Our Loving Mother weeps. From beneath our seas to her shores, the Empire of the Sky has sunk its fangs into her heel, glutting itself on her lifeblood. Her children starve as her skin blanches bone-white, her rivers bleed iron-red, and her valleys and peaks carved out, abscessed and cratered. Left to fester under roaming foreign hands. Each hour the Enemy remains on her shores, seven souls are taken. Since the Accord, countless more have been ground and fed to their bottomless hunger For half a lifetime we have suffered these leeches at our breast. Half a lifetime too long. Brothers and sisters, our Mother cries out for help still. Her voice grows hoarse and ever weary. Will you answer her call with righteous war? Or will her voice fall silent on a coward's ears? — translated from a Khejjaran pirate transmission Every Burning leaves Ash in it's wake. Empires are no different. The skies above Almezár were aglow with cooling embers, amber-pale and baleful as the dusky silhouettes of the sky-cities of the Impérié l'Azhar Sedarié drifted far far, above the din of tumultuous revolt below. It has been 120 years since foreign soles first sullied the Kejjiri-jiim. What began as a fool's failed expedition ended with the world powers learning a land untouched by the Maelstrom existed. A vast, untouched expanse of fertile earth. One only needed the gall to lay claim. Ports and ship-lifts rose where cliffs faces were carved into and incised. Railways penetrated the Black Plateau to better feed the torrential flow of trade exports through the port cities. The earth was hollowed to sate the Empire’s appetite for riches, for industry, for war, for earth, for blood. In time, the Khej were hollowed out or uprooted from their land, too. Almezár was never meant to be permanent. At its best it was a penal colony installed for the express purpose of pushing the Khej into the Badlands, at its worst, a den for criminals, deviants, outlaws and dissidents. Now it stands proud in the wastes, swollen with settlers, soldiers, freedmen and slave alike, and of course the ever-present criminal element that birthed the city, all eking out an existence on earth so razed it no longer bears fruit, all beneath a sky that did not belong to them. Yet during this particular dusk the people sing late into the night. They spill ballads off slurring tongues and bellow from throats wet with wine, for Almezár's High Overseer is dead. And beneath those distant heavens, the Nujh-smoke of war rises from the flickering embers of revolt. Now that the hooks over... Hi, the name's Chrys, Me and my partner Viv are looking to playtest a personal project with some other creatives (that would be you) and see how well the rules hold up and to see if the gameplay is compelling enough to warrant a full write-up and post the system publicly on [itch.io](Log in to view or something so people can use in their own PBP games. It'll be a one-shot over 5 session (10 hours max), though if everyone's still interested and willing I'm not against transitioning it into a longer campaign. So what's the game like? Praxis, is a rules-light story engine focused on pushing your characters to evolve and change over the course of a campaign, and hopefully end up with a memorable story you can look back on wistfully. There's elements of deck building, JRPG-style turn based combat and therefore a measure of tactics in Praxis, but overall the rules for this playtest are simple enough to be taught in 10 minutes tops during session zero. Details(AKA:TLDR): It's a 5 session one-shot where you get to play as either insurgents, mercenaries, or gunrunners caught in the chaos of a country on the brink of civil war. You've gots to be 21+ dawg. You'll have to fill out a super brief form at the end of each week and jot down your thoughts/critiques/suggestions regarding the session. Invites are to be sent out on the 3rd of March. Session zero by the 7th. And if all goes well, Session one is set for the 10th. Synchronous sessions will be hosted on Discord, twice every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays from the 10th-24th of March. Each session will be 2 hours max, at a time (TBD) between 2PM to 8PM GMT. Also, super important. There is a list of themes this campaign will be exploring, so please make sure to read through the first page of the application form before applying. Full information about the playtest can be found in the Log in to view