Liane Merciel's page

Now that this is almost totally done (one chapter to go!), I wanted to drop by and say that I'm really honored and flattered that Paizo asked me to write this project, and I'm also really happy that people liked the story. I'm sorry that the implementation was a little bumpy, but I am incredibly grateful that people were willing to stick with it and jump some extra hurdles just for the sake of reading another chapter. That is quite a compliment. Thanks, you guys. :)

This was a new experience for me, writing-wise, because we did it like an old-fashioned newspaper serial: new installments went live even before I'd finished writing the entire story. I'd send in a few chapters at a time, they'd get edited and queued up, and some of them would start going out to readers even before the rest of the novella was finished. This, uh, creates a certain non-negotiable deadline pressure and also means you're locked into whatever you've already put out there (no more revisions once a thing gets published!), so that was fun. (At this point, I can honestly say that. Ten years ago, "fun" would have been a euphemism for "completely absolutely sleep-destroyingly terrifying.")

Anyway it was a good time and I did, genuinely, have a lot of fun writing it, and I am so glad to hear that people have enjoyed reading it as well. Again, thanks: it means a lot, especially when I know you had to endure a few extra hassles that could easily lead people to go "AND IT WAS SO NOT WORTH IT."

Finally I want to thank Ron Lundeen for doing such awesome work with the statted accompaniments to the story. That is a great idea -- I had no idea the Paizo team was going to do it, and I didn't think to write the story with those concepts in mind at all -- and he's done a killer job with it. It is really cool to see that stuff made concrete and game-playable, and pretty impressive to see how many great ideas he's spun off from each chapter.

So, again, thanks to everyone. It has been a lot of fun. :)

I think that in the story Shalelu could have thought about how dangerous and hostile the Scarps are and compared that to many other goblins from all around the Inner Sea, to show she's mostly a sworn enemy of *these* particular tribes[.]

I want to pick this out for a little bit, because I know a decent number of people on these boards are interested in writing at least on a hobbyist level (if nothing else, lots of people play via PbP, which is... [drum roll] ...writing!), and it occurred to me that I could use this comment as a springboard to a writing exercise.

Getting there is going to be a little circuitous, though, because when did I ever write a short post. So, if you'll humor me for a little while: let's first consider the goals of this particular piece.

The specifications for this blog post were:

-- 1000 words (iirc, this piece is actually around 1350, because it's web fiction and so you're not as tightly limited by space constraints as a print piece would be, but (a) it's good practice to write to specific lengths; and (b) this piece is already overlong, so we should be looking to cut things and definitely we should not add any words)

-- story must be about the scene depicted in the art

-- story must be compatible with the material in RotRL (this is obvs. the off-screen fight that Shalelu has with the goblins before encountering the PCs in Sandpoint after the Swallowtail Festival, so everything has to be consistent with those in-game events)

-- ideally, story should remind people who played RotRL of how much fun that game is, and intrigue people who haven't played it yet

Bonus considerations (not actually required, but fun for extra challenge points):

-- create new bit-part NPC antagonist for GMs to throw at their PCs (here, Uruvuu, who might be amusing for one fight and therefore gets to survive this encounter)

-- showcase unconventional tactics that exploit goblins' quirks and give players some ideas for creative tactics of their own (here, throwing the painted prayerbook pages out the window)

-- open possibility for bit-part NPC to tie into the game some other way (here, we never see who exactly threw those pages out of the farmhouse; it could be a recurring NPC, or even a replacement PC for someone who got killed in the Swallowtail Festival and needs a new character [in which case this faceless hero might accompany Shalelu to town, being homeless now, and jump into the campaign as a new PC]; this is the other reason that we never actually see the character and the tactics depicted don't lock the character into any particular class)

-- anything else you can think of

These are a lot of goals to cram into 1000 words, which is part of why this piece ran overlength (also I talk too much; see also: this post). But it's good practice, and trying to hit all those checkpoints helps keep the pace brisk, which is good for an adventure story.

But because there's so much ground to cover in such a short time, it becomes difficult to add even more material, especially where that material doesn't support any of those goals. Here, adding a digression about other goblins not featured in RotRL wouldn't advance the primary goal of giving readers additional material to use with the campaign, and (secondarily) it would also throw off the pacing to have Shalelu ruminate about an unrelated topic in the midst of an action scene.

