My Fantasy RPG World, Feedback and Ideas appreciated

Let the silly wedding traditions commence.


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Wedding Punchings
The Best Man (with a variety of local names such as Groom's Champion) is charged with protecting the bride and groom. Usually this protection is a farce, standing guard over the wedding cake and other symbolic actions, but it's important to protect the bride and groom against Maylar's wrath.

If Maylar feels chagrined at a wedding he can visit disease upon the bride and groom or their first born.

Maylar respects toughness on part of a groom, but the groom should not be bruised up for his wedding night, so it's typically the Best Man who takes the hits.

A Jórtoca custom that has spread to the Kantoca is to have the bride's male relatives line up to each take a swing at the Best Man. If the wedding party is small the groom's male relatives might or the bride's female relatives might get a swing too. If the wedding party is large, magical healing might be allowed between beatings.

This is considered to be a symbolic act, it's not expected for all the wedding guests to hit as hard as they can, so there is usually at least one person who cheats.

If the groom-to-be fails to get the blessing of the bride's family and wants to proceed with the wedding, it is customary to forgo using the Best Man as a human shield and the groom letting his in laws hit him at the wedding reception. If he takes this beating in good humor, it's considered reasonable for the in laws to bestow their blessing on the union.

A great many noblemen in the Kingdom of Kantoc undergo a knight's training as youth even if they don't end up as knights. At the weddings of lords and ladies, the "Punching Man" is often wearing full armor and instead of swinging fists, the "attackers" use sticks and other blunt weapons.

Sometimes instead of lining up to take a swing, they might actually have full on sparring matches, typically with the Groom's Champion being horribly outnumbered, but it's often choreographed so the Groom's Champion wins a stunning underdog victory.

 

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Lucky Marriage Coins
Phidas can bestow blessings and curses, so it is common for weddings to try to invoke Phidas' favor. Phidas has a little bit of association with good health, but he is mostly invoked to try to call prosperity upon the new couple.The most common wedding ritual associated with Phidas is to have a lucky coin, usually a common silver piece. There are many variations, such as the bride ends up with the coin and sometimes the groom gets the coin or if both get a coin.Typically if the couple or their families have minimal respect for Phidas the coin is blessed in a single afternoon. If the family are staunchly aligned with the Masks, the families of the bride and groom may try to bless the coin for months.The lucky coin is blessed by a priest of Phidas (or a lay person praying to Phidas) then the coin is passed to a family member of the bride and groom, then to another family member, then to another family member, again and again. The point is to get a blessing of luck and well wishes from as many friends and family as possible.Depending on local tradition or family tradition, the various coin bearers may end up carrying the coin for a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, or in rare cases a week before passing the coin along to the next person.

Depending on the local or family tradition, the coin is carried in a person's pocket, on a chain around their neck against their heart, or inside their shoe.
It is considered bad luck if any coin bearer loses the coin.

After the bride and/or groom receive their coin(s), they then donate the coin to Phidas at the nearest Phidas temple or shrine shortly after the wedding. They might donate the coin immediately after the wedding if a Mask is the officiant.

A silver piece donation to Phidas is considered more than generous for most peasants, but wealthier couples will often accompany their lucky coin donation with an additional monetary donations, and it is not unwelcome for a couple or their families to donate material goods.

Regardless of whether or not the lucky coin comes with additional donations, this is one rare case for the Masks where the sentiment counts more than monetary value. The Masks are very polite and gracious when participating in this ritual.

Sometimes the Masks even mint their own commemorative wedding coins which they sell in pairs in which case the couple tends to keep one coin and donate the other one though in other cases paying for the coins is their donation.
Components And Tools
The coin is usually silver. If the married couple comes from money they might use a platinum coin.

Gold is not normally used despite it's universal value. Silver is considered holy to all of the Nine and Phidas in particular, and platinum is considered a metaphysical derivative of silver, sometimes called true silver because it never tarnishes.Barring the occasional use of commemorative wedding coins, the vast majority of lucky marriage coins are just ordinary coins.
Observance
Not every wedding in Scarterra has a lucky wedding coin dedicated to Phidas, but the practice is so wide spread that almost all Scarterrans have at least heard of the practice even if they don't do it themselves.

