Halloween... delay?

Yeah, yeah, the module's still in layout. It's gonna be late! But it's gonna be done. Sorry to have to announce it so late, but that's the facts, jack.

The Magnitude of Spirits

As a follow-up to yesterday's discussion, here is an excerpt from Guilmar the Theologian's The Magnitude of Spirits, a book that was widely suppressed at the beginning of the 10th Age but has come to be accepted as part of the corpus on spirits and gods.

THE MAGNITUDE OF SPIRITS

Guilmar the Theologian

What separates the most humble of spirits from the very Gods themselves? Wherein lies the distinction between the Gods of men and the ancient Gods who ruled the world when the giants stood astride the whole north? It is not a fundamental difference, an essential difference, but rather one of power: that is, one of magnitude. A satyr is no different, elementally, from one of the Aelio themselves. What, then, of mere mortals? Is there something which separates them from the spirit world? We are inclined to answer both yes and no. For is it not blasphemy to suggest that man is on the same field as the very Gods? And yet, man possesses a reasoning soul and the capacity for immortality. Again, we are forced to answer that the truth lies along a continuum of magnitude.

Satyrs, Naiads, and other Spirit-folk

The category of spirit-folk encompasses a number of creatures that dwell in Arunia. Primarily, spirit-folk are those corporeal beings created by the gods to act as servitors in the world. They tend, on a whole, to represent an embodiment of some kind of natural environment. Most spirit-folk are servitor races, thus discluding creatures such as Minotaurs and Centaurs from this category.

There are a number of sylvan spirit-folk, most of them made by Eminia or Aloran. These include naiads, dryads, fauns, and satyrs all of whom are associated with forests (more or less: naiads are rarely found in heavily populated areas). Strong differentiation needs to be drawn between spirit-folk and those creatures that come from some other source, for they hardly belong in the same category. It is possible to include Raksha (the evil shadow-spirits of Mother Night) here without breaking the definition of the spirit-folk.

The defining characteristics of the spirits run as follows:

• Deific servitor race
• Corporeal
• Possessing, however, not insignificant magical powers
• Generally tied to a natural feature

Right away we can see that Raksha are the exception rather than the rule here. Mother Night most likely did not create them (but she uses them) and they have no ties to nature other than their associated with darkness and night. However, they do possess a number of the secondary features common amongst spirit-folk, the most important of which being that they have no desire to form societies of any complexity nor do they value civilization.

The Strangeness of Demihumans

There are three common problems that I see cropping up with demihuman races. Not all settings suffer from these, so I'm not saying this is a universal issue. Rather, these are common pitfalls when attempting to depict something so strange as a race that is almost like men but not quite in some significant ways.

The first is the little men with beards/tall men with ears flaw. This is something that has plagued me personally for a long time. I've struggled to find solutions to this time and time again and I think I have finally hit on a method of depiction that satisfies me. Why bother to have dwarves and elves and halflings and trolls and orcs if they're all just people with different skins on? So I've gone through great lengths to differentiate my demihumans, to make them somewhat strange and unlike men.

The second issue is the problem of the monoculture. I have tried to address that in the 10th Age by explaining it (though even in the 10th Age there is no monoculture but rather two-five racial cultures for each demihuman race  which are determined by a number of factors). Dwarves are intensely conservative and purposefully try to replicate ancient social structures. As something more-than-human (or less-than-human, as the argument may go), they have an almost supernatural ability to recreate their own societies. Their language has barely changed in centuries.

Elves, on the other hand, actively promote a mono-culture through teleportation magic (the Silver Road) and the standardization of elvish classics and grammaticians taught to all wind elves the world over.

The third issue is one that I remembered when I started writing this essay but which I've now forgotten, so maybe it wasn't all that important. Anyway, what I really want to talk about today is the first -- making demihumans a little less human.

Legends and Lore: Agstowe

This here's another one of them Grognard excerpts, meant to accompany the old Grognard Gazeteer on the Dragonfall Uplands!