HOWEVER!!, and this is where we finally get to the writing exercise portion of today's long post, if the story were instead written in support of Goblins of Golarion (OG 2011 version or a hypothetical updated Pathfinder 2.0 version), then it would make sense to write the scene in such a way that the digression felt natural and supported.

So, if you have some time to kill and are so inclined, an interesting thing to do might be to generate your own checklist of goals based on that hypo. If you were writing a story using this same picture and the same word length to support a different product, what would the goal list look like? How would you write the story to achieve them?

You can do this with pretty much any of the story blogs, since the pictures are always awesomely inspiring and there's a big library of products to use as imaginative support. Or you can break down the stories that people actually wrote and reverse-engineer what the behind-the-scenes goal lists probably looked like, and how the story attempted to hit all those points.

It's useful material, and the kind people of Paizo are generous enough to give it away for free, so if you're into that sort of thing, I'd say take the free tutorials and have fun with 'em. :)

Hey hey! I'm happy people liked the story. :)

It's interesting that the discussion turned toward the essential nature of goblins, too, because that was one of the things I had to think about while writing this piece. The version of Shalelu that I got with the writing prompt listed her stats with "favored enemy: goblinoids," so it was a fun writing exercise to think about how to convey that through her POV while also keeping her a solidly Good character.

Because, on the one hand, she has to hold certain views in order to class "goblinoids" as a "favored enemy," and those views can't be totally unreasonable or unfounded, because if she just holds irrational prejudices for no reason (and, moreover, holds them to the point where she is extra efficient at killing these guys on account of it), then that's not terribly Good. On the other hand, goblins are PC-able now, which means they can't be Always Evil Always.

So my thinking was: well, obviously these goblins are bad, because we actually see them in the act of burning down a farm and trying to kill everybody on it, so first we'll show that part, and then we'll relate that to Shalelu's personal experiences and firsthand knowledge about these specific tribes and their varying flavors of psychotic giggling malice, and then we'll use that to support her generalizations concerning All Goblins. That way (a) it's clear that her views are not in fact unreasonable, based on her personal experience of these specific antagonist tribes in this specific region; and (b) if players or GMs want to push back against that, they'll know where she's coming from and what they need to do to effectively play that angle.

So based on that, I knew this particular piece had to be written in tight third-person POV (which is my general preference anyway, because it lets you build in these effects), so it would be clear that what we're seeing comes through Shalelu's personal filter. (By contrast, the Shyka piece takes a more fairytale mythic tone, with no clear or anchored point of view, because the effect I was aiming for there was the exact opposite: nobody has direct personal knowledge of how that story went down, and possibly the whole thing was just invented out of thin air in the first place.)

HOPEFULLY -- and whether or not this succeeded, I couldn't tell you, but it's always part of the goal -- there's enough in the text to both support the playstyle of "Sandpoint's goblins are psychotic giggle fiends! LET US SMITE THEM!!" and "here's a potential character-building point of disagreement that our party/this PC might have with a major NPC. LET US ARGUE WITH HER (in a respectful and mutually enlightening fashion)!!"

Ultimately all this stuff gets folded into the story and (again, hopefully) isn't disruptive to the flow of the narrative, but it's always fun when there's that extra little challenge of trying to build in enough texture for people to strike sparks off it in whatever way best suits their home games. It's a big part of why I enjoy writing game-linked fiction. :)

and that, I guess, is today's episode of real long blabbling from the DVD director's commentary

Oh hey, this one went up!

So here's a behind-the-scenes DVD extra commentary (they still have those, right? no, don't tell me, I don't want to know how out of touch I am):

Dragons are such familiar and iconic adversaries that it's pretty tricky, especially in a short piece, to convey the full depth of the menace that I think they ought to have. I spent a while rolling the problem around in my head, and along with the usual techniques (visuals that hearken back to mythic descriptions, POV character responses, a little bit of grisliness [although not as much as with the phlegm worms, because too much gore tends to undercut awe and shift the mood from grandeur to horror]), I thought: what if the dragon is just really mean? Not just ferocious and cruel in the grand way, but down to the small, petty, knife-in-the-heart details?

Personal anecdote time: I have a three-year-old toddler, and one of the things I'm making for him is a family recipe book. I've passed this book around to all of his grandparents and asked them to handwrite their favorite family recipes in its pages.

Part of the reason I'm doing this (besides that I think food is a vivid and concrete way of passing down a certain kind of family history) is because it's actually really hard for most people to convey deep emotion in the written word, and I want this kid to have something, and this is a way of breaking that ice so that his grandparents have a starting point to work from.

