A Sundered World: The Antiquities of Antikythera

Back when I originally ran A Sundered World (using 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons of course), the first thing the characters encountered was a lone copper clockwork horror. Clockwork horrors were originally featured in 3rd Edition's Monster Manual II, though there were only electrum, gold, platinum, and adamantine.

I'd never used them before, had long since stop playing and sold all my 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons books, and though I'd made conversions of various 3rd Edition monsters they weren't among them, so I have no idea why I decided to throw one at the characters.

The weakest clockwork horrors (electrum) were pegged at a Challenge Rating of 4, which allegedly meant they were a suitable challenge for a party of 4th-level characters. By comparison this one was far more powerful than you would have expected: it blew off half of the shaman's hit points with one ranged attack, and the party was forced to flee.

They eventually escaped, only to run into them time and time again throughout the course of the campaign. We never did finish it, so who knows if they would have been able to stop the legionnaires as they slowly spread throughout the world, wiping out islands and breaking them down for resources.

For the Dungeon World version of A Sundered World, I decided to rename, remake, and include them as their own monster setting and danger: Antikythera's Legion and Antikythera's Armory, respectively.

Here's a work-in-progress of a comparatively "normal" looking kytheran shaman, complete with snake spirit and claw bracer (though I'm going to swap it out for something else). 

Kytherans were the first things made by Antikythera, and were long ago discarded in favor of the Legionnaires. They're one of the first races to have been created, and one of the few to survive the Sundering. They exist in scattered units throughout the Remnants, either pillaging raw materials or setting up fortresses near islands or vortices rich with metal ore, so that they can repair, upgrade, and construct more.

Unlike some other races, like devas and kobolds, all kytheran characters start with the following race move:

Made, Not Born
You do not need to eat, sleep, or breathe, and are immune to poisons, disease, and similar afflictions. When a move tells you to mark off a ration, ignore it. You do not heal naturally, and are unaffected by healing magic or items like healing potions. When you make camp, if you have the necessary tools and parts you regain one-half of your maximum hit points.

(There're items that allow you to spend time and perform quick repairs. Not just a reskin of bandages and poultices and herbs, but something that can be used to fix you, ships, etc.)

Kytheran advanced moves allow you to gain more armor (if you want to be super durable), deal damage when you defy danger against nearby enemies, use your own hands as fearsome weapons, attach extra sets of arms, and more.

Here's another work-in-progress, this time of an iron soldier, one of the weakest of the Legion (weighing in just above copper drones).

Heavily armed and armored, playtesting has shown them to be tougher than what you'd probably expect from a group monster (10 HP and a whopping 4 Armor), but hey, I just build 'em by the book.

Announcements

We've got a bunch of awesome stuff going on this month:

• The Oni went up on the first. You can read more about it here.
• The All of the Playbooks bundle has been updated to include The Oni. If you purchased the bundle prior to The Oni, check for a discount coupon so you can get it at the "bundle" price.
• We've added a couple new bundles: the Booty Bundle and Monster Mash Bundle.
• All of our 10+ Treasures volumes are on sale for the entirety of the month.
• 10+ Treasures hit Best Electrum Seller a while back. It's our first product to hit that milestone, and we did it in under a year, too!
• The Skeleton and The Vancomancer hit Best Silver Seller, and The Psion is now a Best Copper Seller (meaning most of our stuff is a best something or other).

Finally, you can now sign up for this month's Mythoard, which features a Dungeon World adventure written by me.

In addition for every 50 subscribers I'm going to add a discount link for one of our products. So far The Witch is being included (and will become free at 200 subscribers), and when I asked about it yesterday there were over 70. The cutoff date is the 10th, at which point I'll have to send the files out for printing, so spread the word!