Venture Seed - the Compassionate Hand Society

 The Compassionate Hands society

– ( registered imperial charitable organization)

A multidisciplinary professional organization founded during the late Reconquista period by a Holy Courtesan, a Psychic Healer, and subsequently endorsed by the then Agent of Holy Exterre and a high ranking member of the Empress cult.

Membership is by application and is not common;  applicants must be a member of one of the “compassionate professions” – a healer, geneticist, maternal, courtesan, doctor, or the like  Prospective members must demonstrate a life long and intense commitment to the furtherance of their fellow life forms and that of the imperium.   Many applicants are invited to apply after the society or it’s members hear of an especially valiant or noble act of healing or charity; members in good standing can recommend people for invitation. 

Devout clerics of gods of healing and especially those of a nurturing aspect may find themselves receiving an invitation should they reach level 2 or higher in imperial space.   

DCC characters who help stop a plague or viral infection or some other medical achievement of that scale may find themselves receiving an invitation to apply.  Membership in this society does not recognize character class – a Field Scientist is as much a potential member of this organization as a Psi Healer, Cleric, or anyone else.   Membership is more about “achievements & intentions” – if you are the White Healing Wizard, no one will care that you serve Thrice!Angry!Click!Click The-Scion-of-Our-Destruction when the guns come out so long as you take care of people and do good works the rest of the time.

The organization is well funded, insulated from much of imperial authority, and very powerful, albeit indirectly.   On occasion, even now, it has included even imperial criminals and those opposed to imperial rule – provided they are first responsible for their fellow sentients. Non-citizen members can functionally act as citizens while acting as members of this organization, and sometimes especially gifted healers will, if poor, find themselves recommended into their ranks under the aegis of “sponsoring compassionate and instructional travel”

It is not unknown for the Society to assemble crisis teams, composed of dedicated volunteers, to travel to especially troubled worlds – an adventuring band could include several members and the security detail that keeps them alive in hostile DMZs, plague zones, areas overrun with the Un-dead and the like.  

Post-colonial Imperial Kind – additional Being types for Galaxy Black

Being a compilation of various clades, species, and other dedicated populations with minimal distribution across the Imperial Volume.  

 Additional Being types for Galaxy Black (free pdf download)

 

Citizens of the Imperium : Beyond the Zero

 – a few pregens that are NOT zero level scrubs

Now that Galaxy Black I Characters and Classes has been out for a while I thought it would be a good idea to drop a common set of public use pregens.  All of them have seen a fair bit of use in playtesting and many of them have turned up as examples throughout Galaxy Black and it's associated Sub-ether publications so they should even be broadly familiar to you.   One of them has appeared as a zero level character, sans character sheet, in the very first Sub-ether. 

As time goes on, I will add more to the mix.   Remember as always you can bring any character type from any DCC book without really any problem;  (That Damn Hot Dog Suit gets around you know?) 

Citizens of the Imperium : Beyond the Zero – a few pregens that are NOT zero level scrubs

 Reminder note To the Player   Once this is your character, make them, any sex, any gender, tweak their traits, do whatever you like to the finer details to make it your own. Or jettison the details here entirely and run with whatever.

Galaxy Black III Star travel and the secrets of the Sub-ether

 

Now Available from the Dreaming Gynoid store  

and

 Drive Thru

Galaxy Black II Magic, metaphysics, and psychic powers is available for ansible transmission citizen!

 

So what is in Galaxy Black II?  A  full psychic tradition, inspired by Moorcock, Le Guin, Oromo, and Dick but also Charles Fort, Madame Blavatsky, plus Al Bester, Elfquest and the Tomorrow People

 Magic – the most immediately applicable to your DCC game; the imperial magical tradition, new arcane affinities, bizarre powers of illusion and necromancy. 

 Metaphysics – A detailed variant of the DCC magic system providing a flexible third metaphysical tradition, psychic powers.  This is presented with a host of rules and options to exist alongside the Wizard and Clerical abilities and is of comparable flexibility and potency. 

 Psychic Powers – finally, a starting selection of psychic powers from level one to five are presented in full detail

 

Fold Space, Defy Time, Bend the Stars to your will

 

 The human race is gone but humanity lives on, it’s culture and genome infecting a million worlds.

Nothing is ever forgotten Even in a Collapsing Universe; the struggle of Law and Chaos goes on.

  
What is Galaxy Black?

Galaxy black is a science fiction and space fantasy toolkit for your DCC RPG game. A lightly gothic semi-humorous fantasy of the space future that was, and could still be, one day. With magic, bright colours, and deep implications. For everyone.

