2013: A Quick Review

In almost six hours it will be 2014 in my little corner of the world. So there’s still time for me to do a review of 2013!

The year didn’t start well for me, with me being ill and having trouble doing things I really enjoyed – like blogging. In July I came back to this blog and started writing Three Sad Wizards. Most of the posts I made in July and August were about this module. I really like how it turned out and, judging from reactions I got, other people do as well.

In September I completed the 30 Day Challenge. Not all questions on the list were interesting, but I tried to make something of every post, and most of the time I succeeded. And after a year of not being able to blog, this did feel as a real victory.

I also started a series inspired by the Planescape book Uncaged Faces of Sigil. I did six entries in the series Faces of Pretomournon. So far I’m pleased with how the series is turning out, but I think the entries may be a bit too long. Faces of Pretomournon will return in the new year.

In October I wrote my most popular post from this year: Orc Babies. It was a commentary on D&D Next’s “story elements”, that threaten to be completely uninspired and boring. To put money where my mouth is, I showed how I do orc babies in my campaign. Apparently, people liked that.

In November I participated in NaNoWriMo. I hoped I could continue blogging, but that proved to be unrealistic. However, I did write 50K words on my novel that is now almost finished.

So what will 2014 bring?

I’m writing a module called Lost Library of the Death Speakers, which is on hold until I figure out a way to make it less boring. I’m also outlining Valkyries vs. Amazons, an module which can be summed up as Female Fighters in Unreasonable Armor – the Module. However, I also have my Nanowrimo novel to finish, so it may take a while before I have time for it.

I’m also writing the DSA game, a clone of the first edition of Germany’s most popular roleplaying game. So far, I have most of character creation, about half of combat, and a lot of spells done. Still a lot to do though, so it will take time.

Happy new year to everyone, and see you next year!

D&D 30: I Made It, and What Now?

So I completed the 30 day challenge this Monday – precisely on schedule. I managed to post every day, and I didn’t skip days, so I didn’t need to catch up.

I had a fun time telling stories about my favorite PC, NPC, and events from previous campaigns. I play D&D in one form or another for almost 25 years, and it was nice to reminiscent about successful games in the past. Looking back, I saw we had some awesome campaigns.

I think everyone agrees the list is a bit dry and repetitive, but all-in-all most questions are good subjects to blog about. The only questions I couldn’t answer satisfactory where the two dice questions, and the one about energy. I endured the repetitive days of monster questions by drawing each monster. They became my favorite questions on the list. Making an illustration takes a lot more time than writing a post does, but I ended up with some nice drawings.

I really liked reading the posts of the other participants. Everyone’s posts were different from each other, making some nice surprises, or “oh, that’s cool”-moments. Although, I didn’t understand the answers on day 6 (favorite deity). Tyr? Chauntea? Where’s Vecna, or Tharizdun?

The most boring thing about the challenge were the people complaining about the challenge. Of course everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but I don’t understand the need for macho posturing and silly insults. Oh well, it’s over now.

What’s Next For This Blog?

“Faces of Pretomournon” has begun, and three of the NPCs are posted. I’ll keep posting the write-ups about one every weekend, but with 30 NPCs, that will take a long time. Maybe, if I manage to get ahead, I can speed up posting a bit.

Further, I’m still writing “Lost Library of the Deathspeakers”. To be honest, the 30 day challenge took a lot of time away from writing the module, but I’m now returning to it, and thanks to the challenge there’s a gibbering mouther in it. I’ll post some things like new spells, books, and magic items from the adventure on the blog.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 21 – Favorite Dragon

I really dislike dragons. That’s why I changed them to Xaoclost. The drawing is the one that will show up in Lost Library of the Deathspeakers.

I used to like dragons, back when they were the most terrifying monsters in the Monstrous Compendium. But over the years, the designers at WotC made them boring and dull.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day 16 – Favorite Aberration

The first issue of Dragon Magazine I bought had “The Ecology of the Gibbering Mouther”. It was the first time I encountered AD&D’s brand of weirdness, after being exposed to the Tolkienesque fantasy of Das Schwarze Auge. I liked the creature ever since, even though I can’t remember ever using it. I don’t know any published adventures that use a Gibbering Mouther, but this post inspired me: Lost Library of the Deathspeakers will have one.

