And then Billy ripped off HP Lovecraft...

Much has been written about Jezirat of Kemet, the mad priest and explorer, but the lengthy volumes and histories pale against the scale and depth of his own writings. There are orders of scholars and academics who have dedicated their professional lives to decoding the double riddle that is the writings and the life of the enigmatic adventurer. 

Firstly piecing together the life of Jezirat is nearly impossible. Jezirat's writings document events covering a span of time stretching back almost two thousand years to apparently only decades before the current date. Leading theorists suggest that Jezirat was simply a very powerful prophet gifted with both disturbingly accurate fore and hindsight. Others have suggested that "Jezirat" is not simply one man but an order of scholars dating back through the millennia utilizing the same idioms, script and coding, however both of these ideas are rejected by those who consider external accounts of Jezirat's activities as true, as these span a similar period of time and include no less than eight accounts of Jezirat's execution (three burnings, two hangings, two beheadings and one blood eagle).

It has been suggested by the scholar Ziphus Vachochilde of Tarantion that Jezirat was (or perhaps is) in fact a vampire, but this theory has been largely rejected by his peers due to a lack of substantial evidence and being "too obvious". 

The texts themselves take the form of a series of scribbled notes, scrolls and journals written in an obscure and highly formal dialect of Old Kemetian. Unfortuantely for the academics attempting to date the man, whilst the dialect is roughly identical to what scholars believe the inhabitants of Kemet spoke two thousand years ago, it is the same dialect used by scholars, nobles and holy men to this day.

An entirely other body of scholarship chooses to simply ignore the impossible life of Jezirat the man in favour of studying his impossible text. Jezirat's subject matter seems to consist of the most comprehensive study of the lands, peoples, animals, gods and customs east of Khalad. Invariably historical accounts creep in as well, though Jezirat seemed to have little interest in the comings and goings of kings and armies and, to the chagrin of his academic followers, seldom makes note of the dates in his diaries. 

Jezirat's texts are problematic however in terms of their content. Whilst it is nearly impossible to order then with an exact chronology it is also very difficult to order them by content, as Jezirat, being mad, seemed to have a habit of writing about one matter before moving on to something entirely different, occasionally mid-paragraph, before returning to the earlier matter several pages later. Often these non-sequetuers are nothing more but semi-coherent ramblings and ravings. 

The generally accepted method for dealing with this problem is to focus upon one specific field of Jezirat's writings and collaborate within the community to try and construct a larger understanding. For example, one scholar might focus entirely on Jezirat's theological observations whilst collaborating with a scholar of Jeziratine anthropology.

There are numerous translations and compilations of Jezirat's notes in publication each dealing with innumerable Jezirat fields but perhaps the best known and most comprehensive of these is a zoological text concerning various exotic fauna encountered by Jezirat on his travels. The volume is the disappointingly entitled A Compendium of the Monstrous, Fiendish and Other Beasts, by the renowned naturalist Vixterian of Atenople, lately executed for heresy. Jezirat's actual observations are heavily supplemented by Vixterian's own findings and was recently republished in the Seven Cities in a new edition with illustrations by Lady Hypernia Audoinchilde. It is very popular. So popular it has caused a rift in the... fucking... FUCK THIS FUCK YOU 4TH WALL I'm gonna be sticking a bunch of my reinterpretations of monsters and stuff up here. I've been going through the Monstrous Manuel and the Fiend Folio alphabetically and getting people to pick monsters. Sometimes I get an easy one, sometimes I get a dumb one which I then have to make work and fit into my world. I'm most proud thus far of my Al'Miraj. Currently I'm on C is for Chimera but exams and big cats being really hard to draw have slowed me down. I'm not a very good drawerer generally but it's fun. ANYWAY back in character aaaaaaaaaaannddddd..... and thanks to this and Jezirat's writings on the nature of the Other, Below and Beyond have earned him the badge of Heretic First Class in Pellix and only high ranking members of the clergy are allowed to even touch his work.

Ghost Knives

If you are currently playing in one of my games, which, if you're reading this, you probably are, DON'T READ THIS. You'll be spoiling shit for yourself. I realise that's not going to be much of a deterrent. There are those who will make it there business to discover my secrets just because they're secret. Looking at you Red. Looking at you.

