Evil Midnight Lurker's page

Thinking about Jacobs' wonderfully alarming goblins, I recalled a couple of fantasy novels that feature a somewhat similar version.

The goblins in James P. Blaylock's "The Elfin Ship" and "The Disappearing Dwarf" are simultaneously comic and disturbing creatures, whose enigmatic antics are a danger to themselves and anyone in the vicinity; their odd brand of magic only adds to the effect. I'd recommend a look at these books for anyone who wants to add more weirdness to Pathfinder gobbos.

Probably won't do much good at this point, since Death Note is complete and done, but hey, feel free. :) There's a long tradition of using rather strange Western names in anime. (Bright Noah from original Gundam -- not Noah Bright, either, his son is Hasaway Noah; Max Jenius in Macross; Marvel Frozen from Dunbine... I could go on...)

I'm reminded, in a weird way, of the manga/anime Death Note, which suffers from precisely the reverse problem.

The author of Death Note has made up a large number of "Western" names for his non-Japanese characters, the vast majority of which are *complete gibberish*. One of the major players, a British guy, is named "Quillsh Wammy." Really.

This seriously disorients me, because these are supposed to be American or British or whatever people and their names just snap me completely out of the suspension of disbelief in an otherwise very well done story.

Similarly, the pseudo-Japanese names in Legend of the Five Rings annoy me because it's a consciously Japanese culture and the names just don't quite work.

On the other hand, the fractured names in Burnt Offerings -- Asianeque and non -- don't bother me much, because there's no strong connection to real-world cultures being made. It might bother me more if Ameiko's homeland is subsequently presented as strongly Japanese, but for now I'm strangely comfortable with it. :)

What I'd like to see is a comparison shot, not of Earth, but of old Thassilonia. You've said it was about the size of the western United States... how much of that is still above water?

And when can we see the Big T-shaped World Map? ^.^

Looking over the 3.5 stats for our fishoid friends, I realized something very important has been left out of their modern description.

Kopru are enormously high-temperature-tolerant creatures, living by preference in superheated water. In Mystara, the sort-of-civilized not-all-that-evil kopru of the northern Sea of Dread are the blacksmiths of the undersea civilization, the only race that lives in proximity to volcanic vents and works metal in these natural forges (PC3 The Sea Peoples). And on the Isle itself, the kopru of the central mesa hang out in *boiling* mud geysers.

It's been a central feature of the species since their inception, one of their most interesting and unique abilities (and one that makes fighting them on their home ground just that much trickier), but the MM2 writeup completely passes it over. Kopru should have, if not outright immunity to fire, at least a very high resistance to it.

Is there any possibility of correcting this unfortunate error during the course of Savage Tide?

--The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
"An object at rest -- CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!!!"

Matrissa: I wasn't harshing on your group at all, but on the extremely sketchy Pandius site. Had no idea you existed until just now. :)

The "take" on Mystaran elves I've been thinking of is fairly similar to yours, but maybe a bit less specific. I agree entirely with the "soft" concept and its ramifications -- PCs shouldn't be prevented from taking career tracks that NPCs of their cultures would consider too weird for words.

The way I figure it is that magic is so ingrained into M-elves (aside from Blacklore and Gentle Folk) that it's almost unheard of to find one who doesn't have at least one level in some class that grants some kind of spellcasting or magical powers - even their "experts" are actually magewrights (Eberron Campaign Setting), and just being an elf is good enough reason to take all manner of feats granting minor magical powers, such as the regional feats from FRCS or the spell-group feats from Complete Arcane. Elves who would in human societies be rogues become spellthieves, fighter-types become hexblades or duskblades (shich really -are- the classic Elven Fighter-Magic-Users), etc. There are so many options available these days that it's easy to structure elf civilization like this. PC elves, of course, can go ahead and ignore all this to be single-class fighters or whatever, but even some humans will find them odd. :)

If you use the flaw rules in your campaign, I'd suggest making a special flaw available only to elves (non-Blacklore/Gentle) and humans from Glantri or Alphatia: Mundanity. Characters with the mundanity flaw can never learn arcane spells or gain class features involving arcane spell-like or supernatural abilities, even if they go so far as to gain levels in an arcane spellcasting class. Mundanity exists in other cultures, of course, but no one else makes so much of a fuss about it. :) For most Mystaran PCs, the decision of whether or not to be -capable- of arcane magic is simply a cosmetic choice.

