“Maud’Madir and my Greenskin allies in Amarthania. Will you help us rebuild Hope and Light? A safe harbour in the darkness, not to those who preach falsely in the name of Rodrick Hale and his Church of “Light”, but simply for those with goodness in their hearts? I say the Church is corrupt! That there is a malignant heart full of taint where once love used to be, and the gods are blind to it. If such is true, then we must build another. One they can see. A Church of true Justice, Law, Love, and Mercy. A church to stand against whatever Archbishop Hale leads today. A rebel Church. A Bastion… “

And with that please join us in welcoming “Bastions” to the Global Plot arsenal. “Bastions” is a massive multi-year, Guildhouse spanning Global plotline, to rebuild our Church of Light. I don’t want to ruin all the IG fun and plot but we do need to set the scene and explain some OOG mechanics. Please read our FAQ below.

- Adjudicator Elija Quintrell, Priest of Kael
https://underworldlarp.com/community/skein-gate/the-first-bastion/

What is a Bastion?

Let’s be real, the Church of Light in the last two decades hasn’t really been that uh… how should we say, “good.” We recognize this, we’ve heard from our Light following players and the general consensus is that it’s difficult to play a light follower in a 18+ horror game. It’s also even more difficult when your supporting organization is sometimes so good they’re evil. Hard to be a good guy when your church is burning anybody who has a W in their name because that’s the first letter in how you spell Wytch. How do we address this? In the same way we solve all problems. We burn it to the ground! We let the fields go fallow then we plant new seeds. We’re sowing them now and I promise, in the near future, the reaping will come. I don’t know exactly what that means but it sounded cool. 

So while you’re burning down the Church of Light, or at least trying, we’re building what will be the new church and it’s nothing like the old. It all starts with Bastions. Bastions are locally built underground or rebel Churches of Light. Unconnected for now, by sharing the same goal. 

Bastions aren’t just hopeful concepts. Without spilling the beans here, I’ll say they are established by specific NPCs known as Bastion Leaders. For now, they are magical in nature, and I’ll let you figure out the rest IG.

(Best announcer voice)
“By order of your Global Shaper Team, every Guildmaster and every Guild is hereby ordered to build a Rank 1 Bastion.” 

For the record, they already know, and many of you have it already.

What’s a Bastion Rank?

I’m glad you asked. To make this more fun, and to give you some micro-accomplishments to work on (get that serotonin!), we’re ranking them. Each Guildmaster has the option to run Bastion missions for their town. Success on these missions will raise your rank by one. Your bastion rank may have town wide positive effects so it’s within your interests to work towards it, if you see the opportunity. In addition, across the Global landscape, all your Bastion ranks will be calculated and a total Global Bastion Rank will be tracked and displayed. This will have positive global effects. That being said, you are not without opposition.  The current Church of Hale isn’t going to be idle. There are things they may do that might lower the global Bastion Rank and possibly your local rank. As the current church does things, you will start to notice negative effects across the global landscape. Maybe “night” starts an hour earlier at 5pm. Maybe zombies are a little bit faster and imps are a little bit tougher. Maybe you folks do really well in your Bastion Missions and “night” starts at 7pm. We’ll see as the plots progress. As you can see from these really basic examples, these effects may benefit you, even if you don’t have goodness in your heart, but see more below on that.

You’re also not alone in this. Bastions, as you’ll see from the IG post, exist now in many places and are actively being established in many more. This list of Bastion towns is IG and we will not release it here (OOG).

What’s a Bastion Mission?

Bastion Missions take place exclusively in the Celestial Heavens. These God Heavens are now defined and on the wiki for each God. These heavens, and these Bastion Missions that will utilize them, have rules that your GM’s know. There may be individual mechanics that may come into play as you enter these missions. As an example, Malagant’s heaven may not allow Light followers to transport in. Our Rebel Church of Light minions may have to call upon the aid of somebody less light to help. Those are negotiations I would love to be a fly on the wall for. That’s all you're going to get out of me. 

I don’t like the Light. 

We got covered, fam. Again without revealing too much just know and trust that we have you atheists, Dark Followers, and Dragon lovers covered. There will be IG reasons to tie you into this, so you can take part in the fun (if you want). 

What happens after we burn it to the ground?

That’s a FOIG but know that we have plans and if you are a traditional light follower, or just enjoy the world building process, this will make sense in the end and be an enjoyable aspect of the UW universe.  

How do I get involved?

I can’t answer that directly, as these are all being run by your local Guildmaster, but I would guess it will be fairly obvious once the plots get rolling and Bastion Missions start happening. Depending on the current local plots going on it may be something easy to find or something a little more challenging at the start. My suggestion, be good. Help NPCs like the farmers and peasants and make the goodness in your heart apparent to your shaper team. I suspect they’ll find you. 

Where do I track my Bastion Rank?

We’ll cover that very soon, we’re just building the backend system on the website.