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Night10194 posted:When I was first learning D&D ages ago, one of the players could not for the life of him pronounce Svirfneblin and our plot featured a bunch of them, so he just called them Sniverbaldis. How do you pronounce that? I just never say the name out loud because I have no damned clue.
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Nov 17, 2023 21:03
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sleepy.eyes posted:How do you pronounce that? I just never say the name out loud because I have no damned clue. Just like it's written
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Nov 17, 2023 21:13
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Halloween Jack posted:Elves are easier to mutate than fruit flies. We should run experiments. Results from Azeroth are suggestive, though Azeroth elves are themselves mutated trolls. 
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Nov 17, 2023 21:39
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It's simple. Elves are evil Orcs, Dwarves are evil Goblins, Gnomes are evil Dero, Humans are evil Hobgoblins.
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Nov 17, 2023 21:44
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Halloween Jack posted:Elves are easier to mutate than fruit flies. We should run experiments. I suppose when you have such an enormously long generational turnover and low fecundity, you can't rely on evolution via natural selection and have to resort to supernatural selection instead
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Nov 17, 2023 21:52
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sleepy.eyes posted:How do you pronounce that? I just never say the name out loud because I have no damned clue. "Deep gnome" My way would be Svirf-neb-lin. Start like smurf, but with a V instead of an m, neb, rhyming with the first syllable of pebble, lin, like goblin.
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Nov 17, 2023 23:42
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srhall79 posted:"Deep gnome"
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Nov 18, 2023 00:02
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 Here's a very special episode of Fabula Ultima! In this post, we're looking at a rework of the Arcanist class. There's been a lot of feedback for the class, and Emmanuel has responded. I like what I see, so far, but keep in mind that everything here is a WIP! This is not the final draft of the class, nor is this meant to be the official replacement before it's done. The Free Benefits haven't changed, so let's start with the skills. All of them have been changed, and the only change that isn't significant is to Bind and Summon. I'll approach this by putting my individual thoughts on each skill, rather than saving it for later, as well. Arcane Circle (3): As long as you are merged with an Arcanum, spells you cast deal [SL+2] extra damage, and you gain a bonus equal to [SL] to your Accuracy Checks. Thoughts: Much more useful than the original Arcane Circle. The damage and accuracy boost is quite powerful, and as we'll see later, you'll have more MP to work with as an Arcanist than before. Depending on the Arcanum, though, it might actually not be very useful. If you frequently Merge Arcana without an easily-used damage effect, though, it's a must-have. Arcane Regeneration (5): After you resolve the dismiss effect of an Arcanum you willingly dismissed, you and every ally present on the scene recover [SL x 2] Hit Points; the recovered amount is instead [SL x 3] Hit Points if you have an arcane or sword weapon equipped. Thoughts: Again, a much better version of the previous Skill of the same name. If you're planning on playing a healing or melee focused Arcanist, this is a must take. Being able to heal the entire party is wonderful, and it doesn't cost anything extra. Just make sure to manually dismiss a Merged Arcanum before a Scene ends. Arcana are Dismissed automatically if you end a scene, so you'd be losing potential healing if you don't. Bind and Summon: You may bind Arcana to your soul and summon them later. When you encounter a new Arcanum, the Game Master will reveal what you must do in order to bind them. You may use an action and spend 30 Mind Points to summon the power of one of the Arcana you have previously bound (see next page). If you take this Skill at character creation, you begin play with one Arcanum bound to you (you may choose it from the sample Arcana or create it with your group). Any further Arcana must be obtained through exploration and story progression. Thoughts: 10 less MP to summon Arcana, so that's a help. It's still a hefty sum, but that won't be too much of an issue anymore. At least you can summon twice before you need to recover MP instead of once, right? Unfortunately, progress is still gated behind GM fiat, I really wish that would be changed. It's not just that the Arcanist is harmed by this, but the party is too: The Arcanist needs to be focused on too much to continue giving them options. Still, if nothing else, this is a largely narrative issue a GM could easily solve by just changing it themselves. Quick Summoning (4): When you summon an Arcanum on your turn during a conflict, choose up to two options: immediately perform that Arcanum's pulse; and/or reduce the summoning's Mind Point cost by [SL x 5]. If you choose only one option, you cannot willingly dismiss that Arcanum until the start of your next turn; if you choose both options, that Arcanum's dismiss effect will not be available for this summoning. Thoughts: What's a Pulse? You'll see soon! Until then, you can see this is an AMAZING Skill. I'd say it's a must-max for every Arcanist, really, because it's just that drat good. When maxed out, you can reduce the cost of summoning an Arcanum to 10 MP, which is the same as most spells! Who wouldn't want to have that?! This Skill alone makes Arcanist actually good, but you might argue with that. After all, if a class NEEDS a Skill to be good, is it really good? Yes. The changes to how Arcana work make Arcanist good. But this Skill makes Arcanist actually maybe a little too strong. I'm not complaining about that, though! The other effect is also quite useful, but like with Arcane Regeneration, it sorta depends on which Arcana you Merge. Some Pulse effects are quite potent, some are less so than reducing the MP cost drastically. The best part is, you could start with this Skill at level 3, have Bind and Summon, and have a skill in one other class to meet the character creation requirements. 15 MP to summon instead of 30 is still a massive boon. Ritual Arcanism: You may perform Rituals of the Arcanism discipline, as long as their effects fall within the domains of one or more Arcana you have bound (see next pages). Arcanism Rituals use [WLP + WLP] for the Magic Check. Thoughts: Arcanism still has the same issues it did before, really. It's hampered strongly by which Arcana the Arcanist has. But at the same time, it's still a powerful, versatile Ritual Discipline. Consider taking it, but it's not a must have, many Disciplines can duplicate the effects of Arcanism Rituals anyway. So how has summoning changed? Merging and Dismissing are basically the same. Merge effects occur when the Arcanum is summoned, and last until it's Dismissed. Arcana are automatically Dismissed if the Arcanist is killed or falls unconscious, if they leave the Scene, or if the Scene ends. The Dismiss effect only occurs if the Arcanum is actively Dismissed by the Arcanist. This doesn't require an Action, but it must be done on the Arcanist's turn. It can be done any time on their turn, but they can't Dismiss an Arcanum themselves on another Character's turn. Arcana Dismiss effects often have their own mechanics that determine damage if they do damage at all, and their damage increased by 5 at level 20, and by 5 more at level 40. The Arcana themselves have been totally reworked from the ground up, as well. Unlike the original design, ALL Arcana have Merge and Dismiss effects, as well as the new mechanic: Pulse effects. A Pulse effect is simple: When you have an Arcanum Merged, you can use the Arcanum's Pulse effect as your action on your turn. You can only do so once per turn. Even if you get another Action, like via Haste, you can never Pulse more than once a turn. It feels kind of like Summoner after the rework in FFXIV: You summon mainly for the spells it gives you. The other effects are just a bonus! To show off how they work now, here's four Arcana from the list:  yea this straight up just takes enemy actions away for the next turn. Bananas.  