Game: D&D 5e Availability: I will be running two groups in this world / campaign:
Online: Play by post on this site only. I do not currently have Discord or Roll20, and am unable to run games on these platforms, or DM anyone about / on them, at the moment. I'll post when/if that changes. Beyond that, I'm fairly relaxed about posting frequency; as long as you can post every week at least once that's fine. If combat or other time-sensitive
In person: Sundays 11am - 5pm (time allowed for lunch and breaks) U.S. EST; Burlington Vermont (NO GROUP CURRENTLY ACTIVE, BUT IF YOU LIVE IN VERMONT AND ARE INTERESTED IN AN INPERSON GAME PLEASE DO DM THE D.M. ABOUT GETTING ONE TOGETHER)
This thread will remain open for applications on on a rolling basis as long as there are nine or fewer players signed up; when that happens I will add the "Closed" tag to let you know. Currently the thread is OPEN
If you are interested in signing up for this game, please post with:
Ability scores: (4d6, drop lowest; take standard array if you hate what you get)**
Character name:
Character race, class/subclass*:
(Background) Backstory:
* if decided
**(for those who don't already know how to do it, there's an icon that looks like a six sided die with three dots showing in the topic reply menu bar; when you click that it will give you a menu to add a dice roller to your post so that when you click "Post Reply" it will give you random numbers there as if you'd rolled the appropriate dice and applied the appropriate modifications. I've found that if you edit the post too much though, it will reroll those dice at some point when you click "post", and that flags the results in the message as having been potentially manipulated. If that happens message me with the original numbers if you remember and want to keep them, or just do a new post with new dice rollers that won't be flagged, and mention in the post why.
Sea fog from the Bay of Spirits has been drifting slowly upriver for hours or, for all you can tell, weeks. But this is the River that Flows North and South; so for every clammy shroud of fog that settles its heaviness across your shoulders like the dull, cold whisper of Gyrk'vasa that numbs new-reaped souls to forgetfulness, the next is just as likely to be a sweet, soft, misty sigh from the southlands of Inveralwyn's bosom that melts the stone-hard land to soft earth once more and allow the seeds of rebirth to be sown.
All around you, as you sit in your favorite niche in the rooftop garden of the Riverkin's Arms with generously and frequently refilled beakers of sinsir-spiced metheglyn, the murmuring voice ripples around you. The voice of your home, whether for a lifetime or only just for tonight. The voice ever infinitely woven, knotted, macrame'd from a thousand thousand thousand voices; the eternal song of the eternal loves and hatreds and deaths and births and all the livings in between of the Free City of Llandovion .
Or perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps you kneel patiently in the deep twilight of pines atop a black granite cliff. Light from the setting sun weaves a soft pattern of deep wine red on the dim carpet of needles stretching out towards the ocean from the spot where you keep your vigil. The ocean your ancestors crossed only a few generations ago. The ocean whose waves foamed red and grey that night beside the settlers on the beach as they stood in numb horror as the haunting wails of flutes and muted trumpets ... the desolate music that has been heard here every year since on this night ... slowly droned to their sickened and bitterly guilt-seared minds that the eladrin they'd just murdered were not the treacherously beautiful servants of Asmodeus they'd taken them for in their terror at meeting beings of such unearthly beauty as they'd never before conceived of or imagined in their lives. Which is why you now kneel here beside the standing stone. Because, not every year, perhaps not even every fiveyear, but sometimes, eladrin mariners appear out of a swirl of fog in the bay to accept the carvings and flowers the harbor town's youngest girl child carries into the waves as deep as she can wade at the exact moment the last light of Mhair Glynogan, the Festival of Atonement, fades to full dark. And if they do, you know you must bring her the ivory handled glyn knife and hold your wrist still as she lets three drops of your blood fall into the wavelet that laps their feet. And you will have the honor of bearing them the first cups of wine and drinking with them the first stanza of the three day saga of a festival that ensues when they come; and if you yourself are a mortal elf or have elven blood, they may well take you as a cup companion the whole three.
On the other hand, you might be a recently discharged Witchlight Hand who just liked the way the woodlands around Mount Gyrskjevik smelled as you approached the final decision point between heading off to the swamp where your green hag and annis friends settled down when THEY retired on this world, and the slopes down through ash and beech and maple towards the lilting ripple and dapple and lift where the oak leaves of the plains suddenly remind you you're getting near the border and will soon cross from the lands that silly duke ceded to the Feywild just because ... what was it again ... you're crazy, the lala land you've made the countryside into is crazy, let YOU try to govern it? Silly twit, why does it need to be GOVERNED at all? But he's kinda fun to poke fun at ... from a safe distance of course, so you think on the whole you'll probably be off to the mortal plains tonight and then come back and tell your hag friends all about it TOMORROW night and probably laugh their asses off with the story.
...
Then, of course, there are the ruins of Bhruleguia, sole remnant of an ill-fated attempt by the Duchy of Abyrstwth to expand farther into the Haunted Lands.The attempt was summarily abandoned when an icy bank of mist swirled in and engulfed the town one night, and rose in the morning leaving an eerie, abandoned shell devoid of any living inhabitant or creature whatsoever (though some have probably moved in since ...). (although they cannot necessarily be assumed to be all that living, given the proximity of Bonefire Island and the Bay of Spirits). There are, of course, some Aberstwyth wits who attribute the ruin to the fact that there were at least two alternate names for the town, Aberglas and Invervia, which at least some portion of the population insisted on as the true name and refused to call the place Bhruleguia; and so the place never knew its name and just couldn't find itself again when the mist subsided. There are other wits who point out that those portions of the population were probably right; and that such an unbearable name indubitably doomed the town from the moment it was adopted as the official moniker.
"What lies beneath Cricket Tor" is a campaign set in the homebrew world of Sauvogia, in a northern frontier area mainly inspired by Nordic/Scandinavian and Celtic elements. Other nearby cultures have elements of the Basque, and there is a growing presence somewhat farther south of peoples drawing on Moroccan and Berber traditions who come from another comparatively newly settled continent to the south of this one. A third continent completes the hemisphere and is the ancestral homeland of all the above cultures plus two more settled/ancient civilizations, one Greek inspired and one drawing on Arabic and Middle Eastern influences, who have been locked in eternal rivalry for milennia but view each other not as enemies but more as foils (or irritants, depending how frosty the relationships of the current century may be LOL) sent by the Gods to goad them into still greater excellence. All these are cultures primarily of humans and halflings, but dwarven cultures from the third continent also tended to take on elements of the one predominant in the area that clan traditionally called home and shape them into a "use-culture" they adopted when dealing with outsiders while keeping their own dwarven culture deeply secret. Over milennia, the dwarves in these areas (and thus those of their descendants who crossed the sea when the other two continents were "discovered") found themselves using the outside use-cutlure more and more as a mysterious lingering disease gradually dwindled their numbers. To this day, the cause has not been found, but dark rumours persist pf a dark betrayal and a divine curse, and though the disease eventually trickled away as mysteriously as it appeared, all dwarves live in terror of its recurrence and fervently shun any dwarf or halfling who is unfortunate enough to have contracted a rare modern condition shared by those races and gnomes which mimics the two major symptoms of the ancient plague (the facial or foot hair falls out in mottled patches; the skin where it had been then wrinkles, greys, and sprouts wildly tangled and curling but almost completely transparent hairs.
