The Lord Of All Fragments

Vhalkana, his hammer, and his... arm-spikes?

Vhalkana, The Smith-God

Vhalkana was manufactured by the previous smith-god, Cobannos, in an attempt to correct what that deity perceived to be his own weaknesses. Cobannos used all of the best parts of himself as ingredients and died as a result. He omitted various flawed qualities from the new god. Stuff like empathy for mortals, interest in non-smith-related activities, et ceteras. The result is a very hands-on deity.

Vhalkana likes dragooning random mortals to fetch raw materials for him, and not just his worshippers. He sees mortals as a naturally occurring resource much like a lode of mineral ore or a stand of trees. If he needs something they can provide, he will take it.

A typical interaction with Vhalkana might involve him dropping a four-faced angel into the players' vicinity, followed by the angel imperiously ordering the party to retrieve an unusual crafting material from their proximity. Or else. The angel will wait.

Stuff Vhalkana Wants

Things Vhalkana might plausibly demand players fetch:

• Oil from the hide of the Sacred Eel of Moreclede. It helps with tempering difficult materials like solid fire.
• Crystals from the moonscape forest.
• Ivory from the fabled bulette graveyard.
• Aakom from Qelong.
• Purestrain gold from the hoard of Dargon the Dragon.
• Anything from this guy's PDF. Not that I read it. I'm just assuming.
• Mineralized time.

The Devoted

A priest of the smith-god is known as a "pyraethi", which means fire-keeper. They must be devoid of birth defects, proficient in metalworking, and ideally are descended from another pyraethi. Supposedly, most pyraethi are descended from Vhalkana or Cobannos. After death, they can expect to have their soul collected by their deity, converted to soulsteel or another substance (the better a craftsman the pyraethi was in life, the more rarified a material his soul becomes in death), and incorporated into Vhalkana's next project. For a pyraethi, there can be no greater reward.

The smith-god grants prayers relating to the creation of objects (magical or otherwise), the manipulation and refinement of materials, and protection from destruction or calamity.

Every shrine to the smith-god houses a sacred kiln that contains fire from one of Vhalkana's forges. If it doesn't have a sacred kiln, it isn't a shrine. The fire is continually fed and maintained. Many such fires have burned continuously for hundreds of years or more.

Summoning a wall of shields always helps.

Prayers Of Metal And Making

Create Facsimile (1st-level)

You fabricate a copy of a single common magical item touched. The item is identical in all ways except that it vanishes at the end of the day. You cannot copy the same item more than once on any given day, regardless of how many times you memorize this spell, nor can you copy expendable or charge-based items. [1]

Recharge (1st-level)

This spell attempts to recharge a rod, staff, or wand that has at least 1 charge left. It requires 50 gold in semi-precious stones and rare earth powders. Roll 1d6+1. If you roll a natural 1, your working is flawed and you destroy the object in question. Otherwise you restore the that amount in charges to the item (though not above its inherent maximum, if applicable).

Wall Of Swords (2nd-level)

You conjure a 5x1 wall of spinning blades within short range. The wall blocks line of sight. Each turn, the wall inflicts 1d8 damage to creatures that start their turn within it or enter at least one space of its area. It will not inflict this damage to a given creature more than once, per turn. This wall counts as a friendly creature for the purposes of determining flanking, both for players and enemies.

Wall Of Shields (2nd-level)

You conjure a wall of hovering shields into a 4x4 area within medium range. The zone blocks line of sight to creatures within or past it, imparts +1 AC and AOE resist (half damage) to creatures within it, and counts as a creature for the purposes of determining flanking for both you and your enemies.

Greater Facsimile (3rd-level)

As create facsimile, but for a single uncommon magical item touched. You cannot cast this spell more than once, per day. [2]

Sacred Holocaust (3rd-level)

With a touch, you envelop a foe in agonizing flames. A target touched suffers 4d6 fire damage, Fort half. This is a fire and pain-based effect. On a failed save, they are weak (inflict half damage) until the end of their next turn. On a successful save, this spell is not expended from your memory.

Glassteel (4th-level)

Obviously, the pyraethi can cast glassteel. For them it's probably a 4th-level level spell. I don't know why anybody would think it should be 8th level.

[1] I think the price point for a common item should probably be about 1500gp or less. In Pathfinder, anyways. Basically, the spell should let you clone a +1 weapon or armor.

[2] 4000gp or less.

Notable Pyraethi

Pyraethi Faerzin is the most highly regarded of his order, essentially acting as high priest. He has a dozen four-faced angels working for him and occasionally borrows Vhalkana's forge hammer for personal projects.

Per the direct orders of her deity, Pyraethi Xenia has infiltrated the Yellowcake-Priests. They possess sacred scientific knowledge that mankind is not yet ready to use and are obsessed with destroying the world. Since the world is Vhalkana's -or rather Cobannos'- greatest creation, Xenia is commanded to destroy them. She has forged a marvelous helmet that allows her to eavesdrop on their communications with the star that they serve, permitting her to pretend to be one of their number and to infiltrate their ridiculous floating pyramid. She feels like she is operating on borrowed time and will escape as soon as conveniently possible.

Though not the most powerful of spellcasters, Pyraethi Jasparo has bred a sacred goose that lays eggs of the purest iron ore. He guards it like one in the throes of a deeply insane paranoia. Unbeknownst to Jasparo, the goose also exhales fumes of concentrated mercury.

Several pyraethi cooperate at Yesh Barit, the sacred foundry. All manner of projects are carried out here under the direct supervision of Vhalkana's angels. Their chief task is refining orichalcum, used for divine armaments such as thunderbolts, and panchaloha, a chameleonic idol-metal sometimes used by the gods in the manufacture of living creatures.

The Fire Caravan

Now that is a cool-ass mineral. It's moldavite, found exclusively at meteor impact sites.

The Fire Caravan is a troupe of ten or so pyraethi that wander the world in search of thokcha, also known as meteoric iron. They pay top-dollar for documentation of recent meteor activity or stories about meteor fields. They eventually turn all of their findings over to Vhalkana, but also perform their own experiments on samples prior to handing them over. They probably have all manner of void-kissed substances.

Stuff like:

• Armaments glazed with void-rust scrapings. They are forbidden from using the void-kissed meteoric iron, itself, but surely the forge-god will not begrudge his followers a little bit of rust. The priests are getting quite clever at working with it.
• Spun objects of ultra-frozen primum frigidum that will never melt. Useful for, uh, well. Maybe they're unbreakable? I could see laminating some sort of ice-themed armor with it, or alloying it with an igneous mineral to make some sort of fire/ice super sword.
• Superconductive wands (superconductive to electricity, magic, or emotion, depending).
• Metals that convert into dangerous organic matter when contacted with water. They could probably use this to grow you a new limb or organ. Assuming you didn't mind it being hideous and unrecognizably alien.
• A portal stone that permits instantaneous travel between worlds. The sender is waiting for somebody to activate it so they can come through. This would probably lead to undesirable outcomes.
• An Eye of the Star-thing. Whatever it is, it grew uncountable millions of extra eyes, attached each to a stone capable of surviving atmospheric entry, and hurled them at an unfathomable number of worlds. This is probably one of those "when you gaze into the darkness, it gazes also into you" situations, so I wouldn't get too cozy with the eye. Maybe it could give you a bonus when casting contact other plane.
• More moldavite than you can shake a fist at. I'm sure it possesses amazing properties for magic or spellcraft. Maybe allow it to reduce the price of crafting plausible magic items?

