Latest Posts by post-maester - Page 6

Progress continues!

Nothing too new here, but I finished some more Mark III marines from the Burning of Prospero box for my pre-Heresy Emperor’s Children. I did magnetize all of these ones except for the legionary with the vexillum. I figured I would keep the vexilla for marines that will only be carrying bolt guns to give some of them a little more interest.

I think the custom Emperor’s Children pieces still work alright for the sergeant in Mark III armour even though the torso and helmet are technically Mark IV variants. the left shoulder, however is still a custom Mark III piece so no problem there.

You may also notice that I added a sculpted “III” to the sergeant’s right pauldron. I picked some of these up 3D printed from Shapeways. There’s a lot of things on that site that you can use to customize an army. This was a nice way for me to avoid a little more freehanding and instead use something that looks a little nicer :). Unfortunately I could have used one for the Mark IV sergeant I already painted but all well. That one’s done now! I figure I’ll save them for special characters anyways rather than use them on everyone. That way characters stand out more if they don’t already have a custom shoulder piece.

I also painted and magnetized a bunch of weapon options for the sergeant including a thunder hammer, but I didn’t add all those pictures to this post. All those weapons are compatible with the other sergeant as well which is really cool! The only difference between the Mark III and Mark IV hands is a couple tiny rivets anyway so it doesn’t really look like they don’t belong together.

With these 5 finished I now have an even number of Mark IV and Mark III tactical marines painted at 10 each. That’s 20 of an overall 60 marines to paint. Not too bad but still a long ways to go! I might switch focus now to the Betrayal at Calth box exclusively before doing anything else from the Burning of Prospero Box. We’ll see if I can keep my stamina up for painting purple :).

I think next however will be the Contemptor dreadnought from Betrayal at Calth since it will be a little different and it means I would have finished all the Emperor’s Children I need to in order to use as proxies for the Word Bearers and be able to finally give the game a try!

I’ll probably post a teaser picture of that relatively soon, but until then I just wanted to add one more picture of the power sword I painted for the sergeant in this photo set because I think the lightning effect came out a little better than last time.

Thousand Sons Tactical Squad

How do you think the different primarchs flirt?

How does the different primarchs flirt:

Lion - The lion is the most asexual person to have ever existed and has never been attracted to anyone, but he has thought a lot about it. He secretly wishes he could find that special lord or lady that he can court and spoil and be chivalrous to. 

? - Insert the worst kink you could possibly imagine.

Fulgrim - Touch. He will take every opportunity to be close to the person he’s into. And that is in sharp contrast to him since he won't tolerate being touched otherwise.

Perturabo - Gifts. Handmade things that are specifically tailored to what he thinks you like. Will never ask what you actually like.

Jagathai - He will let you ride his motorcycle. 

Leman - Food and drink. He will constantly make sure you are fed and warm, and happy. 

Rogal - Nothing. He won't make the first move. If you like him, he will wait for you to tell him that. When in a relationship, his love language is acts of service.

Konrad -  Art. He will make you an installation of crucified but still living rodents.

Sanguinius - Over-the-top romantic gestures, especially in public. 

Ferrus - Big himbo energy. Will flex his muscles and pretend to be dumb.

? - Super vanilla and romantic.

Angron - Will find anyone who likes him to be weird and thinks something is wrong with them and immediately block them on all socials. 

Roboute - Time. He is the busiest man in the galaxy and usually delegates meetings and messages to be handled by someone else. But he will always make time for you, to see you, or send/answer a message no matter how busy he actually is.

Mortarion - Flowers.

Magnus - Love spells.

Horus - “Want to fuck?” And somehow, he still has enough charisma to make that line sound classy and irresistible.

Lorgar -

Vulkan -

Corvus - 

Alpharius/Omegon - Lovebomb, then ghost. Somehow works every time. I'm a bit stumped about 17-19 since I know so very little about them. I have been asking people for advice and have gotten some great answers. But they really aren't my take, so it feels wrong to add them here. So please feel free to disagree/add/make your own takes to this list :D

Dungeon: Enlanis’ie, Kingdom of the Aurora The Stolen Kingdom

“And so did she travel into the north, to the lands unbeloved by her god of flower and field, to the kingdom of Elanis’ie, where the sky colors dance and the elderlings dwelt, where she scaled the parapets of ever-ice and sought out her mother, who had been born to the kingdom upon her shield, carried from the great battle of the age to seek healing in those immortal halls”

`The Ziiriad, transcription of oratory performance. 

Setup: There are places only spoken of in legend, destinations that can only be reached by heroes after suffering through a long road of trials and proving to both history and the gods above that they are worthy to behold those wonders.

Enlanis’ie was one if those places, a mythical kingdom of the farthest north built off aurora light and glacial ice, which existed only during the depths of polar night. Though it had appeared in innumerable tales over the centuries of its existance, it is most often thought of as a place of healing, where miraculous cures may be sought, or where figures of legend seek their long deserved rest. 