Because for most people, most of the time, it is paralyzingly difficult to convey profound emotions in writing. The deeper the feeling, the harder it is. Prison letters, letters from the home front to soldiers, letters from dying people to their friends and kin -- these often are written in moments of extreme emotion, and quite often, unless the writer has had a lot of practice in the form, they fall into certain rote patterns, because those are the words that spring to mind when you want to say something but don't know how to articulate the idea.

It takes a certain kind of bravery to push your way past that, and to commit your feelings to paper regardless. Especially if you're not someone who's super comfortable with written language, it can take a lot of bravery. And these are typically very private thoughts, thoughts that you'd be mortified to have any stranger reading, let alone picking apart and mocking for spelling mistakes and grammar and relying on Hallmark card phrases.

So my thinking was: well, probably, if you're someone sending personal letters to a hardscrabble mining camp in a poor part of Taldor, you probably are not terribly literate, and it is probably very difficult to do this. The same is likely true of the recipient.

And a red dragon, being both highly intelligent and enormously cruel, would know this, and would derive tremendous amusement from twisting that particular knife in the soul again and again, exposing each person's secrets before an audience of their friends and co-workers, and torching the lot of them before anyone has an opportunity to explain, or laugh it off, or try to retaliate against the dragon itself.

And so there are three sentences about that.

I'm actually not sure how that comes across to readers (is it just, like, weird that a dragon is reading people's diaries out loud?), but anyway that was the intent there.

/DVD extra

It is so good to read Tim Pratt working in Golarion again. Loved this one and the last.

ooo this is a fun story.

I, too, would love to know what happens next. :)

Probably Hermea would be the purest version, yeah.

I'm inclined to think that Nidal and Cheliax demand a certain level of competence in any real positions of power, if only because there are always enough ambitious underlings gunning for your back that the truly incompetent are liable to get shot down fast. However, there's also a skew toward corruption (of different sorts) in both nations, so I wouldn't consider either to be a pure meritocracy. I think of them more as meritocracies with a couple of heavy thumbs on the scale privileging certain people over others.

But, still, they probably have well-developed and functional bureaucracies, and I imagine they're fairly efficient at administering their respective hellworld dystopias. Which is not altogether great for the people who have to live in them, but hey.

Nice overview of the Broken Lands and excellent illustrations (which I vastly prefer to the anime style). The top few especially reflect the "feel" of this region, while the topmost illustrates that beauty can yet exist amidst the scarred terrain of these lands.

Yes!! I agree wholeheartedly. I love the art Paizo gets; it's so varied in style but always incredibly evocative.

And I've always been partial to mysterious landscapes too. Cool character designs are nifty to look at (that Kevoth-Kul illustration is amazing!), but there's just something about an eerie landscape or ruined city stretching off toward the horizon that always makes me want to set a story, or a game, in that place. What is it? Why does it look that way? What's the significance of the details in that landscape? SO MANY QUESTIONS.

Which is all a long way of saying: I love that piece too, and I'm so glad you gave it some praise. :)

It is really cool seeing this stuff. So often I see a picture and think "that's awesome, I want to write about that." Watching it unfold the other way, where you write the thing first and then some really talented artists pull the words into color and life, is a weird but really special feeling.

I'm gratified by the reception in this thread. :)

Aw man I missed Nick Logue!? BUMMER.

Also I should footnote that on my way back up to the hotel room I ran into Amanda Hamon and Thurston Hillman (I was very excited to meet Thurston because he, too, has written some of my favorite things) as they were attempting to decode the vending machine in the hotel hallway.

That vending machine was programmed by a truly evil GM but they did figure it out eventually. I applauded their puzzle cracking and staggered off incoherently.

Good night, A+ con, would do again.

Sunday morning: did a Diversity in Gaming panel, proudly advocated FAILING IN PUBLIC!! as a critical component of inclusivity (also my only genuine maxed-out skill), was totally amazed by Diego Valdez's super awesome Arshea concept/Gods and Magic spoiler, which everybody who skipped the diversity panel missed, and that's what you get for skipping diversity panels. (Also, it is legitimately a super cool idea; I am now way more intrigued by Arshea than I ever was before.)