 

I'm vaccinated now, and most of my friends are, so it's look like my friends and I can start playing RPGs again, relatively soon after a long hiatus...I hope. It's hard to pick up a campaign after it's been put on ice for a long time.

My feeble attempts to try video conferencing based RPGs have failed for reasons unknown.



I haven't checked out Terrible Writing Advice in a while until today. He has recently been covering table top RPGs these days.





As you would guess with the name Terrible Writing Advice, he really wants you to do the opposite of what he says.

When he covers the types of Game Masters, I guess I'm a Sand Box Game Master. I was not always a Sand Box GM, but that is what I evolved into. However, every session or two I will talk to my players and Kormatin's player told me that his favorite session I ran recently was the one that was most planned, which mirrors what other players said earlier so I'm going to add a bit more structure.

Reflecting on types of problematic players and game masters, it occurred to me that I have been playing with the same group of people on and off for over 20 years. We are very good at conflict resolution and talking things out, RPG related and otherwise. At some point in my group, everyone used to be at least one of the types of problematic players but we figured out how to fix our weaknesses.

More often than not, I am the Game Master, not the player.

New players that join in rarely last long. I have pondered if this is because I'm not a good GM or maybe it's just awkward to be hanging around a group of friends who knew each other for ten years while the new guy has known one of the other players for six months.

The closest thing I have to a new player that is sticking around is my best friend's wife. I've known her for a very long time, but she's only recently begun joining our RPG games.

Watching these videos makes me kind of want to try running a Scarterra campaign for a group of newbies, but I'm not sure how to set it up. Also this would take a lot of time and effort and there is a bunch of real life grown up stuff that I should be putting more effort into.

I think finding a new group to play with concurrently would require me figuring out how to host video conferencing, but I can dream.

I also did make a Player's Handbook for my game system a while back but all of it is on my world anvil page now.

Unlike many Player's Handbook, I didn't cover the general basics of storytelling and cooperative gameplay, but again that is because my group of friends knows that (through years and years of trial and error). Though if we had access to this video in the 1990s we might have had a steeper learning curve.



He's right that memorizing every rule in the book is impossible, even with Scarterra D&D10. I sometimes have to look up things that I wrote. Mildly embarrassing.

Now back to your regularly scheduling world building tidbits. Preview of next topic, "What do Scaraquan Merfolk actually look like?"

 

What do Scaraquan Merfolk look like?

So I mention elemental ethnicity a lot. The article is here. Genetics in Scarterra is at least partially Lamarkean, despite the fact that Lamarkean genetics is complete garbage science in the real world. Traits that parents acquire in life will be passed on to their offspring.

So for humans (and demihumans like elves and gnomes), people who live near the equator and work as builders tend to have fiery children.

People who live far from the equator and having nomadic lifestyles tend to airy children.

People who live inland and are mostly sedentary tend to have earthy children.

People who live near the coasts and exercise their creativity tend to have watery children.

Most Scarterrans have mixed elemental traits with the majority of Scarterrans being 50% or more earthy.


Scarterra and Scaraqua may have different myths and cultural norms, but they have the same SCIENCE!

The Baseline

Based on established Science, Merfolk (and every Scaraquan) are constantly exposed to the the elemental essence of water.

That means every Merfolk is going to have water traits as a baseline.

Most Merfolk have light blue, light green, or silvery skin or some combination of these colors.

Most Merfolk have dark blue, dark green, or black hair.

A majority of Merfolk have green eyes. Blue, grey, and brown eyes are uncommon but not unheard of.

Most merfolk have relatively small noses and fairly lithe and curvy bodies.

Most merfolk tend to emotional and empathetic. They also tend to be indirect in their social dealings.

Variants

It is boring if all Merfolk look alike. So the above is the baseline. Most Scaraquan Merfolk are going to have secondary elemental traits.

Much like how Scarterrans are mostly mixed but most are 50% or more earthy, Scaraquans are mostly mixed but most are 50% or watery.

Scaraquans have the same four elements coursing through their bodies and spirits that Scarterrans but their scholars don't think in elemental terms.

Merfolk live mostly in cold waters to develop "icy" traits. Scarterran scholars would call this Void taint or maybe a variant of airy. Note, most but not all cold waters are near the Void. Not many merfolk living in cold waters.

