Fighting Suit Kang

For a thousand years the benevolent society of the Yeti prospered. Living in harmony with their planet Abbith, the Yeti built self-sustaining domed cities and acted as guardians of all natural life. For centuries Yeti Lama-Scientist worked to heal the planet from the ravages of the conflicts that destroyed the civilizations that preceded them.  They shepherded the remnants of humanity and other sentient species into protected reserves, and shielded the natural life of the planet from the influence of the vile Elder Gods.

The Yeti dedicated themselves to harmonizing their external and internal realities, valuing serenity and enlightenment.  Conflict between Yetis was unheard of, and the only threat to their peaceful existence were the Elder gods, a physical and psychic evil that was contained by the powerful technologic-thaumatugy and spiritual-scientific teachings of the Lamas.  

That utopia was destroyed one hundred years ago.

Unexpectedly, the skies were full of giant hostile cephalopods, the Prawn led by the alien Mi-Go from the planet Yuggoth on the outer rim of Abbiths solar system. Millions of Yeti died in the initial assault. Entire dome-cities were destroyed, and the continued existence of the species was doubtful.  The Yeti faced an external and internal crisis. Should they abandon the principles of non-violence and serenity in order to preserve themselves? A congress of reincarnated high Lamas known as Tulku was convened, and they meditated on the appropriate response to the Prawn invasion. During the meditation the Tulkus were themselves eaten by the Prawn. Upon their reincarnation they formed the Serene Council of Elders, reformed Yeti society into a militant communist state and instructed their species to make war.

Overnight the pacifistic, enlightened species became dedicated to violence. The considerable scientific and spiritual might of the Yeti was bent to singular purpose, drive out and destroy the Prawn and their Mi-Go masters. Citizens were organized into armies, factories reconfigured to produce military material and the species was indoctrinated into a philosophy of collectivism and violence. Yet, after a hundred years of struggle against the Prawn, the situation still looked bleak.

The Yeti created many ingenious war machines and proved to be skilled warriors but their efforts were ultimately doomed by biology. With long lives but a relatively short reproductive period, a Yeti family has few children. Yeti scientist soon realized losses in the war for survival would lead down an inevitable road to extinction.  Cloning proved to be impossible due to the reincarnation of the Yeti soul, the experimental clones produced were uncontrollable soulless monsters.  Yeti scientist and engineers turned to robots to address the statistical gap in losses versus birth rates.

The techno-clergy were never able to create a true artificial intelligence. The drones and robots that they built were not fully autonomous and required remote control, limiting their effectiveness by putting the precious Yeti operators at risk.  Priest-Engineer Dr. Manfred Mumbles who lost his two daughters in the 6th Guards Robot Army vowed to create a system that would protect the operators of the Yeti’s robotic forces.

Secretly experimenting with neural interfaces and a rare metal sought by the Mi-Go called tok’l, Dr. Mumbles created a dermal battle suit that would not only protect its wearer but augment their abilities and had the capability of combining with other suits to form a massive and nearly invincible war robot. He called the neural interface armor Fighting Suits and named the robot Kang after the mythical first Lama of the Yeti.

The Fighting Suit Kang program looked promising, but when specially selected Yeti soldiers donned the suits a problem arose. A peculiarity of the Yeti nervous system meant that adults who attempted to use the Fighting Suits did so only under immense physical and psychic pain. They proved the technology, but the operational limitations imposed by acute damage to their minds and bodies limited the usefulness of the program.  The Serene Circle of Elders shelved the project and a dejected Dr. Mumbles retired to seclusion with his only remaining daughter, the teenage Tashi.

One night the Prawn overcame the defensive perimeter near the Mumbles estate. In a panic to defend her home and elderly father, Tashi donned a Fighting Suit and single handedly defeated the squid incursion. Dr. Mumbles after overcoming his anger at Tashi for risking her life ran a series of experiments with the teen and the suit. He discovered that a pubescent but not yet fully formed Yeti brain could operate the suit without incurring trauma. He submitted his findings to the Serene Circle and they agreed to renew the project. The Elders imposed a condition however. Since the embrace of warfighting and violence by the Yeti, their culture had lost the serenity and selflessness that had kept them unified in contentment. The Serene Circle increasingly had to use the tactics of fear and propaganda to keep citizens in line though what appeared to be an unending war. The Circle feared the public’s reaction if they learned that precious Yeti children would now be used to prosecute the struggle against the Prawn. The Fighting Suit Kang program would be classified.

Establishing his secret lab at the largest School for War Orphans, Dr. Manfred Mumbles and his daughter Tashi posed as Teachers, and began to recruit a team of Yeti teens to wear the Fighting Suits, and work together as the giant robot Kang.

They would prove to be the Yeti’s last hope of survival.

Fighting Suit Kang will be a 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Game.

The players will be teenage members of the Yeti School for Orphans who are recruited by Dr. Mumbles to be part of the top secret Fighting Unit Codename Kang program.

Games motifs include:

Giant transforming robots

High school drama / teen angst

Tentacles and giant monsters

Double lives

A hopeless cause

Fallen communist utopia

Tibetan Buddhism and Yeti myths

The player characters will be 0 level Yeti Teenagers who are members of various cliques within the Yeti School, represented by the 5th edition backgrounds mechanic.

