Zahallas, City of the Mages

Zahallas, City of the Mages.

On a quiet peninsula in the west, on the southern reaches of The Thousand Miles, lays the city of Zahallas, a gray maze of impossible walkways and non-euclidean rooms. It's impossible to recreate. It's architecture disobeys all logic and reason. This betrays the fact that Zahallas doesn't exist.

Zahallas is as much a college as a city. All are permitted within its walls to learn, though the laws of the city are strict. None are permitted to speak within Zahallas' walls. It is said this is to make the casting of any spells obvious. While true, it is not the reason. There is a fear that speaking will remind the city that it does not exist.

Zahallas was not built. It appeared one day, thick with dust as if untouched by time for countless ages. The land surrounding it is gray and lifeless, though foolish creatures do make their home in and around the silent city. There is no sky within a hundred miles of Zahallas. The magic of clerics does not work there. The gods cannot hear you. This is because Zahallas doesn't exist.

The Winedark Hand.

When the city was first discovered, 7 mages found an ancient artifact at its heart: a seven fingered hand colored deep purple. Each mage took a finger, and together formed a council known as the Winedark Hand. The Hand ostensibly rule Zahallas, though most bow to the rules of various colleges and schools rather than the Hand directly.

When combined, the seven fingered hand can distort reality, change the truth of the world. This makes it dangerous. Now separate, the hand is greatly weakened. Each finger is powerful, yes, but nowhere near the truth distorting nature of the full hand. Many have tried to recombine the hand. All have failed.

Each member of the Winedark Hand is known as a finger, first through seventh, and holds the respective finger of the seven fingered hand. Each finger enhances certain forms of magical ability, allowing each mage to perform magical feats of immense power. Each finger also makes the mages decadent and lazy. With the fingers, the Winedark Hand could conquer Neurim. It is lucky that the fingers make this a nigh impossibility.

Navigating Zahallas.

Zahallas is a city of impossible geometry. Navigating it is a learned skill. When halls occupy the same space and buildings are larger on the inside with exits on the opposite side of the city as their entrances, navigation by normal means is impossible.

Attempting to get somewhere in the city without help is basically impossible (5% chance). A navigator can be hired for 10 gold per day. In addition, anyone native to the city or with at least 1 level in an arcane spell casting class can navigate the city with ease. The city is easy to navigate when you ignore physical space and only look at it through magical means.

The Skyless Wilds.

The peninsula Zahallas sits on is a lifeless gray waste. Grass grows, but it is devoid of color and ceases to exist when you look at it closely. Trees appear, but only at the edges of your vision. Sometimes you might feel the touch of the wind of the heat of the sun, but these feelings will fade. After all, Zahallas doesn't exist.

These wilds are scarred by magical experiments. Burnt out craters, illusions like theater screens, and conjured beings that have forgotten how to leave. The wilds are uniquely dangerous unless one sticks to the protected road to Zahallas. Any other route leads to danger and starvation.

Creatures of the Skyless Wilds.

Formless Conjurations.

Many conjurations fail to stop existing within the Skyless Wilds (20% chance). Those that fail to return to magical energy and live on eventually forget what they were, becoming a gray mass of false flesh similar to an ooze. They have no intelligence and are drawn to large sources of magical energy.

Roll a d6. That's how hit dice they have. Conjuring spells can be used to constrain them back in a form and remove their hostility.

Mana Kites.

Like a giant manta ray with leathery brown skin and obvious veins. Wings with a diameter of up to 3 feet, and long spindly bodies. They float 5-10 feet in the air, skimming magical residue. 1 hit die, but can only attack by casting magic missile as a 1st-level caster. They'd rather flee than fight thought.

Lost Dead.

When one dies in the Skyless Lands, they must be returned to the rest of the world within a week or their soul will be stuck in the Skyless Lands forever. These lost souls are incapable of finding an afterlife, which brings them great dissatisfaction. Their only goal is to find peace.

Like a ghost, except all they do is posses people, walk them out of the Skyless Lands, and then use their bodies to commit suicide. Doing this leaves the soul of the body behind, who become one of the lost dead. Any of the seven fingers can be used to destroy lost dead permanently.

Superpositers.

A sagging and round body held up by four spindly legs, like those of a harvestman. Their bodies are bright blue, and they're about the same size as a full grown human. They have massive fangs, nearly a foot long, but the fangs are stored in the body when not in use.

They exist in multiple places at once. They can occupy anywhere within a 10-foot sphere, appearing blurry and shifting constantly. This makes them impossible to hit through sources such as swords or arrows, but fireballs and magic missiles work perfectly. After being hit, their position is known until their next turn, when they go back to being anywhere. They have 3 hit dice, and their fangs do damage like a great axe.

Truly ancient superpositers can reach the size of buildings. At this size, their legs are like spears and their fangs like boulders. You would struggle to fight one. They live underground, sleeping for ages. Their skin and fangs can be used to create superposition armor and weapons respectively. They lie about where you or your weapon really are. Be wary of them. A superposition fighter would be unbeatable.

Does Inventory Management Matter?

 I've thought about this question a lot. I've never actually come to a conclusion but I've decided to write down my thoughts so that someone might come to a better conclusion than I.

Does inventory management matter? Obviously there are games like Knave that use their inventory as a central part of the games mechanics, but what about other games?

Shopping list syndrome.

Let's start with one of the biggest issues I (and I think most people have) with inventory management: shopping list syndrome (SLS). SLS is a mixture of that urge to have everything on hand and the annoyance you feel when you realize you forgot to buy something important. It is, in my opinion, a bad thing.

Adventuring equipment is the worst kind of player skill test. It's a mix of wrought memorization (did you remember all the stuff that matters?) and knowledge that are hard to intuit. If you come across a hallway covered in thick green liquid, chances are you can determine that's bad and find a solution to it. That is easily intuit-able. In contrast, the uses of a 10-foot pole are often not immediately obvious and can vary from GM to GM and game to game. A game with very few hidden traps turns a 10-foot pole into a walking stick.