This is basically what I think an Eye Of The Star-Thing should look like.

The Koros

A Koros bird-lancer.

The Koros are a race of barbarous, nomadic bird-riders. They reside in great numbers at the grasslands of Arhelia, where they and their vast herds of bird-horses live, fight, and reproduce. The lands of the Koros are vast and their internal struggles significant, but when a powerful leader emerges the Koros are willing to gather in great hordes and ride against the degenerate cities-states of their region of the world.

The Koros are polygamists. Koros men are expected to have at least three wives, each of whom will birth as many children as possible. There is also a well-established tradition allowing for women that are successful warriors to be treated similarly to men, including retaining numerous wives.

Portrait Of A Bird-Lancer

A Koros warrior typically owns two well-trained bird-horses, a steel-tipped riding spear, a bronze sword for close-quarters fighting, a quiver of filth-smeared javelins, a suit of reinforced leather armor (perhaps incorporating a breastplate if they are wealthy), a pouch of antiseptic salts, decorative bones taken from slain foes or lovers, and feathers from long-dead mounts. Though not an especially inventive people, their bird-horse kit includes stirrups (an innovation other cultures have yet to value).

Successful warriors are rewarded by ritually inscribed tattoos that protect them from various harms. They may include any or all of the following:

• Whorl Against Witchcraft: The Koros has advantage when saving against spells of all kinds. This is the most commonly found tattoo.
• Whorl Against Disaster: The warrior never accidentally drops or breaks their spear. They cannot botch.
• Whorl Against Cowardice: The warrior is immune to fear and being slowed, and their mount has +2 speed.
• Whorl Against Weakness: The Koros inflicts an extra +1d6 damage with a charge attack. They are also immune to most diseases.

Some Koros also procure flasks of blessed water, to be sprinkled over a troop of cavalry and imparting resistance (half damage) against ranged and AOE attacks for an hour or so.

Riding Birds

Every Koros bird-knight can use their mount to leap over 20 feet in a single bound, aiming their lance with the full weight of their mount behind it. Such an attack is devastating, probably inflicting double damage.

The bird-horses are quite dangerous on their own. Their claws can disembowel an armored man. A pecking bird-horse can easily crush a man's skull or rip the flesh off a limb. Skilled riders will incorporate their bird's natural talents into their combat routine.

The Taboos Of The Bird-Tribes

They have many taboos. The most important:

1. Bodies must be brought to the gates of the afterlife. The gate is located in the ruins of an ancient temple in the center of Arhelia. To die and not be sent through the gates is to consign your soul to inflict grief upon your descendants. As I discuss elsewhere, this particular belief eventually results in a great deal of trouble.
2. Digging in the soil is what farmers do. Do you want to be a slave to the land? I didn't think so. Do not ever dig in the soil. For that matter, most work unrelated to bird husbandry is beneath a proper Koros.
3. The word for magic that is not bird-shaman magic is witchcraft. Witches must be killed.

The piece continues...

The Void-Soaked Mummies Of The Broken Dome

An advanced Arha noble from the postclassic era of their culture.

A City Amongst The Stars

Once upon a time, there was a civilization of wizards so powerful that they could hang their cities amongst the stars. Well, not really amongst the stars. More like amongst the Lagrange points in upper orbit around their world (your campaign world).

They encased their orbital cities in domes of glassteel on captured asteroids, locked them tidally, set up self-contained ecosystems with magically generated gravity, and devised permanent teleportation circles to allow easy passage to and from their manmade paradises. It worked quite well for several hundred years. Any time the orbital cities were threatened, they would simply roll a stone imbued with anti-magic over their end of the teleportation circle and wait it out. No teleportation circle meant no access to the city. It was an uncrossable moat.

Their problems were internal in nature. Bathed as they were in cosmic radiation, most children born in Arha exhibited deformities or mutation. In time, these mutations came to be highly prized by the inhabitants. Only the more normal-seeming Arha would interact with the people of the planet below, while the most inhuman Arha would remain in their city as its rulers.

Another significant issue would prove to be the city's undoing: the loss of magical expertise over time. The Arha retained great troves of their ancestors' knowledge, including how to make and repair the city's glassteel dome, but their warped physiologies became steadily less equipped to make use of it. Still, so long as they controlled the teleportation circle, nothing could threaten them from below.

A Soft Civilization Meets Hard Vacuum

Eventually, one of the orbital cities pissed off the wrong wizard. Maybe he was exiled from their midst for his lack of mutation and consequently had a better than usual understanding of the location of his city. Maybe he was just really smart. In any case, he devised and successfully prosecuted a method of piercing the glassteel dome surrounding the city known as Arha: he summoned a byakhee, rode it up to the city, managed with some difficulty to match its velocity and land, and thence disintegrated a significant swath of the dome.

The end came quickly: the atmosphere rushed out before most inhabitants could react. A few managed to escape through the teleportation sphere or by other means. Though the city boasted many precautions against this very event, including hermetically sealable buildings and so forth, most were long forgotten or in general disrepair. In any case, the magical acumen necessary to create glassteel was no longer present and repairing the dome without that would be impossible. The city went quiet and dark, a floating tomb.

A Koros bird-lancer scans the horizon for foes.

Enter The Koros

Eventually, knowledge of Arha was lost to the surface-dwellers and largely forgotten by the other orbital cities (who by now had their own problems to contend with). The Koros, a race of barbarous bird-riders, came to dominate the area around the planet-end of the portal.

The magic of the teleportation circle was quite beyond their limited arcane understanding. They knew only that anything that entered the area of the circle disappeared, never to be seen again. Eventually, the circle was incorporated into their religion. Bodies were lavishly prepared, festooned with such modest finery as their people could afford, and ritually placed into the circle.

As a nomadic, non-agricultural people already disinclined to sow seeds or waste wood on a funeral pyre, the ritual casting of corpses into the circle allowed them to totalize their taboo against digging in the soil. After nearly three centuries, the only acceptable means of corpse disposal is to deposit it into the circle.

Meanwhile, the bodies piled up in Arha. The same magical precautions taken to prevent teleporters from superimposing their bodies over air molecules also prevented the corpses from occupying the same space. New corpses landed atop a vast pyramid of vacuum-desiccated cadavers.

A little bit about the Koros: each man of the Koros takes at least three wives. Each of these wives can expect to have five or six children, of whom perhaps half will survive to adulthood. All of these that leave recognizable remains will be taken to the teleportation circle and deposited within. By the current century, there were hundreds of thousands of cadavers up there, lying quiescent and perfectly preserved by exposure to hard vacuum, just waiting for somebody to find them.

Welcome, Necromancer

Eventually, the Necromancer came. The Koros tried to kill the obvious witch with their spears, as is proper in their culture. Their herbal tinctures that normally proved so effective at warding off magic did little against his swarm of animastrictor skelesnakes. It took him less than a month to killed everybody who might object to him declaring himself god-king of the Koros. He was the right person at the right time.