Legends and Lore

The Three Kingdoms, Agstowe

Ileena Dogwood

Introduction

In my travels, there have been few lands that have charmed me as much as those of the Three Kingdoms. Miles is big and noisy, so I suppose that’s something in its favor. Weyland is beautifully forested, Dorlan is full of wizards... but the Three Kingdoms have a special place in my heart. To outsiders they can seem a quiet place, withdrawn and taciturn, but never have I been more welcomed by halflings who weren’t my kin before! The Kingdoms share many qualities which the harsher Eylic lands of old Middlemarch, yet there is a hidden warmth in the Kingdoms that one does not find amongst the precipitous mountains of Claulan or the deep old woods of Weyland. There are elves and dwarves aplenty in the Kingdoms, but it is the only land in all the North where halflings and gnomes live lives commensurate with their human neighbors.

Agstowe lies across a region known as the Wyrmland, which stretches from the Drammon River to the Dorlish Hills and from the Serpent’s Tail Range in the north to the Great Swamp in the south. Local halfling legend tells us that the region is so-named because it was carved from the earth by the death-throes of a great black Wyrm that had been slain by giants in the earliest days of the world. A related name is that of the Dragonfall Uplands in Agstowe (nestled between the Serpent’s Tail Range and the Wyrmburg), which is said to have been made by the lashing of the great Wyrm’s tail as is thrashed against the earth.

The physical beauty of Agstowe is not to be discounted! It’s spare uplands have a heartbreaking emptiness to them, miles of stoney earth and short pale grasses stretching away along the banks of the rivers that wind out of the mountains. Deep woods, perhaps descendants of the great ur-wood that once covered all the North, can be seen throughout the kingdom. The Blackhollow feels old, as though the generations of halflings and gnomes beneath its bows have left more than just history behind but memory as well. Callaver Wood and the Orcwood both feel young and vital, the pine-needles springy beneath the trod of smallfolk feet.

The lowlands of Agstowe are knit with the rivers that come pouring down from the mountains, and in many places the earth is too flat to accommodate their banks. When the rivers reach the lowlands they often spread from their troughs and wander across the land, turning it to boggy fens. Even the mouth of the Old River has its birthing place in a swamp which empties to the south. These swamplands are lush and verdant and frequent haunts of the forest gnomes. Men too travel into the swamps for sustenance, though frog is considered to be the food of the meanest hovel.

The SCA and Living History

I've always wanted to join the SCA -- but you probably could've guessed that. A lot of my friends in grad school sneered when I brought the SCA up. Oh those guys they said. The reinactors. I'm not sure what exactly they had against them other than the vague notion that SCA people don't really know very much about the middle ages but from what I've seen they do a fair amount of research. Besides which, I'm not part of the uneducated masses when it comes to this subject since I know a great deal. So what's a boy to do?

Fuck 'em, that's what. Join the SCA, be as historically accurate and truthful to my own chosen time period as I can, and fuck 'em! Haters be hatin, and all that. I've gone in whole hog: brewing mead, carving up a sword with which to hit other people, and carefully planning out my 12th century garb. Having been to a single fight practice (heavy lists of course, none of this late-game fencing for me) I've already committed myself fully.

Insofar as this relates to D&D? I'm not sure that it does... yet. But as my experience with the SCA deepens, I'll see if I can't bring it all full circle somehow.

Alboraen syn Aglovar

Steve has a new image up of one of the NPCs in Heart of Darkness: Alboraen syn Aglovar, an unpleasant man if ever there was one.

Yes, Heart of Darkness is really coming!

Conlang Congo

I'm not a linguist. Yet, my first meaningful encounter with fantasy was through Tolkien. I studied linguistics in high school you know, sort of on the side. My first settings were all based around conlangs. Why? Because that's how Tolkien did it and I love Tolkien. I'm sure I'm not the first and I know I won't be the last.

I've moved away from pure linguistics and into medieval studies (with a dash of the classical) but that doesn't mean a good deal of my work hasn't been spent making conlangs for the races of Arunia. Varan, Solia, Orthr, and even a little Eylic have all been codified.

Varan is a franco-latin tongue, built on medieval french and classical latin. Solia is, of course, the elvish language that I based on Finnish (a distant relation to the Eldarin of Middle Earth? No, just another Tolkiensian effort). Orthr, the dwarvish tongue, is an anglo-norse language which fits the anglo-norse culture I've given them as well as all the grim names such as Hrunir and Olfr.

