Skills

Here's my attempt to write rules for skills in my spontaneously-self-resurrecting homebrew tabletop system. These aren't complete by a long shot - there's work to be done in regards to how you go about getting them, but this post is just focused on how you play with them.

My goals for these rules are:

• To use a passive/active system for skill checks that incorporates both Intelligence and Wisdom
• Avoid modifiers, and use a roll-under system
• Let the players utilize items to mitigate proficiency deficiency

Madison Safer

Skill checks represent the player characters using their talents and experience to modify their situations. There are two types of skill checks: Knowledge checks and Application checks. These are both d20 rolls.

A successful Knowledge check allows a player character to recall information that is pertinent to the situation. To make a Knowledge check, you check your roll against your Intelligence. If it is equal to or lower than your Intelligence score, you are successful.

You cannot make Knowledge checks untrained, unless you have a source of information on-hand.

Application checks, when successful, allow a player character to significantly change their circumstances. They're more powerful than we consider skill checks in systems like 5E. Application rolls are checked against Wisdom instead of Intelligence. Whenever you succeed on an Application check, cross it off for the day - you cannot use it again until you rest.

You can make Application checks at a penalty if you are untrained in them. This caveat can be ignored if you have the proper tools for the job. 

If you roll under your Wisdom by 5 or more, you do not have to cross your skill off for the day.

If you roll under your Wisdom by 10 or more, you may tack an adverb onto your action (thanks Arnold).

Some classes have access to exclusive skills. Rangers get Terrain as a skill, which they use for tracking things and altering battlefields. Wizards get Spellbook and Relic as skills, which they use for casting. Other classes will have access to these skills (untrained, obviously) on a case-by-case basis.

The Twelve Gifts of Crucible

Crucible is the third god of the Thirteen, and also the third month of the year, the last of winter's days. The spheres that Crucible rules over are Wealth and Fate. You might think this would make him cruel, but more than anything he is just absent.

Not a lot of mythology exists revolving around the Thirteen, but Crucible is a rare exception.

In the days after the War of Ichor, the Thirteen were weary from their long battle with the Titans, and wearier still from the treaties brokered afterwards with the remaining mortal races. Crucible saw this, and took action. To cheer his fellows up, most scriptures would say. The more pessimistic would tell you that his actions were meant to boost morale and, thus, efficiency. Whatever the case, Crucible gave the twelve other gods gifts over the next twelve days.

For mortals, this was translated into Loom's holiday season. For the first twelve days of Crucible, people exchange small gifts. Depending on the person, they may also mirror or reference the gifts given in the original myth.

Crucible 1 - Alentyan

For the youngest god, son of an Archlord, Crucible melted down the fat of a maddening beast from the depths of the Shadowfell. From this sprouted a blue candle that could cleave through any darkness. It made for a great reading light, and Alentyan smiled (as best as his beaked face could) at the thoughtfulness.

If one were to give a specific gift this day, it would ideally be as close as possible to the candle described in this myth.

Seb McKinnon

Crucible 2 - Cashel

Cashel inherited the divine spheres of Earth and Water from two separate Titans, and so to this god Crucible altered fate. Before this, gold was the element of the heavens - it was found among the clouds, and hollowed from the highest peaks. Now it is found deep in the earth's belly, and sometimes floating through rivers.

The appropriate gift for this day is a monetary gift, specifically to someone of poor social standing. Most people just flick a gold piece into a beggar's hand, instead of the usual silver.

The people of Zosk revere this event. The dwarves were not nearly as big a fan of this act.

Crucible 3 - Endymeron

After the previous day's gift, Crucible thought it would be wise to give something to the dwarves - Endymeron's people. The three headed god ruled over Air and Time, and as such Endymeron's people philosophized a great deal over those two things. So, Crucible crafted the meteorite.

Stones from the sky are the subject of fierce debate among many dwarven philosophers. Philosophically, they are heretical. Practically, they contain many useful metals.

Specific gifts given this day are usually either trinkets crafted from exotic metals, long-winded essays, or anything given to a dwarf.

Crucible 4 - Graeler

Graeler rules the spheres of Empires and Mind. As such, Crucible thought it would be appropriate to create something that fit both. Something that required mental conquering.

And thus, Crucible wrote the first riddle. Graeler was, uncharacteristically, delighted.

The appropriate gift for this day is, of course, telling your friends a riddle they haven't heard before.

Crucible 5 - Haraad

As the goddess of Nature and Health, Haraad's power wanes with the seasons. Within the calendar she rules over the highest days of spring, closest to the solstice. Conversely, she is weakest in the fall, when life begins to decay and when illness commonly creeps over the populous.

To cheer her up, Crucible tinted the leaves of autumn's last days beautiful reds and oranges. Haraad smiled, a rare occurrence in the dead of winter, when this myth took place.

On this day the faithful typically give a gift to anyone in their life who is, at the time, sick. If that happens to be nobody they know, they give someone a preserved leaf from the previous fall, when the colors yet turned.

Crucible 6 - Jaspus

Fire and Home are Jaspus's spheres, and yet they have trouble co-existing. Light a fire in an enclosed space, and smoke chokes out its residents. This rule has exceptions, of course, but it troubled Jaspus. So, for him, Crucible crafted the chimney.

Jaspus nodded in approval. This was one of the most emotional acts taken by the forge-god, at least in recorded history.

The traditional gift for this day is a red cake, cooked to look like a brick. In some parts of the world, sweeping your friend's chimney is also considered traditional.

Crucible 7 - Ka

What gift do you give to a god of Magic and Chaos?

Ka was tickled by the prospect, especially when Crucible invited them over to a house in Deitia, heavenbound city of the gods. Ka relished the opportunity to topple Crucible's plans.

Then they walked in the door ajar, and a bucket of water fell on Ka's head. Each of their snorts from the resultant laughing fit birthed a slaad.

This is the day of Crucible where you play pranks on your friends.

Crucible 8 - Ouran

On the other hand, Crucible was very confident as to what they needed to give to Ouran. As the god of Morality and, more importantly, Invention, Crucible needed to craft something mechanical. After much thought, Crucible presented Ouran with a compass, late in the day.

A compass is the requisite gift, of course. It would be wise to make sure it's the right kind - giving someone in the eastern hemisphere one that's weighted towards the east pole won't be very helpful.

Yeong-Hao Han

Crucible 9 - Quar 

Crucible's original gift to Quar has been scrubbed from history - apparently, it was horribly offensive. Though, in a roundabout way, Crucible's apology to the god of Truth and Emotion wound up as its own gift.

On the ninth of Crucible, celebrators are supposed to give any long-overdue apologies they might have.

Crucible 10 - Sotiro

For the ruler over Stars and Travel, Crucible crafted the cloudless night - a thing that would allow all lost travelers to find their way home, or perhaps further away from it.

Crucible had to call in several favors for this gift, and as such the most appropriate thing one can do on this day is to offer help to any who may need it.

Crucible 11 - Troyt

Waking up early, Crucible flagged down the second child of the Archdragon. He wanted to show her how to create bronze - for a goddess of War and Lightning, a mainly-copper sword seemed the perfect gift. Troyt would later go on to show her followers that same process.

Bronze trinkets are, of course, the gift of choice.

Crucible 12 - Zuzen

To the dracogod of Law and Thunder, Cashel gifted a book with ever-expanding pages, and a quill with limitless ink. This was to allow him to record as many laws as he could possibly think of. Instead, Zuzen used it to record the names of each god felled during the God Purge, three centuries after when this myth took place.

This day is reserved for gifts to those in mourning.

Rumor Tables

I'm prepping for an upcoming campaign, and the first session involves collecting rumors. So, I figure I'd better write rules for rumor tables - something I've done before, but wanted to take another crack at.

My last ruleset had players roll 1d6 while I flipped a coin, asking the player to call it but not telling them what it wound up as. What they rolled determined which general rumor they would hear about, while what I flipped determined whether or not the details were true or false. For example:

GENERAL: Rumor has it that the government of a city far to the north known as Nothokari, capital of the Coatbysk, has discovered an ancient magical artifact that was thought lost.
TRUE: The artifact, known as the Witchcrown, was confiscated by the city's current king- though some attempts to steal it have been made already.
FALSE: The current king, known to be a Lightclaimer sympathizer, is currently negotiating a selling price with Subjugator Garrel.

While that system is perfectly functional, I wanted to tweak it. My goals were:

• remove the secret coin flip - it's better if players aren't necessarily aware that they can find false information.
• ease the amount of work I, as a DM, have to do. rumor tables shouldn't take more than a few minutes to throw together.
• incorporate Charisma into the roll, so that some characters are better at collecting rumors than others.

So, that in mind, here's my new system:

Whenever a player wishes to collect rumors, they must pick a specific region or topic to gather rumors on. Then, they roll a d6.

