the EXTRA character class

eXtra is a diverse vocation available to most races and is intended to define those characters who do not have a previously described class in this chapter.  Sometimes a jack-of-all-trades, members of the extra vocation have a multitude of possible career paths available to them and these characters are defined by the skills (Chapter 6) that they possess.  The primary abiility of an eXtra is charisma and this is the preferred class of yellow Martians.

“If I sometimes seem to take too great pride in my fighting ability, it must be remembered that fighting is my vocation. If your vocation is shoeing horses, or painting pictures, and you can do one or the other better than your fellows, then you are a fool if you are not proud of your ability.”   (WM, VI)

            The selection of a NPC extra’s occupation or societal role would be based upon that NPC’s highest generated ability score; i.e., blacksmith, carpenter, cook, acrobat, baker, shoemaker, farmer, messenger, guide, mechanic, cartographer, jeweler, brewer, inn keeper, potter, artist, merchant or minstrel. 

                The green women are “the artisans who produce every manufactured article wrought by  green Martians. They make the powder, the cartridges, the firearms; in fact everything of value is produced by the females.” (PM IX)

Extras are frequently provided by the referee to fulfill ancillary or supportive part in the game’s campaign or storytelling. They have a limited selection of weapons and armor.  Extras can also make excellent PCs, because of their rapid progression of luck.

 

Extra                    NPC                    Skill     Hit

Level    ATTK      Title      Save   Rank    Dice

 1)        +0           slave        +0        +1       1d8 
 2)        +1          laborer      +1        +1       2d8
 3)        +1        craftsman   +2       +2       3d8
 4)        +2          artisan      +2       +2       4d8
 5)        +2        wealthy      +3       +3       5d8
 6)        +3         nobility      +4      +3       6d8
 7)        +3         regent        +4      +4       7d8
 8)        +4        princess      +5      +4       8d8
 9)        +4        prince         +5      +5       9d8    
10)       +5      incomparable        +6      +5      10d8
                                                                          und so weiter

    “But I am a princess’ cried the girl haughtily, ‘and my country is not at war with yours.  You must give me and my companions aid and assist us to return us to our land.  It is the law of Barsoom.”                 (CMM, X)

Primary ability is an extra is charisma.

This is the preferred class for yellow Martians.

REAPER miniatures painted
      by Thomas Nelson

VALLEY DOR

Valley Dor:  “I lay upon a close-cropped sward of red grass-like vegetation, and about me stretched a grove of strange and beautiful trees, covered with huge and gorgeous blossoms and filled with brilliant, voiceless birds. I call them birds since they were winged, but mortal eye ne'er rested on such odd, unearthly shapes.  The vegetation was similar to that which covers the lawns of the red Martians of the great waterways, but the trees and birds were unlike anything that I had ever seen upon Mars, and then through the further trees I could see that most un-Martian of all sights—an open sea, its blue waters shimmering beneath the brazen sun.”  (GM I)

 “The trees of the forest attracted my deep admiration as I proceeded toward the sea. Their great stems, some of them fully a hundred feet in diameter, attested their prodigious height, which I could only guess at, since at no point could I penetrate their dense foliage above me to more than sixty or eighty feet.  As far aloft as I could see the stems and branches and twigs were as smooth and as highly polished as the newest of American-made pianos. The wood of some of the trees was as black as ebony, while their nearest neighbours might perhaps gleam in the subdued light of the forest as clear and white as the finest china, or, again, they were azure, scarlet, yellow, or deepest purple.  And in the same way was the foliage as gay and variegated as the stems, while the blooms that clustered thick upon them may not be described in any earthly tongue, and indeed might challenge the language of the gods.”   (GM I)

