[Eberron] Debt Collectors: Hip-Hop

[Audious]

So, as per my last thread, I'm writing up a campaign for Eberron. While watching Afro Samurai, something hit me: the anachronisms offered up by animes like Afro Samurai and Samurai Champloo might lend themselves well to Eberron, being that technology is available that normally wouldn't be.

So, I've decided to re-skin Eberron's culture and style with a bit of Hip-Hop culture.

Just looking for some ideas surrounding this concept, or some connections that could be made with existing background and plot hooks.

[Coidzor]

Well, a combination of arcane mark and tagging culture(reminded me of that one episode of Samurai Champloo since you mentioned the series, the one where the two brothers were competing in a tagging contest) might be interesting... Someone starting to do that with explosive runes as a form of subversive activity might be an interesting thing to investigate, though you'd have to have a link between someone who owed the money and such goings on...

Hmm... Bards and the advent of the recording industry would be interesting... since it'd require some capital to set up the production of the record-analogs (may or may not have record player-analogs) And of course, royalties and other intrigues/points of contention could develop into additional things.

Even more potential for conflict would be if the records could actually replicate some of the features of bardic music in some fashion. (possibly each time the "record" is played until it wears out to the point where it starts to get off-sync slightly and then the music plays but not the bardic magic part of it and then it deteriorates some more and needs to be replaced)

I'm sorta snickering now at the idea of a bardificer who makes a custom DJ-homonculus to play his bardic music records...

[Uin]

Once upon a time I was going to run an Eberron game where each character had a bonus skill point at each level to put into a perform of their choice. A roving rock band which would put the world to rights... much better than Bono but maybe not as good as Limozeen's space adventures.

[Set]

You could make a version version of Magic Mouth that mimics a Bard's (non-magical) performance, usable for delivering messages, or 'recording a song' to allow someone else to listen to it later. It might manifest as a crystal that appears to hold an image of the bard / performer within it, while it's 'playing,' so that the singer can be identified by the viewer(s).

Cheap magic item versions might only function once, and only on a certain command phrase (or only triggering for a specific individual), to make for highly secure means of transmitting messages from one person to another, and might only play a single time before the crystal cracks or grows dull and the magic fades, turning them into Mission Impossible-style secret documents that self-destruct after the message is received. It might be impossible to forge such a message, as the crystal embeds the image of the message-recorder during caster (but the person being recorded may have altered their appearance!), making them somewhat more trusted than a letter with someone's seal at the bottom. Since the crystals are single-use, they would likely be quite cheap, and while there would officially be no way to crack open a crystal and receive a message that wasn't meant for one, or, worse, alter the contents of a currently 'full' message crystal, it is quite possible that the crafty gnomes have also developed a way to 'view' the messages in a crystal that falls into their possession, without destroying it.

House Sivis would be the logical creators of this particular messenging service, as first a Bard, and later a Sor/Wiz spell.

That could be a fun little plot seed. The party needs to intercept a message of alliance between two rivals and change it into something that will set the two foes against each other. Capturing the messenger is step one. Finding a way to view the current message (even if by destroying the one-use crystal) is the second. Finding a way (changeling? alter self?) to record a fake antagonistic message is the third (and what if the first party recorded his message against a hard-to-replicate backdrop? Will the party have to sneak into the duke's study to complete the illusion?). Getting the false message into the hands of the second party is the last step (and, if they killed the expected messenger, they may have to put on another disguise and deliver it to the target's hand personally!).