Gothic Matrix: The Cyberpunk Ravenloft Domain Project

[Leliel]

Jacob Reeve, Darklord of Galtus (Master Architect, "Sachiel", Supreme Daeva).

Appearence and Mannerisms: Reeve normally looks like a stereotypical coporate head. He appears hygenic and clean-shaven, although his wears his auburn hair long. He appears to be in his mid-30's, and usually wears the typical Galtian jumpsuit, though he carries his warlock's rod rather prominently, a sign that he is definitely not harmless-though he fakes having a lower level of power than he actually does as part of his act.

While in the Sachiel armor, Reeve's face is obscured by his glowing visor, the only clue to his identity being his obviously male voice, which is artificially modulated to become unrecognizable, even changing his tone of voice and accent. It resembles a marble angel, with fins forming a set of six wings and the chest being inscribed with holy symbols. When activated, the flow of arcane energy is so great that it vents out through the wings and joints, giving it an ethereal appearance as "eyes" appear in the arms and legs, and it's wings release nebulous energy. When docked, it holds two man-like drones (one red, one blue), which it releases during activation to help in it's battles.

He speaks in a calm, almost musical tone, which modulates to convey his current emotional state-though he never deviates from his calm, serene demeanor, even when making threats. He never shows teeth except when smiling, and the "angriest" expression one can get out of him is a brief twitch of the mouth, which soon resumes his normal frown. He always sounds sympathetic and consoling when speaking to another person, even an enemy (although there he allows some condensation to creep into his voice).

Background: Jacob Reeve is as much a product of Galtus as he is it's master. Born a native of the Dark City, his parents were poor factory workers who slaved for Gil-Guilm in the later days of the cold war. He was exposed to suffering and decay wherever he went, and due to his parent's moral upbringing, he resolved to turn the slums of Galtus into a paradise.

In school, Reeve showed himself to be a prodigy, his exceptional intelligence matched only by his inhuman charisma. This attracted the attention of a warlock, who tutored him in the secrets of pact magic. Jacob was a quick learner, and he was already adept at the arcane arts by the time he graduated high school at 15. He later graduated summa con laude from college at 19, staying only the four standard years to form a tight social network, which followed him into Urban Development.

It was just too unfortunate that he happened to do so as Galtus began it's slide into dystopia...

Although Reeve showed himself to be an incredibly skilled architect and aid worker, the corruption that began to become endemic to Gil-Guilm began to sully his idealism, causing it to mutate into a warped cynicism about the world. That would have been that, had he not met Rosanne duPont, a prostitute whose family was being helped by UD. Although their relationship was strictly professional, Reeve began to platonically love her as a person, viewing himself as her knight in tuxedoed armor. This aroused the jealousy of her pimp, a chaos lord who sold her out to the madmen of the Daeva project.

When Reeve next saw Rosanne, she had been transformed into an insane Daeva unable to control her powers. While he initially tried to help her regain her mind, she became too dangerous to those around her, and a sobbing Reeve was forced to kill her for her own well-being.

Unable to reconcile his utopian beliefs with a world that turned an innocent woman into a living weapon, Reeve came to think that the problem with the Dark City was that it did not have a cause to truly believe in, and thus, had become stagnant. No, what Galtians needed was a focus, something to define what they were as a people-like say, an opposing nation.

And from grief, was born insanity...

(Continues later...)

[Leliel]

During his earlier research, Reeve had come across a complex ritual called the "Rebirth of Lightning", a dark bit of magic that would charge metal ore with the energy of a long-lost primordial, causing it to become a capacitor for massive and destructive amounts of electrical energy. Horrified by the prospect of the potential weapon, Reeve destroyed the book that contained it, the only copy remaining copy being the one in his memory. Yet that was a long time before Reeve had become obsessed with his vision of "saving" Galtus from itself, and he possesed a fine memory indeed. Yet it was not perfect, and he needed assistance to obtain the materials to both preform it and expand it's area of effect to an entire planet.

So to both construct an new identity for himself, and to protect himself from the dangers of a criminal underworld, he had the scientists who shared his twisted ideals create a unique suit of arcanotech power armor for him-one whose make would be unparalleled by any other, before or since. They succeeded, and under the moniker of the chaos lord "Sachiel", he began constructing an underworld empire with only one purpose-to recreate the Rebirth of Lightning, and use it to bring about a world war.

And the Mists, sensing where his madness would take him, began to gather...

