Gravestar Species: Malgams

 The Malgams were the first people to land on the surface of the various planets of the Solus system only to be ousted from the lands they terraformed by The Company. These extremely diverse peoples now struggle to make their way on the brutal worlds of the Solus system alongside everyone else.

Physiology:
 Malgams are extremely physically diverse. They all have a mix of humanoid and animal traits to varying degrees and can be broken down into many different subspecies, all related due to their shared origin and mutual humanity. Among the most common include the Yota who resemble coyotes, the Bovid who resemble cows or bulls often but not always with a slight blue tint, the Lopen who resemble Jackrabbits often with small antlers.

Demeanor:
 Malgams are often stereotyped as having a deep connection and understanding of nature, in large part since they’ve spent more time than anyone else on the worlds of Solus in contributed a great deal to creating the ecosystems that sustain those worlds. Still, amongst them Malgams the different subspecies have their own predominant stereotypes. Yota are often viewed as sly tricksters and pranksters or artists and outside the box thinkers. Bovid are often considered blunt and dull witted by comparison to others of their kin, but are also often regarded as trustworthy and steadfast. Lopen are widely considered quick to action, and either skittish or very quick to fight.

Outlook:
Empathy, humility, perseverance, and respect for the past are considered important traits by and large by the Malgams.

• Never forget who put the air in your lungs.
• Your accomplishments can never truly be taken from you.
• Any night under the open sky is a blessing, cherish it.
• Listen, and you may hear things that others miss.
• Never forget the world lives, we worked too hard to give it birth.

History:
The Malgams were genetically engineered from human stock and stored samples of wildlife from Earth in order to better survive the process of terraforming the worlds of Solus. They spent a thousand years terraforming the worlds of the system to become more accommodating, using ancient stubborn machines and careful steady work. They stayed in touch across the stars through ancient communication centers, forming bonds of brotherhood and unity across incredible gulfs of space without the ability to cross them. When The Company Men awoke two hundred years ago they took everything from the Malgams but their pride. Across the system they have come together to support one another in the face of adversity.

Adventurers:
Many Malgams who find themselves without a tribe, through loss or exile, often find themselves becoming lone wanderers in search of a new family and goal in life. Many others who have more ambition than can be fed by life with their insular communities will go out seeking adventure. Some settle down in a home, some merely keep adventuring and fighting for coin.

Typical Names:
Most Malgams have names using nature motifs relating to weather, geography, or flora and fauna. Those who spend much time outside of their communities will often adopt a more ‘typical’ human name to blend in more.

Yota have stats as a Medium Mundymutt
Bovid have stats as a Gruun
Lopen have stats as a Hoppalong. (https://breakrpg.blogspot.com/2023/08/option-menu-creating-your-own-species.html)

These are far from the only Malgams. I’ll probably add more over time, possibly including rattlesnakes, road runners, scorpions, anything else that feels fitting.

First Adventures of Rolls for Initiative

 We just completed our second adventure of the campaign so it seems about right to do a little write up on what shenanigans my players have been getting up to!

In our first adventure our intrepid band of chucklefucks met up in the town of Scoville on the north eastern tip of Stahlfeld, hoping to cash in on the great Lunch Rush as ancient preserved foodstuffs and industrial grade cooking equipment was dug up from ancient Gleysian ruins.

Our band includes Breadbot, the biomechanoid factotum who desires only one thing: to make bread. Marshmallow “Marsh” Fluff, the very hungry Raineko Raider and inventor who manages to turn everything he attempts to invent into a weapon or armor of some sort. Vix Cane, the Tenebrate Murder Princess who experienced a terrible and undefined wheat related tragedy who takes great joy in the reaping of said accursed grains. Grog, the Gruun Battle Princess and the biggest and bestest of boys. Flurp, the Goblin Sage who . . . y’know, nobody’s quite sure where he came from, but he seems to live in Breadbot’s backpack!

Their first quest was to prove themselves to Ma Boulder in order to inherit the “sweet” old woman’s bakery as she retired from the riches of the great Lunch Rush! To do this they were forced to go into the ruins the town was built upon to retrieve ash bronze heating coils for her broken Gleysian oven. After battling delicious sugar goops, and fending off irate Gleysian robots, the party found the coils in the claws of a robotic drone. Luckily, Grog was able to convince it to part with the coils on the promise of not telling its “manager” that they were out of place.

