Lawgiver

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Silver Crusade

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I have the core world for my fantasy setting, known as Aneraph. But the galaxy, and the nearby starsystems, are occupied by various worlds as well. I've got five other planets with fully developed life, as opposed to planets like Eox, that blasted off their own atmosphere during a mage war which I outright copied from Golarion's solar system. I would like help fleshing these worlds out with nations, civilizations, races, religions, and more.
It's used for Pathfinder and GURPS mostly.

The Galaxy of Anuld: Set on the prime materal plane Anuld is home to the last two surviving Primordials, Creation and Oblivion, aside from The Creator (benevolent overgod of fate) they are the oldest beings in existance. While the rest of the primordials killed each other off at the beginning of time, with the death of the Time primordial itself creating linear history within the prime materal plane, these two had a moment of stockhold syndrome, and unable to kill each other, fell in love. They reside at the center of the galaxy, and their "star forge" gives birth to new solar systems in addtion to those that form naturally. (Which is why there are many more habitable systems close to each other.)

Aneraph: is the prime planet belonging to the central solar system, of a cluster near the starforge. It is protected from the forge by a shield wall of dead planets, meteorites, and black holes on the "western side" of the cluster. It's already developed my me as a fantasy world with dead civilizations layered underneath the crust stretching back billions of years, so the Underdark is actually layers of ruins and caverns.

The Planes: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Positive, and Negitive, with their overlaping planes (ooze, magma, lightning, and so forth) are the inner planes. With various afterlives, odd realms, and the massive Asteral plane, as the outer plane. The etheral plane, and the Fae Realm, are out of phase with the materal world, but can be reached via magic, if the stars are right, ect. Anything summoned from the planes to a world is subject to the laws of the materal plane. (This is why you can kill elementals, demons, archons, ect.)

The five nearby system prime worlds: I want help developing ideas for various cultures, factions, nations, warlords, ect. I'm giving you premission to go crazy and create fluff.

Quasslam:A world where magic is used for everything. I got the idea from a player who continuiously created magical items to min-max himself and make money. Magic is everything, and it has created a rapid magic based economy where a Mage Guild is the equivilent of a cyberpunk Mega Corp in power. However many mages have become vapid, self-important, and shallow, and non-magical innivation has gone down the crapper. Why develop warm clothing when you can enchant endure elements on this weeks most popular dress?

Cereaph: At first a joke planet, and partly to taunt a player with a psycotic lesbian gnome, who went looking for an "amazon world" it became a real world. Cereaph is a world of tall amazonian women, all humanoids on seraph are female as the result of a million year breeding program of an elder civilization. It came to the conclusions that women were superior to men, just as real life greeks & romans believed in somthing simmilar5 for men. This civilization stumbled upon the concept of "eugenics" from studying noble bloodlines, and paired it with magic. Thus all of the major humanoids are "perfect" women. Dwarves were destroyed in the ensuing subtle conflicts. However the planetwide belief in prefection lives on after the civilization itself fell. They have mastered art, bronze, and magic, but their civilizations are extremely conservitive, and have a strong sense of Civic pride.

Duazzo: The Yang to Cereaph's Ying, and again, because I wanted to fustrate a lesbian gnome and her lewd player. Durazzo is an all male world. A demon lord of fertility & disease tried to destroy it by creating a pathogen that damaged the female cromozone. Thus rendering all humanoid women infertile or stillborn within a few generations. There's an elaborate return to nature idology behind it, but that's not important. Druids and other primal faiths did not survive the ensuing fallout. But the people of Durazzo survived via a simmilar magical proccess used on Cereaph. The planet is the only one of the five to have undergone an industrial revoloution due in large part to a lack of population for a long time, making it slightly steampunk in flavor. Religion and Knightly Chivalry still play a major roll on this world, due to their involvement in destroying the demonic hordes.

Bawia: a world ruled by two massive states, and their puppets, it originated from the idea "if China and Rome became superpowers and the parthians and persians weren't in the way." The Empire of Silver in the west and the Imperial Tribune States in the east are largely made up of fudal states and warlords that answer to powerful emperor. War is incessent, but neither side can triumph due to the sheer size of the other.