Sunday afternoon: went to Wayne Reynolds's seminar on medieval armor and weapons, saw some excellent line art, was amazed by the discovery that Wayne has a 90-lb. suit of custom-made plate armor that he actually fights in. There are pictures as proof! I am delighted to know this. Also it was an excellent panel with a lot of really neat information about unusual armor and a slide proving the existence of "boob plate" as a thing. (I didn't say this at the panel, which involved a guessing game as to whether a piece of line art depicted a real item or a fantasy invention, but I totally knew the boob plate was a real item because no art director on the planet would approve that in this day and age.)

I missed the Future of Paizo seminar because I was extremely tired at this point and fell asleep for a lot longer than I meant to. Bummerrrrr.

Sunday evening: went out to Seattle for a while, had a lovely dinner at Six Seven (great restaurant, amazing views, you should definitely go if and when you feel like lighting a giant pile of money on fire; it's worth the splurge!), ran into some relatives, etc. etc. civilian non-con stuff.

Returned around 11 pm Sunday evening and WHO DID I SEE AT THE BAR but Painlord and Co., sitting with some dude that they introduced as "this is Greg! You should know Greg!" I was all "who the hell is Greg?" but then we ordered drinks and, you know, how can I keep track of who I'm yelling at when there are drinks on offer? Right? Right.

Anyway it ultimately transpired that Greg was and is Greg Vaughan, author of some of my favorite adventures incl. Skeletons of Scarwall and the Riddleport gazetteer, so I was like "whoa you were totally right! I SHOULD know Greg!" and that was really cool.

Then I saw Wayne Reynolds wandering away from the hotel bar, so I immediately excused myself with extreme grace and alacrity (this is true as to the "alacrity," not so much as to the "grace") and literally ran him down in heels on his way to the bathroom. It was pretty much: "WAYNE!!" [boom boom boom, clattering of impending doom] "WAAAAAYNEE!! I AM COMING FOR YOU WAYNE" [BOOM BOOM BOOM]

(At this point I should note the relevant detail that I had never previously spoken to, or even been introduced to, Wayne Reynolds. This is, from his perspective, pretty much him getting run down by some drunk wild-eyed rando on his way to the bathroom on the third night of a convention.)

Anyway he explained that he was not, in fact, leaving, and ultimately came back to our table with extreme good grace and only a small amount of much-deserved mockery for the highly smooth and cool self-introduction performed by yrs truly.

Then we all cheered Imperial Cheliax (ALL HAIL IMPERIAL CHELIAX!!) and I figured I'd embarrassed myself enough for one night, so that was it for me. I don't know what shenanigans they got up to afterward, but I hope to find out in this thread later.

Thank you Derek!

This really has been a great convention. My personal highlights so far:

-- randomly yelling at everybody ever

-- abandoning my entire party, as Fumbus, to DIE HORRIBLY during our liveplay panel (sorry!, but apparently not sorry enough to get help, instead of just creeping back two weeks later to loot your bones). It was a very fun game, and James Jacobs is scary good at stabbing things in the face as Merisiel. A level 1 character should not be throwing down entire fistfuls of dice for damage.

Of course this did not save any of them from said horrible deaths, but hey. It was a ton of fun playing with BB Wolfe and Luis Loza, and Lyz Liddell is a great GM who rolled admirably with the goofiness and kept us all moving along at a solid clip.

-- getting a truly awesome and lovely audience for the Worldbuilding panel, which I was totally terrified about doing because (a) I am not a convention person; and (b) I know nothing. So it was really sweet and very much appreciated when people came up afterwards to say it didn't suck, and I am deeply sorry if I was so flustered that I miswrote anybody's name in their books. I'm so grateful to all of you, for real. <3

-- getting to tell my two stories at the Horror in RPGs panel. You have no idea how long I was waiting to bust those out. Well, no, if you were there you could probably tell from all the cackling.

-- the banquet! What a fun banquet. I am excited to see the trivia collection take shape and I'm thankful to all my tablemates for making it a very fun dinner.

If anybody sees me tomorrow, say hi! I will be very happy to meet you. I will also probably yell a bunch and maybe curse at Taco Bell for CLOSING AT TEN PM, WHAT THE HELL, so fair warning about that. But you should still say hi anyhow.

I POSTED IN YOUR THREAAAAADDDD

edit: okay now I have a picture but I can't post it because I am bad at the internet.

According to imgur this should work but clearly it does not, which makes me very sad because I really wanted to thank and/or embarrass everyone who put up with my brilliant three-drinks-in idea to go crash the projector screen with a group photo (after which they immediately made everybody sit down and be good, which I can only assume was to stop anybody else from doing that).

