Recruitment and OOC Thread for Island City PBP

[Bill Volk]

Being so close to California is going to cause some complications for a tiny modern day city-state. A distance of only 20 miles makes the area between Island City and California narrower than the narrowest point of the English Channel. You can probably see across on a clear day, and very fit people can swim that distance. Has the US ever tried to annex it, perhaps during World War II when it was important to secure a hold on the Pacific? Do most of the city's food, energy, and other resources come from America? Does it have any important exports to offer in return, or is it suffering from a massive trade deficit? Does it have trouble with illegal immigrants from the US and/or Mexico? Or do all the supernatural creatures running the city just use powerful magic to hide it from the rest of the world and gloss over such mundane concerns?

[khyron1144]

Being so close to California is going to cause some complications for a tiny modern day city-state. A distance of only 20 miles makes the area between Island City and California narrower than the narrowest point of the English Channel. You can probably see across on a clear day, and very fit people can swim that distance. Has the US ever tried to annex it, perhaps during World War II when it was important to secure a hold on the Pacific? Do most of the city's food, energy, and other resources come from America? Does it have any important exports to offer in return, or is it suffering from a massive trade deficit? Does it have trouble with illegal immigrants from the US and/or Mexico? Or do all the supernatural creatures running the city just use powerful magic to hide it from the rest of the world and gloss over such mundane concerns?

You have some good questions.  I have answers to a few of them.  The last question is easiest to answer.  Illegal immigration is a major "problem".  Island City does not have any check points on its borders and does not operate any equivalent to an INS department.

There probably is a sharp trade deficit.  The Island does have natural resources, but those resources amount to an abundance of magical energy and a thinner barrier to the Other Worlds.  These things are not easily exported for a variety of reasons.  Food and mundane energy resources probably come mainly from America.  There is a bustling tourist trade, especially among heads because a week on The Island is reputed to be better than acid and have a lower occurrance of bummers.

I do not know why the United States has not successfully annexed The Island, or even if they have tried.  I think it's not worth it.  One nuke can take out the whole thing, but conventional warfare probably has no chance of working, simply due to the power level at the top of the supernatural food chain resident here.

[Bill Volk]

Would it be easiest to fit a character in as an existing member of the Diggers? I might be some kind of jolly epicurean old-style mummy who supports his lavish undeathstyle (and keeps the island a pleasant place to undie in) by rendering services to them and hassling anybody who disrupts the order of things. I imagine that was rather unhappy that all the nice things I was entombed with have been rotted and looted, and I've been quietly rebuilding my collection ever since.

It might throw a small wrench in the works if I'd have to follow some kind of code of conduct related to Ma'at, but with a liberal enough take on Ma'at I could still fight troublemaking wraiths, specters, demons and vampires as much as I like. After all, they're not really alive.

[Nomadic]

I could go for that. Firstly though, what are the available races (I know a bit about the VtM races so I more want to know about the others).

[khyron1144]

I could go for that. Firstly though, what are the available races (I know a bit about the VtM races so I more want to know about the others).

There's werewolves which are divided up by Tribes (roughly corresponding to geographic origin/ ethnicity of human form, although with a bit of philosophy mixed in), Breeds (human-born Homids, wolf-born Lupus, and Metis, the deformed and sterile offspring of two werewolves), and Auspices (which are somewhat like character class in other games, there's five types; off the top of my head, I remember Ahroun, who are warriors; Theurges, who are shamans, and Ragabash, who are tricksters).  Tribe, Breed, and Auspice can be combined almost any way, except for one Tribe, The Red Talons, is supposed to be all Lupus.

There's Changelings, which are a sort of hybrid between faery and human.  They're divided up by Seemings (corresponding to mortal age:  Childlings are the under-twelve set; Wilders are teenagers to young twenties; Grumps are anything older) and Kith (the type of faery supplying the fae side of a Changeling's nature, some types include:  Sidhe, born nobles somewhat reminiscent of Tolkien-style elves; Trolls, honorable, strong, giant, warriors; Pooka, tricksters with animal features like ears or tails and the ability to shapeshift into one particular animal form; and Satyrs, goat-people renowned for their partying lifestyle and amorous abilities).  I have a decent Changeling splatbbok collection and thus a lot of kiths, so there's a lot I'm glossing over in the itnerest of some kind of brevity.

Wraiths are ghosts.  Spectres are wraiths who have gone evil.  Risen are wraiths who are motivated enough to re-animate their corpse and claw their way out of the grave to do something in the skinlands (think of the movie The Crow).  

Mages are humans who can do magick, but the Mage game's concept of Magick is rather flexible.  While the more ritualistic sort of Magick, whether some kind of Native American Shaman thing or some neo-Druid thing or a Hermetic thing is one of the more obvious examples, things like prayer, martial arts, and science can form the basis for a Magickal system too.  There's four major categories of mage, The Council of Nine Traditions (mages who do more obviously magickal looking magick, which also includes two renegade technomancer groups), The Technocratic Union (mages who rely entirely on science and want to make the world safe by getting rid of the dangerous supernatural reality deviants), Marauders (mages who've gone crazy but can impose some of their craziness on the rest of the world), and Nephandi (servants of unwholesome Things From Out There who want to corrupt and/or destroy the world).

Then of course there's humans.  Humans can have psychic phenomena, true faith, or hedge magic (the difference between hedge magic and magely magick is that hedge magic only works with certain rituals and actually needs the various props and accoutrements, whereas a mage can make it up as he goes along and do magick without anything other than his desire to do so and knowledge) to help them out a bit.

There are a variety of one-step-removed semi-supernaturals.  Ghouls are humans who drink vampire blood without undergoing the Embrace that would actually make them a vampire, which gives them longevity and minor access to vampire powers; it also eventually turns them into the slave of their vampire blood donor.  Kinfolk are humans who carry one copy of the recessive werewolf gene.  Besides making them good breeding stock for werewolves, it also confers immunity to The Delirium, the supernatural process that prevents humans from remembering seeing werewolves.  Kinain are humans with a little fae blood, which gives them access to some minor supernatural powers.

Then there's the exotic stuff, like non-werewolf shapechangers.  Bastet are werecats.  Ratkin are wererats.  Ananasi are werespiders.  Rokea are weresharks.  Gurahl are werebears.  Kitsune are werefoxes.  Nuwisha are werecoyotes.  Corax are wereravens.  Mokole are werecrocodiles.

Mummies are ancient Egyptians who keep getting reincarnated as themselves.

[St0nE]

sounds good... sry it took me so long to get account on here khyron. do u still have the pdf of my character? if not i can put it on pdf or put it on a shorthand form for you.

[St0nE]

*bump*