Geruth: a world where savagery triumphed, where life is short, hard, and stubborn. Humanoids live in tribes, small nomadic states, and occasionally city states. Geruth is trapped by it's own barbaric nature and lack of pack animals (no horses...). The worst aspects of primitive religions run free here, druids commit blood sacrifice to bless crops, priests tear hearts out on altars and commune with their gods using drugs. Wizards and sorcerers are almost unheard of, even written language is rare.

Additional note: Bonus points for creating and naming dead worlds.

Drama Avoidance Disclaimer: Some places this would cause a flame war and odd accusations with two mono-gender planets. especally with Ceraph having a bit of sexisim in it's past. Some of my players would start cracking heads if I used males. So by putting it on an amazonian style planet it is a way to explore, talk about, and confront with an uncomfortable topic. Without invoking the "it's evil, smash it in the face" reflex right away.
Please don't flame. It's not about politics, it's about telling a good story.

Silver Crusade

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I'd probably say Janus, the reason humans are mentioned as attacking half orcs, is because dwarves aren't as impulsive, and would probably give the cold shoulder. Make him pay double here and there, ans so forth.

Anyways, there is of course the "innocent bigot" trope I've used before. The character doesn't have any persional experience with X, so they think back on old stories, and make silly assumptions.
I do this for rural human villages all the time, usually with funny twists. Such as kids gathering around an elf fighter, and asking to see him fly "because grandpa said the elves flew into battle at Mel-Sunshar"

Or I use "understandable bigotry" a Neutral Good shop keeper being biased against half-orcs, and being unfriendly because he lost his father in an orc raid. It's still wrong, but the players can understand why he hates them. That being said he's NG, so he's distrusting, and slightly afraid, instead of outright hateful. "I'm keepin an eye on you greenskin" and the like.

Silver Crusade

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I've run them a few times, and think I should put up the race itself to the lashings, and odd thinking of the internet. Tell me what you think, and critique away.

Shoray are cute little sheep-like humanoids that are industrious, harmonious, and organized. They are somewhat childlike in nature and personality, but smart.

Size: Medium (Average around 5'1)

+2 Con +2 Chr

Trusting: -4 to sense motive

Team Players: If a shoray has a teamwork feat, all other shoary count as if they also possess that teamwork feat if they would gain a benefit at that time. (IE: even if he doesn't have the feat for it, a shoray fighter gives the shoary rouge his teamwork flanking bonus, and gets the bonus himself. But ONLY if he's in the right position.)
Shoray gain a +4 assistance bonus, instead of a +2, if given by another shoray.

Musical: Shoray gain a +1 to caster level if using the Maestro Bloodline. They also gain double bonus from musical morale effects, such as a bard.

Favored classes Bard & sorcerer

Background: Created on the world of Quassliam as a race of harmonious servants, Shoray were taken and put into a pocket plane for the "Unblananced things" of the multiverse by an old, now extinct pantheon. They were freed by a group of planes traveling adventurers, and have grown from a small minority, to a major race across the south-lands in recent years.
Shoray share many values with Halflings & Dwarves, food, hearth, family. But are a builder race that are constantly seeking new lands, and new things to do. They are incredibly social among themselves, friendly and warm around others. If this sounds like a race too nice to survive, you would've been right. But years in the "rejected world" have hardened them as a race of survivors. Shoray work in perfect harmony, and this is never more evident than when forced to defend themselves.
Shories love stories and song, there is nothing they like better.
Funfact: on their birthday shoray give little presents rather than receive them.
Psychology: "like being lobotomized with sugar packets" according to a wizard turned into one. On a subconscious level Shoray are naturally trusting, open with both themselves, and others. They have an almost childlike glee, and love life.

Creator note: I overheard some goths at Mc Donalds griping about how "the whole world is filled with sheeple" and the idea developed into a cute race of promiscuous, expansionist, genuinely compassionate conformists. Giving them a slightly creepy Disney cheery vibe, with musicals and everything. The players are tense and waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never will.