Just to be weird, I have the following suggestions regarding Magic of Arcanum and Tome of Magic:

Arcanum - Up until quite recently, the only race on Mystara that had meldshaping classes was the Shadow Elves -- their shamans are incarnates and soulborn. This was the result of their long-term exposure to the filtered and purified form of the Radiance that gathered in the soul-crystals -- incarnum isn't really soul energy at all in this setting, although many who use it believe it to be such.

When the Nucleus of the Spheres was altered, however, it began emitting this balanced Radiance directly; wizards studying the Radiance have found their old powers mutating into new forms, and all three meldshaper classes have been springing up around Glantri (totemists are found primarily in the Broken Lands and Ethengar).

Tome of Magic -
Binders can be found pretty much anywhere, if you dig deep enough. Especially in "dark" regions like Glantri, where some of them might even operate openly (would the Church of Rad have forbidden them along with conventional religions?). Some vestiges might actually be Old Ones in disguise, keeping an eye on things in a very subtle way.

Shadowcasting's true home is the Five Shires, where the hin see nothing at all wrong or sinster about it -- the power of blackflame is part of their cultural heritage. Good-aligned shadowcasters may even be in the majority among halflings.

Truenamers already exist as one of the Seven Secret Crafts of Glantri, and need simply be upgraded to comply with ToM.

Nazgul are more intelligent than that.

They don't cross rivers because <i>they're terrified of water</i> -- Ulmo, Lord of Waters, is the most activist Vala there is, and he hates evil so much that he and his vassal Osse (embodiment of rivers) might decide to break all the rules and squash the Wraiths flat if they tried it. And they know it.

Eh, tomato, tomahto. :)

Well, there's now enough ideas buzzing through my head to write a small sourcebook. Or maybe a Dragon article -- Races of Mystara, anyone?

Sadly, my internet access will be curtailed for the next week or two, but I'll try to leave this on a high point...

THE WHISPERING CAIRN: MYSTARA CONVERSION

Diamond Lake is a mining town in southern Darokin, in the foothills of the Cruth Mountains between Mar and Hinmeet (three hexes northeast of Mar on the Darokin Gazetteer map). It is in fact the capital of a very small Borderland holding (that includes neither of those neighboring towns), and Lanod Neff is not merely governor-mayor of the town but Magistrate of the Border. He answers to the Inner Council in Darokin City.

Diamond Lake is quite peaceful as Borderlands go; while the Cruth peaks are on the wild side, its southern neighbor is the quiet and prosperous Five Shires, and as such the region is rarely under any serious military threat. Diamond Lake is likely the next Borderland to be absorbed into the Heartlands, a prospect which Neff will go to great lengths to avoid.

In this year of AC 1015 (or whatever), the Darokinian economy is in trouble. The country is still recovering from the War of the Desert Nomads and the meteor impact of 1009, and the radical climate changes imposed by the Shadow Elves aren't helping any. (After several years of failed diplomatic efforts, the Darokinian public has stopped thinking of their new neighbors as sinister and evil and begun thinking of them as stubborn idiots -- it's become increasingly clear that the twisted forest of Aengmor is no fit place even for shadow elves, but they persist in rebuffing offers to restore the place.) In short, Darokin isn't the shining beacon of enlightened capitalism and international commerce it once was. But the citizens of the Republic are, for the most part, dedicated to restoring its glory... while making a profit.

Word of warning before we go further: I believe in acquiring as many of the books as possible, and making use of all of them, and if that means I mention a rule or prestige class you've never heard of... well, too bad. n.n; Substitute something from the books you have, or wing it for yourself. I seriously recommend getting the PHB2 in particular.

Conversion notes:

Any personality from the Darokin books listed as part-elven can safely be run as a half-elf.

Most Darokin merchants and diplomats are experts. The "Merchant Class" can be turned into the Merchant Prince prestige class from Power of Faerun, renaming a few of their abilities to reflect the Immortals of your choice (Asterius is an obvious choice) or just dropping the divine references entirely. Smenk, Tilgast, and Dourstone are all high enough level to be rebuilt with one or two levels of this class -- I'll look into that later.

