Miscellaneous stuff

[Anastasia]

I reworded some of it and used a passage from Races of the Dragon since I think that clarifies things.

Athear must be of lawful good alignment. He must strive to oppose evil, but take special steps to place the evil of Tiamat, evil dragons, or those that specifically aid those groups at a higher priority. Whenever they have a reasonable opportunity to do so, followers of Bahamut act to thwart Tiamat or her minions. If Athear chooses to pursue another form of evil and this results in the escape or otherwise pushing off of following the minion of Tiamat, atonement is necessary; Bahamut is the final arbiter of whether this action requires punishment.

As a Dragonborn as well, this requires that while there can be times for reflection and relaxation, one must never dawdle for too long or else lose sight of the goals laid out by Bahamut. Above this, as a Knight of Bahamut, Athear must never violate the Knight's Code knowingly.

There is one caveat to this -- Bahamut makes exceptions for acts such as lying to protect good individuals. If atonement is necessary, Bahamut or his agents will make this known. 

Specifically banned behavior: Any evil or worse acts. Anything that violates the Knight's code. Knowingly aiding or abetting evil creatures or even neutral creatures that aid Tiamat.

That sounds fine overall.

[Anastasia]

The idea is that making mutants and shit is corrupting. Splicing animals together, turning a herbivore into a carnivore (and vice versa), adding evil (corruption implies a negative tone) templates to animals/plants or using say natural sites of great magical potential for evil rituals. All that falls under the general heading of corruption.

Exploitation is shit like farming/lumber/mining. If a city needs wood for construction/heat, needs arable or grazing land to eat, that's cool with Inari. People gotta live. But logging a whole forest to build some fuckoff fortress? Damming a river to assist in a siege? That's right out.

Okay, that all sounds good.

[Anastasia]

http://www.soulriders.net/forum/index.php/topic,103088.msg1056943.html#msg1056943

A refresher on basic fey organization. This is cribbed from something I gave to Afina back in the day as well as a couple of other sources. Note that this is a library post and the following applies.

The library is a collection of book summaries from many sources across the planes. These are bite-sized bits of information about the setting, as well as legends, myths and other tidbits. Be aware that not every book is accurate - take them for what they are and use your own judgment to the validity of them.

That being said, this is a brush up on IC knowledge rather than an exhaustive explanation of the fey. Note that you should be able to pin down a few of the inaccuracies in the article OOC, that's fine.

[Anastasia]

http://www.soulriders.net/forum/index.php/topic,103088.msg1056972.html#msg1056972

A post that explains how death, the afterlife and resurrection works in Balmuria. It's been cleaned up greatly from its B2 incarnation, so it's worth a reread if you haven't read it in awhile. In particular, the fey section was cleaned up and streamlined, as B3 and beyond did a lot more to flesh them out.

[Anastasia]

We game in under two days. Last call for any pre-game questions, changes or related things.

[Anastasia]

Today's blooper: Annerose, you shouldn't have been able to run. Being fatigued prevents that. You were fatigued at the end of the last session and it slipped my mind. Next time, add a note in topic HP so it's easier to remember.

[Nephrite]

I thought Annerose wasn't fatigued because she passed the Con check?

[Anastasia]

I thought Annerose wasn't fatigued because she passed the Con check?

So you're right, it was Inari instead. Whoops. (Can you tell I wrote this as the sick was setting in?)

[Nephrite]

See, it all works out in the end! Now puke in this bowl.

[Anastasia]

Probably no post tonight, just not coherent enough. I'll try to do a flavor post over the weekend.

[Anastasia]

I'm posting all sorts of various things this weekend, since we missed Wednesday. Here's a fragment from a project that didn't go anywhere.

Inner Faith [General]
Prerequisite: Outsider type
Benefit: You are an exemplar of the faith you follow, ethos crafted into a material form. You count as your own divine focus for the sake of casting divine spells. You need not provide one when casting such spells.