Each rumor table will have at least one true rumor on it. Additionally, the DM will add a number of additional true rumors to it equal to the player character's Charisma modifier. So, at +5 Charisma, the table will be entirely true rumors.

Every other rumor on the table will be, in some way, untrue. It might be a partial lie, or entirely made up. Ideally, even fake rumors point the party in the direction of something interesting. Sure, there might not be buried treasure at the destination they were given - but there is a tiny village home to sprites.

So, as an example, here's a rumor table for Selka. My process for writing these was to do the true rumors first, and then copy and paste the finished rumors to the false section, changing them slightly. Then, I would write an expansion upon the rumor in the spot it left on the true table. This leads to the "false" rumors mostly just being outdated or undetailed, which I like.

However, each table does have at least one true rumor independent from any on the other table. For the True table, this is the omnipresent true rumor that each character has a chance of finding regardless of Charisma. For the False table, it's just something completely made up and not even partially true.

TRUE RUMORS:

1. Recently, a fungal infection has inflicted heavy damage on this year's war-snail population, damaging trade with other nations. An emissary from Ghr'quoz, a Selkian underwater city, is visiting the surface to investigate, and will pay handsomely for anyone who can help. (stagnant true rumor)
2. Mining operations for a substance that will burn even underwater in northeastern Selka have halted due to a cave-in, which some say was caused intentionally.
3. An ancient, immortal warrior from the Obsidian Tide is supposedly being hidden in a large barn somewhere in central Selka, with a visiting Dobarkoli anthropologist attempting to translate the giant's mutterings.
4. An arctic druid roused the slumbering water spirit within a Selkian glacier, attempting to use it as a weapon of war - which the water spirit wants nothing to do with. It's attempting to run, but that mainly means slowly sliding through eastern Selka.
5. A mad wizard living in the Brimstone Marsh has been searching for an apprentice as of late, but has been attacked at all the rural villages he's visited - causing him to destroy many of them, mainly in self defense that's gone a little too far.
6. A number of Selkian exiles have discovered a potent hallucinogen that allows for the development of psionic powers, which they've circulated along with more mundane narcotics - blaming the whole thing on the Rikolese Empire.

FALSE RUMORS:

1. A visiting Raahilan gunsmith has developed guns for the Selkian military that will function underwater. The factory for them is located along the country's northeastern coast.
2. A seal rancher recently uncovered what appears to be the crypt of a Giantine warrior while looking for grazing sites.
3. A glacier that has stayed stagnant for centuries, and is also part of an important religious ritual for pilgrims from Sharsvud, has recently begun to move southward for no apparent reason.
4. A horrific beast from the Brimstone March has begun to devastate the rural communities of western Selka.
5. The neighboring Rikolese empire has been smuggling experimental alchemical drugs over the border to attempt to create a dependency among the Selkian surface-borne population.
6. In southern Selka, there are rumors of a revolution among the Nautilid population, who have long wanted to establish their own nation.

Malachai (Cha +3) and Wrex (Cha -1) both roll to gather rumors about Selka.

Malachai rolls a 5, just over their threshold for a true rumor, and learns about the drug trading going on along the Rikolese border - but doesn't hear about the true party behind it.

Wrex rolls a 1, luckily hearing about the truthful rumor about the fungal infection among Selkian war-snails. 

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Okay, well after writing this I would actually say it takes longer than my previous system. But it is a lot of fun, and I think a little more streamlined for actual play. It's also a good way to get the gears turning on questlines. I think I'll try this system out in my next campaign, and maybe report back on if it works or not.

Hazzem Political Map (Pre-Shattering)

This is a post about Hazzem, the first continent I ever created for Loom and the main setting for my first longform campaign (Overlight, played from like the last day of 2016 'til mid 2018).

Overlight was a post-apocalyptic campaign, though that's somewhat of a misnomer. It wasn't a total apocalypse - there were survivors, and the "Shattering" (the apocalypse-scale event) only affected Hazzem. However, one unique thing about the continent is that (due to an ancient game being played by the fey) it's impossible to leave. Sail off from the west coast, and a mere 60 miles later you'll wash up on the eastern shore. For this reason, much of Hazzem's population believed that Hazzem was the only continent on Loom until after the Shattering.

Anyways, this is a map of Hazzem from before the events of Overlight. Specifically, it would be circa 1330 AEM. Whenever I have time for it, I'll release a map of Hazzem from after Overlight.

Here's a full-size version of this image.

A. The Yetkoli Empire is the mightiest of the human nations that remain on Hazzem after the Quartering, having forced themselves into many formerly-sovereign territories and made them either vassal nations or added them to the Empire as colonies (A2). Their culture prioritizes unification above all else, encouraging its annexed territories to embrace the teachings of Maglubiyet, their namesake and inspiration for their tyranny.

B. Only barely the third-largest of the human Empires, the Linkoli formed post-Quartering from humans who had goblin blood within them. They revere goblinoids as lucky spirits, and nobility within their aristocratic circles is based around who has the highest percentage of "pure" goblinoid blood in their family - often measured through parties designed to test the acuity of one's sense of smell. They're like wine tastings, but revolving around terrible smells (which "true" nobles are supposed to find exquisite).

C. The smallest human nation, and not truly an "empire," the Dobarkoli were refugees from the rampant slaughter of the Quartering. They are not truly expansionist, and have acquired their additional land through negotiation almost entirely. Cartography is seen as the most noble pursuit by the Dobarkoli, and they have a reputation as either the "softy" humans or the "non-imperialist" humans, depending on who you ask. Still, though, they frequent other nations for their map-making and anthropological exploits.

D. The last and second-largest human nation, the Rikolese Empire has a culture of body modification and transmutation magic. Mutations are only as taboo among them as tattoos are in our modern society - still shunned by some circles, but those who do would be considered conservative. They have a colony (D2) in the northeast where they procure cadavers from undead and seafaring races to experiment with new body modifications. Aside from this, they are known for their gothic architecture, rampant vampirism (the cause of much stigma), and spicy food.

E. Dhelkost is a vassal nation of the Yetkoli Empire, a blend of traditional orcish culture modified by human colonialism. It is kept as separate from the Empire so that it can be used as a buffer nation (mainly against Sharsvud), and because many human cities have a stigma against orcs, and would give the federal government hell for allowing them within their borders. Dhelkost has only a few cities and is largely rural. It is also in constant financial crisis - orcs don't understand the concept of a "positive" currency, having used a debt-based economy for thousands of years. Thus, they never spend their money, devaluing Dhelkost's currency into oblivion.

F. Bahkost is a largely agrarian society of orcs, with a society structured around the mastery of disciplines. After maturing to adulthood, an orc will be escorted from their communal raising home and travel to a guild to attempt to become a great artisan. Other races will sometimes, and usually begrudgingly, travel to Bahkost to study. It's also where rich people go to get fancy prosthetics, as orcs are known for being fantastic at creating them. They're known for their springtime theatrical rituals, which are essentially ancient greek Dionysian festivals.

G. Etail Noum, a society of stargazers and astronomers, is an offshoot of Bahkost. They've scavenged much from an ancient Sylvaa society that used to exist in this part of Hazzem. Though they were largely orcish at one point, they have attracted a large immigrant population - particularly halfling followers of Sotiro, the god of stars and travel. Their government is based on astrological signs, electing a leader born under the proper sign for each constellation's season.

H. Sharsvud is the name of a de-facto nation and the forest within which it is located. Another largely orcish nation, it is effectively an anarchy - the closest thing to a government is the council of High Druids, who would snort and spit black phlegm at you for calling them a government. They collectively worship a divine boar called Thousand-Pierced Yev'rott, who they believe will trample human society underfoot. There is internal squabbling about whether or not to allow worshippers of Yev'rott from other nations to live among them. Despite all this, life there is fairly peaceful, if rough-and-tumble.

I. Intihk-bel is the first of the gnoll nations, located in the highlands of the Wedgeplains. They have a noble culture, and trace their ancestry to an ancient demon-hunting society that died due to an infertility curse placed upon them. Descendants of that empire revived it centuries later, borrowing as much as was recoverable from the old ways. They are isolationist and have managed to repel imperialist human forces, but squabble with seasonal pilgrims from Sharsvud. Their aristocracy has regained the ability to reproduce naturally, and uses this as a status symbol.

J. Knoss-if'r is the other gnoll culture, who keep to the areas of the Wedgeplains beneath the escarpment that separates them from Intihk-bel. They rejected that original demon-hunting society, starting a group of nomadic societies that worship and fear nature. Unlike their northern cousins, they have been steamrolled over by the Yetkoli empire, who erected railroads through the Wedgeplains and use it for cattle drives from the west. Despite this, Knossian culture continues to survive and adapt to the strange new world they find themselves in.