A lot of these have their own point system like this one, which I like. It feels like a lot more effort was put into these than the original.  Here's a good example of one of the Arcanum focused on damage. As you can see, the Dismiss effect does less damage than before to make up for the added power of the Arcanum overall. They're no longer just super-spells that cost too much MP.  This one is more martial focused, and it seems to be more effective when using weapons with Multi or when fighting Villains, which is interesting! The book goes into the Heroic Skills, two of which we've seen before, but those two we've seen are unchanged: Arcane Echoes and Revelation. Frankly, Arcane Echoes is still terrible. It doesn't offer an effect strong enough to be a Heroic Skill, but going back to Revelation, I've changed my mind on it, and I may have made a mistake in reading it. The Fabula Points aren't spent to summon or Dismiss the unique Arcanum, they're used to use the Dismiss effect without actually Dismissing the Arcanum. It's still in the air as to whether that's worth doing for 2 Fabula Points, but it could certainly be useful, especially with how powerful Arcana actually are now. As a note on Revelation, as well, it obviously has no effect on Arcane Circle. Not for the reason of it being excluded, but because Arcane Circle wouldn't be affected by it. The other two Heroic Skills are Auramancer's Refraction from the Playtest document, and Grand Summoning from the High Fantasy Atlas. Let's take a look at them: Auramancer's Reflection Arcanist or Spirtist (Must know the Aura spell and/or the Barrier spell) When an enemy you can see deals damage to one or more of your allies who are affected by an Aura and/or Barrier spell you cast, you may choose one option: you deal Light damage to that enemy equal to [Level / 2]; or the damage suffered by each of those allies is reduced by 5 (applied before damage Affinities); or you regain 5 Mind Points for each ally damaged this way. After you resolve an option from the list above, you gain 1 Refraction Point; then, if you have 3 or more Refraction Points, you lose all Refraction Points and all Aura and/or Barrier spells you have cast end immediately. A little confusing, but basically, if you have Aura or Barrier on your allies, you can retaliate against an enemy that hits them, reduce the damage even further, or regain 5 MP. You can do any of these options in any combination 3 times, then you have to recast Aura/Barrier to be able to use these options again. This feels more like a Spiritist thing, I'm not sure why Arcanist is even included here. But an Arcanist can really benefit from it if they're going for Spiritist. It's certainly better than Arcane Echoes. Grand Summoning, on the other hand, is a DOOZY. Grand Summoning Arcanist (Must be level 30 or higher) When you summon an Arcanum, you may decide to spend 1 Fabula Point and spend half of your current Hit Points (rounded down) to shape your lifeforce into a full manifestation of their power. If you do, the Arcanum manifests as a soldier-rank creature of the demon Species under your control (they count as an ally and have their own independent turn during conflicts – if you use this Skill during a conflict scene, the Arcanum joins the scene at the end of the current round). You also do not gain any of the merge benefits you would normally enjoy when summoning that Arcanum. The summoned creature has the following profile:
Uh, holy poo poo. That's a lot. To sum up, you basically can summon an Arcanum as a CREATURE instead of being something that gives the Arcanist themselves extra options. Aside from the benefit of giving more of an action economy to the PCs, it also allows the Arcanist to spend MP to allow the Arcanum to do the same thing Revelation does, but without spending 2 Fabula Points. You still need to spend 1 to use this Heroic Skill, but this is a price far worth paying. Just look at what you get in the bargain! It's insane! Revelation didn't seem as bad when I looked back at it, but Grand Summoning makes it look terrible again! There's just no comparison here. Grand Summoning is just way better than Revelation. And there's nothing saying you can't use Revelation to get a unique Arcanum, and then use Grand Summoning to pay comparatively nothing to Dismiss it over and over... No wonder you can only get this at level 30! So there you have it. Obviously, it's not finished yet, but from all I've seen so far, Arcanist is much, much better in every way. It's actually worth playing now. Hell, it's actually more than worth playing now, it's exceptional. Even if this isn't what it'll end up as, it stands up on its own as a Class a Party can actually benefit from in many ways. 8/10 in my opinion, still has the issues of its Skills having little synergy with other classes, and being progression-locked behind story, but those problems feel rather minor next to what it can offer now. Mecha_Face fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Jan 22, 2024 |
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Nov 18, 2023 00:07
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That Arcanist rework sounds fantastic, but it definitely feels like Arcanists should learn Arcana like other classes learn spells instead of as pure fiat. I'm assuming this is Patreon playtest material - hopefully the core book will just get updated with this version when it's finalised.
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Nov 18, 2023 01:34
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Mecha_Face posted:Oh yea! Those Fuel Knuckles are... Not... Actually that interesting...? I mean, the concept of flamethrower gauntlets are rad as hell, but the actual product, not so much. The examples I picked above are probably the most interesting examples of each table, and almost all the other offerings are either "gives resistance to X" or "Does extra damage to X". This is what I meant when I say the game isn't giving much room for making anything really that cool or unique. Hell, the game's terror of bonuses means that all some Rare Items get is a +1 to Accuracy Checks. The GM can, of course, come up with their own ideas, and some of the Rare Items in High Fantasy Atlas or the playtest documents are a lot more fun, but in general this is what you have to work with regarding examples. As stated, the game's simplistic nature makes it tough to create interesting mechanical effects, because there's not a lot of mechanics to play around with. As much as I think the focus on feeling gamey on purpose is actually a good approach to this, it's a severe weakness here. A GM shouldn't have to be creative in the stead of a game, but that's really what's happening when it comes to Rare Items. That... sounds a lot like Final Fantasy, actually? I can't think of a whole lot of times where a character's story has been about a specific weapon, even for a little bit. Like, the nearest thing to it I can think of is Frog getting the Masamune. Cuts a goddamn mountain in half with it. That's the sort of presence you want a meaningful weapon to have in a story, yeah?