Outer Faith [General]
Prerequisite: Outsider type with the good, evil, lawful or chaotic subtype
Benefit: Choose an alignment subtype you possess (good, evil, lawful or chaotic). Any spells you cast gains the matching alignment descriptor. For example, if you select the lawful subtype, all your spells have the lawful descriptor.

As you might guess, this project was meant to make feats suited for outsiders. Ultimately, I felt they weren't needed and mostly uninteresting. Incidentally, inner faith comes from a rule I use for deities - they count as a holy symbol for divine casting, they don't need to provide one. Since they're the actual source of divinity their faith relies on, it's silly they'd need to use one.

[Anastasia]

Here's a few fragments from spiritual wounds. This is a long term project I've never quite gotten done, so I've put effort into it lately. If you aren't familiar with them or could use a refresher, it's provided below. They've featured in previous Balmuria games. For example, Abigor killing all the plants in Lifasa comes to mind. Granted, this one had some extra prep and oomph behind it, but it illustrates what can happen.

Anyway, these aren't terrifically relevant to B5. You might deal with a few without knowing what they are - a magical location could well owe its origins to a spiritual wound. But they're interesting and a way to make outsiders seem more overwhelming, alien and inhuman to mortals. Even the nicest and holiest outsider is something a typical mortal isn't entirely prepared to deal with.

This also includes a few ways to work around spiritual wounds. It's not impossible, but it requires a support structure and/or feat investment. Generally, these are geared for outsiders who don't have divine rank (or count as DvR0). DvR0s are in a crummy position, as full deities are designed to have avatars to bypass the problem of spiritual wounds. It's being caught in the middle. It wouldn't be such a big deal if Ao wasn't Ao, as there's a lot of DvR0s who would be better suited as demigods. The B1 crew was lucky to bypass that awkward stage.

Incidentally, outsiders via elemental-blood templates (Afina, Muirfinn) count as elementals for this. It just hasn't been written out yet. So they don't cause spiritual wounds unless they get themselves more directly tied to an alignment.

---

Spiritual Wounds

Spiritual wounds are the result of the presence of epic outsiders on the prime material plane. The mortal world is unable to withstand this purity of spirit, and such encounters leave permanent marks on the world. These spiritual wounds cause varying effects, ranging from beneficial to baneful. No matter the type of the effect, the wound frays at the fabric of the prime.

---


Outsiders of all types can cause spiritual wounds. A celestial is no less alien to the Prime Material Plane than a demon. While the wounds they cause are likely to be less onerous than the ones fiends cause, they still weaken the world and bombard it with things mortals are not prepared to handle. Other creatures do not cause spiritual wounds, including elementals. Elementals with an alignment template, such as celestial creature (or the other equivalents) or the half-celestial (or again the other equivalents) may be able to cause spiritual wounds at the DM's discretion. If the elemental is able to, count it as one hit dice category lower than it actually is. Thus, an eligible elemental would need to have at least 26 hit dice to cause a spiritual wound and can never qualify for 40+ hit dice effects.

---

Freezing Wound
Type: Elemental
Prerequisite: 21+ hit dice, cold subtype
Area: A number of feet equal to the outsider's hit dice times its Charisma modifier.
Means of healing: A dispel cold spell.

This spiritual wound results in a sharp drop in the temperature within the wound. The temperature within the area falls by two temperature bands (minimum cold). Water within the area freezes within 10 minutes. Small sources of water such as a stream or ponds are frozen solid. Larger sources of water are also frozen, but only for the parts that are within the area of the wound. Due to the temperature instability between the wounded area and the surrounding, violent, unpredictable and unnatural weather within and around the wound is common.

Glory
Type: Alignment
Prerequisite: 26+ hit dice, good subtype
Area: A number of feet equal to the outsider's hit dice times its Charisma modifier.
Means of healing: A dispel good spell. A caster level check equal to the hit dice of the outsider that caused it is required.

