Deep 6 FaWtL

[Schmorgan Heckengaard]

Limeylongears wrote:

Hands up who's ever seen a curved rapier.

Ask one of the warriors from Hammerfell. I hear they have curved swords. Curved. Swords.

Apparently they like to practice with them while nekkid, too.

[gran rey de los mono]

Hey Freehold. We got 7.5" of snow today. Get your bike-riding butt over here and start shoveling.

[David M Mallon]

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Hey Freehold. We got 7.5" of snow today. Get your bike-riding butt over here and start shoveling.

Seconded. We got around the same amount. Currently 2-4 feet of snow on the ground in most places, with drifts and banks up to 10 feet.

[David M Mallon]

I seem to have inadvertently found myself in a love triangle in Dragon Age: Origins. Alistair, or Leliana...

[Scavion]

David M Mallon wrote:

I seem to have inadvertently found myself in a love triangle in Dragon Age: Origins. Alistair, or Leliana...

Well one is a dork and the other is super religious.

Good luck!

[Freehold DM]

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Hey Freehold. We got 7.5" of snow today. Get your bike-riding butt over here and start shoveling.

that's a light dusting... You can handle that on your own, surely.

[Kajehase]

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Hey Freehold. We got 7.5" of snow today. Get your bike-riding butt over here and start shoveling.

Damn Americans, hogging all the snow.

[Tacticslion]

Scavion wrote:

David M Mallon wrote:

I seem to have inadvertently found myself in a love triangle in Dragon Age: Origins. Alistair, or Leliana...

Well one is a dork and the other is super religious.

Good luck!

You... you're not wrong. (I totally went with developing an OT3, despite that being impossible. Yes, I cheated. I ADMIT IT. I don't care. They are both super happy with me now, and in a romance. DWARVES WIN EVERYTHING.)

EDIT: To be clear, I only cheated because, dang, did it come out of nowhere. the first romance come out of nowhere to surprise me. It was like, "Wait, wh-whaaaaaaaat~? Oh, wow, um, okay! Cool! I... didn't expect that, but she's really sweet, and uh... yeah, sure, okay, maybe. We'll see. Huh, wow, I didn't know that was a 'Yes', but yeah, I'm really liking their chemistry! How cool!" and went with it.

Then I went to talk to Alistair, and I'm all like, "W-wait, really? REALLY? Huh. Well... uh... okay, yeah, sure? Weird, I'd heard the game didn't let you do that. Oh, uh, that was acceptance? Oh, uh, okay. Huh. Yeah, that could be cool."

Then I went back and talked with Liana (for honesty0 and the two started fighting over me and it was awful, and I tried being really nice, and I lost them both. :(

So... I cheated. Because dang it, it wasn't my fault! I didn't even know! :P
(That is usually just an excuse, but seriously, I didn't even know that I was accepting or not or initiating a romance or not. DANG IT.) CHEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAATEEEEEEEEEED.

((Also, I couldn't reset because my last save was something like four hours prior.))

[Freehold DM]

Tacticslion wrote:

Scavion wrote:

David M Mallon wrote:

I seem to have inadvertently found myself in a love triangle in Dragon Age: Origins. Alistair, or Leliana...

Well one is a dork and the other is super religious.

Good luck!

You... you're not wrong. (I totally went with developing an OT3, despite that being impossible. Yes, I cheated. I ADMIT IT. I don't care. They are both super happy with me now, and in a romance. DWARVES WIN EVERYTHING.)

Despite my ongoing feud with Dragon Age, I will always love how they portrayed dwarves in the setting. Very, very, very well done.

[gran rey de los mono]

Freehold DM wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Hey Freehold. We got 7.5" of snow today. Get your bike-riding butt over here and start shoveling.

that's a light dusting... You can handle that on your own, surely.

I could. But I don't want too. And since it is your fault, I feel you should clean it up.

[gran rey de los mono]

Kajehase wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Hey Freehold. We got 7.5" of snow today. Get your bike-riding butt over here and start shoveling.

Damn Americans, hogging all the snow.

I invite you to mount a viking raid for the express purpose of taking the snow. Please. I'll even consider chipping in for travel expenses.

[David M Mallon]

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Kajehase wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Hey Freehold. We got 7.5" of snow today. Get your bike-riding butt over here and start shoveling.

Damn Americans, hogging all the snow.

I invite you to mount a viking raid for the express purpose of taking the snow. Please. I'll even consider chipping in for travel expenses.

I'll chip in my life savings and a pint of blood.