K. The Havaak Bhounad is a dwarven nation dedicated to a singular purpose: protecting the Jahtulan Mountain Range from outsiders. After frequent encroaching from (mostly human) outside nations, it was established in the late 1200s to prevent the coups that plagued dwarven Hazzemite society throughout that century. Fierce and uncompromising, they also serve as an outlet for growing militaristic tendencies within dwarven youth.

L. The Kingdom of Vonnia is a halfling nation that exists as a buffer between imperialistic human societies and the rest of Hazzem, attempting to ease tensions. They are a toxicracy - their officials are chosen based on who can survive intentionally ingesting deadlier and deadlier poisons. Tenacity is the name of the game in their culture - if they should falter and fall to invasion, that could pave the way for total war in Hazzem. "Vonnia" is an incredibly poisonous flower native to the Kingdom, though that isn't known to most outsiders.

M. Located in a swamp rich in Nightsap Trees, the Dripwoods Republic is another halfling nation, famous for its production of high-quality ink. There's also a tinkering culture, and many outsiders immigrate to the swamp for tutelage under some of the brightest - or maybe just the boldest - mechanics on Hazzem. The government is also desperate to be annexed by the Kingdom of Vonnia for increased protection, but their neighbor lacks the resources to be able to properly establish themselves in the swamp.

N. Saltoff is a city-state named for its capital, a vibrant port town. It is populated mostly by bugbears, who have a maritime culture and revere the sea - a holdover from their days with the seafaring giant empire known as the Obsidian Tide. Salt is not only the namesake for the nation, but also its currency and a big influencer on its culture. Salt barons hiring assassins to kill their rivals. Divorces taking place over whether or not sea salt or pink mountain salt is better. The human empires, particularly the Rikolese, are their main customers. They also have huge domesticated war-crabs, which they use in their frequent squabbles with Zosk - who they've hated for as long as anyone can remember.

O. A primarily-hobgoblin nation, named for their founder and first philosopher-queen. She taught that precious metals (which also happen to be Zosk's primary export) are manifestations of divine purity. Coincidentally, Zosk's main river (the Okarr) is very rich in gold. Panning for it is a humble-but-respected profession, and it drives the economy. Zosk is famous for its paladin order, the Knights of the Current, who repel evil spirits from Hazzem's waterways. They are also the primary defense against Saltoff, who they've hated for as long as anyone can remember.

P. Once a colony of the dragonborn to the west, Arx Remelai ("Rising Claw" in draconic) is located in a massive canyon, supposedly made by Rimhr's talon during the Fall of the Archlords. They're a theocracy, focused on the worship of the draconic gods and populated almost entirely by kobolds. They're one of the few people who are consistently on good terms with Hazzem's dwarves, and often send out missionaries to provide humanitarian aid. Their leadership is based on a reincarnating council, the Claw's Fingers (Fetani Arx) - one for Zuzen, one for Troyt, and two for Rimhr.

Q. A vassal nation of the combined human empires, Numenion is a lawless land of extreme natural beauty. It was pretty much free for the taking when the humans showed up. Everyone else had learned to stay away from it, because it's home to a menagerie of horrifying and incredibly dangerous monsters. Only through their combined military might were the empires able to establish a nation there, and even then there have been difficulties creating many permanent settlements. A few disparate other races have also begun to populate it, seeing as they never had the opportunity to before.

R. A fierce isolationist culture of the mysterious Ghostwise halflings combined with a smaller population of firbolgs and elves, the Velikutae Forest Federation sends a message in poison-tipped arrows to any who set foot inside their woods: stay far away. Little is known of them, and ambassadors are sent out to other nations very infrequently. The Yetkoli have had their eyes on Velikutae forest for as long as they've known about it, especially since they learned that within it is an entrance to Hazzem's underdark - where anti-authoritarian elves plot coups against the empires. However, they have not yet found the resources to pursue the endeavor of invading the Federation.

S. Portwheld is a well-established culture of dragonborn who immigrated from the continent Starfyk to the west. One of the most frequent opponents for the human empires in recent days, they especially despise the empires on the basis of their insistence that Hazzem is the only continent - as they are literal descendants of people from another continent. Though their origin nation worshiped draconic gods almost exclusively, Portwheld now generally worships the Thirteen, though religion is generally lax there. They're also known for eating food that is truly, horribly disgusting to almost everyone else, because of how different dragonborn digestive systems are to mammalian ones. They have a small colony (S2) on the island of Xotam to the west, left over from when they first immigrated.

T. A small nation granted autonomy by Portwheld, Doomfall exists for the explicit purpose of welcoming new arrivals to Hazzem. Due to being sealed off from the rest of the world, Starfyk to the west will often ship their greatest prisoners eastward to their doom on the cursed continent - hence the name. They also host Hazzem's church of the Undead Guardians, a pantheon worshipped almost exclusively by adventurers. They welcome refugees, mainly meaning elves that got forced out of their desert home to the southeast by Yetkoli occupation.

U. Appearing out of nowhere very suddenly and quickly laying claim to much previously-occupied human colonies, the Aerapi Territories are ruled over from a floating island nation of gnomes - small, insectoid people related to the fey. As such, they can travel through the barrier around Hazzem unfettered, and frequently offer asylum on outside continents for those who would seek it. This infuriates the human empires, who disliked having their colonies pulled out from under their feet and dislike having their worldview questioned even more.

V. The coast of a haven for all of Hazzem's underwater races, "Selka" is the name for their land-borne penal colony. Merfolk, cecaelia, and the odd nautilid take up humble lives here as seal ranchers. Many aspiring anthropologists travel here, mainly from the Dobarkol Kingdom, to take the unique opportunity to research these elusive races. Missionaries travel for similar purposes. Both groups have little success, but they did start an interest in collecting Selkian war-snails and jewelry among the human empires.

W. Vukkral is the oldest name known for the northwestern island, and it was its name given to it by the trolls who first settled it. Refugees from the God-Titan War, the fledgling society was mercilessly crushed by the Obsidian Tide (one of the Giantine Empires) a few centuries into its lifespan. It never properly recovered, being a shadow of its former self. Despite this, its inhabitants are universally cheerful folk, who delight in meeting others. Except when they're hungry. Then they'll just eat you.

X. Ta'Galot is a recent society, comprised mainly of elves exiled from their desert homeland after being occupied by the Yetkoli Empire. However, because elves evolved in a desert, most of them are unable to survive for long in the frigid environment of Vukkral. The exceptions to the rule are the frost elves, who have a much slower metabolism. Therefore, Ta'Galot represents the largest frost elf population on Hazzem, and many have traveled to it despite not being exiled. There is no official government there, as most of the establishments are universities and research stations. However, they are provided protection by their neighboring trolls and an organized crime ring, the Navah'hken Division.

Y. An isolationist and largely undisturbed culture, Imi Xotam tends to their home island, unconcerned with the squabbling on the mainland. It is mainly populated by humans (separate from the original group that founded the Empires), but also have a small population of dwarves, elves, and dragonborn. They are primarily concerned with honoring and caring for their slumbering god, who was critically wounded during the God Purge and is said to be waiting to reawaken during Imi Xotam's hour of greatest need. They also serve as one of the best sources of knowledge on giantine culture, speaking a version of common that's closer to its root language of Giant and preserving many stories of the old Empires.

Z. The Churntide Isles are an archipelago inhabited by native ratfolk. They grant rulership on the basis of whoever is the best at repelling the sea monsters that frequent their home, naming them Reaver King - an honor held for the past decade by a pirate named Ghunyan. The Isles produce many brilliant inventions, but are known especially for making the best firearms on Hazzem, and potentially on Loom. They're also a fairly young race, worshiping the prophet who gave their society civilization and using a different calendar from most of Hazzem, which starts with their race's awakening. They frequently trade with the Havaak Bhounad, Saltoff, Zosk, and occasionally the human empires.

The grey areas are neutral territory - unclaimed by a government, or unexplored.

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Shoutout, as always, to my fellow Loom DMs for the inspiration for much of this as well as help with occasional lore pertaining to their races. Specifically, Anders was the one who came up with the Navah'hken Division for their character's backstory. They also played in my campaign that inspired a lot of this lore, so thanks to them (as well as Griff, Magnus, Nick, and Vanya) for that!

Also thanks to Ace for helping me with some Hebrew!

A Slice of the Pie for D&D

Heya everyone.

This post is gonna be different from my usuals. I'm not focusing on anything in-universe here, this is more of a game rules thing. It's also not using content original to me - rather, I am intended to port one system over from a completely different game to replace one in this.

This is less of a creative endeavor, more of a manifesto. This is my explanation as to why, for almost a year now, I have been thinking of D&D characters not in terms of alignment...