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Nov 18, 2023 08:29
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Glazius posted:That... sounds a lot like Final Fantasy, actually? I can't think of a whole lot of times where a character's story has been about a specific weapon, even for a little bit. Like, the nearest thing to it I can think of is Frog getting the Masamune. Cuts a goddamn mountain in half with it. That's the sort of presence you want a meaningful weapon to have in a story, yeah? I can think of a few other examples. And depending on how broad your definition of JRPG is, the Mana series has a lot to do with a very specific sword. That said, this is still a TTRPG; role-playing is more important than in video games.
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Nov 18, 2023 13:31
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Glazius posted:That... sounds a lot like Final Fantasy, actually? I can't think of a whole lot of times where a character's story has been about a specific weapon, even for a little bit. Like, the nearest thing to it I can think of is Frog getting the Masamune. Cuts a goddamn mountain in half with it. That's the sort of presence you want a meaningful weapon to have in a story, yeah? Everything about Frog is amazing, though, so obviously his important sword would be too.
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Nov 18, 2023 14:32
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Night10194 posted:Everything about Frog is amazing, though, so obviously his important sword would be too. The Chad Frog vs the Virgin Magus
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Nov 18, 2023 15:34
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Halloween Jack posted:Elves are easier to mutate than fruit flies. We should run experiments. I kind of like Pathfinder's elves for actually specifically adapting to the terrain they're in to get all the various wood/cavern/artic/etc. type elves, they even have a feat to let an elf effectively be so good at it they can shift their heritage between those types (without it taking years like most elves). Lamarck was right in this case!
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Nov 19, 2023 07:35
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With dwarves specifically I've always run their various subraces as just being political or religious affiliations humans misunderstand from the outside. Like yeah a dwarf who supports slavery probably votes Duergar.
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Nov 19, 2023 09:40
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Didn't Gloriantha lean heavily into the elves as manifestations of nature? Also LOL at working dwarves into the deep lore of setting and the hating doing anything with them.
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Nov 19, 2023 13:30
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By popular demand posted:Didn't Gloriantha lean heavily into the elves as manifestations of nature? Glorantha elves (Aldryami) are plant people rather than pretty humans with pointy ears.
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Nov 19, 2023 15:42
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Terrible Opinions posted:With dwarves specifically I've always run their various subraces as just being political or religious affiliations humans misunderstand from the outside. Like yeah a dwarf who supports slavery probably votes Duergar. Honestly, this should be done more often just so humans aren't the only ones with more than one country/political affiliation without having to be 'different subraces'. Druchii just being elves living in slaveocracy Canada in Warhammer adds to the elves, because now we know there's a political split! They aren't totally separate people, this isn't just how 'Cold Elfs' or 'Syrup Elfs' or 'Hockey Elfs' are, this is just something any elf could've gotten up to. Same way you've got multiple human countries. Not to mention imagine the reverse, where it's like, Plains Humans love horses, archery, and khans and River Humans have webbed feet and oh dear.
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Nov 19, 2023 15:46
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MadDogMike posted:I kind of like Pathfinder's elves for actually specifically adapting to the terrain they're in to get all the various wood/cavern/artic/etc. type elves, they even have a feat to let an elf effectively be so good at it they can shift their heritage between those types (without it taking years like most elves). Lamarck was right in this case! A pet theory of mine regarding the Remaster drow retcon is that the idea of the Dark Fate was an in-universe misunderstanding of the Wandering Heart phenomenon.
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Nov 19, 2023 16:32
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Night10194 posted:Honestly, this should be done more often just so humans aren't the only ones with more than one country/political affiliation without having to be 'different subraces'.
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Nov 19, 2023 19:11
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Terrible Opinions posted:It's also pretty easy to do with most existing subtypes. High elf is a manufactured "true elf" identity by the Empire as it expanded and stamped out local elf cultures, sea elves are just folks who live in independent mariner communities webbed finger rumors are just hyperbole, etc. Real true bread for real true elves.
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Nov 19, 2023 20:20
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Terrible Opinions posted:It's also pretty easy to do with most existing subtypes. High elf is a manufactured "true elf" identity by the Empire as it expanded and stamped out local elf cultures, sea elves are just folks who live in independent mariner communities webbed finger rumors are just hyperbole, etc.
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Nov 19, 2023 22:50
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Could also be that elves 'evolve' quickly: A coastal community starts having water breathing children within a generation or two, a community living on a tall mountain ridge starts with crude gliders but following generations develop gliding suit-like folding membranes. Of course if elves diverge this quickly from the 'basic' form it's entirely possible the whole thing can work in reverse too.
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Nov 19, 2023 23:24
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What setting was it where any elf who had a bad thought was excruciatingly transformed into a drow over the course of a few days but the reverse was not possible?
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Nov 20, 2023 00:34
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Kurieg posted:What setting was it where any elf who had a bad thought was excruciatingly transformed into a drow over the course of a few days but the reverse was not possible? Galorion Pathfinders default.
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Nov 20, 2023 00:44
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MonsterEnvy posted:Galorion Pathfinders default. Yeah, that’s what I was referring to earlier with my post about the Dark Fate. Drow were actually being portrayed somewhat more sympathetically in the PF2 era, until they ended up having to retcon them out of the setting entirely with the recent OGL-to-ORC change. Though even in PF1, non-drow elves becoming drow was a very unusual event, not something that happened to “any elf who had a bad thought.”
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Nov 20, 2023 00:55
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Does this mean that elves can have bad thoughts now?
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Nov 20, 2023 00:56
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Cooked Auto posted:Does this mean that elves can have bad thoughts now? See my edited post; there were always elves who had bad thoughts.
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Nov 20, 2023 00:57
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Clearly I was referring to really bad thoughts. 
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Nov 20, 2023 01:01
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What if an elf has a series of mildly bad thoughts over a protracted period?
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Nov 20, 2023 01:06
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Silver2195 posted:Drow were actually being portrayed somewhat more sympathetically in the PF2 era, until they ended up having to retcon them out of the setting entirely with the recent OGL-to-ORC change. Do they just not exist or are they just 'deep elves' now or something?
