Lake Bravo boils.
A lone white Obelisk stands undisturbed in the lake, the beacon that first drew delvers to the ruins underneath Bravado. A blackened monolith in the Dune Sea, once used as a waypoint through the desert begins to hum. A tree, formed of flowing stone in the center of Essex, begins to corrode. Unborn throughout the San Saba wander into the desert, mindlessly following the ‘music of the spheres’, a song unheard by any other strain. The melody seems to call them all to one place.
Towards the West. Towards the lost city of Barogue.
Amid the new threat of these monuments is the rising tension from the North, from the rebels of Queensgrace and the fall of the Antler Tribe. War is coming to the San Saba, and the new leader of the Oxkiller Alliance has declared Barogue a “profane monument of hubris that must be destroyed”. The technophobic zealots have moved their forces into the desert to deny the Board and the San Saba Territories a valuable route to the Broken Coast, a rattling saber heralding further conflict.
Legends and folklore still speak of The Prince Undying, the last leader of the lost city of Barogue before its fall, and whisper of his purpose in these strange objects. Something powerful. Something dangerous. The citizens of the San Saba, in the aftermath of the fall of Waking, are fearful of yet another world-ending catastrophe. The Railroad Conglomerate has demanded the phenomenon be investigated, and the potential threat neutralized, before it interferes with forging a bright new future.
Barogue is the answer. We must delve deeper, into the still hidden mysteries of the Lost City and The Prince Undying. To battle new nightmares, survive the horrors, and uncover the echoes of the fall of the Lost City, we must venture into the unknown.
An image of Barogue from our very first online event two years ago featuring this location, “The Lost City”! Our next event takes us back for a triumphant return to Barogue!
HOW-DY!
It’s that time again Vados, time to start SEASON FIVE! It’s Jonathan here with the first of our posts leading up the online event to kick off the season: THE UNDYING PRINCE. We have a lot in store for y’all in the coming weeks, but today we want to make sure you know a bit about what to expect, some commonly asked questions, and a bit of a story intro into the event.
We haven’t run an online Dystopia Rising event for a while, so let’s cover the basics:
Online events are held on our Lonestar Skies Discord Channel. The server will go live shortly before the event!
You can access the Discord server here: https://discord.gg/SA9eNNCa3Z
You buy your tickets on our online store starting as of Monday, July 10th!
Our online games use a slightly different set of mechanics than you might be used to, but you can find all the rules completely FREE on our website below. I’ll be covering these in detail in a future blog post, but if you like to get a head start on these things, here you go:
Our online event will include CRAFTING!
We all know that’s what y’all are really here for, so I’ll be outlining how you can use these mechanics in a future blog post before the event. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to satisfy all your blueprint cravings and get yourself a head start on the live events starting in September!
Our online event will start on Friday night and end on Sunday afternoon, similar to a live event. Sunday will be primarily reserved for soft roleplay, so the main action happens on Friday and Saturday!
The online event will consist of two main parts:
ONLINE RP: We will have an online Discord server with chat rooms for soft Roleplay and even Voice channels. We will have a few activities you can complete in these rooms, places to use your various Skills, and even a few NPCs!
MODULES: Each full online ticket comes with an option to attend THREE small module events. This will be 2-hour events led by a Storyteller and they are limited to 4-6 players on each run. These modules will happen in SIX different acts throughout the weekend, and each act will tell as aspect of the unfolding story of the UNDYING PRINCE.
Mod Signups and a Sneak Peak into the story of the weekend starts July 24th!
You can earn XP from the weekend, play multiple characters, play cool personal mods with your friends, and get a headstart into the overarching story of Season 5!
Grab Bag Contents
For online events, we have a special ticket add-on called a GRAB BAG! Purchasing this ticket not only helps us prepare for the upcoming season with new props and more, but it also has some tangible rewards for your character!
OUR GRAB BAG THIS MONTH INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING FOR $10!
You get a few unique items that are usable during the online event:
1x “Explorer’s Kit!” - 3 themed [PIPS] that represent adventurous and useful tools for your excursion to Barogue! These are one-use online items that give you a +1 for a roll of your choice! You can see how to use these in our Bravado Bones online game ruleset!
1x Tag [Well Prepared] - This is an online-only item that helps your Mind points change a roll heavily in your favor! You can see how to use these in our Bravado Bones online game ruleset!