With Galaxy Black you should be able to fake your way through your favorite SF

franchise without any problems at all – from golden age space opera to grotty modern post-cyberpunk, from the gutter to the stars, and all points in between.

Galaxy black is also, for those who want it, a setting, showing one example of how using all the elements in the book (and there are a lot of them!) together can work, using a traditional golden age Galactic Empire as a model.

Galaxy black is generators! Make worlds, cultures, aliens, gods, and technology, use the campaign frameworks and adventure generators to inspire or map out a whole adventure, a whole campaign!

Fully compatible with the DCC RPG and its many spawn, available from Goodman Games.

Now Available from the Dreaming Gynoid store and Drivethru RPG

Drive Thru 

Dreaming Gynoid store

Designer’s Notes: A funny thing happened on the way to the Shaolin monastery

 Designer’s Notes:  A funny thing happened on the way to the Shaolin monastery

 

The three electronauts meet in secret but no longer in privacy = one among them, the last to arrive, does so astride a majestic robotic flying horse that squawks, plays music and seemingly farts glitter and rainbows;  the mage themself has a shaved head and an elaborate tracery pattern inked into his skull

These are members of the electric college.   They seem quaint and somewhat hard to believe, but they are in fact quite successful illusionists who use a fusion of cybernetics, technology, psychology, neural hacks, and actual illusion magic to foster a sense of wonder in the mundanes around them. (This is their stated purpose and calling – the kindling of wonder)

So understand their larger than life personas are quite intentional and very deliberate. It is part and parcel of their calling as much as it is a badge and manifestation of their Art.

They are one of the greatest forces for good within the Imperium today.

 

 

Galaxy Black II Magic, metaphysics, and psychic powers should be out by the time you see this.   While it incorporates several new spells and magical traditions (as above) the major thrust of the work is the introduction of a variant magic system for psychic powers in DCC (two of them actually, one plays nicer with DCC as written)

 Several of the disciplines in Galaxy Black have a scattering of details given for the monastery where it is easiest to learn such a thing.  Why was this done? Several fold.   The credo of DCC is Quest For It and in the Collapsing Universe it is no different.  I envision most starting and low level psions, in-character having a list of places they would like to go and train, rather like the characters in a martial arts film[1].   But like everything else in the game it’s a story hook, a neat thing to dangle in front of the PCs or Always keep them moving.   Like any destination in galaxy black there are bound to be complications on arrival – some worlds may regard their disciplines as ancient cultural practices and expect you – and those with you – to demonstrate courage (or whatever they value on that planet), others will be literal monasteries and you may be waiting at the foot of the mountain before they have room for you or find you worthy.  Some may be more like universities or secret training academies a la Traveller’s Psionics Institutes.  No two should really be much alike save for advocating the practice of one or more psychic disciplines.  Part of the flavor of the psychic material in Galaxy Black is a deliberate callback to old Shaw Brothers films, modern Wuxia, and everything in between.  

 The assumed default “voyaging” style of game play that I think most people will take to works best when you have a destination in mind and don’t’ mind the time it takes to get there. And it may take some time……

 

  Remember in Galaxy Black, every voyage should be long and weird, and often an adventure unto itself.  The destination will always have unforeseen complications. Often very awkward or unpleasant ones.   Travel between the stars is fraught with peril and not for the timid.  Each voyage should be memorable for some reason.  Each destination even more so. No one should ever think of a world they have visited as simply a stream of numbers and letters in an index somewhere.  They should befuddle, amuse, frustrate, and challenge.  Always,

Some good examples extrapolated from actual play 

“The trip from High Arcturus to Goth, where half the crew died, and we had to journey into the underworld to get their souls back…while in transit. I remember that. My confiscator has to eat a non-replicated pomegranate once a year or they will rot from the inside.    But I don’t show up on life sensors now if I don’t want to.”

 Or

“Yasmin? That’s the planet that turned everyone permanently yellow right?“

“The apparent luster of semi-pearlescent amber jade.” 

“So yeah yellow….”

“I guess that was the favorite colour of the High Patriarch when they ripped us apart atom by atom and rebuilt us to “cure us of infection.”  But yes to summarize, yes we all got turned an identical shade of bright yellow.  Inside and out.”  

 

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

-         Q

---

[1] Which reinforces the DCCness of it all. In universe, people journey to these exotic psychic academies and monestaries and train for decades to learn the one discipline.  A PC breezes in and in weeks or months picks up this one also.   Leveled characters, i.e. the PCs, should stand out as being implicitly larger than life.