I am playing one in a recent game, and after failing his spellcraft to identify and cure stat drain spell, Abel tried to "hug the stupids away" until the cleric regained his mental stats.

Silver Crusade

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I created a race of Innocent I named Shoray. Little Sheep-like people that were based around teamwork. They disturb the players who are used to my hardboiled campaign settings.
I'm going to post some stuff in another thread about them. But, their childish mindset and musical harmony made them almost disneylike.

On a side note I am playing one recently, and when he ran into a member of the party that had been feeble minded, this 5'2 fluffy sheep sorcerer failed his spellcraft, didn't realize it was a feeble mind, and tried to "hug the stupids away"

The way I reconciled their constant childishness, with their place in the world, was to make their subconscious/Id childlike in nature, while they are just as varied as any other race in the conscious mind.

So an actual Lawful evil necromancer they encountered, was a shoray, and in the middle of the "I'mma destroy the village for throwing stones at me." speech he was distracted by the scent of candy that one player had on him.
It made it hilarious when they actually bribed him with chocolate, then talked him down from destroying the village with skeletons. The conversation included him telling them he didn't raze zombies because he "thought they were icky"
After they'd been mauled and fought their way trough various skeletal undead, and were low on spells and health.

Silver Crusade

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Generic Villain wrote:
Mikaze wrote:


Or are they trying to make us ready to welcome them?
I love the Dark Tapestry/Dominion of the Black, like, a whole bunch. That said, I hope Numeria has nothing to do with it/them. The universe is a big place after all, with plenty of room for aliens who aren't HPL abominations. We'll be getting Dominion of the Black Love soon enough from a couple PF modules, after all.

Being the loremonkey (or fox) I am, I scrounged around. The Silver Mountian is again, (according to sages) a fragment of a massive "spelljammer" bigger than anything ever created, and is believed to have come "beyond the multiverse", crossed into the system loaded for bare, and slammed into golarion, breaking up on impact.

What is more nothing alive has come out, and nobody has found anything alive inside the ruins save the occasional abberation, most of it is tech. The Silver Mount is a massive thing, and it's probably the tail end of the ship, so the ship may have been bigger than an entire country, or larger, and entirely built out of adamantine.
The mechanical menaces are enough to indicate the power of these former creatures.

I ran an adventure inside the Silver mount about a year and a half ago, without all the new stuff printed for numeria. The gearmen intentionally let their guard down during a sandstorm and "slipped up" so the players could get inside where they faced a zoo of abberations and nasty stuff, robotic attack dogs, assault robots, a few wierd alien ghosts (just ghosts with templates and some beefed up stats), unique tech haunts, and at the end a mad Glados like Med-Computer that was trying to recreate the dead alien crew from kidnapped locals, abberations, and summoned outsiders.

The Gearmen appeared at the end, shining cold eyes in the dark sandstorm, thanking the players for "removing another obsticle" before fading away into the sand and night.
I WANNA REPLAY IT AND CONTINUE THE STORY *flails in excitement and rage at collage having gone into full swing and killed his unfinished game.*

Silver Crusade

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A recent game being run in our game shop is "Down" which is an adventure in the abyss by a GM who has been playing since 1st edition, and is using planescape as a base.
We are using a form of gestalt class rules that is working very well.

We only discovered this AFTER the first chapter was done.
I am playing a paladin/ranger named Null, who is an advanced Fawn and comes from a drudic culture. I won't bore you with the details of the complicated mother son relationship in his backstory, but suffice to say he's a damn cool hero. especally against boss monsters where he can smite evil and use his dual weapons to inflict multi-smites in a single round.

Picture Link:
http://c526039.r39.cf2.rackcdn.com/users/275/665/8/photos/De_Historia_et_Ve ritate_by_Edheloth_full.png

We were called upon to save our world, as wierd apocolptic stuff was starting to happen, fields of grain turning into quasits, buildings imploding, ect. The guy who had the knowlage of how to do so was shot before he could reveal the plan (arrows of human slaying X.X ) and we were forced to try and figure things out.
We succedded in stopping a horde of demons from being unleashed and conquering our world, suprisingly some nasty creatures called oberiths were going to destroy it anyway. The demons planned to save the world, and enslave it...
We had no idea because the seer who fortold how to save the world had the curse babble, opposate of tounges, and nobody but a Chaositic can understand babble. (the loon assassinated was the chaositic translator, without him, nobody could understand her.)