...but in Magic the Gathering's Color Pie.



This is that color pie. In clockwise order, the colors are White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. (sidenote: blue is abbreviated as "U" due to its first two letters being the same as Black's). In Magic's lore, these are the colors of mana, a spiritual force that powers magic. In Magic's design, the mana colors serve as a way to limit the abilities of decks.

Red is naturally a very fast color, so it works well in aggressive decks. However, it's bad at playing the long game. Blue is the most reactive color, able to deal with anything once it gets its resources set up - but if something can get its foot in the door, Blue is unable to deal with it cleanly.

However, they also serve a philosophical purpose. Each of these colors gives us a different outlook on life.

White is the color of humility. It accepts that the world is scary and dangerous, and that pain and suffering are inevitable. It seeks to minimize these things. It is not afraid to kill - and it often will, if it means protecting people and society. But where possible, it will instead restrain, and rehabilitate. It also seeks to bolster its own defenses against the world by maintaining powerful, unshakable connections. White is the chain that keeps your bike locked up so that people can't steal it. White is also the chain that bonds you - for the greater good.

Blue is the color of memory. It is concerned with watching and waiting, and then learning from what it sees - to better anticipate the future. Given the proper resources to flourish, Blue can wield the heavy power that knowledge provides to a studious mind. It simply needs its time to pour over the past, so that it can confront the future. It is unconcerned with good and evil, and cares more about learning from what figures described in those terms did. Sure, Blue concedes, maybe this military dictator committed many atrocities. But have you seen his battlefield formations?

Black is the color of ambition. It is willing to sacrifice others in pursuit of its goals, or sacrifice its own short-term benefit towards its long-term desires. It plots and schemes and makes compromises to achieve what it believes to be "good" - not good as in it helps the most people, or as in something commonly accepted as morally righteous. Rather, what is good to Black is simply understood as fact, the culmination of one's experiences that inform one as to what is the correct course for the world - whether that world knows it or not.

Red is the color of passion. It measures lives not in length, but in experience. Going down swinging is far preferable to dying in your sleep to Red. Not swinging for a cause, but simply living - and dying - in the moment. It keeps moving forwards because it sees only the one time it emerges in a shower of exhilarating glory, not the 99 times it dies on the end of a spear, sputtering blood. It jumps immediately into action and throws everything it has at a problem, not worrying about the likely possibility of simply running out of steam and bleeding out. If you live for the future, Red would argue, you're scarcely living at all.

Green is the color of existence. It lives, period. It is much more concerned with the "how" of that statement than the "why." For it knows that understanding lives not in the brain - in things like comprehension and retention - but in the feet, feeling the earth under your toes that connects you to each other living thing. Not that it relies on them - Green is ferocious on its own - but it accepts that all living things have their place in the world. Sure, its own might be in the maws of a bear - but maybe it IS that bear. Truth be told, it's content either way.

(This pretty excellent article explains all of this in more detail, and is also where I lifted the above picture from. If you read it, be aware that it goes much more in-depth than I am, and also that it has some political undertones, if that would make you uncomfortable.)

Also important to these colors is the intersection of them. Refer back to the above chart - the colors are placed where they are for specific reasons. The colors they neighbor are their allies, and the colors they're across from are their enemies. Green gets along well with White and Red, but disagrees fundamentally with Blue and Black. That isn't to say that Blue and Green could never get along, but enemy colors being paired together is usually more volatile.

White is often depicted in gold, and Black in purple. Image from Wizards of the Coast.

So, with these colors, it would be pretty easy to map out the alignment chart in their terms.

White is Good, Black is Evil.
Blue is Lawful, and Red is Chaotic.
Green is neutral, on both axes.

Your lawful neutral character is blue-green. The chaotic good ranger is red-white, and the lawful evil villain blue-black.

However, that isn't really satisfying.

In Magic the Gathering, there exists a setting called Ravnica. This ecumenopolis is based entirely around the color pairs, and they manifest in the form of ten guilds that run certain parts of the city's responsibilities.

The Simic Conclave (Blue/Green) is, officially, in charge of medicine and the plane's waterways. However, they also have a penchant for genetically splicing various animals together to create monstrosities that often escape captivity and wreak havoc on the rest of the plane.

The Boros Legion (White/Red) is Ravnica's military force, which recruits and trains from almost anywhere. Its members are fiercely loyal and dedicated to the idea of the Legion, unable to see any of its flaws - the rest of the plane is simply in the wrong, as they see it.

And finally, the House Dimir (Blue/Black) are shadowy agents who deal in secrets. Officially, they circulate information, serving as the humble newspeople of the plane. But unofficially - and the unofficial is the crux of what being Dimir is - they have eyes everywhere. They run surveillance on every other guild, and plot in the shadows to bring about... well, nobody really knows what their goals are. But it is agreed that they intend to keep it that way.

And that... doesn't really map to my proposed alignments, does it? The monster-unleashing Simic are hardly lawful in any capacity. Meanwhile, the supposedly-chaotic Boros DO value law and order above most other things. And the Dimir are too enigmatic to even describe.

But that doesn't mean that a blue/green character couldn't ever be "lawful neutral," nor a red/white character "chaotic good." It just means that D&D's alignment system isn't a great descriptor for complex characters.

This is why I have let MtG's color pie usurp the position that alignment was supposed to fill. I find that my characters, both when I am a player and a DM, benefit greatly from this. Two Neutral Good characters are "supposed to" act the same in a given situation, but two White/Green characters may behave totally differently based on a number of different factors - such as the people they are with, or which color they lean more towards in that given moment.

It also allows you to inject different factors into your character's color identity. An elf in traditional D&D settings might be drawn more towards White, Blue and Green. A bard is naturally going to connect more with Red, the color-patron of the arts.

The point is to break away from alignment as a system. I've disliked it for a long time, and I've written before about attempts to rationalize character decisions in-universe through different means. And while simply translating a character's alignment into colors is a good place to start for people with attachment to that system, ultimately I would like to see alignment as a concept go away.

It's just good character writing. I don't act the way I do in real life because I'm some abstract concept of good or evil, lawful or chaotic. However, I find it fairly easy to describe myself as Green-Black.

A few miscellaneous things:

• I find that most player characters are two-color or more. When doing this thought experiment, don't limit yourself to trying to pin a character down in just one color. A character might take a few features from two or three colors, or synthesize something unique to a color pair that the individual colors simply don't yield. Here is a list of the "canonical" names for the two, three, and four-color groups, for those interested.
• That being said, there's nothing wrong with mono-colored characters. Each of the five colors is a deep well of concepts and tropes that can be drawn from, and a character being mono-colored just means they dive deeper into that well, whereas a multicolored character pulls specific things from each well. Notice that almost all alignments are color pairs, and they're more than capable of being basic and uninteresting. 
• Characters of the same color identity can be radically different. Pulling from MtG again, the Merfolk of Ixalan are a race of indigenous people dedicated to protecting a secret city. They were tasked with this endeavor by a godlike being millennium ago, and the task is strongly rooted in tradition. Their associated colors are Blue and Green. Notice that they are nothing like the Simic Conclave mentioned earlier. That is an advantage of the system, not a downside of it.

---

Hello! Thank you for reading this long-winded post. It's something I've been meaning to discuss for awhile, and I hope if nothing else it gives you something to think about.

The second edition of Colorful Replies was what finally got me to get off my ass and write this thing. It's written by Mark Rosewater, the head designer of Magic. It's a great way to familiarize yourself with the colors on a more personal level. The first edition of it is here. I really cannot recommend these posts enough - they are funny and super insightful.

Another inspiration to start writing again was my friend Anders, who started their own D&D blog, Robot of Dawn. They are a fellow Loom DM, and the influence their writing and roleplay has had on my own is staggering. Their stuff is great, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Finally, I'm tagging this post as MtG because I might blog about it more in the future. It's grown as an interest of mine, almost rivaling D&D's ability to captivate me. And hey, they're both made by the same company, but made great by the communities who fuel them. We'll see if that shakes out.

Again, thank you for reading. Have a nice day!

Orias, the Sylvaa, and Fey

As we know her now, Orias is the Archfey. Queen of the faeries, higher than all courts. She is one of the Archlords, and the only one most people would designate as "good."

But it wasn't always so.

A dozen-thousand years ago, there existed a race on Loom called the Sylvaa. They were a race of plants with humanoid forms, usually appearing to be made of green vines. They usually have broad, flat heads to absorb sunlight.

Sunlight being their primary object of worship - though Orias, then called the Archsylvan, created them, she was humble and protested their earliest offerings. Whole flower fields were arranged for her and trees mystically modified to grow in her image. While Orias appreciated the beauty of their altars, and loved her creations deeply, she also wanted to remain distant so that they could form their own culture. So they came to, for the most part, worship Loom's sun.