The area of this spiritual wound is suffused with the eternal glory of the Heavens. The area is bright and full of beauty. Life seems better here and pain, discomfort and misery are far away. Peace reigns within this wound. Plants become full and animals that stay within the area gain the celestial creature template. However, this glory does not come without effects. Any mortal creature that spends an hour within this wound must make a Will save. Failure results in the creature becoming unwilling to leave the area of the wound. They will resist leaving by any and all means, and if removed, attempt to return with all their power. This effect can be dispelled by dispel good, greater dispel magic or remove enchantment. Creatures that stay within the wound age one year per day they spend there. They feel drawn to what lies beyond, less and less attached to the mortal realm as they age and pass on.

Rainstorm
Type: Elemental
Prerequisite: 21+ hit dice, water subtype
Area: A number of feet equal to the outsider's hit dice times its Charisma modifier.
Means of healing: A dispel water spell.

This wound results in constant rainfall within the wound. Treat this as downpour conditions, soon flooding the wound and the area around it. This changes to blizzard conditions in colder climates and seasons, but otherwise functions identically. If this wound occurs underwater or the wound becomes underwater (such as being due to flooding), water simply flows from the wound at an equivalent rate as the downpour.

---

Specific Outsider Effects

Opal Glow
Type: Alignment
Prerequisite: 26+ hit dice, lawful subtype, good subtype, cha 21
Area: A number of feet equal to Antenora's hit dice times her Charisma modifier; 375ft.
Means of healing: A wish or miracle spell. A caster level check equal to Antenora's hit dice is required; DC 29. Chaotic evil creatures gain a +4 bonus to this roll.

This wound has the same effect as the glory and perfected life wounds. In addition, the area is suffused with open deposits of Sylican opal. These deposits of Sylican opal shed light like a torch and cast an opal blue-green light over the entire area. The total value of the opal within the wound is equal to the number of feet of the radius times fourteen; 5250 gold.

---


Spiritual Wound Accessories

Destructive Presence [Epic]
Prerequisite: Able to cause spiritual wounds
Benefit: Your presence is more straining on the prime material than normal. You raise the severity of the spiritual wounds you cause by one category. If you already cause the maximum level of spiritual wound available, this feat has no effect.

Planar Child [General]
Prerequisite: Humanoid type, born within the area of a spiritual wound
Benefit: Your type becomes outsider with the native subtype. This grants your darkvision 60ft and immunity to effects that work on humanoids but not outsiders, such as charm person. You gain a +4 bonus to saving throws against the effects of spiritual wounds.
Special: This feat can only be taken at first level.

Soothing Presence [Epic]
Prerequisite: Able to cause spiritual wounds
Benefit: Your presence is less straining on the prime material than normal. You lower the severity of the spiritual wounds you cause by one category, to a minimum of no wound caused.
Special: If you are an elemental that causes spiritual wounds, the benefits of this feat stack with the less severe wound you cause.

Wound Healer [General]
Prerequisite: Able to cast spells, do not have the elemental or outsider type
Benefit: You gain a +4 bonus to any caster level checks to heal a spiritual wound.

Wound Magic [General]
Prerequisite: Able to cast spells
Benefit: You are able to draw on the power of a spiritual wound to enhance your spells, at the price of making the spiritual wound worse. This offers several options. These options may only be used when you are within the area of a spiritual wound.
Empower Aligned Magic: You may draw on the power of a wound to enhance spells with the good, evil, lawful or chaotic descriptor. To do so, the descriptor of the spell must match the prerequisite to create the wound. For example, to empower a holy smite spell, the wound must have the prerequisite of being caused by an outsider with the good subtype. Doing so automatically empowers the spell (as by the metamagic) and grants the spell a +2 bonus to its caster level.
Empower Elemental Magic: You may draw on the power of a wound to bolster spells with matching elemental descriptors. To do so, the descriptor of the spell must match the prerequisite to create the wound. For example, to empower a fireball spell, the wound must have the prerequisite of being caused by an outsider with the fire subtype. Doing so automatically empowers the spell (as by the metamagic) and grants the spell a +2 bonus to its caster level.
Multiply Summonings: You may draw on the power of a wound to greatly increase the creatures summoned by your summoning spells. When you cast a spell of the conjuration (summoning) subschool, you double the number of creatures summoned. The creatures summoned must be native to the plane connected to the spiritual wound.
Using any of these abilities expands a spiritual wound. Each use expands the area of the wound by 5ft. For each 100ft you expand a wound by, there is a cumulative 15% chance the wound collapses into a planar rift spiritual wound. If the wound uses another measurement to express its area, such as yards or miles, use those instead of feet to determine how the wound grows.