One big thing the Necromancer noticed very quickly is that there were not any graveyards or even particularized pyre-ash around. He's very in tune with these things, and would notice if they were there.  Eventually, he got around to asking about it. The Koros explained. The Necromancer found the circle, sent a ghoul through the circle and back, and eventually figured out that the other side lacked pressure or atmosphere.

Natural physics are not usually in the Necromancer's wheelhouse, but he still managed to devise and construct a primitive bathysphere. With his zombies carrying it about, he has explored the ruined city of Arha. What a magnificent discovery! What a wonder! What a necromantic tinderbox just waiting for a negative energy spark!

The circle led to the perfectly preserved corpses of two whole cultures: the relatively small number of Arha and the vast heap of Koros. Animating them would become the Necromancer's magnum opus.

A Koros mummy that has soaked in cosmic energy.

Things From The Broken Dome

The mutant corpses of the dead Arha possess many characteristics that make for powerful undead: extra limbs, maws in their torsos that whisper unspeakable secrets even in death, gravimetric muscles that allow limited telekinesis, and so forth.

Nor are the Koros mummies entirely devoid of interest: bathing in cosmic radiation for centuries has imbued many of them with a smattering of strange qualities: polychromatic auras that becloud the mind, achrononistic ways of interacting with time that allow them to blink in and out of existence, claws dripping with void-ichor, and so forth.

Nor is the dome solely a necromantic treasure. The Arha were a wealthy people, their coffers filled from selling maps and intelligence gleaned from telescopes and their orbital vista. They also possessed a goodly number of magical objects inherited from their ancestors. There are batteries containing raw sunstuff, rings that allow soaring through the air, and more.

There is also the Nullification Stone, a 3-foot sphere of stone that nullifies magic (as an anti-magic field) in a 5-foot radius. According to my math, a 3-foot sphere of granite weights over 19,000 pounds. I have no idea how the Necromancer would use this or what kind of special undead creature he might design to house and wield it, but I'm sure you can come up with something.

Other trinkets include "exo-bracelets" that allow survival in a vacuum (lying forgotten in a vault), ioun stones that reduce your need to consume food by an order of magnitude, and damier-print cloaks that halve damage from projectiles via inertia manipulation. There are also scrolls detailing astrophysics and primitive spelljammer ship deck plans.

Perhaps most perilously, the Arha libraries include well-encoded books describing the rituals necessary to snare a large asteroid and maneuver it into proximity with your campaign world. The ritual poses an existential threat to humanity should it ever fall into incompetent or malicious hands. The Necromancer doesn't need it and might just sell it (perhaps to the Ishnindah).

A Dark Future

Conquering the world seems so plebeian, but that's mostly because nobody ever manages to do it. Actually conquering the world or even just a significant portion of it seems pretty appealing, particularly if you have the means to achieve it. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. An undead army numbering in the hundreds of thousands will probably suffice for at least a continent.

The Necromancer has the Koros, too, who are largely immune to magic (though not to summoned or animated creatures). Their bird-horses make for agile, deadly cavalry, leaping into the air for twenty feet at a time and crashing down onto enemy troop formations. The Koros have decided that the Necromancer is the sacred representative of the afterlife. After all, he has completely mastered the power of the teleportation circle that leads there. He is even capable of returning things from the other side!

Really, the only plausible force for stopping the Necromancer's army would be some kind of crusader order capable of dealing with diverse undead menaces. Which is where the Koros come in: if the Necromancer gets even a whiff of paladins, he'll dispatch a hundred bird-lancers to take care of the problem. Or a thousand. Or ten thousand (there are a lot of Koros). This meshes pretty well with their values, they've always wanted to conquer and destroy the decadent soil-cultivating cultures that sprawl across the world, but largely lacked the means. Until now.

I'm sure you can take it from here. Good luck with all that, player-characters.

The Jek

A marrow river runs through these Jek hills.

The Jek inhabited this land when it was young. Identifiably Jek objects show up in the deepest mines of every country on this continent. Their ancient trinkets wash ashore on beaches and the shores of the deepest lakes. When Karanok, the great mountain, erupted and concealed the sun for a year, fire-impervious Jek statues were carried up amidst the pyroclastic flow. In short, we know that the Jek have existed for a long, long time. But they are absent from recorded history. Why?

According to the priests (who asked the gods) the Jek were driven beneath the earth by a storm that did not end for a thousand years. The priests do not say what happened in the deep tunnels. But the wizards do: the Jek found and paid obeisance to strange spirits: Cave Owl, Moon Centipede, and others. Perhaps they worshipped these spirits before they were driven below, and the gods sent the never-ending storm to punish them for it. Perhaps not. Did the spirits make the Jek mad and evil, or was it the other way around?

Jek initiates perform an unknown ritual.

The Jek revere their shamans. Without the shamans, the Jek would starve. At some point during their time below, a spirit taught the Jek shamans to vomit a vast, roiling pool of edible putrescence. The Jek subsisted on this for thousands of years. Now, they cannot digest anything else. When a shaman announces that the feast is immanent, it is a cause for great celebration: entire tribes will organize their receptacles to catch the revolting spew, dancing and singing with gladness.

Entire rivers of a similarly emitted (though less nutritious) substance course over the Jek lands, most resembling oily eddies of pale, liquescent bone marrow.

As a people, the Jek appear to be disfigured albinos. Their skins are covered with sores.  Many Jek lack fully-formed faces. Their shamans always wear masks. Beneath these masks, the shamans have no discernible features at all. Despite this, they are capable of respiring, speech, devouring the bodies of deceased humans for their own shamanic potions (but never anything else), and expelling the questionable foodstuff mentioned above.

Most Jek live in shallow caves or in the trunks of great trees, though there are a few Jek cities. These cities are mobile: every structure in them is carried or dragged by either the Jek or some sort of creature cultivated by them. Their greatest city, Tlel Washke, is built atop a vast stone slab that is chained to the towering reanimated corpse of Washke, who once styled himself to be the king of giants. Tlel Washke is dragged across the ground by this festering ex-king, following a nonlinear path according to the Jeks' inscrutable wishes.

The Jek do not have much in the way of appreciable metallurgy. They weave baskets and clothes, carve statues and render them indestructible, make amulets, and build strange dwellings from wood and stone and cloth.  The shamans produce a certain number of finishing goods by devouring humans and then regurgitating that material in a new form. For example, Jek swords consist of impossibly intricate human scrimshaw. A tribe preparing for war will feed dozens of prisoners to their shamans, each day, while those shamans laboriously vomit up sword after sword with seemingly no limit to the amount of material they can store inside their person. The Jek do not possess a written language, nor do they seem capable of learning one.

Near Jek, things are not as they should be. Their presence causes dreams to superimpose over reality. Large groups of Jek often appear to have the same face. Water droplets rain upwards from pools and rivers into the yawning sky. Birds cry out dire warnings in diverse languages.

A Jek emissary might appear as your best friend, you, a deceased pet from your childhood, or a horrid shimmering image in your dreams. The message relayed will not make sense. However, the Jek's intent will be obvious: hostility.

The Shadow of the Torturer

“I was sitting there, as I said, and had been for several watches, when it came to me that I was reading no longer. For some time I was hard put to say what I had been doing. When I tried, I could only think of certain odors and textures and colors that seemed to have no connection with anything discussed in the volume I held. At last I realized that instead of reading it, I had been observing it as a physical object. The red I recalled came from the ribbon sewn to the headband so that I might mark my place. The texture that tickled my fingers still was that of the paper in which the book was printed. The smell in my nostrils was old leather, still wearing the traces of birch oil. It was only then, when I saw the books themselves, when I began to understand their care.”