[David M Mallon]

Scavion wrote:

David M Mallon wrote:

I seem to have inadvertently found myself in a love triangle in Dragon Age: Origins. Alistair, or Leliana...

Well one is a dork and the other is super religious.

Good luck!

Technically, they're both religious dorks.

Honestly, my biggest complaint about Dragon Age other than the monotonous combat is that, at least when compared to Mass Effect, I can't get invested in the characters.

[Scavion]

David M Mallon wrote:

Scavion wrote:

David M Mallon wrote:

I seem to have inadvertently found myself in a love triangle in Dragon Age: Origins. Alistair, or Leliana...

Well one is a dork and the other is super religious.

Good luck!

Technically, they're both religious dorks.

Honestly, my biggest complaint about Dragon Age other than the monotonous combat is that, at least when compared to Mass Effect, I can't get invested in the characters.

I absolutely love just about every character you can't have a relation with.

The Dwarf Berserker? Awesome. Great personal quest too. Wrynn? Very cool character, it's a shame they use her as a template for like two other characters, one of which being Anders from DA2.

And I hear Shale is awesome too.

AND STEN! Great dialogue.

As for the combat, I was a fan of Neverwinter/Baldur's Gate style games so I ended up liking Origins far more than DA2 and Inquisition.

[gran rey de los mono]

I love the text on the cover of our old copy of Devil Bunny Needs a Ham.

Quote:

You and your friends are living pleasant and complete lives in Happyville.

You are highly trained and well-paid sous-chefs, who have decided to climb to the top of a tall building, as fast as you can.

Devil Bunny Needs a Ham.

And he's pretty sure that knocking you off the building will help him get one.

Perhaps he is right.

Perhaps he is not.

Great copy, good game.

[Kelsey Arwen MacAilbert]

I have so many ideas for my Pathfinder campaign setting that are too small to put to paper. Like, despite it being a Victoriana setting, there is more Anglo-Saxon and Celtic influence in the Britain expy, and said expy controls the Scandinavia expy. This goes over surprisingly well, largely do to this control having lasted long enough to be seen as normal, a lack of oppression or massive inequality in opportunity, economic benefits to union, and federalization (each regional parliament is fairly powerful and is allowed its own royal family and monarch, and the union as a whole has a High Queen who's family comes from all over the union). Likewise, the Irish aren't being oppressed or denied opportunities, and there is no equivalent of the Catholic/Protestant divide in my setting, so the Irish are fairly well off and not in conflict with the English. Also, the system is woefully inefficient, because British. This country has something of a habit of doing pretty sketchy stuff and calling it progressive and enlightened. Women do not change their surnames when they marry. Generally, a child bears the surname of their same sex parent, but exceptions exist.

[Drejk]

Time for a session.

[captain yesterday]

Kajehase wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Hey Freehold. We got 7.5" of snow today. Get your bike-riding butt over here and start shoveling.

Damn Americans, hogging all the snow.

You can take it Please!!!!!!

of course you should be warned it comes with bitter, bitter cold so you can't enjoy it anyway, which in turn makes the kids grumpy and wild:(

[Limeylongears]

Kelsey Arwen MacAilbert wrote:

Also, the system is woefully inefficient, because British.

Gleefully inefficient, thankyou ;)

[David M Mallon]

For all you Houston people, Houston was recently ranked as the most affordable large city in the United States, with home prices coming in at $93 per square foot (compared to $455 per square foot in New York).

[David M Mallon]

This is glorious.

[Freehold DM]

David M Mallon wrote:

For all you Houston people, Houston was recently ranked as the most affordable large city in the United States, with home prices coming in at $93 per square foot (compared to $455 per square foot in New York).

shakes fist

[David M Mallon]

Freehold DM wrote:

David M Mallon wrote:

For all you Houston people, Houston was recently ranked as the most affordable large city in the United States, with home prices coming in at $93 per square foot (compared to $455 per square foot in New York).

shakes fist

Most expensive city in North America.

[Orthos]

Come on FH. You CAN'T say honestly that you're surprised.

[Celestial Healer]

Evening, all. What did I miss?

[Drejk]

Back from session. Damn, I'm rusty.

Also tired from coming back.

A colleague from work back in Norwich called me, asked how I am, and let me know that he is opening his own business in England, and in the future when he will develop it more, if I was interested he could hire me.

[Kelsey Arwen MacAilbert]

Looks like somebody is concerned about being seen on the road.

[Icyshadow]

Monday already? I barely got to enjoy the weekend!