Jesper Eising

They created the first clocks, obelisks whose shadow would reveal the time and date. They pioneered many light-producing spells. They named the sun Ianap, or "mother of hearths," for it was Her light that allowed their Mother Trees (known to them as Voria) to grow.

Voria grew from Sylvaa graveyards, which resemble thickets of vines spread across vast swathes of ground. All Sylvaa have seeds for hearts, and when they die they sink to the ground and allow the seed to seep into the earth, where it can be nourished. Eventually, if enough Sylvaa died in the same place, a network of these seeds would form and birth a new Voria - which resemble dozens of thin trees twisting around each other to form one thick trunk, with hundreds of branches.

Most Sylvaa who hailed from the same communities resembled each other, so to distinguish individuals they often carved their names into their skin. It's similar to tattoos for humans, and many Sylvaa went further than just a name - they might have entire handwritten works across the length of their body. Sylvaa were known for being fantastic writers, and in modern times original Sylvaa literature is priceless. All writing was deeply personal for them - Sylvaa were telepaths (communicating with other lifeforms by intermingling roots), and so the chance to create something that truly existed in isolation from their brethren was deeply important to them.

As lovely as this all was, it didn't last.

The Fall

Ten thousand years before the start of the most popular calendar on Loom, there was an event known as the Fall of the Archlords. Orias and the five other creator deities split across lines that most mortals don't understand, descending into civil war. Loom was their theatre of battle, and the planet was ravaged. Many of the battlefields still remain visibly damaged today, with civilizations living in a celestial body's scars.

At the end of this war, drastic measures were taken that would ensure no side was a true victor. Ianap, the star at the center of Loom's solar system, was destroyed.

Continents were ripped from Loom's surface in the shockwave. The seas boiled off into steam, and the atmosphere was destroyed - even today it exists only as a weak blanket, scarcely able to produce rain without magical prompting. And, though the creations of all the other Archlords had left petty Loom for extraterrestrial pursuits, the faithful Sylvaa had remained. And so they were all destroyed.

Orias, weeping, reunited with her other Archlords to forge a new sun. They then all departed Loom, bitter and resentful of one another. Orias created a whole demiplane simply to find isolation. It was a perfect mirror of the planet, but entirely devoid of other life - as though it were an empty house, and only she had the keys to it.

Orias, as she is usually depicted after her mourning. (Daniel Kamarudin)

She stayed in this other place for a long time, mourning. And eventually, though it took her thousands of years, she left it. She had made her peace with her lost people, and the land of this demiplane had begun to bloom again as Orias's emotional state recovered.

And that was when the Fey entered.

Redeemed

Fey are spirits, denizens of the Astral Plane born from the experiences of sapient mortals. Like many spirits, they feed on magic and emotion - which were both in abundance within Orias's private demiplane. Once she left, they infiltrated the plane and began to glut themselves, growing fattened and powerful.

However, they were eventually discovered. Orias used her demiplane as a shelter for wounded innocents during the War of Ichor, and that was when she discovered the spirits. She was furious, and ready to destroy them - kind as she was, she was no longer tolerant of anything remotely close to betrayal. However, four quick-witted individuals struck a bargain with her: they would attend to the wounded she had brought in, and the rest of the demiplane, caring for them both. They would do this for the rest of time, becoming stewards of this place that was paradise to them.

Orias, having missed calling herself the mother of a people for a long time, accepted. She named the spirits fey, "redeemed" in Sylvan. She named the plane the Feywild, and changed her long-defunct title to the Archfey.

However, it was not the fate of the Sylvaa to be remembered only as the creators of a language. Their graveyards are not just the resting places of the dead - they are cradles for new generations.

Regrowth

Eventually, the Sylvaa reappeared on Loom. In its 14th century after the War of Ichor, the planet was invaded by a hostile alien force. These were the Yugoloths, hailing from a planet or two over. This event was called the Shattering, but it isn't the point of this paragraph. What is relevant is what they brought over.

Unbeknownst to Orias, a small amount of her original progeny had developed incredibly powerful teleportation magic. The Sylvaa were the original builders of Loom's massive teleporter pads, but some had grander aspirations than just that. These nine Sylvaa wanted to travel to the sun itself, so that they might worship it directly (they were also working on a way to not be burnt to a crisp in this process).

One of their test-runs, to push the limits of how far they could travel, was to Yugo. They all went together, and upon arrival they all perished. Yugo's atmosphere is toxic to most of Loom's inhabitants, and Sylvaa were no exception. Their seeds were buried in foreign soil, an environment that could never host them.

Marco Nelor

Around ten thousand years passed. The seeds of these nine burrowed into Yugo's earth, right into deposits of iron. They were eventually discovered by prehistoric Yugoloths, who cherished them as curious relics. Ose, their adoptive god and another Archlord, saw the seeds for what they were. He was exiled from Loom, and so could not return them himself - but from this point forward he nudged them closer and closer to space travel, so that they might eventually visit Loom and return the seeds.

His efforts were successful, but the visit from Yugo was hardly peaceful. A story for another time. The point, again, is that these nine seeds, able to be nourished by sunlight from Loom's new central star, Vant, jump-started Sylvaa society. They had been reborn into a curious new world, and they found they had much work to do.

Sylvaa Stats

If you want to play a Sylvaa, here are the stats I would recommend. They're tuned for 5E, but if you use another system hopefully this provides a decent-enough framework. Roleplay-wise, Sylvaa are known for their great literature, sun worship, and general confusion at much of modern society. They primarily speak Sylvan.

Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom increases by 2, and your Constitution increases by 1.
Empath Network. You may communicate telepathically with any creature or plant within 30' of you that is touching the ground, by way of your root network. You do not need to share a language with a creature to be able to communicate with it this way, but it must be able to speak at least one language. You may communicate with plants in this way regardless of their ability to speak.
Photosynthesis. You may gain the benefits of a long rest by entering a dreamlike state while immersed in sunlight for 4 hours. During this time, you are considered to be asleep, and are not aware of your surroundings. After 4 hours have passed, you gain the benefits of a long rest and become fully nourished for the next 24 hours. You may still eat and sleep normally, and will need to do so when you lack access to direct sunlight.
Natural Spellcasting. At 1st level, you may cast Dancing Lights. At 3rd level, you may cast Entangle once per long rest. At 5th level, you may cast Daylight once per long rest. You use your Wisdom score for the purposes of casting these spells.

(I should note these stats are almost wholly borrowed from the Sprouting Chaos Player's Companion by BoltNine Homebrew. People on Loom have played Sylvaa before and I wanted to keep the statblocks consistent-ish.)

The Deck of Circular Motion

This is the deck of cards some characters begin the game with. It is used for games of chance and spiritual readings (which can determine a person's past, present, and destiny). It is known as the Deck of Circular Motion and was popularized shortly after the Lightclaiming. The Keepers of the Sun used it to cast portents on the future of their fledgling nation. And when the Celestial Wars broke out, countless soldiers used them as a source of entertainment. They inspire self-reflection and damnation of forces beyond their control in those that use them for either purpose.

They are sponsored by the Thirteen, first and foremost. Games played and fortunes told with them are filtered through their context and influence. They do not have anything against nonbelievers, but all the same those qualities render them less susceptible to interpretation by the Deck.

Although the Deck of Circular Motion only appears in historical records after the Lightclaiming, it has always been on Loom. It is a fact of life there, much the same as gravity and the ability of prayer to bring the rains. Few ever ask where it really came from - when was the last time you pondered as to how the Earth began to rotate?


NUMBER CARDS

The number cards (and also the face cards) are not numbers. They are archetypes, unchanging facets of the stories which sustain all gods.

