“You walk along a wide road of seashells. They crunch under your feet as you travel down a plain of purple grass, overlooking a gold-hued sky. The air is silent and still.”
“Suddenly, the ground to your right bursts and explodes! A giant orange stalk shoots into the sky. Pulsing, glowing polyps adorn the husky stalk. The stalk writhes and swerves slowly in the morning air, but doesn’t seem to otherwise react to your presence.”
“What do you do?”
Steve, Samantha, Kinsey, and Mark sat in rapt attention to Jordan’s voice as he described the scene. With all the papers, pencils, and books around them, to outside observers the study room appeared to have nothing more going on then a group of students studying. Little did any of them realize that the five of them were exploring the Ninth World.
“Um,” Steve, still getting the hang of this new game, thought for a moment, then said, “I get out my spear, just in case.”
“Are you holding it threateningly to the stalk?”said Jordan, grinning.
“No!” Steve figured Jordan might be fucking with him, but he didn’t want to take any chances. “I just have it, you know, poised and ready, in case those polyps or whatever explode.”
“I try to examine it,” said Kinsey. “May I have come across something like this in my studies?”
Jordan thought on it for a moment. “Maybe. It’s pretty obscure, whatever it is, you certainly haven’t heard of it casually. It’s going to be a difficulty 5 Intellect roll to identify it.”
“Damn! I don’t want to spend any of my Intellect pool on thought...or should I?”
“I wouldn’t!” said Steve, suddenly jumpy. “If it attacks us, you might need that pool for your powers!”
“Yeah, alright.” Jordan knew Kinsey was not particularly enamored with some of Numenera’s rules, such as the finite pools of Intellect, Speed, and Strength that each character had. The pools could be quickly restored by resting and other means throughout a game day, but Jordan knew that Kinsey didn’t like the idea of having to manage resources. He’d rather just roll dice and do math. Nothing wrong with that, Jordan thought, but Numenera isn’t that kind of game.
Kinsey picked up the 20-sided polyhedral die. He rolled it across the hardcover of the Numenera rulebook. It came up 13.
Jordan tisked. “Damn. Two shy. But if you expended some of that Intellect pool, you’d have it.”
“Can I spend from my pool, after the roll?” Kinsey asked.
“Sure,” said Jordan. In truth, he wasn’t entirely certain if one could spend from their pools after a roll, but Jordan knew that for these first few sessions, the players would be uncertain of the mechanics, and so Jordan decided to rule to the players’ benefit. Later on, he’d check the rulebook and stick to whatever it says. But for now, Jordan thought, the most important thing is to pull the characters into the story.
Kinsey erased the 13 from the Intellect Pool field on his character sheet and reduced it to 10. “Okay,” said Kinsey. “What is it?”
“The old Aeon Priest you used to work for told you about this,” said Jordan. “It’s a svenskar stalk. It’s connected to other stalks beneath the earth, like a root system. According to the old priest, the stalks are a root system for a tree that grows upside down, into the hollow underground caves, rather than out into the air.”
“Is it dangerous?” asked Kinsey.
Jordan thought for a minute. He didn’t want to tip his hand, but Kinsey did spend some Intellect pool, after all. “It can be. Those polyps growing on the stalk? They are incubation chambers for these beasts...svenskar stalkers...who protect the stalks from intruders.”
“Who would want to intrude on these stalks?” said Samantha. She had barely spoken the entire afternoon. Jordan was worried she wasn’t having a good time.
“Well, Kinsey, your priest explained to you that the stalks are nutrient-rich, so a lot of creatures can draw sustenance from them. Plus...and this is just a rumor, mind you...the insides of the stalks are hollow, and can provide a form of living passage down through the entire root system, into the tree itself. Rumors say travelers frequently venture into exposed stalks. Of course, no one’s ever met someone who’s done that before.”
CHARACTER CREATION
Steve, being completely new to roleplaying, let Jordan guide him through the process.
“The most important thing,” said Jordan, “is to make a character you want to play. A character that strikes you as interesting and fun.”
“But what if I don’t know what’s fun?” said Steve.
“Well, here’s the game, right? You’re in this world...the Ninth World. There have been eight previous worlds, or eras, or ages, or whatever you’d really call them. Your world, the one of this game, has been built on the remains and ruins of the eight previous. So you’re in this world that’s billions of years in the future, but they’re actually a new civilization, historically equivalent to our Middle Ages. But there’s all this abandoned future technology, alien stuff, mutations, psychic powers, all across the world, and these people are surviving by using these devices however they can, and applying their knowledge, and pragmatism, to all this stuff.”
“Okay,”said Steve. “Sounds interesting!”
“Right!” said Jordan. “So, the question is...given this setting, what kind of character would you like to play in it?”
Steve thought on it for a moment. “Well,” he said, “I think I’d like to be a hunter. Someone who, like, knows about the creatures of this world, and hunts them and kills them for food and hides and stuff.”
Jordan’s eyes lit up. “That sounds great!” he said. “Make that!”
Jordan went on to explain the three kinds of characters in Numenera: the Glaive, a physical, warrior-type; the Nano, a scholar who studies the cultures, creatures, and technology of the world; and the Jack, a “jack-of-all-trades” who relies on his wits and adaptability to survive. Though Jordan could make a case for any of the three, he most-liked the idea of a straight-forward fighting machine, and thus chose the Glaive. Samantha and Kinsey both chose to make Nanos, and Mark went with a Jack.
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