Soulbound – items & plot hooks

As mentioned in a previous blog post I recently pre-ordered Soulbound – the AoS RPG by Cubicle 7. While the physical book won’t be available for a while, the pdf file is, so people can start reading, planning and playing straight away.

I’ve only had a pdf copy for a few days, and haven’t had a chance to read through it all – the original intention was to review things every few chapters (and I still plan to), but a couple of things have jumped out at me while reading through the Equipment chapter – in a good way, so I wanted to talk about them, and some ideas that come from them.

The first of these is the currency system in Soulbound.

Rather than using coins, one of the major currency systems used in the Mortal Realms, and especially in the Grand Parch in Aqshy, is Aqua Ghyranis, the life-giving water from Ghyran, the Realm of Life. Apparently coins were abandoned, much to the Kharadron’s annoyance, as they had a monopoly due to the amount of precious metals they had access to. These little asides to world building are always nice to hear about – you can imagine the Duardin sputtering in anger over this, and bitterly complaining whenever the issue is raised.

So far, so good – Aqua Ghyranis has come up before (definitely in the AoS II rulebook, and maybe other places – I have to admit I’ve dropped behind a lot on background reading for the last couple of years). However, we need a bit more detail for an RPG, as we’re going to be using this stuff to buy things, or for its own unique properties.

Replacing the more common system of pennies, shillings and crowns (or brass, silver and gold, depending on your preferred RPG), we have droplets, phials and spheres, in a fairly standard one sphere = 10 phials or 100 drops. We’re also told phials are about an inch tall, and droplets are usually measured with a pipette (we’ll come back to this in a moment). Phials and spheres can be fairly ornate, showing off the wealth of their owner, and can have stoppers, corks or more elaborate mechanisms to open (or even need to be drilled). Larger amounts can be kept in reinforced kegs or barrels.

Obviously, bartering and other exchanges will go on as usual and this isn’t the only currency available, but this is a rather interesting system. While a more traditional monetary system may have people forging their own coins (possibly mixed with less valuable metals), slicing sections off, breaking into a bank or a merchant’s strongbox, or whatever, the fact that the main currency we’re using is (a) a liquid and (b) has different properties gives these possibly somewhat mundane or common scenarios a different bent and could lead to an adventure all of its own – drop a few coins, and maybe you don’t care. Accidentally smash a display of ornate Aqua Ghyranis Spheres, and it’s another matter altogether. This could lead to quite a different experience on “the bank job”!

Now look what you've done! I told you to be careful with the Aqua Ghyranis in a magical environment, but did you listen? No! And now there's elemental all over the floor! This is going to take hours to clean up!

As alluded – it’s not just a currency. Aqua Ghyranis is suffused with life energy from Ghyran and is said to foster growth and healing in all living things. It has allowed corrupted land to be cleansed, and has facilitated the cultivation of areas of Aqshy which were previously barren. You can also use it in game, for this kind of effect - spheres of Aqua Ghyranis can be used to purify areas of land, accelerate the growth of plants, but also to heal your wounds. Do you hoard all that precious liquid, or do you help the wounded traveller that you encounter? I imagine the Duardin in your party would have a very different view to the Sylvaneth!

As noted above, we are told that pipettes are commonly used to measure out Aqua Ghyranis. Ok – this sounds reasonable. You’d have to have a way to measure it out, and pipettes are a common way to measure out liquid. A slight segue here for context on my next point - I work in a chemistry department and have previously worked in a biology one too – so I’m pretty familiar with using pipettes to measure small quantities. The interesting thing here is how accurate you can expect your pipetting to be. Commonly, we’d use a calibrated pipette, which could use a manual action, or an automatic one (depending on your research budget & personal preference!), and has a set range that you can adjust it to measure out (so, a range of maybe 0.2 – 1.0 ml, for example, frequently much smaller, and you’d set it to a specific volume, say 0.5 ml). Normally these have replaceable tips as well, so you don’t contaminate things. The accuracy and precision of your pipetting can depend on the instrument itself, but also the skill (or lack thereof) of the person doing the work – someone may use them wrong, and be inconsistent. You also have more traditional pipettes (a glass tube and a bulb) – so there are a range of options, and you’d select one based on how accurate you want to be.

