A to Z of Grave New World 2016: I is for Indigo

Welcome to a Grave New World, where humans rub shoulder to shoulder with the monsters from folklore.

Indigo is a new designer drug that has plagued the streets of the Eastern United States for almost two years. It was originally distributed by the Cicero Crime Family in New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island but has quickly spread westward.

The Center for Disease Control has begun studying the drug due to a request from the Drug Enforcement Agency. The CDC has determined that the drug is cut with enzymes from a currently unknown type of inhuman. What concerns the DEA, and in turn the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is that the all of the Cicero Family's leadership and key members were murdered ten months ago and production and distribution of Indigo is at all time high.

The drug is a highly addictive psychoactive drug for both humans and inhumans and has a much higher mortality rate for inhumans than is typically found in narcotics.

Cross Planes Turns 5 Today!

Cross Planes begins its 5th year today!

What a long, strange trip it has been.

For those that weren't around for my first post (don't feel bad, there weren't many), this is where the name of the blog comes from:

Cross Planes is my foray into the OSR and DnD in particular.  The title takes inspiration from 2 sources:

1.  Cross Plains, TX was the home of Robert E. Howard, of whom I am a huge fan.

2.  I have a huge fondness for cross genre stories and adventures; Nazis, Dinosaurs, Power Armor, Talking Apes, and Barbarians are all integral ingredients to making any story better...especially DnD.

Last year, I discussed some goals I had for the coming year:

I'm trying to stick to more thematic series these days like Primeval Thule, Elemental Evil and Tiefling Heritages and hope to keep pushing myself as a writer and game designer.

I think I have done this pretty well.

A goal of mine is to start a novella on here, but we'll see, I'm not sure I'm that brave yet.

No novella, sadly, but I keep thinking about it. As I've begun publishing micro-supplements, my main focus is to simply prioritized Cross Planes over anything else.

My next big project is to design a logo for the site, I'm still brainstorming what I want.

This is done and I'm happy with what my wife and I came up with.

One area I'm extremely proud of, is that I've managed to break 200 posts in two of the years on here and 300 posts on another year. Who knows, maybe I'll break 300 this year?

I'm very proud to say that I ended up breaking 500 posts and that I intend to break 300 this year, as well.

Either way, thank you for accompanying me on this journey. Hopefully, my fifth anniversary will be even bigger and better.

I'm very happy your reading what I'm writing. I deeply appreciate my extremely loyal Patrons for my Patreons too.  And I can't even put into words those of you who have bought my digital products.

My goals for the coming year? I can't say that I will achieve this, but I'm attempting to put out 52 micro-products this year. The DMsGuild.Com launched 13 weeks ago and I have published that many products with another launching Monday or Tuesday.

We'll see what happens, but its in my head.

Thank you again for taking time to read my blog!

The Black Hack: A Preview of the Bard from the forthcoming The Class Hack

After purchasing David Black's THE BLACK HACK from Gold Piece Publications, I've begun developing other classes for the game for a product called THE CLASS HACK (I didn't know that OneBookShelf.Com didn't greenlight new publishers on weekends or it would already be on sale). Hopefully it will be available from Cross Planes Game Studio on Monday.

Here is a preview:

       BARD

Starting HP : d6 + 4

HP Per Level/Resting : 1d6

Weapons & Armor : All, Leather, Magic 

Chainmail 

Attack Damage : 1d6 / 1d4 Unarmed or

Improvising 

SPECIAL FEATURES 

Rolls with Advantage when being charming,

performing delicate tasks, climbing, hearing 

sounds, moving silently, recounting legends and 

lore, understanding written languages and 

making music.

LEVELING UP

    Roll to see if attributes increase, roll twice for 

       STR and DEX or WIS.

ARCANE SPELLCASTING

Beginning at second level, Bards can cast a

number of Divine Spells a day, see the following 

page.

SPELLBOOK

     Bards start with a large spellbook containing a

total of 1d4 spells from the Level 1 and 2 Divine

Spell lists. 

I tried to stick closely to the ADnD 1E version so this Bard is a mix of Fighter, Thief, and Druid.  The Fighter is felt most in the use of all weapons and when they level you can Roll for Str AND Dex for improvement.

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY Official Teaser Trailer

A to Z of Grave New World 2016: Hadrian Society

Welcome to a Grave New World, where humans rub shoulder to shoulder with the monsters from folklore.

The Hadrian Society was founded in 1989 by a group of wealthy vampires who perceived an imminent doomsday even tied to the year 2000.  The Society felt it had access to some "lost" prophecies of Nostradamus and began making heavy investments in areas they hoped to exploit, especially gold and silver.

The groups primary founders were Winston Honeycutt, a 130 year old vampire who came across the "lost" prophecies; Ciara Taylor, a silicon valley engineer who was turned in 1986 and was aware of the Y2K issue with personal computes; and The Dahlia, a very enigmatic vampire who was a starlet before the advent of the "talkies" in hollywood before being turned in 1919.