Eladrin generally are only encountered in the Feywild-touched areas (Witchlught enclave and various locations in the wilderness to the north. Other Fey races, somewhat more removed in time from the Feywild, were originally only found there and in nearby areas, but have since migrated south and mingled to the point they're no more uncommon throughout this continent than anyone else. They are, however, rare on the southern frontier continent and still completely unknown on the third (where most of the standard nonFey races originated) except as occasional travelers from the other two; there are no native populations there. and for some reason that continent attracts no thin places where a Feywild crossing might appear. But you are not there, you are here. And you well remember, with a chuckle and a wince, your kender friend's joke, "We're all here because we're not all there." And where you are now is: =========================================================================== %----====----> A place where the dread name of Bria'rkzot Gling is only whispered cautiously by those few who remember his tale, lest they awaken his malice ... but even the most cautious find it difficult to completely suppress at least some whisper of the smothered snorggckr in the throat that immediately follows for those who really know the story of Bria'rkzot Gling ...
-%---====----> Where the only thing most people know about the mysterious Leewamba rock gnome siblings is that what they are passing out to the public as what they want you to know about them this week ... pending further changes ... is that
⦁ the youngest sister is a charmer, has assassinated any number of hearts with the roguish look glittering in her eyes, and is liable at any moment to fix you with a serious look and arms akimbo on her hips, narrow her eyes while she grits out. "Thieves' Cant what? Huh? Answer me that! What can't thieves ...", and then double up to the ground and roll off in a collapsing ball of hooting laughter, attributing it all to "her particular and personal expression of her Master Craftsgnomeship". ⦁ That the middle brother would secretly prefer to go off to some secluded clearing looking for the formerly youngest sister who disappeared into the Feywild decades ago, but decided that it was more interesting to be the razzle-dazzle performer who distracts the victims of the current youngest sister romantic piracies. Or wild business machinations. Or pranks involving large quantities of stirge feathers *(a particularly allergy-triggering material)*, liquid glue and oil paint of many garish day-glo colors ... ⦁ And that the eldest sister of all would love to be a good big sister and help out with little sibs's cute little games , but she's got a steel cage celebrity deathmatch to fight against The Black Widow's Sting in the Axbleford Free Arena in about seventy-squiz hundred thousandths of an hour from now and she's really got to practice her
Scorpion Slam
Knuckle Buster
Spinning Crane Slash
Sweeping Leg Shin Breaker
Flying Knee Smash
Badger's Jaw Swordarm Grapple
Serpent Sting
Wings of Steel
Death From Above
Tiger Claw Choke Hold
Mad Monkey Spinning Kick
Yklwas of Fury
Dragon's Claw
... RIGHT NOW, for the whole time plus a paper flame phoenix rose millisecond for lagniappe and to grow on, to have any possible ghost of a snowball's chance in hell against that flaming &#%)%#$#)% drow-piss ***** who shaves the steel wool she scrubs her dishes with off her own godsdamned LEGHS, all eight of 'em cause they do say she's a real /// ... ---%-====---->
----%====----> Where a dark cave in the edelweiss-pierced northern slopes of Cricket Tor, the cave where the Llan River (known by some as the Abermain River after it ) issues from the depths before flowing in the ridgeline-bent spiral course that earns its' sunlit portion the nickname "The River Who Flows North and South", is rumored to be the gate that leads to tunnels who worm and spiral around for miles beneath the husk of stone and decay (or some other apt description of the natural process of putrefaction by which soil is formed from the corpses of dead ancestors) upon what we so blindly dance and twaddle all our lives, tunnels that lead in the end to the very court where the Shadow Queen holds sway over her splinter of the Underdark, the splinter upon which she has cast her brooding dream of gloaming and whispers for so many untold centuries ... or is it only minutes? minutes that stretch long back before the birth-imprint of the oldest inhabitants of the region's most distant ancestors ever came over the crags and peaks to the north and west or up the rivers and coasts from south-by-southeast, minutes that quiver and die with all the freshness of a lacy fleck of foam flying on the breeze, spittle of the underground ocean's kiss or the mad nightmare's wild flight through endless blind tunnels, or fleck of panting foam quivering and dying from the human victim flying in endless blind terror ever before her on and on through vast labyrinths of shadow and deceit.
----=%===----> Where the Ulvsnessholm Duchy had a piece bitten out of it the shape of a diamond-winged butterfly merely because a surreally sharp and lofty peak in that region, and the areas next it, are a favorite Thin Place for both the Witchlight Carnival and more shadowy manifestations of the Feywild to embody on the Material Plane for a time; to such a degree and frequency that the duke has disclaimed all sovereignty over that region and has said, in effect; "They're crazy. The never-never land they've made the countryside into is crazy. Let them figure out how to govern the place!"
The initial story/campaign in this world is planned to take characters from 1st level to 9th or 10th, with the possibility of continuing or bringing in co-DMs if the group wants to continue.
As far as group size goes, I'm looking to start out with a group of anywhere between 6 to 9 1st level characters; I'd be willing to consider two or three more really well conceived, well described, and/or interesting characters beyond that if they fit well with the existing group, but after that I'd want to close the thread until I see how it goes with that group, and then make the decision whther to open up to further players and/or invite in other DMs who might be interested in running stories in this world
Homebrew content available in this world (post will be updated as more is added):
Races: I'm open to considering characters of variant/alternate races, provided their backstory and the roleplaying of the character can unknot any conflicts with the following story and world based guidelines: (std=placeholder indicating as of yet I have thought of no reason not to use the STandarD generic D&D5e boilerrplate race with no world-specific cultuiral or stat edits; in the final version there will be a longer text fully spelling that out for the races I've decided to leave that way) My thinking so far:
Gnomes: As far as surface gnomes go, they fit the standard gnome subraces statistics-wise, but differ somewhat culturally. The forest gnomes believe (possibly with some evidence) that they are the original race of gnome that left the Feywild millenia ago and became a mortal race; and they view the rock gnomes as untrustworthy tramps at best, and at worst with an attitude that to a native of Krynn would immediately be recognizable as a combination of the worst of the ways the gully dwarves, kender, and tinker gnomes are viewed. And in fact, the rock gnome culture is a culture of nomads and wanderers as well as of artisans and inventors, but in this case the emphasis is definitely on the artisan side. These gnomes have an honor-centric culture orbiting as much around their craftsgnomeship as around their nomadic hardiness and consequent tendency to adopt (at least within a particular group if not overall) more warrior-culture attributes to their ... well, culture ... than might be typical for your generic gnome. A barbarian character from this race of rock gnome would definitely not be out of place, though most groups have developed more technological and mechanic sophistication; in fact, all artificers currently known to exist in the area, time, and cultures the campaign begins in belong to one of these groups in which their craftsgnomeship is in fact bound up with gadgets, but they consider it a matter of honor and pride to make exquisite works of art of them as well. And the battlerager barbarians of this world are these gnomes, rather than dwarves. They build spring-actuated devices into the armor to compensate for their comparatively lower mass and weight; a battlerager gnome of this type can add +1 to the Strength bonus of their spiked armor attack for every 5 levels they gain.
