What more can be said?

Here, hot off the press, is an NPC from Sisters of the Immaculate Fire for your perusal. I 'blame' Tim Power's excellent novel Declare and its effect on my overly impressionable brain for this. Plus H.P. Lovecraft, although not as much since it's been many a year since I've read any of his work, and all I really remember is the prose style and the fatalism of it all.

Anyway...

Walid al-Ad

The man known to the Red Sisters as Walid al-Ad has many names. He is Walid al-Iram and Walid al-Hatif, Walid ibn-Jinni and Walid bin-Shaitan, Walid the Unspeakable and Walid of the Knife, the Beast of Al-Diwaniyah and the Red Dervish. Whatever he is called, Walid is one of the cruelest and most dangerous men to walk the Earth in these days. He is a twisted prophet of a nameless faith, and a sorcerer and alchemist of frightening skill. It is said that Walid is 105 years old (or, some whisper in the dark before praying that Allah will stop up al-Ad's ears from hearing them speak it, three thousand years old) and that he has outlived many enemies. Today, he is believed to dwell somewhere in the most desolate deserts of Arabia, either west of Ramadi near Baghdad or among the unholy ruins of Iram of the Pillars.

The story of Walid is really a collection of whispered anecdotes and the feverish ramblings of madmen, and little can be said for certain. What is known is that Walid was once an Islamic holy man and a Sufi mystic. But in his travels into the deep desert, he came across the ruins of Iram and was ensnared by the whispers of the ghosts. They gave unto him haqiqa, a vision of the ultimate truth - but not at all the haqiqa accepted by Islamic teaching. Instead, it was a twisted truth passed down from the ages before Mohammed, before Jesus, and before Abraham. Whatever the ghosts of Iram said to Walid, it broke his mind and he emerged from the desert a changed man (his companions, for better or worse, never left the ruins and are believed to have been devoured by the hungry ghosts, or by Walid himself).

Walid drew followers to himself from the wretched and reckless, and his cult soon drew the attention of the Ottoman government. In 1819, Walid was personally denounced as a heretic by the Caliph and Sultan Mahmud II, who attended the bloody execution of Walid's followers over the next three years. Walid has since eluded Turkish soldiers, Arabic tribesmen and the dreaded Hashshashin (an ancient sect of Ismaili holy warriors, generally believed to have been crushed centuries ago but known and feared in the shadows of Arabia today). The Ruwallah Bedouin of northern Arabia say that Walid has begun to gather a new cult from among their people, despite the warnings of their imams and sheikhs, and they say he is planning to awaken something ancient and unholy that sleeps beneath Iram.

Origin: Arabic
Nature: Human
Distinguishing Characteristics: A red scar or birthmark, in the shape of a serpent, upon his forehead. Gaunt, almost skeletal, but with an iron grip.

One of my absolute favorite gaming books ever is The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting hardcover for 3rd Edition D&D. It's a scientific fact that every page has an adventure idea. Aside from the exceptional regional/country write-ups, there's a metric truckload of NPCs ready to drop into your games, or to serve as inspiration.

Which brings me to the topic at hand. I've always had an NPC chapter in mind for Warring Stars. You need to give some example of what people from Place X are like, in my opinion (this also works for in-group games - signature characters, in other words). I've done some reorganization today, dropping the NPC chapter and putting the NPCs into their national section of the big honkin' stellar cartography chapter.

Not its actual title.

This has helped, because the new organization prompted me to actual look at what kind of NPCs I had written up, sketchily or otherwise. The list was a bit skewed, and I've got a shiny new plan for fixing it. I'm making two NPCs for each country (the "and everyone else" section gets four) - one for high-end adventures/campaigns, and one for street-level action.

Here's a couple examples...

( Admiral of the Fleet Vladimir Konstantinovich Senin )

( Countess Ophelia of Myles )

These are both high-end NPCs, but they're the only ones I have written up so far. d'oh!

Great, now Frank Miller is gonna send his ninjas after me or something.

Besides, biography is boring. Let's get down to what Drama Shark* is working on.

At the moment, I have three games in progress.

The first is Far Heavens, a planetary romance set in the future of an alternate timeline where the Reformation never happened and a hyperspace dimension known as the Aether allows faster than light travel. Humanity has begun to spread out to the stars (or Far Heavens) and encountered strange lifeforms and mysterious civilizations on nearby worlds. It owes a lot to Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and similar authors as well as pre-19th century colonialism. Progress: 50% done, currently on the backburner.

Next up is Sisters of the Immaculate Fire (formerly known as Powers and Principalities), an admittedly niche game about an order of Catholic nuns who investigate occult and supernatural mysteries in the 19th century. The X-Files is a major influence, as are the supernatural detective stories of Manly Wade Wellman. Progress: 75% done, also on the backburner.

Finally, we have Warring Stars, a space opera set in the late 24th century. Humanity has mastered FTL (in the form of wormholes) and thoroughly colonized the local area of the galaxy out to around 1500 light years from Earth. Along the way, they've encountered several alien species (ranging from the greys of UFO lore to an ancient reptile empire). Firefly/Serenity and Traveller are the main influences, with maybe a dash of Star Wars and Star Trek. Progress: 50% done and my active project of the moment.

I keep almost typing "Dharma Shark", after the legendary beastie from the early episodes of Lost, season 2. Yes, that is the genesis of the name Drama Shark, now stripped bare of anything that would have Walt Disney's lawyers come after me like bloodthirsty sharks. Pun intended.

Welcome to my shockingly bare-bones game preview/design/rambling journal. I'll post something substantial later today. Quiver in anticipation!