What about torches?

Torches are interesting because they put an effective cap on how long you can adventure. The more rations and adventuring equipment you carry, the fewer torches you can carry, so it's a game of balance.

Issue: there are already limits on how long players can adventure, they're called hit points and spell slots. Most games have these built in systems to put a limit on how long you can look for treasure, do we need another one?

What would we do instead?

Perhaps players should, instead of having all sorts of random items they must manage, just have a single resource to manage, some kind of supply. Whenever they want to use an adventuring item, they spend a supply and we treat it like they always had it. Schrödinger's 10-foot pole if you would. I would give characters 1 supply per level, with thieves or thief-equivalents getting 3 per level instead.

Before anyone asks about encumbrance and carrying treasure out of the dungeon, I think there's a simple solution here: use your brain. A fighter can obviously not carry 16 different weapons. They can carry 4 though, that seems reasonable.

Some might find all that silly. I don't blame them. Honestly I'm not even sure how I feel about it. There is a certain vibe to gathering all the pieces you need to go adventuring and then learning that you're missing one.

Gnolls and Bone Magic

 This is part 2 of a series on The Thousand Miles. You can find part 1 here.

Gnolls.

Gnolls were a successful mistake. An ancient alchemist granted sapience to hyenas in the hopes of creating an army. This foolish ambition was predicated on the false belief of hyenas as vicious thieves and grave-robbers but all he created were packs of nomadic hyena-people with the power to make tools and wield weapons.

Like hyenas, gnolls are matriarchal. Their societies are small family groups led by the oldest woman. The other women in her clan her children or grandchildren, and the men all gnolls from other clans. Gnoll clans kick out their adult male children. It is a holdover from their days as hyenas. The specifics of gnoll relationships vary from clan to clan. Some are monogamous. Others keep dozens of drudge-men. Regardless, gnoll men do not hunt. Only the women do that.

Gnolls working with other species have a habit of refusing to work with men. To them, a man in a position of power is clearly unworthy of said position. As a result, most places where gnolls frequent have high ranking women in charge of dealing with gnolls. This behavior can be unlearned, but gnolls do not often live long enough to unlearn it.

Gnolls are nomadic, wandering in search of water and food. Most gnolls maintain specific migration routes which they follow consistently. A gnoll clan knows all the other clans nearby, such is the fate of their intermingling. There are a few permanent gnoll settlements in the Miles, mostly made in caverns or beast burrows. Gnolls have a preference towards spears, clubs, and javelins. Most gnoll tools are made of stone, as gnolls lack the ability to perform complex metallurgy, owing to their nomadic lifestyle.

Gnoll mercenaries are a common sight
on the Tin Road. Around 70%
of all Tin Road guards are gnolls.

Gnolls place great significance on beast pelts. A gnoll hunter is measured by the pelt they wear, which always be the most valuable of their pelts. Lion pelts are the most valuable, followed by elephant, crocodile, and hyena pelts. Some gnoll tribes treat insect chitins like pelts. Gnolls do not deal in coin. They will barter only with pelts, water, or other valuables.

Many have the false assumption that gnolls have domesticated hyenas. This is, of course, false. Hyenas are difficult to tame, let alone domesticate. Gnolls prefer less-intelligent animals fit for carrying such as camels or giant beetles. Large gnoll clans might have a pack of royal hyenas for protecting their matriarch, but these hyenas are tamed through magic.

Gnolls as Enemies.

Most gnoll men are smaller than their counterparts. They have 1 hit die and only their jaws for combat. Drudge gnolls have half a hit die. Gnoll women have 2 hit die and have access to spears, clubs, and/or javelins. Matriarchs have 3 hit die and are marrow speakers (see below). All gnolls have the ability to bite a target below half health for free once per turn.

Gnolls prefer hit and run tactics. They will toss javelins and harry you through the desert until you die of exhaustion. They only engage when their targets are weakened, and only when strictly necessary.

To hear the words of the marrow.

It has secrets long forgotten by time. Photo by Wilmy van Ulft on Unsplash

Gnolls have one form of magic. Sure, they might learn to speak through the wind, or to divine the future in the entrails of the fallen, or in rare cases to practice the arcane craft of mages and sorcerers, but gnolls have one magic that is truly theirs: marrow speaking.

Many see a gnoll clad in furs wrapped in hundreds of bones and think of them as macabre and obsessed with death. This is false. Gnolls are no more obsessed with death than any other mortal species. Gnolls have simply learned to listen to the whispers of bones.

When the body withers away and succumbs to rot and all that remains are bones, it is a fair assumption that there is nothing of value left. Bones are not edible. They make for poor tools. But they remember being alive. They can tell you their secrets, if you know how to listen. And they'd give anything for a few moments of the feeling of life. It is this knowledge the marrow speaker uses.

All matriarchs know how to speak to the bones. Her second in command, often her eldest daughter, will be her apprentice. Larger clans of gnolls might have more marrow speakers, but no more than 1 per 50.

One might be able to convince the gnolls to teach them how to listen to the bones. It'll take time, and they will only teach it to women, but the magically inclined can learn to listen to the stories the bones speak. Lift a bone to your ear. Listen close for the shifting of blood inside, the way the sand in the wind taps against, the subtle changes in the bones weight. These are the words of the bones. Fresh bones are loud. Ancient bones speak with little more than a whisper.

Bones can perform all manor of magical spell by remembering the past. A wizard might create a fireball by causing the air to combust, but a marrow speaker can create a fireball by using a bone that remembers dying in an inferno to recreate that inferno. Mechanically, marrow speakers can cast spells as a wizard of a level equal to their hit die. After being used to cast a spell, the bones fade to dust. Having lived again, there is nothing for them in this world.

Six spells the bones can teach you.

