So this Burning Empires game is happening with my board gaming group. I pitched this game to my group as one of the most unique and intense experiences they could ever have in gaming, for better and for worse. I did not attempt to talk down the amount of overhead and the demands this game would make. During the first session I gave a general overview of the concept of the game and we began to burn up the world. Ben and Matt had never played an RPG before, whereas Nathan (who was invited specifically to play in this game! Yes, another Nathan!) and Logan had played DnD before.
We named the planet Jel-10. Because Nathan would not stop talking about jello. This whole pitch involved jello. I kid you not. Every last point we talked about involved jello.
I'm still twitching.
For those of you who don't know, Burning Empires is based off of a comic series called Iron Empires. The Vaylen, a parasitic race of flatworms that can control the minds of those they infect. But of all the races they have possessed humans are the most intoxicating to them. They've made their own races, including the Kerrn, but humans are everything that the Vaylen could ever want.
Oh, and the Kerrn? They're gigantic frog men the Vaylen made so they could have powerful bodies to inhabit. But, as it turns out, the Kerrn are able to throw off Vaylen possession. So they've broken free and live anywhere they can find a home, doing whatever they can to survive.
So Jel-10 is located in the middle of the Iron Empires and is an intergalactic pit stop of sorts. It's got a variable level of atmosphere, with poisonous bogs and areas without atmosphere, but its location is so central that people have gone there simply to profit off of its location. A loose confederation of merchant guilds have built a government called The League so they can profit off of the planet. The problem is that the government is not terribly centralized, despite their best efforts. One of the Vaylen figures of note, Sernie, is trying to unify the planet so that more profits can be made off their visitors. But due to the infighting of the planetary factions this has been impossible, aided in part by Rahn Sol. He's played by Nathan, who opposes planetary unification. Everyone is so divided there isn't even a standard planetary quarantine! Each faction has their own standards of admitting foreign goods and services, which of course has helped the Vaylen infiltrate. The other Vaylen figure of note is Lithlura Baskins, an actual Vaylen who is part of the entourage of the League. She has helped set up a Vaylen inroad on Jel-10 and is now trying to get as many important people hulled as quickly as possible.
The local people are paranoid of the Vaylen, in part because of a kerrn colony that lives on the planet. The kerrn are led by Mahximuz, a kerrn who had successfully thrown off his Vaylen host. But Mahxmiuz, who will played by Logan, has a secret: he somehow has retained the experiences of the Vaylen who had possessed him. This grants him some unusual knowledge about the Vaylen, but his mental stability can leave much to be desired at times. There's also a a Psychologist Foundation (think an intergalactic organization of psychics) that has set up shop on Jel-10, as part of the security services that the planet provides to its visitors. The organized crime element of the world has its own military junta, making it hard for The League to bring order and peace to the bickering planet.
The initial situation is that Sernie is once again trying to call all the factions together to discuss planetary unification around The League. Rahn Sol wants to make sure that never happens. Let everyone tend to their own business and all that. We are starting in the Usurpation phase, with the Vaylen already on the planet, but trying to take over. We may or may not go to the Invasion phase, heck we may not even get a second gaming session. The disposition scores (our overall HP) are the Vaylen at 23 and the Humans at 24.
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