Tiefling: Most tieflings in this area stay well camouflaged, but not because anyone will fear their demonic heritage; most here do not know tieflings as tieflings, but believe the following about them instead:
There was an unfortunate incident in the early settling of the continent where mortal settlers massacred the innocent eladrin who came to greet them; at that time, the humans, halflings, and dwarves who comprised the settlers came from a part of the world where their races and nations had never encountered either elves or faerie creatures before, and they lashed out blindly in their terror of these unknown but clearly powerful beings. There is a three day festival of atonement celebrated annually, revolving around haunting music that is heard on the anniversary of the massacre throughout the bay on whose shores it took place; and IN GENERAL the residents of the region believe that the Archfey powers controlling the Feywild have accepted the apology, but the superstition has also arisen that tieflings are in fact angry fey who refuse to accept the atonement, or perhaps the transformed ghosts of the murdered eladrin themselves, who appear in this terrifying form to rob cradles, drink blood and exact other folklorically horrific acts of vengeance.
Tabaxi: Tabaxi are present in this area, but rather rare. If you are an undisguised tabaxi, you will NOT pass without drawing notice. In fact, all tabaxi on this world are descended from a small all-tabaxi party of friends, lovers and fellow adventurers which was stranded here after applying to themselves a prank "oil of etherealness" they bought at the Witchlight Carnival which actually stripped them of their ability to teleport or travel the planes for a hundred years. In their outrage, they founded a society dedicated to stamping out fraudulent magical items and exposing their makers and sellers. Each tabaxi of this group, the Mr'went Qao, also swears a personal oath to combat deceit in some other form, and recently there have been rumours their fervor has actually manifested as the first stirrings of a new divine being, or perhaps a fusion of a male and female half into one conjoined god/dess of honesty. This being, tentatively known as Qao (which is a word in the local tabaxi dialect that has evolved here referring to a combination of truth, honor, and the bodily and spiritual fitness or strength that is believed by these tabaxi to arise from them. Cleric and monk characters of this group are certainly an option, and though most are tabaxi there are also rare members of other species who have displayed sufficient "true-blood" (a more literal and rougher translation of the word Qao) to be adopted into the order.
Human: std
Half-orc: std
Kender: kender are most certainly among the mix of races present in the initial campaign setting of <the world of Cricket Tor > ;-> Some more sour individuals liken them to goblins, noting that goblins also spread over all spheres in such a way that no one knows where or how they first came from or went to, just that one day an area is free of them and the next day, without you seeing them coming or going, suddenly the countryside is infested. Such individuals tend to turn out to have been sold a broken toy at the Litwick Market by a kender who was REALLY far from home ... anyway, kender here yes. And it is most probable that the original ancestral kender did in fact get here via a gateway most probably in the Feywild "thin places" in the northern parts of the continent the campaign is starting at, but they so quickly spread throughout all three continents that whenever human settlers got to a place, kender were already there.
Halfling: std
Selected Feywild-origin races (eladrin, satyr, centaur, changeling, fairy, harengon, owlin (who here are a fey race native this world, or rather to the layers of the Feywild most in resonance with and closest to this world; sharing the characteristics but not the Strixhaven-specific elements of the Curriculum of Chaos race): Most certainly! However, backstory will need to account for why you have come south to the more "mortal" lands that the races of the other party members are colonizing; or why you were here already rather than emerging from the Feywild wilderness on the other side of the mountains.
Underdark races (drow, duergar, svirfneblin, etc.): rare but not unknown to the more urbane among society. There is an entrance to the Underdark (which in this world is fragmented into sections known as realms where the tunnels and caverns are intricate and vast, connected with each other by narrow passages or crevasses but essentially separate worlds) in the vicinity; but I am planning to use that in the story so will require that any PCs of these races come from one of several other realms whose outlets are scattered widely among the mountains of the northern wilderness
Half-elf: std
Elf: std
Dwarf: std
Dragonborn: There are Dragonborn in this world, but their bloodlines and cultures are all concentrated in lands and continents in the opposite hemisphere from this one. Many in these lands have never heard of or imagined such creatures as Dragonborn in their lives; and among those who have, reactions run the full spectrum of possibilities for how an individual might deal with meeting a being of "exotic" race who's also a scaled and breath-armed individual well over 6 feet and well over 250 pounds. However, I must say that since this is a frontier area where folk are more used to dealing with unusual beings, fully as many will meet the Dragonborn with fascination as with terror. All Dragonborn here have an individual and usually highly interesting backstory, and all are either in some way separated/exiled from their clan, culture, nation, what have you; or they are representatives/emissaries, either official or secret, of some government, clan or clan faction, business, or other group among the Dragonborn of the opposite hemisphere.
Warborn: Although there are these groups of rock gnomes, and other artificers may have existed and may currently exist in this world, there has been no in-world reason for the creation of such a race as the Warborn. Any Warborn will be outworlders; please contact me to work out backstory that would bring them to this world
Other races that I have decided definitely have no native representatives on this world but for whom I am open to outworlder characters on a case-by case basis based on character story and player roleplay include:
leonin; githyanki; githzerai; goliath; tortle; grung; loxodon; simic hybrid; vedalken Otherwise, if a race is not mentioned here it means that while it may in fact have native representatives in this particular world, they are rare enough in this particular area to need a similar case-by-case treatment worked out between player and DM
Riverkin: A homebrew race; no one seems to know where they came from. Wherever civilization developed enough to trade on rivers, riverkin just seemed to drift into the area and just seemed to naturally drift into all manner of roles as boatkin, stevedores, fishers and fishery workers, seiners, and similar work. They are known for a mysterious sword-art they are rumoured to practice with not only the blades they would naturally use in such work (including a small, easily concealed blade whose name roughly translates to "fishboat hook" and which can be used either for slashing or stabbing attacks, and which adepts are said to even be able to throw with wicked accuracy in spite of the fact that the blade does in fact end in a small, tight curve or hook; and a heavier slashing/chopping blade developed from the cleavers and blades used in fishery work) but also short spears, polehooks, and poles similarly useful in river work. In fact, the best known (but still pretty obscure) riverkin martial art is a blade-and-stick style which employs the long serrated glyn knife (used in the fisheries for skinning a particularly tough-hided native variety of shark; equivalent to a short sword that does +1 damage when stabbing and can also be used to make a d4+1 slashing attack) in the main weapon hand and a short boat pole in the off hand (a short staff is sometimes substituted by practitioners who have migrated beyond the native riverbanks; this has the same statistics as a normal quarterstaff but is lacking the versatile property, being too short to benefit from the momentum boost of using it two handed). Some native riverbank practitioners use a hooked boat pole when they fight in this style; this has a -2 to hit due to the impaired balance but, if it successfully hits, allows a second attack roll to entangle one of the opponent’s limbs in the hook until they can win a contest of either DEX or STR … however, which one is the opponent’s choice, as they might either try to pull free or wriggle and twist until they slip out of the hook. Riverkin take well to the more subtle martial arts, in general, and those who have the opportunity to develop their minds make excellent sages, sorcerors, hedge wizards and warlocks. Few are known at the more scholarly and academic levels of wizarding, but then no one has ever bothered to find out if they could do it either; in fact, the average (non-riverkin) citizen would either collapse in gales of helpless laughter or run for the hills at the bare idea of the hint of such a possibility.