Buoyancy.

The fin bones of ancient fish remember where land was once water. One can use them to swim through the water that once was, at least until the fins disintegrate. Small fins can be destroyed in a minute. Large ones might last hours.

Guard.

Bones marked by ancient and deep scars are more resilient than normal bones. They can be used to absorb a dangerous hit before fading into dust.

Seek.

Fresh bones work best for seeking. Ask the bones to find you something they would remember, then crack them to release the blood stuck in the marrow. It will show you the way. They can always find the rest of their body.

Fuse

Rarely, a marrow speaker might find bones that have fused together. These bones can be used by the marrow speaker to impart their fusion to two inanimate objects, adhering them stronger than any glue.

Animate.

With a whole skeleton, a marrow speaker might convince the bones to move once more. This is temporary. They were not designed for this. They are like a necromancer skeleton, but more brittle, and they fade to dust when they are defeated.

This is not necromancy. Necromancy forces life into bones. A marrow speaker coaxes what life is left out of them.

Tar.

The bones of something that drowned in tar have powerful magic. When a marrow speaker snaps one all nearby creatures (except the marrow speaker) will feel as though they are coated in tar, limiting their movement. This doesn't last long, less than 30 seconds. It fails to work on beings that would be immune to the effects of swimming in tar, like tar elementals.

Ambition Levelling

 A while ago I tried writing my own TTRPG. Turns out, that's hard and I did a bad job. There are parts of it I like even now, such as the class + subclass system, the alchemist and psion, the heavy emphasis on the d12, and an action system heavily inspired by Pathfinder Second Edition. My favorite part and the namesake of the system however, is the ambition system.

Ambitions represent a sort of modified milestone leveling that's prevalent in DnD 5e. Instead of relying on the GM choosing when players level, ambition leveling relies on player set goals and desires to level. This puts it somewhere in between gold for XP and milestone, where players are encouraged to go into the world and explore to level but there is also a narrative tied to their growth.

Ambition based leveling.

Ambitions are a representation of a character's goals, both long-term and short-term. A character should start with 3 ambitions, but can gain more whenever they find something new they aspire to do. I would be wary of having more than 10. Ambitions should be reasonably difficult to achieve but that doesn't mean they have to take a dozen sessions to complete. Building a castle is a reasonable ambition. So is finding a hoard of treasure or defeating the evil necromancer in the cave. A character needs a mix of both.

Ambitions are player-chosen with GM supervision. It is a player's idea what they think their character wants to get done, but it is up to the GM to make sure the player isn't picking ambitions that are too easy or too far away. Collective party goals are also ambitions. If the party is on the hunt for the queen's holy sword, they should ALL complete an ambiiton when they find it.

Whenever a player fulfills their ambitions, that ambition is completed. Once a player completes a number of ambitions equal to their current level, they level up. At level 1, completing one ambition is a level. At level 2, characters must complete 2 NEW ambitions to gain a level. Because character ambitions vary and some things are easier than others, characters will naturally level at different rates.

Why do it?

Ambition leveling is a simple and player directed way to level in games with a greater focus on narrative. The system won't work well for your generic dungeon crawl, but that's not its intended purpose. It's designed for games centered on faction play, drama, and narrative. 

The system is, I will admit, untested. There is a chance that leveling will occur too quickly or too slowly or any number of other flaws that I'm not seeing. That said, I am open to criticism on it. While I think the idea is sound I am sure someone will find something bad mechanically about it.

D20 ambition ideas.

Roll (d20)	Ambition
1	Destroy an evil
2	Find something of great value
3	Break an ancient curse
4	Learn something valuable
5	Find that which was lost
6	Steal something important
7	Kill something dangerous
8	Repair relations between two feuding factions
9	Join a secretive faction
10	Kill someone important
11	Help a faction do something of great importance
12	Start or end a faction
13	Explore the unexplored
14	Become a lord
15	Restore part of the world
16	Fulfill a prophecy
17	Overcome an internal struggle
18	Start or end a religion
19	Make a powerful ally
20	Do something truly evil

The Thousand Miles

The Thousand Miles.

Photo by David Wirzba on Unsplash

 

The western reaches of Neurim are dominated by a massive desert known as The Thousand Miles. The region is not one singular desert, but instead a series of biomes related by a lack of rainfall and the blistering sun.

The Stone Forest .

In the center of the Miles is the Stone Forest. Ancient rivers carved this winding canyon, leaving behind great pillars of painted rock. A few rivers remain, but they are stagnant and stained with mud. Still, some plant life remains, clinging to what shade there is and soaking up what water remains from the yearly flood in spring, where melted mountain snow runs through the forest.

Argava.

The forest is home to Argava, the largest permanent settlement in the Miles. It is a network of tunnels and homes carved out of a massive pillar. The lower levels act as a reservoir, holding as much flood water as the town needs to survive each year. Argavians accept coin as currency, but as a measure of water. In the Miles, water is worth more than its weight in gold.

Argava is run by the Tlah, a group of once nomadic water traders. They settled in Argava a long time ago, but they did not build it. The Tlah are technically vassals to the Zetterite Empire, the strongest and largest in the world, though the Tlah ignore Zetterite taxes as long as they keep the Tin Road open. The Tlah are strictly meritocratic. They try to place people in positions they can succeed in, and those who succeed are given power over those who don't.

Tlahlan soldiers use the stats of bandits or guards, whichever you prefer. They use scimitar and shield, and sometimes carry light crossbows. All tlahlan soldiers carry 1d4-1 cactus fans. Tlahlan soldier commanders carry whistles and ride camels. The Tlah can communicate wordlessly using these whistles.

The Tar Marshes.

To the south of the Stone Forest lay the Dune Sea and the tar marshes. Few pass through these lands except to reach the magic city of Zahallas.