"All who reach the Valley Dor are, by custom, the rightful prey of the plant men and the apes, while their arms and ornaments become the portion of the therns; but if one escapes the terrible denizens of the valley for even a few hours the therns may claim such a one as their own. And again the Holy Thern on watch, should he see a victim he covets, often tramples upon the rights of the unreasoning brutes of the valley and takes his prize by foul means if he cannot gain it by fair.”   (GM IV)  Otherwise, "The great white apes get the flesh when the plant men have drained the arteries.”  (GM V)

"There is an ancient legend that once a red man returned from the banks of the Lost Sea of Korus, returned from the Valley Dor, back through the mysterious River Iss, and the legend has it that he narrated a fearful blasphemy of horrid brutes that inhabited a valley of wondrous loveliness, brutes that pounced upon each Barsoomian as he terminated his pilgrimage and devoured him upon the banks of the Lost Sea where he had looked to find love and peace and happiness; but the ancients killed the blasphemer, as tradition has ordained that any shall be killed who return from the bosom of the River of Mystery.”  (GM III)

“The plant men, with their blood-sucking hands, and the monstrous white apes that make Dor hideous by day, were hidden in their lairs for the night. There was no longer a Holy Thern upon the balcony in the Golden Cliffs above the Iss to summon them with weird cry to the victims floating down to their maws upon the cold, broad bosom of ancient Iss.”   (WM I)

VALLEY of LOST SOULS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Valley of Lost Souls:   “We had now reached the southernmost extremity of the great ice barrier. It ended abruptly in a sheer wall thousands of feet high at the base of which stretched a level valley, broken here and there by low rolling hills and little clumps of forest, and with tiny rivers formed by the melting of the ice barrier at its base.

Once we passed far above what seemed to be a deep canyon-like rift stretching from the ice wall on the north across the valley as far as the eye could reach. "That is the bed of the River Iss," said Xodar. "It runs far beneath the ice field, and below the level of the Valley Otz, but its canyon is open here."

Presently I descried what I took to be a village, and pointing it out to Xodar asked him what it might be.

"It is a village of lost souls," he answered, laughing. "This strip between the ice barrier and the mountains is considered neutral ground. Some turn off from their voluntary pilgrimage down the Iss, and, scaling the awful walls of its canyon below us, stop in the valley. Also a slave now and then escapes from the therns and makes his way hither.  They do not attempt to recapture such, since there is no escape from this outer valley, and as a matter of fact they fear the patrolling cruisers of the First Born too much to venture from their own domains.

"The poor creatures of this outer valley are not molested by us since they have nothing that we desire, nor are they numerically strong enough to give us an interesting fight—so we too leave them alone. There are several villages of them, but they have increased in numbers but little in many years since they are always warring among themselves."  (GM VIII)

ILLUSTRATION by Thomas Yates

Character AGING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Age score measures the physical age of the character based upon % of total life span.  Age score may not exactly correlate with the actual number of years a character has been alive, because during the course of adventures, NPC/PCs may encounter situations where they age prematurely.  Each point of age score represents one decade of life upon the Red Planet for a native Martian.  That is correct, because of advances in medical technology, public health, and epidemiology, the natural life span of a Martian is 1,000 years!

“Only one Martian in a thousand dies of sickness or disease, and possibly twenty take the voluntary pilgrimage.  The other nine-hundred and seventy-nine die violent deaths in duels, in hunting, in aviation and in war; but perhaps the greatest loss occurs during the age of childhood, when vast numbers of the little (green) Martians fall victims to the great white apes of Mars.

“The average life expectancy of a Martian after the age of maturity is about three hundred years, but would be nearer the one thousand mark if it were not for the various means leading   to violent death.  Owing to the waning resources of the planet it evidently becomes necessary to counteract the increasing longevity which their remarkable skill in therapeutics and surgery produced, and so human life has come to be considered lightly on Mars as evidenced by their dangerous sports and almost continual warfare between communities“   (PM, V)

            To generate a character’s age score roll 1d6  (2d6 if scientist, extra or yellow Martian) for every level that a character possesses.

