I've been having a really hard time just getting something onto the page this week. I wrote up another d100 blog post and started to roll up a sword but it just didn't feel good coming out. I decided to just type of a conversational post about the race of Hodas that I had the most input on. This isn't going to include their class write-up, That is for a later post as even recently I've been eyeing the class for a few edits for clarity and balance against it's fellow Hodas classes.
Furies were chosen as one of the races of Hodas while I ran Wasteland Without Epithet. The player in question backed out of the process early, abandoning them. The other players didn't think much of it but I really liked the bones this player gave them to work with. He determined that the Furies liked coffee, practiced martial arts and divination, that they hated supernatural horror and evil. He determined that they were extremely Lawful, with no chaos in their hearts (naturally a PC could be the exception to this). He determined that the Furies are stubborn and beautiful, that they uphold a set of laws that only they know, they worshiped the scribes of creation (who I later decided were the actual participants in the game of Wasteland itself, the players), They lived in hidden communal citadels in the high places of the world. These felt like good bones. I couldn't just leave them on the cutting room floor. So despite being the person running Wasteland, I picked them up and made them my own.
They became a class that felt a little like a warrior monk. Mechanically they had a deed die in the form of a smite, only accessible when fighting the enemies of law. They were described as unnervingly beautiful and loving martial art so they were handled like a monk, their AC derived from their personality score, their beauty is hard to focus on in a fight, it's captivating, unsettling. They gained a lesser augury ability, a simple wheel and woe system. something that felt vestigial but gets a lot of use at the table, they may remove their feathers to make tools and weapons, the creative players have fun with this.
Away from the mechanics over the years of playing the furies have gotten more and more fleshed out. People would play them and make up new things or give inspiration that fleshed them out as a people. We established that Furies leave their communities to become worthy, fighting the enemies of law and eventually returning to the sky citadel. Over time that slowly changed. Furies are essentially immortal as long as they are not slain. That time frame changes so much about them. When you encounter a Fury in Hodas it's possible they have been there for hundreds of years. These fast living races around them leaves their mark. We slowly decided that the Furies who return to the sky citadels might actually be bad influences on the young who leave for the world below. To walk with the men who live in the mud, the mud men. The average Fury has a sense of superiority to these short lived fools... at least at first. The truth is that most Furies never return to the sky citadels. They realize the importance of remaining on the ground to protect and guide these mud men, to pull them up from the mud. Some Furies will never learn this lesson, they will return to the citadel after slaying an enemy of law or leading a crusade and they will perpetuate the cycle that the mud men are inferior. Most Furies find that love and compassion override their sense of superiority and they remain among the mortals.
Originally Furies in Hodas had wings. As many experienced Judges know, flying at low levels can be difficult to work with. So it was decided that Furies bind their wings in wrappings of law, swearing not to unbind them until they are worthy of returning to the sky citadels. Then we started to question how that might get in the way. I cited things like Hawkgirl, Hawkman, and Angel who all bound their wings neatly in their back. Then questions of "how do they wear backpacks?" started to pop up in games. Recently we've settled on the bindings being more symbolic. They have no wings, they wear a sort of harness or string, rope, chain, or similar item which acts as the binding that rids them of their wings until the binding is removed. So that is how it is now, their feathers simply appear in their hands as long as they can make the plucking motion.
The gods of the furies were described by the player as "the scribes of creation". given how religion changes over time due to the countless reasons that it does, it was decided after he left the game that they worship these scribes as the creators of the perfect world and law itself. The scribes created a perfect world and moved on to create another perfect world. Only after wasteland was done did I, with my love of the meta possibilities, decide that the scribes were the players themselves. Those who gathered to create the world of Hodas. The 8 scribes of creation, my friends. Six of the scribes had very active roles in weaving the tapestry of creation, one only named her chosen people and then left, leaving them to be twisted by random happenstance and chaos. The scribe who made the Furies, their personal scribe, gave details about them but walked away. The Furies interpret this as they were simply perfect with less need than the others.
Later, a Patron I wrote called The Architect became a part of their story. This patron was a character from my old superhero games, the product of a game called "True Self" in which the players were put into the world of superheroes I ran as themselves. The Architect has a long, boring, complex story but for the purposes of being a patron, he claims to be a "bored super wizard" and claims that he didn't create the world, but he did plan it out and lay down the foundation, after that the world created itself. This architect became the patron of a player's Fury character. She immediately integrated the architect into the faith, declaring that he was a subordinate to the scribes, their words weaved creation onto the tapestry but the architect laid down the blank tapestry for them to begin their work. This player was one of the people who was there for Wasteland and knew exactly what she was doing.
Coffee was mentioned about the Furies. It was decided that Furies make the absolute best cup of coffee in all of Hodas, which meant that the setting had coffee and we could expand that to others. Goblins make it stronger, strong enough to cause stamina damage, but Furies do it best. This extended to other things. We decided that there was a special type of weapon, but not armor, in the setting, called Fury forged steel. These weapons are only ever made in things Furies are proficient in, darts, javelins, spears, short swords and other similar weapons. Fury forged steel grants a non-magical +1 to hit and damage, demonstrating their superior craftsmanship.
We decided that furies were heavily influenced by Greek origins. Their names are all Greek in origin with only players being the exception. They dress in a manner similar to the ancient greeks, though more revealing to take advantage of their striking beauty. Their art, weapon designs, and sensibilities lean towards a generic, homogenized ancient Greek feeling, not leaning too hard into any one of the many cultures that made up ancient Greece.
As far as classes go there are currently three versions of the fury. Our standard one, as described above a sort of warrior monk who fights with fury forged steel or nothing at all. There is a largely untested Qill of the scribes version who is more like a cleric. They see themselves as a more direct instrument of the scribes than others, gaining spellcasting and lay on hands but losing out on their smite deed, instead adding their attack bonus to both attack and damage. The Quill of the Scribes loses all weapon training in order to come closer to their beloved scribes. The third option is called the Fury Speaker. The speaker is a bit of an edge case to the furies. They learn the words of creation itself to string them together for magical effects. Right now the Speaker uses a sort of free form magic system using the tables from Knave 2e to get their words that the player directly sits with me and determines at least a few options while leaving others open to on the fly spell creation. This class required a lot of trust between Judge and player and out of everything I've ever written it is one of two (the other being the Ooze) classes I would caution that the player should be the right fit for it lest they spend an inordinate amount of time on their turn hemming and hawing over the words they wanna use. In both cases, the Pen and the Speaker, the Fury becomes something with access to some kind of magic and in both cases they are seen as an outlier in Fury society. The Quill is seen as an extremist who had come closer to the scribes than other furies to gain miracles from the Scribes. The speaker however, is picking up the words of creation that the scribes left on the floor of their workshop and learning them by inscribing them on their body through ink or scars, they are seen as almost heretical to the rest of the their people, pushing the limits of exactly what is acceptable.
If you're still here, thank you for reading my talk about the Furies who have kind of become my favorite race in Hodas. The players in the games have had such a big influence on them after they were initially put into the game. I didn't intend to write an essay about Furies today but it's what came to me when I decided to write about something I like. The base class for them is probably coming soon, still being balanced. If you have ideas, questions, or thoughts I would love to hear them! Maybe I'll put out similar posts about the other races of Hodas, the Goblins, Minotaur, Mountainborn, Ooze, Kobolds, and Featherfolk all of which are shaped by the players in the same ways. So thanks for coming out and reading this!