Seeking the expertise of an ancient hero, or perhaps an act of healing far beyond the skill of any mortal, the party traveled weeks into the polar expanse following the path of the auroras in the sky till they catch sight of the Enlanis’ie, or atleast it’s imposing glacial walls. Tall as any fortress but barren of any of the ephemeral spires that feature in so many stories of the impossible kingdom, the party will have to find a way through this foreboding ring of ice and explore the place where the kingdom once stood, 

Adventure Hooks: 

The party’s exploration of these great icy battlements is made no easier by the fact that a blizard has just rolled in, leaving the party no viable shelter besides the surrounding dungeon. Fending off polar beasts and those fey and arcane entities that once fed on the bountiful magic of the eternal aurora. 

Bypassing the walls leads the party to a vast exapnse somewhere between a snow covered quarry and a bombed out capital city, with eerie avenues of hollowed out foundations extending maybe two or three stories in the air before simply ending, stiarways projecting out into the open air connecting to nothing. Among these desolate structures the party will encounter loremaster Anisidora, a venerable elven hermit who wanders the remnants of her home with nothing but a lantern full of captured aurora light to guide her way. Immortal in the way of the most ancient elves, Anisidora is frostbitten and half feral from hunger, but an offer of food and a place by the fire might allow the party to discover the story of what exactly happened. 

To hear the loremaster tell it, this disastrous disappearance is the fault of one Siretiil Glassbinder, A covetous historian who grew tired of living in a technicolor dreamscape and endeavored to preserve the kingdom’s most magical sights in a medium that could not be distorted by the vagaries of the fey magic that gifted the city with all its miraculous properties . Driven by a love of her home that left no room for the opinions of others, Siretiil moved from simply recording and reproducing the wonders of Elanis’ie to outright catching them in prisms, eventually trapping the entire kingdom in a fractal gem that she still carries with her in a jealous madness. If the party presses, Anisidora will confess that Siretiil was her daughter and onetime apprentice, who broke with her mother over the same ideology that drove her to begin glassing sections of the city. Apparently Anisidora was the one thing about Enlanis’ie that she didn’t want to take with her.  Glassbinder could be anywhere in the feywild or material plane by this point, which means that the party will need to add several extra steps to finishing their quest. 

TURN YOUR SOUND ON FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Plancescape: The Palace Moon

Hovering beyond the reach of mortals and beneath the notice of gods, this eerily tranquil wasteland awaits those who would explore its mysteries and discover the fate of a vanished pantheon.

Gods die, this is known, as their fossilized bodies are sometimes found floating in the astral sea or interred in great monuments hidden throughout the cosmos. Sometimes they are slain by other gods, or die as part of their own mythology, or shift and reoccur as new deities as the people who they are pledged to go through ideological changes.

This does not explain the absence of the gods that built the palace moon, a demiplane hanging just outside the material realm in much the same way that a regular moon might orbit a celestial body. In its time it was a hanging garden, a lush green paradise where one might lounge in mountain sized castles and observe the goings on of the material plane, basking in riches and radiance and all the splendor their divine might could conjure. Today the moon is a dust-riven wasteland, with its halls and city sized gardens smothered under colorless particulate with those remaining edifices exposed to the air slowly being worn away by time. It is a land ripe for exploration, as the relics of divinity lay scattered among the towering pagodas and basilicas covered with petrified ivory, amounting to not only the treasures of unknown gods but to the flotsam of various celestial courts and clergies born to serve the now absent divinities. It is for this reason that both scholars and terrible warlords choose to make the Palace moon their home, sifting through the rubble of the dead world in the hopes of finding some fossilized trace of the ineffable.

Hooks:

The a powerful druid who’s influence once kept the region stable has gone missing investigating strange omens from a set of ancient megaliths contained within the foundations of an overgrown temple. As tensions between the region’s factions escalate, those who would seek peace reach out to the party to find her and bring her back. After delving the dangerous ruins (and having to overcome some of the druid’s on defenses along with the local critters) they discover her journal. In attempting to stabilize the ruin, the druid activated some kind of portal and pulled something through, after which the party can deduce that whatever it is she summoned dragged her back with it before the portal closed. Their only hope of rescuing the peacekeeper is to retrace her steps, activate the portal and plunge through themselves, surviving the lunar wasteland and get her back, all before war breaks out at home. 

In the light of the full moon, the silver inlaid skull of a particular aasimar possesses the power to teleport those holding it to a graveyard on the moon, the spirit of it’s departed owner desperate to return to the land from which it was banished. A fortune hunting thief has purchased this skull from an occultist, and has been using it to loot the graves of the celestial court and turn a tidy profit. The players might find a few of these objects in the local magic shops, with a chance to trace them back to their source.

Seeking visions of the divine, a group of mystics cast their mind out to the aether and were cursed with visions of the lunar tomb palace. Extracting from this foreboding omen that the true gods of their world were dead, and all others were merely invading presences, they set about forming a heretical order and stirring up no end of trouble, even after their deaths. These followers of the Lunatic’s Canto can be responsible for all manner of blasphemous crimes across the realm, eventually drawing the party into one of their moon mad rituals the way that cultist are wont to do.

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The Heavens Are Empty Masterpost

To provide easy access to any who would want to use the celestials I made for this project.  Please let me know how it goes if you use any of these creatures, I’d love playtest notes.

