The Spaces Between

The Spaces Between is an upcoming tabletop game, run in Monster Of The Week over Roll20. I will be serving as the GM (or 'Keeper' in Monster of the Week's terminology), and I am looking for 2-3 players to make up our party of monster hunters, who will roadtrip across a monster-infested United States of America, meeting strange folk and solving their supernatural problems, all in the service of tracking down an ancient and impossibly powerful evil and putting an end to it.

The Spaces Between is loosely based on the weekly webcomic Sword Interval by Benjamin Fleuter, but no knowledge of Sword Interval is necessary to play here. I'm taking from it the general concept and aesthetic, but none of the plot or characters.

The World

In many respects, the world of The Spaces Between looks a lot like ours. People have jobs, cities are still standing, and most people's biggest daily concern is getting a good cup of coffee in the morning and making sure their kids make it to soccer practice on time.

But there's a rot creeping in around the edges. This world was always more visibly touched by the supernatural than our own, with Golems fighting in the trenches of the Great War and small towns being built in the skeletons of long-dead giants, but over the past few decades the supernatural has stopped hiding in the shadows altogether. Monster attacks have become regular, the dead don't seem to stay as dead as they used to, and the witches and warlocks of the world grow steadily bolder by the day. What more, it seems like it's getting worse. The center has not fallen apart just yet, but it's hard to see how it'll hold much longer if nothing changes.

Monsters

'Monster' is a catch-all term for hostile supernatural creatures. A ghostie, a goblin, or a golem may not be monster, but if it's a danger to the humans around it, it qualifies. Just about every kind of monster you can imagine exists out there somewhere, from the skin-walkers of Native American folklore to basilisks to youkai, imported from Japan.



Some intelligent creatures live among us - in particular, dragons now represent a fairly large part of the investment market - and there's more than a few small towns that have made a deal with a local Fey creature or god, paying a regular tithe in exchange for protection.

Still, even seemingly benevolent creatures should be dealt with carefully. Even if they look human, they are fundamentally different from us, with alien, even unknowable motivations and goals. They may do harm to those around them without even realizing.

Atlas

Atlas is a secretive organization with agents all across the world. Originally created - at least according to their official publications - as an institution for the study of supernatural phenomena, Atlas has in recent decades reinvented itself as the foremost authority in identifying and disposing of supernatural threats. When monster attacks began sharply increasing, Atlas was a storehouse of expertise in dealing with these new threats, and so it stepped in to protect the people.

That's how Atlas presents itself, anyway. There's a lot about Atlas that nobody knows. They're very quiet, for example, about the organization's history, or where its seemingly bottomless resources come from. And while they may style themselves as the protectors of the common folk, there's large parts of the country that feel ignored by them. Resentment is pretty common.

Here's the facts on what can be confirmed about Atlas: They are at least a century old, but probably older. They have a small army of highly-trained Agents in their employ, and apparently endless funds to keep them equipped. These agents get deployed against major threats, and they pay a bounty to any freelancers who deal with smaller threats that are brought to their attention...as long as they're deemed worthy of notice. Finally, they'll pay a premium for magical artifacts, and for monster body parts with useful properties, like skin-walker hides and dragon teeth.

Monster Hunters

Technically speaking, anyone can be a monster hunter. There's no certification process; if there's a monster causing trouble nearby, grab a shotgun and get to work, and you can call yourself a monster hunter.

In practice, though, any amateur going off half-cocked is liable to get themselves killed. Monster hunting is a dangerous line of work, requiring specialized knowledge, an arsenal of gear and weapons, and the ability to think on your feet. Not to mention a heaping helping of good old-fashioned luck.



Most monster hunters start off learning at the side of a more experienced one, although it's not unheard of for someone to just jump in feet-first and learn on the job. They tend to prefer to work alone, though, or in small groups. It takes a certain kind of personality to want to spend your life hunting fell creatures, and a lot of the time those personalities don't play very well with others.