The Oberiths marked the party for their "help" and because they did so, they wound up going to the abyss, and spending 250 years as magoty things....
*wince*
A group of demons decided it'd be fun to fish them out, and try them for "crimes against the abyss" Null accepted the accusations, "guilty as virtue" was tossed around, then the group was kicked into the abyssal landscape. because Null was "gulty" they took his stuff.

Dispite all this he remained innocent, never broke the paladin's code, and remained a bastion Honesty, Chivalry, and Good. So he's the only unfallen paladin to ever wash up in the abyss.
As the DM kinda hinted at "Null is now an anaomly in the multiversal system, weather that's a good or bad thing remains to be seen."

So whadda ya'all think?
I'll post updates as they happen.

Silver Crusade

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My party took a jaunt through galt once, had to get info on a dragon from a professor who was beheaded by the final blade. Can't speak with him while he's trapped in the blade, it was a fun foray into the bezzare world of Galtian politics for a paladin.
Damn xenophopic nationalists tried to lynch him because he looked all noble in shiny armor, trying to talk them down didn't do any good.

"good people, I've taken care of the anheg infestation of your fields, you can grow food again"
*rabble noises* "it's a trick!" "he's a nobleman" "they want to make us slaves again"
"wait, no, I just wanted to help you so you didn't starve"
"get em"

Thank god a steed is faster than an angry mob.

Silver Crusade

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half elf oracle, fits my persionality well, though my actual faith in christ would create a few odd moments in golarion, and locals would think either that I was a prophet or try and burn me as a heritic, depending on what nation I wound up in.

Silver Crusade

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I'm drawn back to the battlefields in the game The Darkness... it had sort of a WW1 hell or somthing, most of the game was forgettable, but slogging my way through those trenches and the ruined town fighting undead german soldiers and hell-versions of horrors of the battlefield, meeting undead brits stiched back togeather after every assault by their medic.
the british undead made the biggest impact on me, the one moment of calm in the entire battle was being in their fortified town listening to these undead talking about "back home" and how "we're told to capture the hill... but there's always another hill after it." duty killed them, and duty still bound them to that spot. it was sad actually hearing them talk about "going home when the war was over" and working to reinforce their positions.

anyways I rant.

but they along with the book "all quiet on the western front" talking about inspired me to come up with a heck of a lot of WW1 dungeon stuff... never used mind you

Silver Crusade

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I have run "angry mobs" when my players incite them, happens more often than I'd like in some games XD.

The first time this jerk named Haydon got pissed at a merchant and burned his shop down. the villagers formed a mob to take down the "evil" (actually CN) wizard.
Haydon (wizard) "oh I can take a few of angry villagers"
Vule (rouge) "well they are like level 1-2 commoners right?"
Me (DM) "they are a mob actually"
Haydon "so? there's a lot of them I can make the concentration checks, scare them off with a magic missle or two?"
(casts...)
Me: "your magic missle hits pavement"
Haydon "what?"
Me: "angry mob... a swarm of medium creatures, with traits that apply. they have mental traits simmilar to mad monkeys. a swarm of humans is also armed, and thus has a higher damage of 5d6 each turn, no roll to hit if they enter your square."
Haydon "how many hit points?"
Me: "I can't tell you that Haydon."
Haydon: "I prepped a few fireballs"

epolouge: Haydon turned NE about half way through igniting villagers, ran out of area of affect spells, and could not escape the mob. he was torn to shreds.

