| Jewel Knights FAQ |
| Where did you get this idea? Once, a long long time ago in a country far-far away, I happened across a Mekton Campaign One-Sheet for a game called Jewel Box Chronicles by Andrew Dynon. The basic premise was a magical girl Mekton story wherein a group of young teenage girls are selected by a fairy called Mekara to pilot giant Jewel-themed Empathy-Powered Mecha against evil invaders. I liked the basic idea, but wasn't too interested in the straight Sailor-Moon clone he had in mind. So, flashing forward a few years, I was at the tail end of my own magical girl phase, the middle of a Sentai phase, and loving a show called Galaxy Frauline Yuna. At this point I decided I wanted to try running a proto-Superhero campaign, it was intended to be a short (6 weeks or so) thing that I jokingly referred to as "sentai academy". The whole point was to actually think about what it is to be a superhero, and how can you train them? (I've always loved teen superheros, I was a New Mutants fan back in the day...) Around the same time, I came across the Jewel Box Chronicles one-sheet again in the corner of my hard-drive and suddenly everything gelled together. Suddenly the PCs were a bunch of anime teens being trained in a miles-high crystal castle to defend a small peaceful galactic federation from a force called the Dark Nebula. At first, my players were more than a little...reluctant, to play in it, and probably thought I was a little nuts to ask them to do so. But, my "short" campaign turned into a long campaign that was something none of us expected, and turned into the stuff of local gaming legends. Several of my players even ran their own versions of it with other groups as a way to teach their players about teamwork and try to recapture some of the fun that was had in this campaign. Of Andrew's original One-Sheet, little enough remains that I consider Jewel Knights my own creation at this point. The only points from the one-sheet that I remember existing are the "numbers" Lio and At'tei, a gem based theme (I changed some of the gems he chose), the presense of "generic" anime anthropomorphics, and I think his baddies may have also been called Dark Nebulans. Why is a lot of the Material on this site so damn vague? I want details! A lot of the materials I present on this site are my original notes or new material I made to help a GM running a potential Jewel Knights game. It's meant as a jumping-off point, not as an actual full-on sourcebook. Also, I expect that the players of any campaign run using this material might read this site, and so I am purposely leaving a lot of details to the GM's own imagination. Where are the Jewel Knights? Where can I find more info and Stats for them? The Jewel Knights themselves are semi-mythical figures outside of the scope of the campaign, they're a dream for the PCs in the core campaign and thus there are no real stats for them. I myself have never even tried to stat out a Jewel Knight, although I know a few things about them I will share in case someone wants to use them in a game.. 1) A Jewel Knight is bonded with a powerful crystal given by the god-spirits of their world, and once they and the crystal bond they enter into a symbiotic relationship. The Jewel Knight in normal everyday life becomes stronger, faster, smarter, and overall "better", but not only this, they can summon up an armoured form in which they posses incredible powers. However, this armoured form is taxing to maintain and thus can't be maintained for too long, so it's not something they normally run around in. 2) The armoured forms of Jewel Knights have a few standard abilities (armour, flight, energy manipulation abilities, etc), and each one also has a few unique abilities based on their own personality, style and theme. 3) A Jewel Knight is bonded around age 16, and they "retire" around the age of 36, when their bodies reach a point where they cannot continue the wear and tear of using the Armoured Form. They actually get more powerful with age and experience, usually reaching their peak around age 30, and a single Jewel Knight at their peak could probably take on almost anything you can throw at them. (They're Justice League level and higher.) When they retire, the gem is given to a new bond partner, and the original Jewel Knight goes on to live their life as they choose, in continued public service or in private life. 4) Jewel Knights are celebrities, something akin to the most popular movie stars or politicians, and often they become different kinds of celebrities once they finish their "tour of duty". How active are the spirits/goddesses of the Seven Jewel Cluster Systems? The simple answer is: VERY. Each of the Jewel Cluster worlds is very much alive on a spiritual level, and actively watches over it's children as best it can. They are the ones who made the crystaline castles which are the centers of politics in the Jewel Cluster, and they are the ones who directly commune with the Queens of the Cluster and the Empress. They are also known to appear to some people in their dreams, occasionally giving advice or helping to guide or coucil those in need. In my own campaign the Goddesses showed up several times to give hints or useful advice to the players, although they didn't tend to directly inform them so much as ask questions. They see themselves as teachers and guides, and as such rarely give information so much as encourage exploration in certain directions. I had each of them show up as the proprietess of a restaurant, shop or stand of some kind in the dreams my own PC's had. For example, Jade was a child who ran a lemonade stand in a park and Sapphire owned a ritzy restaurant atop a city skyline. How they appear in other campaigns is up to the GM, if they appear at all. Are there Two Sapphires or One? Two worlds, one Spirit. Can Non-Humans become Jewel Knights? The only requirement for being a Jewel Knight of a particular world is that you were born on that world and are thus linked to it's greater spirit as one of it's children. Non-humans do occasionally become Jewel Knights, but since most of the populations of those Eight worlds are human, most Jewel Knights are human too. Were the Dark Nebulans really destroyed? The short answer is "sort-of", you see some believe that despite what the Queens thought, the Dark Nebula wasn't actually the planet where the Nebulans came from. It was in fact the Gas Nebula which the planet sat in (and from which it's name comes), the Gas Nebula itself was an entity which corrupted and manipulated the inhabitants of the planet. Should another planet drift into the Nebula, a similar fate is likely to befall them, and a new Dark Nebulan order could be born. Of course, nobody knows if this is right or when or if this will happen again. In the meantime there are a number of people in the Jewel Cluster who worship the Nebulans as gods, Dark Nebulan Cultists, and they work towards their own evil purposes behind the scenes, usually feeding on those who resent the Queens and their power. What went down in the original Jewel Knights Campaign? The short version is love, hate, friendship, rivalry, laughs, pregnancy, attempted suicide, and more than a few plot twists. Unexpected to me (the GM), one of the players brought in the element of a soul gem containing the essence of her grandmother, a Fallen Jewel Knight. This fallen Jewel Knight possessed one of the PCs, and the whole campaign ended up turning into a massive mind-screw as the evil ghost wreaked havoc among the PCs and NPCs. In the actual Jewel Knights campaign I ran, they never reached their final exams because of this plot thread, which derailed into a spectacular and very cool train-wreck. If you want to find out what really happened, you'd have to find one of the original players and ask them nicely. (Some of them can be found online at the Jade Cafe forum...) What would be good reference material if I wanted to run a Jewel Knights game? Anime: Galaxy Frauline Yuna Sailor Moon Mai Otome (a recent anime scarily close to this campaign premise, highly recommended!) Wild Cardz Candidate for Goddess Comics: New Mutants (original) Generation X |