. Deep below the surface world is an underground world of living airships, strange races, and a city on the brink. Action, intrigue, and discovery await in an underground world lit by it's own sun.