I mean okay maybe it's the thought that counts, but the thought was SUPPOSED TO BE a working picture link. And instead it is only this:

https://i.imgur.com/WXy0slq.jpg

woe, woe is me

(but seriously, big thanks to everybody who put up with me at the banquet. for real!)

I also missed signup (although sort of on purpose) so I will be in the crowd of people floating around and looking for random fun things to join. :)

I think it'll be fun. I like doing conventions that way -- for me, at least, it's always nice to leave a window for serendipity and unexpected things.

Anyway if you see me/us around, say hi! I am definitely up for a few quick pickup games (and/or watching and cheering other people playing in theirs, hopefully not in a too-annoying way).

5/5: All PCs get 1075 XP.

Loot includes: a finely cut emerald (worth 1,000 gp), a silver necklace set with garnets (worth 400 gp), a pair of black pearl earrings (worth 150 gp), a gold ring set with a large diamond (worth 2,500 gp), 13 freshwater pearls (worth 10 gp each), a jade comb (worth 100 gp), and a silver-and-amber bracelet (worth 120 gp).

Also a rather grubby folded leather pouch encrusted with long-dry potting soil and some dead roots. It is not worth anything.

4/7/19: All PCs get 5900 XP.

Loot includes: 143 gp; masterwork rapier; mithral chain shirt; masterwork thieves' tools; (2) sunrods; wand of invisibility (9 charges); wand of cure moderate wounds (14 charges); (5) doses of black adder venom

329 gp; composite shortbow (+3 Str); 20 arrows; short sword; mnemonic vestment; (2) scroll of sepia snake sigil; scroll of see invisibility

3/3/19: All PCs get 875 XP.

Loot includes one dose of dust of appearance.

1/27/19: All PCs get 200 XP.

Loot: carved wooden necklace of fanged demonic faces (25 gp), ceremonial dagger with grinning skull handle (50 gp), talon-adorned thong slippers (25 gp), belt of bone beads and pierced carnivore teeth (100 gp)

1/6/19: All PCs get 1200 XP.

Loot: shell necklace (100 gp), silver-and-pearl necklace (100 gp), carved bone-and-ochre skull talisman (amulet of natural protection), polished tigerwood ring (ring of protection +1)

12/2: All PCs get 800 XP.

11/17 (belatedly!): All PCs pick up 2250 XP.

Loot: scarlet and blue sphere ioun stone, associated skill is K: Religion.

11/4: All PCs pick up 2400 XP.

Loot: wand of cure light wounds (33 charges), amulet of mighty fists +1, {i]+1 chain shirt[/i], 843 gp

Scrolls of blink, cat's grace, remove disease, silent image, and zone of truth

9/23/18: All PCs get 1025 XP.

Loot: (2) oil of magic weapon, (3) potion of cure light wounds, (1) potion of vanish

(5) sets of yellow robes, (4) crude papier-mache masks (no resale value)

Pouch containing 22 sp, 88 cp, and three freshwater pearls (100 gp each)

Small steel key stamped with a grinning skull on its handle

9/16/18: All PCs get 1050 XP (for the past two sessions combined)

Loot: Another three sets of the archaic yellow-metal armor; a finely made green cloak with a leaf clasp at the throat (cloak of elvenkind); a slim steel dagger with elegant gold inlay on the hilt and scabbard (+1 returning dagger); a leather bag containing several smaller bags of coins that have been counted and parceled into probable bribes of varying amounts (total value of all cash is 1,428 gp)

The party has also recovered some documents that tend to establish that Count Lowls IV was stealing from the crown and mismanaging the administration of his own township so that he could divert the money to various projects, including financing foreign expeditions, collecting odd books, and inviting scholars and esteemed lecturers to the relative backwater of his estate for personal discussions. The purpose of these efforts is not clear from the documents, but the unauthorized diversion of tax funds is.

9/2/18: All PCs get 2400 XP.

Loot includes: 55 gp in assorted coins, mostly of small denominations; (7) sets of curiously inscribed archaic armor fashioned from an unfamiliar, distinctly yellow brass or bronze alloy and bearing Sarkorian thematic elements as well as less identifiable markings. Each set of armor is worth 250 gp to a collector but will likely prove impossible to sell in Thrushmoor.

8/12/18: All PCs get 300 XP.

7/29/18: All PCs pick up a total of 2200 XP for the previous sessions.