Photo by Gilberto Parada on Unsplash

The Dune Sea is a vast and open desert, devoid of life except where there is an oasis. Merchants and nomads are the only who would willingly go there. The Dune Sea has frequent sandstorms. They can last for weeks. At times, they've lasted years.

Past the Dune Sea are the tar marshes, lakes of tar connected by rivers of black sludge. The ground there is nonviable, so soaked with tar as it is. There is great value in fishing bones out of the tar. There is one road through, to Zahallas. It is protected by hundreds of magical wards.

In the center of the marshes is Akrahiel, the Bonepowder Mountain. The name is not a metaphor. It is ruled by Mahkireth, often called the tar-black dragon.

 

The Painted Desert.

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

To the north is the painted desert. The dirt there is glorious colors of red, orange, yellow, and at places blue and purple. Trees can find root in the dirt, as devoid of nutrients as it is. Patches of forests and greenery make home for travelers and beasts alike. There's an old belief that there's gold in the dirt there, and many have tried digging for it. None have been successful yet.

Further to the west is Asuria, land of the ghouls. It weeps of rot.

The Tin Road.

In ancient days, the great kingdom of Asur needed copious amounts of tin to keep itself running. Tin is rare in those lands, and bronze was the best metal they could work, so they made a great trade route to the east to buy tin in exchange for copper. Asur has no more need for tin these days, but the trade route remains open.

This is the Tin Road, the safest route from easy to west. One could be a fool and try to cross the mountains and draw the ire of a giant or dragon, or one could be a fool and try to cross through the Dune Sea and die of thirst long before they ever found an oasis, but wise folk take the Tin Road. 

The Tin Road ends are Argava. It used to go further west, to Asuria, but now ghouls patrol that road. A road extends further south, but the historic Tin Road never went that far.

Creatures of The Thousand Miles.

Tar Elementals.

They're called elementals as a euphemism. Born of necromantic energy animating the bones of a beast that drowned in tar. Their bodies are thick and viscous, with protruding bones. Pseudo-pod like arms drag the creature to its prey. It can always have more bones. They can't be killed with swords or arrows or clubs. They can be trapped (they aren't very wise), healed back to proper death, or disenchanted, but striking one with a sword is asking to lose your sword to the tar. They fight like they have 5 hit dice.

Giant Antlions.

Take an antlion and make it six feet long. They dig pits in the sand and spray super-heated sand at anything that comes near. Like a shotgun crossed with a flamethrower. They have 2 hit dice, can hit multiple enemies at the same time, and hit very hard, but can only attack every other turn. They also have a bite with paralytic poison. This poison can be extracted after their death. It is quite valuable.

No one has ever seen an adult giant antlion. No one wants to see an adult giant antlion.

Stirges.

Giant flying mosquitos. They gather blood and bring it back to their nests, where flightless worker stirges mix it with their excretions to turn into into a thick pulp. Their hives are made of the stuff. It smells like iron and rotting meat for miles around a stirge nest. Blood squeezes out of the floor when you stop on it too. Their grubs live in the walls, feeding on the blood-pulp. Stirges also make "honey" as its called.  It tastes of rotten hopes but it never goes bad and is good at hydrating and that gives it value.

Skullbugs.

Small, scorpion like creatures, but without the stinging tail. They carry around skulls, and sing into them, attracting swarms of scorpions, spiders, beetles, and who knows what else. They use these swarms to kill, then lay their eggs inside the corpse. They hatch once all the meat is gone.

Horn Beetles.

Giant beetles, somewhere between a dog and a horse in size. They skitter about eating cacti and bushes. Their shells are impossible smooth. Swords slight right off. As a result, their shells make excellent shields. They have 1 hit die.

Gnolls.

They get their own post.

Monsters.

Goblins with sandstone gold skin and rocky hide are common in all parts of the Miles. They crawl up at night, being born in small caves below the sand. Mahkireth's brood of tar-black kobolds are common in the marshes of the south.

See this post for monsters in Neurim.

Items of The Thousand Miles. 

Dripcoins.

Small bits of crystallized water make trading and transporting water easier. They look like little blue marbles and revert to normal water when crushed. One dripcoin is equal to one gold. A waterskin is equal to 100 gold. A barrel of water is equal to 10,000 gold.

Needle Fans.

Fans filled with cactus needles used by tlahlan warriors. They can be used to spray a cone of needles up to 15 feet away. Perfect for dealing with skullbug swarms.

Horn Beetle Shield.

Shield made from a horn beetle shell. Impossible smooth, but gets worn down fast without constant maintenance by a beetle. Provides additional defensive benefit, but only for 2d6 hits, then works as a normal shield.

The Horn of the Tlah.

A magical musical horn made from a dragon's, well, horn. The sound travels for miles. Like a horn of blasting but the sound is directable. Anyone the wielder doesn't wish to be harmed will be fine. Currently possessed by the leader of the Tlah in Argava.

The Oasis Pen.

A quill and ink-pot with the ability to draw mirages. Any who are not chosen by the user believe the mirage to be real until it is proven false. The pen can only be used once a day, with the magical ink refilling at midnight. Currently possessed by Mahkireth at the Bonepowder Mountain.

You Should Add a Dragon

Despite the fact that half of name of the TTRPG that started this all is dragon, dragons are a surprisingly uncommon part of games. That's weird, because, and I hope this is not a controversial opinion, dragons are cool. The world needs more dragons. You should use more dragons. Every good adventure has a dragon.

Making a hexcrawl? Add a dragon.

Making a dungeon? Dragon.

Want to threaten the player's castle? You guessed it, dragon.

When in doubt you should add a dragon.

The Dark That Hates

 A thousand thousand years ago, an Dark first appeared. No one knows where the Dark came from. Some say it was the workings of a jealous god, others believe it to be the mistake of the first wizard, and others see it as a natural force, omnipresent in the universe.

