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muzzlemouths · 2 months

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Totally normal question (apologies if it has been asked before) do the DMD au boys have different love languages?

What would an act of love look like to them or from them if I may be so bold 👀

Moon’s love language is Quality Time.

This may sound uncharacteristic of the Moon we’ve seen in Dead Mall Dare thus far, but I assure you he wants nothing more than to be in someone’s company.

He spent more time than necessary with the customers and was familiar, or made it his goal to become familiar, with each and every one of them — until The Event, that is, where all of that changed practically overnight.

Sure, Sun misses the customers, too, but he can still pretend. He’s good at pretending they’re still around, good at pretending that each sale is between himself and a stranger rather than a shuffle between his own hands, good at pretending to be alright with all of this. Moon isn’t so self-convincing, and he can’t bring himself to do what feels like slow torture to him. He needs the contact, the real companionship of it all. Someone to laugh at his jokes, to tell him about their day, to be there in the moment with him not just as a customer but as someone he can consider a friend. Trapped in a mall he can never hope to step foot outside of, how else is he meant to achieve that? Similar to Sun, there was a point where he attempted to fool himself into thinking that anyone breaking into the mall after its closing was just another customer. But they’re not. They are taggers, looters, thieves, only there to destroy what remained of their home, and it makes him terribly bitter. He denies needing companionship if only in the bleak hope that it will make him stop wanting it.

He's touch starved, conversation starved, companionship starved. He wants your time. He has to believe someone still wants his.

You may think Sun’s love language is Physical Touch or Words of Affirmation. After all, he’s handsy to a fault with Y/N right off the bat, and has already used no less than four different pet names by the end of the chapter. He’s very generous with his compliments and lays his affections on thick. That being said, his love language is actually Acts of Service.

Always considered the prettier of the two mascots by the average customer, Sun is used to his sense of worth being attached to his appearance. No matter how hard he tries, he will always be looked at for his charm first and everything else, second. He values compliments about his strength, his smarts, his ability to tackle almost any goal, but what he loves most is the chance to prove it.

So when it comes to his love language, he is all about doing anything and everything in his power to bear the weight, to an almost obsessive degree. He'll patch up that broken window by the afternoon, will cook up a four course dinner even if it means an evening of keeping his nose buried in an unfamiliar cookbook, will run from one department and back before you have the time to sneeze if you left something behind, and will spend all day attempting to repair Moon's projector despite knowing nothing about its mechanics just for the slim chance of seeing him smile.

If you allow him the chance to do just about anything for you he will be giddy for the rest of the day. Your stomach growls? Now you’re suddenly being ushered into a booth while he brings you every fruit he can hold with two hands. Need to change but your wardrobe is dirty? Now the laundry is done and he’s already picked out that week’s outfits in advance, so you don’t have to! Tell him your feet are sore? Now you’re in his arms, and he’s not taking no for an answer.

He can get…a little overbearing, admittedly. What starts as a way to show affection soon becomes overwhelming, and you might start to feel infantized or belittled, but he means well. He wants to be helpful, he wants to feel useful, and he’ll do anything to accomplish that.

#dead mall dare au #WHOA THIS IS LONG #OOPSIES #I don't want to monologue any longer since it's already super lengthy but #Crunch if you hit up my DMs I can go more into detail about their LL if you want!

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caissymax · 4 years

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His Final Moments

Experienced the death of my first character in DnD last night, still sorta heartbroken about it because I loved him, so I coped by writing out his final moments in more details haha. This won’t have a lot of context because it’s a session we’ve been running for more than a year now, but I think there’s enough in here to parse out the important bits, so...yeah. I’ve tried to be as true to our actual dialogue as possible so it’s as accurate as my memory with some narrative extras.

As for characters, we’ve got Lard the Bard played by me, Eli the Barbarian by @acorn-boy, Lincoln/Winks the Monk by @poorly-timed-polaroid, Warren the Cleric by @outcast66x, and Seven the Rogue by another friend of ours. All run by our amazing DM @lily-the-leopard!

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“Look,” Winks starts and Lard doesn’t feel bad about not stopping, not looking at him, “I just can’t lose you. You and Eli and Warren and Seven are all I have left.” Lard squeezes his eyes shut and hugs himself tighter. He’s so tired. “You’re all important to me. I lost my mom and never really had a true family.” Lard stops, but he’s so tense and cold his shoulders are almost covering his ears. “You’re running away from me and stirring up feelings that I don’t know how to deal with.” He can hear the crunch of snow of Winks still approaching. “Just know I’ll do everything in my power to keep you from leaving me behind.”

Lard spins on his heel and is up in Winks’ face even though his wide eyes and stunned look makes him feel bad about it. But Lard’s upset with Eli’s lack of care for himself, angry with Winks for not just...leaving him alone to pull himself back together. And his mood isn’t helped by his terrible feelings of uselessness, he’s let Eli down by revealing the coin’s still around and he was helpless as anything when Therian set his attentions on Winks the night before. And it’s all of this that has him blurting out, “Well, that’s too bad ‘cause I’m gonna leave at some point!” And though Winks’ stricken look makes Lard want to backtrack, he’s never claimed to be perfect and his sleep deprived mind barrels him forward. “I’ve got my own people waiting for me to come back, my own family who I miss so...so much.” His hands are shaking and he has to take deep breaths to keep from breaking down then and there. Tears well up in his eyes and he ruthlessly wipes them away. “I’m going back to them someday and that’s not changing.”

“But,” and now Winks in crying and Lard desperately wants to feel bad but he’s got too many of his own emotions filling up his head to even begin processing someone else’s, “we’re a team, Lard.”

Lard sniffs and rolls his eyes and feels meaner than he’s ever been when he says, “Sometimes teams go their own ways, Winks, not all of them are as successful as others.”

And when Winks really starts crying, Lard turns back around and heads towards the monster he’d seen.

At the same time he sees Eli facing off with it, Winks goes barrelling past him and, upon seeing the crackling magic across Winks’ hands and quarterstaff, Lard hangs back. He won’t be caught in another one of Winks’ reckless area of effect spells. He’d had enough of that with the Thunderwave the day before.

Eli’s already fighting with the viciousness and disregard that tells Lard they’ve already lost him to his axe. The creature dwarfs even Eli, pale green and spiked with ice, with a flat face and underbite that makes it quite the ugly thing to look at.

Warren and Seven appear as Eli goes at the creature with his axe, getting a good gouge in. And Lard waits until there’s space back between Eli and the creature before playing a melody on his kazoo and sending two bolts of eldritch blast towards it.

Even though only one of the bolts hits, that doesn’t matter when an ear shattering noise splits through the clearing. Lard’s not within range of Winks’ Shatter but the sound still has him pressing his hands against his ears and remembering exactly why Shatter’s no longer in his own arsenal of spells. He glowers at Winks when he sees the way Eli’s ears have started dribbling blood but can’t complain as the creature goes down.

Which leaves them with their Eli problem to deal with.