Why am I talking about this? Well, we’ve been told that pipettes are commonly used to measure out droplets of Aqua Ghyranis. That sounds accurate… if you want it to be. While we might expect a shady merchant to mix in a few duff coins in an exchange, or to file them down and keep the excess gold or silver, we could equally imagine the merchant who has a set of pipettes all of very slightly different sizes. One is used to measure out “change” given back to a customer, but the merchant also uses a slightly larger, but not noticeably (at least from a couple of feet away) differently sized pipette to take the “money” from his customer. While the individual volume difference may not be much, it could add up over a day or a week, and the merchant’s customers are none the wiser…

…until we come across the inventive Kharadron Overlords, with their technology. We already know that the Kharadron are hard barginers, and that they are annoyed that their metal-based monopoly isn’t the primary form of currency in Aqshy. The Kharadron, and Duardin in general, come across as “details” people. Rules, contracts, precise documentation. So you can bet that at least one of them has more accurate measuring apparatus than your average human merchant. Otherwise it hasn’t been done properly. One can only imagine the argument that takes place across a stall in a market in Hammerhal, between the supposedly aggrieved merchant and the furious Kharadron, both insisting that they are right. A bit of background flavour, or a clever ruse to distract someone?

Admittedly, this may not be a plot hook, or an adventure, but it’s a nice bit of world building, just from one sentence in the book, because someone took the time to think – hang on, how do they measure it out?

So, where can we go for some plot hooks, then? Well, there’re two ones that I’ve thought of while reading this section, and there will be plenty of others.

The description of Aqua Ghyranis tells us the following (on page 100) “Aqua Ghyranis is taken from the sacred waters of Verdia in Ghyran, much to the anger and disapproval of many hard-line Sylvaneth.” There we go – a lovely plot hook straight away. How about a few sessions where a series of caravans carrying Aqua Ghyranis have been ambushed, the guards and drivers slaughtered, and the contents stolen? On investigation, it turns out that the aforementioned Sylvaneth “hard-liners”, or maybe a group of Alarielle worshiping Aelves that want to “impress” the Sylvaneth, are responsible. The Soulbound have to confront the woodland bandits, and convince them to stop their raids in one way or another. A moral dilemma for that Branchwych in your party, maybe?

"Hand over the Aqua Ghyranis, or we'll break your steam engine, Duardin!"

For a second plot hook? How do we know it’s actually Aqua Ghyranis, and not just water (or something else)? Page 107 tells us about Divination Plates – also known as Proof Plates – which are clear glass disks with notches in them to distribute liquid poured on them. The plate is infused with Light magic – and the runes glow in the presence of Aqua Ghyranis. Larger barrels may have runes etched into the container itself. If the Aqua Ghyranis has been diluted or is regular water, the runes may only glow faintly, or remain dark.

Sounds like something a wizard thought up. And if there’s something we know about wizards (and other spell casters), it’s that for every one with good intentions, there’s another with bad ones. Or maybe just no sense of right or wrong (high intelligence, low wisdom territory here!).

Let’s imagine our local wizard, while trying to work out how this particular spell works, manages to find a way to trick the runes on commonly available Divination Plates, maybe by addition of a specific additive to water (magical or otherwise). His research is stolen by a group of ne’er-do-wells, and the local market is suddenly swamped with bog-standard water (or, worse, tainted water). Crop harvests start to fail, wounds are unhealed, and the wizard is feeling like a complete idiot.

Enter the Soulbound – the wizard hires our little group to find the thieves (who probably stole a lot more than this one document), and stop their cartel, while he works on a solution to make the runes “safer” – which could be a whole new adventure of its own.

And with that, a page or so of text has given us a nice bit of colour for the setting, and supplied us with the basis for several weeks of adventures.

At the start of this, I also mentioned a second item that had got me thinking (and I’m sure there will be more). I’ll keep this one a bit shorter, I promise!

In the section on Kharadron equipment, we learn about Aetheric Lenses – basically wonder goggles that the Kharadron use to identify threats, improve visual fidelity at a distance (and presumably up close) and to identify the composition of elements. Already sounds like something every alchemist or artificer in the land would want to get their hands on? Well, the Kharadron aren’t going to give these out to everyone that asks. We find out that most Kharadron would get more than a little testy if they saw a human, or an aelf, with Kharadron technology. So we can easily imagine a heist job, but instead of robbing a bank, we’re trying to get a budding engineer a set of the fantastic Kharadron glasses that will allow him to perfect his new machine. My mind immediately goes to a session running through an environment similar to a Dwemer labyrinth from the Elder Scrolls series, gears clicking, pistons clanking and all sorts of mechanical devices and traps abound.

Oh, and apparently you can see through solid material with them (up to 5 feet!).  That duardin over there? Staring at the wall, lost in thought? Or are they? I’ll leave you to think about what that they might be seeing!

Be careful what you do - Duardin could be watching!

It’s going to be interesting seeing how other people end up coming up with things, from similar sentences or ideas in the Soulbound book – as you can probably see I’m already impressed, and I’ve hardly got through the book! Highly recommended, if you’re into AoS, if only for background reasons!