I love making conlangs and if I can integrate them into the 10th Age, even better. There's something magical about language, probably because its both the way we interact with the world and also the way we perceive it. Language colors everything, intermediates everything. I don't mean to say that every fantasy setting needs a scad of conlangs... but every one that I work on will. It helps inform about culture and character.

For example, dragons have no word for love. Or rather, the word for love and the word for ownership are one and the same in the Wyrmish tongue. And as I look out over the sea of orange and red trees, gazing across the neogothic buildings of Yale, I know that beyond the horizon of high wooded hills there lurk the dragons of my imagination. For I know their tongue, and I know their mind -- in essence, I hold them inside me, a microcosmic force.

Weird, ain't it?

The Tactics of Magic

Magic is power. It is literally raw, unbridled power, the kind that gods harness to create worlds. Toying with the forces of magic is fiddling with the stuff of creation. Or at least, that's the way I like to play it. While a man with a sword can get a lot of things done, sometimes it comes down to the scholarly wizard to save the day, and that's what they're good at: reversing bad situations.

At first level, wizards have their one spell that they carry around with them. I know there are many people who have said it hardly seems fair that a first level mage should burp out a single spell and then be devoid of magics for the rest of the day. Not very wizardly, is it? Beyond the fact that these are barely-out-the-tower apprentices, there is another argument to be made. That is that, given good spell selection, that one first level spell can reverse the fortunes of a party 180 degrees. About to be splattered to hell by forces you cannot combat? If your mage has a sleep spell memorized, maybe you aren't. Discovered lurking around the cellars of an evil monastery? Not if your mage has a phantasmal force to distract the crazed monks (or even to make you appear to be a patch of darkness).

Magic fundamentally alters the surroundings in a profound and powerful way. The well-heeled wizard can use his spells to literally turn a TPK into a stunning success. The sad fact is that not every spell works this way, and not every spell is as good at that as every other. Out of level one spells, for example, magic missile is perhaps the most misleading. I don't know any first timer who hasn't wanted to select it and memorize it as their spell of the day. After all, it sounds badass and it makes an unerring ball of light that cannot miss and definitely strikes its target to deal damage. But magic missile is really a spell for mid- to high-level wizards to waste their low-level spell slots on. 1d4+1 points of automatic damage is somewhat flaccid even for a wizard (after all, his staff deals more damage!)

5d4+5 unavoidable, non-savable damage is something great. But what you really want to do as a low level mage is memorize spells that pack more oomph for their slots: sleep, color spray, etc. These are the mainstays of low level mages because they can make an 8 orc encounter into a 2 orc encounter very easily.

The Long Imperial Shadow

Ancient Miles was the largest mannish empire ever to rule the North. It's great extent and centuries-long endurance means that even today, ages and ages after its passing, the imperial shadow still colors the cultures, attitudes, and technologies of men from Ralashar to the Cloudhome Sea. The memory of imperial might has faded from the minds of most individuals but that does not prevent the shadow of the empire from reaching out and affecting them even in the most basic of their everyday lives.

The most obvious and widespread remnant of imperial control is the practice of burning the dead. Men the North over have taken up this imperial standard and cremation is the norm in any area that was once ruled by the empire (save for Teral where, for dark reasons to do with the Necromancer, corpses are buried). The ritual cremation of the dead is common practice as far east as Claulan and all the way west to the sea-side seat of Kjellos. The Skinchanger Kingdoms and the Twin Empires do not practice it, so one can see a dividing line where the northward expansion of the empire ceased simply by the inherited culture of the region.

The empire was not, however, monolithic over time. Thanks in part to a system of education based on the elvish tutor-system (known as the paidea), nobility across the empire shared a common culture. But those below noble status who were not educated in the classics rapidly diverged from the imperial "norm," creating a number of sub-cultures that were regionally varied and eventually giving birth to such dialects as Dorlish Varan, High Varan, North Varan, and West Varan, all of which can trace their descendance back to the original Old Imperial Varan of the Fifth Age.

D&D and Writing

I think I may have discussed it before, but there are things that differ, fundamentally, from playing D&D and writing, and I think the reason I have such a hard time when writing novel-length endeavors is because I'm stuck in some kind of D&D mode. I finally finished my second manuscript (a clockpunk piece set in 1486 that follows the PoV of a Florentine spy and a Roman nun) and only now have I begun to break out of my DMing chains in writing long-form work. For some reason short stories and I don't have that problem -- maybe because I've written so many of them over the years that my style has been allowed to diverge from the way I run a D&D game.