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Nov 20, 2023 02:17
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Dawgstar posted:Do they just not exist or are they just 'deep elves' now or something? They're gone entirely from the lore. There is no longer an evil subterranean race of elves. There are still cave elves, but they're entirely unrelated and were from before the drow removal anyway.
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Nov 20, 2023 02:29
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what I learned today is that elfs are eevees
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Nov 20, 2023 02:34
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The Serpent Folk are replacing the Drow in the lore as the scary underground threat.
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Nov 20, 2023 02:42
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MonsterEnvy posted:The Serpent Folk are replacing the Drow in the lore as the scary underground threat. 
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Nov 20, 2023 03:31
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Reading Paizo's reasoning behind the Drow in their world makes a lot of sense, actually. WOTC were softening on the "drow are always evil" thing in late 3.5, paizo leaned into it with an adventure path of turbo evil drow to get quick and easy cash just before 4e's lack of an OGL pulled the rug out from under them and "Drow are comedically evil" got flanderized into canon for Golarion. They realized it was lovely and racist and have been trying to figure out a way to write themselves out of it softly but ORC gives them an excuse to just go "gently caress it" regardless of how messy it is.
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Nov 20, 2023 05:44
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 Part Twelve: Nations, Five, Vol. 3  Thrane The history of Thrane is the history of the Silver Flame. Literally, as the Flame emerged upon the surface of Eberron roughly 700 years ago and there is precious little known about Thrane the Galifaran province before that. The story of the Silver Flame I already covered back in the section on religions, but I’ll provide a quick reprise: In the year 299 YK, a pillar of crimson fire suddenly erupted from the ground near the coast of Scions Sound in eastern Thrane. Worryingly close to the royal capital of Thronehold, any who came near could actually feel a malevolence present in the fire. It attracted fiendish monsters and underworld cultists until a paladin of Dol Arrah (off-brand Athena) named Tira Miron lead the provincial armies of Thrane to assault the fire. She had received a vision of a terrible demon emerging from the flame, sent by a strange rainbow-winged serpent that was fighting to hold the demon back. As the battle raged, Tira threw herself into the fire to join the serpent in fighting the demon lord, pinning the two together forever with her blessed sword. The crimson fire immediately changed with a massive explosion that is said to have “rocked the entire kingdom,” probably a romantic exaggeration but possibly not. The great fire dwindled and the red light in it burned out, until all that was left was a tall, narrow column of silver light. This Silver Flame spoke into the minds of Tira’s surviving followers with her voice, promising that it was now purified and was to be a guiding light in the world. A small stone castle was built around the site, set to someday be rebuilt into the grand Cathedral of the Flame and around which the provincial (now national) capital of Flamekeep would grow. The Church took on ever greater importance in Thrane, becoming the majority faith in the region in a mere century and a power in greater Galifar beyond it. There were some early religious clashes over the Church and the zeal with which it expanded, but ultimately the further one got away from Flamekeep then the less likely the Church was to gain purchase. Even so, a number of royal governors over Thrane turned to the Church during their tenure and, when circumstances allowed, put a small handful of these governors on the Galifaran throne. This nearly led to civil war as early as 450 years ago when Joliana ir’Wynarn took the throne and attempted to impose the Church on the entirety of Khorvaire. The would-be theocrats finally saw their chance early in the Last War, deposing the royal family and turning the state over to the Church in whole. If Thrane could win the War, then Galifar would have to be Flamic by default. Thrane was never going to win the War. It was a relatively small, north-central nation surrounded by all the others. Aundair was to its direct west and curled around it to the north a bit. Breland covered Thrane’s southwest, Cyre its south and southeast. Karrnath was directly across Scions Sound to the east and northeast. Committing too much to any one direction would leave it open to invasions from every other side. Even so, Thalin the first (and last) ruling king of Thrane and many of the theocrats who succeeded him believed their conquest was divinely ordained and so pressed on to create some of the most terrible and wasteful battles of the War when more cautious monarchs knew to draw back from a losing fight. The worst of the war for Thrane was along the Aundairan border, but much of the war raged just across the border in the Khorvairan heartland of northern Cyre. The relatively high population of clerics and adepts is probably what kept the nation on its feet throughout the war. In case it’s not abundantly obvious, the national character class of Thrane is the Cleric. Religion is mighty in Thrane for good and ill both. It has permeated the secular government for centuries, first unofficially and now formally. Legally non-members of the Church are not second class citizens, but in practical terms many are. As a result, in Thrane’s population centers the vast majority of the people are practicing Church members. Meanwhile, farther away from the seats of power almost half of the people in a small rural community can get away with professing some other kind of faith. As long as it’s an acceptable kind of faith, anyway - almost exclusively the Sovereign Host, and even then mostly just Dol Arrah and Dol Dorn. The Blood of Vol and Dark Six are outright illegal. Thrane is a bit more muddled for me than the others of the Five, in terms of real-world influences. The hierarchical Church with a council of cardinals and a patriarch or matriarch picked by divine acclamation is clearly meant to call the Catholic Church to mind, particularly the modern Vatican and the historical Papal States. I’ve also discussed, back when talking about the various religions, that I can’t help but see the Church of the Silver Flame as also distinctly Mormon. The Church grew out of the vaguely-Protestant Sovereign Host with practice of continuous revelation via the Voice of the Flame. The LDS Church’s political ambitions are also much more present and obvious an influence to me, as a US citizen who came of age and political consciousness around the turn of the millennium. I also think Thrane suffers some from being “the Cleric” of the Five in a way that clerics tend to in D&D-derived fiction. Clerics tend to be written in a very one-note fashion, having their faith be the near-entirety of their personality and motivation, with what little remains devoted to being healers. Paladins get the same problem too, though trade healing for fighting. You’ll see it in other genres with “The Doctor” character too, where if the problem at hand isn’t medical then they barely matter. To give an example of what I mean, at one point in the show Babylon 5, the station’s chief doctor Stephen Franklin abandoned his job because it had consumed him utterly, to disastrous results when he nearly lost a patient from his own mistakes while running on fumes and stimulants. He had a little revelatory arc about being a more whole person, and then promptly spent most of the rest of the