The episode closed out on Marsh and Flurp working hard to install the coils in their new oven, creating a huge burst of fire and smoke billowing out the windows as Ma Boulder left in floral shirt and large sunglasses cackling all the way to the beach. Thus was the Rolls for Initiative bakery opened!

Over the next week the bakers spent their downtime bonding and making friends. That is to say, Vix and Grog became close friends, while Flurp and Marsh were only able to achieve the power of friendship due to Flurp’s skill at making the repugnant palatable. Meanwhile Breadbot managed to make a friend. Literally. A terrible baking accident generated a talking “Pure-Bread” dog, which now serves as the bakery’s mascot.

 
After a week of business, getting by turning the remains of those sugar goops into delicious jelly donuts while their oven was repaired, the bakers suffered the indignity of thieves attempting to run off with their rolls! These thieves turned out to be part of a concerted effort by the Salty Dogs, a band of mundymutt pirates who had come to ransack the town of its delicious food.

After Vix managed to stare two of them down, they convinced their captured pirates to lead them to their ship. Motivated as much by personal insult at petty theft, as by the 100 coin reward promised by Sheriff Clif Mesa.

They fight their way onto the ship making use of Flurp’s mana bomb, then take out a sniper in the crow’s nest on the way up! Once there they, with a few mishaps, lower Flurp down to a port hole after Bredbot detected more lifeforms below them. Flurp blasts half the pirates below the deck, then the party uses the choke point as the pirates come up to fight, in order to take them out two at a time. This opens up the way to confront the captain, the Great Bane! Sadly the captain goes down easily even with his attempted ambush and soon the party is looking to cash in their reward, find a use for the stolen food, and find a seller for the old pirate ship.

The Great Bane!

 
After having it appraised the party sends Vix and Grog to sell the ship to the nearby Meowsular Butcher’s shop, the buff Raineko accepting the ship as a way to get more fish. Vix is sufficiently enamored with the quiet muscle-neko to spend the next week off time becoming ‘Bros’! Meanwhile Marsh attempts to make oven mitts for their industrial grade oven, instead creating a full body hazmat suit allowing him to walk in. Flurp attempts to form a friendship with the local sheriff but is met only with “Who are you again?” Meanwhile Breadbot attempts and fails to make bread, it’s attempts thwarted as Grog performs acts of unilateral friendship ensuring their closeness for all of time whether Breadbot wants it or not. Which is to say Grog succeeded in a socializing roll, defeating Breadbot’s chances of spending the off time doing baking, much to the biomechanoid's chagrin and the player’s amusement.

Shared by Grog's player after the game!

Gravestar: Callings

 Alright, I think for callings in Gravestar we can pretty readily use everything in the BREAK!! book, though some adjustments may be necessary. We can divide the callings into two types fundamentally, those that need changes and those that really don’t.

For those callings needing no changes I’d put down Factotum, Sneak, Champion, and Raider. Raider really speaks for itself why it works just fine in the space western. Sneak can make a great grifter, snake oil salesman, or conman. Champion could make a great John Henry, Paul Bunyan, or other big tough character. Factotum could work for any hard working farm hand, ranch cook, engineer, doctor, prospector etc.

 Where it gets more challenging are the magical classes. Here I’m going to suggest some reskinning to bring them more in theme with the game and some mechanical changes or limitations to help them work better in that theme. All of these are something I might come back to later to refine them more. In particular I won't be giving every ability a reskin, just providing the general framework for how to retheme the powers. I might later make a list for each ability but it isn’t my highest priority.

Engine Guardian (Battle Princess)
“To mend and defend!”
The Guardian is a person supposedly blessed by the Engine herself with the use of a rare piece of old tech known as an omnitool. They are typically people of great compassion and a seemingly empathic understanding of machinery. Often they are leaders, preachers, accomplished engineers or studiers of old tech. Omnitools are often wrist mounted when not in use and can change to a number of useful forms and are loaded with countless handy abilities. Many guardians claim their omnitools to be truly sentient despite officially predating the development of AI.

Changes:
Starting Abilities:
Omnitool Attack Mode (Heart’s Blade): Your weapon should often strive to resemble a mechanical tool or at least a high tech device.Mechanical Missile weapons function according to the campaign rules of Gravestar.

Omnitool: Replaces Soul Companion as a starting ability. Functions exactly like the Glittering Machine standard ability.

