A Loss for Ellomyr
over 8 years ago – Thu, Oct 05, 2017 at 04:48:56 PM

Hello, defenders of Ellomyr—

Ellomyr is building! As I type this, we’re at 2344 backers. We unlocked a single upgrade to the town at 2300, and are now working on steps of 25 each to add additional elements of value to the community. (Have you voted for your priority? If not, head over to the poll and vote!) We’re also looking for another 150 backers to ensure the success of a second expedition to the Valley of Sins. You can find all the details in our last update.

How can you help Ellomyr achieve these goals? It’s simple: Share, share, share. There are thousands and thousands of gamers who don’t even know this campaign is happening, or don’t know how cool it is. Share a post. Retweet a tweet. Or write your own message about why you’re enjoying this campaign. The more travelers we can bring into Ellomyr, the stronger the community becomes!

They gather outside Gurner Fron's thatched-roof house near the square. Brucha One-Hand. Dora. Nieten. The others. Everyone is so quiet, so still. Only the Trilling Stone makes noise; a soft low song that they can feel in their hearts, their soles, their fingertips. Gurner is dead, gone as he wanted to go, in his home, telling stories about the prior worlds, and the community feels his absence as one feels the loss of gravity or breath.

"He was a good man, and a good leader," Brucha says. His voice is strained, his head down. Everyone murmurs agreement. Even the stone seems to echo the sentiment, a soft, sad, clear note. So much of what they’ve built, they’ve done side-by-side, always with Gurner at the helm.

Now, they'll need to find a new leader. They look around at each other, at this abundance of skills and experience. Who will they choose? The chiurgeon with the healing devices and the engaging voice? The woman of fire who leads with ferocity and a firm hand? The twin automatons and their weird datasphere connections? A collective of the smartest and strongest that works together? That might be their best option, but even then, it's no easy choice. They're aware of how lucky they are; so many good people to take Ellomyr into the future. Neiten steps up, presses the flat of her palm to Gurner’s door. Bows her head. “Look to the future, forget the past,” she says.

The others echo her words. A chorus of sorrow and promise, rising. Rising.

Iadace!
—Shanna and the MCG Team

Another Expedition from Ellomyr
over 8 years ago – Wed, Oct 04, 2017 at 08:21:37 PM

Hello, defenders of Ellomyr—

The people of our town want to send another expedition to the Valley of Sins to get materials for all the things they dream of building. They lost half the team of explorers the last time, but those that survived brought back incredible treasures. Will this new expedition be successful? We’re just above 2300 backers now, and we’ll need 150 backers more by the 9th of October, above and beyond what resources we’ll use for building (as mentioned yesterday) for a successful expedition.

However, if by that time we get 10 great new stories, fan art pieces, or other creations relating to the second expedition or the things the Wrights are building, that will reduce the “cost” by 50 backers.

It was more than a year ago, Viel mused, that she watched Jird pack up her aneen to prepare for a journey to the Valley of Sins with the rest of the explorers. Now Viel was getting ready to do the same thing.

The wrights had such big plans. Their talk spun her head around when they started in. Synthsteel this, and angular spheres that. Mimetic gel wrapped in frost film. These were just words to her, and strange ones at that. She wasn’t a maker, or a crafter, but she thought she could probably be a finder. A scrounger. A scavenger. A delve. In the past year, she’d learned that she had a knack for it. She could almost smell the numenera. Let someone else figure out how to put it altogether. She could find the stuff.

And the wrights were like hungry birds, chirping for more and more iotum. Traders from Othmar had brought in some useful things, and were more than willing to trade it for food and wool. But that supply was limited and irregular. They needed more.

She’d heard all the stories and descriptions from those who had braved the valley before. She’d memorized them, truth be told. Blue mist that acted like a living thing. A massive structure like a floating sphere sliced in half, and lightning between the halves. Creatures that popped in and out of existence almost randomly. The dangers were great. But filled with the knowledge they had from the first expedition, her heart swelled with confidence. Excitement even.

It was time to return to the Valley of Sins and see what they could bring back. This time, they’d bring a wagon.

Iadace!
—Monte and the MCG Team

A Look at the Wright!
over 8 years ago – Tue, Oct 03, 2017 at 09:20:26 PM

Character type is the core of a character. Type helps determine a character’s place in the world and relationship with other people in the setting. It’s the noun of the sentence “I am an adjective noun who verbs.”

Numenera 2 allows players to choose from a total of six different character types: the Glaive, Nano, and Jack described in Numenera Discovery, and the Arkus, Wright, and Delve presented in Numenera Destiny.

