Ominus Rex - Mutant Wild Boar

Alignment: Anarchist
Attributes: IQ: 13   ME: 6   MA: 6   PS: 34   PP: 5   PE: 22   PB: 4   Spd: 7
Age: 25 Gender: Male
Size Level: 13   Weight: 410lbs   Height: 7ft 4inches
Hit Points: 31   SDC: 80
Body Armor: Plate and Mail Armor   AR: 15   SDC: 80
Disposition: Focused, Brutal
Human Features: Hands: Partial   Biped: Full   Looks: None   Speech: None
Animal Powers: Beastly Strength
Animal Psionics: None
Level of Experience: 2nd Level
Occupation: Road Hog Brute; Lieutenant.
Skills of Note: Wilderness Survival 55%, Detect Ambush 40%, Tailing 40%, Boxing, Wrestling, HtH: Basic, WP Blunt, WP Chain, WP Targeting, Pilot Special(Custom Quad ATV)
Attacks Per Melee: 5
Bonuses: +5 Parry, +5 Dodge, +5 Roll with Punch/Impact, +2 Pull Punch, +19 Melee Damage (PS Bonus), Automatic KO on Natural 20 (1D6 Melee Rounds), Pin/Incapacitate on 18-20, Crush/Squeeze 1D4+19 Damage, Body Tackle/Body Block 1D4+19 Damage (Target must Dodge or Parry to avoid being knocked down), +1 Strike and Parry w/ Blunt, +1 Strike w/ Chain, +1 Strike w/ Thrown Object, +4 save vs. poison.
Personal Profile: Ominus was raised by the Road Hogs from a very young age after his family was wiped out after a biker firefight demolished their farm. Already a large child, Ominus grew to be a terrifyingly large size as an adult, helped make him a handy method of terrorizing local villages and travellers. He has learned to communicate with his comrades through grunts, barks, hollers, and rough sign language. In combat, he is very focused, and will continue a fight until his opponent is incapacitated, dead, or is called off by a superior ranking Road Hog. He has also been known to use his fellow bikers bikes as weapons in combat; throwing them or clubbing opponents with them. Ominus is in charge of a group of five Road Hogs (three on bikes, two in a truck) that roam the southern portion of the Road Hog territory near village of Dorris near the old California/Oregon border on Highway 97 (considered a back road in Road Hogs). Their main encampment is at the Cal Ore Cafe located just north of town.
Special Weapons: Ominus wears a heavy 6ft long spiked chain wrapped around each forearm, which he can remove to use as a weapon (2D4+19 Damage). He is also carries around a 5ft club with a chunk of concrete at the end (2D6+19 Damage).
Special Vehicle: Ominus gets around in one of two ways. First is being hauled around in the back of a large truck, and second is on a customized Quad ATV.

Generic Low Level Swine Road Hog Thug

These thugs typically travel in groups of 2 to 5. It is rare to catch one on his/her own.

Alignment: Typically 5% Unprincipled; 30% Anarchist; 25% Miscreant; 30% Aberrant; or 10% Diabolic
Disposition: Arrogant, belligerent, and unpleasant towards any non-Road Hog
Size Level: 11    SDC: 55    Hit Points: 17
Body Armor: Studded Leather Armor   AR: 12   SDC: 28+1D10
Attributes: IQ 11, ME 9, MA 11, PS 19, PP 8, PE 12, PB 9, Spd 11
Animal Type: Mutant Swine, Pig
Human Features: Hands: Full, Biped: Full, Speech: Full, Looks: None or Partial
Age: 15+1D8    Weight: 230lbs
Powers: None
Psionics: None
Level of Experience: 1st or 2nd Level
Level of Education: None, typically illiterate. Most Road Hogs initiates are only interested in how to fire a weapon and ride a motorcycle. Beyond that, individual Road Hogs are on their own in learning a profession or anything that would be considered academic.
Skills of Note: Pilot Motorcycle or Truck 64%, Vehicle Weapon Systems 50%, HtH: Basic, WP Blunt, Plus two Weapon Proficiencies of Choice: Knife, Chain, Pistol, or Shotgun
Attacks Per Melee: 4
Melee Combat Bonuses: +1 to Strike, +4 Damage, +2 Parry, +1 Dodge, +2 Roll with Punch/Fall/Impact
Standard Issue Weapons: (Choose Two) Knife (1D6 Dmg), Chain (2D4 Dmg), 9mm Pistol (3D6 Dmg), 12 Gauge Shotgun (3D6 Dmg Buckshot)

Mutants of London

Found this info online today.  I've heard of the saying, "If the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it.", but never knew this part of the story.
http://ultrafactsblog.com/post/116593278579/the-ravens-of-the-tower-of-london-are-a-group-of

The ravens of the Tower of London are a group of captive common ravens which live in the Tower of London. The group of ravens at the Tower comprises at least seven individuals (six required, with a seventh in reserve). The presence of the ravens is traditionally believed to protect the Crown and the Tower; a superstition holds that "If the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it."