[LordSynos]

Morning FaWtLeans. I hope everyone had a good weekend, and their week is off to a good start.

I woke to a smattering of white built up on the cars and in the corners of the streets, and thought we finally got some snow. Alas, no, the sleet and hail was merely so heavy last night, it built up as if it were snow. I'd feel bad throwing a sleet-ball at someone. :P

[Icyshadow]

I am going to undertake the arduous task of getting the Knight's Honor achievement (gathering a bunch of rare and not so easily obtained weapons and shields) in Dark Souls. I don't usually care for achievements, but after getting them all in Dark Souls 2, I figured I should have them all in the first game as well. Too bad I've had a glitch causing me some problems. I have all Pyromancies with one character, but the game refuses to give me the achievement for acquiring all 20 Pyromancy spells in the game. I don't mind too much though. I'll make a new character to collect all the weapons, and I can just collect all the spells with the same character along the way.

[Orthos]

Kelsey Arwen MacAilbert wrote:

Looks like somebody is concerned about being seen on the road.

Won't let me see the image links without registering.

[Drejk]

Registered users only. Nope.

[Freehold DM]

Ditto.

[Tacticslion]

Yup.

[Tacticslion]

Anyway, today looks to be... busy. Very much so!

Also, my wife just won a Magic: the Gathering game to become a goddess in our single-player game. Heh. Nearly destroyed her character and everything she'd worked so hard to achieve until now, but... she succeeded!

(We've been playing certain "epic" boss fights that "conclude" specific sections out with variant* M:tG instead of normal PF rules as a kind of abstraction, as the card game is actually easier and less easily disrupted than normal PF. It also works to simulate battles that are not played out with stats or would be exceptionally tedious to do so; such as a spirit attempting to possess a host, a match of wits with an ancient dead king who may or may not have been reincarnated as the PC, finding and fighting the cursed city of souls sunk beneath the waves that - sort of - gave birth to you and the fore-mentioned king, or acquiring divine ranks by stealing them from an evil goddess who you'd deceived into giving you one in the first place just so you could do this**.)

Long-winded Explanations and asterisks Go Here:

* No hard card-limits, random decks with (due to the randomization of decks) a sometimes-ability to reshuffle graveyards into play (though not always), and so-on. Players' life/hit points are generally changed as well, with multiple sets, more (or less) than normal, or combinations of both (like the most recent goddess who had four sets of 46 hit points).

** This one was especially tricky because, though she started with an excessive amount of cards, unlike any of her previous opponents, so did the rival, and, to make matters worse, the goddess started with a lot more land/mana^ and five turns to the PC's two^^. In addition to having five turns, the goddess had five individual decks she drew from (one on a given turn) and six different sets of "targetable" life points (of 46 hit points each), making it kind of like she was facing five different foes simultaneously... all of whom could play from any of the mana any had available, though only for their own other cards. She didn't turn it around until after she'd hit 4 hit points (having started from a single group of 49 bolstered from previous games) and dealt a grand total of 1 damage to one of the goddess' hit points. After that, she managed to get enough cards, creatures, effects, and other things into play that she was able to steal and destroy some important elements, regain some of her lost hit points, and then do a set of sweeping pushes that hammered the goddess, gaining in momentum until she swept the board.

^ The unit of "currency" in M:tG that allows the player to do stuff.

^^ Effectively it went, <boss, boss, [boss-or-PC, then the other one], boss, boss, PC; repeat>; it functioned this way because the goddess, again unlike the PC, had five decks she was drawing from and playing with.

Also, Why can't Paizo let my wallet rest?!

(I... I don't have that much money! Arg!)

[captain yesterday]

I'm waiting for History of Ashes and Souls for Smuggler's Shiv (non-mint) kind of anxious to see how non mint non mint means:-)

Also Penny stayed home today, she had a temp and threw up and all last night:(
She feels better this morning after letting her sleep in but with the current temp at -10 (-20 with the windchill) and it being an early release day i didn't feel like taking her in for that couple of hours.

Turns out she was grateful because they have this guy come in to "teach" hip hop dancing during P.E. but he's a total prick about it and Penny and her friends call him the The Dancing Dick

Finally her Principle sounds Exactly like Bill Lundberg from Office Space, which is especially hilarious because this is the third person i've met that talks like that (i had a boss at one of my jobs, and had a customer too, which was funny when the boss had to talk to the customer:-p) something about the midwest maybe....

edit: also congrats to the wife Tacticslion on achieving Divinity through Magic

[Tacticslion]

captain yesterday wrote:

sad stuff

Ugh, having sick kiddos and/or spouses is never fun. I hope she gets better soon!

captain yesterday wrote:

edit: also congrats to the wife Tacticslion on achieving Divinity through Magic

Tacticslion wrote:

Also, my wife just won a Magic: the Gathering game to become a goddess in our single-player game. Heh. Nearly destroyed her character and everything she'd worked so hard to achieve until now, but... she succeeded!