Loot includes:

-- +2 wooden armor
-- (6) potion of cure light wounds, (3) potion of barkskin, (2) potion of hide from animals
-- (4) dose of belladonna, (6) dose of bloodroot, (10) dose of flayleaf, (1) dose of malyass root paste
-- handwritten note requesting "more of your dream brews and the oil," signed by "Melisenn"
-- clay jar containing 4 doses of reddish paste, which Gavrelu can identify as a powerful hallucinogen derived from the muscaria mushroom and tainted with some otherworldly influence that enhances its ability to grant visions of occult knowledge
-- leather pouch containing 1694 gp

I'm really happy this book is getting a positive reception. It was the first time I'd written any out-and-out gaming materials, and I wasn't altogether sure we'd hit the brief. But hey, looks like it came out all right after all. :)

I thought Lyz did a really amazing job with the adventure locations, btw. Lots and lots of neat game ideas nested into each of those.

4/22/18: All PCs pick up a total of 1200 XP for the previous sessions.

No loot!

-- some time later --

With the death of the final oneirogen, and the Tatterman's defeat soon after, the choking yellow fog that had buried Briarstone Asylum begins to lift. At first the sky is a murky, tainted gray, its blue vault still suffused with the last gasps of fog. Then there seems to be almost a twisting in the world, as if two misaligned lenses had been snapped back into focus and the image in a battered old telescope were once again allowed to come clear.

The sky is blue. The sun shines. Somewhere, a cicada thrums and is answered by another. The creased brightness of Lake Encarthan is almost dazzling to look upon, and seems vast and free as the open sea after so long trapped in the asylum's crumbling walls.

In the courtyard, a ghoul seizes up and collapses into decrepit, yellow-stained bones as the sun touches it. The ragged, yellow-painted cultists it had been pursuing freeze as well, then drop to their knees, one wailing inconsolably, the other evidently catatonic. Whatever drove the asylum's supernatural miseries, it seems to have vanished with the mist. The ghoul's bones remain in the yard, however, a grisly and undeniable proof that what happened here was no dream.

Only a single rowboat lies on Briarstone Isle's muddy shore. Tattered ropes, trailing off the isle's lone pier, suggest that the others might have been hacked loose and perhaps even deliberately sabotaged to keep anyone from escaping. The sole remaining boat, having been washed onto thick mud, appears to be undamaged. However, it looks capable of carrying eight to ten passengers at most, and might be precarious with that heavy a load.

"We'll have to split up and go in groups," Winter Klazcka says, emerging from the asylum. The black-haired woman looks exhausted, but also elated to see the world restored. She gazes at the river's flow and the open bay in wonder, rubbing unconsciously at a blood smear on her wrist. "You're welcome to go first if you like. Tell Thrushmoor what to expect. I'll need some time to gather up the survivors, and to find whoever's left of the cultists. They seem to have come back to their old selves, so they should be harmless, but at least some of them are likely to wander around in confusion until someone comes to get them. It might keep me busy for a while.

"Once all that's taken care of, though, I'd like to go with you back to Thrushmoor. I'll want to make a full report to my superiors, and they may be interested in hearing your accounts as well. You saw much more of it than I did, after all.

"I'd be glad to meet you in town later, or you can stay and help me here until we're all ready to go."

4/3/18: All characters pick up 4200 XP.

Loot: wand of cure moderate wounds, 6 charges remaining

2/11/18: All PCs pick up a total of 1650 XP for past two gameplay sessions.

Loot: +2 heavy wooden shield, silver holy symbol of Shelyn (50 gp), (3) vials of antitoxin

1/13/18 pt. 2: all PCs pick up 850 XP for gameplay session.

Thim has a collection of publications that were confiscated for licentiousness, total value 100 gp.

1/13/18: All PCs get 500 XP for gameplay session.

Loot includes: (2) potion of cure light wounds, (1) healer's kit (10 uses remaining)

re: Uskwood druids, there's a pretty neat plot of theirs in Horror Realms under the location writeup for the Uskheart, and I'd suggest checking that out if you want more information about what they might be up to.

This book will have some glancing references to that, mostly in terms of how you might use that to set up Umbral Court intrigues (there are a couple of Umbral Court members that have simmering disagreements with one another, and the Uskheart plays into one of those conflicts), but there's not a whole ton of additional material on that.

re: monsters, I had no involvement in that part of the book and it will be as much a surprise to me as to you, so no hints there. :)

Question: waaay back in Dragons Revisited, we got a description of an ancient gold dragon that lives in disguise in Nidal, quietly trying to do good and help the place's miserable inhabitants. Is that still part of canon; and if so, is the dragon mentioned or referred in this book?