Lard figures that if Eli puts up a fight or pushes past Warren’s blind/deafen and they have to put him on the ground for real, he might as well take the chance to slip away with Therian’s coin.

So, he comes to stand a little behind Winks, careful to keep just outside of Eli’s feral attention. “Warren,” he begins, “do you want to try and snap him out of it-?”

The ground shakes beneath his feet and from a hole Lard hadn’t noticed bursts another creature. It takes a swing at Seven and sends her tumbling across the clearing, she’s back on her feet before long, and his attention moves to Eli who goes after the creature once more.

He hears Eli shout as he strikes, can hear Seven asking Warren for some healing, hears Warren mutter a few arcane words-

-he hears Winks shout, “Everyone get back!” and his heart stutters before he can’t hear anything at all.

Lard realizes then that Shatter is so, so much worse from the inside. It’s so loud, it isn’t. He feels something trickle down his face and neck, his ears feel wet when he presses his palms uselessly against them. His lips are moving but not even he knows whether he’s saying words or simply screaming.

His knees give out and everything goes black. The pain fades and at that point, that’s all he can ask for.

He sits up from his crumpled body and knows that he’s reached the end of the line. He presses his hands to his eyes and takes a few deep breaths to maintain what little composure he’s got left before dropping them back to his side.

It’s only then that he notices the dark, looming figure standing before him. And while he’s never seen her before, he’s familiar enough to know who he’s looking at. He’s on his feet in a blink, bowing, but then there’s a hand urging him back up and he’s swept up in her arms. And that’s when he finally breaks down, sobbing like he hasn’t since he was a child because it’s really over. There’s no reason for him to try and remain strong, no one relying on him. The weight has been lifted from his shoulders and there’s a part of him that already misses it because at least he’d had a purpose.

He’s still crying as she leads him away tucked under her arm.

#dnd stories #dnd storytime #pieces of eight #lard the bard

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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youtube

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

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words-writ-in-starlight · 5 years

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would read the intensive level-up scenes, because I too DM with a ton of backstory and not enough actual session prep, also my current party is lacking in marketable/reusable details AND I'M NOT CREATIVE ENOUGH TO COME UP WITH MORE IDEAS

HERE, THEY LONG, THEY DETAILED, THEY UNDER A CUT

MY PLAYERS BETTER NOT BE READING THIS

(Technically I wrote these all as choose-your-own-adventure style things, and they have breaks for people to choose an outcome, but, A, I only included the path they took in this post, and, B, I knew my players pretty well and was fairly capable of scripting what they were going to do. They were all going up to Level 3, so the last thing noted is what they were choosing in-game--their class specialization.)

AZARA (SCOURGE AASIMAR, WARLOCK OF THE RAVEN QUEEN, PACT OF THE CHAIN)

You fall asleep, and it’s strange—you can feel time passingin the black of unconsciousness, leaving you to linger there for a long, darknight without any sign of dawn. Just asit begins to be too much, you feel something in the endless black for the firsttime. It’s cold, and hard, and touchingyour feet—no. You’re standing, barefoot,on stone.

Realizing this is like opening a dam. Sensation comes back to you in a blindingrush, all at once, and it hurts.

That’s what tips you off. You spent years being tortured. You know that dreams can’t make you hurt, but this—this hurts, light and sound and touch soharsh and immediate that they burn. You’ve had this happen before. Just once. You cover your earsand close your eyes like a child afraid of the dark, and wait to adjust.

You open your eyes, and this time the light is bright butnot blinding, and you uncover your ears slowly and discover that you can hearclearly, and you straighten up.

You are barefoot, unarmed, wearing a plain prisoner’stunic. You recognize the clothes fromprison, but now they’re starless black, so dark you can’t even seeshadows. You do not recognize the heavyiron collar around your neck, but it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t chafe at your skin,it’s just…heavy. Your skin is crackedlike porcelain held together with glue, and golden radiance pours forth likeyou’ve been traced with molten metal, casting a circle of light around yourfeet. Your face feels hot, like someoneis holding a torch directly to the height of your cheekbones, and your eyesdrip something thick and burning down your face.

You look around and see that you’re standing on abattlefield like none you’ve ever seen. Theroar of noise is the bellow of warcries, broken here and there by the sharp andviolent crash of weapons on armor as the posturing armies meet in smallskirmishes.

The armies are small. You are one of sixteen in black, facing sixteen in white. The battlefield is silver and sickly green,alternating squares five feet on all sides, and the armies don’t wear uniformspast their shared colors.

You are still on the back line, with two empty squares toyour left. You can see a black paladincoming under heavy attack from a white sorcerer with fire wreathing her handsto the furthest right side of the fight, and a black rogue with two knivestrying to rip through the white line, there and gone too fast to catch as theychart a jagged course across the battle.

To your right is a towering throne—empty and carved out of asingle piece of black stone, the seat level with your shoulder. You can’t get a good look at the rest of theback line, on the other side of the throne, but you can see that there’ssomeone else still hanging back. Justahead is a tall woman wearing a veil over her eyes, dressed in a priest’s blackrobes and holding her staff of office high with a battlecry. Defending the throne. There is an empty square beside her, in frontof the throne, and a clear line stretching away up and to your left, into theclash ahead.

As you look over the battlefield, trying to get a sense ofwhat’s happening, a soldier on a white horse swings a mace with a roar oflaughter, and sends a black-clad boy no older than twelve to the ground with acrunch and a spray of blood. He stayswhere he’s fallen, and the white horse steps over him to take his square.

You are a strategist. You’ve played chess before. Youknow that this is skirmish is just the beginning of the midgame, and it’s timeto develop the queen.

What do you want todo?

You take a step forward to leave your square, and you can’tmove your feet. Instead, a massivehand—long-fingered and slender—reaches down and scoops you up. Gently, but the fingers are hard and cold anddon’t give any more than the marble chessboard when you scramble to get yourfeet under you.

You’re lifted up and away from the chessboard, toward theinvisible player, and all you can think is that once you touch a piece inchess, by the strict rules, you have no choice but to play it.

The golden light pouring from your skin illuminates a vast porcelainmask with painted-on black eyes without sclera or pupil, a plain almond of inkthat you can feel staring at you. Theonly color on the mask is the bloody red slash of lips, which don’t move when theplayer speaks.

“Here you are,” the voice says. It’s soft and smooth and feminine, butthere’s a note of strain there that makes all the hair on the back of your neckbristle. “You have run for long enough,my warlock. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“You are not a soldier anymore,” the voice says. It’s harder, now, almost impatient. “You wanted freedom—I gave it. You walked out of your cage without a mark onyou. Why do you still hide in theshadows? I have given you freedom, andpower, enough of both to be my agent in the world. But you cower in the back line, waiting fororders.”