Although the path was long and difficult, Reeve and his associates succeeded in both the piecing together of the Rebirth process, and the machines nesscary to spread it's influence throughout the Grid, creating a global stage for catastrophe. Then, using some of the data he had collected from the Grid, he created a series of military AIs in the style of the nation that had opposed Galtus so long ago, set to attack all servers belonging to Gil-Guilm and then self-destruct once the ritual began. Once his inner circle was protected from the ritual, he gave the order to begin the Rebirth.

At first, the ceremony went off without a hitch. Although Reeve wondered why there was an excess of fog, he figured it was due to imperfections in his version of the ritual-nothing serious, and besides, if it were, the Rebirth wouldn't have worked.

Then, true flaws started to appear. At first, they were relatively mundane-undetected SIN appearing in the some if the servers the AIs were attacking, infecting them in the process, stray bolts of lighting hitting Reeve's headquarters, that sort of thing. Then the brazenly supernatural began to occur-the infected AIs underwent all the stages of rampancy in a matter of minutes and turned on Reeve, stating that "justice must be done", the stray lighting began to spit out elementals with aberrant powers where it struck, and Reeve began to panic. This wasn't part of his plan!

Then, one of the AIs broke through Reeve's defenses. Although his technicians rushed to fix it, it seemed to grow stronger with every system it jumped to. Suddenly, all the screens in Reeves room went dark. When they rebooted, their readouts had been replaced by live images of people dying due to Reeve's plot. Reeve retreated back to an emergency exit, but found it had been sealed off by a wall of bloody microchips.

Then, the monitors shattered. Their pieces assembled into a facsimile of a robotic dog, which then transformed into one of a man with a pair of scales for his left hand. Using his normal hand, he pointed to the terrified Master Architect and intoned in a raspy voice like sand rubbing on glass:

"For your crimes and treason against the people of this city in their name, I, Miang Hiroku, once of the Fen Hounds of the Mists, sentence you to suffer their pain-the pain that you have caused!"

And so, Galtus became part of the Mists, and Jacob Reeve it's darklord...

Next: Personality and Curse

[brothersale]

Looking good, however i would change the "Fen Hound of Ravenloft" to Fen Hound of the Mists. remember Ravenloft is a castle to the natives not the land.

[Leliel]

(Oops...Changed it.)

Bleak Avatar-Personality and Curse of Jacob Reeve

Personality: To understand the evils Reeve commits in the name of good, one must remember that while not all evil deeds are done in the name of righteousness, but once one has come to the belief that they can, even the most vile acts become a course of action for the sake the people. Reeve is a person who has made that logical leap, and firmly believes that what he does will be justified when he transforms Galtus into a paradise. Which makes him all the more dangerous, since even as a darklord, his positive qualities-understanding, kindness, and ability to gauge when he has made an error-remain, but twisted into forms that spur deeds that would make a true utopian vomit.

Reeve's understanding of people has allowed him to become the supreme chessmaster, a manipulator who plays people's emotions against them. Indeed, his mastery of psychology is the reason behind his facade of the "conscience of Gil-Guilm"-in his opinion, while it is better to be feared then merely loved, it is even better to be both-and since the corporation is an embodiment of fear, he only has to make the people love him. He even uses this when playing against Gil-Guilm becomes necessary-as Sachiel, he projects the image of a secretive freedom fighter to his unwitting operatives, silently making them closer to him so that they ignore his amoral actions-though he is careful to disguise anything morally dissonant enough to make them doubt him.

Kindness is one of the hardest virtues to turn into a motive for dark deeds, but Reeve has found a way, and his organization has prospered for it. Many owe Reeve the lives of their families and friends, and would gladly die for this "wonderful" man who saved them from poverty-even after they discover his dark side. The Daevas are an even better case of this-due to Reeve's power as a darklord, he is the only one able to focus their psychosis, allowing them to live semi-normal lives-something Reeve is happy to do.

Curse: Reeve's curse is twofold-one being a practical matter, and the other a mental one.

The first part is that Reeve, the great strategist, is constantly faced with an element he cannot control-his nemesis, Miang Hiroku.

Originally the vagrant AI who broke into Reeve's headquarters, he, through some machination of the Dark Powers, was merged with the consciness of a fen hound, giving him the hound's personality and memories along with it's powers over Mists. While not nearly as charismatic as Reeve or as seemingly friendly, he is just as intelligent and cunning, with a singleminded intention-to defeat Reeve once and for all. While this is rather more difficult then Reeve's task of simply outmaneuvering him-especially since over half the scientists in R&D are more loyal to Reeve then him-Miang has his own powers over the physical world as Reeve has his over the mental-Miang can bring sections of the Grid into reality, build powerful robots out of Mist and metal, and-most frustratingly for Reeve-mutate his program outside of combat, causing him to be a constantly changing opponent. Even destroying his core doesn't help-like Reeve, Miang's mind will survive in the form of electrically charged fog, which then seeks out a SIN server to posses, transforming it over the course of a week into one for suitable for Miang.

