What Remains of the Bone-Skin Giants
Last call for Cloud Empress preorders, and newsletter voting
Preorders Close September 17th
This week I am finalizing the PDFs to send to the printer. You have two weeks left to preorder a copy of Cloud Empress. Preorders are the cheapest way to grab the game as retail prices will increase.
Preorder your copy on Backerkit while time remains.
Solo Rules Updated
Speaking of PDF updates, I released an uncorrected (not yet proofread) version of the solo rules. In Cloud Empress Solo Protocol, you take the role of an entire adventuring party simulating the conflicts, exploration, and character journeys like you would during Cloud Empress group play. I’ve made simplicity a priority and the rules fit on a single tri-fold pamphlet.
Join the Cloud Empress Development Discord to try Cloud Empress Solo Protocol.
The Bone-Skin Giants
The giants’ legacy is obscured in horror and mystery, only untangled in the bone-skin scraps strewn about the Lowland Wastes. Tempered for the cold black space of Advancing Christendom, the strongest giants left and never returned.
Only one in a thousand experiments ever made it to the stars. Those who could not fly were disassembled as embarrassments. They were ill-suited, defective, or defected. These remnants called for their kin in dying breaths with screams that traveled as fast as light.
A few giants turned back to Terra. These bone-skin stragglers returned wounded, convinced the white lights of the stars were merely tombstones waiting to be marked by uncaring prophets with their skulls.
There was no space or time for victims at home either. Ancient canons assaulted the returning giants as if they were alien conquerors. In the Lowlands, willingly or unwillingly the giants turned cities into flat wastes. Stories say that the giants were left to gorge exclusively on the gray ash of burned lands and kin-bone.
Today scrappers find smooth armor chewed down to flesh. Underneath, scarred bone-skin sits in beauty-less tapestries of warfare. Yet, there is life left in bone-skin scrap, albeit invisible and fading like the hidden embers of an untended campfire in the daylight.
Magnifold the Head
Haunted Bone-skin Beauty
INSTINCT: 0 AP: 25 WOUNDS: 30
Maginfold is perhaps the only bone-skin remnant to suggest the giants may have possessed great beauty in measure with their great destruction. Maginfold’s beauty is no comfort to travelers. The head sits in a field of flowers like unnerving Farmerlings like a mental rattlesnake. The old avert their eyes. Teenagers dance with danger trying to make the Maginfold's flawless face laugh –in frustration graffitiing the indestructible armor with sexual innuendo and stupid callsigns.
The flashy, quick, and impatient never learn Magnifold's secrets. Maginfold waits in meditative undeath. Magnifold only stirs under the right conditions. Magnifold craves old memories that cannot be forgotten, but can no longer be called to mind on command or arranged into meaning.
Magnifold identifies pieces of bone-skin in amusement and loving insight. The Magnifold might share elaborate biographical information on a giant who carried a piece of flesh or armor lifted to Magnifold’s eye or Magnifold may elaborate on the original purpose of the strangest bone-skin organ or machine.
Magnifold exhales in a voice so low and so long the human ear struggles to perceive meaning –audio recording with playback adjustment is advised. Acorn Villagers advertise such services, bartering equipment rentals for rice and beans. Locals advise travelers to spread powdered chalk under Magnifold’s nose while lifting a piece of bone-skin to the giant’s eye to initiate the next soliloquy.
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