Tuesday 27 June 2017

The Wreckers

The waters around Wir-Heal wash upon Strange Eons and the ships from these shattered realities are often wrecked upon its shore.

Wrecked a bit more often than necessary, due to the Wreckers who lure in ships with false signals at night, who offer safe harbour to those lost; before robbing them blind and leaving them for dead, who fly out in lifeboats to the rescue of floundering craft, the rescue of the cargo rather than the crew; they being left to drown or sometimes shot and stabbed in battles on the sinking ship, and who are feared and hated by all but who are the primary source and tolerated traders of unusual or remarkable items in this part of the Wrecked Heptarchy.


The Wreckers are terrible creatures, violent villains to a man and beast, murderous, ruthless and mad Mask-Men with cracked or self-mutilated masks, True-Men willing to risk the Woodwose curse or indifferent to it and already half-wild and sometimes the deranged pale creatures of Hilb, not knowing what they are but tricked into obedience for a while.

Encountering Them

There are 2d4 with standard stats - STR 10, DEX 10, WIL 10, 6 HP

Roll below for interest or for fun;

D20
Species
Strange Weapon
1
Sheep

'Brown Bess' musket
2
Pale creature of Hilb
Bren gun (d10)
3
Goat
Surface-to-air ‘stinger’ missile (2d20, 1-shot)
4
True-Man
Flare gun (d4)
5
Pig
Blunderbuss (cone)
6
Half-Woodwose
Fire axe
7
Bull
Cutlass
8
Half-Woodwose
Roman spatha
9
Boar
Hunting crossbow
10
True-Man
Zeppelin shotgun (double-damage to zeppelins)
11
Bear
Middle-ages crusader grenade
12
True-Man
Bronze falchion,
13
Wolf
Lee-Enfield 303 rifle
14
Pale creature of Hilb
English civil-war era pike
15
Cow
Bronze trident
16
Half-Woodwose
Navy colt revolver
17
Deer
British cavalry sabre
18
True-Man
Rail-gun (d10, structural)
19
Stag
A slender spear which glimmers like black graphite, pointed at both ends, incredibly strong
20
Pale creature of Hilb
Multi-barrelled 'deck gun' (d10)

D20
Odd Attire
Name
1
Necklace of gold credit cards
Gildas
2
Necklace of cowrie shells
Oudas
3
High-viz safety gear
Gero
4
A pair of Zeiss binoculars
Bladud
5
A brass telescope
Edadus
6
Conical Phonecan hat
Usk
7
British 'Redcoat' military uniform circa 1800
Merianus
8
Green surplus army jackets with the Argentinian flag
Aschil
9
Tunic of Woodwose-wool
Gorboduc
10
White t-shirt with RELAX printed in large black letters
Angarad
11
WWII era British army boots
Heli
12
Tattered Nike Air trainers
Methahel
13
Smoking long-stemmed white clay pipe
Humber
14
Smoking Gaulose cigarettes
Jago
15
Vaping
Gad
16
Roman Amphorae tied to their belts with string
Blagan
17
Flag of the Liverpool football team worn as a cape
Thanet
18
18th Century frock coat and top hat
Ourar
19
A baseball cap with captains markings on the brim and the word 'MAERSK' printed on it
Mempricius
20
Bright yellow life jacket
Artgualchar

Any weapon more complex than a Musket has only d6 shots left in it and the Wreckers either have no more ammo or simply don't understand how it works enough to reload it.

Everything does d6 damage unless stated otherwise.

On the Coast 

D6
What Are They Up To?
1-4
Setting False Signals to lure in ships. usually walking a donkey or Woodwose up and down the shore to simulate ships at anchor
5
Setting out a 'rescue party' to a sinking ship.
6
Encountering survivors of a shipwreck on the shore (about to smash their heads in).

Inland.

What’s their Plan?
MURDER? - If they have no reason to keep the PCs alive, and if they are certain then can kill them without losing any useful members, they will attack. But more usually this option will be combined with ‘trickery’ below.
TRICKERY? - Always false-friendly and suspiciously well-supplied by drink, the wreckers will, on encountering an opponent they cannot beat, suborn them with the demon drink and tales of the dark coast. Then, once their victim is assured of their friendliness, they will either dispose of them there, or guide them back to Mother Redcaps, or the depths of the Moss.
RECRUITMENT? - If the PCs seem questionable enough, fond of a drink and a casual crime, apt to murder on decree but not entirely randomly, and of purchasable character, the Wreckers may try to recruit them. Full entry to their confidence will usually require an innocent death.
THEFT? - If nothing else seems apt, the Wreckers will make at least some attempt to steal something valuable from the PCs. (This option often combined with 'Trickery' above.)

Locations 

Mother Redcaps


The Wreckers are ruled by a bear in a bar; Mother Redcap, an ursine piebald matron in a mop cap with a glazed pot mask like a smiling fat-faced wife.

Mother Redcap - STR 16, DEX 10, WIL 13, 24 HP, Claws (d8)

The lights in Mother Redcaps are always on. Inside she serves British Navy Rum, Gaullish Wine, Grey Goose Vodka and Mead.

She has her own Gramophone, which she calls her ‘Bard-Mill’, and an extensive supply of swing records. Guests are served Woodwose sausages and steak on a full set of china marked 'Great Western'. The chairs are the seats from a crashed airplane placed on new wooden legs. One is always occupied by a bog-mummy called 'Brown Alex', considered to be lucky and referred to as her 'bouncer'. (Actually a vampire though inanimate unless fed blood.)

·        At night, the sounds of 1920's swing music come ebbing softly from the windows.
·        An invisible trap-door just inside the bar door, drops down 10ft to the cellar.
·        Numerous secret compartments in the floor, walls and roof
·        A secret passage in the basement that leads both to the coast and the edge of the moss



The Shipping Container

Somewhere in Wir-Heal, the Wreckers keep their treasure in a buried shipping container. Most will die before they reveal that it exists, let alone where it is, but if discovered it holds the following.

·        Thousands of Nike Air trainers and white T-Shirts printed with 'RELAX'.
·        Religious ikons.
·        Religious vestments.
·        Carved ivory coins.
·        Amphorae of Gaulish wine.
·        Kegs of Virginia tobacco.
·        A crate full of tattered American comics from the 1960's.
·        A bathtub.
·        A soft sphere that projects a holographic childs toy that offers emotional advice attuned to a six year old.
·        A complex crystalline array.
·        A graviton beam emitter which can only be activated by someone with the right firmware in their neural lace, but its AI can verbally identify and quantify threats if pointed at them.
·        A modular bio-cybernetic omni-limb, still in its synth-ceramic surgically sealed military packaging, with pictorial instructions for attaching it in case of full or partial limb-loss.
·        A swiss-army knife.
·        A solar-powered calculator.

7 comments:

  1. The idea of false signals luring ships in some place betwixt places is very appealing. But if your PCs are from approximately pre-industrial world, would you try to describe all those advanced things from their perspective, or just name them with names we in our time have for them? I.e. will be 'necklace of gold credit cards' described as necklace of thin plates cast in strange, golden-like, extremely lightweight and flexible metal, or just like necklace of golden credit cards?

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    1. Its a time-wrecked post-industrial world, so they know vaguely what a lot of technological things are.

      If I was playing D&D I would probably just call them credit cards, depending on the tone of the scene. If it was a 'serious' game I might describe them as you suggested.

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  2. Nicely evocative. Reminds me of the novels “Nova Swing” and “Light” by M. John Harrison.

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