Wound Sense [General]
Prerequisite: Planar Child or int 13 and wis 13
Benefit: You are unusually sensitive to spiritual wounds. You automatically sense when you enter the area of one. In addition, if you succeed on a DC 16 Intelligence check when you first enter a spiritual wound, you identify the effects of it. If you do, you gain a +5 circumstance bonus to the Knowledge (Planes) check to discover how to heal the wound.

Circle of Spiritual Protection
Abjuration
Level: Clr 10, Sor/Wiz 10
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Area: 30ft radius emanation from touched point
Duration: 1 day/level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This spell creates a magic circle that protects the prime material from injury due to the presence of powerful outsiders. An outsider of 30 or less hit dice called into this circle does not cause spiritual wounds so long as it stays within the circle. If the outsider leaves the circle, the circle is dispelled while the outsider is still in it or the outsider is still in the circle when the duration expires, a spiritual wound is immediately created.

This spell can be combined with other spells that call powerful outsiders. The spell's casting time is added to the casting time of the calling spell and the duration begins when the calling spell is cast.

This spell is ineffective if a creature has divine rank.

Material Component

A mix of ground up cold iron, silver and diamond dust worth 2,500 gold.

Greater Circle of Spiritual Protection
Abjuration
Level: Clr 14, Sor/Wiz 14
Components: V, S, M

This spell is identical to circle of spiritual calm, except that it affects outsiders of up to 39 hit dice.

Material Component

A mix of ground up cold iron, silver and diamond dust worth 7,500 gold.

[Anastasia]

A little more relevant to B5: leShay. I've been working on them for awhile, but I find it slow going. The mess that is fey hit dice encourages hit dice bloat, which I dislike. It tends to sap my enthusiasm.

It's interesting how the seemingly random abilities of the ELH leShay hook into the backstory I made for them. Blade of the leShay matches how greater eladrin manifest personal weapons, while charming gaze ties back to Queen Morwel. It's nice to tie these together and use random powers productively.

Finally, leShay choose a season to represent or study. This influences them and is one of the problems that lead to the Seelie/Unseelie split. Winter is a cruel mistress and Auril got up to no good.

Anyway, this isn't anything immediately relevant. It's possible Annerose or Inari might know the title leShay, but probably not much else besides a fragment or two of distorted legend.

Finally, see how charming gaze bypasses immunity? Those sort of immunity bypasses are generally the domain of epic or divine abilities. You rarely see them in non-epic gameplay. The reasoning for this is two fold - earlier on, an immunity can mean life or death. Often it requires a decent investment or spells, so it's best to respect those. By epic, creatures have lots of versatility and can often shut down entire categories of effect easily. Prodding at this in epic makes more sense, this combines with the fact that epic characters are more durable anyway.

Blade of the leShay (Su)

At will as a free action, leShay can manifest a white sword. This blade is a part of their life force as well as what study of nature they deal with. This functions as a +7 bastard sword. If the leShay dies or loses his grip on the blade, it vanishes instantly.

A leShay's blade changes depending on the season they study. See Seasonal Choice below for more information.

Charming Gaze (Su)

A creature that comes to within 70ft of a leShay is charmed, as if by a charm monster spell, with a Will save (DC 46) to negate. This charm can affect those that are immune to it, but they gain a +10 bonus to the saving throw. This ability is a remnant of Queen Morwel's power transforming ancient eladrins into the leShay.

The save DC is Charisma based and includes a +2 racial bonus.

Seasonal Choice

The leShay are based around the four seasons. Each leShay studies or represents some aspect of the natural world, tied to or represented by a season. Each leShay gains additional powers and modifications based on what season they fall under.