The voice pauses, and you find that you cannot speak toanswer. Something you haven’t felt in along time is settling over you: panic. You know fear, fear keeps you alive. You even know the feeling of knowing that you are about to die. This is deeper, more honest. Primal. You are faced with something more powerful than any mortal could hope todefeat, something that could sweep worlds clean without breathing hard, and asthe cool porcelain mask stares down at you, surrounded by the quiet whisper offeathers rustling in the wind, you truly understand what it means to feelsmall.

There is a long sigh, and the wind rushes around you withthe force of a gale, laden with the sweet, warm scent of fresh earth.

“You have agreed to a hard thing, my warlock,” the voicegoes on, a touch softer. “But we are allgoing to be faced with hard things, I am afraid.”

What do you want todo?

“You will seek imbalance,” the voice says. It’s not a request, nor is it even really anorder. It is a statement ofreality. “You will fight to restore whatyou can, and you will destroy what you cannot. You will be a scourge on those who betray the balance of the world. You will do these things, and you will dothem alone. I cannot interfere. I am perilously close to breaking my own lawsas we stand now. You are an agent of thegods now, my warlock, not a soldier waiting for a messenger to bring you orderswith a royal seal.” The player pausesfor a moment, and the mask tilts thoughtfully, like a moon consideringyou.

“I will send a guide,” the voice says at last. “To help you. But you must make your own moves now.”

The hand closes over you, so swift and powerful you can’teven think of resisting, and you’re on the chessboard again. The empty throne is on your left. In front of you is the priestess with herstaff. The game is on again.

What do you want todo?

You step forward, down the diagonal, and step into thesquare occupied by a ranger wrapped in white scarves, carrying a recurvedbow. The golden light spilling from thecracks in your skin burns the white ranger where you touch, and she cowers awayfrom you, hitting her knees. You kickher aside, out of the square, and look down the diagonal to the white throne.

You say, “Check.”

The world explodes, and you wake up.

HEINOUS (TIEFLING, BARBARIAN, PATH OF THE ZEALOT)

You are standing in your home—in the kitchen, with a castiron wood stove in one corner and a narrow staircase twisting upward in theother. Your back is to the door to themain room, the door closed firmly behind you, caging you in the kitchen. It’s simple, but big and broad. You paid for this place with money you earnedwith your own hands, as a mercenary, and you cut down trees for the windowsillsand floorboards with your own hatchet. Your wife Yevelda did the real carpentry, sanded things smooth and fit thejoints together, and the two of you together decided on how to furnish it.

Over the years you lived here, the floors grew scuffed andthe walls gained bumps and marks. Youcan see the window in the kitchen, the one that broke during a storm that senta tree branch through the glass, the one with the sill that never quite lookedright again.

None of those marks of life are here now. Your home looks as fine and warm andbeautiful as the day you finished building it, but untouched. The wood glows in the sunlight that spillsthrough the windows, but you can’t see outside, past the light, and when youtry, it makes you feel dizzy and sick, the smell of smoke strong in yournostrils. You’re standing in the kitchenand you know every inch, but none of your things are here—there is no sign ofthe maple table Yevelda made, and no knives or cooking implements on thecounter. The stove is dark and cold, theiron flawless, as if it’s never been touched. There are no pots or pans, no food stored on the shelves. The pantry door stands ajar, without evendust inside.

You are home, and youare alone. What do you want to do?

You ascend the stairs—they’re narrow, twisting sharply ontop of themselves, and you duck your head automatically to keep the rise ofyour horns from thudding into the wood as you take the first three steps.

At the top of the stairs is a small room. It’s empty of furniture, but you can picturewhere the bed should be pushed into the corner, under the window spillingimpenetrable golden light onto the floor, and where the dresser should stretchalong one wall.

There is a figure standing in the light of the window, withher back to you. It’s a half-orc, astall as you are and even broader in the shoulders, wild black curls twistedinto a complicated pattern of plaits along both sides of the skull and spillingloose down the crown and back of her head. She’s dressed in a blue tunic that flatters the green shade of her skin,and trousers, and she has her hands folded behind her back like she’s waiting.

You know her, of course.

Your foot lands on the creaky floorboard at the top of thestairs, the one she kept saying she was going to fix and never did, and Yeveldaturns around.

What do you want todo?

Yevelda doesn’t respond. She looks at you clinically, like you’re a mystery to solve, a finetrick of carving to unravel, and takes a step back from you, leaving you alonein the light falling through the window. Yevelda spreads her hands to either side of her, and you look down.

There are two greataxes lying on the wood. They’re both yours, or at least unnaturallyperfect copies—you recognize the lines of the haft and the curve of the blade,the place where the head fits to the shaft, the marks of use on the butt. But the axes aren’t wood and steel.

On Yevelda’s left, there is an axe made of whiteporcelain. It shines in the light,glazed and polished. You know just fromlooking at it that the porcelain is cold to the touch where the leather gripshave been transformed into ceramic, smooth and slick as water, the bladerefined to a razor-edge. It looks as lightand lethal as a clear winter night.

On Yevelda’s right, there is an axe made of stone—greygranite. There’s no glossy shine to it,but rather a matte finish to the rock where it’s been ground down smooth,interspersed with glints reflected from whatever minerals make up thegrey. The glints dance like sparks oflightning in your vision. Looking, youcan feel the heft of the stone, the way it pulls at your shoulders, the powerbehind each blow, like holding a mountain in your hands—or like breaking one.

You look back to Yevelda, and she is still standing therebetween the axes, expressionless, hands outstretched to display them.

“Choose,” she says.

What do you do?

You bend down and pick up the stone axe, as strong andpowerful as you imagined, and as you straighten up, the light outside goes greyas wind roars against the walls and,in one sudden burst, the window explodes inwards. The glass tears into your skin, leavingbloody cuts behind. Lightning flashes,so close that you’re blind for a moment as thunder booms, and when your visionclears, you are alone, standing in mist so thick you cannot see Yeveldaanymore. You cannot even see thewalls. There is only the axe in your hands.

What do you do?

You try to drop the axe and you can’t make your fingersmove, can’t force your arms to throw the thing away from you.

Slowly, the blade comes up to rest at your throat.

Do you fight the axe?

A voice that rollslike thunder down a mountain whispers, Fightfor me.

And in one swift motion, the axe slashes yourthroat, and you wake up.

(Note: actually this player failed her Religion roll and therefore does not realize that choosing the stone axe means she’s bound to the Stormlord, not her original god, the Raven Queen. That should be fun.)

NYMERIA (HALFLING, RANGER, MONSTER HUNTER)

You are standing in the square of a small village—the housesaround you are brick, not the river stone and lumber you’ve seen lately, andthe cobbled stones underfoot are red-brown with a dusting of fine goldengrit. You close your eyes and take adeep breath, and you smile, just a touch, as the familiar dry scent of thedesert rushes into your lungs, soothes something in your soul. It’s hard to define the smell of this place,the southern desert of Creshen where the mountains have dried out the ground,stretching all the way to the river delta that cages the desert on the easternedge, but it means home to you.