GHOST KNIFE - a savage bone long-knife. Vicious weapons that hunt hearts and cut throats with a semi-sentient ferocity. These weapons derive their power from the souls of the creatures the knife slays.

CRUNCH: Effectively a magical dagger with a variable attack and damage bonus and an expanded crit-range.

The bonus starts at 0. It increases every time the knife takes an innocent (non-combatants typically, children, anyone you wouldn't get xp for) life.

At first the bonuses increase with every 3 lives.

When the bonus reaches +3 it will only increase again with every 7 lives.

The crit-range is 19-20.

When the bonus reaches +7 it will only increase again with every 9 lives.

The crit-range is 18-20.

When the bonus reaches +9 (crit-range 17-20) it will no longer increase, but it requires a new life every 9 weeks or the bonuses begin to decrease. If the weapons bonuses ever reach 0 again, the next fumbled attack roll will take the life of its master.

The crafting of a Ghost Knife requires a fragment of the crafter's soul. Anyone coming into possession of an existing Ghost Knife will accidentally cut themselves with it, thus binding their soul to the weapon. As long as the Ghost Knife has a piece of the wielder's soul they will be unable to part from it. No saves, no checks, no outsmarting me, it's from first blood to till death do you part. End of.

Though the nature of their crafting means the typical Ghost Knife is made from bone, it is said that in the ancient days of elven rule mighty weapons, swords and spears were fashioned with the same soul-hungry properties of the Ghost Knife. None have been discovered thus far though and so it seems likely that such dangerous and vile weapons have long hence been lost to time.

If you are a WINTERBORN ELF and you rolled Ghost Knife on the thing, either by tradition or by the whisperings of the demons of the North Wind, you know how to craft a Ghost Knife.

This is how you craft a Ghost Knife.

On a moonless night seek a family with a young child. They must invite you into their home and must give you their hospitality for a full month.

Over this month you must destroy every living thing on the property, either via cunning assassinations or by a single orgy of slaughter. Spare the youngest child.

You must dismember the inhabitants and arrange them in a sacred circle by the time the moonless night comes again. Fashion the knife from the bones of the head of the household.

Then, on the moonless night, take the youngest child up to the centre of the corpse circle. Cut yourself with the knife and anoint the child, forehead, cheeks, stomach and chest with your blood.

Slice the child apart, groin to throat.

You now have a ghost knife you sick depraved bastard. I hope it was fucking worth it.

 

Elves

These are some elves

Let's start with the elves shall we? I think they should be weirder you know? Less straight up post-Jackson Tolkien, and more crazy faerie-realm ancient laws and oaths, bizarre features that mark them out as being Not-Like-Us and work crazy elf-magic that they don't call magic because it's just something they do.

"What? Why are you freaked out? I can turn myself invisible to the eyes of all mortals what's the big deal? I also have blonde hair and can play the flute?"

But the issue is if I say "elf" to one of my players they go "post-Jackson Tolkien" or "WoW" or, very, horribly occasionally "Santa"... Likewise if I say "pixie" or "faerie" they go "Tinkerbell". To be fair, so do I, but I have the lack of life  interest and inclination to think about shit like "how can I bring the folk tale depictions of the Fair Folk into line with the pop cultural understandings of my peers?"

Fucking elaborate series of charts.

So first off I wanted a bunch of different types of elves but no way was I about to go into a bunch of fucking elf subraces. It gets too fiddly in both fluff and crunch, but I wanted to get those stereotypes represented you know?

So where's the difference? Well you know that nursery rhyme that's all about how when you were born influences your character? All "Wednesday's child is full of woe"? That deal. That's how it is.

Another elf (not the rube with the gun)

THE APPEARENCE, DEMEANOUR AND CHARACTER OF AN ELF ARE AFFECTED BY WHEN THEY WERE BORN

By season specifically.

Many elf-clans (you can make anything more mystical by adding elf- to it. Elf-bread, elf-coat, elf-blade, elf-hill, elf-night, elf-weasel) MANY ELF-CLANS deliberately time their highly ritualized breeding seasons so that all their kids end up being born around the same time, but others, hey! Anything goes.

