Okay, it's been awhile since I added lore to this thread, but I've come back with some re-imagining for the Fehntüm in order to make them equal in awesomeness to the Vezyi. Previously, the Fehntüm were just a Necromantic-Magocracy with an "Arcane Council" that was in charge of their settlements, which, in my opinion and that of my players, is far less cool than that of the culture I came up with for the Vezyi, which functions around the Vezyi having multiple free resurrections, being led by Necromantic-Priests of Vecna that send them on quests throughout the cosmos (typically hunting down/spying on enemies or searching for lost magic items, like the Eye of Vecna), and having Vezyi that somehow (possibly accidentally) cheated the "Death Pardon" system being banished and hunted down by "Vezyi Palmbearers" (bounty hunters that cut off the hands of outcast Vezyi, which are known as "Vulek") to return the amputated hands and scalp of the Vulek to the Iremonger that accidentally created them (turning the returned hands into crawling claws and creating capes, robes, and purses out of the forehead-skin of the Vuleks).
Basically, the Fehntüm were boring before, and the Vezyi were overloaded with a ton of cool lore that I somehow managed to come up with.
After a few months of contemplating a way to make the Fehntüm as cool as the Vezyi, I finally came up with something about a week ago, and have been ironing it out since them. Now that I've finally gotten it more-or-less completed, I feel comfortable presenting to the few people who still follow this thread the New and Improved Fehntüm Cultural Lore and Mechanics!
Revised Fehntüm Lore
Living deep below the surface of the dreary plane known as the Shadowfell, the servants of Vecna wage endless war with the servants of the Raven Queen. The most devout Shadar-Kai followers of the Raven Queen are elevated by her Divine Majesty into angelic forms, appearing as Black-Raven-Winged Angels with the physical bodies of beautiful, muscular Shadar-Kai, who command armies of winged Kenku, orders of undead-hunting paladins, clerics, and rangers, and others who have devoted their lives to holding back the tides of undead armies sent by the Dark Lord of Undeath, the dreaded God-Lich Vecna. While the forces of Letherna the Raven Queen live upon the surface world of the dark Shadowfell, the ever-churning, deep-haunting hordes of Vecna's undead armies are banished to the impossibly-dark stony depths of the Underfell, the Underdark of the Shadowfell.
As the Master of Undeath, the King of Necromancy, Lord Vecna has created a nigh-flawless society beneath the surface of the Shadowfell to fuel his unholy goal of conquering all of the Shadowfell and killing the Raven Queen, once and for all. In order to do this, he has created two distinct races and cultures that act as undead-creating factories to sustain his hordes of undead that are constantly being struck down by the servants of the Raven Queen. These races are the Vezyi and the Fehntüm, both tied to a type of undead creatures; corporeal and incorporeal respectively. While the Vezyi have been bred and trained to act as zombies and revenants that seem to constantly come back up from the brink of death to fight the endless war against the Raven Queen's followers, the Fehntüm serve a distinct purpose; to not just come back when they die, but to become increasingly more experienced and powerful in every incarnation and generation that the phantom-touched lives through. Though the Vezyi are designed to serve as the infantry and endless hordes of undead that clash against the armies of the Raven Queen, the Fehntüm are Vecna's secret weapon that may win him the war for good, if only they can become powerful enough and not be driven to the abyss of madness in the process.
Origins of the Fehntüm
As with the Vezyi, the Fehntüm can trace their origin back to the Rebirth of Vecna in the calamitous year of 234 AGS (After the Great Sacrifice). Long ago, while Zilya Darkcord, the servant of the long-dead god Vecna (after his untimely defeat at the hands of the Lady of Pain in Sigil), the corrupted goblin priestess to the dormant vestige of Vecna was scheming and preparing the disastrous ritual that eventually became known as the Day of Renascence. Though the faintly-conscious mind of the Vecna helped inspire the great sacrifice of souls that helped awaken and restore Vecna to a physical form worthy of holding a god, Zilya had to seek out the most powerful necromancers active in the realms to get the eldritch knowledge and pure arcane power necessary to complete the ritual. The exact number and names of these ancient necromancers has been lost to time, but they are now known collectively as the "Soulless", for they gave up their souls to Vecna upon his re-emergence as the God of Undeath.
After Zilya Darkcord, with the help of the Soulless, completed the ritual sacrifice of the tens of thousands of souls required to restore the vestige of Vecna to godhood, Vecna created a planar rift that sucked himself, Zilya, the cult of followers that Zilya Darkcord amassed to welcome Vecna upon his return, and the corpses of the thousands of sacrificed into his home domain, the Underfell. He reanimated the corpses of those that were sacrificed to him as his new, personal undead army of zombies, wights, and various other corporeal undead and used his necromantic godly powers to transform his cultists into the Vezyi, corporeal-undead-touched humanoids that are engineered to be the perfect living-factory of souls and bodies for Vecna's eternal war with the Raven Queen. Then, using his divine powers, he rewarded Zilya Darkcord by granting her the secrets of lichdom and elevated her to the status of a Demigod. However, he had a different "reward" in mind for the dozens of necromancers that worked to restore him to godhood. He ripped their souls out of their bodies, granted their souls immortality and perfected their memories, and then caused their souls to meld with the Soulless. This process became known as "Soulmelding", which Vecna only uses on his most devout mortal necromancer followers, which prevents their souls from ever being snatched by the Vistaesh or sent to the Raven Queen's afterlife system.
These "Soulmelded" necromancers were the ancestors of the Fehntüm, as their phantom-touched nature became inherited by their bloodlines, creating a new, unique race of humanoids with the powers of calling upon their spirit form while still living.
Immortal Souls
Though the modern generations of Fehntüm don't possess the complete ghostly powers that were bestowed upon them by Vecna those hundreds of years ago, they did inherit lesser versions of the many different abilities that Vecna blessed the Soulless with, including their immortal souls. Unlike the Vezyi who avoid death at all costs in order to live as long as they can, nearly all Fehntüm not only completely accept the inevitability of the failure of their physical forms, but also embrace it and look forward to the day that they transcend the restrictions of the mortal form. Unlike most other races, the Fehntüm are much more powerful in their spirit form than their physical forms, causing individual Fehntüm to actually be more powerful after they die than during their mortal life. Furthermore, occasionally after a Fehntüm that Vecna has decided was an exceptional servant during their life dies, Vecna will Soulmeld their spirit and soul with the body of a powerful living Fehntüm, creating a unique and extremely powerful and valuable servant known as a "Soulfused" (or "Silfuhsan" in their language).
A Soulfused comes in three different varieties; a Phantom Lord, a Shadeseeker, or a Soulbinder.
Phantom Lords are the elite guards for the leaders of the Fehntüm society. Although the most powerful Fehntüm are practically immortal through becoming Soulfused, not every leader of the Fehntüm settlements is capable or allowed to become a Soulfused after death, and the death of one of the leaders that is capable of coming back after death can range from a minorly annoying to catastrophic if their leadership is needed while they're in the process of becoming a Soulfused. Thus, where Phantom Lords come in. Phantom Lords are mechanically identical to Echo Knights. A Phantom Lord's "echo" is actually the spirit of the soul that is bound to the living body of the Soulfused, which the Phantom Lords have trained to be able to separate from their physical form in order to be capable of attacking from multiple different places on a battlefield, protect multiple people at once, and scout out areas without risking their physical bodies. Most Phantom Lords have barely managed to learn the relatively simple act of manifesting the spirit body of their second soul, but the more powerful ones can summon even more echos, create ethereal wards from the remaining energy of their destroyed echos, and perfectly thwart assassination attempts against those that they're sworn to protect.