Merfolk that live mostly near the ocean floor tend to develop "solid" or "rocky" traits. Scarterran scholars would call this "earthy." As earthy as someone can be surrounded by water. This is fairly common for Merfolk.

Merfolk that live towards the surface have "sky touched" traits which most Scarterran scholars would consider "airy" traits though there is a twist which I'll get to later. This is fairly common for Merfolk.

Merfolk that live in warm waters tend to develop to develop "fiery" traits which Scarterrans also would call "fiery traits, unless I come up with a cooler Scaraquan name for this. This is very common for Merfolk.

So ball park, 5-10% of Merfolk are icy, 30-60% are fiery, 20-40% of Merfolk are "sky touched" and 20-40% of Merfolk are "rocky."

So if a Merfolk tribe lives in warm, shallow water, the Merfolk are going to be rocky, sky touched, and fiery.

Icy merfolk are going to have much darker coloration in their skin tone and hair. They likely are going to be stockier and bulkier than the average Merfolk. They are likely to be more stoic and emotionally closed off than the average merfolk.



Rocky Merfolk are going to lean towards average builds but have fairly good muscle tone. The greens and blues in their hair, eyes, and skin are mixed with grey and sandy colors. They are going to have straighter hair though this would hard to notice because their hair is always floating in the water. They tend to be more pragmatic and straight forward than the average Merfolk.

Sky Touched Merfolk are going to be a bit lankier. The greens and blues in their hair, eyes, and skin are mixed with golds, whites, silver creating more pastel or sparkly colors. They would have curlier hair but this would be hard to notice because their hair is always floating in the water. They tend to be more flighty than the average Merfolk.


Fiery merfolk are going to be have some reds and oranges mixed up with their baselines of greens and blues. This means you are going to get a few gingers like Ariel from The Little Mermaid, but more commonly you'll see purples and browns.

Their body type is going to be a bit more solid than the standard watery merfolk. They would have more cowlicky and frizzier hair but this would be hard to notice because their hair is always floating in the water.

They are more likely to be creative and passionate than the average Merfolk though I guess that's a general Merfolk trait, and since a majority of Merfolk live in warm waters, they might qualify as the average Merfolk or at least the median Merfolk.


What if you have a Merfolk that stays in the "tweens", avoiding the surface and avoiding the ocean floor swimming in between. Also, this Merfolk tribe is going to stick to temperate waters and avoid tropical or polar waters. Well that Merfolk is going to be extra watery with little to no secondary traits resembling the baseline merfolk perfectly.

I promised a twist

Here it is.

Merfolk tribes that live near the surface are more anthropomorphic than Merfolk that live far from the surface (though I still want the non-anthropomorphic Merfolk to be beautiful). I'm not sure if it's a word, but I Merfolk that live far from the surface would be more icthyomorphic (I doubt that's a real word).

Anthropomorphic means "like a human." My made up word ichyomorphic means "like a fish."

So an extremely anthropomorphic Merfolk is basically a human body with a smooth fish tail. Like The Little Mermaid, like Splash.

A more icthyomorphic Merfolk is going to have a humanoid torso but they might have visible gills in or around their neck. They might have fins on their elbows. They might have a vaguely scaly texture to their skin. Their eyes might be less human. Their ears might have ears like this (even though it's not remotely scientific). They might have spiny hair.



Actually the whole picture is a good idea for what I'm talking what I'm talking about. I think this is what a midway mermaid that is medium anthropomorphic, medium ichyomorphic would look like. I figure roughly half of Scaraquan Merfolk are more anthropomorphic than this picture and roughly half of Merfolk are less anthropomorphic than this picture.

Most Scaraquans are aware that surface swimming Merfolk greatly resembled surface dwelling humanoids and that deeper dwelling Merfolk don't resemble them as closely. Most Scarterrans don't realize this dichotomy exists.

It also means that the the Merfolk that Scarterrans commonly see would greatly resemble humans. If a Scarterran used magic to travel to the ocean depths, they probably be shocked how different looking the Merfolk are there.

Scarterrans believe that the first Merfolk were created from elves and/or humans somehow. Scaraquans believe that the first elves and humans were created from Merfolk somehow.

And a Twist on the Twist

I'm not 100% if I want to use this one, but here goes.