His grip on my shoulder tightened. “We have books here bound in the hides of echidnes, krakens, and beasts so long extinct that those whose studies they are, are for the most part of the opinion that no trace of them survives unfossilized. We have books bound wholly in metals of unknown alloy, and books whose bindings are covered with the thickest gems. We have books cased in perfumed woods shipped across the inconceivable gulf between creations—books doubly precious because no one on Urth can read them.”

“We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams. Books whose pages are not paper at all, but delicate wafers of white jade, ivory, and shell; books too whose leaves are the desiccated leaves of unknown plants. Books we have also that are not books at all to the eye: scrolls and tablets and recordings on a hundred different substances. There is a cube of crystal here—though I can no longer tell you where—no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear for an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other.”

― Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

The Sun Devourers

Click for a larger version, friend!

I really, really like these guys. It's just a basic feature of Aztec mythology that the progenitors of mankind were also skeletal star demons that want to eat people and end the world. I used them in an earlier post as one of the things that will go wrong if you lock up the wrong archangel for too long. Don't lock up archangels or you'll regret it!

The Silent God

This depiction of the sun-child looms over an eagle to
demonstrate his peaceful mastery over it.

In the blasted desert known as Eiginn, the sun-blind priests whisper their prayers to the yawning sky, offering praise to their placid, imbecilic deity. The silent child does not respond.

His Holy Person

The sun-child is mute. He appears quite often, especially to those dying of exposure or enduring terrible suffering. His touch heals completely, restoring life and vigor without effort. There is no communication, nor any indication that Solarian understands the significance of his actions. He appears, removes any suffering that he perceives, and vanishes without further consideration. He is a being of pure benevolence, but seems incapable of any emotions or thoughts beyond this. It is uncertain whether he is even capable of understanding a language.

A desert-stranded character dying of dehydration that has caught Solarian's eye might be visited by the godling, have his thirst quenched and health restored, only to return to the same agonizing state a few days later for lack of alternatives. Solarian could very plausibly keep visiting and restoring that character's health for weeks, while never giving a thought to helping them escape the desert or the agony that they are sure to endure there.

Solarian's power is absolute. If it occurred to him that it would remove suffering to transform the Eiginn from an arid wasteland to a verdant forest, he could do so in an instant and without appreciable exertion. But it does not occur to him.

His Sacred Band

Solarian's holy symbol is a sunburst with a face in it, or else any other sort of solar symbol. His clerics garb themselves in white cloth (often silk) and choose their domains from Sun, Life, Healing, or Solitude (depending also on what edition you are playing).

Solarian asks for offerings in the form of scattered grain or water decanted onto the open desert, as well as destroyed weaponry or other instruments of war, long vows of silence, and willing exposure to the elements.

When Solarian appears, time stands still except for Solarian and the creatures to whom he reveals himself. He approaches them, blesses them silently, and wanders away. No other interactions with the deity have ever been recorded.

The current enemies of Solarian's adherents include the hideous reptiles that infest Eiginn, creatures from the lower planes, and organizations or religions concerned with commerce and manufacture. Solarian himself does not have any enemies, and is probably incapable of grasping the concept.

Feats
These feats are only available to devotees of Solarian.

Vow Of Quescience

Limitation: You must never speak above a whisper. Aside from the obvious practical concerns, your near-silent prayers limit your range: your spells cannot extend beyond close range. This limitation is absolute and cannot be increased via metamagic or other abilities.

Benefit: In return for honoring him with your silence, Solarian grants you a +2 bonus to all of your saving throws. You also have a +2 bonus to checks related to moving silently.

Behold The Countenance

Limitation: You have stared at the sun for so long that your vision is permanently destroyed. You regard this as a sacred state rather than a limitation. Regardless, the blindness inflicted on you is magical as well as mundane, and only a heal spell or better will restore it (nullifying the benefits of this feat until you can remedy the situation).

Benefit: If 5e, you can memorize an extra two spells, per day. If other, you can memorize an extra two spells of your highest spell level. Either way, you also gain a +2 bonus to AC and saves.

The merciful sun-child shines down upon the holy desert of Eiginn.

Sacred Sites

There are many holy place in the Eiginn. One such spot is the Well Of Human Suffering, a lush oasis whose water flows from an exceedingly abundant natural spring. Sentient creatures who drink of this water are wracked with unfathomable agony. The natives mostly use it to water crops and feed their camels. Near the spring is a shrine dedicated to Solarian, to whom the creation of the spring is attributed. A carven stone explains that the well is filled with the suffering that Solarian has removed from mortal men. Since the woes of mankind are many, the well never runs dry.

Another important site is the mountain known as the Palace Of Vultures. Once the location of the largest temple dedicated to Solarian, it was plundered by an army of brigands a little over a century ago. It contained the greater part of the church of Solarian's wealth, and now is infested with desert spirits.

Lviem is the most important remaining shrine. It is founded in the cave-carved cliffs in the stony part of the desert. It is there that novices learn the sun chants and how to officiate various religious ceremonies. A hundred or so priests and novices live in the dry, winding passages.

The Sun-God's Prayers

Aureation (1st-level)

Your blessing causes a creature touched to shine with the light of the sun. They gain 3 temporary hit points and the next attack against them this encounter has disadvantage.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, it imparts an additional 3 temporary hit points for each slot level above 2nd.

Pacifying Halo (2nd-level)

You heal 1d8 hit points and are surrounded with a supernatural aura of peace until the end of your next turn. Any creatures adjacent to you during this time have disadvantage when attacking.

Living Blessing (4th-level)

This spell insulates a sufficiently humble creature touched from death. If the creature affected dies before the next day, they return to life with 1 hit point at the following sunrise. The creature does not suffer any kind of level loss or additional penalty. This spell can only be cast upon creatures with 9 hit dice or less. This spell fails if the corpse is destroyed or disintegrated.¹

This is apparently what a Staff Of Brilliance looks like.

Sacred Relics

Sunstone (common trinket)²
This scintillating stone emits light in a close radius. In addition to shedding light while equipped, you heal an additional hit point with your healing spells. If you shatter the sunstone as an action, you are healed 3d8+5 hit points.

Mendicant's Cloak (common cloak)
This humble cloak is threadbare, but contains potent magic. While wearing this cloak, you have a +1 bonus to saves. If it is the only magical item you are equipped with, you also have +10 max hit points.

Staff Of Brilliance (uncommon staff)
This staff has 5 charges. While holding it, you can expend 1 or more of its charges to achieve one of the following effects:

• Water From The Rock (1): While outside of combat, you strike a large natural stone, creating a small crevasse from which bubbles thirst-quenching water. It is enough to provide water for 10 people. Each creature that drinks at least one full dose of the water heals 5 hit points.
• Cleansing Light (2): An otherworldly, colorless light shimmers forth from the staff. You and any living creatures within 2 spaces each heal 1d8+5 hit points. Each undead within that radius suffers 1d8+5 disintegration damage, no save.
• Evoke The Sun (3): This ability can only be used during the day and on the surface. A brilliant sunbeam shines down on 10-foot radius location within close range. Creatures within that area must save or be blinded until the end of their next turn.