Shadeseekers are the master infiltrators and spies that make use of the multiple souls inhabiting their body in order to be master assassins, venture to areas that no one else could reach, and even hunt down and transform the souls of rogue Fehntüm into soul trinkets that they can use to either bind their souls in eternal imprisonment or return to Soulbinders to completely obliterate the souls of those that runaway from Fehntüm society. Where Phantom Lords are masters of protecting multiple people at a single time from different parts of a battlefield, Shadeseekers are masters at killing multiple people at once and unlocking their complete potential as descendants of the Soulless, being mechanically identical to Phantom Rogues.
Soulbinders are the rarest type of Soulfused, but also amongst the most revered and most powerful within Fehntüm society. Soulbinders are created when a living Fehntüm communes with the souls of dead Fehntüm, making pacts with them and merging their own self with those of their ancestors, becoming mechanically identical to Undead Warlocks (but commonly take enchantment spells, which is them calling upon the spirits of dead Fehntüm to temporarily possess and mentally scar their enemies). Soulbinders bind the souls of the ancestors that they've fused with, bringing them temporarily to the physical world, creating avatars of their terrifying spirit forms to aid and protect themselves in combat, become one with undeadly energies, and be capable of both splitting their own soul from their body to ride the spirit of their bound spirit ancestors, as well as being able to defy death by obliterating and reforming their bodies when they'd normally die, exploding with necrotic energy and killing their enemies. Soulbinders are most commonly the leaders of Fehntüm settlements, as their bond with their ancestral spirits allows for them to have access to the knowledge possessed by dozens of generations that came before them and having a particularly close tie with Vecna in order to better lead their communities the way that their Dark Lord wishes them to be led.
Upon death, all of the souls that are bound to the physical body of the Soulfused merges into a singular entity in the Ethereal Plane, becoming more and more powerful and knowledgeable after every death. In fact, most Soulfused are bound to the souls of dozens of their ancestors, all of them contributing their experience, power, and knowledge to benefit Fehntüm society and Vecna's will to the best of their ability. Thus, Soulfused are effectively immortal, and the most powerful ones (most of them being the original Soulless) serve as advisors to Vecna, spiritual warlords and commanders, and the leaders of Fehntüm society. This makes fighting against and attempting to destroy any individual Soulfused nigh-impossible, as they keep coming back and getting even more powerful after every time they die.
Service After Death
After a Fehntüm dies, if Vecna doesn't choose to begin the process of turning them into Soulfused, their physical body magically dissolves and is converted into an incorporeal spirit body, becoming undead phantoms reflections of their previous forms. They then venture into the Ethereal Plane, directed by Vecna's "servant" Kossyuth to Vecna's armies of incorporeal undead, whereupon they join the armies and go to war with the servants of the Raven Queen in hopes of conquering all of the Shadowfell and promoting Vecna to the god of Life, Death, and Undeath and master of the afterlife system. The more powerful an individual was before death, the more powerful their incorporeal body is after they die. Occasionally, Vecna will appoint a handful or so of these Phantoms to serve a particular Soulfused, but otherwise, most of the "immortal souls" of the Vezyi die in battle with the servants of the Raven Queen within a month from the beginning of their second life.
This is no secret amongst Fehntüm society, and is actually why they're so devoted to Vecna's purpose in life. They know that if they become more experienced in life, they will be more powerful in death, and thus more likely to survive the brutal clashes with the servants of the Raven Queen. Beyond this, they also know that the most devout Fehntüm servants of Vecna can become completely immortal if they're converted to a Soulfused, which is a further incentive to serve Vecna. Due to their extremely loyal society, many Fehntüm actually look down on the Vezyi, as they're commonly known for abandoning Vecna after they've used up all of their free resurrections.
Okay, that's the new Fehntüm lore. Please let me know what you think! I'd love to hear thoughts on the revised lore and whether or not you prefer it to the previous version.
Hopefully I'll update Tor-eal even more later this week. Thanks for reading!
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3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
Okay, I've got updated Fehntüm racial stats! Please let me know what you think!
Fehntüm Traits
Your Fehntüm character has the following racial traits.
Ability Score Increase.
When determining your ability scores, you increase one of those scores by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or you increase three different scores by 1.
Age.
Fehntüm mature at the same rate as humans, but can live for up to 250 years of age.
Alignment.
Due to extreme societal pressures, Fehntüm are typically neutral evil, but may be any alignment.
Size.
Your size is either Medium or Small, chosen upon character creation.
Speed.
Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision.
You can see in dim light as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light out to a range of 90 feet. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Undying Resilience.
Your touch of undeath grants you the following benefits:
You have advantage on saving throws against disease and being poisoned, and you have resistance to poison and necrotic damage damage.
You don’t need to breathe.
You can go 10 days without food or drink.
You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in an inactive, motionless state, during which you retain consciousness.
Phasing
As a bonus action, you can call upon your spectral heritage to become partially incorporeal. This transformation lasts for 1 minute, until you die, or until you revert to your normal form as a bonus action. When you phase, you reduce any nonmagical, nonsilvered bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage that you take by an amount equal to half your proficiency bonus (rounded up). You also gain one additional benefit of your choice, chosen when you activate this feature:
You can move through creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. If you end your turn inside a creature or object, you take 5 (1d10) force damage and are shunted to the nearest unoccupied space.
You gain a flying speed equal to half your walking speed.
You can squeeze through a space of at least 1 inch in diameter.
Once you phase, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
Languages.
You can speak, read, write, and understand Common and Qellik (the language of the residents of the Underfell).
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
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Okay, I've got updated Fehntüm racial stats! Please let me know what you think!
Fehntüm Traits
Your Fehntüm character has the following racial traits.
Ability Score Increase.
When determining your ability scores, you increase one of those scores by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or you increase three different scores by 1.
Age.
Fehntüm mature at the same rate as humans, but can live for up to 250 years of age.
Alignment.
Due to extreme societal pressures, Fehntüm are typically neutral evil, but may be any alignment.
Size.
Your size is either Medium or Small, chosen upon character creation.
Speed.
Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision.
You can see in dim light as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light out to a range of 90 feet. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Undying Resilience.
Your touch of undeath grants you the following benefits:
You have advantage on saving throws against disease and being poisoned, and you have resistance to poison and necrotic damage damage.
You don’t need to breathe.
You can go 10 days without food or drink.
You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in an inactive, motionless state, during which you retain consciousness.
Phasing
As a bonus action, you can call upon your spectral heritage to become partially incorporeal. This transformation lasts for 1 minute, until you die, or until you revert to your normal form as a bonus action. When you phase, you reduce any nonmagical, nonsilvered bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage that you take by an amount equal to half your proficiency bonus (rounded up). You also gain one additional benefit of your choice, chosen when you activate this feature:
You can move through creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. If you end your turn inside a creature or object, you take 5 (1d10) force damage and are shunted to the nearest unoccupied space.
You gain a flying speed equal to half your walking speed.
You can squeeze through a space of at least 1 inch in diameter.
Once you phase, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
Languages.
You can speak, read, write, and understand Common and Qellik (the language of the residents of the Underfell).
from a flavor point of view, cool! from a balance point of view.....this race is like a warforged if the warforged was way better. way op.I would never allow it in my campaign. if you got rid of the phasing trait, it would be balanced. it you got rid of... the 4 hour long rest, it would be balanced(but still super powerful).I mean.... any flying speed at level one is already insane, even if its small. and phasing could be used to make quick work of dungeons by squeezing through cracks, floating through walls, and FLYING!and on top of that, poison res, no breathing, almost no food/water, and the equivalent of sentinals rest. its crazy. I dont mean to be rude, and its way more balanced than the last version.... but still sorta op
3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
It's still around somewhere. Might have gotten Imprisoned at one time or another, but it is probably just around doing its thing. There are probably cults that worship it, too.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
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I dont mean to pressure you, but is anything new coming to this thread soon?