2: Lover. The Lover is energy, fulfillment, sustenance. It is the lowest of the cards, representing its close ties to mortal life. At its best, it is stability and happiness. At its worst, gluttony and obsession.
3: Creator. The Creator represents self-image, as it is shaped by the outside world. Its positive aspects are opportunity and epiphany. Its negative aspects are vanity and unintended harm.
4: Seeker. The Seeker is known as our mortal faults, the space upon which we have to improve. It represents experience and forward motion, but also self-neglect and stubbornness.
5: Destroyer. The Destroyer is most concerned with the inner world, and knowing one's own nature, even at the price of forsaking the outside world. It can aid in recognizing danger (specifically the "in over your head" type) and in being humble, but might also create an unhealthy fear in the self or in others - specifically, but not always, of the unknown.
6: Ruler. The Ruler seeks to establish cooperation between people and the environment. It brings the boons of vigilance and widespread peace, but at the potential costs of mental duress and unhealthy competition.
7: Warrior. The Warrior symbolizes purpose. A Warrior might mean success or courage, but it could also bear the banner of insecurity and cruelty.
8: Magician. The Magician is the herald of change, and is recognized as one of the most powerful cards for this reason (it often has special effects in stacking games, for example). It could bring with it agency, or perhaps guilt. It is also a general stand-in for change, as vague as that is.
9: Innocent. The Innocent is comfort. It provides sure-footedness and a knowledge of boundaries when invoked, but can also inflict foolhardiness or repetition.
10: Sage. The Sage is defined the eternal search for truth. It helps in the departments of awareness and clarity, but plants the seeds for doubt and paranoia.
Jack: Caregiver. The Caregiver recognizes itself as indicative of servitude. It is closely associated with likability and compassion, and is weak in the areas of righteousness and preservation.
Queen: Fool. The Fool is expressed in drinking deep, eating well, and the pursuit of pleasure. It is unaffected by impending danger, and wields the strength of emotional knowledge. It is hurt worst by understimulation and being faced with the future.
King: Orphan. We see the Orphan as good fortune. It has the most sway in hours of judgement and desperation, but cannot aid much in the everyday occurrences of social interaction and physical labor.
Ace: Conductor. The Conductor symbolizes the game itself, and the inherent paradoxes that construct it. It is both spiritual guidance and sinful entertainment. It is the lowest of the cards, and yet trumps them all. It was the one that created the game, and yet it does not exist outside its context. Seeing it in a reading is a rarity, and a sign that someone is extremely spiritually unwell. And yet it is the kingmaker in countless games of cards.

Alonzo Fenix

SUITES

The suites are numbers. Specifically, they are the Divine Numbers - those considered holy through their connection to various pantheons present in the canon of the Thirteen.

These numbers are:
Five. This is the number of the Undead Guardians, once-mortals risen to give those faithful to them an afterlife to look forward to. In a traditional playing card deck, it would fill the space of the Hearts suite. In the context of the four elements, it is most closely associated with Earth.
Six. This is the number of the Archlords, the old gods who ruled Loom long before the arrival of the Thirteen. It fills the space of Diamonds, and its associated element is Fire.
Seven. The number of the Titans, who once opposed the Thirteen but at the same time galvanized support for them. It fills the space of Clubs, and its associated element is Water.
Thirteen. The number of the core pantheon, the saviors of Loom, and the House in the broader cosmic context of playing cards. It is, of course, Spades, and for its proximity to the heavens it is associated with air.


RULES CARD

The Rules Card exists, and does what it sounds like. One side contains the rules for spiritual readings, and the other the rules for playing cards. It depicts the Three Creators, ambiguous aspects of the universe itself that dictate morality.


WILDCARD

The Wildcard depicts a mouth, void of all things save a single white tooth. It represents a particularly unknowable deity within the mythos of Loom, the Singular Hunger. If it inexplicably appears off the top of the deck in a game of cards, it loses to everything else (despite outranking all of them). In a reading, it may invite itself as a harbinger of base needs, divine ascension, hilarity, gore, dung beetles, charity, and innortedity.

Mashuka Vampires

In 721 A.E.M., when the Sacellum of Rimhr was making first contact with the various peoples in the northern portion of the continent, one group in specific interested them. These were the Mashuka, a nomadic group descended from the escaped slaves of the Verdant Willow empire. Nomadic groups were relatively uncommon in this area, as the soil in most parts of the northeast was fantastic for growing and roaming too far north would quickly put people in contact with hostile groups of Alquari. Still, though, the Mashuka wandered - a combination of social stigma and religious beliefs forced them into the lifestyle.

The Mashuka were very valuable sources of information for early conquerors from the Sacellum. Specifically, they gave insights on many of the other ethnic groups and were one of the few sources of intelligence on Alquari activities - part of their harvest ritual included foraging in the territory of the druids. During various interviews on this subject, there was a recurring word of advice:

leave the pumpkins in the northern forests undisturbed.

Yayoi Kusama

Part of the aforementioned stigma placed on the Mashuka were that they were carriers of vampirism, a disease caused by spiritual parasites infiltrating the bloodline. While this was rooted in truth, the bloodlines that did carry the disease split off from nomadic Mashuka groups very quickly. One of the locations that these fully-fledged vampires split off into was a particular section of the forest, where pumpkins grew. In time, the disease that caused vampirism adapted, infecting the seemingly-innocuous gourds.

Normally, this would be no problem. Vampirism usually can't progress past the dietary restrictions and aversion to sunlight without the use of magic that changes the form*. But pumpkins, for reasons beyond the world's best-versed scholars, are capable of magic. Whether this is an odd phenomenon present only within them, a worrying talent present in all plants, or the result of some outside force's tinkering is unknown.

( * - vampirism is a disease caused by spirits colonizing an organism. As such, at first it can only grant the adverse effects of being a vampire. However, all spirits feed on magic. Vampiric spirits have a taste specifically for transmutation magic that modifies the body. If one with vampirism feeds their disease enough, they will begin to reap the benefits of it.)

On full moons, or other occasions when the lines between the Material and Astral Planes were thin, natural magic lying dormant deep within the hearts of these pumpkins would begin to stir. Eventually, with additional urging from the spirits within them, they would begin to spellcast.

They would grow spindly limbs of wood, and red eyes would blink open inside their orange shells. Inexplicably, they would gain the ability to talk, and carve out faces upon themselves for which to see and speak with their sharp fingers.

And such were born the Willkhu - Mahsuka Vampires.

http://breebird33.tumblr.com/post/101376826957/happy-halloween-everybody

Statblock

If you need a refresher on how I do these, here you go.

Pumpkin Vampire

HD 3 Size Medium AC As Leather Speed As Wood Elf

Darkvision 60 ft. Dexterity 14

Claws: Dodge 14, 1d8 + Grapple

Jack-o'-Lantern - Dealing fire damage to a Pumpkin Vampire will cause its head to ignite (as a torch). This allows it to cast fire bolt once per turn as a bonus action. 

Vampirism - A Pumpkin Vampire may bite a target that is willing, grappled, or incapacitated as an action. This deals 2d4 necrotic damage and heals the Pumpkin Vampire for as much health. Then, the target must make a Charisma saving throw, DC 15. Those who fail are infected with Vampirism (drains one Charisma every ten minutes until you hit zero) for an hour. At the end of the hour, target makes the save again. If they fail, it becomes permanent, turning them into a Vampire Spawn (for PCs, this means they lose control of their character).

The Shadowfell's God

Shadows

The Shadowfell was born in the time of the Archlords. It began as little more than a corner of the Astral Plane, where dreams give rise to life. Alenta, the most human of the Archlords, claimed this corner of it for himself. He would use it to enjoy his privilege as a creator god, and to deny its use from his fellows. Most of them would use it for nothing but ill.

...but he found that he could not use it. Alenta was by far the least interested in this pantheon with the business of creation, but here when he put an effort forth nothing happened. The plane writhed, contorted to avoid his attempts to create a mental progeny. It rejected him, and stayed barren. Frustrated, Alenta warded the place off from the other Archlords and abandoned it for more hopeful pursuits.

When he left it unchecked, it began to fester.

Alenta's folly was that he attempted to create life through magic. He tried a physical creation of life - to craft flesh and bone into a recognizable form. The Astral Plane does not play by such rules. It is the kingdom of dreams. The tangible has no power there. But still, residue from his efforts eventually manifested as a race known as Shadar'kai.

Another side effect of Alenta's attempts at creation were a distortion of this section of the Astral Plane's metaphysical methods. The will of an Archlord is not so easily resisted, and the plane had to change itself to overcome Alenta's primal magic. So, this section of the plane broke itself off. Going even further, it took on a niche. It would not create life from just any dreams. Exposure to Alenta's blackened machinations meant it would only accept nightmares as fuel for creation.

Millennium passed. Mortal night terrors birthed a menagerie of horrors within the Shadowfell, and where they could Shadar'kai built up their civilizations. This relationship was... unsustainable. Eventually the Shadar'kai learned of their origin, and called upon their creator god. Alenta, surprised that the territory he'd neglected had grown fruit, discovered the beasts on the plane and quickly plunged it into a civil war.

Blows were exchanged. The Shadar'kai, reunited with their god, fought against the rest of their world. Legions were slaughtered and rebuilt in days on both sides. The stalemate calcified, until the civil war was nothing more than worthless bodies being thrown at each other.

This is when the Egg hatched.

Madness

The Shadowfell has a habit of recreating locations on the Material Plane imperfectly. One such location was the Divine Womb, the birthplace of Loom's gods. The mechanics of that place are outside of the scope of this post, but thankfully the Shadowfell's distorted mirror of it function in very simple terms.

Instead of a Womb, the Shadowfell had a Divine Egg. A singular, massive embryo, holding an incubating god. Whereas Loom's gods were born from mortal hope, the Shadowfell would only release its god when the plane was completely hopeless.