Yes and yes. There isn't a whole whole lot, but I did put in a hook if you want to use the dragon. :)

Sadly I don't think there's anything about chains going through people's eye sockets (at least not in the parts I wrote), and there's nothing about the Empyreal Lords either.

The project had some pretty detailed specifications as to what topics should be covered and how many words should be devoted to each section, and it turns out that it's actually really hard to cram that much material into the allotted wordcount. As a result, a lot of stuff that I would have liked to explore just couldn't fit into the available space, and some topics (like faith and deity interactions) mostly got omitted.

(Incidentally, after working on this project I'm even more impressed with the Qadira book, which is a really excellent piece of work, but I think is also the kind of thing that requires enough time to build an iceberg of supporting material beneath the shown text. There's clearly a lot of writing and development beyond what made it into print on that one.)

12/10/17: All PCs get 650 XP for this session plus the last (which I forgot).

Loot includes: cloak of resistance +1 (resplendent shimmering purple cape with winged gold clasp), potion of bull's strength, potion of protection from evil, gold ring (150 gp), (2) thunderstones, Mrs. Freeling's picture locket (gold-and-silver locket with painted miniature inside, worth 225 gp)

11/11/17: All PCs get 400 XP

Loot: (2) masterwork daggers (finely made and ornamented with malachite, worth 500 gp only if sold as a matched pair), (2) potion of cure light wounds, amulet of natural armor +1 (bronze bear-paw amulet etched with runes on the central paw pad)

Pre-Age of Darkness, the inhabitants of Nidal were, IIRC, horselords with a sort of Kellid feel to them, and I'm curious as to whether or not, farther away from the heavier church of Zon-Kuthon/government centers of power, some of the locals still retain some elements of their earlier culture (such as a fascination with horses, or a tendency to think of homes and buildings as transitory and families and bloodlines as forever, even if they haven't been nomadic for many generations).

That's pretty much exactly where we went with it, yeah. :)

Hey guys!

Update/more in Dept. of Managing Expectations: I've turned in my contributions to this project and I hope that people interested in running games in this corner of the world, or just learning more about it, will find them useful.

Because one of the things that interests me about SF/F is using imaginary worlds as a prism through which to consider real-life problems, one of the goals with the gazetteer was to establish ways for GMs to draw real-world ethical questions into their games. If you want to use fiction (which is what I think tabletop games are: interactively told stories) to explore ethical questions about prenatal genetic testing, paid adoption, governmental policies (esp. punitive policies) intersecting with drug addiction, immigration lotteries, immigrant communities' efforts to re-establish cultural histories that they've largely forgotten, etc., then this book should give you some openings to do that.

On the other hand, if your preference is more for straightforward heroic or horror adventures, you should (hopefully!) find lots of hooks to build those, too.

One thing you won't find a lot of is statted-out traits, spells, and sub-systems. My feeling is that there's a lot of stuff from Horror Adventures, Horror Realms, Occult Adventures, etc. that already covers all those bases. Rules building isn't my strongest point and those books already have so much solid material on running corruptions, curses, etc. that I felt like anything I came up with would be redundant with that material. It's already there, this is a good place to use it, but there's no need for me to spend wordcount repeating what somebody else already did better.

Another thing you won't find -- and this was a very deliberate decision -- is stats for the Black Triune. There's an explanation for who they are, what they do, and the role they occupy in Nidal, but there are no stats.

This is because the power level they would need to effectively occupy that role is so variable depending on your campaign's overall power balance that I didn't think it was advisable to actually stat them out. If they need to be Level 15 to do what they're described as doing, cool, make them Level 15. If they need to be major outsiders with 20 class levels and 5 mythic levels, fine, make them that. But what's appropriate for one campaign would be ridiculous in another, so I didn't stat them.

Finally, the last thing you won't find is a bunch of ultra gory descriptions of specific tortures used in Nidal. There are a couple of things that do get spelled out, and a couple of hints from which you can extrapolate more, but my feeling is that (a) you're creative and you know it's there, so you can go as dark as you want and is appropriate for your own game; (b) I don't need to write out a bunch of detailed splatterpunk that other people don't necessarily want to read; and (c) there are more effective ways of conveying dread than that anyway.

Anyway, that's more or less what I was going for with this writeup. Whether or not that actually got accomplished is something you'll have to judge for yourself. But that was the intent.