During the Second Age (where Elves ruled Scarterra), Merfolk had elfin features and pointy ears. In the Third Age (where Humans rule Scarterra), Merfolk tend to have more pointy ears than humans but each generation their elfin features gradually fade. They are becoming more human-like with every generation and less elf-like.

This is happening slow enough that most Merfolk are not aware of this. Ironically, this is something Scarterrans are more aware of than Scaraquans since Scarterrans value historical scholarship greatly and Scaraquans do not.

Because Merfolk tend to be sexy, Scarterran artists love to sculpt, draw, or paint them. Because Merfolk tend to be vain, they like to let Scarterran artists sculpt, draw, or paint them.

Scarterrans art collectors and historians have noticed that the further back you go, the elfier the Merfolk look in artwork.

I remember reading another RPG setting (specifically the book Blood Dimmed Tides in the old school World of Darkness) that Merfolk are literally part human.

In the old school World of Darkness, Merfolk are a type of Fae. All types of Fae are harmed by human disbelief and all types of Fae have to find some means to counter it. In the Merfolk's case they interbred with humans to build up resistance against human disbelief.

Note the WOD Merfolk are extremely matriarchal. My Merfolk are moderately matriarchal. In any event, they realized they needed human blood to survive and since males more expendable than female, they kidnapped a few male sailors, used magic so they can breathe underwater, and used them as breeding stock for a couple years before killing them.

I could work in some point in Scarterra/Scaraqua history where Merfolk mixed genes with elves and then humans but I prefer not to dive into that topic too deeply.

Though since I'm creating a world that has sexy emotionally driven Merfolk there has got to be at least a few tragic Human-Merfolk love stories somewhere. Love stories are not something I'm good at writing, but I'm not opposed to them.

Hypothetically if Scarterra/Scaraqua became a commercially successful I might hire a co-author or ghost writer to help me with the steamy parts.

Merfolk don't have to be turning from pseudo-elves into pseudo humans because of interbreeding. They could be evolving because Scarterra an Scaraqua are still managed by the same nine deities even if their Scarterran/Scaraquan identities are more than a little different.

Other Scaraquans?

I think I have a good grasp on what Merfolk look like and I have lots of material so that Merfolk Tribe A and Merfolk Tribe B can be visually distinct from each other. Huzzah.

I'm less sure how to work other Scaraquans into this. They would probably have less variation.

At least 90% Astalakians live on the ocean floor, so of course they are going to be "rocky." Some are going to live in warm waters, some in cold waters. Some in shallow waters, some in deep waters, but almost all of them are going to hug the sea floor.

At least 60% of Ojiongo live in deep water.

At least 60% of Karakhai swim primarily in the "tween zones"

Ojiongo have very human-like torsos so they might follow the same genetic "rules" that Merfolk have, but the other two I'm less sure of.

I'm thinking of basing these guys on something else (such as real world sharks and crustaceans).

 

In response to the prompt Tell us about a tradition surrounding births in one of your worlds

Kobold birthing Treks
This is the first and most important rite of passage in a kobold's life. In kobold society, a kobold isn’t truly a kobold until he proved they can he survive the journey known in kobold society as “the birthing trek.”

Typically female kobolds in a tribe all lay their eggs at roughly the same time. Kobolds believe strongly that it takes a tribe to raise a child. The females will deliberately mix their eggs up rather than take efforts to keep track of their own biological children.

Eggs are buried in a shallow earthen nest left some distance from the tribe's current encampment. The mothers will then leave a pheromonal trail from the nest showing the way to their encampment.

After hatching, the infant kobolds will instinctively follow the pheromones back to their mothers and their extended tribal family. The infant kobolds will crawl their way home where will they will then be welcomed by their tribe and given names. By kobold tradition, a kobold is not fully hatched until he or she completes the birthing trek.

Many hatchlings die on this trek. Male kobolds will usually sweep an area for predators while the females are preparing the nest, but by tradition, as the soon as the last egg is buried, adult kobolds take no action to aid their hatchlings versus natural hazards. It is believed believed that the young kobolds need to succeed or fail on their own merits.

Kobold tribes will their trekking hatchlings if one or more intelligent creatures is deliberately interfering with a birthing trek. In fact, if there is even a vague hint of an outside force interfering with a birthing trek is going to earn the fierce enmity of the tribe forever.