Today, let’s take a high-level look at the Wright!

About Wrights

Wrights are builders and crafters. When something special is required, a Wright can probably make it. When strange instructions—usually called “plans of numenera” or just “plans”— are found encoded in the ruins of the prior worlds, Wrights can decipher them, and using special components called iotum, craft cyphers, artifacts, or installations. (Installations are things like water purifiers, lightning towers, or force-shield generators.) They can also craft automatons and even amazing vehicles, if their mastery grows sufficiently.

Wrights are especially good at understanding and “stealing” the fire of creation that burned so brightly in the civilizations that preceded the Ninth World. Wrights are the rarest of the already rare scholars of the numenera; they aren’t afraid of weird or incomprehensible lore of the prior worlds—they try to take it apart and learn how to make more.

Not everyone who crafts items of the numenera is a Wright—Wrights are simply those who’ve trained for (or otherwise gained) unique abilities related to building wondrous things.

Wrights enjoy spending quality time building and crafting, but they also like to explore, especially because the iotum they need can usually only be found by salvaging it from places where physical danger is certain.

People are usually very accepting of Wrights, since the things they craft are often useful or even necessary, whether that be a wagon, a wall, or an installation that can light up a small community. In fact, a Wright could by viewed by some as a vital part of any community, but especially so for one that has special needs that can’t be met any other way. With enough time and recourses, a Wright might be able to provide clean water, nutrition, defense, and of course, comfortable homes for people to live.

But when Wrights begin to dabble in more exotic installations, or they make automatons or even vehicles, concern can creep in. A Wright with an automaton servant might be seen by some as a sorcerer who has infused a demonic spirit into crude matter, giving it “life,” similar to the kinds that litter the landscape and that most people have enough sense to avoid.

Wright Abilities

Wrights are capable PCs and share the basic suite of beginning abilities that any explorer has, including knowledge of weapons, equipment, the ability to use cyphers, starting Pools, and so on.

The easiest and most straightforward way for a character to craft any object or structure of the numenera is to use a plan. Plans can be found when exploring, potentially anywhere information is encoded, cached, or phased. They can even occasionally be discovered by making special requests to the datasphere. Mundane objects and structures do not require plans. But all objects and structures of the numenera, like installations, artifacts, cyphers, vehicles, and automatons, do. Thanks to constant research and study, Wrights gain access to plans of the numenera each time they advance in tier.

Other Wright abilities include the ability to ease salvage tasks, gaining extra uses from installations or artifacts, building better quality items than non-Wrights, and similar tasks.

A Wright can also use their abilities to scramble or even disable enemy machines and items of the numenera, boost cyphers, create traps on the fly, gain a bond with all the numenera they’ve previously built to garner remote triggering and other abilities, gain followers to help them in their crafting techniques, and many other related abilities.

At upper tiers, a Wright gains even greater control of the installations and other items they’ve built, granting them a variety of a powerful abilities from tapping and redirecting their energy—up to and including causing an installation to heave itself up out of the earth and become, for a short time, a juggernaut of incredible destruction.

Wrights can craft not only installations, but also cyphers and artifacts. So even if a Wright never builds an installation or helps found a base or community, they’ll be incredibly useful explorers, and able, with some study and practice, to craft the perfect complement to an adventurer’s equipment.

If you want a character good at making things, a Wright might be just right for you.

Iadace!
—Bruce and the MCG Team

Ellomyr Grows—and a New Backer Level!
over 8 years ago – Tue, Oct 03, 2017 at 08:53:28 PM

Hello, defenders of Ellomyr!

Your engagement with Ellomyr—in the shape of stories, ideas, artwork, audiocasts, and more—has been inspiring, and the choices we’ve made together are helping to shape The Trilling Shard. But how would you like for your character to be in The Trilling Shard?

We’ve had a lot of requests for that, so we’re going to make it possible. We’re opening a new, limited reward level called PATRON OF ELLOMYR. You get everything the PATRON level gets, but in addition we’ll include your character, by name and with some personal details (like character descriptor, type, and focus), in The Trilling Shard. And you will be listed in a special Defenders of Ellomyr section of Numenera Discovery. This is a limited level, and will probably go quickly, so if this is something you’d like to be part of, jump in now!

Calistina wondered if the scent of that insidious blue mist would ever leave her. She’d put a year behind her and still she woke up smelling seawater and sarnwood, their only warning before the screaming began . . .