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Puzzle:
3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
Disclaimer:This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I dont mean to pressure you, but is anything new coming to this thread soon?
I've recently been working on other projects. I have developed a bit more, but have been focusing on other stuff, recently.
Have I yet shared the information about The Realm of Dreams in this thread yet? Because, if I haven't, I can definitely do that.
Alright, got it. and I do not think so
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Puzzle:
3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
Sleep used to be freedom. Freedom from the horrid monsters of reality, where the mind floats in a nonexistent void and dreams up entire worlds and peoples. Sleep let the lowliest peasants be gods and let all of the worries of the mortal world temporarily fade away.
But not anymore.
Now . . . now It watches. It came from an incomprehensible alien dimension beyond the stars and brought a sliver of its home into our reality. It infected the Ethereal Plane by its very presence in our universe and steals our minds away when we sleep to observe and record our dreams and learn about our behavior.
Its servants observe our dreams every single night (and have for the past thousand years), imprison our minds in endless nightmares if we rebel against their master's aberrant realm, and experiment upon our minds endlessly, seeking to learn everything there is to know about our reality.
And it doesn't speak, verbally or mentally. We don't know its name.
"Ttwwuitn," we call it. "That-Thing-Which-Watches-Us-in-the-Night."
Ttwwuitn, the eldritch abomination. Ever watching, ever scheming, ever experimenting.
The Ever-Dreaming One, The Eye of the Far Realm, the Dreamer of Reality.
- Zellyn Norath, Female Felshen High Archivian of the Mental Library.
The World-Ripple
Since the disastrous Catastrophe, the Outer Planes, Astral Sea, Sigil, and the Fugue Plane have all had their ties to the Inner Planes severed, thus completely removing access between the Outer and Inner Planes. Not only did this cosmos-shaking event permanently end these planes' magical influence on the Inner Planes, but it also sent a ripple of magical energy throughout the connected multiverse, similarly to how the collision of two supermassive astronomical objects can warp space-time in such a way that can be detected across the entirety of the universe.
At first, this ripple of extraplanar energy didn't have much of an effect on the Inner Planes, barely being perceptible to most inhabitants of the Multiverse (more powerful creatures, especially extraplanar and immortal ones, were affected much more than weak creatures, such as the average commoner). Some slight changes occurred, such as randomly expanding or shrinking certain demiplanes, opening up more Fey and Shadow Crossings to the Feywild and Shadowfell respectively, and further blurring the lines between close planes of existence (allowing the Four Elemental Planes to bleed together more, allowing more people to survive in any individual Elemental Plane), but otherwise nothing else changed. This side-effect of the Great Catastrophe eventually became named by the most erudite scholars as the "World-Ripple", and the main side effects of the event were later understood as simply blurring the lines between the Inner Planes with each other (which were already much more interconnected than the Outer Planes ever were with themselves) and slightly altering the fundamental natures of various types of Extraplanar entities. The World-Ripple made it certain that the Great Catastrophe did not go unnoticed by the most powerful creatures . . . which proved to be both a boon and a bane for the mortal inhabitants of the Inner Planes.
The World-Ripple awoke, disturbed, and attracted the attention of certain entities that, before the Great Catastrophe, were either unconscious, dormant, or content to leave the mortal realm alone. The World-Ripple awoke the Tarrasque, allowing Archomentals, Archfey, and Lords of Undeath easier access to the Material Plane, stirred Tharizdun the Chained God and his many cults, and triggered the eventual release of Dendar the Night Serpent (and subsequent return of Ubtao to prevent her from destroying the world). However, no matter how awful these events were, none were quite as world-altering as what happened next; the creation of a new Plane of Existence inside the Inner Planes and summoning of an Elder Evil from the Far Realm.
Ttwwuitn, the Ever-Dreaming Eye
That-Which-Watches-Us-In-The-Night is an eldritch entity from the Far Realms, appearing in the Inner Planes as a giant star-sized eyeball with an iridescent purple-blue iris and void-black pupil that allows it to stare into your soul and read your mind. Ttwwuitin was attracted to the mortal realm by the World-Ripple, and sent its avatar through the bubble of Aether that protects the Inner Planes from the legions of Devils from the Outer Planes into the Ethereal Plane to observe the creatures that live in this reality and learn how this cosmology and its inhabitants function.
(Note: Ttwwuitn has no gender, but also is not what we would call "gender neutral". Ttwwuitn is just an "it" or "Ttwwuitn". Eldritch abominations from beyond the stars that cannot even comprehend a concept like language is incapable of having any sort of gender identity or pronouns, and is thus just an "it". Additionally, Ttwwuitn has no alignment, as its extreme power and alien nature makes the concept completely unfathomable to it. Just as humans cannot contemplate the morality of killing a single bacteria, Ttwwuitn cannot contemplate the concept of the morality of killing any humanoids.)
After wandering the Deep Ethereal and glimpsing into the magical fabric that makes up this reality, Ttwwuitn's avatar found a small demiplane floating in the realm that slightly resembled its home realm. This demiplane, occasionally called the Demiplane of Nightmares, was a part of the Ethereal Plane that had been warped by the energies of the Far Realm, and thus felt tangentially familiar to Ttwwuitn. Using its unfathomable depths of reality-altering powers, Ttwwuitn decided to make this demiplane the "home" of its avatar in this reality, expanding the Demiplane of Nightmares into the Plane of Dreams in order to accommodate its considerable power and size, as well as to aid it in its purpose in this realm; observing the world and the inhabitants thereof.
Ttwwuitn quickly got to work in changing the nature of its newfound home to allow for this task. Using its latent tie to the Far Realm, Ttwwuitn was able to channel more of its power from its true form in the Far Realm into its avatar in the Plane of Dreams in order to change the laws of the universe in ways that even it would normally not be able to alter. Ttwwuitn changed the Ethereal Plane to draw the souls of sleeping creatures into its domain, allowing it to observe them and experiment upon them through the use of carefully-crafted dreams designed to test the behavior and nature of the creatures in this reality. Ttwwuitn then created aberrant servants to aid in its goal of observing the behavior all of this universe.
The Realm of Dreams
The Plane of Dreams is a strange plane of existence, which is really saying something. It is a void shaped like a sphere, with the Avatar of Ttwwuitn always residing exactly in the center of it, being a giant alien eyeball the size of the Sun. Then, orbiting around the Avatar of Ttwwuitn are the Dream Bubbles, trillions of shimmering 3-dimensional oblong bubbles, one for every creature in all of the Inner Planes that dreams (not just humanoids, but also beasts and other non-sentient creatures that can dream). The size of these bubbles depend on the size of their inhabitant, but are always quite a bit bigger than the size of the individual that resides inside of them in order to give them room to move around (the Tarrasque's dream bubble is easily the largest single bubble, and the Tarrasque dreams almost all the time).
Dreamscapes and Dream Hubs
Dreamscapes are an innovation discovered by the Sheiohn Foulen (the international faction of benevolent psionic peoples and creatures). They are the result of a powerful psion banishing or slaying the servants of Ttwwuitn that normally skulk inside their dream bubble. This feat of mental power grants them the ability to freely manipulate objects and the setting of their Dream Bubble, allowing them to lucid dream at will.
Even more powerful psions or specially designed magical items are capable of even merging multiple Dream Bubbles together to allow for multiple people to interact with each other while asleep. The biggest Dream Hub, the Hive, is accessible only by those that possess telepathy or some other psionic power, so long as they fall asleep within a mile of a Sehnzule, which is a large psionic crystal found in the center of every town that is a member of the Sheiohn Foulen. The Hive is the conglomerate of millions of individual dream bubbles created through the collective psionic powers of the members of this international psionic faction. In their language, the Hive is known as the "Sheidar", pronounced as "Shay-dahr".
