Gathox Deities: The Goddess Who Balances On Narrow Precipices

Given the progress of the new campaign I've been running, I thought it would be fun to make a quick post about one of the deities worshiped in Gathox. The players are all holed up, YMCA-style, at the Temple of Flex, which is dedicated to Ji'Gin'Jir.

The Goddess Who Balances On Narrow Precipices, or Ji'Gin'jir - Acrobats, bodybuilders, performers, and daredevils of many races worship The Goddess Who Balances On Narrow Precipices. She represents the power of the living body, the tenuousness of living amongst many deaths, and the triumph of will over inertia. Ji’Gin’Jir is said to preside over pageantry and games of risk, and to cast a hateful eye on sloth and indecision. Her grace is known by disasters averted and her wrath felt in the punishment of indebtedness. Her image is a mass of gymnasts intertwined, and her passage is known by the lingering stench of sweat.

Favor/ Disfavor: Prayer to Sha-Benyu before the performance of an extraordinary physical act may provide a 1% chance to improve the attempt by 1 die. Failure after the granting of this boon is punished by reduction of Dexterity by 1 point for the rest of the day.

Gathox Map Art: DONE!

So here's one of the largest pieces of art I've made in a long time, which is the culmination of numerous whiteboard drawings during game, spare time sketching, and quite a few hours of rendering.

It's divided into three neighborhoods: the large southern section is The Kettle, or the poorest neighborhood; the upper right hand section is the oldest neighborhood, Berchan Favela; and the upper left is where the richest gangs live, called The Craw.

I'll be breaking out the neighborhoods and keying them for the book. Meanwhile, check it.

Gathox Classes: The Militants

Gathox uses the Swords and Wizardry WhiteBox Rules as its chassis, and today I'd like to share the classes and subclasses for fighting types, also known as Militants. The information listed here is in addition to the information for Fighters found in S&W:WB.

Militants

Militants are the bread and butter of street gangs, the might making right for the elite, and the most common PC occupation in Gathox. Rare is the street urchin who grows to adulthood without learning the sweet science, and rarer yet is the merchant who has no need of muscle to enforce the protection of her goods in a lawless city.

Militants use the advancement tables and abilities listed for the Fighter in Whitebox. A Militant can choose to be a Street Tough, Soldier, or Martial Master at the beginning of play. Each possesses a unique ability to aid in distinguishing themselves from their brethren.

The Street Tough

This Militant knows the pulse and rhythm of the city, living in tune with the nuances of bravado and eternally studying the art of the hustle. Barroom brawls and back alley beatdowns provided ample classroom instruction for the Street Tough, and now the Tough is ready for the big time.

The Street Tough enjoys a natural +1 to unarmed attack, and may attempt to Intimidate any humanoid, although only one at a time. The Intimidate forces the target to roll a saving throw: success means the humanoid has called the Tough’s bluff, and failure means that the humanoid must obey the next request made by the Tough, short of harming themselves or their allies.

The Soldier

Unlike the Street Tough, a soldier consciously chose a career path from an early age, signing on with a private defense company or entering into formal training with an established gang at a young age. The Soldier understands the chain of command and how to fight in groups, and never lets the chaos of the moment undermine their countless hours of drills and martial practice.

The Soldier has learned how to apply instantaneous discipline to even the most ragtag band of combatants, and may assert Discipline on their party up to 3 times per day. The use of Discipline inspires the Soldier and her fellow combatants to gird their loins for battle, granting a 1-point bonus to AC and saving throws for 3 rounds. This only applies to teammates within vocal range.

The Martial Master

A Martial Master is a Militant raised within an insular family tradition of fighting, often utterly idiosyncratic and divergent from common forms of fighting. The Martial Master spends virtually their entire adolescence and early adulthood training with family members to become a self-contained, one man army. Players are encouraged to be creative with their chosen martial path, whether it be kung-fu, gun-kata, or something even more wild.