Blade of the leShay (Su)

Depending on choice of season, the leShay weapon changes to match.

[Anastasia]

Knowledge check: Elementals and fey.

The relationship between elementals and fey came up in the past week's sessions. I'll touch on this here and give a quick rundown of how they interact. As elementals represent the building blocks of the mortal world and the fey are the incarnations and protectors of it, there's going to be some overlap.

1. How much do elementals and fey know about each other?

Not a whole lot. While they work in related fields, they aren't directly connected. More experienced and knowledgeable fey and elementals will have a basic grasp of the other through simple osmosis. They deal with enough similar things to have some crossover. It's akin to hanging out in the pen and paper scene and only playing D&D. While your main field of knowledge is D&D, you've probably picked up a few tidbits about other systems and games.

For a fey, a K:N check can identify an elemental, though it provides no more information than that it is an elemental and what type it is. An elemental does not enjoy the same benefit, as few of them have the intelligence or inclination to take knowledge skills. Those that do are exceptional and likely know this information anyway.

2. Do fey and elemental politics cross over at all? What about culture?

Not really. They're separate as far as that goes. The upper echelons, such as the archomentals and fey courts, do have some dealings and connections. However, this seldom extends to typical fey and elementals. A typical fey finds a normal elemental's focus too limiting, unless that focus lines up with the fey's own preferences. Likewise, an elemental finds a fey's mischievous nature and focus on nature in general, rather than a single element, to be as incomprehensible as most other creatures are to it.

Para-elementals get along somewhat better with fey, as a split elemental focus allows them to better understand Titania's children. Likewise, fey find it easier to deal with an elemental who isn't focused on only one element. Quasi elementals that are tied to the positive energy plane get along better with Seelie fey, while ones bound to the negative energy plane find more harmony with Unseelie fey.

This stat block's flavor section touches on the different mindsets. It's worth a read to see how it works out in practice.

3. So what about those upper echelon politics?

I won't go into this too much, but the Seelie and Unseelie keep diplomatic ties with their respective counterparts (Princes of Elemental Good and Evil, respectively) in the elemental planes. The closeness of those ties varies from archomental to archomental. Most are loose and informal, comprising of a few ambassadors and personal relationships between powerful servants.

Imagine less formal alliances and more of backdoor channels.

4. How much do fey and elementals cross-breed or blend with each other?

It happens, but it's not common. The link to Grinning Zephyr is an example of an elemental impacted by fey power, while Afina and Simmer from B3 are examples of fey changed by elemental blood. Practical reasons limit this on both sides. Elementals don't really get fey, so gaining fey blood or power rarely occurs to them, let alone happens. It's usually an accident or special circumstances that lead to it. An elemental so changed has difficulty fitting in with other elementals. The courts of the Elemental Princes of Good or Evil are more palatable to them, as they have likewise been touched by something unrelated to the elements. They understand each other in a way normal elementals never will.

As far as fey goes, the fey cycle stops them from accruing elemental power. The transformation into an elemental (or outsider in the case of many templates) removes a fey from the cycle. As B3 showed, this is culturally unacceptable to fey. It's usually an accident or a particular fey going off the rails. The most common cause is one who grows to value their sense of self over the cycle and reincarnation. Accidents like Afina and Simmer's transformations into pyrofey likewise occur. Most fey who change find new homes elsewhere, as they rarely find acceptance in a fey court after that. Afina and Simmer were lucky in that regard, but B3's court was anything but normal.

5. Does B5's world offer an unique twist on this?

No, it's fairly standard as far as elementals and fey go. This should be obvious but it's worth mentioning. B5's world isn't like Alere from B3 or a few other worlds mentioned - there's nothing changing names and obscuring matters from mortals. It's a standard Prime Material as far as that goes.

[Anastasia]

So we have an abandoned goblin village, a bunch of human refugees, the shaman's treasure and questions. So what's your plan here, all? Let me know what your plan is, as well as anything each of you is going to do on an individual basis.