Opening your eyes, you turn, sure-footed, to look up at thestatue at the center of the square. Thetrinkets in your hair click together, but the sound doesn’t worry you, not now,not when you’re safe in your home and you have no need to hide. You tip your head up, toward the brilliantsun overhead, looking for the face of the statue, the draconic head turningintelligent eyes toward the council hall, each stone scale fletched withprecious silver—one claw on a pile of books and scrolls, and the other raised passant, dexterous talons held out inwarning. You have seen the statue everyday of your life here, it was crafted long before your birth and will finallycrumble long after your death.

You smile, and salute the Platinum Dragon, and blink.

You open your eyes.

The statue is not there.

Something cold twists in your chest, and, Nymeria, standingthere over the smashed rubble of your god’s icon, you know what’s about tohappen.

The village is empty as you rush through the streets,silent. You pass the signs of ruin—bloodand other things splashed against brick, doors battered down and stones clawedout of their moorings—but there are no bodies rotting under the harsh sun. It’s not right, not whatever right is supposed to be, but you can’tthink about that right now. You’rerunning, sprinting flat out, and you know, with strange certainty, that you’reolder now by far than you ever were in this village, but it doesn’t make youany faster to reach your own door.

It’s when you reach the door, splintered in its frame fromthe night your mother died, that you know you are dreaming.

You still step inside, because you have had this nightmarebefore, and you cannot help but see it through.

You know what you will see inside. Your little sister, Hama, sprawled on thefloor of your kitchen, a scant few feet from the safety of the cupboard whereyou told her to hide. A vampire,drinking from her arm, and her blood staining her shirt as red as the ribbon inher hair.

The ribbon in yourhair.

You know that you will blindly grab the nearest thing tohand, and that it will be a fragment of a chair, and that you will drive thefragment through the vampire’s back and into its heart before it can drop Hamaand turn to you. You know that it willlie there, paralyzed, and do nothing to stop you when you cut off its head withyour mother’s cleaver, and that your sister will, somehow, still be clinging tolife when you kneel down beside her.

You know that she will die with blood in her mouth, frombroken ribs and punctured lungs, and suffocate before she can bleed todeath. You know that the stench of deathover the village, of your mother and sister’s bodies in this heat, will saveyour life while you sit here in shock and clutch her to your chest untilsundown.

You step through the door anyway.

And you see your sister holding a tin cup in both hands,filled with water, creeping back to the cabinet.

“Ny!” she blurts. She’s only eight, and the last three days have ben brutal, but she stillsounds defensive when her older sister catches her doing something wrong. “I—I swear I was hiding, I just got so thirsty, it’s so hot in there--”

What do you do?

You’re trying to reassure her, arms around her shoulders, when you hear the voice behind you.

“And here I thought the village was finally empty,” thevoice drawls, and it makes your gut twist and your spine tingle, because itsounds—wrong. Flat, like the vocal cordsaren’t moving enough to imitate human speech.

You turn around, already sure of what you’ll see—the vampireyou killed, in vengeance for your sister’s life.

It’s there, dressed in tatters, skin waxy but flushed withthree days of easy prey. It’s easilythree or four times taller than you, and in the dream you can’t quite make outits face. You never looked at it, whileyou killed it, and now your memory can’t call up its likeness.

Then you glance over its shoulder, and your heartsinks.

It’s not alone.

There are five creatures there, two vampires and three deadthralls—you think you recognize the thralls from your own village. Isn’t that the butcher who always gave yourmother a discount, because she always thought you and Hama were so charming?

You realize, quick and sudden, that you have a choice. You can get Hama to the cupboard and lock herin, or you can bull rush the pack and snatch up the bow you can see on thefloor where the stake should have been, if the chairs had been broken.

Do you save yoursister, or fight the monsters?

You sprint forward before the vampire can stop laughing, andyour hands find the bow—your bow, theone you oil every day, the one you took over the Winter Pass to Desca. You grab blind and an arrow meets yourfingers, and you nock it and fire. Yourfirst shot takes the lead vampire in the throat, and it goes down. You spin, grabbing another arrow, and fire again. And again. And again.

You’re on another level, one you’ve never touchedbefore. The bow feels like an extensionof your body, your arrows hitting truer, your reflexes just a touch faster,your arm strong and unshaken by the work of it.

When you stop firing, the horde is dead all around you—andso is your sister.

You wake up.

#dnd #dungeons and dragons #starlight writes stuff #no bullshit this is some of the writing i'm most pleased with of late #it's long but it went pretty quick while i read aloud and the players responded #the warlock almost had a heart attack because i legit pulled up a chessboard on my computer #and she blurted 'YOU CAN'T MAKE ME PLAY CHESS AGAINST YOU YOU'LL KILL ME'#it was...hilarious #god the barbarian fucking whiffed her religion roll so bad #the dc was A MCFUCKING TEN kids #how's that sweet sweet 12 int treating you mom #anyway the point here is that i don't prep numbers for SHIT but i have all the character crap nailed down like...real hard #i'm gonna give them an npc cleric and i love him so much already #i also love that they'll have a cleric #because last session some shit went Awry and someone was down to...not many hit points #and they were like 'what do i do if i hit zero'#and i replied with 'hope someone has a healing potion 'cause y'all ain't got no healers in your party'#queue deeper than the sea of stars #emsondraeling #asked and answered

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brain-leakage-blog · 6 years

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Running Castlevania with Old School D&D, Part 5

This is part of a continuing series. For part one, click here. For part two, click here. For part three, click here. And for part four, click here.

While the previous posts in this series have mainly been concerned with showing how to adapt Lamentations of the Flame Princess' various character classes to Castlevania-appropriate archetypes, this post will handle the setting of Transylvania itself. And while I dipped into Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and Symphony of the Night to build a D&D style adventuring party with, neither game really offers much in the way of setting material outside the castle.

For that, I'm going to go back a little farther into the franchise's history, to the much-maligned proto-Metroidvania, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.

Please, hold all torches and pitchforks until the end.

Just a brief side note: If I really were to run a Castlevania-themed campaign for a group of PC's, I'd probably lean heavily on Simon's Quest to do it with. While the 8-bit NES wasn't quite up to the developers' ambitions, the game has some good bones to build off of.

I would probably have the players roll up original characters, with at least one being the next heir to the Belmont line. I'd have the game take place a few years after one of the "major" Dracula battles outlined in the main series, and have the Belmont player character's relative be suffering from the same curse Simon did: The wounds taken in his battle against Dracula are not healing. He is slowly dying. As his condition worsens, he has visions of becoming a creature of the night. A fortune-teller reveals the truth. If he dies before the next full moon, he will become a vessel for Dracula to be re-born, stronger than ever. The only way to lift the curse is to bring Dracula's spirit back into its previous body. But Dracula's minions have scattered his remains, to ensure that his curse will run its course.

Honestly, the only major difference in the set-up would be that the "cursed" Belmont wouldn't be accompanying the PCs. I'd hole him up in the basement of a church, surrounded by garlic and crosses, with monks praying over him day and night. It would then be up to the group of relatively green and inexperienced adventurers to run a desperate race against the clock, with only minimal guidance from their mentor.