Guardian Shield: Functions as Shield of Love.

Standard Abilities:
Soul Companion: Becomes a Standard Elective Ability. You may only choose Brave Toy as your option. Weapon link is especially thematic but not required.
Glittering Machine: Remove from Standard Abilities it’s a Starting ability now.

Technopath: Guardians are especially attuned with machines and can learn to work with them through intuition as much as knowledge. You gain Crafting Discipline Gadgeteering. You use Aura for Crafting rolls. This ability replaces Love-Love Chef.


Hellion (Murder Princess)
“Good. Bad. I’m the guy with the gun.”
The Solus System is haunted by ghosts, spirits, and things far older than humanity. Hellions are more haunted than most. They have bonded, willingly or not, with an ancient eldritch spirit which hungers for the ectoplasmic flesh of other ghosts. This writhing mass of tentacles, eyes, and teeth is able to manifest itself in a small fragment resembling a strange ancient weapon. The Hellion is able to channel the dark powers of their haunt in order to become an excellent hunter of spirits and ghosts. Typical Hellions are dark brooding sorts driven into the life of an undertaker by the bizarre sights they see and the constant hunger of their companion.

Changes:
Starting Abilities:
Haunted (Wrath’s Blade): Only you can see the small writhing eldritch spirit which haunts you and whispers gibbering madness in your ear. However, at your call it may manifest in your hand as a weapon. This weapon may appear of ancient craftsmanship, an old weathered weapon made of ectonite, or a writhing living thing of tentacles and eyes. This functions as Wrath’s Blade except mechanical missile weapons function as stated by the Gravestar campaign rules.

Standard Abilities:
Couturier: Remove this ability.

Ghost Rider: Your Haunt may manifest in reality more completely as a strange writhing unliving beast. You may have both this manifestation and your weapon activated at once, your Haunt is unconcerned with being in two places at once. This functions as the Battle Princess Soul Companion ability except as follows: It must be an Animal Companion, it must take the Mount ability. It gains Living Dead as an ability.


Void Witch (Sage)
“Have you ever seen fire in zero gravity? It's beautiful. It's like liquid.”
Some people dreamed in stasis during the long voyage to Solus. Others have taken up the life of spacers and spent whole generations wandering in the black void between planets and heard the music of the spheres. These people originated the quiet and secretive art of tapping into that void for magical power. These witches are often feared for their potential power as they learn to bend gravity, light, and plasma to their whims. The typical Void Witch is a wanderer, navigating the routes between worlds or wandering landbound in an urge to see the sights and hear the music of the spheres.

Changes:
Starting Abilities:
Eidetic Memory (Grand Grimoire): You have been trained to have an excellent memory and collect lore and stories as a conduit for oral history. This functions much as the Grand Grimoire ability just without the actual physical manifestation of a book.

Light and Gravity (Sage’s Staff): You can manipulate small motes of light or use gravity manipulation to push things around. This functions just like the Sage’s Staff ability except that ghosts and spirits that are afraid of light will also attempt to avoid your magelight.

Standard Abilities:
Gravity Flux(Mortifying Bloat): You curse somebody with a wild warping aura of unstable gravity. Armor flies off, their weight and mass shift unexpectedly when they attempt to fight, yet they’re oddly buoyant. This functions much like Mortifying Bloat except the resulting debuff does not change their physical size, instead making their mass unstable. Fundamentally this removes the inability to go through doorways or small spaces and makes rigid creatures vulnerable to the spell.

Anomaly Gremlin (Very Useful Cloud): You summon a sparkling bit of space resembling a starfield or nebula of tiny proportions. This functions as a Very Useful Cloud except that instead of moisture to summon it you require a direct line of sight to the sky.


Shaman (Heretic)
“Time is an illusion. And so is death.”
The Solus system is full of spirits and not all are the angry dead. Many are respected ancestors, embodiments of natural forces, or strange alien things that are difficult to understand but mean no harm. Shamans are those individuals who have learned to listen to these spirits and ask their assistance. Typical shamans are deeply spiritual and empathetic, seeing past the illusionary divides between people, spirits, and nature.

Changes:
Fundamental changes: The Shaman uses Aura instead of Grit for their ability checks. Swap Aura and Grit starting aptitudes and progressions Swap Lash Proficiency for Drawn Missile weapon.