It's probably worth noting that,

No, honey, you may not read this (yet). Sorry.:

... it probably won't go terribly well for her, because, you know, secretly being Beshaba in disguise aside (which she doesn't know yet, though is starting to suspect), she had - very early on the in the game - "eaten"* a "weird" magic purple rock imported from the Raurin that had power somehow related to conjuration magic. It was a piece of a mighty portal within the Temple of Purple Portals (which most saw as an ironic name since none of the doors were purple... only shadow-magic users could see the purple stone beneath). Anyway, the Raurin is the desert that was created out of the Imaskari** empire long ago - the same empire that created mighty gates that not only stole people from other worlds, but also kept out actual gods by their power. Needless to say, it caused her quite a bit of indigestion, but through the power of positive thinking - and a combination of the ability to control her corporeal form with a charisma score like a truck - she was able to force herself into stabilization and "digest" the material (spread it out in an even matrix across her form). Having found that exceptionally odd, and with no clear way to figure out more about the portals, as well as a distinct disinclenation in studying their deep history until after she'd "finished becoming the most powerful force, presence, and being within the Moonsea, bringing it all under her control" she proceeded to never do that again and neither look it up nor talk about it. So... she's now somewhat allergic to divinity, and doesn't know it. And just regained divinity. Hm. That will... be interesting. I wonder if she can somehow modify the latent magical energies within the thing to make everything more palatable now that it's inextricably part of her being. I'd only imagine that's kind of like performing open heart surgery on yourself. Without actually knowing how to perform open heart surgery or what, exactly, the problem is.

I... I should probably drop her some hints, shouldn't I?

* The character could consume materials and then literally pay in blood (STR and hp damage) to produce them at a later date sans spells. Plus being immune to poison led to her sampling a lot of strange things.

** It's not called Imaskari in this game, but the idea remains the same.

[captain yesterday]

reading that made me wish i hadn't rage sold all my Forgotten Realms books* shortly after finishing reading 4th ed. Forgotten Realms

* excepting of course the Grey Box and The Atlas of The Forgotten Realms which are both too awesome and have too much sentimental value to part with:-)

edit: and yes she's feeling much better:-)

[Orthos]

Tact's Spoiler:

Imaskari, ancient portals, purple stone... sounds like things are winding up toward Pandorym waking up/breaking loose?

[David M Mallon]

This is my fourth week at trade school, and I'm starting to get sick of their s#%# with cancelling classes. It takes roughly 30 minutes for me to drive from my apartment to the school, sometimes more or less, depending on traffic. Class starts at 8 AM, which means that I have to leave at roughly 7:10 AM in order to make it in on time. Whenever class is cancelled, they send out an e-mail alert. Problem is, the e-mail alert a) is only readable on smartphones (which I don't have), and b) gets sent out at 7:30 AM, long after I've left. So far, four classes have been cancelled in four weeks, and out of those four, I've driven all the way out to the school three times only to find out that my instructor wasn't in the building.

[Ragadolf]

Sorry to hear that David. MAybe you should start charging the school for your gas and time. THEY certainly don't have any trouble charging the students for anything they can! :)

As much as I enjoy seeing everyone pick on FH (Rightfully so!) because of their snow, I don't have any to complain about. :(
This far south in Lousy-Anna, we're lucky to get sleet, much less snow. Although they JUST decided to announce closing all the public schools tomorrow due to 'icy conditions'.

Please. These people don't know what icy conditions are.

Of course, since they ARE clueless, I wouldn't want to drive on the road with them in icy conditions either!

Better safe than sorry I guess. ;P

[Tacticslion]

Orthos wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

You know, I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't even thought of that?

Wow. I mean... daggum, wow. That... that would be pretty amazing.

MORE, EVER MORE (Not yet for you, Lovey.):

... it actually makes a lot of sense, too, given the different elements that I've set up. For example, I've replace the Red Wizards with "Night Mages", which are functionally very similar, but utilize "Night Stone" in all of their creations and magic, implanting it into their bodies.