And now the 30 second glory

 

 

 

 

One nation

One sky

One Empire

 

Both Galsxy Black II Magic, Metaphysics and Psychic Powers and Galaxy Black III Star travel and the Secrets of the Sub-ether ready for release;  just waiting on approvals from GG.    Thank you all for your immense patience with this project! 

The next installment , Galaxy Black IV  Gear (Space Trader Nick’s Coreworld Supply Catalog 957^th Sidereal)  Will be a little bit longer in coming as I need to go back through all the numbers and make sure they sing (it’s a very pixelbitchy book).  More than any other save perhaps III, Galaxy Black IV will be a fairly self-contained book for those wanting to pick and choose.  The imperial book of common prayer (which is functionally our Deities and Demigods book) and the Judges Guide to the Collapsing Universe will round out the year.  

Somewhere in here Sub-ether 03 will drop.

Many years of deep studio work are finally paying off and we couldn’t be happier.  

 

We are a tiny little company,  if you like what we do or just want us to stay around, consider supporting us on Patreon.   Get early access, previews, and WIP from all of our coming projects by becoming a patron today!

 

The Imperial Shadow has fallen over your world - Galaxy Black

 

The human race is gone but humanity lives on, it’s culture and genome infecting a million worlds. 

Nothing is ever forgotten  Even in a Collapsing Universe; the struggle of Law and Chaos goes on.

 

What is Galaxy Black?

“Galaxy black is a science fiction and space fantasy toolkit for your DCC RPG game.  A lightly gothic semi-humorous fantasy of the space future that was, and could still be, one day.  With magic, bright colours, and deep implications.  For everyone. 

 

With Galaxy Black you should be able to fake your way through your favorite SF franchise without any problems at all – from golden age space opera to grotty modern post-cyberpunk, from the gutter to the stars, and all points in between.  

Galaxy black is also, for those who want it, a setting, showing one example of how using all the elements in the book (and there are a lot of them!) together can work, using a traditional golden age Galactic Empire as a model.

Galaxy black is generators!  Make worlds, cultures, aliens, gods, and technology, use the campaign frameworks and adventure generators to inspire or map out a whole adventure, a whole campaign! 

Galaxy black has character classes, psionics, weird alien magic, demons, daemons, and terrifying new vistas of reality “

Fully compatible with the DCC RPG and its many spawn, available from Goodman Games.  

 

 Galaxy Black I Characters & Classes introduces the core classes of Galaxy Black to supplement (not replace) those used in DCC, from the undead slaying space knights of the celeste numina to alien bounty hunters who stalk their prey with biotech  

EXTENSIVE alien creation tables allow you to create a single alien or a whole world of them, customized and tweaked with the shaper tables, and all manner of options. Over 4300 combinations are possible!  Judges can create whole alien armies and players distinctive gene tweaked unique entities with the same system. 

Legacies tables to get the band of voyagers together quickly with common bonds they have inherited.

Extensive background about some of the more alien clades of the Empress Imperium, the engineered Insectivroids, the sun castes of the Saurids, and much more!

Use as much, or as little, as you wish in your campaign. All options are full compatible with one another while remaining modular.

Note: this is only the first book of Galaxy Black. You will need the DCC RPG rules to play;  Those seeking a highly psychic or magically oriented game will need Galaxy Black II Magic, Metaphysics, and Psychic Powers, coming in April.  

 

Now Available from the Dreaming Gynoid store and Drivethru RPG

Drive Thru

Dreaming Gynoid store  

 

The Waiting is Over

 

From the (new) introduction to Galaxy Black

This…is not the introduction I planned to write. (If you are curious, it largely exists intact as the intro to Colony Black.)

 

The facts are that Dreaming Gynoid is a tiny little start-up operation with very little budget but a lot of ideas and a lot more love, and the last few years have been rough but the last three have just been brutal.  2020 and quarantine was kind of the last straw.  Don’t worry this is neither farewell or epitaph but it is important (perhaps, quite likely in fact, only to me) to get across that this is not the way I intended to release any of this.

But we adapt or the world breaks us.

So thus I welcome you to this, the first volume of Galaxy Black, a full service SF-Fantasy-Horror toolkit for your DCC RPG game.  In the years that it has taken to develop it has gone from being simply a single, one and done SF toolkit to a sprawling wonderous mad thing of it’s own.  Many thanks to Joe Goodman, Harley Stroh, Doug Kovacs and everfyone else involved in bringing the strange weird beast that is the DCC RPG to life and for letting us all play in your backyard.