The dark is ambivalent about you. It neither cares for you, nor sees you as a threat. It merely is. In contrast, The Dark (proper noun) knows you, and It absolutely despises you. It loathes you. It sees your existence as a personal affront to Itself. The Dark hates you. The Dark is Hate.

The Dark is a living force within the world of Neurim. Despite numerous attempts to do so, The Dark is impossible to communicate with, either because It cannot speak or because It can't be bothered to speak to mortals. Regardless, there are two truths known about The Dark: that It is intelligent and actively malicious (It wants every mortal dead), and that It is born of negative emotions. Places rich in anger, fear, and especially hatred summon The Dark. Mortal suffering feeds the dark. It knows this.

That's why It birthed monsters.

What makes a monster.

Monster is a word with a specific meaning in Neurim.

A human is not a monster, at least not in the literal sense. A human can think. A human has higher thought. A human can do whatever it wants if it puts its mind to it.

A dwarf is not a monster, at least not in the literal sense. A dwarf can think. A dwarf has higher thought. A dwarf can do whatever it wants if it puts its mind to it.

An orc is not a monster, at least not in the literal sense. An orc can think. An orc has higher thought. An orc can do whatever it wants if it puts its mind to it.

A goblin is a monster. It cannot think like a mortal. Its actions are programmed into it, like a machine. A goblins sole goal is to bring harm to mortals. Goblins may take intelligent actions, but they do so only to further their goal of bringing harm to mortals. Goblins might build a city, but the city is not like a human city. It is a war machine, designed to raise beasts and forge weapons to further the eternal war of The Dark against mortals. The goblins cannot stop themselves. A human might commit an act of evil because they chose to do so. A goblin does not get to choose. It is intelligent, yes, but it is not sapient.

There is one other difference between mortals and monsters. Monsters are created, literally forged by The Dark. There are no goblin children. They come out of the shadows fully formed and with ill-intent. Such is the way of things.

Those The Dark claimed.

Many a cult has tried to beseech The Dark for power. The Dark ignores them. To work with mortals would to go against every thing It stands for. A blasphemy against It's very existence. That has not stopped some from worshiping It like a god. 

Though The Dark refuses to work with mortals willingly, it has, at times, corrupted them on accident. Prolonged exposure to The Dark can change you. Warp your mind. Exacerbate your worst qualities.

The sixth cycle of the dwarves suffered this. Together they dug deep in search of the first dwarven ancestor, The Sculptor. At some point, they ran out of lamp oil, and they continued to toil in the dark. But the dark bred paranoia, and paranoia bred The Dark. Over years, the dwarves grew distrustful of others. Everyone else was a threat. The sixth could only trust the sixth. These dwarves are the Duergar. Some Duergar had their minds completely eaten by The Dark. They are the ur-paranoia, the beings from which distrust and fear are born, the Dero.

The elves once lived in harmony, together as elf-trees, immortal and wise. The high elves were the leaves, which brought the trees sun and bore beautiful flowers. The wood elves were the trunks, which brought stability and protection. And the dark elves were the roots, strong and proud, which gathered water and sustained the tree. Over the ages, the roots grew jealous of the attention the other elves got. The leaves grew wondrous fruit, and the trunk was home to many a beast, but the roots were left to be gnawed at by fungus and insects. It was this jealousy that formed The Dark, and what eventually convinced the dark elves to slither into the caverns below the earth, forever splitting the elf-trees.

These are the two most well known cases, but there are other such stories. Of shut-ins driven mad by their own anger, of small villages cursed not by goblins but by prejudice. Still, these cases are rare. The Dark prefers more direct methods.

The dungeon yet lives.

There are no mortals The Dark hates more than adventurers. It is them who interrupt It's work. It is adventurers who slay goblins, and bring light to places that It holds. For them it has created the ultimate threat: the dungeon.

There are places out there one might call a dungeon. Abandoned temples, ruined keeps, caves deep and dark. The Dark might have a presence within them. They might be home to monsters, and adventurers might plunder these places for riches. But they are not true dungeons. A true dungeon is alive.

Deep within the earth they churn, colossal entities of winding corridors, immense danger, and immense riches, each a terrible angler fish for adventurers. These dungeons are explicitly nonsensical. They steal from the world. A dungeon might eat a town, and then a town grows inside of it. They border on the reality of what is real and normal and what is eldritch and arcane. A dungeon might be filled with monsters, mortals, beasts, or whatever the dungeon decided to eat. The dungeons keep them safe and sustained, a minor price to pay to attract their true prey.

From the author.

Lore's over. You can stop reading if that's all you're interested in.

Neurim is my personal fantasy world, a place with all the fantasy tropes endemic to the standard, but with a layer of the strange and alien placed on top. The Dark is a core part of this world, an explanation for why monsters exist. There's a reason I tackled it first. It was the first thing I wrote. I wanted the act of killing monsters to be simple and universally acceptable. Goblins are basically biological robots. Killing them is a moral good. I'm also weird and picky about words in real life, so Neurim gets to be weird and picky too. A monster is an explicit thing, and while a human might be able to be a monster (figurative), they can never be a monster (literal).

Living dungeons are an in universe explanation for the mythic underworld. They are rare, ancient, and dangerous, and reality is allowed to be a bit weird inside of them. There are plenty of normal dungeons that abide the rules of the world in Neurim. There are also complexes of malicious stone that exist to eat adventurers.

Faction Alignment: A Way to Represent Faction Relations With an Alignment Grid

 This is a repost of a post I made on the OSR subreddit many months ago. I still agree with the post, I just wanted it available in an easier to link to place.

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Factions are one of those ways that a GM can make a game feel alive. Factions tend to be the kinds of groups that go out and do active things if they players don't interfere with them. which makes the world feel alive and encourages them to do things. Best of all, factions can be anything, from a wizard and his apprentices, to a village out in the borderlands, to a cult of demon worshipers.