The precise problem is easy to trace: an overabundance of descriptive words which hangs up the action. In D&D, every time you see something new you have to have it described in detail. Those details matter! They allow your players to make complex decisions (usually decisions that you never even considered) at a moment's notice. Is it important that the stones of the tower are unevenly spaced? Surely, in case someone wants to knock it over. Does it matter that the man you're talking to has a beard? It does if you want to set his face on fire.

Medieval Hack

As a medievalist, I love harsh realistic systems that suck the life out of you to even contemplate playing -- Hârn is a perennial favorite. How could I not, therefore, be delighted to hear of the efforts to create an OSR-made system by a group of OSR medievalists? Yes, that's right, I'm hopefully going to be working with some folks (spearheaded by Chris at Hill Cantons).

What can I say about it so far? MongTrav character gen. Unbelievably flavorful. I'm so glad to have the chance to work on this, I can't even express myself!

Fantastic Religion: Avauna

AVAUNA

(the Healer, the Everyoung, the Daystar)

Intermediate Goddess, NG

Portfolio: Light, healing, medicine, the sun

Aliases: Noronë

Domain Name: The Daystar’s Abode, Elysium

Superior: None

Allies: Galos

Foes: Tharos, Hasht

Symbol: A sunburst

Worshipper Alignment: Any good

Known as Noronë to the elves, Avauna is married to Galos the Blind. She is the ruler of all things relating to the disc of the sun and the daylight. A consummate healer, Avauna nevertheless refrains from the sorts of fertility rites and midwifery normally associated with Eleia.

Once one of the chief Goddesses of the Northern regions of the world, worship of Avauna has gone down in the days since the Eighth Age. Many of her temples stand deserted or left to ruin, their treasures gathering attention from adventurers the world over for the famed use of gold by her clergy to represent the healing light of the sun.

Avauna generally appears as a powerful and motherly woman dressed in a long dress and holding the hook used to hang the Lamp of the Sun in one hand. The imagery associated with her is mostly solar.

The temples that are still functional are lavish affairs covered with hammered gold and alabaster. The holy symbol of Avauna is a sunburst and her colors are gold and silver. A number of important Collegia, Halls, and Convocations of medici remain throughout the north. All Healers of the Daystar and many of the leeches and medici of the civilized north are trained in the great lecture spaces of these universities and academies.

Beyond the Hedge, (part 6)

We return to the tale of Barley Hedgeman, esquire. The previous parts are all linked on part five. If you thought the continued adventures of our good Hedgeman have been too long delayed, you are bound to be at least partially satisfied by this resumption of his adventures.

They had crossed over into the wild and soon there were no more ruins nor signs of habitation at all. Alandrya assured him that elves had once lived in this fair land. Time, it seemed, had undone the great houses that once stood warden over the silent hills. And it was true that time and again they would see a great heap of marble rubble. Barley realized only after walking close by one and seeing the cosmophilic carvings heaped upon the broken stones that they had once belonged to a grand manor house of the elves.

Some time near noon on the fifth day, they caught sight of a goblin picket moving among the hills. It was coming from the northeast, which meant it was likely they had been going to scout out the location of the army. Barley said as much to Alandrya and the elf agreed with him. She hurried to don her shining mail and even with Barley fastening all the straps it took near on ten minutes to struggle into it.

Once she was sheathed in her silver armor and her blade was drawn she whispered to Barley, "Go and hide."

"Mistress?" Barley gaped. He had drawn his own dagger, a pathetically small thing compared to the long sickle-like blade Alandrya carried. "I won't abandon you." He set his jaw squarely and frowned so hard that Alandrya had no choice but to nod and turn back to the matter at hand.

The Problem with Sheep

I am the curator of the #DNDOOC channel at rizon.net (no longer at suptg thanks to the diminutive tyrant known as PurpleXIV) and sometimes people stumble in not knowing that the channel's been taken over by grognards. Sometimes they do realize and don't care, figuring that anything with DnD in the name stands a fair chance of getting answered. The sad fact is, though I've played 3.x and 4e, I don't know them back to front so I can't really answer game-design questions when it comes to "how can I balance this?" or "does this make sense according to the rules?" While I can roughly estimate the amount of damage a level 5 warrior will do per-round in AD&D (1d8 assuming arming sword, with a THAC0 of 16 means at least a few hits, plus whatever magical bonus the weapon has) I really can't calculate the huge levels of hp damage dished out by Pathfinder or 3.x characters.

