Fantastic Odysseys Issue One has not one but two pieces for River of Heaven—an adventure called Darius’ 7 and a rules article that upgrades character generation to the system used in OpenQuest 3.
It’s the first thing I’ve released for the game in about five years, and it feels like I’m coming out of a cryogenic deep freeze.
This is the art direction that I recently sent to Dan Barker, one of my regular artists. It’s both an overall set of direction regarding the setting and the specific pieces for the magazine.
As a bonus, I’ve attached one of the pieces, the work-in-progress street gang member (no.3 on my list).
Enjoy!
;O) Newt
Overall, River of Heaven is set in the 42nd century, a far future setting. Characters are “augmented” with nanomachine-powered bioware (think slicker cyberware than 2020 meat is metal).
The setting is where Science almost becomes Magic without becoming a science-fantasy setting. The original intent was that it was to be a hard sci-fi setting, but John Ossoway, the principal author, and I (who was mainly on system tinkering and Editorial) realised quickly that audience expectations meant that such a thing would not be much fun 😀
It’s almost a transhuman setting, but the Singularity has not yet happened. I’m considering using the tagline “Far-Future Roleplaying Five Minutes before the Singularity” 😀
RoH, as it currently stands, has two sub-settings that have their distinct styles.
Broken Sol – Old Earth, abandoned due to environmental collapse, where many desperate survivors live in post-apocalyptic conditions (think Mad Max with gas masks and hazmat suits). Then, in the rest of the system, there’s a combination of space stations/ orbiting habitats, a Mars split between colonies of the old school green uniformed US military and an emergent Imperial Chinese. Overall, this sub-setting is gritty and slightly gonzo. Otherwise, it turns into boring NASA punk, and if you’ve played Starfield, you’ll realise how tedious that is :D.
The Kenturan Hegemony – Centred around Alpha Centuria Prime, this confederation of planets/systems is where everyone else who left Earth on huge sub-light colony ships ended up. Its the opposite of Broken Sol, and currently enjoying its Bright Era. It’s that crazy melting pot of vibrant styles plucking all the best bits from past human history. There are Dune-like Noble Houses and Professional Guilds – so outfits clearly say that the character’s social status is a big thing. Or not if the character needs to be better or just trying to blend in the crowded masses of the Kenturian Hegemony’s megacities.
I need the following for Fantastic Odysseys Issue 1.
1. General River of Heaven “Citizen of the Hegemony” adventurer or “Freelancer” as I’m calling them now – to denote that they are not an indentured employee of one of the Guilds or Noble Houses. So you have a free hand here to develop the piece based on the Kenturan Hedgemony general AD above. They should be armed and dangerous with futuristic-looking weapons. RoH characters have augmentations, one step up from meet and metal cyberware, this is the 42nd Century, and work as a mix of bioware and nanomachines. This piece is to go with an article called “River of Heaven Hacked” which bring the current ROH rules, which are based on OQ2, up to OQ3.
2-4 are for an adventure Darius 7, an escape from Earth-type scenario set in the Broken Sol sub-setting. The trick here is while Ruined Earth is a very cyberpunk setting, the tech is very far-futuristic.
2. Darius. The dashing, lower-tier noble, handsome captain of the Starshine, a vast Step-ship, will be the character’s travelling base for the rest of the series of adventures, of which this is the first.
3. Blood Letter is a street ganger who operates out of an old Post Office (known as the Vault) and on acid-rain-soaked streets. They wear a bizarre mix of Postie uniforms, improvised weapons, and basic environmental protections (face mask/filter, acid-rain-resistant poncho).
4. A Banker of Heaven’s Vault – Wears a pinstripe suit, bowler hat and an elaborate porcelain mask. It has an obvious PDA and hand weapon (shock rod?). A data cruncher for Heaven’s Vault, a big old corporate building that has survived the fall of Earth and still has an uplink to the Moon.