The staff regains 1d4 charges daily at dawn. If you expend the last charge, roll 1d20. On a 1, the staff immolates and is destroyed.

---

1 Players usually eschew most forms of preventative measures that require significant resource expenditure. A 4th-level spell is no joke to parties of 9th level or lower, but might just be worth using under very particular circumstances.

2 I divide magic items into common, uncommon, rare, and unique categories. Deal with it.

The Kitab al-Bulhan (The Book Of Wonders)

The real-life Kitab al-Bulhan is an amazingly illustrated treatise on astrology and geomancy. It looks like I'd expect a spellbook to look. It depicts constellations, sinister-looking djinni summonings, and what I presume to be semi-magical fauna.

If you are going to have your wizard find a scroll or spellbook, you are honor-bound to make a handout along these lines.

If you go with spellbook, you might want to include a few extra options: so long as they hold it in their hands while casting a summoning spell, the summoned creatures have +2 attack. Perhaps you should also include a ritual whereby one can summon a perilous djinn and interrogate it? Yes, definitely.


Whispering Djinn Answer Table (d10)

If you spend 100gp on rare incenses and various metal powders, you can spend six hours to conjure an invisible spirit possessed of significant metaphysical knowledge. You attempt to coerce magical secrets out of the inherently hostile creature, with varying results (reroll redundant results excepting 1s):

1. Thou Hast Erred: You summon a djinni, all right, but your binding is imperfect. The djinni is able to spontaneously combust your body, inflicting 5d6 fire damage, Will DC 16 for half. If you survive, you can hastily dismiss the creature before it repeats the effect.
2. Accursed Theology: At great length and with persuasive eloquence, the djinn claims that the gods of your world are mere spirits, either misguided or malicious, and that the world is the product of a single, remote deity who does not walk the world. Unless you can somehow erase this knowledge or the authority of its source from your mind, you permanently have advantage against divine magical attacks and resistance against healing spells. Potions still work fine, though.
3. The Secret Language Of Insects: Given a little time to zone in on the precise dialect, you can communicate with insects or the gestalt intelligence possessed by swarms of insects. They are completely hostile to mammalian life, but respect certain rules of propriety with regards to the exchange of gifts and services. If you displease a swarm of insects, they will have no problem at all reciting blasphemous secrets to drive you stark-raving mad, usually for days at a time.
4. Ingots Of True Flame: The fires of the mortal world are ghostly shadows of the flames that dance beyond creation. An ingot of true flame is dangerous for material creatures to possess, but has its uses. A dedicated pyromancer can fashion true flames with a wood-burning kiln, 100gp of esoteric woods and spices, and a day or three of unsleeping chanting and tending. The result is a wefting knot of constantly-reshaping red metal that superheats and destroys most non-magical things that it contacts, but that can also be used to empower fire spells. Whenever a spellcaster casts a fire spell while possessing the ingot, one of the dice of fire damage is maximized and the ingot has a 1-in-6 chance of being destroyed. How one safely handles the ingot is left to your imagination.
5. The Adverse Words: The beings of the material world are fragile. You learn a complicated series of otherworldly phrases that amplify entropy in whatever creature you recite them at. The targeted creature suffers 1 disintegration damage per full minute that you recite these words, or per hour if you merely think them. The creature must be within 100 feet of you and within your line of sight, though if they are within 25 feet line of sight is not necessary. The words lend themselves well to extended recitation: if necessary, you can chant these words for days at a time.
6. The Elevation Of Metal: In the world beyond worlds, there exists a realm of purified matter only somewhat removed from the divine world of the gods. All alchemy may be viewed as a process attempting to purify matter and return it to a divine state. You have learned the secrets of purifying metal such that it approaches one of the earlier stages of metaphysical purity. With this process, you can spend three days and 100gp on a metal weapon or armor, imparting the "Empyrean" prefix, e.g. "Empyrean Chain Mail +1". In weapons, the empyrean prefix causes the weapon to inflict +1d6 damage against non-elemental outsiders. In armor, the empyrean prefix imparts a +1 to all saves.
7. The Inverted Zodiac: Though most educated spellcasters are passingly familiar with the zodiac, there is a secret zodiac consisting of stars and other stellar bodies not visible to beings in a normal state of mind. By consuming 50gp of carefully chosen hallucinogens and invoking stellar entities for an evening, you can perceive the horrifying astral archetypes and cast an accurate horoscope for a willing ally. Roll 1d4: on a 1, the targeted player has a -1 to all d20 rolls for the next day. On a 2-4, that is how many times a player may add a 2 to a d20 roll during the next day; this can even occur retroactively to make a player succeed at a roll that they would otherwise fail.
8. The Virtues Of Herbs And Beasts: Many strange beasts and plants inhabit the earth, and many stranger still beneath and beyond it. You have learned the salubrious value of several strange creatures, many of whom you are able to create as needed via spontaneous generation. Rather than brewing potions of healing the standard way -whatever that might be- you lure, conjure, and create creatures whose bodies naturally contain potent healing alkaloids. The short of it is that you are able to brew healing potions for a cost halfway between the normal purchase cost and the normal sell cost. For example, if potions of curing cost 50gp in your game and can be sold to NPCs for 25gp, you can create them for 37.5gp. The process of rapidly spontaneously generating and then slaughtering strange beasts and plants is horrifying to behold, messy, and probably heretical.
9. Phylactery Against Misfortune: You inscribe potent spells against bad luck and other ill occurrence in tiny symbols on a thin scroll, wind it up, and place it within a sacramental box. The custom inks and other ingredients cost 100gp in total. When worn as an amulet, the scroll provides a +1 bonus to all saves, until you roll a natural 1 on a d20 roll or an enemy critically hits you. If that occurs, the roll is treated as a normal failure and the amulet loses its magic.
10. Motes Of Unlight: You learn the secret of harvesting motes of "unlight", a poisonous, bewildering energy that negates light and confounds proprioception. These motes can be stored in a specially prepared Gloom Lamp costing 200gp. Every 1d6 days of harvesting, the lamp will be sufficiently full for use. When activated, the unlight floods a 15-foot radius around the lamp for the rest of the encounter, blinding and slowing creatures within that radius for 1 round, Fort DC 16 negates. Alternatively, the unlight may be expended to restore a semblance of life to a recently dead, relatively cohesive humanoid cadaver, lasting for approximately five minutes.

The Spiderscape (Forgotten Realms)

This is an updated version of an earlier concept.

Forgotten Realms: A Days Of Future Past-style dark future in which Lolth has devoured all but a handful of her fellow deities, leaving only a few of the most interesting to hide and wonder when it will be their turn. Lolth's dominance has is unkind. She has spun a sun-occluding cocoon around the entirety of Faerun, plunging the world into gloomy twilight. With her blessing, spiders evolve into ever more capable predators, filling ever larger portions of ecosystems. The magical Weave, the source of magic itself, is pulled taught and patterned like a web, twining around Drowish prayers and filling them with power. A spectral web stretches across the afterlife, snaring souls before they can reach their final rest and filling an already bloated Lolth with even more power. 