Here's the continent map for those who may want characters hailing from outside the immediate area. I'm considring shifting the southernmost purple country from the Basque-inspired culture to the Moroccan-inspired one, but otherwise this is essentially final draft...except I think I want to call the route leading from the rest of the continent to Axbleford Free Port and the campaign area, "The Guarded Road"; there is a dedicated order of priests, the Aino Aaltonen, who I will be developing a homebrew subclass for soon who are dedicated to keeping passage through the Haunted Lands open and at least sporadically safe enough for some flow of commerce and travelers. They will be based out of the trade enclave that separates the Haunted Lands from the rest of the Wild; the river that is founded on is sacred to the goddess Inveralwyn, being one of several waterways said in tradition to be either her birthplace in a world locked in eternal ice, the first waterway to flow (or to flow again, in those traditions that see these two goddesses as being locked in an eternal alternating cycle of the slaying and rebirth of one and then the other) and, like the others, does in fact seem to have some deterrent quality; in this world, vampires can cross running water, albeit with difficulty, EXCEPT for these streams and rivers which act as an absolute bar to the passage of all undead)
FYI the grey area at the very bottom left where there's the letters 'ands' is a beachhead from another nomadic / barbarian culture whose boats were blown by a storm from the southern continent. This people, the Tsotskhandar, were inspired by my discovery of the saga of Jangar, one of the core Mongolian mythic heroes; I'm definitely intrigued enough to want to weave elements of the story into play whenever that culture comes into play in the game, but I'll definitely mix them up to keep things fun >;-) Anyway, if anyone wants to play a non-Nordic barbarian that culture is definitely available with some backstory filling in how you got so far north
The campaign starts out in the Duchy of Abyrstwyth, so initial terms and phrases will be drawn from the Welsh-inspired culture of that area. I will use edits to this post to summarize / fill in cultural information, phrases and concepts to players new to this thread, either as they come up in play or as I think of them.
Currency system: This world essentially conforms to the CP-SP-GP-EP-PP standard in terms of how the values of the coins relate to each other; and to simplify things all coins will essentially be worth the same as a standard CP(etc.), but for flavor I will refer to them by different names across different cultures of this world, as shown in the following table:
Character classes: There are no firearms in this world, but I am willing to work with anyone who has a gunslinger already created that they really want to bring in to find another way your character can do essentially similar or the same things with a different "skin", perhaps adjusting further to balance party power levels if necessary. Otherwise I'm pretty open to anything that makes sense for the setting, unless it seems like a problem is shaping up in terms of balancing the party so everyone has an equal chance to have fun, and if all players think that's possible even though technically there might still be some power difference I'm willing to go with it and see what happens.
As mentioned above, all battlerager barbarians and artificers in this world (or at least this portion of it) are members of the as-yet unnamed race of ***** gnomes. Indeed, many septs of these gnomes pair the two classes into battle kindred and base at least some of their defense on groups consisting of barbarian/artificer pairs.
The Ainö Aaltônen homebrew cleric subclass is an option for any race; wood elf characters can also belong to a shadowy group of guerilla warriors among that culture, the Taurë Tavárii. This is actually a rogue subclass that combines stealth and some elements of druidic magic with a swashbuckler's sense of style. This group's traditional melee weapons are a moon-touched rapier and dagger; these will be awarded by an elder when the initiation rituals are passed (3rd level subclass specialization; this WILL be earned in an adventure or a mini-side quest in which the initiation is played out) Some traditions within the sect also utilize a silk scarf as a surprise weapon to entangle opponents' hands, arms, wrists, or even sometimes ankles; the scarf has inconspicuous pockets around the edges where small weights can be added and buttoned in. Some rumours would even have it that when weighted they can throw these scarfs like bolas, but I'm a little dubious about that myself ... maybe after another round of sinsir-spiced metheglyn ;--)
As far as my general homebrew goes, I have a few subclasses and backgrounds that are available in any world I create, and more are being added.
And of course, tabaxi and those others who see themselves pursuing a quest against untruth with a particular bitterness towards fake magic items, are certainly welcome in the cleric and monk branches of the Mr'went Qao. The metaphysical/spiritual side is new enough to the group that they have not developed any traditions of paladinhood yet, but if you really want to play one definitely message me with a proposal for how you think a "first of his/her/its order" paladin of this group might look; some ideas for abilities, oath, geasa or taboos, etc.
Finally, I am working on developing the riverkin martial art styles into onw or more appropriate subclasses; please mention if you want to play one of these and I will message you with what I've come up with so far. Otherwise, I'll add that in a post when ready.
==================
As far as other classes and subclasses go, I'm pretty flexible; it's more how the balance of the party is shaping up that would be my concern rather than being opposed to any particular classes or subclasses in themselves. As I say, I'm starting characters out at 1st level, but if you know or have a good idea what you want to specialize in at 3rd level please also mention that in your application to join the game.
Sure are! Orc tribes are quite common in the area marked "Near Marches of the Wild" and have given rise to plenty of half-orc offspring who have spread throughout the area. They are less common in other regions, and half=orcs from there might be used to some (at the least) discrimination and pleasantly surprised to come to this area and find that many accept them without a second thought
Are the lineages from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft an option?
The worldbuilding looks interesting. I'll give it a proper read later this day/week.
Ravenloft lineages are definitely an option. I have content sharing on for the full books of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Domains of Delight, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and Xanathar's Guide to Everything; and the race bundles from Eberron, Mythic Odyssey of Theros, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, Dragonlace: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Strixhaven. Anything from those books is definitely on the table if not specifically mentioned otherwise in the world description; otherwise, just try and fit the character story into the setting. For instance, there would definitely be places in the Haunted Lands where the Mists touch, and a character from a Ravenloft domain could have stumbled through and then had the doorway close behind them before they could return.
There's also miscellaneous content from other sourcebooks that w
I'm definitely interested... I have three ideas, two are a little out there. What info do you want in an application?
So sorry; got distracted and didn't notice I hadn't transferred this part over from the other thread:
If you are interested in signing up for this game, please post with:
Ability scores: (4d6, drop lowest; take standard array if you hate what you get)**
Character name:
Character class/subclass*:
(Background) Backstory:
* if decided
**(for those who don't already know how to do it, there's an icon that looks like a six sided die with three dots showing in the topic reply menu bar; when you click that it will give you a menu to add a dice roller to your post so that when you click "Post Reply" it will give you random numbers there as if you'd rolled the appropriate dice and applied the appropriate modifications. I've found that if you edit the post too much though, it will reroll those dice at some point when you click "post", and that flags the results in the message as having been potentially manipulated. If that happens message me with the original numbers if you remember and want to keep them, or just do a new post with new dice rollers that won't be flagged, and mention in the post why. An example of an ability score array of 4d6 drop lowest dice rollers: (in a post I deliberately edited often enough to be flagged):
Are the lineages from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft an option?
The worldbuilding looks interesting. I'll give it a proper read later this day/week.
Ravenloft lineages are definitely an option. I have content sharing on for the full books of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Domains of Delight, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and Xanathar's Guide to Everything; and the race bundles from Eberron, Mythic Odyssey of Theros, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, Dragonlace: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Strixhaven. Anything from those books is definitely on the table if not specifically mentioned otherwise in the world description; otherwise, just try and fit the character story into the setting. For instance, there would definitely be places in the Haunted Lands where the Mists touch, and a character from a Ravenloft domain could have stumbled through and then had the doorway close behind them before they could return.
There's also miscellaneous content from other sourcebooks that w
Name: Ren'thalasir (Renn, she/her) Race: Githyanki (See backstory) Class: Fighter (Eldritch Knight or Psionic Warrior) Background: Far Traveler Backstory: The only survivor of a Githyanki exploratory party, Renn has discovers she likes the freedom of being on her own on the Material Plane rather than locked in the arny on the Astral.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Liarin: Against the Cult of the Reptile God Adewild: Shadows and Light 2 Brother Thaddeus: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
Ability scores: 9101714912
Morbrukk Scarhide
Half orc barbarian
Backstory will fill out after work
Backstory Folk hero: Morbrukk wants to find a home for his people who have been displaced by his clans enemies. He wants to find a home where they can rebuild greater than ever. He wants his clan to rein in glory and never want for anything.