Even if two kobold tribes are fierce rivals, they would never dream of interfering with another tribe's birthing trek.

It is considered auspicious to either be the first hatchling to make it to camp or be the last hatchling. Either way the young kobold is considered to be destined for greatness. The first kobold is said to be blessed with strength and courage while the last kobold is said to be blessed with tenacity. It is the case the early completers of the trek tend to be bigger and stronger than their nest mates on average while late completes of the trek tend to be far more likely to be artists, innovators, or sorcerers Tiamalan kobolds believe in numerology and give a special precedent to lucky numbers they view as likely to be a favored soul or parent of a future favored. If it's third year of the zodiac cycle, they will tend to considered the third hatchling to arrive as blessed. If it's the fifth year of the zodiac cycle the fifth hatchling will be considered blessed, etc. A lot of Tiamalan kobolds have their birthing trek order number as part of their names.

Some tribes with set territories use the same camp site and nest site generation after generation (especially common with the Laershin kobolds while most other kobold tribes have to hastily improvise based on the situation when their females are near laying time.

A kobold tribe that has recently suffered severe casualties may choose a shorter birthing trek to shore up their numbers. Since the Gilgren kobolds live the most violent lifestyles and have the most enemies, they frequently set short birthing treks routinely. The Tiamalans and Laeshin consider this somewhat scandalous and will blame any faults they see in Gilgrens on their weak birthing treks producing kobolds weak in mind and body.

History
All three major kobold ethnicities practice the birthing trek with very little variation between them. The birthing trek seems to be one of the few rituals they have that predate when the three groups diverged.While the kobolds claim they always did this.

Some dragons say that in the the First Age that kobolds were overpopulated and breeding like vermin overtaxing the support capacity of their lands forcing them to adopt this practice...or a perhaps a dragon imposed this form of population control on them and it became a part of their culture after generations of repetition.


I'm tempted to delete and submit my article on Merfolk Swim Days or Karakhai Teething Days so I can post to this prompt again, but I probably won't.

 

In response to the prompt Tell us about an important food staple in your world.

The funny thing, most of food related articles have used the species template and I mostly covered how the foodstuff is grown. This template is for processed food requiring me to write something different, but the answer was obvious.




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midday pies
Pies come in a wide variety of varieties throughout Scarterra with many regional differences. Pies can be a main dish, a side dish, or a dessert."

Midday Pies" is a catchall term for pies eaten at midday. Midday pies are known throughout Scarterra, but they are especially popular in West Colassia where they are eaten by many workers both farm hands, townies, and soldiers on the march.

The whole point of a midday pie is that it's a working man's food. The idea is you take the pie with you in the morning when you go off to work, and then eat the pie at your midday break, fueling yourself for the second half of your working day before returning home (or to base camp.

The main advantage of midday pies is that they are convenient. A person can eat his entire midday meal in a single crust encased package.

Ingredients
There are many variations. All midday pies have a crust, most are filled with a mixture of meat, vegetables and herbs.

Most pies are made with a "peasant's pie pastry" and some pies are made with a "prince's pie pastry."

A peasant pastry is basically flour and water. The crust is edible but not not very appetizing. Most of the time, a peasant pastry is used as little more than the packaging for a pie and the crust is then discarded entirely or fed to the pigs.

If the person is very destitute or an area is suffering famine conditions, the crust can be eaten. Usually the crust softened up first in water. Some hungry soldiers on the march like to dissolve their ration of coffee, tea, or beer.

A "prince's pie pastry" is leavened with butter, lard and/or other ingredients to make the crust softer and taste better. Pies with a prince's pie pastry can be eaten crust and all

They are more expensive than typical pie crusts, but the name is a joke. It is not literally limited to princes and nobles. Commoners can and do eat pies with prince pie pastry when they can afford it and noblemen sometimes have to settle for eating a pie with a discard-able peasant pie pastry if they are traveling long distances (though a nobleman is highly unlikely to stoop to eating his crust dissolved in his beverage).

Salted pork is the go-to meat for midday pies in West Colassia, but rabbit and fish can be substitutes if that's what they have access to. In Fumaya, potato and fish midday pies are called "King's Lake pies" because the city of King's Lake has lots of potatoes and lots of fish.