11/5/17: All PCs pick up 600 XP for gameplay session.

Loot: (2) vials of silversheen, (1) oil of align weapon, 40 gp, six pearls worth 15 gp each, a calling card for the Thrushmoor offices of the Sleepless Detective Agency that prominently bears an accusatory eye (the agency's logo), and a sword in a crimson leather scabbard ("Red Destiny," +2 short sword).

10/21/17: All PCs pick up 400 XP for gameplay session.

LOOT: (6) vials of alchemist's fire

Doctor Chawaar's hydrocephalus manuscript (minimum 400 gp, higher value possible if sent to Katheer), brain-shaped wooden box (50 gp), screaming/crying twin figurines (50 gp), brass sculpture of Osirian pyramid (50 gp), selected texts from Administrator Losandro's private collection (300 gp)

Contents of Administrator Losandro's locked drawer: magnifying glass, two vials of alchemist’s kindness, a vial of smelling salts, two vials of soothe syrup, 4 doses of antitoxin, 2 doses of opium, scroll of fox's cunning, two scrolls of remove paralysis

10/20/17: Gavrelu picks up 100 XP for boardplay recap.

10/15/17:

Uldin picks up 100 XP for boardplay recap.

Gavrelu picks up 25 XP for general boardplay.

Everyone in the group gets 400 XP for gameplay session.

LOOT: (1) potion of cure light wounds; (1) potion of sanctuary; wand of bless (18 charges), 3 sets of Pharasmin priestly vestments worth 15 gp each

UNIDENTIFIED LOOT: (1) purple glass wand; (1) potion

"If you're certain," Winter replies, uncertainty creasing her brow. She leads the way toward the dingy curtain that blocks off the end of the hall heading back toward the asylum's main entrance. "I'd warn you that it isn't safe, but that's a silly thing to say here. What is?"

About five feet away from the curtain, she stops, waving whoever wishes to proceed to go ahead. The sound of faint, choking sobs can be heard from the hall beyond. Winter grimaces. "If you can help it, try not to make too much noise, and... put the curtain back if there's anything left. The children can't stand the sight of that thing, and they've been through enough."

Beyond the curtain is a stone wall largely covered, and disfigured, by an immense growth of yellow fungus. Its stringy tendrils crawl over the blocks, thickening in the center to a pulsating mass of spongy flesh. An enormous pink-rimmed eye, easily the size of a wagon wheel, blinks and weeps at the heart of the main mass. The sound of sobbing seems to emanate from the fungus's depths, though it has no apparent mouth or vocal apparatus.

9/24/17: Everyone gets 300 XP for the session.

Thim, Vaduk, Uldin, and Gavrelu pick up 75 XP for boardplay.

Loot: 48 gp in money, surgeon's tools (20 gp), pearl of power (level 1), phylactery of faithfulness (purple and dark gray), wand of admonishing ray (3 charges), potion of cure light wounds

Thanks, that's helpful for me to know. :)

I have some thoughts that should hopefully cover those three angles. Whether they'll suit your campaign is a separate question -- I think Nidal is lowkey like Numeria or Alkenstar in that some people just don't want that kind of thing in their fun fantasy adventures, although "relentlessly grimdark, ultra-insular nation chained in eternal servitude to wacked-out pain god" isn't quite as clear-cut a case as robots and spaceships or guns -- but I do hope to incorporate some suggestions on how and why PCs might have left that country, and why parties might choose to swing by.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but overall -- from this thread and others -- I'm getting the general impression that what people want is primarily:

(1) What is Nidal actually like, how does it even work, what's it like to walk through its streets and talk to its people, etc.;

and

(2) why on earth would PCs ever want to go there.

Does that sound about right?

In the department of managing expectations:

(1) yes, I'm on deck to cover part of this book. Definitely not the whole thing. Definitely not any stat-heavy parts;

(2) my tendency is to approach the material from the perspective of "what information would help people tell stories set in this country?" I'm looking more at history, culture, how society functions (and dysfunctions), what everyday life is like for various subgroups, etc. While there may end up being some class-specific material, I don't expect there to be a whole lot of that, and there might not turn out to be much at all.

BUT there should, hopefully, be a lot of stuff that's easily adapted to various class concepts, in terms of both background and development within Nidal, if that makes sense. Not so much mechanics, more story and worldbuilding stuff.

Just stopping by to see what people are interested in, for, uh, idle curiosity, and stuff...