The Martial Master enjoys a 1-point bonus to armed attack rolls, and may Brandish two weapons at once without penalty. The Brandish allows the Martial Master to roll damage twice and take the higher of the two rolls upon a successful attack – in the case of two weapons doing unequal damage, use the higher value damage roll.

A Fresh Welcome to the Vertical Slum

 
For the last two and a half years I've been writing, designing, brainstorming, and running a home campaign called Gathox Vertical Slum. The first home campaign ran 48 sessions and featured a total of 17 different players. At first, I just wanted to run a cool sci-fi/fantasy mashup for my friends, but as time went on I realized that I wanted to publish the game. The pause on blog posts has been due largely to playing the game with friends, writing and rewriting parts of Gathox, and making art. Well, that and I moved across the country twice in a year . . .

This post is intended to introduce Gathox to folks that are new to the blog, to the community, or to me. If you haven't seen it, here's the first post I wrote about Gathox.

In Brief

Gathox is a wandering god with a city on it's back. The city is lousy with gangs and aliens, and it's where the players do their adventuring.

Gathox At A Glance

Gathox is a massive wandering godling, either mindless or inscrutable in motives, who travels across the wildernesses and wastelands of at least two dozen catalogued worlds. Sages of all stripes suspect that the godling may exist simultaneously on these worlds at different points in the universal timeline as well. Gathox finds sustenance on these worlds, sucking up dunes, woodlands, and small lakes into the half-kilometer wide maw at its rocky head, perpetually driven forward on more than a million humanoid legs. As the great beast moves, these legs regularly break off and decay where they rest, sprouting all manner of gourds and cucumbers within a fortnight.

Those who have approached Gathox from the front claim they can read the obscure lines of a face on the great rocky mound, its mouth agape in a perpetual wail, eyes turned upward. From a distance, Gathox appears to glide along the surface of the earth, lumbering forward at the pace of an elderly porter. Many who spy Gathox for the first time face difficulty believing that it lives, swearing it looks like nothing so much as a floating island hovering upside down.

A city, also called Gathox, grows on the sloped, mountainous back of the godling. This vast city is surrounded by a great, rocky wall like the rim of a caldera. Precarious stacks of tightly packed buildings sprout from the godling’s hind-quarters, increasing in size and sophistication as the city stretches toward the head of the god, ending in a massive spire which appears like a horn above the face of Gathox. Those who dwell within the city of Gathox often reverently refer to it as “The Great Spire,” although this can just as often refer to the actual Spire itself.

At first approach

Following in the wake of Gathox, wanderers encounter a variety of strange phenomena. Severed human legs in various states of decay adorn the ground, quickly spouting into fields of gourds regardless of the terrain. Piles of trash, exploded and often burning, punctuate the sides of a great concourse of footprints, as if a shoeless army had recently passed through the area. Travelers who follow the path of the city will eventually gain ground, spying first the Great Spire, then a protrusion of buildings, catapults, and lights.

As wanderers draw nearer, greenery can be seen to grow between buildings like weeds breaking through cracks in concrete. Numerous chimneys and industrial stacks spew acrid, oily clouds of pollution into the sky, leaving Gathox perpetually mired in a haze of particulates. Birds circle overhead, diving to the surface in turn, gradually growing more numerous as distant buzzards draw close to see what the fuss is about. Navigating near Gathox can be a chore, as the strength of the godling’s local magnetism causes compasses to point north toward its head. Those who wish to enter the city must do so from the low-sloping back end, which features an elongated metal ramp reaching to the earth which is also supported by human legs grafted to the underside.

What Gathox Does

Gathox uses Swords and Wizardry: White Box rules. There are subclasses of Fighters and Wizards, and no clerics - instead, players can opt to be Mutants as the third class. Players can engage in domain-level play from the first session by playing gangs. There's a ton of weird equipment, totally bizarre monsters, and plenty of debauchery and death to be found. Oh, and psychic powers. Because psychic powers are as rad as lasers. Did I mention there's lasers?