Probably a Summer elf

The appearance stuff is more or less A Rule, take demeanour and character as guidelines and ultimately down to the player.

So the first table:

ROLL D4 OR PICK
1. Spring
2. Summer
3. Autumn
4. Winter



SPRING ELVES are of the most rural folkloric type. These are your guys in your pointy elf hats. They mostly chill out in secluded gently wooded valleys and glades. Sometimes they are bound to rivers and streams. These guys are your nymphs and your glaistigs and your lamiak (the Basque river-spirit kind, not the demon).

So physically they tend to be the shortest of the elves and have something of a youthful, androgynous charm. They dance and they sing and skip about in stupid fields and are New Life given shape. They fuck each other on ancient phallic fertility hills and go from laughter to tears and back to mirth again in a matter of seconds, as changeable and fickle as April weather.

Example time. We have a spring-born elf in the party. The player is the sweetest girl you'd ever meet, so I kinda assumed that's how her character is. I assumed wrong. These are some things are resident spring-elf has come out with that illustrate the darker side of the elven psyche:

"I want to make a necklace out of the orcs testicles."

Or the one that really freaked me out. 

Also an elf

"Can we eat the goblins?"

That's how elves are.

RANDOM SPRING ELF TRAITS (roll d3 times)
1. The ears of a cat
2. Swan feathers instead of hair
3. The tail of a cow
4. Cloven hooves
5. Vestigial gossamer wings
6. Green hair (or feathers)
7. Skin resembling fish scales
8. Flowers bloom wherever they step
9. Goat horns and legs
10. Animal eyes (roll d3, 1. cat 2. goat 3. fish)
11. UNEARTHLY BEAUTY (see t'other table)
12. MAGIC (see T'OTHER t'other table)


SUMMER ELVES. Let's have a looksee.

So the spring elves cover the folklore type elves, the Summer elves are the conceptual decedents of the High Elves from Warhammer, the Eladrin from Type IV and the Grey Elves that came before them. Elves are the People Before You, the Tuatha de Danann, that cruel race of decadents from Melnibone, the ancient lore-masters from Atlantis.

Why summer? Summer is campaigning season, when armies march out. So summer elves tend to be of a more straightforward, military mind set. They are aloof, powerful, each in form a petty deity and they KNOW it.

They burn from within as the great midsummer festival fires do. In ages past they built great cities, spires of stained glass and opal. Some say they drove out the dragons, some say they tamed them. Some say the race of firey elves fashioned the goblin-folk from mud to serve them. Some say they never truly gave up their power and rule all the world still from their hidden communes and elf-towns where they sit, debating politics and ancient lore, guarding the secrets of the millennia.

SUMMER ELF TRAITS (d3)

And another

1. Eyes glow with an eldritch bioluminescence
2. Heart glows with an inner light. When shirtless the heart and lungs are visible under the skin.  (I think that's an idea I'm pinching from someone... I'm very sorry someone, that's a really fucking good idea and I love you).
3. Hair is a mane (toss a coin. Heads lion, tails, horse)
4. Snake-eyes
5. Snake-like skin or tail
6. Constantly accompanied by small local insects
7. Eagle-eyes
8. Eagle-talons! (fuck it, +1 dmg on unarmed attacks)
9. Horny crown made from oak branches
10. ACTUALLY A CENTAUR (no I don't have them statted up yet...)
11. UNEARTHLY BEAUTY (same drill as before)
12. MAGIC (still the same drill as before, jeeze)

AUTUMN ELVES - are my favourites. I like the crazy death-cult elves from Eberron and I like Warhammer's grimfaced Wood Elves. These guys are wolfish, forest dwelling fatalists, with sad, fanged grins and tearful berserker rages. Whilst all elves lead long, long lives Autumn-born are acutely aware of the inevitable end of all things and understand the futility of existence. As such they tend to either be given to self-destruction - hedonism and hard-drinking, eking out as much experience as they can - or throw themselves into their causes and beliefs, violently forcing a truth of some form onto a fickle and indifferent reality.

The exact belief system the elf ascribes to is liable to change fairly regularly, your standard elf being an inherently fickle and whimsical beast.