Non-drow or anybody that dislikes eating fungus and spiders is pretty unhappy. A few remaining deities and their followers prowl the shadows, surviving as best they can and seeking a way to defeat or escape Lolth.

Bosses

Boss fights are basically the best. They're the climax of the rising action, where the players really show their stuff, or suffer for it. They're also time for you to crack out earth-shaking badniks, with incredibly deadly abilities.

They're usually something that's fucking cool, too. A lich or a dragon, a god or an Old One. A tarrasque. Whatever. Something that kicks ass and players associate with corpses and tear-stained character sheets.

The best bosses are the bookends of campaigns, showing their faces early on in the campaign, intermittently pulling some strings, and then taking part in a major throw-down during the last or nearly last session.

During the Final Battle, PC deaths are possible or even unavoidable, depending on how difficult your campaign is. Total party wipeouts become a possibility that is more or less acceptable to your players, who wouldn't want the climax to be an easy fight. Heck, the harder it is, the happier the players will be, when they win (or almost win, which can be just as good).

Buzz-Kills

-Watch out for the fight being too easy, even if the players have an amazing plan. But similarly, it shouldn't be too hard in a way that isn't fun. Bosses should sizzle on your players' taste buds, one way or another, rather than be 1,000 hp wastes of time.

-The boss shouldn't be a one-trick pony. Ideally it should have two stages, where the boss alters or steps up its mode of combat, usually after it is reduced to half life.

-Watch out for save or die effects, or their cousins, domination/charm effects. A good rule of thumb is to give a boss the ability to automatically have an effect like these cause the boss to lose his next turn, rather than die. Or to have the effect wear off at the end of a round, in the case of dominate effects. This avoids you simply having a monster be immune to an ability, and gives the players their druthers.

Tips!

-Broadcast how difficult it's going to be to kill the boss, in-game rather than out of game. Out of game gloating can backfire way too easy. But in-game foreknowledge can impress your players into performing better, and possibly give them some tips about how to win.

-Outline what's at stake to the players if they fail to defeat the boss. It doesn't need to be a "save the world" scenario. There can be very clear, unpleasant consequences, without it being an earth-shaking scenario.

-The final session of the game can be the most important of the entire campaign. It's the one players will remember best, for chronological reasons. The boss should be memorable, and the fight should encapsulate and exemplify all the good things from the entire campaign.

Sekolah

I have always loved cults and religions. The mythology of most religions makes for great reading, and the means of worship vary significantly. This is one of my favorite religions, from one of my better games.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind.
-John Keats (1795-1821), Ode to Psyche

The Salahs

In the Second Enlightened Sekolian Cult, a Salah is considered to be the personified power and authority of the shark-deity Sekolah, holding the authority to act as a leader in the church and to perform priestly duties, as well as the sacred power to work miracles. A group of Salahs is referred to as a 'shiver'.

The word 'Salah' denotes elements of both power and authority. All Salah have undergone and survived a shark attack known as 'the Shriving', and been spared death via Sekolah's implicit intervention. This brush with Sekolah and death gives the Salahs a mystical understanding and authority over the oceans, as well as the twin processes of life and death. As a spiritual power, Salahs are said to possess the abilities to control the winds, to communicate with sharks, and to devour wicked spirits that threaten their devotees.

The Shriving

There is a single requirement to become a Salah: Any man or woman that has been assaulted by sharks, lost two-fifths or more of his or her body mass, and survived, is then eligible to become a Salah. This loss of body is regarded as an offering to Sekolah, and may be either deliberate or accidental. Such horrible injuries are considered to cultivate detachment from mortality in the victim that then allows them to achieve a closer relationship with the deity than other worshippers.

The Modern Cult

The faith of Sekolah is referred to as a cult because it focuses on a principle deity and his associated menagerie of spirits, but does not purport a doctrine of morals by which believers are expected to live their lives by. The doctrine of Sekolah's cult is concerned chiefly with how to honor and revere Sekolah, and what few morals it espouses pertain to individuals and their duties to various categories of other people, such as spouses, family, and mamluks.

The modern cult is more temperate than its predecessors, who were blood-soaked and aggressive. It is presently led by one Iber Salah, who has distinguished himself by forbidding his Salahs to set foot on soil that is not part of the Guatican Co-Prosperity Sphere. This has led to a number of foreign Salah to reside aboard houseboats and the like, and is interpreted as a tacit support for the Shah's recent expansionist policies.

Campaign Design Best Practices (Part 5)

17. Production Value - Treasure Art: If you have a black and white printer and an internet connection, you can find pictures of your treasure. I haven't done this in a long time, and every time I remember to I kick myself because there's nothing cooler than being handed a picture of your newly obtained hoard of goodies. Something fun that certain boxed sets have done is have cards for each item with a picture on the front and the item details on the back --i.e. nothing beyond the skills of your average computer using gamer.

18. Style - Reward What You Like, Punish What You Hate: For years I would offer to let people start out with extra experience points if they typed up a character background. I know that many DMs require this. The thing is, I hate them. Every time I read one I'd get bored. It's rare that I would actually finish an entire history unless I was looking for plot hooks. One day I had an epiphany: why am I rewarding players for boring me? So I stopped asking for character histories, and when I need to involve backgrounds it will be more along the lines of things that I want, like me giving them perks in exchange for accepting a certain amount of hassle-causing backstory. Another habit in the same vein that I have been cured of is trying to separate my emotional reactions from the rules of the game with regards to rewarding players. I'd think things like "Paul sure made that game less fun for me, tonight." And then I'd give him as much experience as everybody else. Your fun is important, and your opinion of whether players are fun or not fun is probably the best barometer your gaming group can get. Similarly, if someone is flexible about the rules and isn't always waving the rulebooks in your face, you should feel freer to give them a little leeway with the rules. If a player is a stickler and gets in your face about every minor rules mistake, don't feel bad about applying the same standard to them.

19. Style - Don't Be Scared To Change Things: A bad habit that I rid myself of only recently is trying to run modules or campaign worlds exactly how they are written. I guess I was convinced that if I could run things exactly as they were written, I would end up with the best game possible. This is untrue. Firstly, most mainstream game designers are kind of lazy and their modules are often not playtested or especially inspired. For the really mainstream games things have to be oriented toward the lowest common denominator, and so will be less interesting to people that rate low on the Aspergers scale. Secondly, no matter how good a module is, the author cannot know how the pacing is going in your game, because this will vary every time the module is run. What might seem like a great time to ambush the players on paper may in fact be when the players are getting cranky because things are too difficult. Fudge the module a bit, delay or omit, replace and swap. Your game will be better for it.

Campaign Design Best Practices (Part 4)

13. Drama - Segmented Dungeons: Break your dungeon levels up into sections that will take about a session each to manage. You might accomplish this by having there be seals that need to be broken between each level or section, by having unavoidable choke points, or assembly puzzles that need to be completed with items found in a given section. The reason to do this is so that each session feels like something fresh in the minds of the players when they begin a new session, and so that any rejoining players that missed a session or two don't feel clueless. If the segments increase in difficulty as one conquers them, there is also a rising dramatic arc.

14. Production Value - Logo: You should have a logo for your campaign. A symbol that has something to do with the game, perhaps a representation of the main MacGuffin or arch-villain's personal rune. Put the symbol on your character sheets and handouts. This is called branding, and will add "polish" to your campaign and make it more distinctive in the minds of your players.

