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Annihilation, the first book of Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy, has been adapted into a movie by Paramount Pictures. Natalie Portman has the role of the Biologist, the lead character of the first book.*

The adapation is written and directed by Alex Garland, who made a movie named Ex Machina that I've never seen but I've heard good things about.

Just seeing something like the Southern Reach trilogy get adapted for the big screen is kind of amazing to me.

(The Southern Reach trilogy is Weird Fiction, which is usually described as Lovecraftian (though the field's expanded well beyond HPL at this point).)

* Oddly enough, I'd always pictured the Biologist as Asian. I don't remember why. though it's entirely possible that it's because she was. But hey, they got Natalie Portman for the role, so all right.

Barghest! Watch out Akina!

If I understand correctly, the popular interpretation of how a pit fiend's at-will trap the soul SLA works is that it doesn't require a gem in which to imprison the victims.

If I follow that interpretation correctly, if the pit fiend zaps someone with the spell and they fail the save, they disappear into hammerspace or wherever and the pit fiend can later extract the victim from hammerspace at its leisure.

Let's say a perfect storm happens - the pit fiend casts trap the soul on someone with spell turning (perhaps courtesy of an intelligent ring with a readied action). The spell rebounds, and against the odds the pit fiend beats its own SR and fails the will save.

What the heck happens to the pit fiend? Does it just wink out of existence?

How would the pit fiend get freed if there's no gem for anyone to find?

Disclaimer: I'd require the pit fiend carry some gems around, because cramming someone into a gem is actually part of the spell effect. And so it'd wind up in an appropriate gem. But by RAW the pit fiend doesn't need a material component (the gem in question) because it's an SLA. So I'm curious how the rest of y'all would handle this.

I've placed the order on October 8, 2014, and the four items that need to be shipped (CotCT books 3 to 6) are still pending.

Mainly wondering if there's a backlog or if one of my ordered items went out of stock.

Please let me know if I need to adjust my order (such as swapping any now out-of-stock items to a pdf).

Thank you.

It looks like I got two orders merged together that I didn't mean to --

Order 3104496 is for Inner Sea Gods, Death's Heretic, and The Redemption Engine.

Order 3104497 is for The Advanced Class Guide.

I thought I had paid for the two orders to ship separately, but it looks like they're scheduled to ship as one package.

Since it'll be months until the ACG is out, that is somewhat undesirable.

It didn't occur to me to check until I realized that my first order should've at least shipped by now.

Please advise if I need to do anything to help correct this. If I need to be charged extra for the shipping, you're authorized to do so.

This was a pretty amusing thing that happened in my game a couple weeks ago that I hadn't gotten around to posting.

Ooh, I notice the palace grants a settlement bonus. Does that mean the kingdom building rules are incorportating the settlement rules from the GMG? Or are the settlement rules getting a tweak aswell?

Okay, I've not read the Prince of Wolves, but I know it takes place in Ustlav and Count Galdana's a character.

Does Rhakis Szadro or his clan, the Prince's Wolves, actually appear in the novel? Do Rhakis Szadro and Galdana actually know each other?

They've actually met in my campaign, so I figured I should try to get an answer about that...

At the end of Broken Moon, with the party reaching 9th level, the cleric with travel domain decided to teleport to Magnimar with the chunk of Kvalca's heart and have her resurrected. The cleric did essentially ask the new Packlord Rhakis Szadro for permission with a Sending spell; he said "yes."

Kvalca's first three questions when she came back to life were "what became of the necromancer?" "How long was I dead?" "Who's now Packlord?"

Now, I made both Kvalca and Rhakis comrades of Professor Lorrimar, and both them attended the funeral and had met the PCs there.

The party helped Rhakis become the new Packlord of Shudderwood at the Stairs of the Moon, and Rhakis received the vision from Desna along with the PCs.

In light of the Whispering Way having attacked Shudderwood, Kvalca will support Rhakis as Packlord and support his task of taking the battle to the Whispering Way.

As part of that, I'll stat up Kvalca as an ally to appear in book 6, along with Rhakis and Count Caromarc.

I would make her a level 13 barbarian, or perhaps a barbarian/ranger multiclass, with her alignment being Chaotic Neutral (good). And I'd probably give her leadership for flavor purposes.

Any suggestions as to archetypes or rage powers that really fit with a dire werewolf clan leader? I am NOT familiar with barbarian abilities and would welcome advice.

Ran a search and found no threads about this, so:

I'm playing a nature oracle in my group's next campaign, and I plan on taking the following Mystery:

Friend to the Animals (Ex): Add all summon nature's ally spells to your spell list. You must still select these spells using your allotment of spells known. Animals within 30 feet of you receive a bonus on all saving throws equal to your Charisma modifier.

Now, I had a question about the "Animals within 30 feet of you receive a bonus on all saving throws equal to your Charisma modifier." If I am reading that correctly, that feature is always on, and there's no provision for excluding anything from it.

So it would buff my bonded mount and any other mounts in the party at all times, but it would also be buffing at all times any tyrannosaurs or rocs or grizzly bears that were trying to eat me. Am I reading that correctly?