Nightflier's Midnight Game Thread

Game Master nightflier

Shadowlands in General:

Shadowlands

When Izrador fell, the world was thorn. Waves of devastation swept over the face of Aryth, Eredane in particular, and then the Veil fell over the world. But that was not the only change. Dark God's fall managed to split the world into two – a world of sun and light and the world of shadows and gloom. That other world became Shadowlands.

Geographically, Shadowlands are twin to Aryth, although the separation happened at the time of Izrador's fall. That means that two realms diverged in shape after that moment, but until then, they were identical. Shadowlands are extremely similar to Aryth in general shape, although more wooded and wild, since humans got there very late and not in large numbers. There are not many cities, and those that do exist are not very large, except those that are seats of power for the realm's rulers. Shadowlands are mostly filled with the ruins of Elthedar cities, or their twisted and dark reflections.

There is no day in Shadowlands. The cold and seemingly distant sun gives the light equal to that of full moon on Aryth, leaving the Shadowlands colder than Aryth. Moon is blood-red in color in all its phases, and the sky is dark purple. The moon seems to be larger and closer than on Aryth.
In game terms, all light sources have their ranges halved. During the Shadowlands „day“, which inhabitants call „gloom“, light conditions are dim. A normal night is even dimmer, but is still considered dim light. The blood moon’s glow averts total darkness, but miss chances are increased to 40%. A cloudy night will block the dim light of the stars and moon, leaving only darkness.
Mist is also very common and light mist tends to fall every night, and heavy mist every third or fourth night. Gloomtime mist is also common, but it's usually very light.

Darkvision

A character or creature possessing darkvision can clearly see in shades of grey up to the distance listed for the race or spell. Beyond that distance, the being with darkvision is just as susceptible to miss chances as those without darkvision at any range but basic shapes can be discerned.

Magic

Shadowlands enhance Shadow subschool spells by increasing the caster level by 2 and all shadow spells are 10% more real. However, some magic is impeded on Shadowlands. Spells with either the fire or light descriptor require a successful DC 20 + spell level concentration check to cast.

Vegetation

The larger plants have managed to survive in the Shadowlands, but almost everything have adapted to the world without strong source of light and warmth. There are many smaller plants that give off luminescence in order to attract insects and bats, and there are many carnivorous plants that use the same effect to attract prey.

Inhabitants

Dominant inhabitants of the Shadowlands are many kinds of Fay, They are ruled by the powerful entities called the Eternals - simply because they have been alive for extremely long time. Eternals do not age, but they can be killed like any other being, although with great difficulties. The examples of Eternals are Twilight the Fay Queen and Thorn the Briar King. There are others as well, with varying degrees of power. Those entities have shaped the Shadowlands in various ways with their loves, conflicts and betrayals.

Most common races available for player characters are:

Shadar (Elves)
Humans (of Varyag ethnicity; descendants of Dorns)
Fell (including Morgral, which is Shadowland type of Dhampir)
Goblinoids
Tengu
Tieflings
Ratlings (various types)
Kitsune
Wayang
Catfolk (various types)
Minotaurs
Gargoyles (various types)

Gloomnight:

Gloomnight is the largest city in the Shadowlands and the oldest as well. Unlike other Elthedar cities, it was transported into Shadowlands only partially destroyed, so it was inhabited from the birth of this realm. Therefore, Gloomnight is a crumbling, sprawling, decadent, corrupt city, with history that stretches thousands of years - a city that outlived several nascent empires which ruled it, and continues to exist in some kind of urban unlife. This is a dark place. Some of the city's most interesting locations are: Hag Market, where you can haggle with Hags and deal with the Devils; Old Court, where vampires dance to the silent music and trade in blood and dreams; Slaveport, located at the confluence of two great rivers, where barges bearing fresh slave-meat from East and West unload their cargo; Nightingale Street, where you can find any and all pleasures known to man or dragon; Old Dungeon, located beneath ruins of Constabulary, filled with corpses when the Great Plague struck the city; Troll Bridge, built by Trolls at the bequest of Lord Mayor and in return they got the toll rights and land to build their slums across the Great River; Despot's Hold, overlooking the rivers, but without any lord living in it.

Gloomnight is essentially divided in two parts - Gloom and Night. Gloom is the part of the city which is above ground, and Night is underground part of the city. These two parts are interconnected in many places, some of them controlled by the Great Houses, some of them free to use by anyone. Gloom is a dismal place of twisting lanes, narrow alleys and chaotically placed houses and haphazardly built towers. In the center of Gloom there is an impossibly tall castle, with many pointed spires, easily the size of Teros Obsidia. This is Despot's Hold - the seat of ultimate power in the city, now without owner for a very long time. Person who controls the Hold controls the Gloomnight; person who controls Gloomnight controls much of Shadowlands, so the Hold is contested amongst the Great Houses. Currently, the Hold is under joint stewardship of House Garganth and House Borzar, but they do not rule it. It is said that the ruler of the Hold must be accepted by the Throne of the Hold, an ancient artifact - possibly a remnant of the world before the Fall.

Power in the city is divided amongst Houses, both Great and Lesser. Houses of Gloomnight are something between noble families, guilds and criminal gangs. Each Great House is dominated by one race, but all the Houses have members of various races, who are fighting for influence inside their House. Current Great Houses, with their dominant races, colors and the description usually applied to them are:

Golgoth - NE Black/Green Shadar Fleshwarpers
Morai - NE Black/Blue Morgral Assassins
Zim - N Blue/Red/Green Goblinoid Alchemists
Garganth - NG White/Blue Gargoyle Sentinels
Zelenya - CG Green/White Beastpact Earthkeepers
Rajarr - LE Black/Red Tiefling Slavers
Borzar - LN Red/White/Blue Asimar Mercenaries

The daily life in the city is centered around markets. There are several of those: Hag Market, where you go if you want to buy a broken dream, discarded wish, magic sword or slightly-used soul; Goblin Market, where you can buy everything from food to weapons made by goblin smiths from the Coldmist Mountains; Slave Market, near the River Port; Hold Market, which is now defunct - as well as several other smaller specialized markets. Several fay have their stalls at the market or shops around the market square, as well as alu-fiend twins, Mayala and Nayala, who mostly deal in poisons and potions.

There is a large Hag comunity in the city. A prominent member and sort of unofficial leader of Hag Market, is a Hag called Baba Svetlana. She's 900 years old and rather uninterested in good or evil. She trades equally with all and nobility often buys from her. She sells, among other things, used wishes, one night stand frog princes, slightly rotten pumpkin coaches and awakened mice bodyguards. Svetlana is little above it all. She's old enough not to have to work and equally old to acquire a cynical view on both good and evil, so she drifted towards neutrality. If she's the owner of your character's contract, she would use him mostly as a messenger or a spy. These days Svetlana mostly trades in information, but she's always interested in some new magic item (or old and powerful), piece of property in the city and her not so secret passion is collecting (and reading) love novels and ballads from the Twilight's court.