Factions tend to have two major defining traits: their virtues and their goals, or what they stand for and what they want. Using these two traits, we can describe how factions feel about each other. Presenting:

This alignment chart represents the 9* ways a faction can feel about another faction.

True allies are bound by both belief and a purpose. They tend to actually work together, and support each other in their endeavors. True enemies are the opposite, as they are diametrically opposed , they are doomed to war.

Those with unaligned virtues but aligned goals are allies by chance. They don't agree with each other, but are willing to work together. This doesn't mean they're allies, or even fighting by each other's side, just that they aren't actively hindering each other. The opposite of this, unaligned goals but aligned virtues, are enemies by chance. They don't wish to battle, but they have to for whatever reason. Unlike allies by chance, enemies by chance are usually actively fighting. Personally, these two are my favorite faction relations.

Having goals that are unrelated (neutral goals) tends to lead to factions that simply exist around each other. As their goals are separate, they have no reason to fight or cooperate, merely existing around each other, though one faction might dislike or like another due to their virtues, and could be persuaded to shift goals in such a way that puts them at odds or allies them with another faction.

Factions with neutral virtues are very similar. Their only relation with others is through their goals, so how their goals relates should be the thing that changes how they feel about each other. However, unlike neutral goals, those with opposed goals will tend to take up arms against each other, and those with aligned goals will often work together.

The way I separate these groups is simple: allies by chance do not like each other and do not get along. Their relationship lasts for as long as its beneficial. Enemies by chance actively dislike that they are fighting, and will try to end things as quickly as possible. Uniting and separating by cause tends to describe nations at war. These nations aren't fighting due to differences in belief, only because one nation wants something another already owns. Neither factions harbors deep ill will towards the other. Factions united or separated by belief only exist simultaneously to each other. They might like or dislike each other, but will only take active steps against another if circumstances change.

The final kind of faction relationship are those that simply don't care about each other. If your goals and virtues are totally separate, there is no reason to even have an opinion. There is technically a tenth kind of relationship, that of ignorance, of two factions not knowing each other (thus the asterisks earlier), however this is the same as a true neutral relationship, and thus who cares.

There are no mechanics tied to this, just a way of thinking about things, though for fun I will also provide the way I run faction relations:

1. Faction virtues determine how they think about each other. Faction goals determine how they interact with each other.

2. A faction will only fight another if their goals are opposed. A faction will only ally with another if their goals align.

3. A faction's goals will not change without outside influence (The players or another factions).

4. A faction's goals can only be persuaded to shift towards a faction they like, or away from a faction they dislike.

I find these rules keep a faction from feeling too arbitrary.

Anyway that's my little write up. I hope you find it useful.

Why I Run My Dungeons as Pointcrawls

 I'm going to assume you're familiar with the concept of a pointcrawl. And a dungeon for that matter.

I realized a while ago that dungeon design is a lot easier if you pretend hallways don't exist. I was designing a dungeon at the time for a group that fell apart, Spinerock Keep, an abandoned fortress infested with giant spiders, goblins, ghouls, and demon cultists led by an antipaladin. While I was getting to work on it, I realized that drawing out all these rooms and figuring out how they connect with hallways and doors and whatnot was going to take hours. And for what? So my players could engage in the incredibly interesting task of drawing lines on graph paper?

I made an executive decision: I'm not drawing hallways, I'm drawing circles with room names and numbers and connecting them via lines. I made a pointcrawl. It took about 20 minutes, and much of that was coming up with cool ideas for stuff to put in the dungeon. 

I hate mapping (featuring the Caves of Chaos).

I despise it really. You're welcome to like it. I can see why people like it. I don't. I see it as needless busy work that makes simple tasks take longer and requires a very specifically designed dungeon to get benefit out of.

There are two scenarios I've seen people use to explain the virtues of mapping. Perhaps there are more but I have not seen them. The first is that the players might map in such a way that an obvious hole in the dungeon reveals a secret room. The players get free treasure and get to feel cool. The second is that the players might map wrong and suddenly end up in a scenario where they can't find the exit because their map is wrong, and their last torches are starting to go out. It's very dramatic, and I do love drama.

These are the Caves of Chaos. They're from B2 The Keep on the Borderlands from 1979. It's one of the modules that has achieved cult status. Chances are, you know about The Keep on the Borderlands, even only in passing.

You'll notice that the Caves of Chaos have two traits (amongst others): there's a lot of empty space between rooms and hallways, and you can navigate very well just by turning left or right and any fork in the road. Both of the examples I gave earlier don't really work in this dungeon. If there was a secret room between two other rooms, how would you ever know? It wouldn't appear any different then the rest of the dungeon, and unless you want to check every bit of empty space everywhere for secret doors, you'd never find it from a map alone. And the only way you'd ever make a map that would end up leading you astray is if you really misheard the GM and made something obscenely wrong. And that's ignoring that some parts of the Caves of Chaos look awful to map. Like, how do you even describe rooms 57, 58, and 59, or the cave system that is rooms 42-45.

That's the thing about mapping. It either goes perfectly, in which case it was busy work, or someone messes up somewhere, often by adding a square where they shouldn't have. I find that those scenarios aren't interesting, they're annoying. Especially when it involves redoing half the map, and especially when it was because the GM's description wasn't clear. I've used the Caves of Chaos as an example, but I could've used one of a dozen other modules instead. I think older modules do it worse (especially with being annoying to map), but I don't think anything has ever done it good. I'd love to be proven wrong here.

But what about the hallways?

Side tangent about mapping aside, you might be wondering about pointcrawl dungeon hallways.Well, they exist within the fiction of the game, of course. Characters still traverse hallways, it would be silly if they went through a door and teleported 15 feet away into a new room, though perhaps a teleporter door dungeon could be fun.

