Children of the Ark

You awaken, dazed and confused. Your eyes open to a submerged blur. A few bubbles drift past the green-tinged watery background in front of your face. You find that you cannot move your arms; after a few seconds you realize that they've been locked down. Manacles hold them and your legs tight, another metal belt around your waist helps to keep you in place. Trying to recall how you ended up in this spot, you try to think back into the blankness that is your past. The memories slowly seep back into your brain, almost painful after what seems like thousands of years of thoughtless dreaming.

You remember your DNA being set on fire, after being captured for the secret experiments of The Corporation; you remember being strapped down to a lab table, looking up through the glare of overhead surgical lights at men in lab coats, corporate logos embroidered on their pockets. The name on the logo escapes you, and then something else catches your attention - the memory of the faces of those two men wearing lab coats, smiling and looking happier than Cheshire cats with birds in their mouths. Those faces burn in your brain. You try to shake your head to clear the thought, to clear the remembered pain, and feel it snag on something. Reaching back, you feel a great metal needle-spike lodged into the back of your skull. After a second, cutting through the sense of horror and panic, you dimly remember a dream, which informed you about the neural jack they implanted in you to help in your training.

In a rush, a flood of other training dreams return to you, flowing through your brain. Flashes of knowledge and history flow into your mind; bits of skills twitch into your muscles. You struggle, wishing to be free of your Cryogen Tank, and suddenly your form shifts into a metal shaft and pierces its way out of the tank. You relax and return to your human shape. Your lungs burn, pulling for air; because the hull of your spaceship has been breached by millions of tiny space fragments over the last ten thousand years. And then your form begins shifting, changing into liquid metal. You dont need air in this form. Your brain finishes sorting through the massive pool of knowledge it has collected, and presents the information to you.

You can remember now.

You know.

You are immortal.

In this version of the Victus Role Playing System, you play the part of "explorers" from the not-too distant future; people who were the unwilling victims of corporate genetic tampering in the early twenty first century. After the unlawful experimentation, you were forced into an ages-long cryo-sleep, and sent out to explore the far reaches of the galaxy in a slow, sub-light space ship. Your fate has left you immortal, alone, and stuck in the deep void of space ten thousand years from the time that you were born into. Humanity has passed you by; they have advanced and forgotten about their ancient travelers. The world that you will wake into is far different from the one you were forced from.

Do not worry, though. Before long, one of the dreaded Council warships that roam human space will respond to the recently activated archaic homing beacon lodged in the hull of your ship, and attempt to bring you ancient travelers back home with the help of its feared angels and their ships heavy plasma cannons.

Thanks to Erik Soto for the awesome pic.

Thanks to Ryan for this one:
Ultimate power and yet there are still worries. Others want you dead. The world trembles at you your finger tips, but what is a world when the Universe, ever expanding, could be yours? Xelomites? the Council of Time? They want your head. Mortal fodder for your whims. Bend reality to your will, realty fights back. Beware the Cronium pimp cane wielded by a shapeshifted old mall shopping lady.

The game came to life when our good friends helped refine and play test the game. Special thanks to

• my brother Ron for bringing in an atypical non-gamer view and his enjoyment of the game


• Eli for his enthusiasm and sharp review, he contributed much to the skill masteries and game system


• Ryan for not completely destroying my home while the game was in its infancy


• Gerry for playing a matter creationist and making me try to refine those rules while he learned them


• Joe for commanding and somehow squeezing an army of power armor soldiers onto his star ships


• Paul for showing the potential for "close combat" specialization, aka the shank


• Dan for bringing the greatest marketer/shapeshifter ever to life, The big O


• Ben for "revitalizing" that underprivileged neighborhood with his self created star ships main cannons