Maps for Lost Library of the Deathspeakers

For the past couple of days, I've been brainstorming and outlining for Lost Library of the Deathspeakers, including assembling the maps.

This are the sea caves that give access to the library. The sea is invested with vampire mermaids. The ancient evil in the library attracts other evil beings, and demons, ghosts and shadows can be encountered deeper into the caves.

Click for bigger picture!

This is the library itself, and the crypts under it. The big square hall in the middle is the reading room, where the Player Characters can gain access to many ancient books of power if they find a way to communicate with the undead librarians.

The library is dangerous as well: The water leaking from the caves above is contaminated with the spirits of the dead, and a Xaoclost starts to hunt down the characters through time.

Click!

New Monster: The Xaoclost

The past and present are separate places. The timestream is constantly turning Now into Then, but they have no influence on each other after that’s done. It might be possible to travel from the present to the past, but it is impossible to change the Now with your actions in the past. You can travel to the past to kill the mother of your greatest enemy, but as the murder happens in the past, it doesn’t have any impact on the present. If you return he’ll still be alive, and so will she.

That is, if you return.

For the past is the domain of the Xaoclost, a species of nightmarish reality-defying creatures. These 50-feet-tall monstrosities roam the past, ever looking for ways to break into the present. With difficulty, they can come within milliseconds of Now, but they can never fully reach it. The Xaoclost are always just behind you.

Unfortunately, people go into the past all the time: Chronomancers have their spells, Time portals are known (like the one below the city of Vulture), and ancient dungeons like the Library of the Death Speakers are often so old the Now no longer has a grip on them. The Xaoclost cannot come here, but they lie in waiting for adventurers to come to them.

No. Enc.:	1 (1)
Alignment:	Chaotic
Movement:	90’ (30’)
Armor Class:	3 (base)
Hit Dice:	10 (base)
Attacks:	1 claw or weapon/1 whip/1 bite, or breath weapon
Damage:	1d8 or by weapon/1d8+poison/3d8, or 2d8 (base)
Save:	F10
Morale:	10
Hoard Class:	XV
XP:	2100 (base)

The stats above are the weakest possible Xaoclost, one more than 1,500 years in the past. When they move closer to the present, they grow stronger and more powerful. However, it costs them a lot of effort and it does hurt them terribly. When a Xaoclost moves close to the present, use the table beneath to determine changes to his stats.

Years in the Past	Hit Dice	AC	Breath Weapon	XP	Special Abilities
0 – 5	20	-7	22d8	8250	Suggestion once per day
6 – 15	19	-6	20d8	7250
16 – 25	18	-5	18d8	7250	Hallucinatory terrain once per day
26– 50	17	-4	16d8	6250
51 – 100	16	-3	14d8	5100
101 – 250	15	-2	12d8	5100	Half damage from normal weapons
251 – 500	14	-1	10d8	4200
501 – 750	13	0	8d8	4200
751 – 1000	12	1	6d8	3600
1,001 – 1,500	11	2	4d8	3600
1,500 or more	10	3	2d8	2100	Breath weapon, fear aura, poisonous whip

Breath Weapon: Xaoclost have powerful breath weapons. Every individual Xaoclost has a different kind of breath. Usually, the breath weapon of a Xaoclost other effects besides the damage it does. All breath weapons are usable every 3 rounds. All victims of a breath attack may attempt a saving throw versus breath attack for half damage, and maybe an additional saving throw for the secondary attacks.

Breath Weapon Examples:

1 - Cloud of Hate: 50’ long, 40’ wide cloud of black smoke. In addition to taking damage, all chaotically aligned characters must make a save vs. spells or instantly attack lawful and neutral characters. Lawful and neutral characters must make a save vs. death or suffer an additional 2d8 damage.