 

This first volume deals with people – these are (some of the) trillions of zeros that make up the Empress Imperium.  Here you will find zero level character creation rules, character classes, and more tools to mod those character creation rules than you will know what to do with.  It is hoped that the Judge will use these tables to create specialized populations of the various clades and species in the book, unique to the worlds of their campaign.  Here also, these tables allow, in a relatively harmless and (mostly) mechanics free players to specialize the weird aliens they play and the specifics of their characters to an incredible degree.

 

Much like the first fantasy role playing games, the options herein, much like Galaxy Black itself, exist across the whole spectrum of space fantasy, sf, and horror, making a heady space fantasy potpourri.  This is intentional.   While Galaxy Black undeniably has a style and an attitude all of it’s own, there is enough herein (once it is complete) that the Judge and her players should be at home, able to create almost any SF situation from just GB and the DCC RPG rulebook.

 

In coming months, the remainder of galaxy black will release likewise.  I have tried to stage the releases in order of maximum usefulness outside of Galaxy Black itself, both for widest possible appeal and so you wonderful completists don’t have to wait a year and  a half to have the ‘complete game.’   A book on gear and technology will accompany this one, followed by one big book detailing space travel, the sub-ether, and all of that fun stuff (finally!).  Following that a book on the supernatural, detailing the gods, the magic, and (at last) the psionics of Galaxy Black.   Afterward that leaves the bestiary and the Judge’s guide.

 

Gwendolyn Harper, March 5, 2021

It was a harsh land, a harsh and unforgiving land. Setting up a Doomed Colony Scenario

During a Colony’s first year, almost anything can pose a problem.  Assuming the colony is not entirely subsisting on emergency rations, winter and countless other environmental considerations can affect attempts at agriculture, regardless of the nature of those crops be they imported or native.   Surely certain (expensive) steps can be taken (greenhouse domes with full environmental controls and lifelocks) but these are seldom within the budget of a foundling colony.

A single mystery illness, crop failure, or environmental disaster can destroy the colony in mere progressions.

Free Download – the Doom that Came to Colony Six

 

GetColony Black here  (itch.io link) 

 And here  (drive thru link)

Colony Hazard - Thulk Worm Contagion

 Dear mother

 

Extraordinarily sun-burnt greetings from the distant imperial frontier!

We are coming up on our first local year here and what a year it has been!  This is my fist test of my homebuilt ansible, I have no idea how long it will take you to receive or how badly it will have degraded.  We are well into the Quarantine, but our little colony is doing incredibly well for itself. To be perfectly fair I think it was declared while I was still in transit, but we only learned of it locally maybe 20 progressions back if that.  

 

We are on the northern continent right now, which is in winter strangely, so we may have picked a bad time.  Apparently there is a sapient people up here and I would like, am trying to make peaceful first contact with them, as a representative of the colony if nothing else.   One of the other colony sites encountered them on their first trip to the mainland and well I am pretty much the resident scientist for the colony at this point.   I’m happy to help! 

 

A lot more has gone on and I have several strange new friends, but I can’t real.ly talk about that.

I may need to formally speak to ‘Great Aunt Greta” about the family giving me a grower’s license for some napthentevine.   I’ll need the full one as I’m so far from home. Also, I would eventually need to bring in and vette my own licensors.  Never saw that coming.

I believe we have spores.  Must dash,

Regards to father

Your socially appropriately loving daughter

 

 

 

P.S.  The megafauna here used to be dregging ENORMOUS.  I’ve scanned in a few of the bigger fossils for you to print on your Maker.  I’m sure Gran will appreciate the conversation starter

Colony Hazard – Thulk Worms (free!  Get it here )

What is this about?  Get Colony Black here  (drive thru link) 

Colony Black - Useful Colony links post

Every time someone has come to the cluster and tried to recover, or reactivate the portals and gates here, disaster has struck.   If the Player Characters (or worse, the authorities, or even worse, the Company) get their hands on these portals will it happen again? How soon?

 A few additional resources that would be of extraordinary extra help in making use of the material in Colony Black! Enjoy. 

A brief history of the corporation

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-corporation-1600-to-2100/

 Andre Norton’s Forerunner, a big big big influence on this ish

https://www.tor.com/2017/12/18/a-little-alien-magic-andre-nortons-forerunner/

(Part of a great little series looking back over Andre Norton’s total output. Pretty much the only reason I go to Tor nowadays.)