I've never been a fan of the Mutants in Avalon sourcebook because of the Arthur angle it took, this look much more interesting.  You could use this as the background for a specific Tower Raven (Purebreed) animal species that would start with special perks.

The Beholders

About a month ago, a Palladium forum member (Dolcet) who was looking for ideas for 'a race calling itself the Beholders. These Beholders consider themselves to be the Paragons of existence; for only they can truly know what beauty is and all other living things must die for the crime of not being a Beholder.' [link]

I thought about this for a while, but initially dismissed it because I thought it too two-dimensional of an enemy.  Like the Daleks, Cybermen, and Borg, there really isn't much to them beyond kill anything that isn't you.  This would make sense if you were working with a hivemind species, but I felt that's been done to death (Aliens, Borg, Mimic, etc).  I then thought about the Beholders being more of a group or society of zealots instead of an elitist race. Then I realized how this could reflect that elitist hate that humanity is famous for (be it race, religion, nationality, or gender).  This, I started to think, was starting to sound more and more interesting.

The question then became, how are these "Beholders" conducting their genocidal campaign? I was stuck on this.  Why would The Beholders, a group that epitomized beauty, have access to weapons of war?  What weapons would they use?  As I mulled this, I started thinking back to a scene from the old 1950's War of the Worlds movies, three large war machines protected by impenetrable shields, slowly advancing across the countryside, killing all in their path.  It was a start.  Then came memories of old horror movies like the House of Wax and the Medusa Transducer from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

That was it! I'd change the heat rays to Medusa Rays!  Everyone struck by these beams would be turned into calcified (stone) statues. The Beholder's madness would see this as poetic justice, turning these pitiful creatures that cannot possibly understand or appreciate "true" beauty into works of art, and then leaving these statues scattered across the landscape for posterity.  Death by Art.

Then, today, I finally brought it all together:

---

The Beholders are a group of bioengineered humans (artists, curators, aficionados and the like) from before the Big Death.  They had engineered themselves with better senses and other talents so that they could create and/or appreciate art and beauty to the ultimate extent.  After the Big Death, these Beholders cloistered themselves away from the ravaged world for decades in an old art museum.  After all the decades secluded away from the outside world and surrounded by the beauty of the artwork they adored and protected, they fell into madness.  They never once considered leaving their museum, as nothing outside its walls could compare to the beauty that they guarded within.

As time passed, a few of these Beholders wanted to join the museums collection, and in a bid to preserve their own perfection, developed a method of rapid calcification of the body, figuratively turning them to stone.  Over the years, a handful of the older or more vain Beholders submitted themselves to this procedure, helping perfect it.

Then one day the museum was discovered by a band of scavengers looking for valuables from the old world to sell. The scavengers were quickly caught by the museums Guargoyles, and when the scavengers were interrogated the Beholders were horrified that these scavengers saw their artwork only as items to sell for profit, not appreciated and fawned over.  This revelation angered them to the point where they began their genocidal campaign against anyone that couldn't be identified as a Beholder.

The few mechanically minded among them built a number of majestic war machines, works of art that they would march out and across the land and do away with those who could not appreciate beauty like the Beholders could.  These war machines stood a hundred feet tall so that they could be seen and appreciated by all around it.  They were armed with calcification rays so that these blind ignoramuses could be turned into works of art to beautify the world.  And finally, they were protected by force fields that the museum had used to protect some of the larger displays.

On their first battle, if you could call it that, three of the Beholders machines came silently upon an encampment of Free Cattle late on the night of a new moon.  When dawn broke, the Beholders watched as the people came out to gaze upon these tall wonders that had appeared around them.  At first they Beholders thought that these people may be redeemable, but that one of them picked up a rock and threw it at one of the machines.  Immediately, the Beholders opened fire upon the Free Cattle and turned them all to stone before marching on in search of others.

---

The hook for the adventure would be that one of the scavengers was able to elude capture and then escaped the museum after the Beholders "killed" the rest of the scavengers and left on their genocidal rampage. The group could be brought into the story in a number of ways, here are some examples:

• After finding a village populated only by these odd statues, they encounter the escaped scavenger who relates his mad tale.
• Cardanian scouts capture and interrogated the escaped scavenger, and the group is assigned to validate his mad claims.
• A wealthy individual hires the group to discover what happened to the scavengers he hired to loot an old museum hidden in the ruins of a distant city. They then encounter the surviving scavenger and a few Beholders who have stayed behind to guard the museum.

I will work on and post some stats for the Beholders, their War Machines, and the Museum soon.

Functional Fungal

I love looking for new things to add to the background for my AtB games, and here is one that just crossed my radar.

Amsterdam designer Maurizio Montalti is working on using fungal organisms to replace, or act as an alternative, to plastics.  As you will see in the video below, he shows how he has used this to produce bowls, plates and cups.  He also discusses how it could be used for textiles (jackets, shoes, etc.).



Using nature to grow products isn't anything new, and in one book I recently read (The Commonwealth Saga, by Peter F. Hamilton), they used a type of coral to grow buildings.

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