Celestial Herald; CR 7; a messenger for when Sending won’t do it.  Excels at ranged and skirmish combat with a magical returning javelin.

Apiarian Worker; CR 1; a bee-like celestial with a healing death burst ability.  Skilled at both ranged and melee combat, particularly in groups.

Apiarian Queen; CR 5; a bee-like celestial civic leader.  Ranged combatant, deadliest when her workers are with her to allow the use of her legendary actions.

Prism Heron; CR 1; a bird with a radiant tail, native to the shores of Mt. Celestia.  Skirmish attacker with a blinding tail attack.

Kinderwachter; CR 1; a child’s guardian taking the form of a stuffed animal.  Good at protecting a target, alone would rather flee than fight.

Bariaur and Bariaur Defender; CR 2 and 4; ram-centaur celestial nomads.  Both skilled charge-attackers with ranged options and many attack types.

Celestial Witness; CR 3; spy, observer, and sometime defender for the heavens.  Flying battlefield controller and debuffer.

Guiding Beetle; CR 4; beetle-like travelers who seek and aid the lost.  Slow but equipped with good defenses and many ranged attack and control spells.

Brux Lightstalker; CR 5; forest warden and hunter in the Beastlands.  Ambush and skirmish attacker with a light-blend ability.

Pax Pollinator; CR 4; conflict-averse heavenly field lurker.  Multiple ways to nonlethally discourage or end combat, a radiant pollen attack for when the enemy won’t take the hint.

Mudsinger; CR 6; salamander-like patron of the arts and mountain wanderer.  Likes to either mix it up in melee or stick to long-range combat, depending on how deadly it wants the fight to be.

Celestial Introspector; CR 7; heavenly therapist and advisor on mortal affairs.  Can actually make you fight yourself, has touch attacks that prevent movement.

Belieren Warden; CR 6; steward of the Upper Planes’ prison on Elysium.  Skirmish attackers specializing in isolating single enemies and locking down their foes.

Winterbird; CR 9; icy stormbird that rescues those in frozen reaches.  Skirmisher with a protective aura of heavy obscuring winter weather.

Tarn Steward; CR 25; elephantine guardian of the Glass Tarn and its prophetic powers.  Powerful charger and melee combatant with many options to shape the battlefield and move enemies around.

My Complete Homebrew Catalogue

In the past I have made master list posts whenever I added a large brew to my portfolio… but that got to be a huge hassle. People would reblog it, and then things wouldn’t get updated evenly.

So, after some work, I’ve made a spreadsheet. This sheet will have a static link that I can update on the sheet side so that when something new gets added the link will be the same and people can find it relatively easily. I’ll still post things here when I complete them, but it’s nice to have a little treasure trove of just my things.

HERE IS THE LINK TO ALL MY BREWS

And I’m talkin’ classes, sub-classes, spells, items, creatures, books, and everything else too. Just click the link above.

An added bonus is that I (and I guess you, if you trust me flat out to balance things well for your games) can just pin this link to a discord channel and my players can reference it super easy if they are using any of my homebrew content.

Archfey

The Feywild landscape creates a fantastical mirror image of the material plane, echoing its features and magnifying its wonders. The archfey who keep their kingdoms in the Plane of Faerie are likewise echoes of inhabitants of the material plane: jealous rulers, vicious peasants, greedy merchants. They are archetypes made manifest, sometimes even verging on parodies of the folk they represent. These archfey delight in mischief and revelry, but their sense of what is humorous and what is clever does not correspond to that of a mortal. The archfey described below take their entertainment from stealing children, controlling their subjects, and trapping hapless mortals in labyrinths as much as they enjoy riddles, mimicry, and flattery.

The Fallow-Fallen

The Fallow-Fallen embodies the anger of a downtrodden serf. The Fallow-Fallen seeks to feel powerful, so they exert their will over whatever unfortunate beings pass through their demesne. The Fallow-Fallen loves violence and gore more than most of their kin among the archfey, with a special taste for those who look down on others. They command a pack of faerie hounds to chase down trespassers, but a respectful guest may be rewarded with a harvest bounty or a fey steed faster than any mortal horse.

The Thistlewise

The Thistlewise echoes the territorial nature of a solitary druid. The Thistlewise wants nothing more than to be left alone, but they have great knowledge and gifts beyond the ken of most mortals, making them a desirable endpoint of a Feywild pilgrimage. The Thistlewise tangles the mind, misleading and misdirecting creatures who dare disturb them. Their realm is overrun with tangling vines and thorny brambles that form a twisting labyrinth with neither entrance nor exit; escape is virtually impossible without a magical aid. The Thistlewise sees mortals like insects, but from time to time, a rare species might catch their eye and their aid.

The Marioneer

The Marioneer mirrors a grasping chancellor, constantly scheming for control and approval while in service to the whims of a good-natured satyr king. They command a court of puppets, strung up and charmed by them to both entertain their satyr liege and serve the Marioneer’s own desires. The Marioneer cannot keep constant control, but in their immediate presence, fey and mortals alike struggle to retain their sense of self. The Marioneer requires nothing less than absolute deference, but visitors may still garner their favor–as long as they recognize the true power behind the throne.

