Morgath'ak-Lugash: The Iron Fist

As I mentioned in a previous post about the elves of planet Ore (the setting for the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad campaign), iron is a very serious danger to the health and well-being of elves (as per the DCC RPG rules, but maybe with bigger, sharper teeth). As is the case with most societies, there are some elves who are "more equal than others." The elven nobility are largely unconcerned about their more pedestrian kinsmen, and are more than happy to let the lot of them (and their sickly, mutated children) go hang. Basically, the thinking of most elven nobles is that, if they can't afford the specialized clothing, filter masks, and treatments needed to avoid the worst effects of iron poisoning, then they shouldn't come to Ore. Ore is for their betters, and they should come, do their menial work, and then get themselves back through the portal to Elfland. Any talk about unequal treatment, or of the callousness of the nobility, is simply whining. After all, if they deserved better, then they should have been born properly.

Unfortunately, many of the lower-born elves left Elfland because they have no prospects there, either. There are no options for them but to toil in their menial trades, to serve the Court, and to go abroad to fight whomever the King sees fit for them to fight. They simply do not matter, and their suffering does not concern the elven nobility ever a little bit. Clearly, this gives rise to some resentment on the part of the lower-born (called lordak-mugh by the nobility, meaning "rust children"--and, yes, that sounds just as bad to a lower-born elf as the most virulently racist epithet one could utter). This resentment, in turn, has sparked a movement among the lower-born elves. This movement is called (in the old language of the Dominionist elves) Morgath'ak-Lugash, or "The Iron Fist."

Morgath'ak-Lugash has been simmering for a long while now. Mainly, it manifested itself in graffiti and acts of vandalism. Younger, lower-class elves have adopted symbols and slogans associated with it to appear consequential to their peers. However, the Iron Fist is no joke. It is led by a secret cabal of leaders, and has a hidden network of members, organized into cells to maintain their anonymity. Some of the leaders are powerful in their own right, but not from the nobility. Some exercise influence through criminal enterprises. Some are high-ranking members of artisans' guilds. Quietly, and so very carefully, the members of this cabal are conspiring against the elven nobility. Soon will come a time when their silence is no more. They will rise, and they will extract a bitter retribution for their suffering. The broad masses of lower-born elves may even support them, if they can provide a solution to the Iron Issue. Here's the thing though. There are rumors of a permanent cure for iron sensitivity. 

Should such a cure become broadly available, it would rock the very foundations of elven society on Ore (and perhaps even in Elfland), and upset the existing power structures. The nobility will not stand for that. They have their own league of troubleshooters to deal with Morgath'ak-Lugash, and they are on the hunt for those who would oppose them. There already have been... incidents. A young elf, known to be a member of criminal syndicate, was found recently, his limbs nailed to a tree in a public park. Iron nails, of course. He was gagged tightly to keep his screams from being heard, and his flesh carved with the slogan, "Thus, for all traitors to the King." From the state of his body, it seems as death must have been a very long time coming, and excruciatingly painful. This other organization has no name, at least not one that anyone knows, but it is known; and it is feared.

For those in the know, it has become quite obvious that there will be a confrontation in due time, and it will be bloody. The tinder is laid upon the hearth, and the kindling well-oiled. All it needs is a proper spark, and the fires of revolution will burn hot and spare none. Among the other races, only a few even have an inkling of what is happening among the elves. Even those who know (the Grand Vizier's spymaster is one such) have very little information, and are dismissive of its importance to the security of the realm. Morgath'ak-Lugash is no more than a collection of petty rabble, elvish trash who will get properly sorted out should they have the temerity to do more than gripe their wine shops and paint a few, pathetic slogans in the public squares. They are no real threat, of course, though they may cause some trouble for the elven nobility. Even so, reason the Grand Vizier's advisors, anything that keeps those high-born pricks busy and out of the affairs of men can only be a good thing. Right? So, they do not worry.

There are unfortunate facts about fire, though, that they should remember. Fire doesn't reason. Fire doesn't respect boundaries. Fire has no conscience. Fire simply burns. Left to its own devices, a well-laid fire that escapes its containment will burn everything in its path.

The Spires of the Elven Lords

Iron is poison. Iron is inescapable. Iron kills.

Since their coming to Ore, the elven people have fought a losing battle, to escape the effects of Ore's poisonous, iron-rich environment. Or, if not escape it (for this thing truly is not possible in the long term), to delay the onset of iron poisoning. There are several ways to do this, but today I will speak only of the first: The elven enclaves.

Elven culture on Ore has attempted, wherever possible, to find new ways to seal the elven people away from the outside environment, and from the the poison that saps their vitality, warps their magic, and corrodes their very souls. The most notable places where this has occurred are the Spires of Ur-Hadad. Though Man conquered the elves in His rebellion, lo these many years ago, the elves never surrendered their Spires. They still stand, a testament and a monument to elven persistence in their quixotic fight against the inevitable. In the end, there is only metal. Ore's very core spins malignantly beneath their feet, and its arteries pump iron rich magma. There is no escape, no surcease, only the long, bitter struggle against the inevitable. Then, there is death, or there is madness, or there is the choice to "sail into the West," a cryptic reference to Elfland that no elf has ever explained to outsiders. All we know is that sometimes elves return to elfland, and they don't come back.