15. Drama - Forming An Adventuring Party: Don't have them meet in a tavern. How will that distinguish your campaign as any different from tens of thousands of other games? The party works better when the players have an established relationship --making it a given that they are siblings and cousins has worked well for me. Or if you must have them meet, have them meet under circumstances likely to make them cooperative. Having them meet in the drunk tank of a jail, for example. Or in a more modern campaign, have them be caught in an elevator together for a few hours. I've also had one player be the head of a company that interviewed the other PCs to see if they were right for the job --if you do this, be sure to roleplay a few people that definitely won't get hired, just for fun.

16. Production Value - Character Portraits: Even if you aren't an artistically talented person (I'm not) you may have a player that is, or they may have amenable friends that are. Tell the players that if there is a decent character portrait made of their character then it is worth a good chunk of experience. Nothing makes a character more distinct than seeing it come to life.

Campaign Design Best Practices (Part 2)

I have begun enumerating these. I can crack a hundred, easy. Let's see if it holds my attention for that long.

5. Mechanics - Dungeon Design: If you are using D&D 3.0 or 3.5, be sure to include at the potential for at least one incidence each of Fortitude, Reflex, and Willpower saving throws. Be sure to include at least one trap, one locked door, one secret passage, and one optional encounter. Try to have "conceptual" dungeons, like a dungeon with only one monster that can attack them at various points throughout the dungeon. I once had a dungeon in which a piece of the Rod of Seven Parts was used to keep an avatar of Yogsothoth (as statted in the 1e Deities and Demigods) incarcerated in a crypt. On their way into the dungeon the PCs had to contend with tentacles coming out of holes in the walls that were treated as though they were individual monsters, weird spatial distortion, and abrupt mind-control effects --all courtesy of Yogsothoth, the sole inhabitant of the dungeon, whom they could not confront until the end.

6. Style - Dungeon Design: Don't be bland about your dungeon designs. You want dramatic locations. You want "ah-ha" moments. You want interesting terrain and situations. Do things like design a dungeon based on a Frank Lloyd Wright house, or Hitler's Berlin bunker. Have things to fall off or into. Have rivers and ledges and cliffs. Fight in all of these places. I once based a dungeon off the design of Masada, in Israel, for example. This will let you concentrate on filling the dungeon rather than drawing floor plans.

7. Style - Characters: The more you make it about your campaign world, the less it is about your player's characters. I have found that there is a sliding scale between these two that cannot be bypassed in tabletop gaming with more than two players. With smaller groups there is time to emphasize both the personal and the general, but in larger groups this is not possible, and you have to make the choice. I have run campaigns in which I desperately tried to convey the special noir of the campaign world, and I have had more bland campaign worlds in which the players' ideas for their characters became the driving force behind the action. Both make for wonderful games, but one or the other may be more suited for your group.

8. Style - Character Background: In exchange for a little extra experience -particularly if a player missed a session or two and wants to catch up- you can give him the opportunity to bluebook. That is, to write a summary or excerpt from the character's journal, or otherwise indicate what he was doing during the session that he missed. Alternatively, the bluebook may delve into the character's past -- it can be anything from a travelogue of the time before the PCs met, to any other form of campaign literature. In a more modern setting, perhaps the character has written a book or recorded a CD, the player might then write a review of the work.

Solarian: Knowledge (religion)

In this game I had a little blurb or benefit associated with each level of the various knowledge skills. This ended up being a little too much work to keep track of, but wasn't too bad for the smaller player group at the time.

Knowledge: Religion
(gods and goddesses, mythic history, ecclesiastic tradition, holy symbols, undead)

1: The most popular deity in your region is Solarian, here is his profile and symbol:



Solarian is god of the sun, innocence, silence, youth, and beauty. His Hierophants describe him as a mute child, and say that he displays very little interest in or capability for understanding speech. The rooster is holy to him.

2: Here is a list of the other widely accepted deities and their associations:

Ilia -Purity, Childbirth, the Moon
Aspects of War -Battle, Emotion, Madness
The Spirit of the Soukh -Commerce, Travel, Charms
Defiled Woman -Rape, Betrayal
Great Worm -Transformation, Hunger
Ivory Father -Progenitor Deity

3: Here is the genealogy of the gods:

Ivory Father begat Solarian and Ilia, Aspects of War, Defiled Woman, Great Worm, and the Spirit of the Soukh. Ivory Father was then slain and devoured by his daughters the Aspects of War. Neither Ivory Father nor Ilia are much worshipped, and Great Worm is only almost solely worshipped at Silk Waters.

4: You may purchase potions of cure light wounds for 50 gp each, at any oasis where you are able to peacefully interact with the market.

You are also familiar with the Hexachord:



It represents the totality of your pantheon, with the central circle being mankind and each deities' symbol encircling it. They are, starting from the top and proceeding clockwise, Ivory Father, Aspects of War, Ilia, Great Worm, Spirit of the Soukh, and Solarian. Ivory Father is included out of respect, Defiled Woman is regarded as a demon and as such is not included.

5: More about the Genealogy of the Gods:

Many do not consider Defiled Woman or Great Worm to be true deities, as Defiled Woman was born much later than the other deities, and Great Worm appears not to be the child of Ivory Father. Indeed, Great Worm is the only deity aside from Ivory Father that seems to have created itself.

6: More about the Hexachord:

Deities on the left side are male, deities on the right are female. The higher a deity is on the hexachord, the more powerful he, she, or it is in relation to the other deities (ie Ivory father was the most powerful, Great Worm is the weakest). Defiled Woman's power remains largely unknown.

7: Extra domain option
You gain access to a domain pertaining to a deity of your choice, you retain the option of access to that domain.

Solarian: Dying Of Thirst

Saliva becomes thick and foul-tasting; the tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth .... A lump seems to form in the throat ... severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin. Hearing is affected, and many people begin to hallucinate... then come the agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. The tongue hardens into "a senseless weight, swinging on the still-soft root and striking foreignly against the teeth." Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers have been known to moan and bellow.

Next is the "blood sweats" phase, involving "a progressive mummification of the initially living body." The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying sense of drowning.

Finally ... there is living death, crawling on your hands and knees: "your lips disappear as if amputated, leaving low edges of blackened tissue; your teeth and gums project like those of a skinned animal, but the flesh is black and dry as a hank of jerky; your nose withers and shrinks to half its length, and the nostril-lining showing black; your eyes set in a winkless stare, with surrounding skin so contracted as to expose the conjunctiva, itself as black as the gums...; your skin [had] generally turns a ghastly purplish yet ashen gray, with great livid blotches and streaks; your lower legs and feet ... are torn and scratched by contact with thorns and sharp rocks, yet even the freshest cuts were so many scratches in dry leather, without a trace of blood"

The Island: Dreki Corpse-Eater

Dreki Corpse-Eater is an immense dragon that lives atop a mountain of frozen corpses. The corpses are those that have died outside of battles. He is Nidhoggur and Beowulf's dragon at once, the spawner dragons. The players couldn't really hope fight him, and he wasn't interested in fighting. After Dreki gave his speech, the players fought some of Dreki's children.