show still just being The Doctor. Clerics in the D&D fantasy genre have the same problem and Thrane doesn’t escape it, at least not in this book. If you want D&D-specific examples, think Durkon for a long while in Order of the Stick or the cleric in the second D&D movie, Wrath of the Dragon God. (A pretty poo poo movie but a better D&D movie than the first one, at least.) Church and State Thrane is, per authorial voice, as good but flawed a place as any other in Khorvaire. Corruption still exists and fanatics still find purchase as long as they’re the “right sort” of fanatics, much as in anywhere else. It’s not that faith drives people to corruption or fanaticism but rather that the Church is the dominant venue through which the corrupt and fanatical may act in Thrane to exploit others. Church law has replaced the Code of Galifar. Though it is much more lenient on the laity than the clergy, it is still more stringent than the Code. The Church preaches an “Hierarchy of Evil” and most criminal acts are considered to have very real supernatural causes and consequences that must be addressed, sometimes forcefully. The bad tendencies that come out of this are exacerbated by a small handful of actual supernatural capital-E Evil powers in the world. Sometimes they are in the right, but there’s a bad false positive rate. Afterall, mundane personal evil pings off of detection magic much the same as the lingering traces of supernatural evil that’s been and gone. Overall, daily life isn’t that much different from elsewhere in the Five except for a higher pressure to attend church services. A peasant farmer is a peasant farmer is a peasant farmer, and that’s still a huge percentage of the Khorvairan populace. Thrane is in a good position for it with some of the same quality farmland as Aundair to the west, though not the personal friendship that Aurala has with the head of House Lyrandar. That’s probably worth a few sweet deals from the Lyrandar Raincallers Guild. As well, the Church provides (and enforces) a more unified sense of community than anywhere else in the Five. Being totally surrounded during the Last War probably helped with that. Being surrounded probably explains a lot about Thrane and the Church. The Church of the Silver Flame has, it seems, always been expansionist while also always considering itself under siege. The first construction around the Flame was a small castle - a fortification meant to guard the site where a supernatural force broke into the world and had to be fought. But soon it wasn’t protecting the world from the Flame but the Flame from the world. The book also adds that since the early days of the War, the Church has tried to turn the nation into an autarky - complete economic independence and self-sufficiency. Not a bad idea given the constantly shifting loyalties of the war! However, they can’t get over their siege mentality and more than a few powerful Church authorities are certain that peace is just a time to work harder to close off everyone else. The siege mentality is self-perpetuating at this point. Unfortunately for Thrane, even if they did succeed in walling everyone out, what it actually means is that they’ll be woefully out of date when the next war happens and end up cracked like a nut between everyone else. Related to war issues, something I forgot to mention in the Karrnath write-up but which is also applicable here: Karrnath and Thrane, while obeying the letter of the Treaty of Thronehold as regards the warforged, are contentedly ignoring the spirit of the Treaty as both states hold the near-entirety of their former warforged soldiery in indentured servitude. Ostensibly this is until they pay off the cost of their construction and maintenance, but we know how this goes. We don’t get much word on how warforged are being used in either country, aside from the occasional mention of someone like Kaius’s harem guard. Five Nations and Races of Eberron add precious little more aside from “working and building” in ceaseless toil since warforged don’t need to eat or sleep. (They can be mentally fatigued by the tedium of repetition much as anyone else, though, so this endless labor is definitely a kind of mental torment, if unintentionally inflicted.) If I had to answer the question in a game, I’d probably have most of both countries’ warforged in their respective armies’ engineer corps. Maybe Thrane would dress it up as more of a public works program instead of a military project, but new fortifications are high on their priority list. Warforged trained as skilled craftsmen and artificers are keeping up on that as well, and we are told they’re making up for shortfalls in the workforce in some places while putting people out of work elsewhere. Thrane’s government - which really is the Church’s government - is another strong parallel to Karrnath. There is a clear, defined hierarchy in the Church of the Silver Flame that few other faiths in Khorvaire possess. A body of low-ranking but omnipresent priests watch over their collective parishes, answering up the line to higher offices, who continue up the line as well until you reach a Council of Cardinals who oversee the major branches of the Church and answer collectively to the Keeper of the Flame. All very feudal. The Keeper speaks with the Flame’s authority, the person who hears the Voice of the Flame most clearly in all of Thrane. And in her seat of power in Flamekeep she is mighty. Outside of her seat of power is another matter entirely. Thrane is much more overt than Karrnath that an absolute ruler’s authority only extends so far as someone is there to actually carry out her commands. Kaius has used various means to keep his fractious warlords in line, including keeping most administrative power in the hands of the extended royal family, but the “royal family” in Thrane is part of the problem for the ruler. The Keeper of the Flame, Jaela Daran, is an eleven year old child and the closest thing she has to a royal family to support her are the ones using her as a figurehead. Jaela was picked by the Voice of the Flame five years ago. She is a slight girl with a “chocolate-colored complexion,” as Five Nations puts it. She had a strong gift of foretelling, able to predict disasters shortly before they happened. Her father took her to the Church in Flamekeep, realizing his daughter was touched by holy visions. When she was brought to stand before the Flame, through her it revealed the presence of a secret cult within Flamekeep dedicated to the Lords of Dust, the ancient fiend masters of the prehistoric world. The incumbent Keeper stepped down promptly in her favor. Jaela is not the only Keeper in the Church’s history to be elevated at such a young age, but she is the first in more than a century. She is wise far beyond her years, and in the Cathedral of the Flame she is bathed in the Silver Flame’s divine power. Mechanically, the past several years have made her a level 3 cleric of the Silver Flame, but when within the Cathedral her power is boosted to that of a level 18 cleric. Whether it comes from the Flame or not, she has an uncanny grace under pressure. That said, most of the actual temporal power of the state is not in her hands but instead taken up by the Council of Cardinals. She can speak with the voice of divine authority but the Council goes out of its way to make sure she doesn’t have to. As a result, she spends much of her time wandering the Cathedral with a monstrous “pet” bred by House Vadalis to be the Keeper’s bodyguard. Some cardinals, no doubt, think it is upon them to allow a child to be a child for even a little longer and grow into herself as much as possible. Others are not so solicitous. Most noteworthy is High Cardinal Krozen, Jaela’s self-appointed guardian and her planned interim successor if something tragic was to happen. Krozen is known to be a cynical, scheming old man who sees the entirety of Thrane as his parish to guide as he feels appropriate. He is explicitly Lawful Evil but with the power to hide it (both magical and political), and simply has too much power to summarily remove from office. What’s uncertain is whether Krozen is actually good or bad for Thrane. The book is deliberately vague.  