Each of the mine managers of Diamond Lake is the head of his or her own very minor merchant house; each has visions of absorbing the others' operations and rising to become one of the Great Houses of Darokin. So far, they've at least managed to stay independent of the Greats; agents of any of the nine leading houses can be encountered in the area.

Ellival Moonmeadow is from the northern elven realm of Wendar, and as such is not as concerned with Aengmor as the local elves; still, he isn't likely to be sympathetic to any shadow elf PCs.

By the numbers, from Backdrop: Diamond Lake:

3. The Feral Dog - Tirra is a 7th level spellthief (Complete Adventurer).

4. Church of St. Cuthbert - The Church of Karameikos, where Jierdan Wierus (LN male human cleric of Vanya 7) presides over his slightly-heretical branch of a pantheistic religion from the next kingdom over.

12. Garrison - the Chapel of Heironeous becomes the Chapel of Thor. Valkus Dun wields warhammers rather than longswords.

14. The Midnight Salute - Purple Prose is a spellthief 3, and a Glantrian scion of Clan Alhambra -- a "flamenco elf."

...That's all I have time for; it'll probably be two weeks or more before I can continue. Laters.

I was never too enthusiastic about that aspect of the M3E project either. I run all Core races and classes as they are presented in 3.5E and I don't really feel that that changes the Mystaran feel too much. It is different from Classic D&D, but thats one reason I'm running 3.5E in the first place...

Håvard

A couple of tweaks could be added to preserve flavor -- give Rockhome dwarves a small amount of spell resistance that grows (slowly!) with total character level; give halflings on Five Shires soil a counterspell once per day; and, as stated earlier, make duskblade the favored class for most elves.

But there shall be no level caps or class restrictions! Fie upon such silliness!

Sounds like an interesting background idea for Cauldron. I'd need to read up on AP1, but does that mean Kyuss was probably a Milennian in mortal life?

Håvard

I'd say one of the original Traldar refugees, maybe even a student of Zirchev gone bad? :)

While I'm a big believer in adapting the setting to the system rather than the other way around, which is why the "official" Mystara-to-3rd-edition site bugs me, after reading the PHB2 it occurs to me that one way to capture some of the original system's flavor is simply to make Duskblade the favored class for most types of elf. :)

This should be pretty easy. Replace Sasserine with Specularum in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. This was the original port that Rory Barbarosa set sail from.

Maybe not... if you're starting in the jungle near Cauldron, it might make more sense to have Sasserine be the capital of the Thyatian-occupied Hinterlands. Don't see why you couldn't still use the original X1 text of Barbarosa's journal anyway.

Cauldron, maybe a surviving outpost of the Milenian Empire that's been in touch with the northern continent for a couple of centuries?

I think the general consensus on converting Classic D&D characters to 3.5 is that you divide all levels above 10th by 2, so a 36th level character in classic would become a 23rd level character in 3.5.

Now that's wrong and I can prove it.

There's no way in hell that a 23rd level wizard could handle the magnitude of epic spellcasting that would be required to create something like Floating Ar. You need levels in the 30s or higher even to begin on the whole "radical transformation of a region" thing.

No, I think the high-level characters should retain a lot more of their highlevelness in 3.5. It's part of the Known World's charm.

Books: "Captain Blood" and "The Sea Hawk" by Rafael Sabatini. Also the movies.

For a little silliness, check out film versions of "The Pirates of Penzance." Including "The Pirate Movie," a goofy '80s take incorporating the silliest swordfight in history.

Mystara, now, has quite a blend of ethnicities even before you start dragging in the non-humans.

In and around the Sea of Dread... we've got the clans of jungle-dwelling Irishmen on northern Davania; the prophetic black half-elves of Yavdlom, west of the Archipelago; Indians, both American (Atruaghin) and Indian (Sind); Darokinians (generic Euro fantasy) and Traladarans (Slavic); Thyatians (Imperial Roman); Ochaleans (Japanese/Chinese); Pearl Islanders and Ierendians (various degrees of Polynesian); and Minrothads (Dutch, kinda).