Divine Wombs will give birth to a Lastborn God at the end of their planet's lifespan, but the Shadowfell contained only a Firstborn God. As opposed to being the synthesis of its planet's history, the Firstborn God would exemplify everything the Shadowfell isn't. And it would bear the visage of its greatest criminal.

The Shadowfell was a place of madness and shadows. Alenta had rendered it such when he tampered with forces he didn't understand, and then returned only to plunge it into hopeless war. And so the Divine Egg finally cracked open, giving birth to his only son: Alentyan, the god of Light and Wisdom.

Peter Mohrbacher

After this event, Alenta's interest in the civil war dwindled. He departed the Shadowfell in disgrace, and his people followed suit. They went to Vessel, one of Loom's three moons.

Alentyan left as soon as he was born. He had no purpose here. Its denizens cared not for either of his disciplines. The Material Plane was much more accommodating, and that is where he resided for thousands of years. He was a sage for those who sought him out, bringing illumination to those he deemed worthy. He lacked interest in the position of "god," but when a council of others like him sought to care for the planet in its darkest hour he found no good reason to exclude himself, and took his place among the Thirteen.

The Shadowfell stayed as it had been after Alenta left. A small group of belligerent Shadar'kai remained to continue fighting against the beasts they could take on. It produced the finest monster hunters in the planescape for generations to come. 

Dreams cannot be tamed, even by the divine. Light and wisdom will always flee from a place of shadows and madness.

The Mourning Blade

This is a magic item. It's also an experiment with magic weapons, where they start out with minor effects but "level up" as you use them to gain cooler powers.

Source: rockydesign on cgtrader

The Mourning Blade is an artifact of the Mourn family, a lineage of elven spellswords. It is usually kept locked away, for it is only given to those who have truly learned the price for taking a life. The hope is that, once you have it, you never use it.

Of course, the people who wind up finding it probably aren't of the Mourn lineage. For them, it's just  a Longsword +0 (counts as magical for overcoming resistance/immunity) that can shine light out of its eye, as per the light cantrip (or, lacking that, a torch). You may activate or deactivate this ability as a bonus action. You may only use this feature for an hour, after which this ability is disabled for 24 hours. When this also happens, it also cries a quicksilver tear.

Quicksilver tears restore a spell slot when consumed. The level of the spell slot is your choice. When you do this, you take 1d6 poison damage per level of spell slot restored. Against non-magic users, it is just a poison that deals 3d6 damage.

The first time you kill an enemy with the Mourning Blade, it cries a quicksilver tear. This will drip down onto your skin, automatically administering the effects to you. It also turns your eyes the same color as the sword's eye.

The second time you kill an enemy with the Mourning Blade, and every time afterwards, you cry a quicksilver tear. You may consume this tear on the same turn as the killing blow as a free action.

The third time you kill an enemy with the Mourning Blade, and every time afterwards, it becomes a dancing weapon that will automatically attack any creature that comes within 10 feet of the newly-made corpse. You have until the end of your next turn to get out of the area, or the sword attacks you. You cannot wield the weapon again until combat ends.

The Sacellum's Heirarchy

After the Age of Eight Plagues, the Sacellum of Rimhrheld found itself forced into splitting its territories into two. The southern territories remained as they had been, holding onto the structure of the old church while moving into a more political, less religious age. The north, meanwhile, gained its own Pope, and was allowed to be (officially) referred to as Meltiras (its traditional, "true" name) for the first time since it was claimed.

The Sacellum of Rimhrheld

The Sacellum is in control of the southern portion of the continent. They do not preach - they worship. Four times a day, citizens are required to face towards the altar at the city's center and bow. They hold this position for ten seconds, before returning to their daily tasks. Altars are usually accompanied by a belltower to signal these times of day - an hour after sunrise, during lunch, an hour before dinner, and at sunset.

It is considered more pious to travel to the altar to worship, to light incense or candles (depending on region - candles are more common closer to the coast), and/or to perform certain rituals. These are, again, prone to regional variation, but one constant is the consumption of a grain alcohol mixed with spices known as Flaxin. For this reason, larger cities will have multiple altars, and many merchants make their livelihoods selling incense, candles, or Flaxin.

The southern Pope is usually just referred the Father (maekrix in draconic) and is descended from the bloodline of primal dragonborn, who were first blessed with holy fire by Rimhr. Maekrix is actually just a title to refer to the "father of a city," which is about equivalent to a Catholic bishop. Other maekrix will always be referred to by name, so if someone just says "The Maekrix" you know they're talking about the Pope (that word being more of a layman's term).

Technically, all maekrix are equal. In their letters, they even call the Pope athear maesinti - "holy brother" - same as all the others. But the Pope holds the power that he does thanks to his noble bloodline and his position in the Sacellum's capital, Ner Kangix.

The onureth (singular onur) are the individual communities of the faithful. They're led by the edars. Parishes and priests, essentially. But where they differ is in the jobs they perform. The Sacellum doesn't have masses. Edars perform rituals - both the calendrical ones and those which are more spontaneous, like funerals and weddings.

Those important enough within the church are given a sjach, or "shadow." They act as assistants and understudies, ready to claim the position if it winds up vacant. You would think this makes assassinations common, but with spells like speak with dead available it ensures that only the best of that bunch can kill their way to salvation.

Saints are also a thing - people who earn the privileges of a religious leader through deeds rather than hoop-jumping. They have been scarce since the days of the Plague of No Tombs, so most of them are dead. The church occasionally resurrects the ones who were potent warriors or spellcasters, but most do more work in the annals of history than they do on the ground.

There's other ranks, too, but those can come later if necessary. This is a solid groundwork for right now.

The Church Over Meltiras

The distinction between the Church and the Sacellum is clear, right down to their names. The Sacellum is all about worship - that which is holy is already known and established. You needn't become educated on it, because it's common knowledge.

The Church is different. They believe that everything should be incorporated into the church. This includes many of the pagan rituals of the local people, which have contorted to fit the constraints of the Sacellum's overseers. Under better circumstances, the rituals probably would have been squashed underfoot. But Meltiras was being settled at the same time it was being fought for, and so there was little time for inward pacification of native cultures.

One very popular tradition surviving from pre-colonial times is icon painting. This is always done on wood fresh from the trees, using paint with a manufacturing method predating the Sacellum. These are used to honor the deeds of locals, and delivered to the edar at the neighborhood altar. It's a religious honorific and a way of distributing news to the populous. The people bring in the local events, and at church every Rimhrset the edars inform their onureth what has gone on in the days hence.

The north also lacks maekrix or saints. A council of the local edars will vote on issues that pertain to a whole city, instead of leaving it up to just one person. There is still a northern Pope, and the church's Zealots fill a similar role to saints.

The Pope resides in Baryinnah, where she can have the aid of prophecy whenever necessary. She is unrivaled in her power. Meltiras's first pope was selected in 1001 A.E.M. - her name is Liberty Vii'shalor, and her relationship with the Church (not to mention the Sacellum) is outside the scale of this post. All you need to know is that she is not directly responsible for the differences between the Church and the Sacellum, but she did shirk her duty in shrinking the gap between them.

Zealots are awarded their title when their onur votes upon the greatness of their deeds - which are usually less pious than a saint's. Their miracles are bloody. If they win the support of six onureth, they are brought to Baryinnah and anointed in holy oils by the Pope. They are then awarded four servants to enable even greater deeds of holy fury.

A Zealot's Grip is both their spouse and their battlefield companion. They are sent to the affairs beneath the Zealot themself, and accompany them into larger conflicts. On the battlefield they also have the support of their Skull, a Church-sponsored tactician and general.

They also have a Throat, who handles their bureaucratic affairs. Finally, a Zealot's Faith is an edar who enforces their will and holds services specific to the follows of a certain Zealot.

A newly-chosen Zealot is allowed to recommend specific people for any of these positions, with that party's consent. Failing that, the Pope will pick the brightest of their sjachs for the job.

The Age of Eight Plagues, Part Two

Part one here.

The Plague of Drowned Dead

The year is 831, and the Plague of Vermin has almost been defeated. When their waves come, they are pitiful compared to the former deluges of pestilence that came in earlier years. The Sacellum's paladins see less and less work digging rat-proof trenches, and things seem to return to normal.

And then, people began bursting into flame.

While certainly the quickest of the plagues to take a life, Drowned Dead was toward the lower end of the bell-curve in terms of lives taken. It was another airborne disease, meaning most everyone on Starfyk had it. But the exact mechanisms that caused the infected to spontaneously combust were never discovered - it was seemingly entirely random.