(I'd also make sure that the enemy kidnapped the cursed Belmont as the night of the full moon approached, giving the PC's one more thing to worry about. But that's just me...)

Anyway, there are a few resources I'd recommend using here. First and foremost is A Guide to Transylvania, which I mentioned back in my Alucard post. The PDF is available on DriveThruRPG for about eight bucks. The crunch inside is AD&D 2e specific, but everything else is system agnostic. This book details everything from Transylvanian history, to peasant superstitions, to secret societies. No other supplement will help you fill in the details of the Transylvanian countryside as well as this one.

The second (more expensive) resource is the current D&D 5e Curse of Strahd campaign book, which is an update and expansion of the original Ravenloft module. Why this one instead of the (many) older ones? First, it's widely available in hardcopy. And while I'm not completely in love with what I've seen of 5e's rules, you just can't deny that Wizards of the Coast puts out a high quality product these days. This thing will survive some wear and tear at the table. Second (and more importantly), it maps out and expands the land of Barovia far beyond what the older editions did.

The third (completely free) resource is the Transylvania map that appeared in the old NES Game Atlas. A high-quality scan is available here at castlevaniadungeon.net.

The simplest, easiest way to take care of mapping the Transylvania countryside is just to use the foldout map that comes with Curse of Strahd and swap out the names. For example, swap out the starting village of Jova from Simon's Quest with the Village of Barovia from Curse of Strahd. Swap out Yomi—the nearly-abandoned town just outside Castlevania—with the destroyed village of Berez.

While this won't be 100% faithful to the geography on the Castlevania map, enough of the landmarks in Simon's Quest have a rough Barovian equivalent to make it work. Below are some suggestions, with corresponding map and page references.

Castlevania Location / Barovia Location / Curse of Strahd Foldout Map Location / Curse of Strahd Page Reference

Town of Jova (Area 1) / Village of Barovia / Location E / Page 40 - 48

Town of Aljiba (Area 16) / Village of Valliki / Location N / Page 95 - 124

Yuba Lake (Area 14) / Lake Zarovich / Location L / Page 38

Town of Veros (Area 6) / Village of Krezk / Location S / Page 143 - 156

Town of Yomi (Area 48) / Ruins of Berez / Location U / Page 161 - 166

Laruba Mansion (Area 36) / Wachterhaus / N/A (Located in Vallaki) / Page 110 - 115

Brahm Mansion (Area 21) / Argynvostholt / Location Q / Page 129 - 142

That should be enough to get the idea. That said, I'd probably also swap out some of the obviously non-European names with some real-world Transylvanian ones. Targoviste for Aljiba, for example.

One pro to this approach is that it requires relatively little prep time, especially for an inexperienced DM. Curse of Strahd has plenty of fleshed-out NPCs, side-quests, and description boxes for just about every building and room, if you decide to use them. You can use the encounters, too. Stat conversions from 5e to LotFP are simple: Just use the closest equivalent monster from the free Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game, and add two to the creature's Armor Class. Don't sweat the other details.

Me? I probably wouldn't go that far. I'd probably just use the maps, crib or ad-lib all of the descriptions from the Transylvania Guide, and wing it with the NPCs and encounters. Similarities aside, Castlevania and Ravenloft are two different properties, with two entirely different feels to them. Relying too heavily on the published material just means you're playing Curse of Strahd. Which is okay. But it isn't Castlevania.

Which, of course, leaves open the question of Castlevania itself.

The Castle Ravenloft layout in Curse of Strahd is unchanged from the original I:6 Ravenloft module. It makes a perfectly serviceable stand-in for Dracula's Castle, provided you're taking your inspiration from the first couple of games. But if you want something closer to the sprawling, changing, living embodiment of Chaos featured in Symphony of the Night and most of the later games, you'd be better off creating your own funhouse-style Mega-dungeon. As with anything, which you choose will depend heavily on your group, their preferences, and their play style.

Before I close this installment out—and since I'm already mining Castlevania II for ideas—I'm going to give some sample stats for that game's two Boss monsters. For Carmilla, I used the Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game version of the Vampire, with almost no modifications. For Death, I re-skinned the BFRPG Lich, added a bunch of Hit Dice, and swapped out his spell casting for a handful of specific, spell-like abilities.

If neither one seems challenging enough, both are easy enough to scale up in power. After all, when it comes to "end game" content, you're bound to have a pretty high level party. Watching them effortlessly steamroll the final bosses would be sort of anticlimactic. If that's a concern, my personal preference is to creatively choose the location for the encounter.

Instead of meeting Carmilla in her vampire lair right away, why not have the PC's encounter her at a masquerade ball, using the powers of her enchanted mask to appear as one of the living? Force them to use roleplaying and guile to maneuver her to a place they can fight her without harming innocents. What about having the PC's run into Death on the grounds of an old battlefield or cemetery? He could raise dozens of allies among the dead, forcing even the most powerful group of PCs into a pitched battle for survival.

Granted, if you're planning to use Castlevania II as your template, you could always just let the PC's walk right by them with no consequence...

(Note: the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rules assume ascending armor class and a base, unarmored AC of 12. If using these creatures with a system that has a base AC of 10, simply subtract 2.)

CARMILLA

Alignment: Chaotic

Armor Class: 21

Hit Dice: 9 (attack bonus +8)

No. of Attacks: 1 weapon or special

Damage: 1d8, or by weapon, or special

Movement: 40' or 60' (fly)

No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)

Save as: Lvl 9 Fighter

Morale: 11

Treasure Type: Special

XP: 1,225

Beautiful, vain, and cruel, the aristocratic vampire Carmilla is one of Dracula's most ambitious servants. Famous for her inventive and sadistic tortures, she is best known for bathing in the blood of young women. She possesses Carmilla's Mask, a powerful, cursed artifact.

Like all vampires, Carmilla casts no shadow and no reflection. She cannot cross running water, and may not enter another's home unless invited. She cannot tolerate the strong odor of garlic, and will recoil from a mirror or from a cross presented with conviction (for more information on these weaknesses, see the Vampire, p. 124 of the Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game).

Carmilla is immune to Sleep, Charm, and Hold spells. If unarmed, she will treat her hands like claws, raking her target for 1d8 damage. When armed, her vampiric strength gives her an additional +3 to damage when using melee weapons. Her bite (though seldom used in combat) inflicts 1d3 damage, and drains one level of energy from her target for each round she continues to feed. Feeding places her in a vulnerable position, and she suffers a -5 to her Armor Class.

Victims reduced to 0 hit points by Carmilla's feeding die, and they will rise as vampires during the next sunset. These new vampires are permanently under Carmilla's control, and always act as if under a Charm spell.

Carmilla can command common nocturnal creatures. Once per day, she can summon 10d10 rats, 5d4 giant rats, 10d10 bats, 3d6 giant bats, or 3d6 wolves. The creatures must be nearby to be summoned. Once called, they arrive in 2d6 rounds and obey her commands for 1 hour. If she chooses, Carmilla can also assume the form of a giant bat or a giant wolf at will.