From Five Nations. Jaela doesn’t get official art but Krozen does. Boo, I say! Boo! Krozen has been around for quite a while and Thrane was literally beset on all sides during the War. He has seen the country through thick and thin. How much of that was on his shoulders? Is he given a “thankless” job playing second-fiddle to some child who just showed up one day, doing the hard work of making sure things run properly? Was he corrupted by power and venality, or is he a man who understands that sometimes you need a knife in an alleyway instead of a paladin’s holy sword? The Keeper has faced assassination attempts since the earliest days of the Church and Krozen might have taken it upon himself to be Thrane’s ruthlessly pragmatic spymaster (or had it put upon him by his own predecessor). Even his slightly longer write-up in Five Nations says little that’s conclusive, allowing the DM to use him as anything from a straightforward evil advisor to a more complicated faithful but morally compromising agent of the Church who believes the ends justify the means. The third major element in Thranish politics is Queen Diani ir’Wynarn. When the Church overthrew the crown early in the War, Church officials understood that while popular sentiment was largely on their side it was not enough on their side to see a bloodbath made of the royal family. It also risked turning all four of the other Five directly on them. So instead, the royals of Thrane were “allowed” to retire to the royal palace to live on as little more than kept pets to help the new theocracy look good. Diani is extremely aware of how precarious her situation actually is. Despite this, she still harbors royal aspirations. Outwardly, she is a cultural curiosity, a keeper of quaint tradition. She entertains guests of the state including foreign nobles and diplomats who insist they need to deal with a royal for decorum’s sake. She is fond of Jaela and tries to help the young Keeper as much as their respective positions allow, without looking like she’s trying to openly grasp for power. Diani maintains a variety of public functions that help people find a sense of normalcy and community that crosses even religious lines within the country. Inwardly, Diani is an opportunist, but a canny and patient one. Her public fondness of Jaela is no performance, but she does realize that if she is to attain the throne once more she will have to act against the young Keeper. Many of the foreign diplomats she deals with carry words of support back and forth across the borders, though who knows how much those words will actually be worth if they must be put to action. Nearly everything she does has a secondary purpose of helping her build the secret coalitions and find the agents she will need to make her dreams a reality. Marked Out There’s actually very little to say about the marked houses and Thrane. All of them still do business there, as Thrane has not successfully become an autarky yet, but none are headquartered there. Church law is too strict for most houses’ tastes. Over the centuries the Church’s growing influence made the houses feel unwelcome enough to center operations elsewhere. The Church is not too bothered by this. Adventure! Thrane is surprisingly rich in potential adventure, given the elevator pitch of “Lawful Good theocracy headed by a beatific child pope.” You won’t find many traditional hooks around bandits, dungeons, or haunted forests. (There is one extremely haunted battlefield, at least.) The Church will also tend to come down on you like a ton of bricks if you get up to any particularly wild shenanigans. But at the same time, Thrane is riven with internal divisions that they refuse to openly acknowledge because they consider themselves surrounded by potential enemies. Adventure is more an excuse for Thranish characters to get out of Thrane instead of having a campaign there, but there are definitely people and forces who can find something for you to do if you’re bored. Diani and Krozen both have secret agendas for which they would need to hire some deniable (and disposable) agents, and both are also viable avenues through which a party might end up in contact with Jaela Daran. Jaela may not have the most political savvy but is still no fool despite her few years, and could also use independent agents to get stuff past her guards and caretakers. The Church in general is also constantly looking for a new mission or crusade on which to send the faithful - after all, there was a rakshasa cult inside Flamekeep itself just five years ago, and who knows if all of them were caught? Though reformers looking for internal corruption may end up shunted out to a distant church in a target-rich area like Sharn to keep them busy. Guillotines? Unlikely but not impossible. Despite internal pressures, Thrane seems unlikely to descend into civil war any time soon. The Thranish people consider themselves under siege from all directions, culturally if not literally, and a great deal can be forgiven for the sake of unity. Karrnath just across the Sound to the east and the Mournland to the south are both very present reminders - both are lands of monsters to the average Thrane citizen. Breland to the southwest is a den of iniquity and corruption while Aundair to the west is still despised as their greatest rival during the war. All of the rest of Khorvaire is misguided at best and horrifyingly godless and unholy at worst. The most likely scenario as I see it is if someone kills Jaela Daran, and even then that depends upon who does it and why. Someone from another country killing her could ignite a war. A member of the Blood or a Dragon Below cultist doing it could spark a new crusade - one that could start a new Khorvaire-wide war depending on what happens. But if Jaela dies accidentally or intentionally when Diani makes her move? The only way the royal family of Thrane doesn’t get publicly executed is if they get Romanov’d in a cellar instead.  The Mournland Cyre was the jewel of Galifar. Stretching across much of the south of Khorvaire, it was one of the most expansive and populated provinces of the grand Kingdom. It was named for Cyre ir’Wynarn, the youngest of Galifar I’s five children but the only one who survived to see the day the conqueror king abdicated. When Cyre I took the crown, he decided that his own heir would be placed as prince regent over the province of Cyre as he had been. Anything done twice is a tradition, and so the province became the crown principality for much of the Kingdom’s history. Various kings and queens have come from different provinces because sometimes people just die young, but the practice always returned to Cyre. The ECS does not tell us too much about what Cyre was really like, though we know some details. Power accrued there as it hosted the heir apparent to the crown, who was to be trained on the provincial government in advance of taking on continental rule. A mind-boggling amount of wealth went with it. Every dragonmarked house had a major presence and some made their headquarters there. Important lightning rail lines and Orien trade roads sprawled across the land. Then came the War. The War ate up much of Cyre’s wealth, murdered its children. Even friendly armies crossing from one nation to another were a disaster to the nation’s northern reaches, the heart of its agriculture. Regions in the south and east broke away, and others nibbled at the borders. And finally in the last days of the War came the Day of Mourning. The final indignity that laid Cyre low. If anybody truly knows what caused the Day of Mourning, they are almost certainly lying dead in the ruins of Cyre, obliterated by their own weapon or accident. Four years ago in 994 YK, a terrible light brightened the sky in the north of Cyre that blinded Thranish spotters just across