Even the dead would ignite on occasion, leading to the Sacellum declaring burials at sea to be mandatory. This upset a great deal of the populous, particularly the few bugbear citizens - for whom burial at sea was a religious requirement that had been outlawed since their assimilation. Social unrest was the name of Drowned Dead's game, and while their Plague was not the most damaging in the long term - that distinction would be reserved for the Plague of No Tombs - they did pave the way for much of the success of future Plagues.

Drowned Dead was, as had become routine at this point, hunted down and killed in 842 A.E.M. This also marked when the Sacellum came into possession of the city of Baryinnah, complete with its own oracle. Though it would fall and be reclaimed several times over the span of the next few Plagues, its capture was a symbol of the Sacellum's near-domination over all of Starfyk.

The Second Plague of Vermin

God dammit.

We already know the details of how exactly a Plague of Vermin operates. This was just another instance of it, lasting from 855 to 871 A.E.M. (the Sacellum had gotten good at fighting it in the years past). What's more interesting is how exactly Vermin, the very same who had conducted the first Plague with her name, lasted this long.

If you remember, the Plague of Vermin was a sickness of the blood. This means that any animal whose blood mingled with a Vermin-bearing creature would contract it - including when they ate a patient.

Surely, not all the squirrels in the forest were slain by fire and blade. Some were eaten by the coyotes, as any other. And those coyotes fell ill with Vermin, too.

Vermin invented not just a Plague, but a method of reaching immortality. Her sentience stretched thin between a myriad of beasts, like a spiderweb. She still lurks there, in the forest. It will never be rid of her. Her blood has soaked into the soil there, and on quiet nights when the wind rustles through the trees, their leaves whisper her name.

The Plague of No Tombs

With Vermin driven back for a second time and a twenty-one year period (the longest pause between any of the Plagues) of good health after it, the Sacellum began to think the feverish night was done. Baryinnah stood tall, a beacon of the Sacellum's victory over the Alquari. Hushed at first, the whispers that the Age of Plagues had ended grew confident. There was a whole generation of children entering university that had not seen a Plague in their lifetime. Hopes were high for the future.

And in 892, they were ripped asunder.

The Plague of No Tombs was a zombie apocalypse, plain and simple. The dead did not stay buried. The whole continent was plunged into a vile period lasting over a century. No Tombs themself was never discovered - they were just one more shambling husk among the millions. Bodily fluids spread the Plague, drowning whole towns in undead bile until they were naught but an army of things that would be better off in the sepulchers.

This Plague left a huge impact on the culture of Starfyk as a whole. In the north, the tradition of canonizing great war heroes as Zealots (largely in the place of traditional saints) began. The Sacellum pioneered the Turn Undead spell as a means of crowd control. And in 988, there was a proper secession.

In that year, the patriarch of the Vath family found a way to merge the soul of an ancient Giantine Emperor with his own. This was unprecedented, and challenged the divine monopoly the Sacellum had on the continent. Seeking to rekindle his lost people, the man (if he could be called that) now known as Llipyah Vath staged a revolution.

In the already weakened state of the Sacellum, they had few free hands to contest this revolt. And so the Tenth Empire was born. They were an uneasy ally during the later days of the Plague of No Tombs - giants proved incorruptible by the disease, seeing as they were made mainly of earth and spirit.

After countless losses, the Plague was finally brought to sustainable levels in 1001 A.E.M. Baryinnah had been cleared of undead, and it was the new center of the Sacellum's power in the north. With seven Plagues behind them, the Sacellum's territories in the south and the north had come to hate each other, and separating them had become the only sustainable choice for the future.

The Plague of Black Blood

This was the last of the Plagues. It was the shortest, both in terms of turnover between the previous Plague and lifespan. It lasted from 1003 A.E.M. - a mere two years after the end of No Tombs - until 1008.

The Alquari were just as devastated by No Tombs as the rest of the continent, and a power vacuum formed among them that failed to stay full for long during the previous century. They were fighting on two fronts - the reckless Plague unleashed by a desperate High Druid and amongst themselves. Black Blood was more of a warrior than a proper druidic mage, and he was the one who ended No Tombs for them. He found himself thrust into the position of High Druid, and one who sorely needed to produce a successful Plague.

Pulling heavily from No Tombs, Black Blood also produced a blood-based disease. It thickened the blood, congealing it into a useless black sludge. It was similar to what the Sacellum had seen before, and so they were prepared to treat it once it came along. It was even somewhat of a relief compared to what they had seen in the past two centuries. Just more shivering civilians in dusty, hastily-built hospitals.

Black Blood's throat was ripped out by one of Aurdao Vihn's wardogs. With him died the Age of Plagues. These were the blackest days of the continent, bringing a surging tide of ruination upon all who walked it. The Alquari were a scattered mess, reeling from blow after blow, the most of them being self-inflicted. The Sacellum was chained in debt to its foreign sponsors, hastily carving up what little of the frontier remained to try to pay back a backbreaking price. Baryinnah still flew their banners, yes. But to the west they had a new enemy in the Tenth Empire, and their northern colonies were barely recognizable as worshipping Rimhr.

The blackest days were done, yes. But the future was not looking white, only a dour shade of gray.

New Year's Random Encounters

Still working on the second part of the Age of Eight Plagues. But I was struck with inspiration for some random encounters while watching The Twilight Zone, and I want to take it as far as I can.

Goals for this: create a world that feels interconnected, experiment with random encounters that revolve more around roleplay/exploration than just combat

1. While walking along a trail, you come over a ridge and notice a wispy smoke coming from a bit further along the trail. Keep walking and you start to smell burnt flesh and hair. Eventually, the party comes along a broken bridge, 1d8 mangled corpses, and 1d4 mangled (but alive) soldiers. If asked, they will explain that they were going to hang a local criminal when they heard her watch ticking. Upon the captain pulling it out and putting it in his pocket, the damn thing exploded and took out half the bridge and most of the company. The criminal is nowhere to be found. 50% chance one of the remaining soldiers knows her name. At the very least, the party needs to find another way across the river. But there's also sidequest potential here.
2. Immediately after coming into a clearing, an arrow/bolt/bullet whizzes past the party leader's head. The party then takes notice of the 2d6 bandits taking cover behind rocks and fallen trees in the clearing, and has ten seconds to declare they hop into cover before they get shot at another 3d4 times (one for each bandit on the other side of the clearing). They've walked right into a shootout between two gangs. The enemy bandit leader has a gun, if you're running a time period when they're rare-but-existent. Give them one bandit taking cover behind the same rock as them to talk to, but otherwise just see what they do.
3. An abandoned farmstead. There are unharvested pumpkins in the field, watched over by three stoic scarecrows. The house stands with its door open, creaking in the wind. On the porch is the corpse of a boy, no older than ten. Inside there's a kitchen, a big bedroom, and two smaller bedrooms. The big bedroom has the corpses of the parents, and in one of the bedrooms is the corpse of another farmer and a scarred, passed out girl of no more than sixteen. Her name is Magpie, and she fought off the rival farmer - but not before he slaughtered her family. If you help her, give the parents proper burials, or take the rival farmer's body off of the property and burn it, you can sleep in the house and even take some of the food. If you hurt Magpie or take any of the food without helping her, the scarecrows will come alive and attack you (possessed by the spirits of her family, of course).
4. A druid and 2d3 coyotes that have ransacked a camp of 1d6 sleeping soldiers. The coyotes are eating their entrails while the druid melts all of their possessions, wood cracking in the flame and coinage melting into slag. The druid knows the party is there, and will let them walk away.  But if they come too close, he will order the wolves to attack. He wants nothing to do with you, steeped as you are in filthy civilization. If you do fight him, the fire will burn all of the treasure here into worthlessness within three combat rounds. (I'd probably say it's worth 3d10x10 GP in 5e, scale up/down as needed).
5. While crossing a bridge, you see a girl missing an arm floating down the river, left side of her face burned and stump dyeing the water around her crimson. She's unconscious, but alive. This in the criminal from entry one, named Kudzu. She's an anarchist, potential companion, and party-level rogue with an affinity for explosives. She'll propose that she go with the party if nobody else does, without mentioning that the law is after her. 25% chance of her having connections with local anarchists in any town you visit from now on. Within the largest nearby city, authorities will pay 250 GP for her alive, and 100 GP for her dead (adjust as necessary).
6. Poorly built wooden tower belonging to a local gang that's busy with a shootout right now. There's only 1d6 bandits guarding it right now (50% chance each is asleep) but the real danger is the traps present. A tripwire in the front door activates three crossbows, a bucket with a hornet's nest in it set on top of a door left ajar, ceramic pots with slimes in them (painted with red stripes). Not a lot of gold or practical items to be looted, but the bandit leader's room has a lot of expensive antiques in it (200 GP total to be looted if they all make it to the city).

Druids and their wolves. Image source: Riot Games