In addition to the above abilities, Carmilla also shares the common vampire's Charm gaze, which her victims can save vs Spell to resist. Unlike her more common brethren, Carmilla's charm is exceptionally powerful, imposing a -3 penalty rather than the standard -2.

Carmilla cannot be harmed by non-magical weapons. Exposing her to direct sunlight for more than 1 round destroys her, and submerging her in running water causes her to lose 1/3 of her Hit Points per round for three rounds, with death occurring on the third round. Any other method of reducing her HP to 0 merely incapacitates her, causing her to fall into an apparently death-like state. But if her body is not exposed to sunlight, submerged in running water, or burned, she will begin to regenerate 1d8 hours later, at a rate of 1 hp per turn.

Carmilla's Mask (Artifact)

This artifact is a smooth, silver mask, closely resembling the kind commonly worn during masquerade balls. When the mask is placed onto a human or a dhampir, dozens of hollow, silver spikes appear in the inside, causing it to latch onto the victim's face, and inflicting 1d3 damage. Each round the victim is prevented from removing the mask, it drains 1 energy level, feeding as a vampire, until the victim is reduced to 0 Hit Points. Once dead, the victims do not rise as vampires.

If the mask is freshly fed, bloody tears will pool in the corner of its eyes, and for the next 1d12 hours it will convey several abilities on any vampire that wears it. While wearing the mask, the vampire casts both a shadow and a reflection. Garlic, holy symbols, and holy water have no effect. The vampire may enter any home with no invitation, cross running water, and even walk in the sunlight—although this last will still be uncomfortable.

Additionally, victims of the vampire's Charm gaze suffer a further -2 penalty to their saving throw.

DEATH

Alignment: Chaotic

Armor Class: 26

Hit Dice: 15 (attack bonus +10)

No. of Attacks: 1 touch, weapon.

Damage: 1d8 touch+drain, by weapon.

Movement: 30' or 60' (fly)

No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)

Save as: Lvl 15 Magic User or Cleric (use lower)

Morale: 11

Treasure Type: Special

XP: 3,150

Death is Dracula's top lieutenant. Fiercely loyal to his master, Death will fight to protect him at all costs. Death's actual nature is unknown, although he is believed to be an evil manifestation of pure Chaos. His physical form resembles that of the classical "Grim Reaper," a skeletal body wrapped in a tattered cloak. He carries Death's Scythe, an artifact-level magical weapon.

Upon first encountering Death, all intelligent, living creatures must save vs Spell or flee in terror for 2d6 rounds. Even on subsequent encounters, Death's gaze is terrifying. All creatures that meet it must make a save vs. Spell or be paralyzed with fright for 2d4 rounds. Dhampirs, due to their half-undead nature, get a +2 bonus to this check.

Death prefers to attack with his scythe when possible. If forced to make a physical attack, his touch causes 1d8 points of damage and drains 1d4 points of Constitution, while simultaneously healing him for the equivalent amount.

The Constitution loss is permanent. It can only be healed by the casting of a Restoration spell, at a rate of 1 point per casting. If a character's Constitution score falls to 0, he or she immediately dies, and rises the following round as a lesser wight. This creature is identical to the wight described on p. 126 of the Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game, except its attack causes 1d4 points of damage and 1 point of Constitution loss. All characters killed and transformed into wights are considered permanently dead, and cannot be Raised. They may still be Reincarnated.

Death is able to cast Speak With Dead, Animate Dead, and Raise Dead at will. And while he rarely feels the need to disguise himself, he is able to do so with the aid of Polymorph Self. Additionally, Death is always treated as having an active True Seeing spell cast on his person. For purposes of spell duration and saving throws, Death's caster level is 20.

Death is immune to all non-magical weapons. Like all skeletons, Death only takes half damage from bladed weapons, and only one point from arrows, bolts, or sling stones (plus any applicable magical bonus). Additionally, he is immune to Sleep, Charm, and Hold spells. Death cannot be turned by the cleric's Turn Undead spell.

Death cannot be permanently killed. When reduced to 0 Hit Points, Death's physical form is destroyed, and his spirit re-joins the primordial Chaos outside the world. After 1d10 months, Death will Reincarnate on the physical plane, although in a weakened form equivalent to a wraith (see Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game, p. 127). He must then drain the equivalent life force of 2x his normal Hit Dice (a combined 30 levels) in order to regain his full strength and powers.

Death's Scythe (+3 Great Weapon)

Like Death himself, Death's Scythe is believed to be an evil manifestation of Chaos. In combat, Death's Scythe delivers 1d10 damage, with an additional +3 magical damage bonus. On any natural attack roll of 18 or better, the target must save vs Magical Device or die instantly. Any mortal being who attempts to touch the handle of Death's Scythe must make the same saving throw, but at a -4 penalty.

3 times per day, Death's Scythe can create 1d3 Phantom Sickles. These are smaller, ghostly sickles that spin out towards their intended victim. The sickles last for 1d4 rounds, continuously attacking, and causing 1d6+1 damage per successful hit.

Creatures killed with Death's Scythe may not be Raised, but they may still be Reincarnated.

#brain leakage blog #Castlevania #ravenloft #curse of strahd #dnd #dungeons and dragons #OSR #basic fantasy roleplaying game #d&d #carmilla #death #gothic #horror #lamentations of the flame princess

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vapormaison · 4 years

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Budget Hi-Fi for Future Funk & Vaporwave: An Introduction

Introduction

I’ve had a couple of readers reach out to me in DMs after the holiday, and both wanted to start consuming vaporwave in reasonably high-fidelity — presumably with some fresh Christmas cash. First off, I want to apologize for converting them to this insane hobby. It will serve as an eternal joy to your ears, but an eternal terror to your finances. With that in mind, they both gave me budgets of around a thousand dollars, American, and I found myself recommending rather identical setups based on their parameters, living space, and general use patterns.

From the outline I gave over those previous DMs, I prepared a three part (potentially five part, if there’s sufficient interest) series of articles serving as a primer to roughly introducing basic principles of hi-fi enjoyment to a novice or neophyte crowd, My hope is that this can double as both a buyer’s guide for the reader, but also as a way to proselytize new fans into these two great hobbies: hi-fi and vaporwave. Here goes:

BASIC PRINCIPLE: Pure Sound, Compression & Loudness

“Pure Sound” is more of a term in vogue with Japanese audiophiles, but I think it’s functional here for what we’re trying to achieve. To understand pure sound, we’ve got to take a look at its antithesis: compressed digital. I want to make a point here of the word compressed because I’m not some boomer or vintage fetishist to the point where I can’t appreciate good sound from a digital source.

