Animated Object

Race created by Tim Hornikel

Art by Avery Liell-Kok

Attributes: +1 Perception, +1 Strength, +2 Toughness,
Starting HP: 6 x Toughness
Movement Rating: Average (40 feet)
Racial Affinity Focuses (½ cost) :
Non Organic (NO BREATHE, NO FOOD, NO SLEEP, NO HERB) (Free)
Levitation (Free)
Telepathic Communicator*
Racial Language: Archaic Elven, Any one language of the race they came from.*

* An Animated Object can not communicate with other races if they have not purchased Telepathic Communicator. They can think and move, but not make their thoughts known.

Despite already wielding phenomenal magical power, the Godelves of Cyrus had always been fascinated with ways to increase their ability to wage war and subjugate the world. To that end they carried out many profane experiments. One of those experiments resulted in the creation of weapons and objects animated by the souls of murdered slaves.

The goal of these experiments was to create weapons that could fight without a bearer. If the bearer died in battle, the weapon would continue fighting unencumbered by restraints of mortal flesh. The Godelves were only semi-successful. They did indeed create weapons capable of fighting without wielders, but the weapons were not wholly controllable and they retained some personality of the creature they were created from.

The Godelves shelved the idea, literally. They contained the Animated Objects up in boxes that would contain their magic  and make them inert. These boxes were scattered amongst the Godelven empire to be used as last resort defenses in case of slave revolt. Most were forgotten in the mists of time, but many have been released and live out interesting lives in the hands of adventurers, rascals, and kings. Some decry being wielded by lesser beings and choose to carve their own path from the world.

All Animated Objects, as they have come to be known, have a few things in common. They always contain some amount of metal in their construction. They never take the shape of anything bipedal or animal, always being a created object of some sort. No Animated Object retains the memories of the individual which they were created from, but the memories do exist within special rune covered metal cubes which are separated from the objects during the creation process. Some examples of animated objects which have been found are swords, lyres, arrows, mirrors, and other weapons and household objects.

When an Animated Object was created, the soul of a being was extracted at the moment of death and implanted into a specially prepared magical metal. This metal was then forged into the desired shape by a Dwarven slave. Part of the metal was separated from the object and turned into a rune covered cube which would retain and constrain the memories and personality of the being which was used to power the object. The soul would reside within the object itself, developing a new trainable personality. The experiences that an object had then would get transferred to the storage cube, no matter how far away or hidden it was. Though the Animated Object only had access to the new memories and personality it made, it was found that they would feel attachment to certain races, most likely the one that they were created from. Likely, this is some bleed through of the old memories and personality.

Conventional damage and magical spells can harm and incapacitate an Animated Object, but it is hard to truly kill one. There are rumors of a few ways to do so The first is to destroy the storage cube, which will release the soul within the object and leave the object inert. The second way is to cast an object into a fire hot enough to completely destroy the metal. The third way to destroy an Animated Object is by having them absorb the memories of a cube that is not theirs. This will short out the cube and release the soul.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=92754

http://www.silvervinegames.com/Svg/Downloads#cyrusgameaids

It’s the perfect thing to refresh new players on what they can do at the table.

We’ve just updated our process for the Player Picture Project and given it a permanent home on our website.

http://www.silvervinegames.com/playerpictureproject

If you aren’t familiar with the PPP, you should be. Since we love seeing the incredible and diverse characters that come from our players, we try to make use of them in our publications and games whenever we can. If you submit your character to the Player Picture Project using the PPP PDF form, we might turn it into a Pregen for use at convention games, include it as an NPC in a published adventure, or even showcase it on the chapter pages in an upcoming book (as seen to the left). Check out the new PPP page and the fully interactive submission PDF. Grab your best character, fill out the form, and then send it to  ppp@silvervinegames.com. We can’t use the character or commission art for it without the digitally signed form, so go fill one out and show us the awesome characters you can come up with!  http://www.silvervinegames.com/playerpictureproject

It’s March 4th again, GM’s day. A day to celebrate everything about being a Game Master. To reward those who run our games, putting in hours of hard work beforehand or improvising on the fly to give us really great play experiences. GM’s day is also traditionally a day to put gaming supplies on sale, and that is something we’d normally do, but we’ve got something different for you this GM’s day. Let me start by telling you a little story.

A few months back, I was running a one shot of an adventure that I was writing a review of for Gnome Stew. My printer was busted, and I wanted to print some of the maps out in color anyways. I swung into a print shop, handed them my thumb drive and asked them to print 4 pages. “I’m sorry sir, due to corporate policy, we can’t print this. It is copyrighted material and you need written permission.”  The company that made it neglected to put a print disclaimer on the pages for the printouts. Even though they were marked as printouts in big bold letters, and even though I could have called up the author and gotten the guy permission over the phone, the corporate policy required it in writing. That got me thinking. It’s easy to forget to include a print disclaimer on the pages that you should. There are also a lot of times when you might need to print out a section of the rules for quick reference. If you don’t have a printer, then you  might get stuck on the wrong end of a corporate policy. Since Silvervine is a small company, and understands what GMs go through, we got with our legal rep and worked up something nice.