The Spires were built to combat the iron threat, and consist of what, for lack of a better description, are the bones of ancient creatures. Though their arts are not now practiced (and are forbidden by decree), the ancient elves of the Dominion were masters of technomancy, and could create life through processes now forbidden (though it is rumored that some elven factions still follow this path). They "bred" homes, aether ships, fortresses, fell constructs bred for battle, and all manner of other things. These creatures were grown from a single seed and developed over time into the mature works of elven master artisans of this craft. Over what amounted to many generations of the lives of Men, five elven Spires grew from such seeds, rising thousands of feet into the skies above Ur-Hadad, each unique and yet the same as the others.

In appearance, the Spires look like the bleached, blue-white bones of great creatures (actually a complex diamond-like substance), shining unsullied by time under the sun and moons of Ore. Their surfaces are near-impregnable, with few windows or portals, and these well guarded. The rise, with insectile grace, into the sky, sharp points skewering the clouds layers above, disappearing from sight, far, far above. They look just a little bit like gigantic vines and fronds, laden with buds and studded with thorns, climbing toward eternity.

No non-elven person has ever entered the Spires. In fact, not even every elf has done so. They are sealed off to most, and guarded jealously against unauthorized entry. Cloistered within are the elite of elven society, whose faces are masked in strange helms and concealing armors and robes, and whose voices emerge, strange and discordant, like a chorus of angels, from the places where their mouths must be. No living human has ever seen the faces of the elven nobility, at least not in life.

Each Spire has a name Anuch-Dar (the Collective Mind), Morgath-Ka'ak (the Bloody Hand), Morgath-Gur (the Sinister Hand), Morgath-Noriel (the Adroit Hand), and Anuch-Ur (the Singular Mind). No one is quite sure what these names mean, and the elves aren't inclined to answer questions about them. In fact, the Spires are not spoken of in the hearing of non-elves, and even those elves who walk among Men refuse any attempt to discuss them, going so far as to fight duels to avoid doing so. As a result, we have little to go on but rumors. Here are a few.

• The elves are preparing an army to reconquer Ore.
• The elves are using their arcane knowledge to build a bridge to the the moons.
• The elven females are the true rulers, and use the Spires to keep their breeding stock of pure-blooded mates in harem.
• The Spires descend miles into the depths of Ore, and are just the tips of a far vaster structure that spans the entire world.
• The Spires are great ships, and could leave the surface of Ore to climb among the moons and stars.
• The creatures living in the Spires are not elves at all, but demonic creatures, and wear their concealing raiment to hide their true natures.
• The elves are attempting to cross-breed with Men, and the Spires are full of vast slave pens, technomantic laboratories, and mad elves bent on fiendish experiments, lusting after human women. 
• The Spires are great libraries of lost knowledge, jealously guarded by powerful elven mages.
• The Spires are portals to other planes, where the elves still rule great empires of cruelty and despair.

None of these rumors has been substantiated, but neither have they been disproved. And there are many more than these, each wilder than the last, each speaking to the greatest hopes and deepest fears of the Men of Ore, and each underlining the great rift that still exists between the two races.

In their enclaves, the elves are safe, and keep themselves pure from the taint of iron, for a time.

Outside of the enclaves, Men gaze suspiciously upon the Spires, pondering their threat and their promise, at the same time filled with dread and with avarice.

Outside the Spires, there also are elves. They are not the elite of elven society. They do not share in its bounty. They are not privy to its secrets. Their lives are too short, and too many of them are corrupted by iron. Their misery grows, generation by generation, as they are warped and corroded from within. They, too, gaze at the Spires. And their hatred grows a little each day, like the shoots of a thorn bush rising from blackened ground, growing from sentiment, to philosophy, to vocation. Their hatred is spreading and becoming organized, and it has a name: Morgath'ak-Lugash, the Iron Fist.

More about the Elves of Ore and the Effects of Iron

I've written previously (several times, in fact) about the Elves of Ore. While I don't like to play elves that much, I'm pretty fascinated by them as they are emerging in the Metal Gods project I've been working on with  +Adam Muszkiewicz, +Wayne Snyder, and the rest of of the Divine Order of The Purple Tentacle. My next adventure will be very elf-centric, and will examine in great detail what might happen as elves attempt to deal with iron infection, as I wrote about in another post. I'd like to follow that idea up, here.

Elves have little tolerance for ferrous materials, and particularly forged iron. It's poisonous to them in the same way that heavy metals are poisonous to humans. Iron is debilitating, physically and mentally. It may even be that it's debilitating, spiritually, as well. Elves must avoid places with high concentrations of iron, like the aptly named Iron Coast. There are even some regions of Ore with sufficient iron that the water is undrinkable by elves. This is, in part why Ur-Hadad was one of the bastions of elven culture, before Man's rebellion and eventual triumph. Much of the land there is relatively low in iron content, though no place on Ore is totally free of iron. It was the least of the evils.