I have a new character. Wood elf ranger. Could I join this campaign? It sounds fun!
Sure! Go ahead and post what you got
Name: Erolith Nightshade Race: Wood Elf (See backstory) Class: Ranger Background: Forest ranger from the Western Heartlands near Drawn Swords Backstory: Erolith is son of two elven magi whose settlement was overrun by orcs when he was young. Left orphaned and homeless, Erolith has dedicated his path to assisting travelers along the Dusk Road and throughout the woodland country stay safe from marauders and villains.
Game: D&D 5e
Availability: I will be running two groups in this world / campaign:
Sea fog from the Bay of Spirits has been drifting slowly upriver for hours or, for all you can tell, weeks. But this is the River that Flows North and South; so for every clammy shroud of fog that settles its heaviness across your shoulders like the dull, cold whisper of Gyrk'vasa that numbs new-reaped souls to forgetfulness, the next is just as likely to be a sweet, soft, misty sigh from the southlands of Inveralwyn's bosom that melts the stone-hard land to soft earth once more and allow the seeds of rebirth to be sown.
All around you, as you sit in your favorite niche in the rooftop garden of the Riverkin's Arms with generously and frequently refilled beakers of sinsir-spiced metheglyn, the murmuring voice ripples around you. The voice of your home, whether for a lifetime or only just for tonight. The voice ever infinitely woven, knotted, macrame'd from a thousand thousand thousand voices; the eternal song of the eternal loves and hatreds and deaths and births and all the livings in between of the Free City of Llandovion .
Or perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps you kneel patiently in the deep twilight of pines atop a black granite cliff. Light from the setting sun weaves a soft pattern of deep wine red on the dim carpet of needles stretching out towards the ocean from the spot where you keep your vigil. The ocean your ancestors crossed only a few generations ago. The ocean whose waves foamed red and grey that night beside the settlers on the beach as they stood in numb horror as the haunting wails of flutes and muted trumpets ... the desolate music that has been heard here every year since on this night ... slowly droned to their sickened and bitterly guilt-seared minds that the eladrin they'd just murdered were not the treacherously beautiful servants of Asmodeus they'd taken them for in their terror at meeting beings of such unearthly beauty as they'd never before conceived of or imagined in their lives. Which is why you now kneel here beside the standing stone. Because, not every year, perhaps not even every fiveyear, but sometimes, eladrin mariners appear out of a swirl of fog in the bay to accept the carvings and flowers the harbor town's youngest girl child carries into the waves as deep as she can wade at the exact moment the last light of Mhair Glynogan, the Festival of Atonement, fades to full dark. And if they do, you know you must bring her the ivory handled glyn knife and hold your wrist still as she lets three drops of your blood fall into the wavelet that laps their feet. And you will have the honor of bearing them the first cups of wine and drinking with them the first stanza of the three day saga of a festival that ensues when they come; and if you yourself are a mortal elf or have elven blood, they may well take you as a cup companion the whole three.
On the other hand, you might be a recently discharged Witchlight Hand who just liked the way the woodlands around Mount Gyrskjevik smelled as you approached the final decision point between heading off to the swamp where your green hag and annis friends settled down when THEY retired on this world, and the slopes down through ash and beech and maple towards the lilting ripple and dapple and lift where the oak leaves of the plains suddenly remind you you're getting near the border and will soon cross from the lands that silly duke ceded to the Feywild just because ... what was it again ... you're crazy, the lala land you've made the countryside into is crazy, let YOU try to govern it? Silly twit, why does it need to be GOVERNED at all? But he's kinda fun to poke fun at ... from a safe distance of course, so you think on the whole you'll probably be off to the mortal plains tonight and then come back and tell your hag friends all about it TOMORROW night and probably laugh their asses off with the story.
...
Then, of course, there are the ruins of Bhruleguia, sole remnant of an ill-fated attempt by the Duchy of Abyrstwth to expand farther into the Haunted Lands.The attempt was summarily abandoned when an icy bank of mist swirled in and engulfed the town one night, and rose in the morning leaving an eerie, abandoned shell devoid of any living inhabitant or creature whatsoever (though some have probably moved in since ...). (although they cannot necessarily be assumed to be all that living, given the proximity of Bonefire Island and the Bay of Spirits).
There are, of course, some Aberstwyth wits who attribute the ruin to the fact that there were at least two alternate names for the town, Aberglas and Invervia, which at least some portion of the population insisted on as the true name and refused to call the place Bhruleguia; and so the place never knew its name and just couldn't find itself again when the mist subsided. There are other wits who point out that those portions of the population were probably right; and that such an unbearable name indubitably doomed the town from the moment it was adopted as the official moniker.
==================================================================
"What lies beneath Cricket Tor" is a campaign set in the homebrew world of Sauvogia, in a northern frontier area mainly inspired by Nordic/Scandinavian and Celtic elements. Other nearby cultures have elements of the Basque, and there is a growing presence somewhat farther south of peoples drawing on Moroccan and Berber traditions who come from another comparatively newly settled continent to the south of this one. A third continent completes the hemisphere and is the ancestral homeland of all the above cultures plus two more settled/ancient civilizations, one Greek inspired and one drawing on Arabic and Middle Eastern influences, who have been locked in eternal rivalry for milennia but view each other not as enemies but more as foils (or irritants, depending how frosty the relationships of the current century may be LOL) sent by the Gods to goad them into still greater excellence. All these are cultures primarily of humans and halflings, but dwarven cultures from the third continent also tended to take on elements of the one predominant in the area that clan traditionally called home and shape them into a "use-culture" they adopted when dealing with outsiders while keeping their own dwarven culture deeply secret. Over milennia, the dwarves in these areas (and thus those of their descendants who crossed the sea when the other two continents were "discovered") found themselves using the outside use-cutlure more and more as a mysterious lingering disease gradually dwindled their numbers. To this day, the cause has not been found, but dark rumours persist pf a dark betrayal and a divine curse, and though the disease eventually trickled away as mysteriously as it appeared, all dwarves live in terror of its recurrence and fervently shun any dwarf or halfling who is unfortunate enough to have contracted a rare modern condition shared by those races and gnomes which mimics the two major symptoms of the ancient plague (the facial or foot hair falls out in mottled patches; the skin where it had been then wrinkles, greys, and sprouts wildly tangled and curling but almost completely transparent hairs.
Eladrin generally are only encountered in the Feywild-touched areas (Witchlught enclave and various locations in the wilderness to the north. Other Fey races, somewhat more removed in time from the Feywild, were originally only found there and in nearby areas, but have since migrated south and mingled to the point they're no more uncommon throughout this continent than anyone else. They are, however, rare on the southern frontier continent and still completely unknown on the third (where most of the standard nonFey races originated) except as occasional travelers from the other two; there are no native populations there. and for some reason that continent attracts no thin places where a Feywild crossing might appear. But you are not there, you are here. And you well remember, with a chuckle and a wince, your kender friend's joke, "We're all here because we're not all there." And where you are now is:
===========================================================================
%----====----> A place where the dread name of Bria'rkzot Gling is only whispered cautiously by those few who remember his tale, lest they awaken his malice ... but even the most cautious find it difficult to completely suppress at least some whisper of the smothered snorggckr in the throat that immediately follows for those who really know the story of Bria'rkzot Gling ...