Chicken and beef pies are not unheard of, but they are food for wealthier people, such as nobles or wealthy burghers. Lamb and goat are not unheard of either. Goat based midday pies are fairly popular in East Colassia.

Of course, meat pies vary not just on the type of meat but the cut of meat. Higher status people get the best crusts of meat while the inner parts of an animal are often called the "umbles" and served to the lowest class people. The etymological origin of "eating humble pie."

The meat is supplemented by whatever fruits, vegetables, and herbs are seasonally available. Potatoes can be used to bulk up a pie adding calories for relatively cheap. Very poor people might have pure potato pies instead of meat and potato pies

In Umera and the Elven Empire, sometimes rice is used as filler rather than potatoes though midday pies are far less popular in these lands than in the northern hemisphere.

The Suppliers Of Pies
Depending on the filling, ingredients might be pre-cooked separately but most pies are baked with all the items mixed together.

Midday pies are usually eaten cold. Most rural peasants would make their pies at home (either the morning of or the night before they are going to work and take them with them into the field while soldiers are of course made by the camp cook and soldiers are issued their midday pies with their morning rations.

Townies will usually go to a pie shop and buy their pie fresh in the morning before the start of their work day at a pie shop.

In a large towns, most pie shops are probably going to offer a wide variety of crusts and fillings with different price options for different people based on their preferences and what they can afford though if a pie shop exists solely to feed one type of worker (such as a pie shop set up a mining camp) the pie man probably has a large storeroom full of identical pies to sell.

Manufacturing Process
Ingredients are laid out on a crust and thrown in the oven.

Article Side bar

Item type
Consumable, Food / Drink
Current Location
Scarterra
Raw materials & Components
A crust, usually simply flour and water but more flaky and soft pie crusts are hardly unknown.Meat, usually pork, fish, or rabbit but other meats are known.Plus seasonal fruits, vegetables and herbs. Often with starchy vegetables like potatoes or rice.

 

I finally got to play RPGs a little bit.


Finally was able to run an RPG session. Today was a really hot June day. The last time we played, I had to drive to my friend's house slowly because the roads were iced over. I might not get to play again until the leaves change for autumn.

So last session Kormatin died because he walked into an ambush set by the Decedents. We talked it over, and given that the bad guys robbed the local armory and Kormatin walked by the armory on the way to the ambush, so there was no way he would have not realized something was up, so we replayed the ambush, but this time the attackers had low tier weapons (spears, light armor, and light crossbows) rather than top quality weapons (morning stars, medium armor, and heavy crossbows).

Despite being outnumbered 12 to 3, Kormatin and his sidekicks won. It was still a hard fight (it took around fifteen rounds), but giving the bad guys less effective weapons made a huge difference.

All the bad guys wore party masks to hide their identity (and because they have a light hearted view of murder).

The bad guys were "led" by relatively elite warrior roughly as skilled as Kormatin though with inferior equipment. Because he wore the fanciest party mask he used the pseudonym the Reveler.

There was also spell caster lady (the secret puppet master of the cult), five enthusiastic but mediocre fighting cultists, and five local criminals as hired muscle.

Spoiler: Lengthy description of the battle

The criminals held back and took potshots with crossbows while the cultists swarmed Kormatin's side kicks and the lady used support magic.

The bad guy's plan was to quickly take out Kormatin's sidekicks while the Reveler held off Kormatin.

Kormatin's sidekicks are Tihalt, a rookie Hallisan warrior that has one dot of magic (he can modestly enhance weapons and armor temporarily) and Ragana the gnome, priestess of Hallisan. She was a support caster with no real fighting ability

But Kormatin's sidekicks acted defensively so the mob wasn't grinding them down very fast. Ragana the gnome was using healing scrolls and summoning lion spirits to serve as temporary meat shields, while Tihalt (with slightly magically enhanced armor) was using his sword and body to keep the bad guys from getting to Ragana.

The spell caster lady had two tricks in her arsenal, the ability to summon spirit wolves (which often tangled with Ragana's spirit lions) and she could cast hexes to weaken the dice pools of her enemies, but her hexes are resisted by Willpower and Kormatin and his two sidekicks were chosen specifically for their high Willpower because they were originally supposed to be going after hostile enchanters, so that didn't go very far.

Tihalt was in bad shape from several small wounds, but once Kormatin was able to kill the Reveler (after ten rounds) the battle finally turned. Kormatin charged the spell caster lady, so she withdrew, up.