Basically the Night Mages have a complicated form of arcana that relies on Night Stone (similar to a green star adept), particular magical Patterns (similar to a geometer), and advanced School Specialization (ala the Red Wizards); the energy of the Night Stone is focused through the patterns which switches their weave to Shadow Weave (ala Shadow Adept). I've used retraining rules shenanigans to allow them to "retrain-backwards" older levels for their very-hard-to-get prestige class, as it's basically a gestalt of those classes. I've also given the Night Mages access to rather advanced and well-researched libraries to allow them to use Shadow Weave slots to power lower-level Weave slots - basically using the Shadow Weave to create "reactions" in the weave, making it look like they're casting Weave spells - and that they're weaker than they are - thus avoiding much of the persecution they'd otherwise experience.

Part and parcel of this whole... thing... is the requirement that they divide their soul into three places: their body, their familiar, and their bonded object (this is in contravention to the normal limits, but, eh, it's a single-player game and I don't really care - if she really wanted to be a Night Mage with both bonded object and familiar, I'd definitely let her). With this division, comes communion with three parts of themselves, allowing them to create a myriad of interesting objects for less cost (i.e. reducing the cost to create stuff, making it cheaper and more appealing) - their items, of course, having fragments of Nightstone and Patterns in them as well.

I've also done similar things with a few martial traditions, elves and their High Magic - partially borrowing from Krynn, actually, and tying it to bardic traditions and moon-based magic - but they are strictly Weave-casters, and find the idea of the Shadow Weave abhorrent, as a group.

Anyway, I'd been thinking that the Nightstone - which does exist in other places, though it's really rare - is just a stone from space. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuu~t attaching it to Pandorym is just too cool to ignore. Especially since I've set the PC up (in the background) as an actual god-killer herself.

What happens, I wonder, when a godkiller who's slowly come to respect and revere good gods and a godkiller who's slowly come to hate and desire to annul everything come into conflict?

Ooooooooooh~! Juicy!

Holy carp, I've gotta use that, now. Two different disembodied spirits looking to find a method of reincarnation... one of which used to be a god. Hm... I wonder if I can link Pandorym to a god the Imaskari chained, bound, and corrupted. I know that I'm going to make Pandorym an advanced Black Blot (who's mind was affected as if by the void, itself affected as if by the donjon, leaving the the body stuck elsewhere), while the PC is ultimately going to become something more akin to a Genus Loci of the Moonsea itself (and possibly linked to Living Lake of a size and power which even that monster couldn't comprehend - or even more akin to a living mythal, er, I mean mythal(lar) that covers the entire Moonsea. Hm, hm. Gotta think on how to handle this.

The entire plot, in Beshaba's case, was to gain revenge on Iyatchu Xvim, Selune, Moander, and Tymora for their duplicity (or acceptance) of the corruption and murder of her mother...

To do this, she found and tapped into an ancient secret: the non-existent goblin gods (see below for their history. It's... way too long.

Anyway, she did this with the intent of grabbing a bunch of power for herself, getting revenge on gods who'd "wronged" her, and causing general mischief and problems. She also figured it'd be a blast to tweak the noses of every god in and around the Moonsea (including that old fuddy, Shaundakul), so she messed with the whole Northkeep Soul Repository (see below) and an exceedingly dumb but eager and ambitious Night Mage (see above for them) to exploit a few holes in the system to get herself reborn as the next Incarnate (see goblins below). Sweet schwag and all that.

To keep herself "present" during her absence, she created a set of twelve iterative variant ice-assassins in a logically impossible loop (so that all wanted to kill her, but only after they killed each other, in turn, each of which wanted the others to survive to help them kill their target, etc...) under her absolute command (all of which were horribly cursed to have bad luck in anything they did to break free, spoil her desires, or kill any of the others; this was combined with their collective and mutual curses of "you're guaranteed to fail if you try to kill me" at each other). Thus assuring she'd be "fine" she shed her divinity into a divinity-keeper (probably "hiding" it the ice-assassins) and "over-rid" the process that the night mage was using to become immortal to gain the power of the city and all within it.

She still had to deal with the fallout, naturally, but she could handle a bit of ill-luck, as all her opponents just kind of seem to be cursed with one thing going wrong after another...

Goblin History (my Darling One, you still can't read this yet):

Way back when, under the power of Imaskar (in this game), the goblinoids* were originally summoned as slave races before the various humans by the Imaskari. Deeming them unsuitable (as they seemed to go insane in this world), they were mostly sent back and warded against. The trick is that the goblinoids were all intimately connected to their gods in their world - their souls were their gods, even when they were still alive**, so, when they were summoned, they weren't killed, but they were prohibited from having their souls, or gods.