            Depending on the character’s age score; his physical age description falls into one of five broad categories.  The age category will modify the character’s generated abilities.  These modifiers are NOT cumulative and if an ability score is reduced to zero by aging, the character is assumed to have died from complications of aging (heart attack, cancer, stroke, pneumonia, etc.). 

 

                                                                                                                           ^{Table 2.4}

 Age     (score)           S         D          C         I         W        Ch          

Youth    (1 -  4)         -2         -          +1         -1        -2          -

Adult   (5 - 50)          -          -            -           -          -           -         

Middle (51- 75)       -1         -1           -         +1        +1        +1

Senior  (76- 90)       -2         -2         -1        +2        +2        +2

Old       (91- 99)         -4         -4         -3       +3        +3        +3

 

It should take a minimum of one simulated Barsoomian year to advance each level   (i.e., it would take three years for a PC to go from 2^nd to 5^th level).  Aging does not cause a character to lose acquired levels , but it may prevent him from gaining new levels.  

WARHOON

 

Warhoon:  An exceedingly savage tribe of 20,000+ green Martians found in Barsoom’s SW hemisphere lead by an old and insolent Jeddak, Dak Kova.  They decorate their torsos with the hands and skulls of their victims. Warhoons are notable for their semi annual gladiatorial games which are held in a sunken amphitheater.   “They are a smaller horde than the Tharks, but much more ferocious.  Not a day passed but that some members of the various Warhoon communities met in deadly combat. I have seen as high as eight mortal duels within a single day.”    (PM XVIII)

 

There is also a somewhat larger tribe of Warhoons of the South ruled by Kab Kadja that shares an uneasy truce with their northern cousins; otherwise, “The various hordes of green men of Barsoom are eternally at deadly war with one another, and never, except on that single historic instance when the great Tars Tarkas of Thark gathered a hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from several hordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, from the clutches of Than Kosis, had I seen green Martians of different hordes associated.”  (GM II)

 

IMAGE is from Frank Cho,
MINIATURE is old Heritage Sculp (Waco TX)

BARSOOM

Floating fourth from a distant sun in the inky depths of a parallel universe was Barsoom, the  Red Planet.  Its five mighty oceans once stood tribute to the life giving rivers and springs that supported the lush flora of this world.  At that time, the continents were devoid of any form of intelligent animal life except for a single source deep within the Valley Dor.  All this was twenty million years ago, when the hope of Barsoom lay in the fruit of the Tree of Life.

            “For countless ages the fruit of the Tree of Life underwent the gradual changes of evolution, passing by degrees from true plant life to a combination of plant and animal.  In the first stages the fruit of the tree possessed only the power of independent muscular action, while the stem remained attached to the parent plant; later a brain developed in the fruit, so that hanging there by their long stems they thought and moved as individuals.  Then with the development of perceptions came a comparison of them; judgments were reached and compared, and thus reason and the power to reason were born upon Barsoom.

            “Ages passed.  Many forms of life came and went upon the Tree of Life, but still all were attached to the parent plant by stems of various lengths.  At length the fruit tree consisted in tiny plant men, such as we now see reproduced in such huge dimensions in the Valley Dor, but still hanging to the limbs and branches of the tree by the stems which grew out of the tops of their heads. 

            “The buds from which the plant men blossomed resembled large nuts about a foot in diameter, divided by double partition walls into four sections.  In one section grew the plant man, in another a sixteen legged worm, in the third the progenitor of the white ape and in the fourth, the primaeval black man of Barsoom.

            “When the bud burst the plant man remained dangling at the end of the stem, while the other three sections fell to the ground, where the efforts of their imprisoned occupants sent them hopping about in all directions.”    (GM, VII)

 

            From the descendants of these buds arose the Green Martian and the three principle races of Barsoom; the First Born, yellow Martians, and the white Martians.  The peak of the Martian civilization was reached over one hundred thousand years ago when the sailing ships of the fair-skinned Martians ruled the planet’s five mighty oceans.   A race of brave men and beautiful women, they prospered and their ancient empire stretched from pole to pole.  Under the leadership of the white Martians, architecture, literature and the esoteric arts reached a pinnacle that has not been reclaimed..

