Episode 18: The Massacre at Pier 24

"He who comes in second dies. This is a war. Let’s treat it like one. Anyone gets in our way, we’ll crush them. We have the weapons and equipment, we have the know-how, and we have the drive. We will win."

-Admiral Maxemillian Stayne, when asked about the Dogma of The Regime

"Boom ! Ping! Buck! Pow!

Now who’s the nigga with the different style?"

- Ice Cube, Wet ‘Em Up

Shock. We all stared at each other like fools.

"Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Benjamin Laudermilk and I’m the regional director of the Firm here in the Northeast. I’m not really certain why I was called here, but I do appreciate the chance to see you off. I hope you go on to better things. Mr. Barron?"

Santiago Barron casually lit his cigarette and waved at the characters who had congregated at the end of the pier. The Tontons Makouts pointed their rifles.

"Sons and daughters of the Jaweh. Children of God." He smirked. "Execute them."

And the Tontons Makouts opened fire.

And ten player characters died in about four minutes. Some who had been around quite a while. Some who had been created that day...all were cut down before the hail of gunfire, and while some of the wounded dove for the debatable safety of the river, a well-placed match sealed their painful fate in the flammable waters of the Hudson.

Like I said, shock.

I had tried. I tossed as many bones as I could, but I just could not help them. There was nothing I could do while preserving what little integrity I had left as a director to save them. The group had been dissonant, uncooperative, wracked with internal strife and not particularly observant...But was this punishable by such a complete massacre?

Yeah, I guess so. After all, The Sanhedrin would not cut any Messiahs any slack for not being able to properly get their crap together. This was a weakness to be exploited, and it was exploited to the best of the Sanhedrin’s ability. The player characters, as somewhat new members of the Apostate, were in grave danger and knew it. They gave their opponents an "in" and had plenty of chances to cover their asses but failed. So when a squabble broke out in the middle of brokering a deal with a highly-placed member of the Chain in Manhattan, he elected to save himself some trouble and earn some points with his superiors by having his guards mow them down. There weren’t a lot of places to hide and the attack took the PC’s completely by surprise.

I felt I should say something....this was a tense situation. "How could you let this happen, you pack of absolute jackasses" probably wasn’t it.

"Uh.... Jesus. Is ...uh...anyone here still alive?"

They blinked.

"Bueller?"

They stared and continued to blink.

"Okay...I guess my next question is about your options...which would you rather do? Start a brand new game somewhere else unrelated to this one, or would you like to create new characters that would be your characters’ replacements here in New York?"

They opted for the latter. I decided that it would be my chance to really finalize the character creation process, which actually appealed to me. Having a week to finish this would really light the fire under my ass that I needed. Up until this point we had fiddled with a somewhat half-assed character creation system, based as much off of what the player wanted and what I personally thought made sense... nothing rock-solid. Basically, as far as I can tell, the only humans on earth who have ever run this game were myself and Hala Winter, and both us have a firm enough grasp on what we wanted to see to be able to do such free-from character creation. Still, it would soon become necessary to create a more serious system. Monday, I went into work with a new-found resolve.

After a week of sneaking game design in amongst all of my other stupid duties as a game designer, I emerged with this simple list ready to play next Sunday...

Last Exodus Character Creation Made Simple

(And given away here for free!)

Step 1. Determine concept, Millennium Religion, Soul order, Etc...

This one’s easy...it’s the first step in creating almost any character. I have been fiddling with the viability of creating completely random tables for this for people who just can’t get an idea (everyone gets blocked every once in a while). "Let’s see...I’m a...Glass Elemental...of the Crush...who was a...mechanic...before he found...Branch Davidianism." I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Step 2. Allocate 15 points among four Qualities.

Again, pretty simple...Your four Qualities are Spiritual, Mental, Physical, and Cultural. These are all the attributes you’ll need. If you’re a starting-level Scion, you’ll have fifteen points for these- three more than regular people.

Step 3. Allocate Spiritual Score into three Deiform Quality Bonuses

Your Soul is almost always a bit stronger, faster, smarter, and/or better looking than you are. How much so is determined by your Spiritual Score, which josh argues is the most important stat in the game and I’m inclined to agree with him. Basically you take your spiritual score and allocate it amongst Mental, Physical, and Cultural as your bonuses when in Eden.

Step 4. Allocate Physical, Cultural, and Mental score into Coil Proficiencies

Skillz what pays the billz. Characters in the Last Exodus are assumed to have a lot of mundane skills here on earth, just like real people. An average PC is assumed to be able to read/write, drive, turn on a computer and play a game or type a document, do research, and extrapolate from there. Prof iciencies are either skills outside the norm that the character has anyway (Jet Fighter Pilot, Atlatl Use, High Pagan Ritual ) or things that the PC is just good enough at to warrant some sort of a bonus when doing it . (Graphic design, Journalism, Shoot)

Step 5. Allocate the Deiform Quality Bonuses into Deiform Proficiencies

Deiform proficiencies are a bit more bizarre. Anyone in Eden can usually fire off a few halfway decent spells, pilot an Aethership, and telepathically order out for Chinese food. Consider for a minute the casualness with which Chewbacca fixes a wildly complex android or Gandalf zings off a spell. These are powers with which the soul is proficient, such as things like voodoo, psychometry, or cybernetics.

Step 6. Select Spiritual Score’s worth of Soul Order Traits

Each soul order has a variety of power available to it. For example, some Elementals can generate their element from thin air while others can teleport through their element and still others can do both. The character looks again to their Spiritual score to see how many Soul Order traits they can take.

Step 7. Select Positive and Negative Traits, make sure to balance Coil/Deiform!

By this point the character is almost done, it merely needs the positive and negative traits (merits and flaws, advantages and disadvantages) to round it out. The trick, however, is that they must balance on an "X." If you want to make your soul really bad-ass, you have to make sure your Coil- human form- has a lot of flaws. If your human form is gonna be more powerful, your soul takes negative traits to make up for it.

Step 8. Select Spiritual score’s worth of Miracle Communions.

The last step. Take your spiritual score and allocate it amongst the six different communions. Remember to leave at least one in the communion taught by your religion, if you have one.

Step 9. Play character

You’re done!

A week later I examined the elite cell that the Apostles had selected to win New York back from the Sanhedrin and avenge their fallen comrades...not bad. Three members of the Congregation, Frank’s Noble, (who was Dragomir’s nephew) Laura’s Noble, and Josh’s Order-like B’ahai Created, Nicholes’ Dominion of the Chamber, Gareth’s Primordial of the Order, @nubis(I love the name), Rodney’s big heavy Created of the Squad New Orleans Voodoo houngan, Fat Daddy LaGrier (That one too), Mike’s Neffalim of the Squad, and Peet’s Turncoat member of the Firm who is a gambling addict (and the cerebral of luck.) They were assisted by some human followers including a homeless thief and A cop who has since realized his rightful place in the Divine Crucible of the Alliance.

I liked these guys. I was impressed.

I decided to start them off at the funeral for the last batch of characters in Potters’ Field. Before the coffins were cold they were beginning to plan their attack:

"We need to find the survivors of the last attack"
"There were no survivors! What are you, a moron?"
"Ok, I think we should just blow up the financial district."
"That’s good. Subtle."
"No one told me to be subtle."
"And why should I trust you again?"

I withheld the urge to sigh too loudly...