Trait, Lifepath...Subsetting? Tharn

kromac-beast.jpg

I enjoy some Miniature gaming and Warmachine/Hordes in the world of the Iron Kingdoms is fun. While this setting focuses on “civil war” tech to pre WW1 with a steam punk feel, it also gives an interesting feel towards the othe cultures in Hordes. Hordes is the backwater areas which are more about controlling monsters and the use of ancient magic to support what they want. Anyhow, there are 2 specific creatures that I would like to engage with in order to generate the feel that I am looking for.

The Tharn. A human barbarian tribe devoted to the devourerer worm. They channel his essence of chaos to generate their own body to make themselves stronger, faster, and more robust. Both males and females are able to do this of this stock in different ways. I would rather not make an entirely new stock and would do not want a high magic game.

I would prefer to use the Tribal Barbarians setting with a special lifepath called Ravager with a trait called Tharn or Warped.

The trait should allow something similar to “boost” in psychology but specific to Power. The character must roll Will in order to conjure the rage and aggression. The OB is 2x the D given to the boosted stat (Power). The Warp ravages the characters body and forces him to make a Forte test at the same Ob at the end of the scene. This functionally would work the same as a sorcerer’s tax. If anyone has any other suggestions, let me know.

The Warmachine/Hordes setting is great. I’m an Everblight player, myself.

As to converting Tharn, why not just rename the Hatred attribute? Rather than being invoked in an act of destruction, the player could call on it whenever their physical prowess is being challenged (must be a versus test).

Same rules as other Emotional Attributes, if it advances to 10 the Tharn’s body is wracked from their brutal lifestyle and drops dead on the spot.

I like that; however, I haven’t been using many emotional attributes in my game. To summarize the setting.

Mostly humans with elves originally being the rules of the planet. They retain use of their high technology but have been declining for some time as their craftworld had run out of resources hence the pitstop. The elves had a large empire which stretched over most of the planet but has recently been shoved back due to depleting resources. The humans were originally used as slaves while the trolls recently arrived around 400 years ago. The trolls are basically Hordes Trollkin mixed with 40k orks. They are sentient fungus with differential levels of intelligence which arrived from a asteroids.

Technology and the current situation are reminiscent of 800’s europe before the arrival of Charlemange. There are few powerful cities with large e dxpanses of border kingdoms. International organizations are beginning to arise in power to fill in the gap as the border kingdoms are hotly disputed over. Faith is non existant and sorcery is rare. I am encorporating more as the game goes on and it develops, but I wanted to make less for the players to learn and for me to have to manage. I am a relatively new GM (at burning wheel anyhow) and my players are new to the system.