Natives of the Realm of Dreams
The first type, and most powerful, are the Dream Watchers, which look like miniature versions of Ttwwuitn, being giant, 5-foot diameter floating eyeballs that radiate emotions and can manipulate reality at will while in the Plane of Dreams. They are the observers of dreams, there is always at least one watching when you are dreaming, and they use their reality-warping powers to create the environments/setting of your dreams and their psychic aura of emotion-manipulation in order to create dreams with specific moods or themes, distinguishing normal dreams from nightmares.
The second type are the Dream Catchers, which appear to be giant floating human hands, with one notable alien feature; they are perfectly symmetrical, having one thumb on each side the hand. If someone manages to somehow escape their Dream Bubble or banish the Dream Watcher from their Dream Bubble, a Dream Catcher will be sent to either restrain them or kill their dream form (killing a sleeping person's dream form makes them wake up immediately with one exhaustion and none of the benefits of the long rest, if they were taking one).
Finally, and the rarest, are the Dream Nomads, which are Beholders that have left behind their physical forms and spend all of their time dreaming. Beholders don't have a Dream Bubbles, so Dream Nomads instead roam through the plane of existence and enter the dreams of other creatures, often resulting in some pretty strange dreams for the individuals that have had their Dream Bubbles intruded upon. Due to their dream-related reality-warping-powers, Dream Nomads are capable of replicating events and objects from Dream Bubbles that they enter while asleep, making their physical lairs bizarre locations filled with random collections of objects that the Beholder thought were interesting in whatever dream bubble they happened to enter. The servants of these Beholders, who tend to be cultists to Ttwwuitn that believe Beholders to be his purest children, keep them sustained while they sleep, feeding them while they're catatonic and keeping any treasure that the Nomad manages to manifest while sleeping.
To the Dream Nomads, Ttwwuitn is known as "The Panopticon", based on its positioning at the heart of the Realm of Dreams. They believe themselves to be the "True Spawn of the Panopticon", based on the prominence of their many eyes, and think of Ttwwuitn as the Herald of their homeland, the Far Realm, and that it will transform the Multiverse to fit its will.
Edit: Fixed some wording and expanded slightly on the Dreamscape sidebar.
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This is really cool! Why is Ttwwuitn observing the creatures of Tor-eal? Is it simply observing or does it have some sort of agenda?
That's purposefully left vague. However, I like to think that it is just trying to learn how this reality works. Like how a scientist might observe a culture of bacteria to learn from it, or how a kid might watch an ant farm to see how they act. It might have a hidden agenda, but it also might just be seeking knowledge for the purpose of seeking knowledge.
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How come the dream hubs are based on creature size and not lifespan or intellect or something like that?
Because the Dream Hub is actually a physical location inside of the Realm of Dreams and needs to be big enough to fit the body of the creature that is inside it. The Realm of Dreams is a part of the Inner Planes, so it's actually a physical plane, even if it generates mental constructs for its occupants to experience and is like a mix of a physical reality and a plane of existence like Limbo.
A Dream Hub functions like an omnidirectional treadmill of sorts (like the ones from Ready Player One, but functioning in all 3 dimensions). Dreams in this plane are sort of like pre-programmed Virtual Reality demiplanes, so they have to be at least large enough to fit the person/creature they're showing the dream to, as well as a couple Dream Watchers, and a tiny bit of extra space in case the Dreamer moves a bit unpredictably.
If the Realm of Dreams wasn't a physical location (like a part of the Astral Plane or the Outer Planes), the size of the Dream Hubs would probably be based off of the creature's Intelligence score or something like that. However, Psions can manipulate and expand Dream Hubs due to it being partially mental.
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I haven’t read the whole thing, but I have a question: with the barrier, do the souls of the dead just eventually drift to the borders of the barrier? If so, are they considered a line of defense? After a long time, would it eventually be plausible for this ever-growing number of spirits to actually take on the devil army?
I haven’t read the whole thing, but I have a question: with the barrier, do the souls of the dead just eventually drift to the borders of the barrier? If so, are they considered a line of defense? After a long time, would it eventually be plausible for this ever-growing number of spirits to actually take on the devil army?
Nothing gets through the barrier between the Inner Planes and the Outer Planes, if that's the thing you're referring to. The souls of the dead are "snatched" by the Vistaesh (the god of life/souls that is the combined vestiges of hundreds of dead gods) from the Deep Ethereal and taken to the Raven Queen to be sent into the Afterlife system in the Shadowfell.
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I haven’t read the whole thing, but I have a question: with the barrier, do the souls of the dead just eventually drift to the borders of the barrier? If so, are they considered a line of defense? After a long time, would it eventually be plausible for this ever-growing number of spirits to actually take on the devil army?
Nothing gets through the barrier between the Inner Planes and the Outer Planes, if that's the thing you're referring to. The souls of the dead are "snatched" by the Vistaesh (the god of life/souls that is the combined vestiges of hundreds of dead gods) from the Deep Ethereal and taken to the Raven Queen to be sent into the Afterlife system in the Shadowfell.
(This one is a bit different from the others. I had an idea for a region in a fantasy world earlier today, and found a location and some lore from Tor-eal that would make sense for it to fit into. I might do more of these later down the road if I like this one.)
The Black Desert
In the year 666 AGS (After the Great Sacrifice), Dendar the Night Serpent was released from her prison by her Yuan-Ti cultists. After she escaped the demiplane she had been imprisoned in for thousands of years, she devoured many of her followers, destroyed the homeland of the Tortles (the Snout of Omgar), and spent 5 days doing as much damage to the land of Chult as possible. On the fifth day of her destruction, her old rival, Ubtao the Mazemaker, returned to the Material Plane with his prophets/barae and was able to reimprison Dendar underneath the Peaks of Flame and returned to watch the gate between her demiplane and Chult to prevent her from ever escaping again.
After she was trapped once more, Dendar became so furious that she used her little remaining power to cause the Peaks of Flame that she was imprisoned under to erupt. The volcanoes continued to do so for the entirety of the next year. Ubtao decided to shield the rest of the world from being blanketed in volcanic winter, and used his godly power to cause the ash to settle in the area around the Peaks of Flame (stretching all the way to Lake Luo to the northeast, the Valley of Lost Honor to the west, and the Cauldron to the southwest). Most of the ash collected in/around the Valley of Embers and the Land of Ash and Smoke, drastically altering their landscapes and ecosystems. On average in areas near the volcanoes (Valley of Embers, Land of Ash and Smoke), the ashfalls deposited around 3 feet of volcanic ash every day.
This huge region of the continent became blanketed with so much as that it killed off all inhabitants that could not escape the area quickly enough. Lake Luo was filled with enough acidic volcanic ash that its extremely basic waters were neutralized, and its waters became livable. Entire settlements, like Omu, were buried underneath hundreds of feet of volcanic ash, and all of their inhabitants were killed. There was so much ash that it turned jungles into hellish black deserts, complete with "sand" dunes made of volcanic ash and miles-long rivers of lava spilling their way into the ocean. Acid rain covered this region of the subcontinent, melting away large sections of the mountains and killing parts of the jungle that managed to survive the heavy ashfalls.