The Kegling

The Kegling maintains an unusual feature of the Feywild landscape: the ubiquitous tavern. A bawdy and cheerful brawler, the Kegling loves to engage in a physical challenge with their patrons only to turn about and offer a drunken riddle-contest. The Kegling is a masterful host who stands on barroom ceremony, but is over-indulgent. Less overtly sinister than most other archfey, once you’ve met the Kegling they seem ever-present, their tavern appearing on the roadside or in the midst of the Seelie Court. As lord over common knowledge and common sense, information given to the Kegling will be spread around or held in reserve for later blackmail.

The Paper King

The Paper King is no king at all, but the manifest ego of a powerful mage. They are a hoarder of knowledge and memory, particularly the memories of those who visited the Feywild and lost their recollection of those times. The Paper King’s true prize is a vast repository of spells, transcribed from lost spellbooks and tomes that found their way to the Feywild. In fact, any book lost or misplaced eventually finds its way here, to the towering retreat of the Paper King. The Paper King might allow a courageous mortal to peruse the collection, but only at the cost of a few memories of their own.

The Hungerhanded

Born of the greed of the owner of a trading company, the Hungerhanded seeks nothing more than to obtain. The Hungerhanded gives nothing without receiving more in return. They see all mortal passersby as beneath them, simply delivery carts of precious treasures who are unaware of their true purpose. The Hungerhanded will happily provide protection for their little treasure-deliverers, as well as any reward that costs them nothing. The Hungerhanded’s negotiation skills are unparalleled, and they always know when they have the upper hand.

The Autarch

The Autarch is the Feywild’s adaption of a motivational speaker, one whose words are unsettlingly persuasive. The Autarch rules a dominion of followers who each believe they are acting in their own self-interest, self-governing in ways that always seem to benefit the Autarch. Self-deceit is the name of the Autarch’s game; even they themself are convinced that everyone within their domain is acting according to their own nature. Their way, it seems, is simply the best way. Why else would so many people choose to follow this philosophy of self-rule? The people of the Autarch’s realm often speak in the Autarch’s voice, repeating the archfey’s philosophy unthinkingly. The Autarch claims to want nothing but a few moments of a creature’s time; they know that is all they need to win hearts and minds.

The Askew

The Askew exaggerates the features of a traveling minstrel. A performer and pantomimer, they are one of those rare Archfey who make their way to the material plane more often than most. They enjoy the attention, of course, but they also enjoy luring children from their homes and bringing them to the Feywild to serve in their own court for years. Sometimes even decades pass before they are permitted to rejoin their kind, but when they return, they have been made feral by their time in the Askew’s service. The Askew loves nothing, hates nothing, and fears nothing. It wants only companionship and joy, and a mortal who can offer either–even for a brief time–could please it enough to receive a rare boon. A creature who dares disturb its reverie, however, invites a curse upon their head.

““Congratulations, you’ve successfully commissioned a fursuit.””

— - The DM, narrating our Gunslinger using rainbow giant ape fur to make a fursuit (AND a fur cloak) for the Illrigger.

Dare: The Silent King’s Vigil

Setup: many in the castle will attest to the existence of a ghost in the catacombs beneath the foundations, if not from their own experience, but from generations of tales going back to the days of the petty,  tribal kings, when the realm was divided up into a patchwork of little territories ruled over by whatever warlord could martial enough blades to hold them. 

While most stories tell of the ghost stalking out of its crypt to drag the living down to the shadows with it,  or attempted exorcisms of blade and blessed book, a few hold the whisper of truth: those that venture down to the catacombs when the moon is right and sit in silent meditation with the peaceful phantom can gain great insights into themselves, or secret truths known  only to the dead. 

Adventure Hooks: 

While staying in the castle of their patron, the party hears the rumor of the ghost and its vigil, particularly from a harrowed young page who was thrown into the catacombs by his youthful tormentors and developed several nervous quirks from the experience. They tell the party that it wasn’t the ghost itself that traumatized them so, but the fact that they were trapped in the catacombs so long with noone but the dead for company. Chief among the page’s new eccentricities is a fascination with the macabre, and they gently try to coax the party down into the catacombs so they can share in the page’s experience. 

By Feudal grant, a newly risen knight has taken up residence in the castle, and is more than a little put out by the fact that her new home has such an infamous reputation among the surrounding populace. Seeking to show her new prestige and authority, she puts out a call for brave warriors willing and capable of removing this unwelcome spirit from her domicile. 

A member of the clergy has gone missing while attempting the Silent King’s vigil, locking themselves inside the tombs for several days while attempting to communicate with and permanently put the spirit to rest. A mentor to the party’s cleric, or important for one of thier ongoing adventures, the party must search the catacombs for the missing vicar, or attempt his abandoned ritual and ask the ghost where the holyman might have wandered off to. 

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Campaign 3 Class Predictions

This is just what I think the cast might pick as their classes for next campaign (I have no idea what races they might pick, aside from Sam)

Travis - Either a Cleric or a Paladin or a Wizard. He is very much the dad of the group and he has said multiple times that he enjoys strategizing and being able to play an intelligent character.