Which brings us to the problem: the sheep. One of the folks who's an on-and-off visitor to DnDOOC asked about translating a sheep from 3.x to Pathfinder. Apparently, this sheep was integral to the adventure. He had a stat-block in front of him for the sheep and was wondering the proper procedure to take a docile animal from 3.5 to the Paizo system.

I didn't understand.

The Sunday Sneak: History of Pinehall

More of the Heart of Darkness module to look at? You got it!

Pinehall (section header)

The dwarven settlement known as Pinehall (Granarholl in Orthr, but dwarves are notorious for not wanting to speak their own language around outsiders) was founded in the 8th century of the 9th Age and eventually destroyed in the late 4th century of the 10th Age.

It’s rise was responsible for bringing a great number of dwarves from their mountainous holds in the Arinnfal to the north; nearly all of the dwarven settlers in Culcomb were survivors from the destruction of the old hall or their descendants.

While the conflicts that beset Pinehall early in its history were generally between dwarves and elves, it is the Dorls who the Pinehall dwarves are truly wary of: Alphonsar and Tiriodar, the two men most directly responsible for the fall of the old halls were both Dorls and so was the army that followed them.

Having long memories and longer lives, those who survived the siege and slaughter of their kin are unlikely to look kindly upon Dorls again. Their natural distrust has been compounded, and even menfolk of non-Dorlish descent can expect a cold greeting in Culcomb.

The Bard's a Cheater!

One of the things (and one of the things I strongly agree with, by the way) that the OSR touts is the notion of player skill. We've gotten too far away from player skill in the modern incarnations of D&D -- you don't have to be skilled to play a character, you simply have to say what you want them to do and they will succeed at it or not depending on how skilled the player was who built that particular character. The onus of the game has shifted to the character-building process.

That's something the OSR hates. It removes player agency, weakens player control, and transforms the player's in-world proxy into a marionette being controlled with limp elastic bands. What defense can there be, then, for the AD&D 2e rogue classes? Both the thief and the bard exhibit strong notes of character-skill trumping player-skill. Take, for example, the bard's ability to influence the reaction of crowds.

That, according to the strict rubric of player power, should be determined by the things a player makes their character say to the crowd, no? In the world without skills or character-abilities that trump player's own abilities that would be true. Does that limit people with some real-world charisma to playing bards? Well, maybe so, but someone who can't muster up a little speech for the king's court ingame has no business playing a bard anyway since they probably can't roleplay any other aspect correctly.

But let's look closely at the power-as-written and parse it. Is it really as anti-OSR as it seems?

Looper Stupor

I've read and heard a lot of things condemning Looper as "a time travel movie for stupid people." So far, it seems to me that the crux of these arguments rely on discounting the narrative's stated physics for time travel (whenever you are existing is the present, so the "future-events" that have yet to happen are dynamic) isn't how time travel works.

I'm sorry to break it to you, but time travel doesn't work. There is no time travel. When you are watching a movie that features it, you simply have to accept their explanation of how it works. That's what narrative is about. It doesn't matter if you think it works differently. That's called arguing the premise and if you do that when you are experiencing some narrative then of course you won't like it.

Looper posits this: there is something special about the subjective present. People traveling back from the future have vague memories of the possibility-cloud that lead up to their time-travel jump but, since it hasn't objectively occurred yet it is in flux. As things solidify into the subjective present, new memories spring into place. You're free to dislike that on any grounds you want, but saying that it isn't how time travel would work is just juvenile and laughable.

That is all!

[Fiction] The Reservation, part 3

Are you behind? Here's the previous episode of the Reservation, all warmed and ready for ya.

It only took John a few minutes to figure out that they weren't going to the Gutman farm at all. He didn't say anything. He was acutely aware of the white demi-leather seat under him and the stain he must be leaving with his overalls. The little hydrogen coupe shot by the turn-off and kept going, rolling at an even hum down the wide highway. Farms blurred by on either side, real ones growing corn and soy beans, not power plants.