The characters earn inspiration dice based on acting in accordance with their clique.

Characters will be able to re-roll a failed roll or take advantage on a roll by establishing a scene of drama or angst.

When the characters wear the Fighting Suits the suit itself has a character class and earns XP. Players have a choice of what suit they want to wear before a mission.

When the players combine to form Kang, they share armor class and hit points but act individually with different classed Fighting Suits having different functions.  

The characters will only be able to wear the Fighting Suits unitl they become adults, as they grow nearer to adulthood they begin to take hit point damage from the suit itself.

Game sessions will typically follow the Monster of the Week formula combined with a hex map crawl that contains varying areas of difficulty and reward that are visible to the players.

Fish N' Chips

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"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

In the ancient days before the planet Abbith was fixed in space and its lands still shifted, while the snake men of Yig studied the stars from crystal towers, the oceans were ruled from a cyclopean city known as R’lyeh. Here dwelt beings that crawled down from the nuclear chaos of space. Their mother was Hydra, and their father was Dagon and the spawn of these oceanic forms were the Deep Ones who swam in the primal seas of Abbith and multiplied. From black reefs, and salty shores they lifted their croaking throats in praise to the terror of the cosmos and their hideous prayers were answered. For beyond the gates great Cthulhu heard their hymns and slithered through time and space to take the seat his worshipers had prepared in the city of R’lyeh.  Mother Hydra and Father Dagon lay at his feet and spawned so that for millennia the Deep Ones thrived in dark green depths.

The cataclysm that the Snake Men of Yig brought down from their towers changed the planet and caused R’yleh to shift into stygian depths only loosely connected to the warm oceans of Abbith. The Yiggian were gone and the hairless ape called man extended his dominion over the primal continents. Great Cthulhu fell into a dream, and this dream tormented the Deep Ones.  It compelled them to mix their species with the blood of man in order to wake their slumbering god. The Deep Ones left R’yleh and built spawning pits and hidden grottoes near the newly formed shores of Abbith. When the tide and stars were right they arose from the depths and sought out human women with which to strengthen their blood.  Sea wrought gold they carried and the primitive chieftains of man were easily swayed to sell their women for strange treasures from the deep. The children of these unions were hybrids, called by some the Sea Bloods.

Born as seemingly normal human babies, the hybrids are raised in man’s villages by their mothers. Before long the deep begins to call them, and they hear the dream of the god that sleeps in R’yleh. Eventually they change, and by middle age take again to the sea in order to bring the vitality of their blood back to the sunken seat of their sires. Today some coastal communities tolerate or even celebrate the impregnating of their women by Deep Ones. Most of mankind does not willingly hold congress with the Deep Ones however, and the breeding is usually a sudden attack from the depths.

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Current Events

In the city of Sanctuary, the Sea Bloods have thrived. Those that are cast out of human settlements know they can seek safe haven across the ocean in the land of Shulim. They find their passage aided by their fathers, and in the city itself a High Priest of Dagon called a Goswami meditates in a temple to the Sea Father and holds power and influence enough to protect the Sea Blood community.

Recently, The Goswami after long years of preparation set forth on a path to rule the city. Sanctuary suffered an attack by savage blue men of the wilds, led by a powerful chieftain who commanded a spawn of Shub-Niggurath to assault the Temple of Dagon directly. The Pasha Assur Salidani and his Thugee warriors, most powerful faction in the city, were decimated defending the temple. Only through the action of group of mercenary adventurers called The Company, of which a Sea Blood named Jabba was a member, were the temple and the city saved.

Seizing an opportunity in the power vacuum, the Goswami had his acolyte Jabba poison Mistress Jaingaiva a human wizard who stood in opposition to their dominion. This left only The Company as a significant threat to the rule of the Deep Ones, an organization that the Goswami had already infiltrated with Jabba.  When the stars were correct, Jabba was ordered to lead a swarm of Deep Ones from the depths while the Goswami and his fellow Sea Blood Priest attacked the center of power in the city, the Pasha’s Palace. The Goswami was slain in a battle with the Pasha’s wizard, an exile Adian Gharban named wa-Sharquan, but the wizard too was struck down. Jabba and the Deep Ones over-powered the remainder of the Pasha’s forces and slew the Pasha himself. With the city on the brink of takeover by servants of Dagon, leaders of the human community came to The Company to beg for salvation. The Company ignored their pleas and decided to flee in a spacecraft they had recently salvaged leaving the humans of Sanctuary to their fate. With the old priest slain in battle against the Pasha’s wizard, Jabba became the new Goswami and consolidated his control over the city.

Goswami Jabba is not amused. 

Sanctuary under the Deep Ones

Goswami Jabba immediately sacrificed the prisoners taken in the battle to Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. The Sea Gods responded to his prayer of blood by raising a giant barnacle fortress to be his seat.  Deep Ones flocked to Sanctuary from all the oceans of the world, swelling the ranks of Jabba’s salty host.  Once it was clear that the city would fall,  human citizens with the means begged the local pirates for passage but their request were unheeded. Jabba wisely bribed both the Black Fingers Thieves Guild and the Pirate Captains with sea gold, and sent the Deep Ones to aid the pirates in their raids, winning the loyalty of the freebooters.