Marisha - After Keyleth and Beau I feel like she'd choose something with a high charisma to shake things up, so I feel like she'd choose a Sorcerer.

Laura - Barbarian. She has made it incredibly obvious that she just wants to deal a shit ton amount of damage. She might also pick a race that is large like a Goliath, Half-Orc, Aasimar, something like that. Or she might choose something exotic like a Tabaxi.

Sam - I feel like Sam might play either a Fighter or a less standard class like Blood Hunter (especially since we didn't get to see the full extent of a Blood Hunter's abilities in this campaign). I also feel like after playing two Small characters he'll switch it up to a Medium or Large character.

Liam - I feel like Liam might choose either a Bard or a Druid. With both his natural charisma and his incredible insight as a person he'd be naturally adept at either. He also just rocks spellcasting classes.

Taliesin - WARLOCK.

Ashley - Honestly I have no idea on this one. She has played both a Barbarian and a Cleric now, two classes on opposite sides of the spectrum (I mean I know she was a War Cleric so she was still technically a Tank but she was also primarily a Healer). She might pick Rogue as a good medium but I'm honestly not sure.

Again, these are just my personal predictions, I have no idea if they're gonna be right or not, I'm just throwing this out there.

It would be cool if most of the class picked some of the stranger classes or subclasses available now that so many of the Unearthed Arcana material has been officially published. It would also be cool if for their Races they picked more exotic characters like Tabaxi, Genasi, stuff like that. Fuck, even a Kenku or Aarakocra would be cool.

Either way, it's so weird to think about this because this campaign doesn't feel like it's close to ending. At least for me. In campaign one it definitely like the endgame because of all of the build up and the stakes being set super high and everything, but this one just doesn't have that same feeling.

But I am still excited to see how this all ends and to see how the ending of this campaign will affect the beginning and world of the next campaign.

I’ve been trying to think of a setting for a nautical campaign. A vast expanse of tropical islands and waterways with the obligatory shady towns that sit on the water and temples of worship deep in both the jungle and the water. Any thoughts?

Yeknow what, fuck it, I wasn’t planning on writing a full pirate campaign anytime soon but everything’s better with pirates so lets do this!

Campaign: Scoundrels of the Sundered Isles

The Priests debate as to how our hearts may be weighted against its bearer’s sins.. but we Sailors no Better: ‘tis not sin our hearts are weighed against, ‘tis coin, as only coin could get a man to sail out to the edge o’ the bleedin world and gettim to stay ‘ere long enough to get to sinnin in the firstplace. 

-Overheard at The Last Hurrah Tavern

Setup:  The Tropical waters of the Tourmaline Sea have been a flurry of activity over the past century and a half, as natives and settlers from three different continents work together to reclaim land once lost after a half-millennia of supernatural darkness rendered a large chunk of the mainland uninhabitable. Most people deserted the Sundered Isles ( their name derived from a mistranslation that they were “Sun-Dead”) fearing the raiders and plagues that issued from that calamity, and they stayed away even after the sun returned, letting the gentle creeping of green reclaim the once barren rocks. 

Ever hungry for expansion, civilization makes its first tentative steps into these dangerous lands, with ports popping up all along the coast and archipelagos, the first wave of resettlement of a land once thought consigned to oblivion. 

All is not peaceful however, as powers both foreign and continental strive to establish dominance in this new frontier, with settlers, traders, and foolhearty sailors caught in the clash between. Discover the Mysteries long buried in darkness and sunken beneath the crashing waves, as you and your party strive to make your way in the Sundered Isles

Campaign Start

Captives of the Villainous XROC Merchant company and on their way to do hard labor in one of a number of debt-colonies, the party is miraculously saved when a tremendous wave crashes against the ship where they are imprisoned, shattering it upon the coastline and giving them the chance to escape together through the island.   There they find themselves Port Calmayne, a prosperous trade hub where the party can get their sea-legs under them while determining the best course of action and evading the Company. 

Early Game: 

A Priestess of the sea god has work for the party, neverminded that she’s a “retired” pirate, and the job involves helping a group of smugglers exterminate some monsters they accidently imported from the continent 

Investigate the haunted manor of an old Commodore, recover a treasuremap, and perhaps acquire some funds by looting through his hold treasures. Don’t get shot by a ghost while you’re at it. 

Earn the Respect of the local sailorfolk by diving for treasure into shark infested waters. Hidden among the bones of a great dragon are tokens that prove the party’s skill and sea-blessed luck, earning them passage on any ship going anywhere in the Sundered Isles

Mid Game: 

Make your way to Greenveil Lagoon, hidden home of all true pirates and the Bretherin Court. Help reunite an old salty-dog pay respects to his long departed crew, or start treasurehunting for the world’s most skilled but unlukiest mapmaker. 

Hunt ruins for a fabulous relic, then defend it in a ship-duel from a mystic privateer intent on taking it back.  When a job goes bad, it goes bad, and it’ll take all the party’s skill as sailors to evade this tenacious ( and seemingly omniscient) foe. 