Silver Crusade

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thanks, I kinda seperated them into a few types.
Hollow Legion: they aren't intelligent troops, but these zombies have innate training to take advantage of, so they are proficent with their weapons but have no feats, they attack en-masse from range. those that died in bunkers know enough not to charge out of them, and fire from cover.
like all zombies Hollow Legion can only move OR attack. but when facing a firing squad that is still dangerious, not to mention their armored coats (scale mail armor sewen into jackets, low max dex, but that doesn;t matter for zombies) or breastplates.
Barbed men: soldiers that died in the barbed wire, they drag it around with them when they reanimate. giving them a nasty attack on top of their usual zombie slam, it also can cause disease, what with the barbs having partly rusted in the muck, dirt, and zombie.
if you make this into a ghoul, I'm thinking barbed wire whip?

of course you have ghouls, everywhere you have large battlefields ghouls come to feast on the dead and dying, these needent be connected to the battle or the Hollow Legion, but some might be.

not to mention things like grenades and toxic weapons deployed, those would attract all sorts of nasty creatures in additon to the normal wildlife.

even a biligerant army officer might return as a skeleton champion, still directing attacks on empty enemy positions.
another excuse for undead are men sworn to their banner, the banner was never captured, and untill it is, the undead soldiers remain at their posts defending their position from everything, awaiting orders from a long dead monarch. like many ghosts they don't even realize they are dead.

Silver Crusade

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I actually thought on that, and wrote up a bit of a dungeon like that.
the trenches were inhabited by a combination of creatures that had taken up residence, these being creatures attracted to death and decay, nukkavee, fungal monsters, etc. and the dead themselves, mostly zombies corpses that are reanimated by the magical pollution. I had the image of gasmasked zombies firing on the players from trenches and using cover, they are not "Smart" but they are using the style of warfare that's been drilled into them in life by sargents, commmanders, and trying to survive.

enchanted ammunition being lobbed by cannons and truestrike moters, a cloudkill rune set to go off wherever the cannonball landed and thus poison the trenches. for example, and areas enchnated with wind wall to keep out the gas.

Peppermill Cannon a multibarrel cannon simmilar to a gatling gun used as a trap facing down one of the trenches. makes a burst attack in a line like a lightning bolt before self distructing to keep it out of enemy hands.

magically animated artillery occasionally dropping shells as a trap.

and of course the ultimate killing machine to keep them from "going over the top" and bypassing the dungeon. the "Iron juggernaught" a WW1 style tank still looking for enemies and packing enough firepower to punch through a city wall. the wizard who created it died, and took the secrets of it's animation to the grave.
the iron juggernaught is basicly a cannon golem with a lot more armor and four cannons.

Silver Crusade

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Begger: "good sir please I need healing"
Cleric: "Ahhh yes my good man" *click*
Begger: "oh look I'm all better!" *hobbles away*
Cleric: "that always happens... I must heal so well I don't have to cast the spell!"

Silver Crusade

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Deadmanwalking wrote:


Sarenrae and Desna are both also good for scorched earth tactics when pushed too far. Neither is someone you f$!* around with, and I like and respect that in a deity. Calistria's good for that, too, but that kinda goes without saying as the Goddess of Vengeance.

agreed with that, Rovagug and his horrid spawn is a good example of one of the few things sarenrae puts into the "kill them all, salt the earth, burn the corpses" catagory. she is a sun godess afterall And my persional favorite.

Silver Crusade

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from what I've read Turin... the natives never exploted Arcadia's natural bounty for one. the lands there are... from all acounts stunningly beautiful, Primal, Rich, and almost completely untapped.

other detailed stuff hasn't meen mentioned yet as far as I know, I think Serpant folk also live from the southern jungles of Arcadia but I've got nothing to back it up but that fact that they are mentioned as having had an empire "South of Azlant" and the eastern ones being so soundly beaten that they were removed from history by their human foes. the last civilized ones isolated to a little island somewhere south of the shackles or small enclaves in hidden parts of the world.

Aztec and Mayan themes anyone?
oh I think this Foxy monk is drooling over a potental new adventure path

Silver Crusade

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going to have to revisit numeria and think harder on Alkenstar

Silver Crusade

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Um everyone, I'd like to make a few points.
1. Galt has no offical miltiary nor is the Red Reveloution welcomed by anyone. the nation is literally easy to conquer, but impossable to hold onto in it's current state as over several governments have proven. one of them even being a general who implimented martial law and manditory conscription, only to be killed by a firing squad of his own men.