This region of Chult have collectively become known as "the Black Desert" (or sometimes "the Ash Desert") due to how Dendar's release turned much of the subcontinent into a desert, from the dunes of volcanic ash in the Land of Ash and Smoke, to the Petrified Forest of Ataaz Yklwazi, to the Ashtop Mesas of the Valley of Lost Honor where dwarven strongholds are carved into the sides of the basalt canyon walls next to rivers of lava (inspired by the Mesa Verde ruins). In much of the Black Desert, the volcanic ash was so thick and tall that Ubtao sped up the process of sedimentation for it, covering the land in several dozens of feet of ashstone (like sandstone, but made of volcanic ash and pitch-black in color), which was then often covered in a few feet of volcanic ash. Over the centuries, erosion, wind, rivers, and lava have drastically altered the landscape, creating the Ash Dunes of the Land of Ash and Smoke, the canyons and mesas of the Valley of Lost Honor, the Obsidian Rivers of the Cauldron, and the Ashmoors of the Valley of Embers.
Inhabitants of the Black Desert
Though the initial eruptions of the Peaks of Flame killed practically all inhabitants of Chult within a 100-mile radius of the supervolcanoes, over the past few centuries, the area has slowly become more and more inhabited by the creatures and races best suited/adapted to survive in these environments. Here is an overview of the main sentient creatures that now reside in this region:
Firenewts. As firenewts are immune to heat and require moisture, they can fairly easily survive in the Cauldron and Valley of Embers. They're nomadic hunter-gatherers that wander the Ashmoors, surviving off of edible mosses that grow in this region of Chult, small crustaceans and birds, and Giant Fire Beetles. They still worship Imix and other Fire Archomentals/Primordials, create weapons and armor out of enchanted obsidian that they gather from the streams of lava from the Peaks of Fire, and use domestic Giant Striders as mounts. Due to centuries of trading with outside cultures/races (Tortles, Yuan-Ti, Chultans, Tabaxi) most adult Firenewts now also speak Common and are True Neutral instead of Neutral Evil.
Yuan-Ti. Though hundreds of Chultan Yuan-Ti were devoured by Dendar when she was released and thousands more were killed by the ashfalls, the Yuan-Ti have gradually begun repopulating this region of the subcontinent; specifically, the area that previously was known as the Land of Ash and Smoke and the desert that now covers Omu. These Yuan-Ti have adapted to their environment, with their scales turning obsidian-black over the past millennia, making them expert ambushers. Not only has their physiology altered slightly, but they have also started making buildings and statues out of the basalt from the Peaks of Flame. Most notably is the Black Pyramid, a 1,000-foot-tall basalt pyramid built on the ruins of Omu. The pyramid is the house of the government of this tribe of Yuan-Ti, its entrance is guarded by giant-cobra-shaped Obsidian Golems, and it houses the ruler of this settlement of Yuan-Ti; the Yuan-Ti Malison Mummy Lord that wields a Flame Tongue, known only as "The Nameless One." (See sidebar below for more information about him.)
Tortles. Ever since the Snout of Omgar was destroyed, the Tortles have been left without a homeland. A few hundred Tortles that lived on the mainland of Chult were able to survive Dendar's release from imprisonment, and eventually became one of the main inhabitants of the region previously known as the Cauldron, finally settling down to a single location to build a few settlements. Over the past few centuries, the Tortles have slowly advanced technologically and culturally. They trade with the Dwarves of the Valley of Lost Honor for metal tools and weapons, build settlements out of a special type of concrete made from volcanic ash, and mainly eat fish, seaweed, and vegetables. (I'm abandoning the idea of Lake Tortles. They were stupid, and don't fit my current image of the world.)
Dwarves. Over the past millennia, Valley of Lost Honor has become repopulated by the Albino Dwarves of Chult, even predating the eruption of the Peaks of Flame. Having recovered their old forge, Hrakhamar, and the surrounding area that had been overrun by Firenewt worshippers of Imix, the Dwarves decided to up their defenses and install protections against future volcanic eruptions (air filtration systems, adamantine structural reinforcements, better insulation to keep the forge cool, magical wards, emergency exits, etc). Over the 600+ years they had to convert Hrakhamar into a true dwarven fortress, this tribe of albino dwarves' stronghold became known as "Fort Firesteel," home to Clan Firesteel and its mines and forges. After the eruption of the Peaks of Flame, Fort Firesteel was far enough away from the supervolcanoes and high enough in elevation that they were able to avoid its worst effects, but they still felt the impact of this calamitous event. Ash still covered much of the landscape (even though this wasn't nearly as bad as it was in the Valley of Embers or Land of Ash and Smoke), crops that were grown on the surface were killed, and the few Chultan settlements found in the Valley of Lost Honor were completely buried by ashfalls, creating many Chultans to seek refuge in/around Fort Firesteel. Now, many Dwarves of Clan Firesteel and Chultans (as well as half-Dwarven Chultans) have spread out more through the new mesas and canyons that make up the Valley of Lost Honor and began carving settlements into the sides of cliffs. (Imagine Mesa Verde, but bigger and with black sandstone and volcanic ash everywhere.
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I’m going to post here so I get notifications when new lore comes
Hi everyone! I'm working up the will to finalize my signature, so... I guess this will be the signature for now
Okay, it's been awhile since I added lore to this thread, but I've come back with some re-imagining for the Fehntüm in order to make them equal in awesomeness to the Vezyi. Previously, the Fehntüm were just a Necromantic-Magocracy with an "Arcane Council" that was in charge of their settlements, which, in my opinion and that of my players, is far less cool than that of the culture I came up with for the Vezyi, which functions around the Vezyi having multiple free resurrections, being led by Necromantic-Priests of Vecna that send them on quests throughout the cosmos (typically hunting down/spying on enemies or searching for lost magic items, like the Eye of Vecna), and having Vezyi that somehow (possibly accidentally) cheated the "Death Pardon" system being banished and hunted down by "Vezyi Palmbearers" (bounty hunters that cut off the hands of outcast Vezyi, which are known as "Vulek") to return the amputated hands and scalp of the Vulek to the Iremonger that accidentally created them (turning the returned hands into crawling claws and creating capes, robes, and purses out of the forehead-skin of the Vuleks).
Basically, the Fehntüm were boring before, and the Vezyi were overloaded with a ton of cool lore that I somehow managed to come up with.
After a few months of contemplating a way to make the Fehntüm as cool as the Vezyi, I finally came up with something about a week ago, and have been ironing it out since them. Now that I've finally gotten it more-or-less completed, I feel comfortable presenting to the few people who still follow this thread the New and Improved Fehntüm Cultural Lore and Mechanics!
Revised Fehntüm Lore
Living deep below the surface of the dreary plane known as the Shadowfell, the servants of Vecna wage endless war with the servants of the Raven Queen. The most devout Shadar-Kai followers of the Raven Queen are elevated by her Divine Majesty into angelic forms, appearing as Black-Raven-Winged Angels with the physical bodies of beautiful, muscular Shadar-Kai, who command armies of winged Kenku, orders of undead-hunting paladins, clerics, and rangers, and others who have devoted their lives to holding back the tides of undead armies sent by the Dark Lord of Undeath, the dreaded God-Lich Vecna. While the forces of Letherna the Raven Queen live upon the surface world of the dark Shadowfell, the ever-churning, deep-haunting hordes of Vecna's undead armies are banished to the impossibly-dark stony depths of the Underfell, the Underdark of the Shadowfell.
As the Master of Undeath, the King of Necromancy, Lord Vecna has created a nigh-flawless society beneath the surface of the Shadowfell to fuel his unholy goal of conquering all of the Shadowfell and killing the Raven Queen, once and for all. In order to do this, he has created two distinct races and cultures that act as undead-creating factories to sustain his hordes of undead that are constantly being struck down by the servants of the Raven Queen. These races are the Vezyi and the Fehntüm, both tied to a type of undead creatures; corporeal and incorporeal respectively. While the Vezyi have been bred and trained to act as zombies and revenants that seem to constantly come back up from the brink of death to fight the endless war against the Raven Queen's followers, the Fehntüm serve a distinct purpose; to not just come back when they die, but to become increasingly more experienced and powerful in every incarnation and generation that the phantom-touched lives through. Though the Vezyi are designed to serve as the infantry and endless hordes of undead that clash against the armies of the Raven Queen, the Fehntüm are Vecna's secret weapon that may win him the war for good, if only they can become powerful enough and not be driven to the abyss of madness in the process.