They chose their name in celebration of Emperor Hadrian and to remind the lycanthrope population that, although Remus and Romulus, who are widely believed to have been werewolves, may have ensured Rome's founding, Pluto created the vampire to ensure that Egypt and Rome would not be ruled by man-beasts.

The group has headquarters in Cincinnati, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City that were all designed for protections from various extinction level events.

While the group claimed it was only the the actions of Ms. Taylor that the Y2K bug did not bring an end to modern civilization, their role in inhuman politics has continually decreased since the turn of the century. The group chose not to publicly advertise their concerns over end of the Mayan Calendar, but is vigilantly preparing for the the possibility of an asteroid hit on the Earth.  While their worries about the end of the world have not born fruit, their investment in gold and silver has made its members, strictly limited to twenty-three, extremely wealthy.

A to Z of Grave New World 2016: G is for the G'harne Fragments

Welcome to a Grave New World, where humans rub shoulder to shoulder with the monsters from folklore.

The G'harne Fragments are a set of very well preserved shards that recount the pre-human civilization of G'harne that was located somewhere in the southern Sahara Desert.

The were discovered by St. John Albert Carmichael in 1889 while exploring the Congo. Carmichael reported that his team encountered the Kazar tribe who worshiped a worm-god and who had reportedly taken the Fragments as a trophy from their sworn enemies, the M'Go. Carmichael claimed that the M'Go were "hideously deformed" and that he traded the fragments for several lanterns, oil and rifles. The Kazar warned Carmichael that the Fragments were cursed before going through with trade.

Upon St. John's death in 1909, the Fragments were bequeathed to Miskatonic University in New England, where they were intensely studied by Dr. Henry Powell and Professor Ryan O'Malley. The fragments were stolen from the university's Lumley Library in 1940.

One of Pope Francis' first acts was to reveal that the Vatican had stolen the Fragments and all of the research tied to them due to their perceived profane nature and to return them to Miskatonic University.

The Fragments have become the cornerstone of a new inhuman studies program at MU. They reveal startling theories about the origins of humanity, the origins of inhumanity, and the possibility of nonhumans who inhabited our world thousand or even millions of years ago. The information they contain has been heavily criticized by several noted inhumans and "immortals", including Di Yi, a chinese vampire who claims to be oldest in existence and Hebe, the self-proclaimed greek goddess of youth and a powerful psychic.

A to Z of Grave New World 2016: F is for Freemasons

A general note, this is purely a work of fiction and has no basis in fact, merely storytelling.

Welcome to a Grave New World, where humans rub shoulder to shoulder with the monsters from folklore.

The Freemasons have shaped the face of our nation since the colonial days of the New World. Many of our Founding Fathers belonged to the ancient order and when they declared their independence, they immediately began scheming for ways to defeat Great Britain. It was a Chapter House in Boston that initially began communicating with Eleanor Sith, a very rare type of inhuman known as a vrykolakas, that has the curse of both lycanthropy and vampirism. With Sith's help, the Freemasons began negotiating with many supernatural beings and convinced them to help in fighting the Redcoats and preserve their independence. After all, the persecution the inhumans faced from the British government was far more unpleasant than what the Freemasons offered.

After winning the war, the Freemasons continued to maintain control with many of our earliest leaders being prominent members of the secret society.

In his book, Mason and Dixon, Robert Edward Chambers offers convincing proof that the Freemasons, who'd lost control in much of the Southern United States, manipulated the Memphis Pack of lycanthropes into declaring its pogrom on their hated vampire enemies from days of the late Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt. This pressure essentially forced the succession and formation of the Confederate States of American and the order went on to force Lincoln's hand in declaring war.

The secret society began to see it's power base erode in the late 19th century and was shocked when it's influence couldn't prevent the nation's entry into World War I. The order strongly believed that the U.S. had no need to tie itself to the affairs of Europe and remained almost in hiding until the late 1950s. It was then that it began to renew it's solidification of power with the U.S. government with a new generation of Freemasons eager to take back their country in positions of power. And by the end of 20th century had secured its hold and began to guide it's country back on the path it desired.

While many activists point to great strides in inhuman rights, the vigilant among them can point at increasing draconian policies and the general loss of civil rights for all citizens starting after the September 11th attacks on New York, Washington D.C., and Boston. Conspiracy theorists are quick to point out that Al Queada has nt history of employing Inhumans and that their involvement in the second "Boston Massacre" needs to be more deeply investigated. Critics also point to the fact that Boston Mayor, Jonathan Braddock, has been a member of the Freemasons since he was nineteen.

There is a growing concern among the Inhuman community that perhaps the Great Experiment might be teetering on the brink of extinction and the "preppers" amongst them have begun preparing for the worst. An alarming trend is that some of the largest malcontents have already committed some high profile assaults and murders of humans, which ends up working against the community's goal of preserving their status as full and equal citizens of the United States of America.