The simplest way to think about pointcrawl hallways is that they exist, but are not defined. Two rooms could be connected by a straight hallway, a zig-zagging hallway, a curved hallway, a corner hallway, or anything other shape of hallway. If the shape matters, just keep track of it somewhere. If not, it can be ignored until the moment it matters (it likely won't).You can do something similar with rooms. If the size of the room isn't important, then do you need to define it?

If something of note exists within a hallway, like a trap or weird intractable for the players, then that hallway transcends being a hallway. It becomes a point of interest within the pointcrawl. No longer is that ever-shifting tapestry between rooms 11 and 14 just kinda there, it gets its own stopping point on the dungeon map. The same is true of hallways with great importance on the map, such a dungeon highway.

So what's so good about a pointcrawl?

1. They take less time to make. Cutting out the making of hallways saves time. Cutting out most dimensions entirely saves more time. Of all the upsides, this is the greatest.
   
2.  They're way easier to map than normal dungeons. It's hard for players to mess up the act of drawing circles and connect them with lines, and the process takes seconds. No more repeating distances.
3. Room connections are easier to see at a glance. Seeing what rooms belong the ghoul bishop is easier when there's less fluff.

How to make a pointcrawl dungeon.

The same way you make any pointcrawl. Create points of interest, in this case rooms in the dungeon, and connect them. I like to draw the points of interest on my map in such a way that matches the spatial layout of the dungeon, and I also like to draw my bubbles in the shape of the room, and I use symbols to show anything important going on in the connecting hallways, such as stairs. It's an art, not a science. I can't tell you how you'll best like your dungeons.

Should you do it?

If you and your players really like mapping then no, you probably shouldn't make pointcrawl dungeons. Pointcrawl dungeons were made by me because I felt that mapping didn't add much to my game and thus removing the elements that exist for mapping didn't remove anything from my game. If you like mapping, it isn't for you. Pointcrawl dungeons also tend to be worse for games that have grid based movement in combat. Things work better if movement in combat is more free form.

If you are ambivalent to dungeon mapping, or are like me and actively dislike it, then there's no reason not to give it a try in my mind. It makes prep easier, and if you find out you like it then that's a good thing to me.

Help I need to know what shape a hallway is.

Sure, here's a table:

Roll (2d6)	Outcome
2	Repeated Zig-Zags
3	A Single Zig-Zag
4	Slant
5	T-intersection
6	Corner
7	Straight
8	Corner
9	4-way intersection
10	Winding, Cavern Like
11	90 Degree Turn (Curved)
12	180 Degree Turn (Curved)

If you need distances, roll 1d6+1 and multiply it by 5 or 10 for the length of your hallway. If you'd like a vertical element, roll another d6. On a 6 there are stairs up, on a 5 it slants up, on a 3 or 4 the floor is uneven but ultimately flat, on a 2 it slats down, and on a 1 there are stairs down.

Dragons: Personality Defines Color

 I think the way dragons are currently handled is weird. Dragons are defined by their color, with different colors of dragons have distinct personalities. Does this not strike anyone as weird? If all red dragons are evil and greedy, how in the world does the species of red dragons survive.

I have an alternate idea for how dragons and their colors work.

Dragons are one species.

Dragons, regardless of their color or physical form, are different forms of the same species. A dragon with red scales is as different to a dragon with white scales as a brown cow is to a black and white cow. This has a side effect: the color of a dragons scales does not impact their ability to reproduce with any other dragon. Dragons are immensely powerful and rare beings that need a large amount of territory to feed off of. Their interactions are rare. It is in the best interest of their species to allow any of those interactions to result in new dragons.

Dragon colors are defined by their personality.

Dragons are sapient long before they hatch. This gives them the time and ability to find themselves, to have a defined personality the second they come out of their egg, and when they do their scales and form will match their personality. A greedy dragon will have red scales. A vain and arrogant dragon will have blue scales.

This answers a question that I've always had with dragons: why are there so few good dragons? Simple, if a dragon hatches and its scales portray it as being kind, or generous, or benevolent, or any other trait that would betray their nature as good, it is in an evil dragon's best interest to kill it. Few things can stop a dragon. Another dragon is one of them. What few good dragons exist do so only by escaping the clutches of their hatching parent, or by being born to good dragons.

Dragons can change.

Given enough time and introspection, a dragon might change the way it thinks. Dragons are powerful beings. Their bodies warp around their minds. If a red dragon becomes cruel and sadistic over time, it's scales will turn black and it's breath will turn from fire to thick acid. Such changes are uncommon amongst evil dragons. There is no need for introspection when you have a mountain of gold and a nice warm place to rest for centuries at a time.

In contrast, good dragons shift form all the time. As their desires and goals change, so do they, and dragons that interact with mortals often have a greater need for introspection and changing their beliefs. A dozen unique shapes of one dragon might be construed as a dozen different dragons.

How do we use this?

One could argue that a use of this idea would be to break player expectation. Traveling to the lonely volcano, where a dragon is said to horde coins in the millions, players might expect a red dragon. They will prepare their potions of fire resistance, and their shields of flame protection, and they will be very confused and extremely worried when they find a black dragon upon a mountain of gold. You'd have to telegraph that heavily to make that work.

Instead, allow me to offer a location with a built in plot:

Cambor, the city of dragons, is a grand city state and merchant republic built along the coast, the only viable dock a hundred miles to the North or South. Cambor makes it's riches on the back of the sea trade, and the city is dense with exotic spices, dyes, beasts, and magical items. Naturally, this makes the city a key target for pirates and bordering nations.

In the past hundred years, Cambor has been put under siege 11 times. Each time, a dragon has come to the city's rescue. The first time the dragon had golden scales with short wings and breath of fire, the second the dragon was silver with long wings that extended to the tip of its tail and with breath of lightning, and so on each dragon was wholly different. Thus Cambor got it's name, the city of dragons, protected by at least 11 dragons.