So, for the Elves of Ore, dealing with this peculiar relationship with iron has challenged their artisans for as long as elves have inhabited Ore. They have learned to cultivate and spin spider silk into thread so fine that their clothing is nearly impermeable. They have labored long to find means of purifying air and water. They have developed amazing means of sealing their enclaves off, using both arcane power and mechanical inventions. Their healers have tried, though largely unsuccessfully, to create means of leaching iron from tainted elves' blood and tissues. To put a point on it, elven industry is uncommonly fixated on dealing with the iron problem, and this issue permeates the work of virtually every class of elven artisan, and many an elf has made a glorious name through successful invention of new means of avoiding infection. What they've managed to produce is more a band-aid than a cure, but the various devices, tonics, and raiment they've produced, work.

In many cases, wealthy elven characters look like fremen in still suits (from Dune) or Mass Effect quarians, hidden behind masks and filters, shrouded in folds of peculiarly tailored clothing, and wearing elaborate helms and headdresses or strange devices, which hum and glow with weird energies. These iron countermeasures also are very, very expensive (as expensive as plate mail, or even more so). Thus, elves with the means to buy them tend to be among the most elite of their race. They are long-lived and relatively healthy, avoiding most of the effects of iron (but certainly not all). Poor elves don't fare nearly as well. They are more sickly and the rate of birth defects among them is much, much higher than among wealthier members of their race. The poor also don't live nearly as long, at least if they remain on Ore.

The elves who can afford these countermeasures, though, also look alien to non-elves (and as privileged and uncaring to poor elves). They mark themselves as Other, seal their compounds off from the world and hide behind hermetically seals portals and windows, and otherwise isolate and alienate themselves from the world and its non-elven people. For this reason, any elf character who uses iron countermeasures should apply a penalty of -1 per countermeasure to his or her Personality modifier.

Modeling In-Game Effects of Iron Exposure on Elven Characters

Clearly, though, if I'm going to make this a part of play, I need a simple mechanic for doing so. The easiest thing I can do is to assume that the effects of iron impact character attributes, especially Strength and Stamina, though I think I could make an argument for effects on Agility, Personality, and Intelligence, as well.

Here's what I propose. Iron infection should cause attribute drain, and this effect can occur due to either acute exposure (e.g., being wounded with iron or steel weapons, wearing iron armor, etc.) or chronic exposure (e.g. living on Ore and not using "protection"). Acute exposure is relatively easy to track. Chronic exposure is a bit more difficult, and would require something to be tracked long term. If the mechanic is too granular it just becomes a pain to use, so I think a more abstract means is better. So, how about this?

Effects of Chronic Iron Exposure

At the beginning of each new adventure, Elf characters must make a d20 roll. If the roll is less than their character level, then the character must reduce one attribute by 1 point. If the elf in question is protected by the countermeasures discussed above, he or she may reduce the target number by 1 for each countermeasure used (up to 3). Failure to make the roll results in attribute drain of 1 point. The affected attribute could be at the option of player or Judge, or it could be rolled randomly. Luck is not affected by iron exposure, but an elf may burn 1 point of Luck to avoid the effects of a failed roll.

Example: Cresto the Elf is at level 3. Before starting a new adventure, he must roll a d20 and get a score of 3 or more. If Cresto rolls a 1 or 2, he must reduce one of his attributes by 1. He rolls a d5, getting a 2. Cresto loses 1 point of ... (*rolls randomly*)... Agility, permanently.

Effects of Acute Iron Exposure

Given the nature of the game, characters are going to get wounded a lot. Just to make this a bit more fair and simple for elven characters, acute iron exposure only occurs when they are reduced to zero hit points as a direct result of being hit with an iron or steel weapon (or trap, or whatever). That is, if the character is wounded during combat with an iron or steel weapon, and by that strike is reduced to 0 hit points, he or she must make a check just as for chronic iron exposure.

Example: Cresto (3rd level elf) is already wounded (down to 4 hit points). The fearsome Octo-man swings an axe (steel), inflicting 5 damage. Cresto goes down. After the fight, his companions attempt to "recover the body" (as per DCCRPG Rules, p. 93), and the Luck check is successful. Cresto is alive. He loses 1 point of Strength, Agility, or Stamina, as per the rules, but then must also roll a check to avoid the effects of iron exposure. He rolls a 7, which is equal to or higher than his character level. He avoids additional effects (this time). If he had failed, he would roll a d5 to determine which attribute is affected and subtract 1 point from that attribute.

Optional (Hardcore mode): Elves struck with iron weapons take an extra point of damage.

Long-term Impact on Elven Characters

Over the long term, as elves reach higher levels, the chances of debilitation increase. I think this is a simple way to measure the passage of time and how it increases chronic effects. It also makes elven characters a bit less durable over the long term, unless the elf in question takes measures to address the effects accrued. I think this could be done in any number of ways, most of which reduce to the best rule: "If you want it, then quest for it." A good mechanic also should be productive of better stories, after all, and should have a real impact on the characters and the game world. I think what I've offered here can achieve those things.