Starting Abilities:
Meditation(Fitful Sleep): Your daily routine involves nightly meditation. During which spirits may attempt to warn you or whisper secrets to you. Mechanically this functions like the ability Fitful Sleep.

Spirit Guide (Squire Marlow): You have a spirit who is especially concerned with your well being and will attempt to aid you. This functions mechanically as Squire Marlow.

Empathy (Dreadful): You have a deep sense of empathy and connection to other beings. This functions as the Dreadful ability except that you instead get an Edge on rolls related to calming, inspiring, or befriending someone. You also are able to use your Aura check to instead learn that your partner deeply cares about or desires.

Standard and Advanced Abilities:
Reflavor most abilities you take to match benevolent nature spirits or the benign dead. Consider changing the Allegiance Points of most abilities to Bright. This is best handled on an individual basis but I may review the class and come up with a list of reflavorings later.

History of Solus

 In the beginning, Earth died. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, hundreds of colony ships launched from the dead world into the emptiness of the void. There were as many backers and movements as there were ships, each bound by their own ideologies. Most have never been heard from since the exodus. Of the handful whose fates were known, only one concerns us right now.

Providence
The Providence was owned by a corporate entity that has since become so ubiquitous and monolithic as to be only remembered as The Company. While ostensibly a cryoship, lacking good AI it was necessary to wake up an engineering and maintenance staff on a regular basis.

The journey into the void is fraught with misfortune, almost as if the ship was cursed. Systems broke down continuously, and eventually, the course was lost, leading the ship to wander lost in the void for centuries longer than expected. The maintenance crew burned through multiple lifetimes despite the cryogenic freezing, eventually passing on their understanding to a new generation of engineers, and then another. By the time the Providence arrived the engineering crew had gone through so many generations the practice of waking from cryo to repair the ship was as much a religious ritual as routine. Thus the religion of Enginism was born.

Solus
Upon arriving in the Solus system the Providence found few habitable worlds. Instead, during their brief awakening, the board of directors concocted a plan for terraforming the various planets and moons of the system that could be made habitable. To do this onerous work the board did not seek volunteers nor did they forcibly enlist their passenger cargo. Instead, they used old Earth technology to genetically engineer a generation of human-animal hybrids designed to handle the difficult conditions on the planet.

It took over a thousand years of hard labor and oversight of temperamental machinery to finally make the worlds of Solus habitable. In that time the chimera sent down to serve as first-generation colonists had largely relegated their origins to half-forgotten myth. They had settled in the best lands their terraforming could create and remained vaguely in touch across the void between worlds with half-functional ancient technology. When The Company returned looking to take what they claimed to own it was a shock to the chimera. Sadly the early conflicts between the chimera and The Company were often woefully one-sided in favor of the Spaceborne Company.

Awakening
The colonists were not awakened all at once. Instead, the Company men were the first out of the cryotubes. The first thing they did was unleash hell upon the chimera who resisted their takeover using technological superiority. Then they proceeded to pick the best of the terraformed worlds for their own use, taking those most useful to them to their new paradise of Persephone.

When the rest of the colonists were awoken they found themselves scattered amongst the other planets and moons of the Solus system. Most were forcibly funnelled to the desert world of Perdition, easily the largest of the habitable worlds even if it was only barely hospitable.

 Discovery
There was a lot to learn for the new colonists. Imagine if you will, finding yourself abandoned in a barely livable desert and told you’re unspeakably in debt to an overwhelmingly powerful company. Then imagine that becomes the least of your problems when you’re confronted with ghosts, ghouls, and spirits of all sorts. The early years of the colony were a riot of madness and destruction as the colonists struggled to deal with their new ectoplasmic neighbors.

Then considered the added upheaval and chaos brought about with the discovery of magic. It was a weak thing at first, chaotic and barely understood. Ghostly guns, divine gifts of the holy engine, necromancy, nothing seemed too improbable. Many people, raised on an atheistic dying Earth, found their core beliefs shaken and fled to the warm steady embrace of Enginism.

Of most interest to the company however was the new black gold, ectonite. The strange metal was discovered in and around ancient alien ruins and had impossible properties. Soon The Company was ruthlessly organizing mining and archeology sites to extract ectonite and study the ruins they were associated. It was back-breaking labor often associated with frequent ghost attacks but this was of little concern for the company.