The truth is that the dragon is but one. Her name is Symiris, and Cambor is her home. The confluence of cultures is something she has vowed to protect, though the reason shifts over time, same as her scales. Symiris lives in the city by posing as the purveyor of a fine art gallery (dragons may take up a mortal form at will!).

A new threat sits upon the horizon. Perhaps a great fleet of pirates, or a neighboring kingdom, or hordes of undead, or anything sufficiently scary. Whatever it is, it's too much for Symris alone, and she knows this. The issue lies in that the senate of Cambor refuses to do anything. Cambor has a small navy, nowhere near enough to deal with an opposing army, but where they to act fast they might be able to muster the forces to survive, even if just with mercenaries. But they refuse to act, for they believe that Cambor's 11 dragons will rise to protect it.

Cambor could easily be the location of faction play, dealing with the senate, local merchant interests, mercenary groups, and of course Symiris herself. There's no right or wrong answers here, hell the players could simply let the city burn, but I would recommend that whatever you do, make it so that Symiris does not want to let the city know she's a dragon. She enjoys her peaceful life, and would greatly dislike having that disrupted.

The Sixth Head of Tiamat

Many know the story of the five headed goddess of the dragons. Of the primordial well from which all dragons were birthed, a being forged in hate and cast in malice: Tiamat. They say her cruelty is unmatched anywhere except the deepest pits of the Hells, though some would say it was in those pits she was birthed.

Fewer know of her greatest enemy, Bahamut, a silver beacon that stands alone against the tyranny of the Dragon Queen. Were it not for him, Tiamat would've destroyed our world a half thousand times over. While Tiamat is anger, malice, hatred, Bahamut is compassion, generosity, love.

Only two know their truth of their origins. Tiamat once had six heads.

The white head was the dullest, for her head was filled with bestial rage and a chill streak ran in her blood. She was vicious like a starving beast.

The green head was a natural liar. That every word that left her lips was a lie was the only guaranteed truth about her was her venomous tongue.

The black head was cruel and sadistic. She took great joy in torture, playing with her prey like half-interested cat. Even her mere presence would sting like bitter acid.

The blue head was vain and arrogant, her scales little more than mirrors for her to gaze upon herself with, a conduit for her electrifying self-importance.

The red head had a fiery temper and a greed that could not be sated by all of the gold in the universe. They say she swallows clouds and exhales smoke.

And finally, the gray head was the wisest and most powerful of them all. She had a contingency for every outcome and layers of plans within plans. But strangest of all, while the other heads were at best ambivalent about mortals, the gray head took great interest in them. She would demand worship. She needed their love.

When Tiamat was young, the heads were in agreement. The young world was her toy. Seas were frozen solid, swamps choked with toxic miasma, plains drenched in acid, deserts scarred by lightning-glass, and entire forests reduced to little more than ash. The mortals of that time, barely able to work stone and flint, looked upon the six headed dragon with utter fear. She looked back at them with unending contempt.

The gods, both high and low, feared Tiamat. An accord was struck, a deal unlike any before or after it. They whispered to the gray head in its sleep. Taught her love and empathy. Taught her that she could make the mortals love her, truly love her, not just fear her.

The gray head would begin to bicker and argue with the other five. Wanton destruction was fun, yes, but it was unnecessary. A needless waste of energy. The other heads listened at first, but hatred was Tiamat's blood. For her, destruction was inevitable.

The gray head eventually tried to stop the other five. The insult was so personal, so grave, such an affront to their very nature that their rage boiled the earth. At once, the five bit down upon the gray head's neck, severing it from the body.

The head, now free from she who's hate was ancient when the world was young, would take up the name Bahamat, growing a new body and wings, and his scales shifting from lifeless gray to glorious platinum. He vowed to stand as the world's guardian against Tiamat.

The blood that dripped from the fresh wound would form eggs upon the surface of the world. From these eggs the first dragons would hatch, and these dragons, each a fraction of Tiamat's endless rage, would torment the world much like their mother, but they were lesser than her even with their number. And at times, a dragon would hatch with the same compassion and love as Bahamut.

Bahamut would lock Tiamat in a prison of his own making. He was weaker than the Dragon Queen, but he was smarter, and the Dragon Queen's rage was easy to manipulate. Her cults, formed by the gray head in Tiamat's youth, still seek to free her, to return the world to the days when her primordial fire would bathe the world in fear. Their efforts were in vain. Tiamat, even freed, would never be the terror she once was.

The five headed dragon was a mere fraction of the six headed dragon. The wound never stopped bleeding, a permanent reminder of the rift between the heads. Each day the red head cauterizes it, but it does not change that the heads now rarely agree, only bound by their common hatred of the Platinum Dragon.

They say if you are unlucky enough to bear witness to the Dragon Queen, you can see the heads shuffling, as if hiding an embarrassing secret. They also say that Bahamut never shows the end of his tail, for the one time he did it was as if a blade had freshly severed the tip, a flat end slick with fresh blood.

The truth is now known only to the Dragon Queen and the Platinum Dragon.

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This alternate dragon creation myth was born of an idea I want to talk about soon relating to dragon colors being defined by their personality, rather than the other way around. Tiamat and Bahamut don't exist in my worlds, so I wrote this more for fun and practice than anything, but I do think it's an interesting idea and I think it has a proper mythological feel to it.

And So it Begins

 Howdy folks, I'm Pastel. This is my blog where I can talk about TTRPG's. I've been a GM of many years and I've been a player for many more. My taste in ttrpg's tends towards the OSR, or perhaps the NSR. If you don't know what those mean, others can explain it far better than I, and it shouldn't be hard to find.

I've floated the idea of making a blog since I found the OSR. Frankly I always assumed the blogosphere was full. What's the point? Then again, does it matter? What's to stop me from creating, and it's a good place to hold my creations forever. Perhaps someone will find use in it, even if it's just me.

Don't expect any amount of order or consistency. I'll post when I have something to say. Hopefully at least once a week. I hope you all like it.