2 - Mud Stream: 80’ long, 30’ wide cone of mud. In addition to doing damage, the mud stream contains 1d4 small earth elementals. These have 6 hD, AC 4, and do 1d8 damage.

3 - Napalm: 70’ long, 20’ wide cone of napalm. The napalm does normal damage on the round of the attack, and half that again the next round (save for half).

4 - Negative Fog: 50’ long, 40’ wide cloud of grey mist. The Xaoclost’s breath weapon is a living creature from the negative plane that feeds of the warmth of its victims: Move 90’(30’); AC 2; hp 25, #attacks 1 per creature; attacks as a ten HD monster; Dmg 1d6; M n/a.

5 - Phantasmal Killers: 100’ long, 5’ wide line of terrifying illusions. In addition to suffering damage, the victim must try to disbelieve the illusion once by succeeding in an INT attribute check, or die from fear.

6 - Rat Swarm: 80’ long, 30’ wide cone of living rats. There’s 4d10 rats in the pack. In addition to normal damage from the breath weapon, the rats get to attack. They get 1 attack per 10 individuals, inflicting 1d6 hit points of damage per hit. If a character is swarmed by a whole pack, he must make a save versus death or fall to the ground under the horde. The victim can make no attacks until he gets back on his feet.

Fear Aura: Xaoclost have a fear aura of 250 feet. Creatures of fewer than 1 Hit Die within the aura flee automatically. Others may save vs. petrification or are stricken with fear (-2 penalty to attack and damage).

Whip: These creatures also attack with a stinger-tipped whip for 1d8 damage. Victims must additionally save versus poison or fall in a coma for 2d10 days. Unless the victim is very lucky, the Xaoclost will probably eat the victim before he gets out of his coma.

The First Language

The common language in the world of Seralin is a constructed language: conceived and kept up to date by the Society for Language, Vocabulary and Idiom, or SoLVI in short. This Guild changes the common vocabulary and grammar, and publishes a new edition of The Green Tome, almost every decade. There are now a total of eighty-six (86) editions of The Green Tome, all different from each other - sometimes only a little, but often greatly.

Common was originally designed to be easy to learn and to be understood by speakers of all existing languages​​. But in the dozens of editions SoLVI has released the language has changed so much that no one really knows what exactly is correct. There are dozens of versions of Common. The speakers of different versions can more-or-less understand each other, but is not really a common language that everyone uses, which was how it was intended.

But few people know there are no eighty-six, but eighty-seven versions of the common language. The first version of Common was written nearly 2000 years ago Dr. Alandra Sannie, a linguist at the University of Pretomournon. She based the language on a number of ancient scrolls adventurers had found in sea caves on the Silk Sea coast. After she had studied the roles, Alandra came to the conclusion that the unknown, ancient language they were written in was an ancestor to many - if not all - modern languages ​. She was amazed at the clarity and simplicity of the language, and decided to use it as a base for a new language that would serve as a common language to all people of Seralin.

Constructing the language took Alandra many years, but eventually she presented her life's work: The Grey Tome. The academics of Pretomournon received Alandra’s work enthusiastically, and the university immediately organized lectures in which Alandra could teach her new language to others.

No one survived the first lecture. Alandra had never spoken the language during her studies, and did not know the language was only safe as long as it was written. Pronounced out loud the words contained terrible power. Alandra was right: this flawless language could conjure beautiful images in her audience with only a few words, but her students gouged  out their own eyes so they didn’t have to see those images. Others stabbed sharpened pencils in their ears not to hear her words. Others jumped out of the window and, as this took place on the fourth floor, fell dead on impact or died on the way to hospital.

The Grey Tome was safely hidden in a vault and not until a thousand years later was brought out to consult while writing the first version of The Green Tome.  Linguists have paid more attention which elements of the language they used, so that their new language wouldn’t have the same terrible consequences. Yet, there are still traces of the Language of Death found in the current common language. That’s why words can hurt.

(The books below use the ‘Reading Eldritch Tomes’ rules from Realms of Crawling Chaos.)