-%---====----> Where the only thing most people know about the mysterious Leewamba rock gnome siblings is that what they are passing out to the public as what they want you to know about them this week ... pending further changes ... is that
⦁ the youngest sister is a charmer, has assassinated any number of hearts with the roguish look glittering in her eyes, and is liable at any moment to fix you with a serious look and arms akimbo on her hips, narrow her eyes while she grits out. "Thieves' Cant what? Huh? Answer me that! What can't thieves ...", and then double up to the ground and roll off in a collapsing ball of hooting laughter, attributing it all to "her particular and personal expression of her Master Craftsgnomeship".
⦁ That the middle brother would secretly prefer to go off to some secluded clearing looking for the formerly youngest sister who disappeared into the Feywild decades ago, but decided that it was more interesting to be the razzle-dazzle performer who distracts the victims of the current youngest sister romantic piracies. Or wild business machinations. Or pranks involving large quantities of stirge feathers *(a particularly allergy-triggering material)*, liquid glue and oil paint of many garish day-glo colors ...
⦁ And that the eldest sister of all would love to be a good big sister and help out with little sibs's cute little games , but she's got a steel cage celebrity deathmatch to fight against The Black Widow's Sting in the Axbleford Free Arena in about seventy-squiz hundred thousandths of an hour from now and she's really got to practice her
... RIGHT NOW, for the whole time plus a paper flame phoenix rose millisecond for lagniappe and to grow on, to have any possible ghost of a snowball's chance in hell against that flaming &#%)%#$#)% drow-piss ***** who shaves the steel wool she scrubs her dishes with off her own godsdamned LEGHS, all eight of 'em cause they do say she's a real /// ...
---%-====---->
----%====----> Where a dark cave in the edelweiss-pierced northern slopes of Cricket Tor, the cave where the Llan River (known by some as the Abermain River after it ) issues from the depths before flowing in the ridgeline-bent spiral course that earns its' sunlit portion the nickname "The River Who Flows North and South", is rumored to be the gate that leads to tunnels who worm and spiral around for miles beneath the husk of stone and decay (or some other apt description of the natural process of putrefaction by which soil is formed from the corpses of dead ancestors) upon what we so blindly dance and twaddle all our lives, tunnels that lead in the end to the very court where the Shadow Queen holds sway over her splinter of the Underdark, the splinter upon which she has cast her brooding dream of gloaming and whispers for so many untold centuries ... or is it only minutes? minutes that stretch long back before the birth-imprint of the oldest inhabitants of the region's most distant ancestors ever came over the crags and peaks to the north and west or up the rivers and coasts from south-by-southeast, minutes that quiver and die with all the freshness of a lacy fleck of foam flying on the breeze, spittle of the underground ocean's kiss or the mad nightmare's wild flight through endless blind tunnels, or fleck of panting foam quivering and dying from the human victim flying in endless blind terror ever before her on and on through vast labyrinths of shadow and deceit.
----=%===----> Where the Ulvsnessholm Duchy had a piece bitten out of it the shape of a diamond-winged butterfly merely because a surreally sharp and lofty peak in that region, and the areas next it, are a favorite Thin Place for both the Witchlight Carnival and more shadowy manifestations of the Feywild to embody on the Material Plane for a time; to such a degree and frequency that the duke has disclaimed all sovereignty over that region and has said, in effect; "They're crazy. The never-never land they've made the countryside into is crazy. Let them figure out how to govern the place!"
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
The initial story/campaign in this world is planned to take characters from 1st level to 9th or 10th, with the possibility of continuing or bringing in co-DMs if the group wants to continue.
As far as group size goes, I'm looking to start out with a group of anywhere between 6 to 9 1st level characters; I'd be willing to consider two or three more really well conceived, well described, and/or interesting characters beyond that if they fit well with the existing group, but after that I'd want to close the thread until I see how it goes with that group, and then make the decision whther to open up to further players and/or invite in other DMs who might be interested in running stories in this world
Homebrew content available in this world (post will be updated as more is added):
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
Races: I'm open to considering characters of variant/alternate races, provided their backstory and the roleplaying of the character can unknot any conflicts with the following story and world based guidelines: (std=placeholder indicating as of yet I have thought of no reason not to use the STandarD generic D&D5e boilerrplate race with no world-specific cultuiral or stat edits; in the final version there will be a longer text fully spelling that out for the races I've decided to leave that way) My thinking so far:
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Gnomes: As far as surface gnomes go, they fit the standard gnome subraces statistics-wise, but differ somewhat culturally. The forest gnomes believe (possibly with some evidence) that they are the original race of gnome that left the Feywild millenia ago and became a mortal race; and they view the rock gnomes as untrustworthy tramps at best, and at worst with an attitude that to a native of Krynn would immediately be recognizable as a combination of the worst of the ways the gully dwarves, kender, and tinker gnomes are viewed. And in fact, the rock gnome culture is a culture of nomads and wanderers as well as of artisans and inventors, but in this case the emphasis is definitely on the artisan side. These gnomes have an honor-centric culture orbiting as much around their craftsgnomeship as around their nomadic hardiness and consequent tendency to adopt (at least within a particular group if not overall) more warrior-culture attributes to their ... well, culture ... than might be typical for your generic gnome. A barbarian character from this race of rock gnome would definitely not be out of place, though most groups have developed more technological and mechanic sophistication; in fact, all artificers currently known to exist in the area, time, and cultures the campaign begins in belong to one of these groups in which their craftsgnomeship is in fact bound up with gadgets, but they consider it a matter of honor and pride to make exquisite works of art of them as well. And the battlerager barbarians of this world are these gnomes, rather than dwarves. They build spring-actuated devices into the armor to compensate for their comparatively lower mass and weight; a battlerager gnome of this type can add +1 to the Strength bonus of their spiked armor attack for every 5 levels they gain.
Tiefling: Most tieflings in this area stay well camouflaged, but not because anyone will fear their demonic heritage; most here do not know tieflings as tieflings, but believe the following about them instead:
There was an unfortunate incident in the early settling of the continent where mortal settlers massacred the innocent eladrin who came to greet them; at that time, the humans, halflings, and dwarves who comprised the settlers came from a part of the world where their races and nations had never encountered either elves or faerie creatures before, and they lashed out blindly in their terror of these unknown but clearly powerful beings. There is a three day festival of atonement celebrated annually, revolving around haunting music that is heard on the anniversary of the massacre throughout the bay on whose shores it took place; and IN GENERAL the residents of the region believe that the Archfey powers controlling the Feywild have accepted the apology, but the superstition has also arisen that tieflings are in fact angry fey who refuse to accept the atonement, or perhaps the transformed ghosts of the murdered eladrin themselves, who appear in this terrifying form to rob cradles, drink blood and exact other folklorically horrific acts of vengeance.