Sign on With the Monster Hunting Crew of the Leviathan’s Bane, travel to the most dangerous corners of the archipelago, fight creatures that break ships between their coils, learn how to cook seamonster

Explore an ancient, eternal lighthouse, used as a lair by an eccentric pyromancer. Help a wayward celestial find their misplaced chariot of fire and learn clues as to the darkness that overtook the mainland so long ago. 

Late Game

The Merchant company that enslaved the players wants control over trade in the Sundered Isles, and is willing to unleash a madwoman in order to get it. This renegade pirate is obsessed with becoming the terror of the high seas, going so far as to overthrow the brethren court that keeps order among the Isles’ freebooters, and even unleash a vampire on the populace in hopes of becoming one herself. 

Venture into the lush jungles and overgrown ruins of the continent, and meet the fallen demigod who caused the devastation in the first place. Now little more than an eccentric old lizardfolk, this seemingly benign evil has many stories to tell, and more than a little wickedness still in him. 

The Wave that set the party free was only the herald to a true upset, as over moths an entire new archipelago of islands emerges from the seafloor after millennia in the depths.  Dotted with ruins and artifacts of a long dead civilization, these new isles draw fortunehunters into a clash with the merfolk exiled by the sudden rising of their home, all the while an ancient power wakes, looking to assert itself over the world once again. 

As always, I’m tremendously grateful for all my followers, but if you’d like to support my creative efforts, consider checking out the links below:

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Art 

Your adventures are awesome, just getting that out of the way. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about spelljammer, due to rewatching treasure planet most likely, and I’m curious how you would handle it

Drafting an Adventure: Setting Sail in the Astral Sea 

Forgive the break from my usual format for this prompt, but as it deals with past versions of d&d and how I implement some of these ideas in my game, I figured I needed to change up my authorial voice for this one.

For those who might not know, Spelljammer is d&d’s answer to starwars style planetary adventuring, and is both its own setting as well as an “addon” to other campaigns involving a magical means by which adventurers could fly out from their homeworld into an version of space modelled on archaic views of the universe as a way of explaining why their wooden spaceship didn’t have to worry about things like gravity or vacuum pressure. 

I was never into Spelljammer myself, as it was primarily a 2nd edition thing and i started playing the game with 3/3.5. While the idea of fantasy spaceships was always intriguing, I felt that Spelljammer itself was a bit silly, with its space hamsters, British hippo gun fetishists, and reliance on “ D&D trope, BUT IN SPACE” to prop up much of its material. 

That said, we can all agree Treasure Planet, and the idea of fantasy space pirates is SICK AS SHIT, so I’d be doing a disservice to myself and the campaigns I run if I didn’t have that sort of thing running in the background. 

So lets talk first about how I run the astral sea, as I use that as my backdrop for such adventures:

The Astral Sea is an expanse of starry void, filled with glittering mists and nebulae and aurora, as well as the occasional field of crystalline coral.  It is the raw canvas of creation upon which the gods ( and other great powers) paint their myriad creations. This morphic quality is also utilized by powerful arcanists to create their own worldlets and mind-palaces, making their dreams into physical domains of impossible wonder. When these arcanists die or otherwise move on, these realms endure, slowly drifting together into ruinous archipelagos that provide habitat for astral denizens.

There is no such thing as distance in the astral plane, more of a notional geography of one landmark in relation to another. Part of the reason this great expanse is referred to as a "sea" is that navigation in such a realm requires either the following of particular " currents" that follow predictable routes through the expanse, or by the charting the relative position of various landmarks in relation to one's desired destination. One could also make use of the vast network of portals to get about, trace the boughs of the cosmic trees, or take a walk on the infinite staircase.

Its bad to be out in the astral sea for too long, as that primordial chaos can either unweave one's being or make some unwanted "Creative additions". This necessitates an astral ship for a long journey, or sheltering in a crystalline reef or other structure.

The Shallows of the astral sea reside in the realms of mortal dreams, and the phantasms of imagination and flotsam of fantasy spill over into the starry expanse.

Running Astral Adventures:

Since the Astral plane is by definition so far removed from the "grounded" state of traditional fantasy adventuring, I like to think of it as a sort of secret/background/bonus lore that's never touched on in most games, until the party starts having dealings with high level wizards and the like. A wonderous thing they get to discover when they cross over the threshold from practical heroics into the realm of the fantastical. That threshold is likely an unintentional one, as an unknown portal or teleportation mishap sends the party hurtling into the unknown, only for them to have to struggle through a strange world and find their way back to reality.

The construction, reclamation, or chartering of an astral ship is then a later benchmark where the party has taken control over their destiny, allowing them to travel between the realms by their own agency.

Adventure Hooks:

The diaspora of innumerable dead worlds spread out through the astral cosmos, survivors of realities that collapsed under their own weight or the mismanagement of their gods. These Starry pilgrims can find new homes among the reefs, or travel from world to world as astral nomads. Such an existence is a hard one, and it's not unusual for some of these peoples to turn to interdimensional raiding and piracy as a means of survival. Often the loot of these raids ends up in the markets of Leng, where the treasure of a thousand worlds flows through wicked hands of that world's miasmic masters.

