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Ascala Spotlight - Life According to Prophet

 Hello. C J here. The Uprising Core Rules cards are done and up for download. I’m still working on the Uprising Core Rules home print PDF so they can be played but there’s also a lot of cards I need to make and illustrate before it’s playable. So, in the meantime, here’s one of my characters. Welcome to life according to Prophet.

Prophet is a fun hero character. She was originally introduced in The Astral Chronicle as a side character. She helped the crew win when it counted, discovered magic within herself and returned to her homeland of Ascala for all the correct reasons. Why she was in the Astral in the first place was part of the story. Her normal name is Sarah Lanarday, part of a noble lineage from the land of Anteli. A few branches of House Lanarday left Anteli and moved to Ascala through the Astral. This was before she was born by a while.

She’s to my reckoning in her early thirties and is a specialist in sound magic. Upon returning to her homeland she made a name for herself as a storm musician, Ascala’s equivalent of electronic dance music. She headlines concerts all the time now and Ascala’s Chief of Media is on first name basis with her. She’s female and she’s good at it. I set myself up a challenge as a male, and only male, gendered author back when I first took up the craft. The challenge is to write an even or mostly even balance of male and female characters in all roles in stories.

Sarah Lanarday, now known by her magename Prophet, proved that I was right to try. She’s powerful because she puts in the work and having mage talent in her only means she’s allowed to work harder. She’s also a spell rouge, the Ascalan term for mage-mercenary. The Chief of Media helps fund and run their five or six TV stations and live outdoor events like concerts and block parties. Prophet is the one character I’m ever allowing to have this much of themselves figured out in advance because she took an entire The Astral Chronicle storyline to do so.

Now if only the Captain could get his inner struggles figured out.

Prophet will be a playable character in Uprising, although all the characters can be allies and rivals as well as suits the story the Game Master has in mind. I have art of her but there’s a lot more I can do here now that Uprising is actually done. Characters in the game have factions that determine what sets of characters and other cards can be included in a deck with them. I’m planning on Prophet having the Corporations, Symphonic Brotherhood and Spell Rouge factions.

This means I need to detail all of the generic characters and other heroes that exist in these factions. Corporations will get a full 20 of them, the number for a complete Dominion Class. The Symphonic Brotherhood and Spell Rouge sets will be a Dominion Focus each, smaller more specialized sets of cards with characters or other effects. A Class is larger than a Focus. So I need some electronic dance music themed characters and mage-mercenaries as well. These factions can repeat more than once in a set of cards and in the entire game line. Ivy is also a Corporations character.

Then we get to the never ending category of cards called moves. These are decks of combat, social, or magic actions that have internal synergies. Here really anything goes but I need at least one deck of moves for every skill mentioned in a set of cards. Prophet is planned to have the skills Fist Fighter, Willworker and Acrobat. I need a deck of cards depicting a character, most likely her, using these. Prophet needs moves for actually playing the game.

And then there’s the social moves. Those are based on a character’s keywords including their gender, species and extra details. Then there’s the question of doing all of these and maybe more with Pride themed content. And that’s one character out of thirty for the main core game. This might take a while before the game is playable.

C J Mcpherson


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