Tabaxi: Tabaxi are present in this area, but rather rare. If you are an undisguised tabaxi, you will NOT pass without drawing notice. In fact, all tabaxi on this world are descended from a small all-tabaxi party of friends, lovers and fellow adventurers which was stranded here after applying to themselves a prank "oil of etherealness" they bought at the Witchlight Carnival which actually stripped them of their ability to teleport or travel the planes for a hundred years. In their outrage, they founded a society dedicated to stamping out fraudulent magical items and exposing their makers and sellers. Each tabaxi of this group, the Mr'went Qao, also swears a personal oath to combat deceit in some other form, and recently there have been rumours their fervor has actually manifested as the first stirrings of a new divine being, or perhaps a fusion of a male and female half into one conjoined god/dess of honesty. This being, tentatively known as Qao (which is a word in the local tabaxi dialect that has evolved here referring to a combination of truth, honor, and the bodily and spiritual fitness or strength that is believed by these tabaxi to arise from them. Cleric and monk characters of this group are certainly an option, and though most are tabaxi there are also rare members of other species who have displayed sufficient "true-blood" (a more literal and rougher translation of the word Qao) to be adopted into the order.
Human: std
Half-orc: std
Kender: kender are most certainly among the mix of races present in the initial campaign setting of <the world of Cricket Tor > ;-> Some more sour individuals liken them to goblins, noting that goblins also spread over all spheres in such a way that no one knows where or how they first came from or went to, just that one day an area is free of them and the next day, without you seeing them coming or going, suddenly the countryside is infested. Such individuals tend to turn out to have been sold a broken toy at the Litwick Market by a kender who was REALLY far from home ... anyway, kender here yes. And it is most probable that the original ancestral kender did in fact get here via a gateway most probably in the Feywild "thin places" in the northern parts of the continent the campaign is starting at, but they so quickly spread throughout all three continents that whenever human settlers got to a place, kender were already there.
Halfling: std
Selected Feywild-origin races (eladrin, satyr, centaur, changeling, fairy, harengon, owlin (who here are a fey race native this world, or rather to the layers of the Feywild most in resonance with and closest to this world; sharing the characteristics but not the Strixhaven-specific elements of the Curriculum of Chaos race): Most certainly! However, backstory will need to account for why you have come south to the more "mortal" lands that the races of the other party members are colonizing; or why you were here already rather than emerging from the Feywild wilderness on the other side of the mountains.
Underdark races (drow, duergar, svirfneblin, etc.): rare but not unknown to the more urbane among society. There is an entrance to the Underdark (which in this world is fragmented into sections known as realms where the tunnels and caverns are intricate and vast, connected with each other by narrow passages or crevasses but essentially separate worlds) in the vicinity; but I am planning to use that in the story so will require that any PCs of these races come from one of several other realms whose outlets are scattered widely among the mountains of the northern wilderness
Half-elf: std
Elf: std
Dwarf: std
Dragonborn: There are Dragonborn in this world, but their bloodlines and cultures are all concentrated in lands and continents in the opposite hemisphere from this one. Many in these lands have never heard of or imagined such creatures as Dragonborn in their lives; and among those who have, reactions run the full spectrum of possibilities for how an individual might deal with meeting a being of "exotic" race who's also a scaled and breath-armed individual well over 6 feet and well over 250 pounds. However, I must say that since this is a frontier area where folk are more used to dealing with unusual beings, fully as many will meet the Dragonborn with fascination as with terror. All Dragonborn here have an individual and usually highly interesting backstory, and all are either in some way separated/exiled from their clan, culture, nation, what have you; or they are representatives/emissaries, either official or secret, of some government, clan or clan faction, business, or other group among the Dragonborn of the opposite hemisphere.
Warborn: Although there are these groups of rock gnomes, and other artificers may have existed and may currently exist in this world, there has been no in-world reason for the creation of such a race as the Warborn. Any Warborn will be outworlders; please contact me to work out backstory that would bring them to this world
Other races that I have decided definitely have no native representatives on this world but for whom I am open to outworlder characters on a case-by case basis based on character story and player roleplay include:
leonin; githyanki; githzerai; goliath; tortle; grung; loxodon; simic hybrid; vedalken
Otherwise, if a race is not mentioned here it means that while it may in fact have native representatives in this particular world, they are rare enough in this particular area to need a similar case-by-case treatment worked out between player and DM
Riverkin: A homebrew race; no one seems to know where they came from. Wherever civilization developed enough to trade on rivers, riverkin just seemed to drift into the area and just seemed to naturally drift into all manner of roles as boatkin, stevedores, fishers and fishery workers, seiners, and similar work. They are known for a mysterious sword-art they are rumoured to practice with not only the blades they would naturally use in such work (including a small, easily concealed blade whose name roughly translates to "fishboat hook" and which can be used either for slashing or stabbing attacks, and which adepts are said to even be able to throw with wicked accuracy in spite of the fact that the blade does in fact end in a small, tight curve or hook; and a heavier slashing/chopping blade developed from the cleavers and blades used in fishery work) but also short spears, polehooks, and poles similarly useful in river work. In fact, the best known (but still pretty obscure) riverkin martial art is a blade-and-stick style which employs the long serrated glyn knife (used in the fisheries for skinning a particularly tough-hided native variety of shark; equivalent to a short sword that does +1 damage when stabbing and can also be used to make a d4+1 slashing attack) in the main weapon hand and a short boat pole in the off hand (a short staff is sometimes substituted by practitioners who have migrated beyond the native riverbanks; this has the same statistics as a normal quarterstaff but is lacking the versatile property, being too short to benefit from the momentum boost of using it two handed). Some native riverbank practitioners use a hooked boat pole when they fight in this style; this has a -2 to hit due to the impaired balance but, if it successfully hits, allows a second attack roll to entangle one of the opponent’s limbs in the hook until they can win a contest of either DEX or STR … however, which one is the opponent’s choice, as they might either try to pull free or wriggle and twist until they slip out of the hook. Riverkin take well to the more subtle martial arts, in general, and those who have the opportunity to develop their minds make excellent sages, sorcerors, hedge wizards and warlocks. Few are known at the more scholarly and academic levels of wizarding, but then no one has ever bothered to find out if they could do it either; in fact, the average (non-riverkin) citizen would either collapse in gales of helpless laughter or run for the hills at the bare idea of the hint of such a possibility.
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
Here's the continent map for those who may want characters hailing from outside the immediate area. I'm considring shifting the southernmost purple country from the Basque-inspired culture to the Moroccan-inspired one, but otherwise this is essentially final draft...except I think I want to call the route leading from the rest of the continent to Axbleford Free Port and the campaign area, "The Guarded Road"; there is a dedicated order of priests, the Aino Aaltonen, who I will be developing a homebrew subclass for soon who are dedicated to keeping passage through the Haunted Lands open and at least sporadically safe enough for some flow of commerce and travelers. They will be based out of the trade enclave that separates the Haunted Lands from the rest of the Wild; the river that is founded on is sacred to the goddess Inveralwyn, being one of several waterways said in tradition to be either her birthplace in a world locked in eternal ice, the first waterway to flow (or to flow again, in those traditions that see these two goddesses as being locked in an eternal alternating cycle of the slaying and rebirth of one and then the other) and, like the others, does in fact seem to have some deterrent quality; in this world, vampires can cross running water, albeit with difficulty, EXCEPT for these streams and rivers which act as an absolute bar to the passage of all undead)
FYI the grey area at the very bottom left where there's the letters 'ands' is a beachhead from another nomadic / barbarian culture whose boats were blown by a storm from the southern continent. This people, the Tsotskhandar, were inspired by my discovery of the saga of Jangar, one of the core Mongolian mythic heroes; I'm definitely intrigued enough to want to weave elements of the story into play whenever that culture comes into play in the game, but I'll definitely mix them up to keep things fun >;-) Anyway, if anyone wants to play a non-Nordic barbarian that culture is definitely available with some backstory filling in how you got so far north
The campaign starts out in the Duchy of Abyrstwyth, so initial terms and phrases will be drawn from the Welsh-inspired culture of that area. I will use edits to this post to summarize / fill in cultural information, phrases and concepts to players new to this thread, either as they come up in play or as I think of them.