In the most twisted and surreal expanses of the dreamscape, the Quori hold sway, formless tyrants incapable of creation themselves and so desperate to claim the minds of mortals to give shape and order to their nightmare realm.

The ruins of civilizations beyond count float in the astral sea, just waiting to be explored. Expeditions to these dream palaces can be great undertakings, but can provide campaigns without frequent dungeon crawls a chance to get their delve on without having to leave an important central location of a campaign.

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FKA twigs

wizard hat cowboy brim

Villain: Sigix the Dread Warden, Turnkey of the Crawling King

“ There is nothing of yours he cannot take…. days, joys, secrets. Forget hope, and let the darkness unmake you…. the shadows may be hungry, but they are kinder than Sigix” 

-Stained note found in disused cell of the howling basilica

Setup: Heavy iron boots resound through seemingly endless hallways, a nightmare landscape of mist and claustrophobia. Emaciated figures huddle in cells among the bones of the dead, and the walls and ceilings seem to always, always, be closing in, ready to swallow an intruder.  This is the domain of the Dread Warden Sigix, a recursive prison located on the plane of shadow, and dedicated as a temple to the worm god Torog, who made Sigix a saint among torturers and set him to guard these nameless halls forever. 

No crime is necessary to be imprisoned within this umbral labyrinth, as its purpose is the slow torment of the imprisoned, rather than the enforcement of any mortal or divine law. Creatures from all over the multiverse end up in there, slowly wasting away to the shadowfell’s influence between long and seemingly pointless “interrogation” sessions in Sigix’s personal chambers. 

Adventure Hooks: 

An old, crumbling door appears in  random places through the material plane, a shadowy “prisoner” begging passersby for aid to lure in the unsuspecting. 

Secret acolytes of the Crawling King know an invocation to open a gateway to Sigix’s realm, and often work covertly as gaolers or slavers, feeding their patron an occasional “snack” as tribute.  Should the party fall into the clutches of a particularly well connected and evil authority figure, they may employ one of these acolytes to give the party into Sigix’s care, confident that they’ll be unable to escape from his prison-palace. Once imprisoned, the Dread warden will never let the players go, sending dark beasts and Torag cultists after them, before pursuing them himself. 

Haunted and brokenhorned, a paranoid teifling approaches the party and pleads with them for help. She claims to have escaped from an impossible prison, and is being hunted by…. well she doesn’t know what.. but she’s sure a terrible fate awaits her. In their care she recovers slightly, but is given to terrible nightmares and paranoia. IN fact, this waif was indeed one of Sigix’s prisoners, released only as part of a devil’s bargain with her sister in the balance.  Her sister will only walk free if she finds new people to take her and her sibling’s place in the jail. Won over by the party’s generosity though, she’s suddenly VERY conflicted about sacrificing the party, and it will only take a little coaxing to reveal the truth of her situation. 

Keep reading

Any ideas for a dungeon for an all wizard party? Looking for inspiration for a fun one-shot in between campaigns

Oneshot: Latenight Brainstorming

It’s time to hit the books! 

Setup: The party are a group of incorrigible youths attending a magic school (no not that one, another one), who are facing down a big test that may or may not decide whether they’ll be forced to repeat a year.  Sadly for the party, they’re not great at school, and their only hope not to be forced to endure the humiliation of being held back is an all-night cram session before the big test. 

Cram session, as in “ cramming ourselves into a secret passage we found to the forbidden section of the library, then cramming as many high-magic tomes into our packs and hope that one of ‘em will have a spell we can use to cheat on this test.” 

Challenges & Complications: 

 Step 1: The Heist. Plan out with your party the way in which they’ll circumvent the various defenses of the library, from the insomniac upper classmen ALSO cramming for their exams, to the demonic librarian that patrols the stacks endlessly, looking to castigate any who put a book back where it doesn’t belong. The challenges should seem relatively easy to overcome, so encourage your players to think outside the box and use what their characters would know from their various classes. 

Step 2: The Secret Passage. Getting to the Forbidden section of the library is easier said that done, and requires going through a winding series of cramped and forgotten hallways crawling with spiders, alchemically mutated rats, and all manner of other minor threats. 

Step 3: The screwup. Things are progressing well trough the heist, with the party having gotten to the forbidden stacks and managed to toss a few promising looking spellbooks into their “study pile”. Then things start to go wrong: the party stumbles across one of their classmates ( the one who may or may not be the chosen one) and her do-gooder friends, Who’ve ALSO decided they need a few books from the library ( likely for worldsaving nonsense) and protest at the party sniping their supply. A squabble between the two groups attracts the attention of a demonic librarian, and the party is forced to flee through the stacks and back through the passage. 

Step 4: Study The Maelstrom Tome. Among their purloined parchments, the party discovers a magnificent book that claims to be an invaluable treatise on weather magic. Knowing that one of their proffessors was stressing the utility of such spells, the party begin perusing the book without any acknowledgement that it’s started to rain outside. Messing around too much with the tome ends up releasing a powerful storm elemental, which threatens to blow their tower-dorm down if they don’t manage to seal it back in its book. The party will have to skirmish across rainslick rooves, possibly climbing spires or  hitching a ride on one of the castle gargoyles in order to reach their flying foe. 