But, the way 90% of the world consumes music in the 21st century — in lossy mp3 formats with varyingly low bitrates on mediocre-to-poor head/ear phones is not ideal. Steve Jobs’ decisive victory over physical media with the iPod and iTunes expanded our libraries, but rendered most of that music into poor shadows of its state when originally recorded. The reason why your dad or grandpa are still devoted to their old stereo with a collection of CDs and vinyls is not just because they’re a luddite — primarily, it is because those CDs (up until ’95 or so) and vinyls (since and to forever, essentially) are usually compiled and pressed in the highest resolution possible.

And before, anyone gets on my case about denigrating about Steve — I love the guy. His taste was excellent, too. Here’s a picture of the man’s Woodville mansion, where his only furnishings are a lamp, his hi-fi and some records. He’s got a handmade-in-Scotland Linn LP12, Acoustat Monitor 3 loudspeaker pair, and a Spectral Statis Amplifier. Absolutely legendary gear. Rest in sonic peace, King.

It was a $30,000 kit in its day, so he spared no expense. While he was selling you poorly compressed music, he was enjoying his audiophile vinyl music (a 1960s recording of Handel is in there, one of the “pure sound” classics in Japan) in the ideal recreative sonic comfort. Be more like Steve. I’ll try to get you there for 1/25th of that price.

What We Need:

To get a good sound system going for your library of vaporwave, there are four things you need at minimum. Today I’m going to just address formats. In the coming weeks I’ll go over the following: playback platforms (turntable, network streamers, etc), amplifiers, and your speakers (in-ear, headphones, or loudspeakers). But what all those are predicated by are a necessity of some kind of musical source — the reason, if you will, that you’re probably intrigued by hi-fi, right? Apart from the aesthetics of most systems, we’re trying to reach a higher echelon of music enjoyment.

Digital Fomats

The short answer here is just .flac files. They are lossless (uncompressed) 16-bit data-hungry kings which pump out much more detail than normal mp3s, which will be extremely important when you get a pair of nice speakers or headphones. I will go into that into more detail in a future article. If you play a crummy mp3 on a pair of nice earphones or loudspeakers, you waste their ability to soundstage — something we will discuss when we get to the speakers article. These lossless lassies also give us the ability to chase after that muse known as “dynamic range”, which is another way we can detect detail in musical compositions.

This kind of stuff matters deeply to both audiophiles and the artists themselves. If you remember the Quincy Jones vs. the Estate of Michael Jackson case, one of the accusations is that the detailed sound-spaces he created were crunched to oblivion in subsequent CD and digital releases of tracks like Thriller and Bad.

Above is a CNET comparison of the vinyl rips of Bad’s original release and a 2017 mp3 release. The top is “good” dynamic range -- you can hear the whole sound arrangement. The bottom is, well, shit.

People will occasionally argue for other digital formats. I don’t consider it a point even worth belaboring, really, as in my own benchmarks and those of many other audiophiles, there’s just no beating FLAC for general purpose listening. Some people will simp for another similar lossless format, ALAC. It’s Apple’s format, and while I’m a huge apple Stan (this is being typed on a 2018 MacBook pro connected to a Apple Thunderbolt display), Apple has effectively abandoned the project since Jobs’s death, primarily because it doesn’t sell, and secondarily because it needs a visionary of Jobs’s caliber to really take it global. Some people will also try to sell you on WAV. Just laugh at them. It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of vaporwave releases offer .flac as a format available for download, and you should be taking that option every single time.

Now, if you’re not a downloader, there are some streaming services that are offering hi-res. Spotify does so, but poorly at the moment. Tidal does a much better service to listeners and creators. I’m a Tidal guy, myself, but just because Tidal was an early adopter of hi-res formats for streamers. The differences in a few years, I think, however, will be negligible, as Spotify has finally started to take audiophiles serious now that its market share has started to stagnate. I’ll be going more into how to optimize your lossless streaming in my article about pre-amplifiers and network streamers, so stay tuned for that.

Analog Formats

I’m going start off by making a controversial statement here: cassettes are not high fidelity.

This is unfortunate, because the vast majority of physical releases for vaporwave are definitely motivated by a sort of 80s nostalgia and I’m sure many of the purchases are also motivated by the false presumption that the cassettes offer better sound quality. While they very well might seem like it in comparison to a youtube upload (although I think Real Love uploads in hi-res audio, not sure about Artzie), they will mostly be wasted on your system unless you’re just looking to pump some bass or annoy your neighbors. Real quality sound will be difficult to extract from these.

Why CDs? Why vinyl? It comes down to the numbers. I’ll explain this in the most lay terms possible, so much so that I’m sure audiophiles will wander onto my socials and demand retractions and corrections.

One of the ways we measure high quality sound is in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). I think this is best expressed as a sustained “pop, & warmth” that you hear when a needle hits a record. With tapes it sounds a little different — I’d liken it to the cracking of unboiled pasta, or the fluttering of plastic in the wind. The lowest quality consumer tapes, the stuff that your parents probably fucked to in the early 90s, are rated at roughly 45-50db of SNR. That’s like 2003-iTunes level of muddy, ugly, sound. CDs are almost double consumer-grade tapes, at around 95db. Vinyls sit at around 70-75db.

Now, some vinyl-heads will come at me with some takes from the Loudness Wars. Yes, CDs went through a period from roughly 1994-2008 where they were poorly mastered that they bordered on unlistenable. But we’re talking about vaporwave, where the work is contemporary, and the mastering and production lines are boutique. No one at the Aloe Island, DMT FL, or Neoncity is demanding the mastering engineer to compress the sound to make the bass sound punchier for badly designed car audio systems based on bad anecdotal studies from disgraced EMI engineers -- at least that I know of.

However, I will, just for you, include an obligatory “loudness wars” jpeg that only you will understand. Everyone else, for the purpose of this article, disregard.

Saint Vitus - "Let Them Fall" from "Lillie: F-65" (2012)

Additionally, I know most of you guys like a “little” analog sound in your systems. I do, too. Vinyl’s a warm medium, and I love it for that. It exists in that happy medium between the noisiness of cassette tape and the cold cleanliness of CD. If I ever have to do serious reference listening of classical music or something like that, I have CDs for that. Vinyls are what I listen to for fun.

Concluding Thoughts

My next article — in a few days — will be getting into the weeds with gear, specifically turntables, cassette decks (I know the people want it) and network streamers. I’m hoping that gives interested parties some time to get their records or FLACs on a hard-drive, because that is going to be essential to us even embarking on this journey towards high-fidelity Outer Heaven.

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cacophonouscatharsis · 5 years

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DM’s Log #5.1: The big day is tomorrow! Also lore

Tomorrow is the big day, the first session where we’re actually playing my campaign! I’m super excited! Originally I was worried because I didn’t exactly have a whole lot planned, but I did a huge time crunch tonight and I got some maps done, definitely enough to span a full 3 hour session! Now that I actually have the monster manual on me it’s so much easier compared to when I didn’t have it. Before I had to homebrew everything and I didn’t even think to have ability modifiers or anything so I kinda winged it or just didn’t bother. Now I have everything on paper right in front of me in detail ugh it takes a big load off my shoulders. I’m also not restricting myself to a bit outline either. The first time I DMed I had this big summary of the campaign and what I wanted the players to do and go. I gave the party a big objective right off the bat and it culminated in banishing a god which was pretty over the top for first level honestly.