The Scrolls from the Sea Caves

The original scrolls that a group of adventurers found in the sea caves on the Silk Sea coast. The five scrolls are all extremely fragile and must be treated with great caution. Someone rolling out a scroll must make a Dexterity check or the scroll crumbles to dust.

Spells: Power Word: Blind, Power Word: Kill, Power Word: Stun.

Complexity	Study Period	Total Comp. Rolls	Potency	Spells
14	6 days	15	16	3

Alandra’s Copy of the Scrolls

Alandra copied the fragile, damaged-by-silt scrolls in two thin notebooks bound in black leather. The text is almost the same as that in the scrolls, but it differs in a few key points: Alandra didn’t know the language in which the scrolls were written and therefore made ​​a few mistakes. The entire text has been annotated, and Alandra included a number of spells that were not in the original.

These books are long since removed from the vaults of the University of Pretomournon. Where they are at this time is unknown.

Spells: Confusion, Power Word: Blind, Power Word: Stun, Read Language, Read Magic.

Complexity	Study Period	Total Comp. Rolls	Potency	Spells
12	5 days	12	16	5

The Grey Tome

The Grey Tome is a thick book with a gray dust jacket. The pages are yellowing and gnawed at by worms and rats, but for a 2000 year old book is in good shape. It’s still in the vaults of the University of Pretomournon. Since Alandra wrote it, an unknown number of incomplete copies were made, that might pop up anywhere the Labyrinth Lord wishes.

This version of the First Language is perhaps the most dangerous: it has the power of Death Speak, coupled with the uncontrollability of people who want to use that power without understanding it. The words in this book easily describe the clearest images, but the images are of the sort the human brain cannot comprehend and have insanity as a result.

Spells: Confusion, Fear, Power Word: Blind, Power Word; Kill, Power Word: Stun.

Complexity	Study Period	Total Comp. Rolls	Potency	Spells
12	4 days	11	15	5

The Green Tome (first edition)

The first edition of The Green Tome is a book of great size with a green leather cover. It is much thinner than the Grey Book, and a lot less complete. The linguist who compiled the book was Somin Gennek, one of the founders of SoLVI. Gennek used The Grey Tome as an example to make his version of Common as clear and as easy to learn, but he was fully aware of the dangers that the use of First Language entailed. He was very careful, and the result was a common language that possessed only some dangerous supernatural properties.

Spells: Confusion, Read Language, Scare.

Complexity	Study Period	Total Comp. Rolls	Potency	Spells
9	2 days	2	10	3

Death Speak

This is the first language, from which all other languages have evolved. It is an ancient tongue of the dead, and it’s words are words of pain and corruption. It’s an powerful language and it can convey concepts and feelings, but it is difficult to pronounce.

Anyone who tries to pronounce Death Speak must make an Intelligence check with a -4 penalty. Failure means everyone hearing the words, including the speaker himself, suffers 3d6 damage and gets the irresistible urge to commit suicide. This works as a suggestion spell, but with a harmful act (obviously).

If the roll succeeds, the words of the speaker convey the emotions he wanted to express. This has one of the following effects:

Confusion: As the magic-user spell of the same name.

Fear: As the magic-user spell of the same name.

Joy: All people in the audience get a +2 Charisma and a +2 on morale rolls for 2d6 turns.

Love: The members of the audience get romantic feelings for each other and the speaker. Hilarity ensues.

Rage: The members of the audience go berserk, as described in the dweomer of rage spell, and start attacking each other.

Sorrow: All people in the audience get a -3 on all die rolls for 2d6 turns.

Learning Death Speak: To learn the First Language, someone should have a teacher who already knows it, or have access to The Silk Sea Scrolls, Alandra’s copy of them, or The Grey Book. The pupil must study for a total of 200 hours to learn the language. Then, even a rudimentary knowledge of the language is gained, and Intelligence checks to pronounce it are made with an additional -3 penalty (for a total of -6). This extra penalty will disappear over time, provided the character Death Speaks on a regular basis.