Yup, in as plain English legalese as we could print it, we’ve got a blanket print disclaimer that covers our products.  Basically, it gives you the right to print one full backup copy of an electronic product from Silvervine games and you can print limited sections if we forgot to put a print disclaimer on the individual page. If you get stuck at a print shop trying to print something, just point them to this page. We’re going to make our print disclaimer live perpetually at http://www.silvervinegames.com/printdisclaimer.

If you think this is a nifty idea, and that more companies should try to provide common sense solutions like this, spread the word. Talk about it on Facebook, Spread it on Twitter, send the link to your favorite bloggers.

We hope this small step helps smooth out any situations you might have. While we’ve currently only got the one product that we sell (there are a bunch of free downloads at our Drive Thru RPG store), we’ve just started work on our first published adventure, so this might come in handy for you in the future.

Good Gaming and Happy GM’s day.

http://www.silvervinegames.com/Svg/Downloads

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?cPath=&products_id=86971

Some News To End The Year And Start The New One

There are quite a few things being planned and finished right now at the Silvervine offices. I like keeping people informed, so here is a quick overview of some things going on with SVG.

1. Errata and New Print Run – It should come as no surprise to anyone that Silvervine Games is a very very small company. We do this mostly for love of the game but we have a dedication to making a quality product. It took us 7 years of working in our spare time to get Silvervine to a state that we decided was good enough to put out there. We got something we really liked and something that everyone who saw it really seemed to like. We sold out of our first print run over the course of two small conventions. That’s a great response if I ever heard one! But no book, especially one done by a very small group, is without errors and we’ve caught a few issues since release. Rather than do a new print run with the typos and errors from the first book we are going to make some minor changes where we can and have a new print run ready sometime in the beginning parts of the new year. We’ll also be making a valiant effort to provide updated PDF copies to people who purchased the first run. We’re not sure of the exact system yet, but we’ll set something good up. In addition, we are going to be making a static errata page on the website where people can find errata with ease. Expect these things sometime after January.
2. Player Picture Project and Next Products  – Some of you are familiar with the Player Picture Project and how we like to make use of character concepts that people have made at convention games. Check out the chapter pictures in front of every chapter in the Silvervine Games Core Rulebook and Cyrus Worldbook if you aren’t. Well, the player picture project is going to be springing up again in the first bit of January, but with some changes for ease of use. We’ll be modifying some sheets so that PPP releases and characters can be filled out mostly on the computer. So to all of you out there with a plethora of awesome characters, I’m looking at you Brian Miller – the man of a million characters, get ready for a new round of PPP awesomeness.
3. SVG: TLDR – One of my own personal projects that just hasn’t gotten off the ground yet is SVG: TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) a series of web videos aimed at teaching the game and certain GMing ideas to players and GMs. While many people learn games from books, many more learn them from other people. Silvervine has its own unique flavor that sometimes requires Game Masters to think in a different way. In SVG: TLDR, we’ll be imparting information your way in an electronic face to face. If you’ve got any topics or questions you’d love to have us cover, just shoot an email to contact@silvervinegames.com.

With those few tidbits to sate you over, we wish everyone a happy end of the year. We’ll see you all in 2011.

– John Arcadian, C.E.O. Silvervine Games

Features:

• Over 30 unique map building pieces that combine in a limitless number of ways.
• One main file that combines 99 of the most commonly used building pieces.
• Extra building pieces, including specially shaped ones, so that you can print as many pieces of whichever kind you need.
• Designed to be ink friendly and print on 3 by 5 inch index cards.

Silvervine Games – Dungeon Design Deck
Silvervine Games – Dungeon Design Deck – Individual Pieces

Silvervine has a nifty little christmas gift in store for you, but you don’t get to open it until tomorrow! Check back tomorrow for your gift and some awesome news!

]]> http://www.silvervinegames.com/blog/2009/12/a-christmas-gift-from-silvervine-to-you-but-you-cant-open-it-till-christmas-day-12-24-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.silvervinegames.com/blog/2009/11/silvervines-black-friday-offering-silvervine-games-paper-miniature-makers-11-27-2009/ http://www.silvervinegames.com/blog/2009/11/silvervines-black-friday-offering-silvervine-games-paper-miniature-makers-11-27-2009/#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 John Arcadian http://www.silvervinegames.com/Svg/SilvervineNews

We hope that everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving yesterday. In the spirit of the Black Friday shopping sprees that are going on, we present you a free gift. I recently made a free paper miniatures PDF for Gnome Stew with one of the other Gnomes Matthew Neagley.

Since Silvervine has unlimited character possibilities, it can be pretty hard to find an accurate mini sometimes. Thus, we are offering the paper mini maker file here, in a Silvervine flavor. Simply download the file, click on a logo, choose any image from your computer, and print! Instant paper miniature.

Silvervine Games – 1 Inch Paper Mini Maker
Silvervine Games – 2 Inch Paper Mini Maker