Moving further away and expanding past humans, there's the elves -- regular, shadow, and flamenco; the hin of the Five Shires, some of the most dangerous (and sometimes piratical!) halflings in D&D history; dwarves (standard-issue dour and conservative); the biplane-pilot mad-science gnomes of the Flying City of Serraine, which could crop up anywhere; and, of course, the thriving undersea kingdoms of merfolk, tritons, sea giants, sharkmen, and even kopru. (Not all of them sit around brooding about their lost civilization and enslaving everyone who comes by. Some have got on with their lives, and may even make acceptable neighbours.)

Plenty to choose from, no?

A good point, that. If all the devotional energy channeled towards Kyuss was being diverted into the monolith for the sole purpose of invoking the AoW... and he doesn't get his Immortality unless and until the Age is insured... yeah, that works.

(Also, there's no need to hew to the magic number 36 in 3.5 Mystara. Can't see any reason, other than GM sanity, why you couldn't have, say, a 47th level fighter still plugging away at her Path.)

Maybe if aspects and avatars don't count as Manifestations... it is reasonably possible for a mid-to-high-level party to defeat such things, so they might be allowable under Immortal law.

As for how the bad guys expect to get away with the AoW...

...okay. I think this can work.

Above all, the Immortals have to maintain the Balance of the spheres and elements on the Prime Plane -- without that, the Prime's high rate of successful candidates for Immortality goes down the drain. Something as vast and horrible as the Age of Worms would, you'd think, upset Mystara's balance completely, and be something that prognosticating Immortals would spot well in advance.

But this is the work of Thanatos, whose plans span millennia and who isn't about to let a mere government security agency run by gods stand in his way. As ever, the worms are the key.

The green worm, though a vector of undeath, is a living creature; in the Mystara variant, it is designed to possess an overabundance of life-force, so much that a wormspawned undead will actually "read" to the Balance just as it did in life -- hence, the AoW is simply a transition from one state of balance to another.

Kyuss's monolith, here (and possibly in the original; I still haven't got the chance to read Dawn of a New Age), functions as a long-term storage device for his Immortal energies, building up enough power to warp Mystara's ecosystem in a phenomenally short time, so that by the time the Intrusion Council notices, it will already be too late. Only the PCs will be there on time to destroy the Wormgod's avatar form and cause the whole plan to fizzle out.

Or not the whole thing: there's simply no way they can truly slay Kyuss. The Age of Worms has been stopped, but the Wormgod will still ascend to join his endlessly patient patron in further plots. The party would be wise to seek out the paths to Immortality, purely in self-defense... :)

I would camp out at Game-a-lot like a rabid Star Wars geek for the chance to buy any 3.5 Mystara product you guys even consider producing. Especially if it had a non-hex-based map. :)

But in the meantime, let me try to continue with some Diamond Lake church conversion notes...

Church of St. Cuthbert -- there are a few good substitutes, but I'm inclined to the idea that this is a distant outpost of the Church of Karameikos, a LN pantheistic order whose dogma bears a fair resemblance to that of dark ages Catholicism. Self-flagellation would fit right in to a fringe temple.

Wee Jas -- Nyx, benevolent lady of the undead, an Entropic who isn't evil so much as plain strange. She views undeath as the natural conclusion to life, preferring those forms of undead that retain their free will and are not ruled by unnatural hungers Z(necropolitans, liches, etc.), so her priests would stand against Kyuss and his worms.

Heironeous -- Thor, patron of honorable and courageous warriors. Alternately, Diulanna, Halav, or Tarastia.

Obad-Hai -- Ordana the Forest Mother, or maybe Djaea.

The Ebon Triad -- not sure, except that Thanatos himself is included in place of Nerull, and of course secretly backing the whole thing despite protests to the contrary.

...And another piece of evidence that the Reaper is behind Kyuss's rise: it was he who created the Burrowers, creatures of corruption and madness in the form of immense worms. :)

Yeah, they were Exalted/titan level critters. We can skip that, though, and just use 3.5 writeups, perhaps giving some of the more powerful nalfeshnees and balors and what-all Rank 0 to reflect Entropic favor. (And of course Alphaks the Roaring Demon is basically a balor with 30+ wizard levels before you add in divinity.)

...Now, upon rereading the first and second Immortals boxes, I'm reminded of a serious obstacle.