Eventually Gutman said, "Sam still making his guns?"

John decided that he was trying to be friendly. Everyone knew that Sam still made and repaired bolt-action rifles and shotguns from before the war. "Yeah," he said with a noncommittal air, hoping that was the end of it.

"Don't know why people insist on 'em," Gutman replied. "Ever seen what a scramjet can do to a person?"

This was starting to get very uncomfortable. Did Mister Gutman have a way of checking his cameras remotely? If they were wired up to his phone, he'd probably already seen everything. John gave him a sidelong glance. "Scramjets?" he asked.

"You know, sabot rounds. Like the Manstopper Carson carries around," Gutman explained. He didn't seem agitated or even suspicious. Just curious.

"Oh, yeah," John muttered. "Only licensed City-folk have those, though, and they're few and far between."

Gutman made a sound that was neither here nor there and gave a little shrug indicating he didn't know how true that was. John risked a glance at him, but Gutman was looking straight out over the highway and didn't seem to have a care in the world. "You weren't going to go to Sheriff Carson about all this," Gutman mused. "Were you?"

"About... this...?" John said, doing his best to act ignorant of the whole situation. He knew the game was up though, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. What would Sam Stalton do? Probably pull out an old revolver and shoot Greg in his fat head.

"You know, all this..." Gutman made a vague gesture. "Livestock and what-not. I could tell it spooked you, that's all. I just wanted to make sure you weren't going to make it into... ya know, trouble."

John swallowed. "Mister Gutman," he confessed, gripping hard on his wireless wrench in his overall pocket. "Carson's up at the farm right now."

"He what?" Gutman gasped. "Oh HELL!" He slammed on the brake and the car squealed to a stop. With a frantic look at the road he spun the coupe around and started heading back. "Damn it, John, why'd ya have to go tell an outsider for?" Gutman's eyes were wild and frantic. John could see the future that Greg Gutman saw: his contacts in the City evaporating, his standing with the Syndic ruined, the farm transferred to someone more reliable, and Greg Gutman out on his ass. Thankfully, Mister Gutman didn't seem too keen on hurting John over it.

When they got to the farm, Sheriff Carson was out between the huge stalks of the windmills. He'd drawn his gun already and John gaped to see Mrs. Gutman all sprawled out on the dewy grass, arms cuffed in big exoplastic Syndic cuffs. The light on the black plastic blinked red.

Greg stomped on the brake again, bringing the coupe to a halt in the gravel driveway. Carson looked up and slowly began to walk towards the car, his M-31 gripped firmly in one hand. He kept the barrel pointed down and away, as though he was afraid of accidentally discharging it.

"Stay here, John," Gutman grumbled. "This'll all work out for the best."

The car door clacked open and Gutman rolled to his feet. He started walking towards Carson, hands in the air.

"Woah, now!" the sheriff called. "Just stop where you're standing, Mister Gutman, if you would."

Greg obliged and came to a halt. His shoes glimmered on the gravel and John leaned forward instinctually to see what was happening.

"Now, just put yer hands behind your back if you'd be so kind," Carson went on. "I've got to call the Adjutant. It's lucky he's already on his way, now, so you can be processed nice and quick and go see the Syndic."

Greg did as he was told, hands folding behind him. As he did, John noticed his lift up the tail of his waistcoat. There, tucked into the seat of his pants, was a big ugly black exoplastic handle coated in fine synthetic leather: a Falstaff M-40, the Justifier.

John made a side-to-side swiping motion in his pocket, the pad of his finger sliding across the wrenches' main screen. Please let it be on universal reception, he prayed. He was rewarded by the sound of the coupe's engine revving. Gutman had wrapped his meaty paw around the Justifier and was waiting as Carson drew ever closer. Clockwise full circle went John's finger and the car leapt forward.

Gutman spun around, the Justifier in his hands and raw naked fear in his eyes. The coupe sped forward and John made a quick up-and-down motion which caused the hood to pop up and block Gutman from his sight. He ducked behind the dashboard as the one and only sabot Greg Gutman had time to fire blew a dollar-sized hole in the chair where he had been sitting a moment before.

The car rocked when it hit the huge bulk of Greg Gutman and then crumpled as it struck the pylon of a wind turbine. John knocked his head on the glove compartment and then everything went black.