2. in discussing Nidal and Chelax one nation has been left out of the discussion Molthune.

Molthune is a LN military olgarchy and territorial expansionaist state. they are currently at war with colition of Nermithas because they cannot expand in any other direction. they are listed as having a massive, effective, effecent, war machine. The only reason Nermathas has not been conquered is that Molthune cannot hold the forests against the gurrilla fighters.
More importantly the military aches to take a good swing at Nidal, Isger, and Chelax because it shares a border with the first two nations and because Molthune was the first state to rebel against Chelax.
Only the three of them combined with the mountian range keep Molthune's military industrial complex from marching south. I concidered a Golarian war, and where the military might of molthune falls will make a big diffrence.

let me elaborate.

if Chelax ties it's army up on forgien campains the High Commander of Mothune (a masterful general in both military and ecnomic matters by all accounts) will likely take a swing at Nidal.
Isiger CANNOT help chelax in it's current state, it's military is still recovering from the goblin wars, and if monthune struck at Nidal it would have to march right through Isiger claiming territory along the way. how far they get into Nidal is debatable, but on the planes of Isiger neither Chelax nor Nidall could dislodge Molthune.

The Molthuni Military is not a just a professional force, it is a Miltiary Industirial Complex moblized into at a state of Total War on a national scale. they don't just bring massive troop numbers and military engineers to the fight, they bring Lawful Lycanthrops (including by some accounts Miltiarily trained and armored werewolves and werebears.), Centuars, State Sponsored Druids, Spec-ops rangers, and Mages trained and the Acadamy of Military Magic.
about 65% of molthune is under arms at any given time, in war this can be pushed to full mobilization.

Markwan Teldas also has the same benefit that Evans pointed out, when he says mobilize the General Lords say "How High?" unlike Abagal his people love him and respect him as well as fear him. meaning that with a Military like that and overwhelming Public Support anyways in the long run Molthune might be able to outlast Chelax in a slugfest on it's own.

The Nermathians are too disorganized to mount an attack on the Molthuni homeland. likely only Fort Ramgate would come under more sustained attack, but molthune has built the place into a nigh impenitrible fortress.

Silver Crusade

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I experimented with Deathless, and shocked my tomb raiding players, they were supposed to retreve a holy artifact from the saint it was interred with.
problem was, and they'd been warned of it, the tomb was protected by guardians. so they went preped for riddle asking shynxes, traps, the occasional trial etc.
little did they realize that a regiment of crusaders, who pledged their after-lives to guard the tomb against ALL intruders was what they faced. they had become various forms of Deathless that I kinda made up on the fly, this was back in 3.5 of course.
I remember the Knight they nicknamed Meteor, he a positive ghiest who animated his own armor and when they stood outside said "where in the nine hells is the guardian? there's always a guardian to unlock these things."
He promptly announced his presence by kicking a door off it's hinges three stories up (a small turet used for defence when the crusaders were alive). Then swan diving three stories to the stone lance pointing down in what in life would have been a suicide drop. Yelling "your challange is accepted"
He went toe to toe with the team especally after the rouge failed his dex check with 1 and got flattened, not killed, but knocked to -2 and bleeding.
His first action was to cast Virtue to stablize the rouge, and then charged the party.
The entire fight went on with him encouraging the adventurers "ahhh solid hit" "Jolly good show." and all that.

other "white dead" they fought included "Eternal" a zombie crossbowman who used cover and traps he used his DR to great advantage against return fire.
"The Mourner" was an interisting challange. I just made her up on the fly, she looked like a priestess robe and corset with wispy light inside. Her gaze let her look into someone's soul and she told you exactly what you did NOT want to hear. good charcters were shaken, nuteral were stunned, evil just had a mental breakdown. her chamber was full of dead evildoers who had just curled up and died in the fetal position. her weakness was that she could only focus on one person at a time. so solo villans who came here before the party were just torn down by her.