Today
It's been over two hundred years since the awakening. Things have stabilized a bit. The Company has consolidated its power even more, its leaders practicing dark forbidden arts using ectonite. The best of old Earth technology isn't available to the common man, with many forced to rely on more primitive weapons such as ballistic guns, and many people have worked with the same old temperamental pieces of equipment for generations. Regardless, the black gold has unlocked new technological wonders, enabling formerly impossible magitech, and even being used in circuitry to create the first truly self-aware AI. The job of Undertaker has become common across the Solus system and there's good pay to be found in ghost hunting.

Gravestar: Cowboy Ghostbusters in Space!

“The dead don’t rest easy on the world of Perdition. Ain't nobody exactly sure why that might be, but folks got a few ideas. Some think the ghosts were always here. This world was right an’ proper dead an’ we damned fools had to go an’ wake it up again. If that don’t make the lot of us necromancers, not sure what would. Now other folks say the ghosts an’ spirits an’ whatnot followed us here from Old Earth. A few billion hungry ghosts none too happy to watch the lot of us flyin’ off into the black as they starved on a dying world. A few folks think we just picked ‘em up out in the void. Passed through some nebula of ectoplasm an’ picked up some right nasty hitchhikers. Engine knows I ain't got a clue. All I know is bein’ an undertaker sure as shit ain’t as easy as it used to be, but it damn well pays good!”
-Ol’ Jim

Extremely Self Indulgent Introduction
Alright, so what in several dozen hells am I doing here? As those who know me will attest, world building is a serious addiction for me. Note how I do not do the standard AA style “Hello, I am Dasaria and I have a problem.” Because I insist on wallowing in this addiction to sweet creative juices. They sustain my wretched meat form! Lately those sweet brain juices had been flowing and converged with one of my other terrible debilitating habits of mine: Anime. Specifically I was watching the reboot of Trigun and remembering a very important fact. I. Love. Space Westerns. So I started making one! So, I’m gonna share it online for people to enjoy!

What will I do with this? I don’t know. I might write stories about it, which could be cool. That said, I bet this would make a kickass RPG setting. Probably it could work in a lot of systems. However, since I recently got my hands on a beta copy of BREAK!! (yes the exclamations are obligatory) and it has become one of my hands down favorite systems. I think I’ll be releasing conversion suggestions and rules for BREAK!! This will probably be a fun learning experience. Of course, I also love the default setting for that system but as mentioned I have a problem. So, let's dive in!

The Setting Synopsis
The Solus system is our primary setting here. Why am I focusing on a single star system rather than a galaxy or something? Because as Douglas Adams said “space is big.” It can be a bit unwieldy in how big it is. So, we’ll be limiting ourselves to one star system. Indeed, most of the action will be taking place on the miserable desert planet of Perdition as mentioned by Ol’ Jim above.

What will our players be doing here on Perdition and the related worlds? They’ll be undertakers. The Solus system is, of course, haunted! Because space ghosts can do more than host late night television shows. Undertakers make it their job to take care of the restless dead and put them down where they belong.

Meanwhile, the Company who owns all the land is aggressively encouraging colonists to mine a new “Black Gold” called ectonite which has mysterious supernatural properties. All while they try to dispossess the first wave colonists, and literally suck the population dry. Because, obviously, they are literally vampires. Why? Because who doesn’t want to fight a rich railroad man vampire monopoly owner in space? That sounds awesome.

There will be ghosts, magic guns, vampires, space ships, cowbowys, robots, and genetically altered animal people. Major inspirations include Trigun, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, Wildstar, Ghostbusters, Firefly, Hadestown, No Evil, and every single thing set in the old west and featuring ghosts ever.

Baseline Mechanical Conceits
Plan is to write up some fun enemies, maybe customize some callings, and write up new species for players to be while fleshing out the setting.

Besides that though the following baseline rules alterations to the setting are being considered:

1- Combination Weapons which feature mechanical missile weapons combined with a melee weapon will only cost what it would to have the two weapons, the double cost is not incurred. Why? Because it’s the wild west in space and guns are awesome! Gunswords are also awesome. The people of Solus can and will strap guns to anything and everything.

2- Small mechanical missile weapons have 6 shots before needing to reload. Large mechanical missile weapons have 2 shots before needing to reload. Does this make pistols stronger? Yes. Is this on theme? Yes. Do I want everyone and their mother to have a pistol? Yes. Do I want them to have two? Even better, yes.

Y'know what? They ride genetically engineered dinosaurs too because why not?