Origins of the Fehntüm
As with the Vezyi, the Fehntüm can trace their origin back to the Rebirth of Vecna in the calamitous year of 234 AGS (After the Great Sacrifice). Long ago, while Zilya Darkcord, the servant of the long-dead god Vecna (after his untimely defeat at the hands of the Lady of Pain in Sigil), the corrupted goblin priestess to the dormant vestige of Vecna was scheming and preparing the disastrous ritual that eventually became known as the Day of Renascence. Though the faintly-conscious mind of the Vecna helped inspire the great sacrifice of souls that helped awaken and restore Vecna to a physical form worthy of holding a god, Zilya had to seek out the most powerful necromancers active in the realms to get the eldritch knowledge and pure arcane power necessary to complete the ritual. The exact number and names of these ancient necromancers has been lost to time, but they are now known collectively as the "Soulless", for they gave up their souls to Vecna upon his re-emergence as the God of Undeath.
After Zilya Darkcord, with the help of the Soulless, completed the ritual sacrifice of the tens of thousands of souls required to restore the vestige of Vecna to godhood, Vecna created a planar rift that sucked himself, Zilya, the cult of followers that Zilya Darkcord amassed to welcome Vecna upon his return, and the corpses of the thousands of sacrificed into his home domain, the Underfell. He reanimated the corpses of those that were sacrificed to him as his new, personal undead army of zombies, wights, and various other corporeal undead and used his necromantic godly powers to transform his cultists into the Vezyi, corporeal-undead-touched humanoids that are engineered to be the perfect living-factory of souls and bodies for Vecna's eternal war with the Raven Queen. Then, using his divine powers, he rewarded Zilya Darkcord by granting her the secrets of lichdom and elevated her to the status of a Demigod. However, he had a different "reward" in mind for the dozens of necromancers that worked to restore him to godhood. He ripped their souls out of their bodies, granted their souls immortality and perfected their memories, and then caused their souls to meld with the Soulless. This process became known as "Soulmelding", which Vecna only uses on his most devout mortal necromancer followers, which prevents their souls from ever being snatched by the Vistaesh or sent to the Raven Queen's afterlife system.
These "Soulmelded" necromancers were the ancestors of the Fehntüm, as their phantom-touched nature became inherited by their bloodlines, creating a new, unique race of humanoids with the powers of calling upon their spirit form while still living.
Immortal Souls
Though the modern generations of Fehntüm don't possess the complete ghostly powers that were bestowed upon them by Vecna those hundreds of years ago, they did inherit lesser versions of the many different abilities that Vecna blessed the Soulless with, including their immortal souls. Unlike the Vezyi who avoid death at all costs in order to live as long as they can, nearly all Fehntüm not only completely accept the inevitability of the failure of their physical forms, but also embrace it and look forward to the day that they transcend the restrictions of the mortal form. Unlike most other races, the Fehntüm are much more powerful in their spirit form than their physical forms, causing individual Fehntüm to actually be more powerful after they die than during their mortal life. Furthermore, occasionally after a Fehntüm that Vecna has decided was an exceptional servant during their life dies, Vecna will Soulmeld their spirit and soul with the body of a powerful living Fehntüm, creating a unique and extremely powerful and valuable servant known as a "Soulfused" (or "Silfuhsan" in their language).
A Soulfused comes in three different varieties; a Phantom Lord, a Shadeseeker, or a Soulbinder.
Upon death, all of the souls that are bound to the physical body of the Soulfused merges into a singular entity in the Ethereal Plane, becoming more and more powerful and knowledgeable after every death. In fact, most Soulfused are bound to the souls of dozens of their ancestors, all of them contributing their experience, power, and knowledge to benefit Fehntüm society and Vecna's will to the best of their ability. Thus, Soulfused are effectively immortal, and the most powerful ones (most of them being the original Soulless) serve as advisors to Vecna, spiritual warlords and commanders, and the leaders of Fehntüm society. This makes fighting against and attempting to destroy any individual Soulfused nigh-impossible, as they keep coming back and getting even more powerful after every time they die.
Service After Death
After a Fehntüm dies, if Vecna doesn't choose to begin the process of turning them into Soulfused, their physical body magically dissolves and is converted into an incorporeal spirit body, becoming undead phantoms reflections of their previous forms. They then venture into the Ethereal Plane, directed by Vecna's "servant" Kossyuth to Vecna's armies of incorporeal undead, whereupon they join the armies and go to war with the servants of the Raven Queen in hopes of conquering all of the Shadowfell and promoting Vecna to the god of Life, Death, and Undeath and master of the afterlife system. The more powerful an individual was before death, the more powerful their incorporeal body is after they die. Occasionally, Vecna will appoint a handful or so of these Phantoms to serve a particular Soulfused, but otherwise, most of the "immortal souls" of the Vezyi die in battle with the servants of the Raven Queen within a month from the beginning of their second life.
This is no secret amongst Fehntüm society, and is actually why they're so devoted to Vecna's purpose in life. They know that if they become more experienced in life, they will be more powerful in death, and thus more likely to survive the brutal clashes with the servants of the Raven Queen. Beyond this, they also know that the most devout Fehntüm servants of Vecna can become completely immortal if they're converted to a Soulfused, which is a further incentive to serve Vecna. Due to their extremely loyal society, many Fehntüm actually look down on the Vezyi, as they're commonly known for abandoning Vecna after they've used up all of their free resurrections.
Okay, that's the new Fehntüm lore. Please let me know what you think! I'd love to hear thoughts on the revised lore and whether or not you prefer it to the previous version.
Hopefully I'll update Tor-eal even more later this week. Thanks for reading!
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
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a great read! thanks for the update, super cool
Puzzle:
3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
I am posting here so that I can get new lore when it comes out!
Okay, I've got updated Fehntüm racial stats! Please let me know what you think!
Fehntüm Traits
Your Fehntüm character has the following racial traits.Ability Score Increase.
When determining your ability scores, you increase one of those scores by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or you increase three different scores by 1.
Age.
Fehntüm mature at the same rate as humans, but can live for up to 250 years of age.
Alignment.
Due to extreme societal pressures, Fehntüm are typically neutral evil, but may be any alignment.
Size.
Your size is either Medium or Small, chosen upon character creation.
Speed.
Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision.
You can see in dim light as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light out to a range of 90 feet. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Undying Resilience.
Your touch of undeath grants you the following benefits:
Phasing
As a bonus action, you can call upon your spectral heritage to become partially incorporeal. This transformation lasts for 1 minute, until you die, or until you revert to your normal form as a bonus action. When you phase, you reduce any nonmagical, nonsilvered bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage that you take by an amount equal to half your proficiency bonus (rounded up). You also gain one additional benefit of your choice, chosen when you activate this feature:
Once you phase, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
Languages.
You can speak, read, write, and understand Common and Qellik (the language of the residents of the Underfell).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
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from a flavor point of view, cool! from a balance point of view.....this race is like a warforged if the warforged was way better. way op.I would never allow it in my campaign. if you got rid of the phasing trait, it would be balanced. it you got rid of... the 4 hour long rest, it would be balanced(but still super powerful).I mean.... any flying speed at level one is already insane, even if its small. and phasing could be used to make quick work of dungeons by squeezing through cracks, floating through walls, and FLYING!and on top of that, poison res, no breathing, almost no food/water, and the equivalent of sentinals rest. its crazy. I dont mean to be rude, and its way more balanced than the last version.... but still sorta op
Puzzle:
3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
what happened to the taresque?