Freelance hunters make their living by collecting bounties for their quarry. A lot of the time Atlas is the one footing the bill, but it's not uncommon for a town to get fed up waiting for Atlas to notice their problems and pool some money to post a bounty for themselves. Either way, they send notice to the Hunter's Guild (a loose professional organization that mostly serves as a job board), who forwards it on to hunters in the field. Some hunters specialize in particular types of monsters (in particular, there are so many cases of ghost infestation that there are a fair number of hunters who do nothing but bust them), but most just take whatever cases come in front of them.

Magic

Magic is real. Anyone can be taught to do it, although learning takes such dedicated practice that few bother. All it takes is the right words, a medium to act through, and a source of power. Sometimes that power is ripped from the earth, sometimes it's taken from the user's own body.



Magic is dangerous. Used carefully, it's a powerful and versatile skill, but magic abused will run its own course, often with fatal results. Many's the tale of an amateur magician who conjured a servant for themselves by binding a disembodied spirit to an earthen body, only to have their creature turn on them when the binding slipped. Even a simple fire spell can turn into an inferno if not carefully maintained.



That being said, magic is perfectly legal, and Atlas itself keeps a fair number of mages on staff. Just use with care, and bear in mind that anything done by magic that would be a crime if done mundanely...is still a crime.

Witches

Witches are an underground order of magic users who draw their power exclusively from their own bodies and have adopted a common creed: to take what they can and give nothing back. They are thieves, murderers and mercenaries, using their powers as they will for their own self-interest.



Witches usually choose a particular medium to exert their power through, and then specialize in that form of magic. Sometimes this medium is a body part, such as hair, teeth, or blood. Other times, it may be external; a familiar animal, or even flame. Regardless, once a witch has mastered their chosen medium, they tend to adapt it to suit the purposes they are trying to achieve rather than learn a whole new form of magic. They are magical specialists, and each chooses a special name for themselves (typically of the form 'the [adjective] [noun]' reflective of their area of specialty.



Although in casual speech it's common to refer to any female magic user as a witch, the term is only accurately applied to a specific subset of mages who have pledged themselves to the order of witches, which accepts new members only on recommendation from an existing member. That being said, the order is a pretty loosely-knit organization; witches recognize one another as peers and extend all due courtesies, but are generally solitary, working together only when the promised rewards are truly exorbitant.

Despite the name's implications, anyone can be a witch regardless of gender.

Some witches live among us, while others hide in the wilderness and quiet places at the fringes of society. There are only a handful of true witches, but they are powerful, wily, and experts at remaining hidden. Atlas has a substantial standing bounty on all known witches, worth twice as much alive than dead.

The Hanged Man

In a world full to the brim with monsters, The Hanged Man is the monster. Nobody, save perhaps the upper echelons of Atlas, knows where he came from. He's believed to be an ancient warlock, kept alive through dark sorcery, in possession of magical arts unknown to modern mages. Despite his power, he is not invincible; he has been killed several times, in fact. The problem is, it never sticks. Within a few months, he rises again, as powerful as ever.

Just as mysterious as his origins are his goals. The Hanged Man seems to be searching for something, but what and why remain obscure. What is clear is that anyone unlucky enough to be standing between him and his goals will be torn asunder by his magic.

The first appearance of the Hanged Man coincided with the beginning of the uptick in monster attacks, and many members of the public place the blame for the world's current predicament on his shoulders. But is that truly the case, or is the increased monster activity responsible for the Hanged Man's emergence from his slumber?

How to Join

The campaign will begin as soon as my schedule permits, most likely in mid-April. If you want to join, leave a comment to this post, filling in the following form:

<b>Name:</b> <b>Contact info:</b> <b>Character Concept:</b> You're not, like, committed to this, I just want to hear an idea or two. <b>Times Available:</b> What times on what days of the week would you be available to play? <b>A picture of your favorite monster</b>