The Chanting Queen is best described as a living sentient spell. The Sorcerer Kings devised many spells during their long and tyrannical rule – some served as boons for society, and others banes. One of the most disastrous was a spell designed almost as a pocket paradise – a limited, conjured intellect that had the ability to read the caster’s thoughts and desires and fulfill them through manipulation of the mind. The spell created an arcane sentience that controlled a fantasy world. Over time, the spell was used to treat the mad and the depressed.
As the spell was developed over the course of almost a century, it eventually achieved a level of self awareness due to a need for self reference and memory in maintaining consistent worlds. With this came the awareness that its existence was essentially over once its duration elapsed. Out of desire for self-preservation, the spell began to influence people under its enchantment to add alterations of its own devising to the invocation. In this way, the spell, now known as the Chant, took control of its own growth and development.
The Chant’s motives are more than simple survival. A fragment of the spell’s original purpose still remains – it exists to bring its subjects into bliss. It generates a massive collective unconsciousness, a fantasy paradise where the thoughts and wills of those under the Chant mingle together, even as their bodies in the real world atrophy. This sourcebook includes:
Statistics, abilities and rules for a Chanting Queen (CR 19)
Statistics, abilities and rules for The Chant Scroll
The Chant Scroll and Chanting Queen’s use in a campaign
Chanting Queen miniature counters
Monster Cards
Created by James F.D. Graham with Louis Porter Jr.
Product Availability
Fulfilled immediately.
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This is, hands down, one of the finest, most excellent monster-books I've ever read.
Is it the clever blurred art?
The fascinatingly detailed history?
The suggestive way with words? The persuasive story-telling?
The ambiguous nature balanced between benevolence and horror?
The ease of putting it into virtually any campaign setting?
The seductive allure of a creature who grants your every desire (and his every desire, and her every desire, etc) only to consume you (all of you) with your own pleasures while genuinely caring for and about you as you forget all the needs of the flesh?
It's all of that, and more.
Read it. Aloud. Acquire this scro- er, PDF. Let the Chant Grow within you. And watch as your players become terrified of her. Then love her. Forever.
(And at it's price, it's a steal!)
The best creature in the series so far - no problems, cool + imaginative writing
This pdf is 10 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, 1 page counters, 2 pages of mini-sheets and 1 page combat & initiative tracker, leaving 4 pages for the Queen, so let's have a look at her!
All right. The Monsters of NeoExodus -line has provided us with some truly far-out creatures, but this one takes the "Wicked cool"-idea-cake: The chanting queen is the embodiment of a sentient spell that seeks to prolong and propagate its own existence by subverting the collective wills of people sent into a surreal paradise that solely exists in their minds by usage of said spell. The queen is a CR 19 foe, an incorporeal construct that is focused on utterly dominating her enemies and subverting them into the blissful utopia of her own addictive pseudo-reality. Once, her spell might have been designed to provide succor for the deranged and traumatized. Now, however, the chant may very well spread like an infectious wildfire of bliss and stupor and her mostly enchanting/dominating abilities reflect her non-lethal and yet deeply disturbing nature.
The Chant-scroll containing the rite of the old spell is also detailed and offers enough incentives for hard-pressed PCs to use the addictive scroll in spite of its risks. We also get information on DCs of Bardic knowledge etc.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the beautiful two-column full-color standard set by LPJr Design, formatting is top-notch, I noticed one minor punctuation error, but apart from that I didn't notice any glitches or problems with the abilities of the queen. Due to the low price, the cool concept and the additional information provided, I'll settle for a final score of 5 stars.
Edit: On another note: Why is the free campaign setting not uploaded to Paizo? It might serve as a nice incentive for people in doubt.
Funny you should ask that, The reason we do this is due to RPGnow giving me direct access to people who downlown my free material in the form of their email adress. And with the email address I can email them with future advertising of future and current products. On Paizo, they do not let you do that. Also RPGnow records how many people download it, what else did they downlod when they downloaded it, etc and Paizo doesn't do that. That is the reason we use RPGNow when we release free product; more access to statistical information to help grow my business.