The second is for Reeve to be constantly reminded that he isn't the hero he thinks he is. Every night, when he goes to sleep, his soul dissociates from his body in the form of a white light. While this allows him to observe events around him in a non-physical form, he is inevitably drawn to those sites where his actions have caused even greater misery then before-which he is made perfectly aware of, due to the fact that ghosts and benevolent AIs in the area are able to perceive that whatever the strange light is, it is the source of the people's misery, and while their attacks don't hurt him, they give him flashes of insight into the memory of the tragedy he caused. When he wakes up, it is with often with tears in his eyes-though these dreams only strengthen his resolve to accomplish his dream.

Next: Powers and Abilities

[Leliel]

Hoo boy. That break was way too long.

Anyway, just cheking syntax and spelling here.

[Blacklight]

This is severly awesome. I love you take on fantasy cyberpunk. I am also working on a similar but unrelated project called Cyberia using the Savage Worlds System.

ONe thing you might want to take a look at is CthulhuTech, a Dark Cyberpunk cosmic Horror setting.

[Leliel]

Wow. And I thought you had forgotten about this.

I had forgotten about it.

Oh, well, time to make up for lost time...

[Leliel]

The Architect's Tools: Powers of Jacob Reeve

Due to the combination of a cutthroat corporation and a cultural call to self-improvement, all the heads of Gil-Guilm (with the exception of Lecter, who got his position through boot-licking) are rather powerful in combat, and Reeve is no exception. He was already an incredibly skilled warlock of the fey pact before he became darklord, and he has refined his abilities to become the preeminent pact mage of Raveloft-easily the equal of Azalin in sheer power, although not nearly enough knowledge-he is more focused on social matters than esoteric academics.

Besides this, his privileges as darklord has given him greater powers, not least of which is the Undying Soul-if killed, one of the abandoned factories of Galtus mysteriously starts up 2d10 days later, creating a new set of the Sachiel armor, which he appears in as soon as it is completed, unharmed. The process disintegrates the previous set, leaving salvageable but unfixable components. The only way to truly kill him is actually to get him removed from the Board of Directors, by revealing his crimes and treason to the world and convicted. He will still be alive, but will loose his darklordship forever. Miang is aware of this, and while he cannot convict Reeve himself, he often masterminds plots to help his agents find evidence against him.

Besides this, Reeve has gained power over weather, instinctively knowing a five-minute ritual that will bring one of the rare calm rains of Galtus. By extending it to ten minutes, bring the infamous "wet hail", and fifteen minutes, a devastating but localized thunderstorm.

One of his more noncombatant abilities is the ability to temporarily banish insanity: By stenciling a third eye on the forehead of a person suffering from madness (either one who has failed Madness saves or a Daeva), he can cause that person to return to sanity for one month. He uses this both as a measure of control over his less sane agents-ie, Daevas-and as a bargaining chip ("Work for me, and you'll never hurt the people you love again").

While he rarely uses it (even Reeve recognizes it's morally aberrant and wrong nature), he has the ability to turn his enemies into powerful Daevas. By conducting a one-hour ritual on a helpless subject, Reeve can turn him or her into an Indra-type Daeva, a unique variety of the super soldiers, with superb powers over radiant energy...at the cost of their powers being even more uncontrollable then that of other Daevas, and as such, causing even more destruction in their rages then their kin. Needless to say, they either end up turning to Reeve to help them control their powers or succumb to self-loathing and turn themselves into suicide bombers for one last strike at Gil-Guilm...which ultimately solves nothing. Thankfully, as with all Daevas, those with strong connections to the Indra-type (ie, if the PCs have one of their number turned, they can help him get back to normal).

Closing the Borders: When Reeve desires to cancel out the element of unforeseen foreign interference, a mist with dancing lights surrounds Galtus. Anyone fool enough to journey into the mists despite warnings of the locals-who are perfectly aware of what the mist does-finds themselves in a bizarre realm of twisting metal tubes, overgrown with fey plants. Powerful unseelie with cybernetic parts stalk this maze, a dungeon without end or many supplies. While there is a center, the trapped can only find it if Reeve decides to reopen the borders-mainly because if that happens, it's the only way out. If the interlopers give up and decide to find their way back before then, a secret, unseen compartment with an exit to where they were opens right next to them. If they leave via the center, they end up in the bottom floor of the Gil-Guilm exiting through an obscure "employees only" door that normally leads to a storehouse of parts with no known use.

Next: Daevas