This time I’m dialing it back, giving the players more breathing room and choice in what they want to do. I don’t have an outline, just sort of a basic idea of what’ll happen in my head. Which I know probably doesn’t sound good but I also don’t want to be forced to look back at notes and revise them and shit. Maybe I’ll start doing that down the road when I actually have to remember shit the players have done, but for now it’s not something I need to worry about. Anyway now I’m just worried I’m making my encounters too hard for my players. Especially this short dungeon I made that’ll lead them to a prophecy that will foreshadow things much later down the line. I put several thugs, animated armors, and even a Helmed Horror at the very end as a sort of boss. I think the players will be okay though, after all it’ll be the four of them versus the one boss, so as long as they didn’t take too many hits from the previous enemies it should be a challenging but overall not life threatening battle.

Also I figure this is probably the best time to start posting some lore about the world of Lhorvash and its four continents! I’ll have some drawings I’ve made of them below. They ain’t good but they do the job

Lhorvash is a world that is caught in a cycle. The drive for war is built into the very heart of the world and it’s inhabitants, and if this war is not carried on a regular basis, the world will be purged and reborn anew. All life will be reset and begin to create civilizations once more. However some species have an unexplained innate ability to live on through this process. Dragons, Giants, and select few Animalfolk from Midoraka are able to live through one or even multiple cycles. In the most recent cycle, what most historians believe to be the third iteration of the world, dragons ruled for several thousands of years. However a species only known today as the Progenitors, rose up and drove them to near extinction using strange yet powerful weapons. After that they ruled Lhavosh with impunity. That is until one day, they all mysteriously vanished, and in their wake they left a cataclysm that split the once giant continent into four smaller ones. The only thing that remains of their legacy are massive stone superstructures beneath the earth.

Of the four continents on Lhorvash, Vuusrin is the most diverse, in virtually every way. Ethnically, politically, and also in terms of landscape. It has also been at constant war, it’s once lush forests cut down and used to forge great siege weapons. Only once has a single civilization came close to ruling the entirety of the land. At its most powerful moment, its king stood upon the tallest tower in all of Lhorvash, and called to the gods to grant him strength. Strength enough to conquer all he could see. In that very moment his entire country, which had occupied land from one end of Vuusrin to the other, was suddenly broken apart and submerged beneath the waves. The castle and the tower the king stood upon was made the epicenter of what is now known at the divide. This epicenter is a massive whirlpool that devours any ship that dares get too close. The reason for this catastrophe is only explained in legends, by the most commonly believed one is the gods struck the king down for his arrogance, as an example to the rest of mortalkind.

Lork is the largest continent out of the four, and is also the harshest. Most of the land is a barren desert. A massive rock worm named Kavkor stalks anything foolish enough to roam above ground in large groups. On top of that one of the last living dragons, Adramorgeth the Everlasting, patrols the sky, routinely perched upon its mountain, Charred Rock. The only civilizations that have a chance of surviving are those that are built deep underground. These subterranean metropolises are inhabited mostly by Dragonborn,Draconians, and more recently, Tieflings. However these people do not have the luxury to pick and choose who they share space with. The only thing that matters to them is if you can prove your worth and earn your keep.

Midoraka is a mysterious country, ruled today primarily by elves. A strange aura that surrounds the land boosts the power of all forms of magic. However due to the potential for mages to gain untold amounts of power within the boundaries of the continent, strict laws are placed upon its citizens, and those wishing to take up the arcane arts much first acquire a government issued license to perform magic. This also opens them up to routine inspection by the military police, which does not require a notice beforehand nor a warrant. The government is controlled by a council of individuals voted in by the many lords of Midoraka. Before this council system became a reality, the land was ruled by the Erna Empire. Back then the Elves were at their strongest, due to two powerful allies. The Animalfolk in the north, and the Tieflings to the south. This peace did not last forever, and without warning the Empress Imbryl Erna ordered for all Tieflings within her borders to be immediately slaughtered. Most of the military followed their orders, and got to work exterminating all Tieflings they could find. The walls of the city of Zithrindar became a prison for the victims, as the military burned it to the ground. The few that managed to survive fled to the nearby continent of Lork, and luckily for them the indigenous Dragonborn welcomed them in to their fold. A select few military generals rebelled against the empire, and shortly after the massacre committed a coup d'é-tat. The Empress was publicly before her once loyal people, and those that followed her heinous order were imprisoned for life. For the elves transgressions, the Animalfolk retreated into the Ancestral Forest, never to be seen again.

Depending on who you ask Borshaub is even more dangerous than Lork. If the Remorhaz and Frost Giants don’t kill you, the blistering cold surely will. Only the hardy Dwarves and Orcs, as well as the crafty Gnomes have managed to make a home here. However none of them are willing to venture further north, into the land known only as the Great Freeze. A land of never ending blizzards, where any mere mortal creature will freeze to death in minutes. Separating this frozen wasteland from the rest of Borshaub are the Walls of Hesret. Four barriers that connect mountain ranges on either side, made of stone lined with sacred runes. They’re believed to have been built by the Progenitors thousands of years ago, what their ultimate function is though, no one can be certain. The walls are carefully maintained by both the dwarves and gnomes, who are part of an uneasy alliance. Said alliance formed due to the Orc Rebellion that took place twenty years ago. The gnomes considered the Deadlands to be a part of their territory, and began to venture east of the Shivering Chasm. The Orc tribes had been at constant war with one another ever since there was more than one tribe, leading the gnomes to thinking it would be an easy victory against a fragmented opponent. The Orcs don’t go down easy though, and before a war could break out, Brakuung the Mighty defeated every other orc chieftain in single combat, proclaiming himself to be the Godchief of all Orcs. for just less than a year, the thirteen tribes were united under a single banner, and went to war against the would be gnomish invaders. It would have been a total massacre, if the Dwarves had not intervened. They knew if Brakuung was allowed to live, he would lead his armies further west and conquer their kingdom as well. They made a hasty alliance with the gnomes, less to help them, and more to save themselves. After months of seemingly endless carnage, the newly formed Alliance was able to incapacitate the Godchief and his only son Virmalk. He was beheaded before his own people, and his eight year old child was stripped of his tusks. The tusks of an Orc are considered sacred, and if they are removed in any way that does not involve combat, it is seen as a disgrace. What remained of Virmalk’s tusks were soaked in an acidic substance created by the gnomes, preventing them from ever growing back. He was banished back to the Deadlands, to live on as an example for the rest of his kind of what happens when you rise up against the Alliance.

Sorry for clogging up your dash with my lore. I’ll put out another DM’s Log summarizing the events of our first real session. See you then!

#DM’s Log #DMs log #dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons #D&D #DnD

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