It's still around somewhere. Might have gotten Imprisoned at one time or another, but it is probably just around doing its thing. There are probably cults that worship it, too.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
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I dont mean to pressure you, but is anything new coming to this thread soon?
Puzzle:
3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
I've recently been working on other projects. I have developed a bit more, but have been focusing on other stuff, recently.
Have I yet shared the information about The Realm of Dreams in this thread yet? Because, if I haven't, I can definitely do that.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Alright, got it. and I do not think so
Puzzle:
3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
The Realm of Dreams
Sleep used to be freedom. Freedom from the horrid monsters of reality, where the mind floats in a nonexistent void and dreams up entire worlds and peoples. Sleep let the lowliest peasants be gods and let all of the worries of the mortal world temporarily fade away.
But not anymore.
Now . . . now It watches. It came from an incomprehensible alien dimension beyond the stars and brought a sliver of its home into our reality. It infected the Ethereal Plane by its very presence in our universe and steals our minds away when we sleep to observe and record our dreams and learn about our behavior.
Its servants observe our dreams every single night (and have for the past thousand years), imprison our minds in endless nightmares if we rebel against their master's aberrant realm, and experiment upon our minds endlessly, seeking to learn everything there is to know about our reality.
And it doesn't speak, verbally or mentally. We don't know its name.
"Ttwwuitn," we call it. "That-Thing-Which-Watches-Us-in-the-Night."
Ttwwuitn, the eldritch abomination. Ever watching, ever scheming, ever experimenting.
The Ever-Dreaming One, The Eye of the Far Realm, the Dreamer of Reality.
- Zellyn Norath, Female Felshen High Archivian of the Mental Library.
The World-Ripple
Since the disastrous Catastrophe, the Outer Planes, Astral Sea, Sigil, and the Fugue Plane have all had their ties to the Inner Planes severed, thus completely removing access between the Outer and Inner Planes. Not only did this cosmos-shaking event permanently end these planes' magical influence on the Inner Planes, but it also sent a ripple of magical energy throughout the connected multiverse, similarly to how the collision of two supermassive astronomical objects can warp space-time in such a way that can be detected across the entirety of the universe.
At first, this ripple of extraplanar energy didn't have much of an effect on the Inner Planes, barely being perceptible to most inhabitants of the Multiverse (more powerful creatures, especially extraplanar and immortal ones, were affected much more than weak creatures, such as the average commoner). Some slight changes occurred, such as randomly expanding or shrinking certain demiplanes, opening up more Fey and Shadow Crossings to the Feywild and Shadowfell respectively, and further blurring the lines between close planes of existence (allowing the Four Elemental Planes to bleed together more, allowing more people to survive in any individual Elemental Plane), but otherwise nothing else changed. This side-effect of the Great Catastrophe eventually became named by the most erudite scholars as the "World-Ripple", and the main side effects of the event were later understood as simply blurring the lines between the Inner Planes with each other (which were already much more interconnected than the Outer Planes ever were with themselves) and slightly altering the fundamental natures of various types of Extraplanar entities. The World-Ripple made it certain that the Great Catastrophe did not go unnoticed by the most powerful creatures . . . which proved to be both a boon and a bane for the mortal inhabitants of the Inner Planes.
The World-Ripple awoke, disturbed, and attracted the attention of certain entities that, before the Great Catastrophe, were either unconscious, dormant, or content to leave the mortal realm alone. The World-Ripple awoke the Tarrasque, allowing Archomentals, Archfey, and Lords of Undeath easier access to the Material Plane, stirred Tharizdun the Chained God and his many cults, and triggered the eventual release of Dendar the Night Serpent (and subsequent return of Ubtao to prevent her from destroying the world). However, no matter how awful these events were, none were quite as world-altering as what happened next; the creation of a new Plane of Existence inside the Inner Planes and summoning of an Elder Evil from the Far Realm.
Ttwwuitn, the Ever-Dreaming Eye
That-Which-Watches-Us-In-The-Night is an eldritch entity from the Far Realms, appearing in the Inner Planes as a giant star-sized eyeball with an iridescent purple-blue iris and void-black pupil that allows it to stare into your soul and read your mind. Ttwwuitin was attracted to the mortal realm by the World-Ripple, and sent its avatar through the bubble of Aether that protects the Inner Planes from the legions of Devils from the Outer Planes into the Ethereal Plane to observe the creatures that live in this reality and learn how this cosmology and its inhabitants function.
(Note: Ttwwuitn has no gender, but also is not what we would call "gender neutral". Ttwwuitn is just an "it" or "Ttwwuitn". Eldritch abominations from beyond the stars that cannot even comprehend a concept like language is incapable of having any sort of gender identity or pronouns, and is thus just an "it". Additionally, Ttwwuitn has no alignment, as its extreme power and alien nature makes the concept completely unfathomable to it. Just as humans cannot contemplate the morality of killing a single bacteria, Ttwwuitn cannot contemplate the concept of the morality of killing any humanoids.)
After wandering the Deep Ethereal and glimpsing into the magical fabric that makes up this reality, Ttwwuitn's avatar found a small demiplane floating in the realm that slightly resembled its home realm. This demiplane, occasionally called the Demiplane of Nightmares, was a part of the Ethereal Plane that had been warped by the energies of the Far Realm, and thus felt tangentially familiar to Ttwwuitn. Using its unfathomable depths of reality-altering powers, Ttwwuitn decided to make this demiplane the "home" of its avatar in this reality, expanding the Demiplane of Nightmares into the Plane of Dreams in order to accommodate its considerable power and size, as well as to aid it in its purpose in this realm; observing the world and the inhabitants thereof.
Ttwwuitn quickly got to work in changing the nature of its newfound home to allow for this task. Using its latent tie to the Far Realm, Ttwwuitn was able to channel more of its power from its true form in the Far Realm into its avatar in the Plane of Dreams in order to change the laws of the universe in ways that even it would normally not be able to alter. Ttwwuitn changed the Ethereal Plane to draw the souls of sleeping creatures into its domain, allowing it to observe them and experiment upon them through the use of carefully-crafted dreams designed to test the behavior and nature of the creatures in this reality. Ttwwuitn then created aberrant servants to aid in its goal of observing the behavior all of this universe.
The Realm of Dreams
The Plane of Dreams is a strange plane of existence, which is really saying something. It is a void shaped like a sphere, with the Avatar of Ttwwuitn always residing exactly in the center of it, being a giant alien eyeball the size of the Sun. Then, orbiting around the Avatar of Ttwwuitn are the Dream Bubbles, trillions of shimmering 3-dimensional oblong bubbles, one for every creature in all of the Inner Planes that dreams (not just humanoids, but also beasts and other non-sentient creatures that can dream). The size of these bubbles depend on the size of their inhabitant, but are always quite a bit bigger than the size of the individual that resides inside of them in order to give them room to move around (the Tarrasque's dream bubble is easily the largest single bubble, and the Tarrasque dreams almost all the time).
Natives of the Realm of Dreams
The first type, and most powerful, are the Dream Watchers, which look like miniature versions of Ttwwuitn, being giant, 5-foot diameter floating eyeballs that radiate emotions and can manipulate reality at will while in the Plane of Dreams. They are the observers of dreams, there is always at least one watching when you are dreaming, and they use their reality-warping powers to create the environments/setting of your dreams and their psychic aura of emotion-manipulation in order to create dreams with specific moods or themes, distinguishing normal dreams from nightmares.
The second type are the Dream Catchers, which appear to be giant floating human hands, with one notable alien feature; they are perfectly symmetrical, having one thumb on each side the hand. If someone manages to somehow escape their Dream Bubble or banish the Dream Watcher from their Dream Bubble, a Dream Catcher will be sent to either restrain them or kill their dream form (killing a sleeping person's dream form makes them wake up immediately with one exhaustion and none of the benefits of the long rest, if they were taking one).