the border. Then a great explosion of magical power rocked the capital of Metrol and the dead-gray mist began to spill forth from the city. Anyone caught in the mist died instantly. It enveloped the whole of Cyre in just a day. Some were able to get out ahead of it via the last lightning rail rides out of the country. Some lived just close enough to the border to run. But for the majority of the country the mist was an inexorable tide of death. The mist stabilized at the rough borders of Cyre. Areas that had broken away remained untouched. Once it stopped in place, the mist no longer killed anyone who passed into it, but it remained a hostile border to a nightmare realm. Strong winds can occasionally part the mist but it always returns. The Day of Mourning was the end of the War. Ceasefires took a while longer to be declared and the Treaty of Thronehold that officially ended it took another two years. But the War was already over and much of the continent was locked in disbelieving grief. The national character class of Cyre was the Bard. The people were cosmopolitan and well educated, used to a high standard of living overall. Artists and artisans both were popular and the nation was the center of the cutting edge and the avant-garde. Now the Cyrans are a fragmented people, spread far and wide across Khorvaire. Some try to establish new communities and keep the spirit of Cyre alive while others are unmoored and rootless. As an aside: the pronunciation of “Cyre” has been up for enough debate that Keith Baker has commented on it. Long story short, there is no official pronunciation because it’s been a thousand years and you’re drat lucky Common is even mutually intelligible across the continent. Okay, okay, actually, Baker suggests there were functionally three Cyres, since it encompassed not just the pre-Galifar human nation of Metrol but also the goblinoid nation of Darguun and the more distant “frontier” province of Valenar. For my money, I like to imagine that in the Metrol region it was pronounced “Sire” because it sounds more royal (and “Cyran” like “Siren”), and people would totally be up for that kind of arrogance for the crown province, while by the time you get to the small communities in Valenar it had picked up an extra syllable and some variance. With a diversion into the hard-C pronunciation in Darguun and bordering communities because that sound feels like it crops up more in their naming conventions - and maybe it’s also a relatively new import to Karrnath since House Deneith is centered there and they hired a lot of goblinoids during the build-up to the War. (Also in imitation of what people have done to “Caesar” and its derivatives over the past two millennia.) The royal pronunciation is probably the most common now considering how many survivors have collected in New Cyre around Oargev, as an exercise in national unity, but regional pronunciations probably still survive in other far-flung refugee communities. In Exile The interior of the Mournland is a blasted, alien wasteland. The mist swathes the land in permanent twilight - night and day are meaningless. Everything goes wrong there, sometimes in consistent ways and other times in unpleasantly novel fashion. Many locations have shifted and changed, with whole communities and cities moved many miles away from where they once stood. Time does not seem to matter within the dead-gray mist. Many of Cyre’s dead lay where they fell, still wholly intact. You can go to the final battlefield of the War in the southwest of the Mournland and find the dead of Cyre, Breland, Thrane, and even Darguun all lying where they died on that fateful day, untouched by decay. Strange and hungry monsters wander the land but the most common scavenger is the two-legged sort, with equipment and goods occasionally pilfered by the daring or foolhardy who would venture into the Mournland in search of a lost valuable or a “souvenir.” Some of these scavengers are funded by New Cyre or Karrnath, hoping to find the secrets of the Day of Mourning. Nothing safe to eat grows there any longer so you have to bring all your own supplies in, and no healing - magical or natural - happens there. Things do still grow and live there, but they are wholly unnatural monsters. Sometimes the dead do reanimate (except for those at the final battlefield, who refuse to get up from their naps) while other things that somehow survived the mist have long since mutated due to unknown arcane energies. Metrol is said to be haunted by pallid humanoid “ghostbeasts” that lurk in its ruined buildings. A terrible rent in the earth called simply the Glowing Chasm lies in the north, out of which issues an unearthly violet light which seems to draw in and further mutate the monsters wandering the land. Meanwhile, some of the magical energies of the War itself have coalesced into odd new forms of life called eternal spells, battle spells casting themselves again and again as they crawl all around a gargantuan Glass Plateau that spans several hundred miles in the south of the country. While these are officially some of the Big Mysteries of Cyre that will go unanswered for the DM to use as they please, the Glowing Chasm screams “daelkyr” to me. As alien flesh-crafters from the plane of Xoriat, trapped in the deepest pits of Khyber, this is right up their alley. Does this mean the Day of Mourning was caused when a daelkyr’s prison breached? Maybe. Maybe not. But it certainly sounds like one was breached and that’s where this  Just be wary of any farmers you find and their alpacas. There is a society, of a sort, developing in the Mournland despite all this, though. Constructs seem to be immune to whatever mutating power pervades the land there and as such a significant and growing population of warforged have walked away from the other Five Nations for the ruins of Cyre - the book notes they make a good 98% of an estimated populace of 1,000 in the wastes long-term. They are as yet mostly a scattered populace collecting in various enclaves dedicated to different ideas of what a warforged society might look like. What they all share is discontent with how they were treated by the Five. After all, they’re still property in two of the other nations and unpopular reminders of war in all of them. The most dangerous of these movements follows a charismatic leader known as the Lord of Blades. The Lord of Blades is a figure of rumor and mystery. For all that every warforged is supposed to be a documented and numbered product, nobody has the slightest notion who he could have been during the War. Some suggest he is the first true warforged or maybe the last one made before the creation forges were shuttered, while others will claim he must be any warforged of note who has died or disappeared since the War ended. He is festooned with armor spikes and other blades mounted across his metal body, striking a dramatic silhouette as he appears before his followers and promises them that they are Khorvaire’s future. That they were made for war and thus war they shall make. In response to a much earlier part of this review, Cythereal made a very cogent point that the warforged relate not just to racism but even more so to demobilized veterans after World War I. Which I feel kind of stupid for overlooking, considering elsewhere in this review I’d also talked about the general issues with demobilized veterans across Khorvaire. Oh well! Anyway, the Lord of Blades should probably be considered in this light as analogous to some, y’know, obscure political figures from Italy and Germany who got into a bit of a scrap with some others around this time. Took advantage of people who felt betrayed and used during war, had a hard time integrating into civilian society afterward, started lionizing conflict for its own sake. You know the sort. Concrete information on the Lord of Blades is difficult to find. (The ECS tells us only that he’s Lawful Evil and Fighter 2, Artificer 5, Warforged Juggernaut 5. He gets a full stat block in another