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Currency system: This world essentially conforms to the CP-SP-GP-EP-PP standard in terms of how the values of the coins relate to each other; and to simplify things all coins will essentially be worth the same as a standard CP(etc.), but for flavor I will refer to them by different names across different cultures of this world, as shown in the following table:
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
Character classes: There are no firearms in this world, but I am willing to work with anyone who has a gunslinger already created that they really want to bring in to find another way your character can do essentially similar or the same things with a different "skin", perhaps adjusting further to balance party power levels if necessary. Otherwise I'm pretty open to anything that makes sense for the setting, unless it seems like a problem is shaping up in terms of balancing the party so everyone has an equal chance to have fun, and if all players think that's possible even though technically there might still be some power difference I'm willing to go with it and see what happens.
As mentioned above, all battlerager barbarians and artificers in this world (or at least this portion of it) are members of the as-yet unnamed race of ***** gnomes. Indeed, many septs of these gnomes pair the two classes into battle kindred and base at least some of their defense on groups consisting of barbarian/artificer pairs.
The Ainö Aaltônen homebrew cleric subclass is an option for any race; wood elf characters can also belong to a shadowy group of guerilla warriors among that culture, the Taurë Tavárii. This is actually a rogue subclass that combines stealth and some elements of druidic magic with a swashbuckler's sense of style. This group's traditional melee weapons are a moon-touched rapier and dagger; these will be awarded by an elder when the initiation rituals are passed (3rd level subclass specialization; this WILL be earned in an adventure or a mini-side quest in which the initiation is played out) Some traditions within the sect also utilize a silk scarf as a surprise weapon to entangle opponents' hands, arms, wrists, or even sometimes ankles; the scarf has inconspicuous pockets around the edges where small weights can be added and buttoned in. Some rumours would even have it that when weighted they can throw these scarfs like bolas, but I'm a little dubious about that myself ... maybe after another round of sinsir-spiced metheglyn ;--)
As far as my general homebrew goes, I have a few subclasses and backgrounds that are available in any world I create, and more are being added.
Classes Backgrounds
Master falconer (ranger) Mountebank
And of course, tabaxi and those others who see themselves pursuing a quest against untruth with a particular bitterness towards fake magic items, are certainly welcome in the cleric and monk branches of the Mr'went Qao. The metaphysical/spiritual side is new enough to the group that they have not developed any traditions of paladinhood yet, but if you really want to play one definitely message me with a proposal for how you think a "first of his/her/its order" paladin of this group might look; some ideas for abilities, oath, geasa or taboos, etc.
Finally, I am working on developing the riverkin martial art styles into onw or more appropriate subclasses; please mention if you want to play one of these and I will message you with what I've come up with so far. Otherwise, I'll add that in a post when ready.
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As far as other classes and subclasses go, I'm pretty flexible; it's more how the balance of the party is shaping up that would be my concern rather than being opposed to any particular classes or subclasses in themselves. As I say, I'm starting characters out at 1st level, but if you know or have a good idea what you want to specialize in at 3rd level please also mention that in your application to join the game.
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
So are half orcs allowed?
Sure are! Orc tribes are quite common in the area marked "Near Marches of the Wild" and have given rise to plenty of half-orc offspring who have spread throughout the area. They are less common in other regions, and half=orcs from there might be used to some (at the least) discrimination and pleasantly surprised to come to this area and find that many accept them without a second thought
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
Are the lineages from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft an option?
The worldbuilding looks interesting. I'll give it a proper read later this day/week.
William Brackwater: Human Fighter - The Windward Isles
Tyrgram, the Butterfly Knight: Dwarf Warlock - Secret of Greenwold
Iòlinder Corrach: Half Elf War Cleric - Allansia Adventure
I'm definitely interested... I have three ideas, two are a little out there. What info do you want in an application?
Liarin: Against the Cult of the Reptile God
Adewild: Shadows and Light 2
Brother Thaddeus: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
Ravenloft lineages are definitely an option. I have content sharing on for the full books of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Domains of Delight, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and Xanathar's Guide to Everything; and the race bundles from Eberron, Mythic Odyssey of Theros, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, Dragonlace: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Strixhaven. Anything from those books is definitely on the table if not specifically mentioned otherwise in the world description; otherwise, just try and fit the character story into the setting. For instance, there would definitely be places in the Haunted Lands where the Mists touch, and a character from a Ravenloft domain could have stumbled through and then had the doorway close behind them before they could return.
There's also miscellaneous content from other sourcebooks that w
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
So sorry; got distracted and didn't notice I hadn't transferred this part over from the other thread:
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
Ability scores: 13 6 10 12 12 10
Morbrukk Scarhide
Half orc barbarian
Backstory will fill out after work
im going to just use the standard array
Also it says manipulated dice rolls because I added words to the original roll
That's okay, I own everything so I'm good.
You can avoid that by putting the roll command into quotes. Let me try:
EDIT: original numbers are 9; 12; 16; 15; 13; 12
Putting them here to see if the quote solution prevents the manipulated dice roll message.
Thinking about a dhampir paladin. Or perhaps a druid with a fun race combination.
William Brackwater: Human Fighter - The Windward Isles
Tyrgram, the Butterfly Knight: Dwarf Warlock - Secret of Greenwold
Iòlinder Corrach: Half Elf War Cleric - Allansia Adventure
I have a new character. Wood elf ranger. Could I join this campaign? It sounds fun!
Ability scores: 9 13 14 9 10 12
Liarin: Against the Cult of the Reptile God
Adewild: Shadows and Light 2
Brother Thaddeus: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
Name: Ren'thalasir (Renn, she/her)
Race: Githyanki (See backstory)
Class: Fighter (Eldritch Knight or Psionic Warrior)
Background: Far Traveler
Backstory: The only survivor of a Githyanki exploratory party, Renn has discovers she likes the freedom of being on her own on the Material Plane rather than locked in the arny on the Astral.
Liarin: Against the Cult of the Reptile God
Adewild: Shadows and Light 2
Brother Thaddeus: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
Backstory Folk hero: Morbrukk wants to find a home for his people who have been displaced by his clans enemies. He wants to find a home where they can rebuild greater than ever. He wants his clan to rein in glory and never want for anything.
Sure! Go ahead and post what you got
Famh Thrawn Fiadhaich - 'half elven' sorcerer (wild magic) 2, Sleeping Gods - A Dragon Warriors campaign in the Lands of Legend
Sae Ivui Nailo - wood elf rogue (inquisitive) 5 , Sea of Death: Captain Hailstorm's Lost Treasure
Ryshraxea "Shra" Naranthi - tabaxi artificer 1, Nyx's Tomb of Annihilation - Group 1
---RETIRED HEROES' REST HOME---
Quspira Inirali - tiefling cleric (Life domain) 4, Painted's "He'll be the father of my child"
Name: Erolith Nightshade
Race: Wood Elf (See backstory)
Class: Ranger
Background: Forest ranger from the Western Heartlands near Drawn Swords
Backstory: Erolith is son of two elven magi whose settlement was overrun by orcs when he was young. Left orphaned and homeless, Erolith has dedicated his path to assisting travelers along the Dusk Road and throughout the woodland country stay safe from marauders and villains.
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