On Oerth, where most of the gods are kinda distant, you can see Kyuss popping up with no hope to stop him but the PCs. Faerun, much the same deal.

But in the Mystaran cosmology, the Immortals are organized into a more complex society. They have laws and customs -- and they police some of them rigorously.

Immortals are forbidden to manifest fully on the Prime Plane -- and the Intrusion Council is constantly on watch for such interference, and they won't hesitate to come down and personally throw whoever violated the Balance a savage beating. In short, the deus-ex-machina save is MANDATED BY THE SETTING. If Kyuss actually pops out of his monolith and starts the Age of Worms then and there, the PCs shouldn't need to lift a finger -- he's acting illegally and will be stopped by higher powers.

I have no idea how to spin this. Part of the problem is that it's already been done, several times, and any new tactic to keep the Immortals from noticing would seem like beating a dead horse...

More cosmological notes, focusing on Kyuss.

I'm going to use "god" and "Immortal" interchangeably here. Despite the protestations of some authors, there really isn't any difference worth noting.

...I'm not quite sure if the 3rd edition Deities and Demigods rules are really sufficient to describe Immortals -- they seem to have a much greater breadth of powers available to them, along with many more levels of power before you hit Old One and vanish in a puff of overgodliness -- but let's start with that anyway:

The gods of Mystara face one crippling flaw: divinity doesn't breed true. Even the offspring of two Immortals will never possess any divine ranks -- they might be half-celestial (or -whatever) creatures, or even full-fledged outsiders, but from a god's perspective they're still ordinary mortals.

Any Immortal can grant any willing mortal divine rank 0 with a simple expenditure of Power, but this is a poor substitute for the real thing; beings with rank 0 (generically known as Titans) do not receive power from worship, and can NEVER advance in divine rank to become true gods -- they may not even be able to gain further class levels, or indeed advance in any way whatsoever from that day forth. Titan status is reserved for favored servants of the Immortals who just don't have what it takes to achieve true power.

True power, in this sense, can only be achieved by the Paths of Immortality -- fairly well-defined careers that amount to vast, years- or even centuries-long magical rituals that prepare the quester to receive true godhood. In short, Immortals can -only- bestow positive divine ranks on someone who has completed one of the Paths. (It doesn't even have to be knowing completion -- several Immortals, such as Ka and Yav, were quite surprised to find themselves ascended.)

In this context, it becomes evident that Kyuss's life represents a twisted Entropic version of the Path of the Dynast, the traditional clerical route to Immortality -- he invented countless new forms of undeath, founded a nation and ruled over it for some time, built a great monument, then sacrificed his people to achieve godhood. It's entirely possible that Kyuss's path was not finished until the final prophecy of the AoW came to pass, that he wasn't a true Immortal until his actual release from the monolith, in which case Thanatos would have been granting spells to the Kyuss cult.

I'd like to see a super-sized version of the Apparatus, one that could house a typical adventuring party in comfort. An iron lobster the size of the Nautilus, complete with diving suits, art gallery, and of course a pipe organ!

All right! Kindred spirits!

*dusts off Gazzeteers, Almanacks, Hollow World, WotI, the Five Holy Boxes, and sundry other stuff*

Let's see... the last I heard of von Hendriks he was still in exile, but if the timeline's progressed past PWA3 (I don't count the scribblings of that deranged halfling) then I have no idea where he is, but the Barony should be long since under new management, yes?

(And, to be honest, Zeech in his short lifespan developed more character than the randomly-tyrannous Black Eagle ever did.)

Hm. Living on the coast of California, I don't have access to the latest Dragon and Heard's new Princess Ark article yet. Anyone seen it, and if so, is there anything that seems relevant to this topic?

Meanwhile, I feel like digressing into cosmology... mostly for the benefit of any new readers checking the thread, but we might as well try to get this clear, seeing as how both SC and ST involve the Abyss.

Let me see... in the Known World cosmology, there's no Great Wheel; the Astral Plane is filled with a theoretically infinite number of drifting pocket planes, many of which have been colonized by the Immortals. And there are a lot of nested or otherwise linked planes among them. So it's not too far a stretch to posit the existence of an "Abyss" consisting of any number of linked planes inhabited by some truly nasty Entropic Immortals. Or some or all of the various layers visited in the APs could be separate, depending on the needs of the story. And as a reminder, the five "Spheres of Immortality" so often talked about in the Known World material are in no sense locations -- they're concepts and affiliations.