So, much later, when some idiots**** found an ancient portal and summoned the creatures (or, more accurately, couldn't get it to "work right" were accidentally killed by their own experimentation, and left the portal on as a result), they (having an advanced militeristic society) entered with intent to conquer... but without souls. Having been summoned through the shadow^, they instead only had shadow-spirits. So while they acted in most cases like they were alive (including responding to positive energy), they had no souls at all and simply became shadows on the plane thereof at death. (They also look really different, have throat-sacs to create deep calling sounds, can turn into local "features" - hence gargoyles, though "forest" goblins can turn into branches, and "snow" goblins into solid mounds of the not-so-fluffy stuff, etc. - and have severe problems with light.)

Eventually, they were defeated and chased off, though not before the orc "gods" (powerful exemplars of the species possessed by avatars) managed to slay a few of the other gods and take their god-stuff for themselves (and slowly funneling souls into their followers, creating the first "native" goblinoid species)^^. The other goblinoid gods were not so lucky and the avatars faded as the species were driven to the far north before... okay you don't care, and it's long. Point is they seemingly disappeared, but later came back, okay, history finished.

Later the soulless goblinoids - already losing their culture and racial memories due to a loss of most of their stuff over the years and the harsh conditions by which they survived -, were furious at a city called Northkeep. The city had settled into the savage frontier and begun bringing true civilization to it, tapping into ancient magical resources (left over from the fall of Netheril) they'd more or less accidentally alighted upon. The city had come into conflict with the goblinoids in the region (having freshly descended from their frozen northern sojourn) and used their superior access to magical resources to devastate the "backwards" god-fearing goblinoids. In truth, both sides were in the wrong, but the civilization of Northkeep was the more benevolent of the two.

The goblinoids, in retaliation, decided to summon their gods, and so gathered all 40,000 shamans, who surrounded the place, pooled all of their magic together, and "summoned" their gods as independent bodies. The shamans didn't realize it, of course (having had so little lore other than that of the world they were in), but the goblin gods didn't exist like that - they were always part of the goblins' souls. So, when they tried to summon the gods as independent forms, instead they ripped the life force out of themselves, destroying all of them and many of the other goblins around. What's worse, the gods themselves still weren't "real" - as there was no actual soul-stuff present, there no "gods" could really be created, and so the goblinoids actually just accidentally made very, very powerful shadow-illusions that look and act an awful lot like gods.

Realizing the truth for the very, very few, brief moments of lucidity they had, they pooled their power, and obeyed their summoners' (dying) wishes, destroying Northkeep, though not in a fit of rage or hatred (as it seemed) but in a bid to get souls for their worshipers - the souls of all those living in Northkeep. Unfortunately, their combination curse/power gathering/incarnation cycle was a bit of a rush-job and while Northkeep sank beneath the waves, there were several "holes" left that were exploitable to those in the know. Bad luck, but the good thing is that the goblin "gods" attempted to hide what they were doing, and did so very, very well. Being a major work of secrets, magic, and bad luck allowed exactly three creatures to know of it: Shar (who, true to her nature, promptly forgot about the then-useless thing feebly struggling to gather power), Mystra (who would later be killed), ... and Beshaba. Amused, Beshaba used great power to "curse" (and bless) the project with "success".

The goblin "gods" however, would quickly devolve. Relatively pious creatures, the goblins learned quickly from their gods' bloody display - goblins are brutal, savage, and destructive. Their belief and worship quickly shaped the nature and minds of the "gods" created by the magic of the devastated shamans. This created a rather unfortunate feedback loop of degeneration and savagery.

Eventually, the "project" would (after far, far too long) bear fruit, and an Incarnation fueled by the power of many of the souls from Northkeep would be born, allowed to float to the surface, and wash ashore. He would later find a large group of goblinkind living in the Thar, where he slowly attempted to teach them civilization and tame their savagery. He would only partially succeed before his "time" (extended though it was) ran out, and he quietly descended back to the depths from which he came.

Having seen the success of their labors once, Beshaba would then time the temptation of a particularly arrogant and eager apprentice (if powerful) Night Mage into believing that he could take some sort of "immortality power" he'd discovered from the depths of the Moonsea...

Spoiler Alert: he failed. Sort of. While succeeding at the same time. Idiot.