book.) Most descriptions come second-hand through some follower or another. He seems to always be on the move, driven by a need to constantly rally his people or perhaps too paranoid to stay in one place for long. Or both. Either way, his followers are energized and further radicalized by his seemingly random comings and goings, always with grand plans and promises of a future of adamant and darkwood instead of flesh and bone. Most warforged are repelled by his message, even other separatists who gather in the Mournland, but as rumors spread, warforged in other nations find themselves alienated from their fearful neighbors. So does he isolate and recruit his fellows into what is rapidly becoming a strange “ethno”-nationalist cult. He does not rule the Mournland yet, but if the other warforged communities of the wasteland do not unite then they may find themselves picked off and absorbed by his followers. Dragonmarkets As the jewel of Galifar, Cyre was home to two prominent marked houses: Cannith and Phiarlan. Officially Phiarlan’s headquarters in Cyre worked to coordinate the other major elements of the house spread across Khorvaire, as they run the far-flung Entertainers and Artisans Guild. Unofficially, it was the center of Phiarlan espionage operations, a politically neutral and profitable network of agents for hire for all nations throughout the War. A little too conveniently, the entire leadership of House Phiarlan was “on tour” outside Cyre when the Day of Mourning happened. Maybe some secret of the Day is hiding in the depths of their ruined headquarters in Metrol. Cannith did not fare so well. They all but openly owned the city of Eston in the northwest of Cyre. It was their seat of power and the font from which countless wonders of modern magic flowed. The lightning rail was developed there. The first warforged were prototyped there. With a century of terrible war, the wealth of a continent had flooded into Cannith’s coffers. When the Day of Mourning came, it decapitated the house leadership and slew hundreds of the finest minds in artifice. A spare few explorers have reported that Eston is even worse off than Metrol, nearly all of it in shattered ruins and with entire neighborhoods collapsed into the crevasses where once there were streets. If any wonders of Cannith are still intact there, they are buried under a city’s worth of rubble. As is whatever secret superweapon may have caused the Day of Mourning, if it even exists. Adventure! So much adventure. So, so much. But primarily in the form of survival adventures of attrition, where you can’t heal and have to hope nothing bad happens to your supplies. But most of the rest of the continent wants to know something about what’s going on in the mists, hopefully to figure out what caused them to hopefully prevent them from recurring. Or to master and deploy them again. Numerous patrons would love to get samples of some of the new wildlife or strange substances of the wasteland, be it Vadalis looking for breeding stock or the wizards of Arcanix desiring a sample of Plateau glass to test. Prince Oargev will eagerly buy up any information on the new life and old ruins of the Mournland, though with his limited means he may have to pay out in information and favors as well. The Mournland is a front-and-center demonstration of how Eberron’s mysteries are yours to define. There are always hints and suggestions, but couched in terms of rumor and speculation. Some things do get resolved in later books but most do not. There’s no metaplot and the world is made to pick up and go whichever direction you feel like. There are plenty of signposts to helpfully guide you but little stopping your game from striking out into uncharted territory. Maybe the Day of Mourning really was caused by a Cannith superweapon. Maybe the Phiarlan elves were finally paid enough to sell off some ancient secret of Giant magic that broke Xen’drik and were smart enough to get the hell out of town. Maybe a daelkyr really did break loose. Maybe a meteor struck Metrol and set off some destructive arcane cascade through the nation’s network of battlefield wards. Maybe Cyre’s borders accidentally made the draconic symbol for “gently caress you” after Valenar broke away and the dragons of Argonnessen took it personally when they saw the updated maps. Maybe all of these happened at once and the Cyrans are just unspeakably cosmically unlucky. The Mournland is designed to be a mean place to adventure in, but it’s also something that people know about. It’s been four years since it happened, people have gone poking around the edges and a brave few have gone even deeper. But never for long, not if they wanted to come out and tell the tale to others. So players who go there will know what they’re in for. It’s not about making players eat poo poo without warning, it’s an optional challenge mode. I’m pretty cool with it being a cruel, capricious place because the PCs are supposed to know that going in. Of course a bad DM could make it unduly vicious or railroad you in, but that’s a problem endemic to DMing in general. It’s a hosed-up, alien landscape right in the heart of the continent, there to remind everyone very pointedly that the hubris that broke Galifar politically also risks Khorvaire materially. Another War may be a literal existential danger. But it’s also a temptation because someone, somewhere is going to look at that and go, “Okay, but I’m good enough to keep it under control.” And then calamitous nonsense happens, as it is wont. Guillotines? The Mournland may be the most pointless place to have them, but I would bet there’s at least one guillotine up already. They would just speak to the Lord of Blades’s soul. He needs them. And if his followers catch a fleshy somewhere in their territory, it almost certainly ends in the big chop. Next time: Lamias, Rakshasas, and Bugbears, oh my! disposablewords fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 06:00
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At some point you just need to run Spire. There's your Drow fix.
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Nov 20, 2023 06:23
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I suppose one very thematic way to play with the calamity that wrecked the Mournland is the idea of various nations (or the Lord of Blades, for an even scarier danger coming from Mecha-Hitler) trying to rediscover and weaponize the effect to have the equivalent of the atomic bomb for if/when Khorvaire undergoes the equivalent of World War II which is being threatened in-setting. And of course it's a very on-the-nose "cost/horror of war made manifest" as is; God knows the survivors are probably some of the worst for PTSD war veterans given how nasty what they saw was. As for Thrane, Krozen gives me massive Three Musketeers Richelieu vibes; a "Three Paladins" campaign could have a lot of mileage really. Jaela is an interesting idea (especially being possibly the most powerful cleric in-setting thanks to Eberron assuming high level NPCs are rare as HELL) but the underage thing can get a little skeezy in my experience with some of the fandom (I know I've heard a lot of "LoliPope" jokes  ). I'd almost prefer she was older but kept out of leadership by the church insisting she keep focused on "spiritual needs" while they handle the "messy details". She might make an interesting Joan of Arc analogue also if we want to continue the idea of Thrane as France. Revolutionary-era France would also work for Thrane in particular given we have a nobility which has been dispossessed of power and possibly vulnerable to purging if their queen gets caught in her schemes (now THERE'S a way to get guillotines).
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Nov 20, 2023 08:26
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Nah, they are more like Yuan-Ti but with long necks, and a bit lamer.
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Nov 20, 2023 10:04
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