Finally, and the rarest, are the Dream Nomads, which are Beholders that have left behind their physical forms and spend all of their time dreaming. Beholders don't have a Dream Bubbles, so Dream Nomads instead roam through the plane of existence and enter the dreams of other creatures, often resulting in some pretty strange dreams for the individuals that have had their Dream Bubbles intruded upon. Due to their dream-related reality-warping-powers, Dream Nomads are capable of replicating events and objects from Dream Bubbles that they enter while asleep, making their physical lairs bizarre locations filled with random collections of objects that the Beholder thought were interesting in whatever dream bubble they happened to enter. The servants of these Beholders, who tend to be cultists to Ttwwuitn that believe Beholders to be his purest children, keep them sustained while they sleep, feeding them while they're catatonic and keeping any treasure that the Nomad manages to manifest while sleeping.
To the Dream Nomads, Ttwwuitn is known as "The Panopticon", based on its positioning at the heart of the Realm of Dreams. They believe themselves to be the "True Spawn of the Panopticon", based on the prominence of their many eyes, and think of Ttwwuitn as the Herald of their homeland, the Far Realm, and that it will transform the Multiverse to fit its will.
Edit: Fixed some wording and expanded slightly on the Dreamscape sidebar.
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This is really cool! Why is Ttwwuitn observing the creatures of Tor-eal? Is it simply observing or does it have some sort of agenda?
That's purposefully left vague. However, I like to think that it is just trying to learn how this reality works. Like how a scientist might observe a culture of bacteria to learn from it, or how a kid might watch an ant farm to see how they act. It might have a hidden agenda, but it also might just be seeking knowledge for the purpose of seeking knowledge.
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How come the dream hubs are based on creature size and not lifespan or intellect or something like that?
Because the Dream Hub is actually a physical location inside of the Realm of Dreams and needs to be big enough to fit the body of the creature that is inside it. The Realm of Dreams is a part of the Inner Planes, so it's actually a physical plane, even if it generates mental constructs for its occupants to experience and is like a mix of a physical reality and a plane of existence like Limbo.
A Dream Hub functions like an omnidirectional treadmill of sorts (like the ones from Ready Player One, but functioning in all 3 dimensions). Dreams in this plane are sort of like pre-programmed Virtual Reality demiplanes, so they have to be at least large enough to fit the person/creature they're showing the dream to, as well as a couple Dream Watchers, and a tiny bit of extra space in case the Dreamer moves a bit unpredictably.
If the Realm of Dreams wasn't a physical location (like a part of the Astral Plane or the Outer Planes), the size of the Dream Hubs would probably be based off of the creature's Intelligence score or something like that. However, Psions can manipulate and expand Dream Hubs due to it being partially mental.
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I haven’t read the whole thing, but I have a question: with the barrier, do the souls of the dead just eventually drift to the borders of the barrier? If so, are they considered a line of defense? After a long time, would it eventually be plausible for this ever-growing number of spirits to actually take on the devil army?
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Nothing gets through the barrier between the Inner Planes and the Outer Planes, if that's the thing you're referring to. The souls of the dead are "snatched" by the Vistaesh (the god of life/souls that is the combined vestiges of hundreds of dead gods) from the Deep Ethereal and taken to the Raven Queen to be sent into the Afterlife system in the Shadowfell.
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Cool, thank you!
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(This one is a bit different from the others. I had an idea for a region in a fantasy world earlier today, and found a location and some lore from Tor-eal that would make sense for it to fit into. I might do more of these later down the road if I like this one.)
The Black Desert
In the year 666 AGS (After the Great Sacrifice), Dendar the Night Serpent was released from her prison by her Yuan-Ti cultists. After she escaped the demiplane she had been imprisoned in for thousands of years, she devoured many of her followers, destroyed the homeland of the Tortles (the Snout of Omgar), and spent 5 days doing as much damage to the land of Chult as possible. On the fifth day of her destruction, her old rival, Ubtao the Mazemaker, returned to the Material Plane with his prophets/barae and was able to reimprison Dendar underneath the Peaks of Flame and returned to watch the gate between her demiplane and Chult to prevent her from ever escaping again.
After she was trapped once more, Dendar became so furious that she used her little remaining power to cause the Peaks of Flame that she was imprisoned under to erupt. The volcanoes continued to do so for the entirety of the next year. Ubtao decided to shield the rest of the world from being blanketed in volcanic winter, and used his godly power to cause the ash to settle in the area around the Peaks of Flame (stretching all the way to Lake Luo to the northeast, the Valley of Lost Honor to the west, and the Cauldron to the southwest). Most of the ash collected in/around the Valley of Embers and the Land of Ash and Smoke, drastically altering their landscapes and ecosystems. On average in areas near the volcanoes (Valley of Embers, Land of Ash and Smoke), the ashfalls deposited around 3 feet of volcanic ash every day.
This huge region of the continent became blanketed with so much as that it killed off all inhabitants that could not escape the area quickly enough. Lake Luo was filled with enough acidic volcanic ash that its extremely basic waters were neutralized, and its waters became livable. Entire settlements, like Omu, were buried underneath hundreds of feet of volcanic ash, and all of their inhabitants were killed. There was so much ash that it turned jungles into hellish black deserts, complete with "sand" dunes made of volcanic ash and miles-long rivers of lava spilling their way into the ocean. Acid rain covered this region of the subcontinent, melting away large sections of the mountains and killing parts of the jungle that managed to survive the heavy ashfalls.
This region of Chult have collectively become known as "the Black Desert" (or sometimes "the Ash Desert") due to how Dendar's release turned much of the subcontinent into a desert, from the dunes of volcanic ash in the Land of Ash and Smoke, to the Petrified Forest of Ataaz Yklwazi, to the Ashtop Mesas of the Valley of Lost Honor where dwarven strongholds are carved into the sides of the basalt canyon walls next to rivers of lava (inspired by the Mesa Verde ruins). In much of the Black Desert, the volcanic ash was so thick and tall that Ubtao sped up the process of sedimentation for it, covering the land in several dozens of feet of ashstone (like sandstone, but made of volcanic ash and pitch-black in color), which was then often covered in a few feet of volcanic ash. Over the centuries, erosion, wind, rivers, and lava have drastically altered the landscape, creating the Ash Dunes of the Land of Ash and Smoke, the canyons and mesas of the Valley of Lost Honor, the Obsidian Rivers of the Cauldron, and the Ashmoors of the Valley of Embers.
Inhabitants of the Black Desert
Though the initial eruptions of the Peaks of Flame killed practically all inhabitants of Chult within a 100-mile radius of the supervolcanoes, over the past few centuries, the area has slowly become more and more inhabited by the creatures and races best suited/adapted to survive in these environments. Here is an overview of the main sentient creatures that now reside in this region:
After the eruption of the Peaks of Flame, Fort Firesteel was far enough away from the supervolcanoes and high enough in elevation that they were able to avoid its worst effects, but they still felt the impact of this calamitous event. Ash still covered much of the landscape (even though this wasn't nearly as bad as it was in the Valley of Embers or Land of Ash and Smoke), crops that were grown on the surface were killed, and the few Chultan settlements found in the Valley of Lost Honor were completely buried by ashfalls, creating many Chultans to seek refuge in/around Fort Firesteel. Now, many Dwarves of Clan Firesteel and Chultans (as well as half-Dwarven Chultans) have spread out more through the new mesas and canyons that make up the Valley of Lost Honor and began carving settlements into the sides of cliffs. (Imagine Mesa Verde, but bigger and with black sandstone and volcanic ash everywhere.
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