(There's also the note that, rather than being only quasi-divine entities, Orcus, Demogorgon, and the other "demon lords" are full-fledged deities in this setting, on par with the greatest Immortals of the other Spheres. So they ought to have actual divine ranks, or whatever system is used to represent Immortality.)

Adimarchus's story could be pretty much the same, from what I know of it (I didn't start collecting Dungeon in earnest until SC was over, so my knowledge of that one is scanty). Just change a few of the locations, file off the serial numbers... The demodands and their basic goal re: Cauldron also doesn't need much tweaking, except to point out that most Immortals of ANY sphere who got wind of the scheme would have been horrified at the potential destruction of Mystara's balance... okay, maybe it DOES need a rewrite... n.n;

Chris Manos's idea to create our own conversion threads for our favorite low-support campaign worlds strikes me as eminently sane and rational, so why don't we start with the world that plays host to the ORIGINAL Isle of Dread: Mystara!

Granted it's way too early to adapt the actual Savage Tide adventures, but we can start laying the groundwork right now by taking a look at SC and AoW as they would fit in... and by thinking about the nature of the Known World itself. There really isn't much 3.5 material for it.

For starters, it pays to keep in mind that the biggest difference between Mystara and the other worlds is one of power level. In the Forgotten Realms, a handful of epic-level wizards and whatnot exert great power behind the scenes; in Eberron, there are simply NO epic members of the common races, and may never have been. The Known World, in sharp contrast, is a place where it sometimes seems you can't throw a rock without hitting a 30th-level character; epic progression is an expected part of the adventuring life. There's an empire where you have to be an epic-level spellcaster just to be part of the government! Fortunately, the high-level characters form almost a separate ecosystem of their own in which they're too busy ruling countries, scheming against one another, and trying to achieve godhood to have much time to personally hassle the lowbies.

Anyway...

Cauldron (and by extension Kuluth-Mar) could fit in on the northern coast of Davania, near the tribal lands being conquered by the Thyatian Empire; this is a jungle area on the fringes of civilization, and not that far away from the Thanegioth Archipelago and the Isle of Dread itself.

Diamond Lake... a mining town in the south of the Republic of Darokin? This lets us replace Mistmarsh with the Malpheggi Swamp, and remnant lizardmen who have really good reason not to trust humans. The Free City then becomes the capital, Darokin itself. The Nyr Dyv is represented by Lake Amsorak, and we can easily drop Magepoint on its shores and the Order's island within it.

Redhand and the Bandit Kingdoms: I'm thinking the eastern Savage Coast. Even the name "Redhand" fits in with the Curse.

The Rift Canyon... might be best to drop this somewhere in undefined inland Brun, some distance northwest of Glantri. Alternately it might fit in, or be replaced by, the Broken Lands.

Kyuss's divine sponsor is no doubt Thanatos, lord of the Sphere of Entropy; setting something like the Age of Worms into motion is the kind of thing he does for kicks. (This is a god who deliberately engineered a situation in which his rival Immortals were forced to erase their own favorite nation from living memory to save the world. Nasty.)

So! (rubs hands together) Anyone else?

I style myself after my hero, a character from the '90s Tick cartoon: the Evil Midnight Bomber what Bombs at Midnight. Just replace "bomb" with "lurk" and there you go.

"He says to me, he says to me, 'You got STYLE, baby. But if you're going to be a real villain, you gotta get a GIMMICK!' And so I go I says YEAH, baby! A gimmick, that's it! HIGH EXPLOSIVES! Aaaaaa-hahahahaha!"

Speaking of Mystara, does anyone have thoughts on adapting Savage Tide to that setting? Shouldn't be too hard I think given that both the Isle of Dread and Demogorgon exist in that setting.

Håvard

As well as a thriving undersea civilization, and a bunch of halfling pirates.

Really, there should by all rights be a Known World adaptation -- the Isle of Dread BELONGS to Mystara. Any chance of hiring Bruce Heard and/or Aaron Allston to handle this?