Step 5: The test has been rescheduled due to inclement weather.  With most of the roof blown off of the grand hall and the carefully laid out tests nearly washed away by the rain that came sluicing in, the party have miraculously managed to obtain a reprieve from their encroaching deadline. 

Future Adventures

If you wanted to use this adventure as a springboard to a larger campaign, have the story pick up some years after the characters have graduated, having moved out of their awkward adolesence on to varying other carriers out in the wider world. Have it be a reunion for old time's sakes and work with each player to figure out the trajectory of their life in the interm period. Eqch of these characters has accued their own problems, but reunited, they might just be able to scheme their way out of trouble as they once did.

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Villain: His Majesty, King Marlow the Incardinate. Restorer of the Throne and Protector of the Realm. 

“I have bled for my people, for the realm. Is it not just that I ask them to do the same? “ 

Setup: To accuse King Marlow of “Consorting” with demons is as useful a charge as accusing a bird of consorting with the sky.  Fiends placed the sovereign on his throne, do his bidding throughout the realm , and some have even been placed in positions in his court. The King’s priorities are the demons’ priorities, and the realm suffers for it. 

Born in exile as the grandson of a usurped monarch, Marlow was instilled from an early age with an expectation of what he deserved, of the way the world should be, and the great injustice to the cosmic order that his line did not sit upon the throne of their homeland.  These expectations kindled a rage in the boy that could not be quelled, along with a drive that would propel him along a course of greatness at any cost. Growing first into a strong warrior, Marlow became a leader of mercenaries across the continent, accruing loyal followers, battlefield experience, and political allies in preparation for an attempt at retaking his kingdom, or perhaps carving out one of his own. 

Marlow’s plans changed radically when during one of his more bloody conquests, the slaughter drew the attention of a demon that was lairing nearby and came out to join the “fun”. Marlow faced the demon when it proved too great challenge for his men, and managed to defeat it. So great was his bloodlust however, his desire to see the thing dead, that the would-be king leapt upon the creature as it was dissipating back to whatever foul hell had spawned it, dragging Marlow along for the ride. 

None can say exactly what foul pacts Marlow struck with the masters of that realm, but a year and a day after he disappeared, he appeared on the borders of his homeland with an army at his back, the ability to call up the monstrosities of the pit, and a wretched creature whispering blasphemous council in his ear. 

Now restored to his throne, King Marlow seems content to rule as any other iron-fisted ruler might, save that he entrusts his business primarily through bound fiends and other infernal denizens, rather than potentially disloyal courtiers. 

Adventure Hooks: 

When the King wants his will to be known, he sends out “emissaries”, prisoners or simple victims possessed with cackling demons who wear their tormented mortal vassals like one might a prized suit. One of these cackling emissaries, who dresses to accentuate the wounds suffered during their imprisonment and binding, has found its way to the player’s local court, dictating the king’s intentions to the nearby nobles and commanding a feast or festival in its honor. At some point during all this pageantry, the emissary encounters the party and lets slip a secret:  They’re not really possessed, the binding failed on the road from the royal court and they’ve been pretending ever since. Easy enough to pretend to be a mad, inhuman thing, but this is the first chance they’ve had to slip past their guards and other courtiers and drop the act.  The emissary begs the party for their aid, to help them escape, and to help them rescue their noble family still held captive in the king’s dungeons. 

Knowing that the gods are unlikely to look fondly at a demon-backed ruler presiding over the realm, King Marlow has made his intentions clear that he is giving the faiths of the kingdom total total independence from royal authority, save for the Pelorian faith, whos clergy conspired to have him murdered ( obviously) and thus have had their temples shuttered. Though worship of the dawnfather is not strictly outlawed, gatherings must occur outdoors and under scrutiny of royalist officials … which has obviously led to an underground movement of sun-worshipers looking to oust the king from his throne and purge the land from demons. 

To further convolute matters with the faith, the king has invited innumerable strange cults into the realm, making it a haven for religious practices not tolerated elsewhere. 

The King’s demonic advisor is known only as “The Riven”, and manifests as a disgusting tangle of wounds, muscle, and savagery that possesses from the body of a sacrificial victim. Traditionally this victim is a goat, as mortal vessels wear out after a short time, but that does not stop the king from providing more humanoid vessels for “special occasions” famously sacrificing the ruler he usurped and having their Riven cadaver play out a grotesque abdication ceremony.  In Recent months however the court has gossiped about The Riven’s absence, possibly due to the fact that the special sacrificial knife King Marlow uses to summon it was stolen by a  particular master thief who now plans to do ….. something with it. Bounties have been placed on this thief across the realm, and the party can earn themselves a literal king’s ransom should they manage to capture the scoundrel alive. 

Tried my hand at Essek specially after it seems he’s trying to make amends with the mighty nine. Absolutely one of my favorite characters this campaign can’t wait to see what happens next. Also swear that he had curly hair at some point if he didn’t o well lmk and I’ll fix it.