* My goblins are... different. Very different. Different from Pathfinder/Golarion goblins, from the "weird" goblins that appear in my Gob Smash One PbP, and different from "standard" Forgotten Realms goblins. Their broader racial group includes trolls, ogres, the normal three and are the origin various therianthropies.

** The way my gods function is different too***.

*** Look, suffice it to say that everything is different. ;P

**** The Night Mages. Well, their precursors, anyway.

^ 'Cause Nightstone, ya?

^^ Yeah, Talos is also Gruumsh in this. Not because Gruumsh slew and replaced Talos, but the other way around. Talos found, slew, and absorbed the newly minted godling Gruumsh, and has slowly been feeding his new people souls to create a new "revenue stream" as it were.

Ugh, I write waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy~yyyy too much!

[Orthos]

Tacticslion wrote:

Spoileriffic:

I know that I'm going to make Pandorym an advanced Black Blot (who's mind was affected as if by the void, itself affected as if by the donjon, leaving the the body stuck elsewhere)

Spoilersponse:

I take it you don't have Elder Evils, where he's fully statted out? Or his mind anyway - his body is basically a Gargantuan-sized sphere of annihilation, though the Umbral Blot idea might work if you want the PCs to be able to actually stab him. Meanwhile the Mind is an incorporeal ball of psionic mindwreckery, with several cool abilities such as shrugging off divine magic like it ain't no thing, sucking the spell slots straight out of divine casters, and anything it kills immediately comes back as a Dread Wraith or a Quell under its command.

It's one of the more awesome baddies in the book, and doesn't suffer from getting overwritten by something more awesome released elsewhere, like Elder Evils's version of Kyuss, who's a cakewalk compared to the Age of Worms version, and has much less interesting minions than the Age of Worms version.

[Tacticslion]

Orthos wrote:

Tacticslion wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

And more...:

Hm... I do have that book, but haven't looked at it in ages.

That said, the point of "advanced" was not just "more hit dice" or (even worse) "the template", but rather, "here is the most basic chassis" followed by "but it's more impressive than that".

Otherwise, they're pretty similar (hence my earlier links to "giant template" and "sphere of annihilation" under "the body"). While the 'blot allows a fort save, it also has a draw that the sphere lacks, can't be controlled in the way the sphere can, and lacks the "insta-destruction" elements that the sphere suffers from. I must admit, I was thinking of it as an abomination, rather than a construct, however... hm.

Looking him up, he's got abilities more or less in line with what I was thinking the mind had anyway, but the problem is the write-up specifies he's a weapon against gods, but gods are not susceptible to his insta-destructive power, with nothing noted as a viable substitute; in the meanwhile, with the stats presented, the gods in Deities and Demigods could take him on fairly well. (It's actually a really, really awesome stat-block - it's just not well set up to oppose a CR 60 encounter, which is probably just due to being a "fragment", but lacks real hints to progress from there).

Any hints as to where it's from other than (probably anyway?) the Far Realm** (EDIT: or the Vestige non-realm)? I've read Darkvision (which was quite good), but that really doesn't give any more than the entry itself.

Right up until the really, really weird 4E decision to turn the thing in Chessenta into an "ancient" independent Primordial by a different name*, I'd been rather convinced that the unresponsive big sphere of annihilation was simply Pandorym's body (no, seriously though, that was a terrible decision; why did they do that?).

Still thinking of having him originally be a god that was "corrupted", much like Beshaba, but through his own, different, story.

* EDIT: Ah, yes: Entropy, of course. This claims that the mind and body were both in the Celestial Nadir, but I don't really recall that at all. The only thing I recall was that the mind was looking for the body that was hidden "somewhere" and there was a great struggle to push the crystal container back into its holder before the mind got free. I had no idea that the body was so close by (which directly goes against the write-up they'd made for the thing in the first place).

Also, for the record: super-advanced variants of this plus this is the basics of what the city had turned into. It was supposed to be periodically siphoned to create Incarnates that would then "inject" souls into the goblinoids (mostly by having lots of kids), though, due to the shoddy rush job, the Incarnates were basically created with no actual knowledge of who they were or what they were supposed to do - only vague instincts.

** EDIT 2: It is worth noting, at least, that the mind shares at least a passing similarity to another far-realm entity, the uvuudaum, which is intriguing, though, obviously, they are not the same.

[Orthos]

Quote:

Spoiler:

Any hints as to where it's from other than (probably anyway?) the Far Realm** (EDIT: or the Vestige non-realm)?

[Drejk]

And submission for Monarch of the Monsters 5 was sent.