She’d survived. So had most of the others. That’s what mattered. And they’d retrieved a cache of knowledge from the Valley of Sins that rivaled anything she’d ever previously discovered. Plans of the prior worlds, a whole cache encoded in a crystal storage device!

In the seasons since the margr attack that’d brought her to Ellomyr, the city had recovered, and more. It’d grown. Some of that growth was her doing. As a Wright, she’d already known a few plans that described how to create minor wonders. Indeed, she’d crafted luminous dynamos to bring light to the growing community at night, some vermin wards, and—her crowning achievement—a swiveling machine able to shoot lightning that she’d mounted on a tower.

But the new plans opened up a far wider range of options! Using them, she and her crew of helpers could craft installations of greater scope and power. But that meant they’d take that much longer to build, so she had to pick her projects carefully.

Should she build a far larger and more capable lightning tower? Or should she build a massive purification station that would ensure enough pure water for even a community growing as fast as Ellomyr? Or maybe she should begin on building force shield generators to make the walls impenetrable . . .

Lighting incense that smelled of flowers and hope, Calistina pondered.

So what should we build for Ellomyr? We’re currently just shy of 2,300 backers. At that number, and for every 25 additional backers we get between now and Thursday evening, we’ll build one cool thing to aid Ellomyr’s growth, prosperity, and security.

Vote here for your favorite choice!

So spread the word—it may seem surprising, but most gamers haven’t even heard about this Kickstarter campaign. Let’s get some more backers, and build some cool stuff for Ellomyr (and for you)!

Iadace!
—Charles, Bruce, and the rest of the MCG Team

Ellomyr Builds (and a Cool Surprise!)
over 8 years ago – Tue, Oct 03, 2017 at 12:21:11 AM

Hello, defenders of Ellomyr!

Before we get to events in our favorite Ninth World community, here some really cool news:

Our friends at InXile, who made the incredible, critically acclaimed computer RPG Torment: Tides of Numenera, have extended a really kind offer: They’ll give everyone who backs this campaign at a $25 or higher level a coupon code for 50% off TTON. The game retails for $45, so this is worth over twenty dollars.

So in addition to all the great rewards you’re getting from this campaign, you can also grab Torment: Tides of Numenera at an incredible price. We’ll work with them to get you your coupon code right after this campaign ends, so you can play it while you wait for your new corebooks!

This offer is extended to every existing backer, and all new backers through the end of this campaign. So please spread the word!

Fheen unloaded the cart, stacking the various containers of iotum they had salvaged from this month’s scavenging run in the Valley of Sins. This was a good haul; the wrights will be proud of what his team brought back to Ellomyr. Wooden crates full of glowing crystal pebbles. Bundles of uncured synthsteel rods. The cracked spherical stone that was almost too hot to touch with your bare hands. And weirder things he couldn’t explain.

As Fheen worked, Jird catalogued the found items in her blankbook and thought about their potential uses. Crystals can provide energy for more signaling devices. Synthsteel can make more windriders. The cracked sphere, if repaired, can power cold lights throughout the town, perhaps forever. Her thoughts halted in surprise as Fheen removed a tiny green glass shape from the wagon and waved it dramatically so she wouldn’t overlook it in her list.

Before Fheen could set it down, Jird stepped forward to grab the glass, dropping her stylus and blankbook in her eagerness. She was surprised by how heavy it was despite it being no longer than her finger. Inside, a syrupy fluid roiled chaotically. She didn’t know the word for this kind of iotum, but she had once heard descriptions of it from an Aeon Priest long ago. This was a miraculous find. If Fheen had found this in the Valley of Sins, there must be more of it around. And with four or five of these bottles, they could change Ellomyr in ways the townsfolk could never imagine.

She tapped the green glass with her fingernail, smiling as the fluid whirled itself into complex molecular patterns against its container. She was thinking of building something for peace instead of war. Something to help the people grow instead of just barely hold on. Something called a flesh regenerator, a numenera device that can cure burns, sickness, and wounds in moments. A creation that would make everyone’s lives… better.

Even with the Battle of Ellomyr well in the past now, people are eager to build. The town—not a village anymore--is growing by leaps and bounds. More expeditions by intrepid explorers into the Valley of Sins yield more iotum that can used by wrights to attempt to use to build new devices. What will the people build?

We want to hear your answers to that question. You’ve done so much to contribute to the narrative of Ellomyr, helping it survive. Now how will your characters usher in the town’s future? We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Iadace!
—Monte and the MCG Team