Summary
Exarch is a setting about Dark Age peasants discovering sci-fi tunnels filled with dangers and treasures. It’s also about life at Home and the changes that sort of discovery brings. Decades ago, things were simple and rustic. Then a natural disaster, a crack in the glass dome, or some technological failing exposed the endless megastructure that surrounds the place you call Home.
The zine is system agnostic across OSR rpgs, though it lends itself better to classless games like Knave, Into the Odd, Cairn, or Warlock! Your party of peasants will go on deadly expeditions and (hopefully) return with cybernetics, strange futuristic artifacts, and new Utterances in the Steel Speech.
Too many cybernetics might give the mad security AI power over a character, but the Steel Speech will allow a character to command the powerful golems wandering the empty halls. Expeditions are filled with danger but offer rewards that will please a party's patrons and give the would-be heroes the power to attain their dreams of comfort and wealth.
The zine will include procedural generation for patrons at Home, rooms and area types for the megastructure, and the twisted inhabitants the party will encounter on expeditions. It also includes tables for technological artifacts, Utterances in the Steel Speech that allow a character to manipulate the structure and golems around them, and cybernetics to change a character's physical abilities.
Art (including the promotional image) is public domain and in some cases has been altered and is used commercially according to the copyright laws for each image. Most of the zine will be artless, though we now have the VERY talented Emiel Boven doing some art for us!
Some Examples of What's in the Zine
Two examples of the three area themes are:
1. Hydroponics featuring rooms like the:
Plant Maturation Chamber
A dim room with dozens of glass pillars. Blue light emanates from the depths of the ever-swirling water within the columns. Frondy stalks run the the length of the pillars, stretching up and down beyond the PCs sight.
- A panel with two switches rests at the base of each pillar. A vertical handle protrudes from the glass of the column itself.
- When the handled is pulled, a hatch is opened and the swirling water spurts out and begins flooding the room. If the panel is started with a charged device or Utterance, then flipping the red switch activates the gravity device will hold the water within the pillar when the hatch is opened.
- Any present labor golems go about charging a panel, flipping the switch, pulling a frond from the vegetation, and scanning it before closing the hatch and deactivating the panel. They then move to the next column.
2. Parasite (working name) featuring rooms like the:
Peristaltic Tunnel
Circular folds line this fleshy tunnel.
- If a fire is lit on the surface of the tunnel itself, or if more than 20 damage is dealt to it in another way, the folds begin peristalsis.
- Any character knocked off their feet by the surging movement is swept deeper into the structure.
- Any character unable to escape through a side passage in the peristaltic tissue arrives in a Digestion Chamber at +2 Depth.
A couple of the backgrounds on the table What did you abandon—by choice or otherwise?
- A tech cult: begin play with a mace of Fabricus, a Steel Tongue, robes, 3 phials of oil, and leather armor
- A street surgeon’s apprenticeship: begin play with a bone saw, a lesser familiar or a flunky from the streets, an organ preserved in a jar, and a set of scalpels
And a few of the Utterances:
Neumann's Replication - The next Utterance cast on this target occurs twice
Assassin's Injection - One nearby character or object is considered a high-priority hostile by target golem or exarch
The Money Stuff
- The base goal for funding is 500 USD. That's about fifty print copies.
- I'm keeping the stretch goals simple, and we've made enough to warrant a good cover material and a bit of art from Emiel Boven!
Risks & Challenges
This is my first crowdfunding project. That comes with the risk of a lot of little, awkward mistakes (like sending out an email wrong or something) and a project that isn't as polished. I'm playtesting a fair bit and plan on giving myself a month or two to get it looking professional and cleaned up. I'm choosing to keep stretch goals simple and small so things don't get hairy and no one ends up disappointed. The worst that happens is that it fails, you get your money back, and I put it up on itch.io.