[Tacticslion]

Stuff:

Totes aware of the vestige "not coming back" but the "right angles to reality" and "in between the planes" is exceedingly similar. And there does hold some similarity between a binding pact/bound by rules of a weird sort of honor, anti-divine elements (both as deities hate it, and the feeling is mutual), and the "once you've crossed you can't come back" - as in, if something from this world crosses, it can't get back, and if something from that world crosses, it can't get back.

The thing with the Far Realm is that, while, yes, it's maddening and weird, it's also got it's own rules. The illithid (LE) are mentioned to have originated there in some sources with their alien life-cycle, as are Beholders (originally CN, but classically LE). This is all reminiscent of Pandorym in the desire to destroy "all unlike me" through their own resources and are surprisingly rational.

This is actually a rather interesting read.

That said, a fusion of the two ideas isn't that far out of line, either. If, say, the Far Realm infected a vestige that had deliberate reason to hate the gods...

But anyway, that's just me digging and mining for ideas. I'm not really going to use Far Realm or "a-reality" vestiges in this game.

(In fact, the cosmology is heavily altered, with a "Fade" being the "in between" realm of the material and spirit. The "Fade" functionally replaces both ethereal and dream, while the spirit partially replaces, partially supplements the astral sea-like concept of 4E. This is, in part, inspired by Dragon Age's cosmology, though I've not played beyond Origins. The other "planes" that exist (and they do) are things more like Eberron's planar orrery set-up, which function more like a multiverse, with the Shadow being the key to other materials and the Fade being the key to other planes.)

Oh, yeah, I should mention...:

I noted that "Gods" are different in my setting, because, in fact, they are. A "god" (as most people unknowing use it) is effectively a semi-independent idol-focus for the souls of the deceased. When worshiper dies and is sent to their god, the god has the option of incorporating the dead soul into themselves, leaving the soul independent servitor, or rejecting the soul (sending it to the service of the False). The reasons a god may choose one or the other is because, ultimately, a god is shaped by the souls it incorporates. Hence, a god needs to be careful about allowing anything it deems "heresy" be integrated into itself, and it can't allow things that are too far afield of its views to maintain their position as part of its court or risk those spirits being summoned and instructing mortal faithful (and causing ever-further deviation from what the god wants itself to be) - hence sending them to the service of the False, where they are noted as heretics and failed servitors of their god; there they can be devoured by daemons, escape and be corrupted into demons, make pacts and be tortured into devils, or serve faithfully and possibly become a good enough servant of their god to return and serve them (or just a servant of Kelemvor). On the other hand, the Faithless are sent to the Wall of the Faithless, because, as a soul with no faith, incorporating them directly into a deity would be kind of like poisoning the deity - directly opposing the very souls that believe in and hence sustain and empower the god. Thus, instead, those who are dystheistic or rather doofy enough to refuse to believe or worship are placed in the Wall of the Faithless - a great wall that uses the essence of soul-stuff by grinding it down into non-affiliated "security measure" that generally keeps all of reality from falling apart. Effectively, they don't serve any greater cosmological purpose and, while it would be nice to let them be, without souls keeping the world stable, the everything - most notably all the other souls that exist - would slowly decay and collapse. This isn't "the ends justify the means" sort of thing - it's literally the option of going to a world where they will be eaten, corrupted, or ruined, or putting them to use keeping the world together.

Incidentally, the gods also help keep the world together and keep those souls that worshiped them alive within themselves.

As for "what created existence" I'm intentionally leaving that vague (but again, leaning toward DA:O-like answer); but if forced to answer (for some reason) it's basically the overly-simple answer of "mystical space aliens" i.e. extremely powerful variant free-form pantheon of super-advanced phrenic paragon psuedonatural elohim of legend-gestalt-titan-gestalt-phane-gestalt-chronotyryn-gestalt-sarrukh-gestalt-, [url=http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/-bestiary-by-challenge-rating/-bestiary-cr-20]tapping into a few unique abilities to do so, as well as all the mythic simple templates.

And their power would be a combination of the Paizo one with these two.

(Maybe something related, I dunno.)

But that's really just an off-the-cuff answer as a general suggestion, not a specific hardline statement of ultimate traits and abilities.

[Kelsey Arwen MacAilbert]

So, has anybody else read yesterday's Oglaf? It was genius, yes?

[Drejk]

Kelsey Arwen MacAilbert wrote:

So, has anybody else read yesterday's Oglaf? It was genius, yes?

It was an outrage!

[Tacticslion]

... what? Sorry, but what's an Oglaf?