AUTUMN ELF TRAITS (d3)

1. Owl-eyes

2. Wolf-fangs
3. A foxes tail
4. Antlers
5. Cloven hooves
6. Wolf-ears
7. Skin flakes off in leaf shapes
8. Flesh becomes see-through at dawn and dusk, appears skeletal
9. Ever present tiny spiders
10. Claws/talons
11. UNEARTHLY BEAUTY
12. MAGIC

WINTER ELVES -  Fuck it. The Others from A Song of Ice and Fire (AKA the White Walkers from Game of Thrones I READ THE FUCKING BOOKS). I didn't want to look to Warhammer again, because although Witch Elves are fun... I dunno... meh. And I'm in about six different minds about the Drow. So from out of the godhaunted forests of the North come the Winter Elves, sweeping into human settlements on the backs of albino elk to bring slaughter to the petty humans and offer their souls up to their baleful and blasphemous gods...

... Oh you want to PLAY one.

I think with all these descriptions it's not set in stone. As funny  as it seems an happy spring-born couple that have a child in Winter aren't suddenly raising a psychopath. Unless they are. No, they get a kid who is cold and kind of aloof (even amongst elves), or given to of enduring melancholies. A winter-elf born amidst the stately hidden manses of the philosopher summer elves probably does a bunch of outsider poetry. In the old days of the really big elf-cities there might have been a rudimentary, Planet of the Apes style cast system forming, with the halls of state being populated by calculating winters and summers, whilst the autumns, suicidal in their dedication, gravitate towards the military, then with the fertile spring-elf majority making up the artisans, fine confectioners and party planners. That almost answers the question of how a civilization of layabout aristocrats function, a spring-fertility goddess, immaculate as she carries a sheaf of wheat, seems only to natural.

Whatever. I'll make it up as I go along.

FUCK! TRAITS! WINTER ELVES

1. Spider silk for hair

2. Deathly pale
3. Elaborate red or blue patterns/tattoos on skin (Celtic whorls or spider webs)
4. Weep blood
5. Thorn-like growths
6. Claws
7. Fangs/sharp teeth
8. No shadow
9. Silent/laconic/mute - uses sign language OR ice-blue eyes
10. Cold to the touch
11. UNEARTHLY BEAUTY
12. MAGIC
 
T'OTHER TABLE - UNEARTHLY BEAUTY

So people tend to make elves hot. Fair enough. That's fine for some elves, but some elves should have UNEARTHLY BEAUTY. This is a beauty that defies all human understanding, a beauty that HURTS to look at too long. A beauty that tugs at the soul. Farm boys jump into ponds to try and catch another glimpse of the UNEARTHLY BEAUTIFUL, poets put out their eyes rather then look upon anything lesser, painters bite off their fingers and drink their paint knowing they can never create anything so beautiful.

Now lets arbitrarily stat that shit up.

 

Add d3 to your Charisma (unless you're winter-born)

 SPRING ELF - you are as bright and fair as a cherry tree in blossom. People are drawn towards you as a vessel of hope (+2 to charisma checks or whatever with neutral or better disposed NPCs) and with you at their side your allies find it hard to believe ALL is lost whilst you still stand with them (grant an ally +2 to a saving throw vs. fear level/day). To use these abilities you have to do a short inspiring speech ("Folk in those stories Mr Frodo...")

Snakey elf

SUMMER ELF - FUCKING CLARK KENT. You are tall and beautiful if proud. Your righteousness and virtue shines through you. People WANT to do better by your example (+2 to an allies attack bonus level/day). You are also very effective at demoralising the enemy (-2 to enemy saving throws vs. fear, level/day). To use these abilities you need to be on form. If you've fucked up recently then you can't use them for a while or until you do something impressive again. If you do something REALLY impressive, like, John Williams Superman score cues up impressive, even bigger bonuses maybe?

 

AUTUMN ELF - You have the sad beauty of the lily, of the old songs of home and what we've lost. If the summer elves are the Superman score you're like that bit in Bioshock Infinite with the guitar. Your allies are profoundly affected by your death or injury and will fight all the harder to defend your life, for it flickers like a candle in the wind (if you are reduced to a half hp, an ally gains +2 to damage against the last enemy that attacked you. If you are reduced to quarter hp it's +3. If you are reduced to 0 +4.)