I did my best polish accent, inflected all the words wrong, and went with it. The words are partially derived from John Gardener's nihilist dragon, and partially from TS Eliot's The Wasteland. The main thrust of it is that Dreki is aware of the future and what The Tree wants to do with island: kill the dragons, end magic, and supplant the nature of reality in the campaign setting.

I don't expect it looks like much on paper, but despite its nonsensical nature and what I'll charitably call "poetic logic" it made an impression on my players.

"We've been expecting you. I am Dreki Corpse-Eater, world-wrecker, fatal my fang, hungry my horde, father of Goin Dreki and mother of Murrain Dreki."

Because you will one day not exist you do not exist now. You are neither living nor dead. And you know nothing. You see nothing. You remember nothing. You don't see Island, the nymphs departing, thunder screaming out of bells in the distant sunrise.

I heard what The Thunder said. I heard it, but have not heeded it. Dry sterile thunder. Wrongful thunder, bad bad bad thunder. A world of rock but no water, a world of sound but no word. That is what I was to make. What I have given to man to do instead.

You come to me here in this dead land, death's other kingdom. You think you can crush the multifoliate rose of death's true kingdom. That is the only hope for empty men. For thine is the kingdom.

It was my job, but I have given it to man. This capacity to destroy. no part of it want I. Mankind's time on Island is no more than a swirl in the stream of time, but I have prolonged it.

I am killed not by you, but by one like you. Shantih shantih shantih."

Campaign Snippets: The Island part II

Above is a picture of the cosmology of this campagin, sans Tree.

The Dream Of The Tree

Last night, you dreamed a true dream. While other men reclined on their beds and dreamt lies, you perceived a rare and wondrous Tree which glowed like the sun. It's bark was gold, it's trunk studded with jewels. This Tree was no hangman's Tree; no body twisted in the wind beneath his mighty branches. This was the Victory Tree, to which the world is nailed.

You wondered why you deserved to view this Tree. And it was then that you saw that the Tree was dripping sap, and it was your crimes which caused this injury. It's blood was rare perfume!

Then did the Tree deign to speak to me. "Your people have worshipped presence and absence, yet they care not. I alone shall heed your prayer, I alone bring glory." And I saw that it was also the Truth Tree.

"Now do I command, my best beloved, that you this vision tell to man: reveal the word that it is this glorious Tree which will bring surcease of sorrow and give renewed life." Prayed you then to the Tree in joyful spirit, with great zeal, and then there you were alone.

Notes

It was supposed to be sort of a vegetable Christ, semi-based on how the Danes were more easily converted to Christianity because of the similarities between Odin hanging from a tree, and Christ nailed to a "tree." In my version, it also shared certain characteristics with the Yggdrasil, the Norse world tree.

I fell in love with the idea of a near-mindless, all-loving entity that instinctively tried to grow, and snuff out magic by killing dragons and fairies wherever it could. It would send The Dream Of The Tree to just about anybody, instructing them how to build bells out of iron that would weaken magic and supernatural creatures for miles around. If enough such bells were constructed and rung, magic and fae creatures would disappear entirely, leaving only The Tree as the source of the miraculous. Below is included the affiliation rules that I used for it. Affiliation rules are from the 3.5 PHB II, and basically represent how much a group or entity likes you.

Affiliation: The True Rood
Criterion / Affiliation Score Modifier
Character level +1/2 PC's level
Religion 9 or higher +1
Setting up a bell tower in a new region +2
Killing or banishing a spirit +1
Killing or banishing a group of spirits +2
Saving an innocent life +1
Saving a group of innocents' life +2
Making use of heathen magics -3

(3 or lower) No affiliation or junior member with no benefits.

(4 - 10) Brother/Sister: You gain a bonus exalted feat. Must donate at least 50 gp per month toward bell foundry construction and upkeep. Gain access to a special equipment list, any of which may be used if you possess an exalted feat.

325 gp Incense: Delayed Bless spell, as scroll.
360 gp Sacred Splinter: Swift cure light wounds cast @ 1st level, self only.
720 gp Coat of Many Colors: Energy resistance 1. Vest Slot.
5500 gp True Leaf: Raise Dead as scroll.

(11 - 17) Saint: +4 competence bonus on Religion and Spellcraft checks. You may take a -1 to your affiliation score to be raised from the dead as a raise dead spell, save that there is no level loss.

(18 - 22) Beacon: +1 luck bonus to all saving throws while wearing a Coat of Many Colors. You must disperse a den of fae or heathens each week, or suffer a -1 to your affiliation.

(23 - 29) Apostle: You must tithe 10% of your income toward bell foundry construction and upkeep. You are constantly under the effects of the tongues spell.

(30 or higher) Seed: You gain a bonus exalted feat.

Old Campaigns: Brython Map

I've been too busy to post, so I thought I would upload this old campaign map that I made. It was printed on colored stationary so that the minor color differences wouldn't show at all. The villains of the setting were a circle of knights that has betrayed an Arthuresque figure. Their coats of arms are visible on the map, indicating what areas they controlled.

The campaign features bandit knights, Tamlin, a Christianity cognate sweeping away pagan religions from a fantastic British isles, St. Brandon, and a really cool dragon that deserves its own update. The monsters on the map are taken from the Carta Marina, a 16th-century ancient map of northwestern Europe that should be required viewing for all d&d players. I would draw your attention in particular to the creature near the bottom of my version of the map: it's a 16th-century cartographer's version of a whale!

Two convincingly immoral organizations

I find many of the evil organizations in rpgs to be one-dimensional and cliche, so I tried to write a couple that were a little more complicated.

The Jackals
These religious devotees wear shrouds stolen from corpses and rub their bodies with cremation ash. They hold that good and evil are really the same thing. Indeed, they believe that all things are one.

By ritually embracing pollution in the form of cannibalism, they are revealing the illusory nature of the social taboos against it and, by extension, all other taboos and moral categorizations. They seek power and, when they obtain it, seek to find even more power, because they believe that the accumulation of enough power will allow them to escape birth and rebirth on the outer planes as petitioners.

The order does not fear the afterlife because they believe that, since all things are one, the various lower planes and upper planes are really the same place, and torment is the same as pleasure.

The Cult of Great Worm

A religion that venerates a temporal deity, these cultists cultivate mulberry forests and wear ceremonial garbs of the finest silk. Their deity is a vast, nearly immobile, man-devouring worm that the cult believes will pupate into a great deity once it has been fed enough.

Eons ago a great deity -the cultists would say the greatest deity- perished, and Great Worm spawned in the rotting, divine cadaver. Back then, it was as small as a man. Immortal and invulnerable, it remained until men were created, and fed upon them. Eventually, it grew too large to hunt for itself, but did not starve to death nor diminish in size.

Centuries later, a tribe of men began to worship it and draw power from it, despite its apparent lack of intelligence or acknowledgement of this worship. In gratitude for these gifts, the tribe would feed its enemies to Great Worm, who would not eat any food save the flesh of men. This tribe was the ancestor of the current-day order.

Great Worm is now so large that his slightest movement causes tremors in the earth, and still he has not spun a cocoon, nor pupated. He resides amidst a vast mulberry forest, his maw opening and closing, dripping filthy poison. One of these days, the cult maintains, he will finally be sated, and spin a vast cocoon of fine silk. What will emerge from that cocoon, nobody can say.