 

 A few links from the BRILLIANT Atomic Rockets page. This Man Deserves Your Moiney

 So…company scrip

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/money.php#id--Finance--Medium_of_Exchange--Trade_Tokens

 the galactic survey

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/survey.php

 interstellar colonization

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/colonysitereal.php#id--Interstellar_Colonization

 

 

Finally a few links for those of you looking to flesh out colony 5

This is part of an awesome YouTube series on alien biospheres

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_SNUf5udMU&feature=youtu.be

 What is an archipelago?

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/archipelago.html

 some additional inspiration

https://www.britannica.com/place/Malay-Archipelago

Colony Black

Welcome to the Imperial Frontier

Want to get away from the law, the public eyes, the constant surveillance, and all the damn biometrics? Want to make use of some wacky sociopolitical theory that would Never. Fly. in Imperial space?  Start your own commune or temple!  

Each time someone has come to the Cluster and tried to recover or reactive the portals there, disaster has struck.  If the Company, the Authorities, or - worse - the PCs - get their intenticles on these portals will it happen again?  How soon?

A sample colony and rules to found your own barebones colony on the frontier.  All the possible threats that could initially manifest and just maybe a path to forge your world's destiny!  It's all up to you. The tools here for you to explore, exploit, survive, and conquer. 

Tools for solitaire and one-on-one play

A sourcebook for the New Orien cluster, cut off from the Imperial network

The beginnings of a complete campaign! 

Yes two releases in a single week.  IT just happened that way. :)

Now available from drivethrurpg and our own storefront

Out now! Apocrypha Obscura - Transmissions from the Dreaming Gynoid

A compilation from the first years of the Dreaming Gynoid blog. Compiled from five years worth of articles, posts, and missives, many no longer available,

Longtime readers of the blog will find here much that is familiar and more than a little that was lost in the blogspot purge    I've gone through and tagged (I think) everything here int he blog that appears herein.  Transparency - it's a thing.   Also I don't want anyone thinking I'm trying to mislead anyone here.   Most of this material has been previously published, often in a somewhat different form, on the Dreaming Gynoid blog from 2018 to the present.  Some material also appeared prior on the  “Swords of Jaldipoor,” “I Shoot Him in the Face!”  and “Lens of Unrectified Night” Blogs, from 2015-2018.  

DriveThru RPG link 

Dreaming Gynoid store link 

Awards and Decorations for 956 S.R. (2020 Patron appreciation superpost)

PATRON APPRECIATION POST

This year alone we posted 38 early releases, previews, venture seeds, behind the scenes, and making of posts.  Sub-ethernaut level backers get access to the Galaxy Black playtest docs and scads of articles not seen anywhere else.  All proceeds go to making our books better!   We are still small but growing super fast.   Please consider giving the Dreaming Gynoid patreon a look see if you are interested.

 https://www.patreon.com/DreamingGynoid?fan_landing=true

 

Awards and Decorations for 956 S.R.   11.020 /Third Empire

 The Empress, Maos T’Uvurth  first of Her name, Queen mother of the Tanix dynasty commands forth the following commendations, special awards, and deeds of note at this the end of the imperial year (a Sidereal) 956, being the 956^th year in imperial record keeping since the conclusion of the Holy Reconquista of Vaena Martel I.

 The Empress’ List 956 S.R.

Osiris White, Chris Dunlap, James Velez, T.R. Williams, 

Tore Nielsen, Beckett Warren, Victor Garrison, Corey Brin,  and Jodi Breeden

 

All of you have made possible

The Book of Scarlet Abomination, Blasphemy Leak, and three issues of Sub-ether.  And (with your infinite patience) Galaxy Black

 

Sidereal Knighthoods

Beckett Warren, Jodi Breeden 

 are hereby awarded to those Imperial backers who have been with us more than a year.

 Special recognition and Imperial thanks also to

Aaron Johnson, and Evlyn Moreau for deeds above and beyond. 

 Moving into our third year, I want to also give thanks to every single one of you who have given us a look and those who continue to come back for more. We salute you!  Without you, this is all for naught.

 

Dreaming Gynoid studio is                      Gwendolyn Harper

 

Known Co-conspirators                            Chris Dunlap

                                                                               Osiris White

 

A little out of the ordinary.

Psychedelic and weird fantasy, SF, and horror

 

https://www.patreon.com/DreamingGynoid

https://dreaming-gynoid.itch.io/

https://ko-fi.com/dreaminggynoid

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/15028/Dreaming-Gynoid

 

We humbly thank Extrre Ashtereth for Her guidance and support these years of the Gynoid.  Praise Her Name, the Queen of Heaven.

And Tamarah Pandoramicum for allowing us to finish our tasks. Hail her dread majesty, princess of demons.