Stolen by Bats: Two Classes (Crooked Cross & Zee Captain)

Two new classes for Stolen by Bats. 

 

Did we mention the current Lady Mayor is a Devil?

The Crooked-Cross

+1 Veils and +1 False Identity per Template
Starting Equipment: Crooked Crucifix, Neat Suit, Priest’s Raiment, Ratwork Derringer
Skills: 1) Hypnotist 2) Liar 3) Politician 4) Theologist 5) Lawyer 6) Investigator
A – Loathsome Imp, Countertheology
B – Devil’s Advocate
C – Apocyanic Crucifix
D – Mithridacy

False Identity

You get +1 per Template. You have a persona and papers for each of them.

You can pretend to be anyone, but gain no special knowledge – so, a disguise as the Head of the Admiralty or the Prince Consort might only be situationally useful.

 

Loathsome Imp

You are assisted by a Loathsome Imp, a 1HD… person, or at least something in the shape of one. They will never remove their black tea-shades, and are always loyal, nearby and perhaps a little too encouraging.

Your Imp gains HD as you do, and always has an accompanying disguise for your False Identities – for example, the batman to a high-ranking admiral, the lady-in-waiting of a courtier, etc.

 

Countertheology

You’re sponsored by Hell. This is never obvious at first glance (sometimes even to you).

You’ll be employed by Devils to undertake certain tasks, and you will be given Hellish gifts in recompense.

You’re “welcome” at the Brass Embassy, or at least, as much a human can be in such a den of demons. If you ever visit the Iron Republic, the trip will be marginally less horrendous.

 

Devil’s Advocate  

You have an amazing power to argue counter-positions and convince people.

You can make a person believe any lie, or follow any ideology, if you talk to them for a minute and they fail a save.

The delusion lasts only while you are present, or for [Templates] hours after that. They’ll come to their senses once your influence fades.

People won’t kill based on your advocacy (unless they were the kind to kill at the drop of a hat already.)

The classic test of this ability is convincing a priest to destroy a crucifix.

 

Apocyanic Crucifix

The titular Crooked Cross. You’re handed it by a Devil, or it’s mailed to you in a sulphur-smelling box.

You can hold forth the Crucifix, which is plated in coral-derived Apocyan enamel.

Anyone seeing it will remember their most hidden memories – which, nine times out of ten, requires a Save vs. Fear.

 

Mithridacy

You can rearrange the memories of a sleeping or unconscious person as you wish, by laying your hand on their forehead and focusing. 

The Zee Captain

+1 Crewmate and +1 Save per Template.
Starting Equipment: Heavy Coat. Optional Eyepatch. Clay Pipe. Dogleg Shotgun.
Skills: 1) Navigator 2) Wrestler 3) Swimmer 4) Storyteller 5) Boxer 6) Liar 
A – Lazy Scout Bat, Zee Ztories
B – Inured to Terror
C – Ship’s Officer
D – Eyes of Deepest Peligin  

 

Crewmates

You have an indistinct, but large, number of former Crewmates, from your time at Zee.

You can bring [Templates] of them along at a given time. They’re, rude, resourceful, 1HD drunks.

 

Lazy Scout Bat

You have a large and well-trained, but staggeringly lazy, scout bat.

It can fly for up to a mile, has unparalleled hearing, echo-locative abilities, and is almost invisible in dark conditions (like almost all of the Unterzee or Neath).

It will fly to a location, scout it out, then tell you [Templates]+2 interesting things it saw when it returns. How does it tell you? Well, you’re a Zee Captain, of course you can talk to bats.

However, the bat is lazy: it has [Your Hit Dice]-in-6 Chance of actually doing its job, with a +1 to the Roll for each Ration you feed it beforehand. You’ll know if it decides to slack off, because it flies to a high place in eyeshot and visibly falls asleep.

 

Zee Ztories

Roll 3d12 on the following table. If you roll duplicates, choose from the results above and below.

If you ever spend a year at Zee off screen, you can roll again.

 

1. Blinded in Varchas
You spent a month in Varchas, the Mirrored City on the northern coast of the Elder Continent. Your eyes still cringe in pain when you think of all that sharply reflected light, all that pressing heat, all those blooming fungal flowers, and those five stepped towers, glittering like the sun.

It is the city where they banished darkness. You learned to adapt.

You’re resistant to the negative effects of light. This includes the strange properties of the colours of the Neathbow.

 

2. Did a Tour on Demeaux Island
The Iron & Misery Company run a horrendous funging company on Demeaux Island, harvesting massive fungi for food, medicine and building materials. You did a horrendous, horrendous tour there, picking maiden’s caps from your tear ducts and vomiting up wriggling masses of spores.

You survived, somehow.

Damage you take from poison is reduced to one per die – i.e., 4d6 Damage from poison becomes 4, and 3d8 becomes 3, and so on.

 

3. Hunted Monsters at the Chelonate
An island town, a bloody kingdom, built into the vast and perpetually rotting corpse of a turtle. Not just any turtle, though. A pagan god of a turtle. The ship’s chaplain identified it as the corpse of Leviathan.

You worked with the weird locals on a few hunts – hauling up massive, wriggling corpse-eaters, with flesh of deepest Peligin. And then, you ate them.

You can eat pretty much anything organic as a ration.