WINTER ELF - You are beautiful and terrible to behold. Death incarnate. With a baleful glance you can freeze the blood of mortals (force a fear save in an enemy with less HD then you, or equal HD but they get a +2 bonus, level/day). You can only use this ability if you haven't fucked up lately (DM ruling). As death incarnate you remind your allies of how good it is to be alive (grant an ally +2 to save vs. death, level/day). BUT your icy presence makes people uncomfortable around you (you don't get the standard UNEARTHLY BEAUTY cha bonus).

 T'OTHER t'other table... ELF MAGIC

Elves with inherent magic get a random magic spell according to their season. This is not the same as the magic-user equivalent. It does not occupy a spell slot or cost mana points (I use mana points). It does however require a casting roll. These spells are inherent abilities, just stuff the elf can do you know? Instead they can use them a number of times equal to their level per day.

 SPRING ELF

1. Charm Person
2. Cure Light Wounds
3. Purify Food & Drink
4. Protection From Evil
5. Going Hooded
6. Levitate (if the elf already has wings this counts as Fly)

SUMMER ELF (if the summer elf has any serpentine traits they may choose Snake Charm instead)

1. Light
2. Shield
3. Comprehend Languages

Grudgingly a 4th Edition Elf..

4. RESIST FIRE (-4 dmg from fire)
5. Agency of Far Dispatch
6. Mantle of Influence
7. Arrows Aflame
8. Blistering Taunts

AUTUMN ELF

1. Sleep
2. ELFSHOT (like magic missile. The elf makes a standard missile attack but uses a casting roll to determine its success. If successful the missile attack automatically hits its target and does weapon dmg+d6)
3. Comprehend Languages
4. Detect Magic 
5. Hold Portal
6. Cause Light Wounds
7. Going Hooded
8. Hunting Hound

WINTER ELF

1. Detect Magic
2. Cause Fear
3. Aura of Protection
4. Terrifying Visage
5. FROST (touch spells. Does d4 cold damage. Damage die increases every 2 lvls)
6. Cause darkness
7. Web
8. You know how to make a Ghost Knife.











Profane.

When I'm right I'm fucking right.

Looking back I don't even think I gave the bastard two days.

Anyway I'm suitably/bored/in need of distraction/having good D&D ideas n' games/otherwise creatively dry to start this shit up again.

Hi.

The name of this blog is derived from a poem I wrote... what? Two years ago now? Umm... Summer of 2011... bugger me.

Much has gone past in the interim.

The poem, I recall, was a response to some serious seeming hick-ups in my trivial teenage experience. There was a girl and ailing relatives and some allergy panics and a lot of D&D. Thus the poem worked out to be an eight-line reflection on the appeals of escapism and the pursuit of fantasy in the face of a cloyingly cynical and savagely unfair reality, as existential threats and the nebulous tribulations of life and lust are reduced to clear, easily defeated forms, coupled perhaps with the more positive sense of power and achievement through the boundless realms of the human imagination.

So it was a load of wank really.

But yeah, I've been doing some half way decent ideas lately and I need a  receptacle for them. Hi blog.

Hi readers inevitably comprising solely of half a dozen of my friends to be shortly disappointed when I give this shit up by the end of the week!

Hi obscurity!

Hi fog of impenetrable pretention strangling my better judgement!

Let's have some fun.

Hello!

Hello! So this is the strange and mysterious world of the internet! Right, I am a youth who plays D&D. Not as often as I'd like to. Or, really for that matter, enough to justify a blog about it. But meh! It offers an alternate to homework!

Like I say, I probably don't play regularly enough (I shall rectify this! By Crom I shall!) but when we do I am inevitably the DM and hence spend a lot of my time coming up with world and setting stuff. I come up with quite a lot of world and setting stuff. Often times it's good or interesting. But sometimes my friends aren't around to be lectured in the fine points of the Magocratic Revolts in Ichall or whatever I've come up so I can feel like I'm doing something constructive with my time.

If I'm honest, I'll give this whole venture 3 days before I get bored and never look at it again.

Week tops.