            A sophisticated race of builders, artists and merchants, the glory of the ancient Martians was lost forever.   Their planet was dying, the atmosphere was thinning and the Red Planet’s oceans were slowly evaporating.   The docks of their opulent cities were extended in a vain attempt to keep pace with the receding waters, but soon all the bays and most of the rivers were dry. 

            Although famine and disease took their toll, greater mortality arose from the conflict that arouse when the savage green hordes were no longer restrained by natural boundaries. Previous enemies now cooperated and they slowly developed the capacity to become oviparous as well as telepathic.   “The result was a partial amalgamation of the blacks, whites and yellows, the result of which is seen in the splendid race of red men.”  (GM, XII)

            The handsome and cunning black race migrated to the tropical South Pole and prospered upon the loot of piracy.  The yellow Martians established a secret kingdom in the planet’s frozen North Pole. The white race is nearly extinct, and their descendants, the evil therns, are a “race of mental giants and moral pygmies.”   (GM, IV)

            A soft, ochre moss now covers most of the surface of the Barsoom with the exception of the poles and the cultivated districts of the red men, which are inter-connected by a complex network of canals. The oxygen level of the Red Planet’s environment is maintained by the great atmosphere plant built by red Martian scientists many years ago.  With the advent of the aerial battleship, the green Martian hordes have been confined to the dead sea bottoms and the ruins of ancient seaports.

 

            Nights upon Barsoom are very cold as the thin atmosphere of the planet does little to retain heat.  The twin moons brilliantly illuminate the night sky when they both appear; otherwise, the nights can be very dark.  Dawn and dusk have a rapid onset and the days are hot.  In the orange skies of the Red Planet there are few clouds. The landscape is smooth; there are occasional rolling hills and few peaks exceed 4,000 feet in height.  

IMAGE is from Joe Jusko

TIME MEASUREMENT upon Barsoon

            “The Martian day is a trifle over 24 hours, 37 minutes duration (Earth time).  This the Martians divide into ten equal parts commencing the day about 6 AM Earth time.  The zodes are divided into fifty shorter periods, each of which in turn is comprised of 200 brief periods of time, about the equivalent of the earthly second.  The Barsoomian Table of Time as here given is but a part of the full table appearing in Captain Carter’s notes (GM, XVI):  

                                                                                                Table 1.1              

200 tals = 1 xat

50 xats = 1 zode

10 zodes =  1 revolution.”

                                                                                 

     Game action is resolved in rounds (rd); each representing 20 tals (17.7seconds) of simulated time. 10 rounds = 1 xat.   In the course of a round, most characters are presented an opportunity to attack, defend and/or move.  Other game actions such as parleying, searching and complex tasks (traveling or skill usage) require greater amounts of simulated time and are measured in

 

 xats (a little less than 3 minutes),

zodes (a little less than 2 ½ hours),

days ( 24 hours, 37 minutes),

weeks ( 7 days = 1 week),

months ( 8 weeks = 1 month), or

years (12 months,  96 weeks or 672 days).

 

            It is important for the game master (GM) to keep close track of the passage of game time (simulated not actual) during an adventure or action sequence.  This prevents confusion between the interrelation of the activities of the player characters (PCs) with the f actions of important NPCs as well as time and history upon the Red Planet.

 

Date          Historical Event

 

-50000 Nation of Helium established

 -7500  First great canal completed

     0      Atmosphere Plant completed  

  1066   First Aerial Battleship constructed

  1864   Tardos Mors becomes Jeddak

  1987   John Carter Arrives upon Barsoom     

  2000   The death of Issus 

  2002   Heliumite fleet sacks Kadabra 

  2005   Improved navigation compass invented