4. Kidnapped by Pirates at Gaider’s Mourn
They caught you in their puttering little ironclads, and hauled you up to that pirate fortress, up the winches, to that fortress which perches atop that titan stalagmite. The views were, for once, incredible, but the ramshackle walkways and dizzying drops were not.

The pirate younglings laughed at you, clinging tightly to the ropes. You had to adapt to escape.

You can climb like a mountain goat. Parkour has not been invented yet, in this world, but you can do something quite like it.

 

5. Laid Over in Polythreme
In Polythreme, everything is alive. The bed you sleep on is a slave. The coins you pay with chatter amongst themselves. The weapons scream their own battlecries, the drinks scream for mercy – truthfully? Everything screams.

You weren’t supposed to take anything. But after that month stuck there, in the screams, you broke. A little act of mercy.

Add a Living Item to your inventory. It must be something you could fit under a coat. It has a personality, it can hear, and it can speak. It likes you, at least at first.

 

6. Lost in the Iron Republic
“Factory-engines roar like false lions. Blood thunders in the dock-pipes. Crimson lightning skitters across the deck, leaps to the rail, coils there like a cat. The city is reflected in glassy-calm harbour water: the citizens there have the heads of dogs and serpents.”

You remember little of the trip, really. Your own journal entries make your blood run cold to this day.

Swap any two single digit numbers on your character sheet.

 

7. Met the Princes of Mount Palmerston
Mount Palmerstone is a black hip of rock, which rolls up from the Unterzee in the northern Neath. It’s covered in scraggy black thorns, and thick ash, which drifts down from the lip of the active volcano above.

You met a group there, called the Brimstone Convention, and burned your hands on their searing crowns. You’re sworn to secrecy, of course, but you might expect a boon or two.

Your hands are horribly burnt. You can read Hellish, and you can light flammable things on fire by glaring at them. You may receive missions from the Convention.

8. Saw the Sun at Aestival
Aestival is a tiny island. It’s not really on anyone’s maps – good thing, too, because it sits directly under a hole in the Roof. A single, genuine beam of sunlight pins the middle of the island, and fruits and trees grow there. You may have wept, upon seeing those lost pieces of your youth.

But alas. The Sun is fatal now. So found out your old First Mate, when she stepped ashore, and died peacefully, sleeping on the beach in the warm light.

You have gained two things from Aestival: one, painful nostalgia. Two, a mirror-box full of genuine Sunlight, which, as you’ve learned, has a habit of killing Neathers.

9. Drank and Sang in Port Carnelian
Port Carnelian is London’s first and only colony on the Elder Continent – old habits die hard, eh? Port Carnelian is a heaving place, full of Khaganians, Londoners, and the local Speaking Tigers, who, as you may expect, despise everything about the city.

Some despise it enough to leave.

One of your Crewmates is a Speaking Tiger. They have 2HD, and they’re a fucking tiger.

10. Went (Will Go?) to Irem
Irem is (was?) an archipelago in the eastern Neath, near the Khanate. Irem fell (will fall? Is falling?) into the Neath, and now rises (rose?) from the peligin waves. It is (was? Will be?) experiencing some fascinating uncertainty of time and tense.

Some appears to have rubbed off on you.

All clocks immediately break in your presence. It’s a real buggerance. Once, ever, you can stop time for a minute.

11. Wore Masks on Visage
On Visage, a naked face is a shame to God, and everyone must go masked. Those wishing to learn wear frog masks, those wishing to spy go bat-masked, traders wear the faces of locusts – and a hundred more like that.

It certainly made finding the pub a bloody adventure.

You can easily see through mundane disguises, and recognise people you know by their body language alone.

12. Held by the Admiralty at Station V
They hemmed you in with ironclads, and led you to the farthest west you’ve been, through the Barnsmore Gap, to a spherical island. Like a god’s egg, cracked open, to reveal glittering prisma within.

They took you inside anTHE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUou hardly remember much of the trip.

You certainly felt odd afterwards.

Your eyes are flecked, almost imperceptibly, with gold. You can sense when something is obeying or disobeying The Law. Not the mundane law of London, of course, but The Cosmic Law of the Judgements.

 

Inured to Terror

You’re completely immune to Fear effects, and suffer reduced effects from Curses, Trauma, and similar effects.

If you have to roll on the Terror Table, roll twice and take the less harmful effect.

 

Ship’s Officer

You’ve re-established contact with one of your loyal officers. They don’t count as this Level’s Crewmate. They are loyal, helpful, and have 2HD.

Choose one of the following officers: 

• First Officer – Knows exactly what you’d want them to do in any given situation (i.e., you can direct them without actually needing to be present.) 
• Engineer – Expert on machines and engines.  
• Gunner – Has a +2 to Hit, a skill at firing solutions, and a big fucking gun. 
• Cook – Can make edible Rations out of pretty much anything organic. 
• Doctor – Can restore 1d6 HP with 10 minutes of First Aid. 
• Mascot – A small, harmless animal. Or, perhaps, a small, harmful animal. Hates your Bat. Can sneak into places and understands human speech. 

Eyes of Deepest Peligin

Your eyes have turned Peligin, the darker-than-black, lightless blue of the Unterzee. 

You now have perfect vision in darkness.

Zailors, Monster Hunters, and other rough-and-tumble types will give you the respect you deserve. You can also cry the waters of the Unterzee on command, but that’s not so helpful, it’s just creepy.