200 Barogue Bucks - This is an online-only currency that will let you obtain herbs, scrap, blueprints, and more, similar to the Cali*Co Point system we used before! We will have more on this in a future blog post!
Plus, you get some physical carded items that will start you out strong for our live events starting in September! While every character can earn items for their LIT inventory, the GRAB BAG includes an option to get your items mailed to you!
1x Basic Red Mist - A handy Injectable brew that can be self-administered in Bleed Out. Handy for surviving the wasteland!
1x Weapon Augment of your choice! - Augments are a new type of item that can be attached to a crafted Weapon. They last for 3 months and tend to be a bit expensive to craft. You can start out Season 5 with a shiny new Augment of your own!
1x ‘SHARD OF THE RED CROWN’ Currency Card - This will be a brand-new collectible currency-style card for Season 5, a physical trophy of your trip to the Lost City. This will have some in-game effects for DR:TX event as well during this next season, as well as being highly collectable!
Item Cards by Mail! - Have all the carded items made in our “Do Work, Get Paid” virtual econ system, items purchased with Barogue Bucks, and GRAB BAG items mailed to straight you by USPS!
Grab bags are limited to one per player, so don’t miss out!
The story of “The Undying Prince”
I’ve included the story teaser of our event at the beginning of this blog post, but let’s talk a bit about what to expect from the STORY of the online event in August.
Our online event concerns the LOST CITY OF BAROGUE. Long thought simply a legend, it was discovered two years ago in our game during the events of our last online event of the pandemic season. Barogue was a massive moving city, propelled through the deserts of the Dune Seas on mighty tracks to evade the hordes of undead, suspending an entire city on its back. Barogue is a wondrous relic of the past, from a time after the fall of man to the zombie virus, but at least two hundred years before our current age in Dystopia Rising.
When Barogue was first found by Felicity Redfield and the map bearers two years ago, the city was buried under a massive sand dune, with an Elder Leviathan coiled around it like a nest. The first expedition fell through the opening at the top of the glass-like steel dome into the city, and the events of the first online event, “The Lost City” occurred inside. At the end of that episode, the survivors ascended a tall spire they named the Altar of the Scion Vossa to escape the city, fashioning a temporary crystal matrix to power the crystal plinths of the abandoned titan city. In the exodus they created a massive psionic blast that scattered the leviathans around the city. When the giant sandworms fled, they left in their wake a crater that exposed the majority of the moving city.
Over the last two years, the Railroad Conglomerate and other factions have worked tirelessly to uncover the bulk of the superstructure of Barogue, peeling back the layers of sand that hid the city’s secrets. In the shadow of the massive titan city is a small settlement fondly called New Barogue, the heart of the RRC operations at the Lost City. Settlement is perhaps too strong of a word, but the ramshackle array of tents and mining equipment at the excavation site is always changing as new work crews arrive from Essex and beyond.
The primary focus of the RRC is on scavenging the Lost City for usable salvage, scrap, and metals they can bend towards their ever-hungering needs of expanding the Oxline across the wastes. While most of the metal in Barogue is a very hard alloy similar to titanium, this crazy future metal is difficult to process with current technological levels. Instead, scavengers focus on panels, bolts, wiring, and anything they can tear from the superstructure to box up and ship out on the Oxline. Anything that can be melted down into a railroad tie is shipped back to Essex for processing, one more link in the chain of the Oxline network.
In their wake of this systematic dismantling are beleaguered archeologists from the RRC, the Grave Council and the San Saba Republic, uncovering new secrets of Barogue on a daily basis. While they contend with brutish laborers that trample on their archeological digs, the scientists and researchers of the expedition are slowly finding new ways to access areas within the city and struggling to understand the strange crystal psi-tech that once powered the mighty titan city.
The city is a treasure trove of archaeological secrets, psi-tech, and raw resources that will fuel RRC operations for decades to come. It is a deadly and mysterious site, but the risk of the city outweighs the rewards that await if the RRC can fully unlock the titan city’s many labyrinthine halls.
Here’s a sneak peek of one of the maps I made for this event! Take a look at the Lost City of Barogue!
We can’t wait to show you more of the Lost City of Barogue, so you can experience the horrors and mysteries within. Don’t wait to get your ticket, and make sure you are ready when Mod Signups go live on July 24th. These mods are first-come, first-served, so you’ll want to be ready to check in when they go live!
Next week, we will have more to uncover about THE UNDYING PRINCE!!!
See you soon Vados!