The Deep Ones defiled the Temple of Erroneous, and Jabba ate the Bishop of Error. The compound of the Company was besieged but has thus far held due to the prowess of female warriors called The Cats, and a powerful psychic blue woman who hold it alongside those members that did not fly into space.  The Vat Guild office on the edge of town became an impregnable bunker and activated its automated defenses. After considerable loss the Goswami called off the assault. The human citizens of Sanctuary are now the subjects of the sea spawn, their women are used for breeding and the men are sent to the altar of Dagon. The Goswami is building a kingdom of salt, a pit of Deep Ones and Sea Bloods whose wet throats again croak prayers to Great Cthulhu. They are preparing a magnificent ritual, amassing sacrifices and waiting for the moment when the stars align that they may wake the god that slumbers in deep R’lyeh.

The Wheel of Becoming

The Void Knights

When humanity first encountered the life destroying Xylithians a paradigm shift was required to deal with an enemy that threatened existence itself. Never before had the species faced a foe whose motivation is simply annihilation.  The philosophers and scientist of the empire wrung their hands to accommodate the reality that a force in the universe existed just to consume life. Here was the idea of entropy given agency and frightening power.

Fulvius the Imbiber, court philosopher to the fourth Emperor in the seminal work Debates On the Efficacy Of Argument, A Symposium On Futility established the conceptual basis that the only logical response to the idea of nothing, was in fact nothing. This treatise became the foundation document of an order of Knighthood endowed directly by the Imperial Throne.  

Founded during the reign of Empress Sulpicia the Void Knights are charged with understanding nothing, and stopping the spread of Xylithians. They receive orders directly from the Empress herself, and owe allegiance only to the throne.  Initiates are recruited exclusively from the second sons of second sons of aristocratic noble houses throughout the Empire. Neophyte Knights, known as squires take a vow of chastity and loyalty to the throne and are castrated to prevent unnecessary thoughts. Upon attainment of Knighthood at age 16, they receive a select frontal lobotomy. Knights proceed up a rank structure of degrees, having living tissue removed or replaced with necromantic magic as they advance in the understanding of the void. Eventually, at the ninth degree, Grand Master Knights are little more than undead brains preserved by necromancy, when a body is required they are placed in the empty corpses of initiates who failed to attain understanding.

Since Void Knights are mostly undead, they are particularly suited to combating the Xylithians who feed on life. In addition to the necromancy that sustains their bodies, the knights command Thaumaturgical magics, the power of their meditations increasing as they proceed towards a greater understanding of nothing.  The Void Knights train in the use of starships, and personal combat. They carry a distinctive weapon called the star lance, a polearm that radiates negative or positive energy and may be used in melee or as a missile weapon.

Void Knight
Title and Level	XP	Hit Dice	BAB	Save	1st Lv Meditations	2nd Lv Meditations	3rd Lv Meditations	4th Lv Meditations	5th Lv mediations
1 Squire		1d8	+1	14
2 Kight	2700	2d8	+1	13	1
3 Keeper	5500	3d8	+2	12	2
4 Gallant	12000	4d8	+2	11	2	1
5 Justicar	24000	5d8	+3	10	2	2	1
6 Warden	45000	6d8	+3	9	2	2	1	1
7 Paladin	95000	7d8	+4	8	2	2	2	2	1
8 Master	175000	8d8	+4	7	2	2	2	2	2
9 Grand Master*	350000	9d8	+5	6	3	3	3	2	2

Level One - Squire

Focusing the Thoughts - The Void Knight is castrated. They may no longer reproduce.

Shield of Humanity  - May wear any armor

Level Two - Knight

The Understanding of Space - The Void Knight receives a partial lobotomy. +1 WIS -1 INT, +2 Save vs mind affecting spells and illusions.

Sword of Hope - The Void Knight is given and can use the Star Lance

Meditations of Nothing - The Void Knight begins to use Meditations

Level Three - Keeper

Empty Inside - The Void Knights lungs are removed and replaced with undead lungs. They no longer need to breath.

Level Four - Gallant

The Center of the Circle - The Void Knights heart is replaced with an undead organ. +1 HP

Level Five - Justicar

Perception is Reality - The Void Knight’s eyes are ritually scooped out. Save or Die. If the Void Knight lives they have attained a level of enlightenment that precludes the need for sight.

Level Six - Warden

As Within So Without - The Void’s Knights flesh dies. Their skin appears rotten though it remains supple. +1 AC

Level Seven - Paladin

Approaching the Gate - The Void Knights remaining organs except for the brain, become undead. They no longer require food or water.

Level Eight - Master

Impermanence - The Void Knights Limbs are removed. The may attach implants as needed.

Level Nine - Grand Master

The Wheel of Becoming - The Void Knights mind is made undead and removed from his body. It is kept in a cloister and implanted into the bodies of failed Justicars as needed.