The spellcaster lady drank three potions at the start of the battle, it was not clear what they all did (one of them was Blur), but one of them was a potion of flight, so she fled up, low enough to still be in range to cast her summoning and hex spells, but high enough to not be able to be hit with a sword.

Kormatin had been dealing with hostile illusion spells a long time, so he had a wand that pierced illusion, he used it to counter act the Blur potion.

Kormatin had acquired potion of Flight long ago, so he followed her into the air and then smacked her with his sword sending her back down to Earth.

Kormatin figured as long as he was flying, he might as well be dramatic. After having taken down both the bad guy leaders he landed dramatically in the midst of the hired rent-a-thugs. That was scary and they figured since the people paying were down that they should flee (one already fled early after failing a break test.

The lady staggered up and drank a healing potion and an invisibility potion. Because she was badly injured and panicking she forgot that Kormatin had activated an anti-illusion effect so the invisiblity was useless. Kormatin hit her again (negating the healing potion she drank) and then he demanded she surrender.

Kormatin was still flying, so he flew in to help out the fight with his sidekicks. The other cultists seemed ready to fight to the death, but Tihalt had finally managed to peg one. Kormatin caught them by surprise and killed one, then he finsihed off the one Tihalt wounded. At this point they were able to get the surviving three cultists surrender.

The Maylar cultists were originally willing to fight to the death, but only if they could bring down at least one foe with them and at this point it seemed impossible.

The five rent-a-thugs ran away and Kormatin did not view it important to try to track them down. Two of the low ranking cultists were killed and three were captured. The Reveler was dead and the theurgist woman was captured.

Now it was Scooby Doo unmasking time.

Kormatin's player assumed some of the Duke's adult children were involved in the cult. His oldest son Bodhan was kind of putz, his youngest son Tactitus was suspiciously cooperative and helpful, and his daughter Felicja was a snarky brat.

Kormatin's player assumed Felicja was a red herring and the mastermind was either the oldest son (who was pretending to be dumb) or the youngest son who was suspiciously helpful.

But Felicja was the spell caster lady and the Reveler was an unknown patsy and not one of her brothers.

They interrogated the minions separately. One of them said Felicja was the mastermind, one of them said the Reveler (who was dead) was the mastermind and one of them was evasive but implied that Felicja was the mastermind.

Fumaya doesn't have full time judges, feudal lords act as judges. Normally, the case would go to the Duke for trial. Since the Felicja's father for trial and he would likely be unfairly biased at her trial, they could have taken their prisoners to the king, but they didn't want to alienate the Duke, so opted to let him try his own daughter.

There was a brief courtroom drama. Felicja gave tearful testimony that she was coerced into helping the Decadents though her story was filled with holes and most of the other prisoners did not back up her story.

The Duke wanted to acquit her, but Tactitus convinced him that the other nobles would make him pay a political consequence for showing that much leniency despite all the evidence against her.

At the end of the day, Duke Wiern ended up sentencing his daughter to banishment (as an accessory to multiple murders of peasants) while executing all the other captured cultists (for perpetrating multiple murders of peasants).

Now I have story fuel for later. Lady Felicja is now in the wind and can potentially return as a recurring villain.

Duke Wiern may or may not hold a grudge but the PCs will probably have to interact with him again and Duke is now officially a frienemy.

Kormatin and his sidekicks were not sure if Duke Wiern would hold a grudge for turning in his youngest daughter, so they left the area to report in with their superior.

I had another adventure planned but I was going to have to leave in 45 minutes before had to pick up his kids from day care and we didn't want to start a fresh encounter if we had to put it on pause for several weeks, so we had Kormatin and company take some downtime.

But I did drop the bombshell by adding a new character Brigid (who has a very complicated backstory because originally I had two characters for two different stories and I eventually merged them), who revealed that she is presumably his half sister and that Kormatin has a lot of half-siblings in Swynfaredia because their father deliberately tried to sire as many bastards as he could, and that most of his half-siblings are ass-hats.

Kormatin and his buddies Ragana and Tihalt took some time to spend some experience points they were accumulating and raise a few traits.

In the downtime, Kormatin bought some supplies and helped Brigid integrate into her new home.

 

So for some reason I cannot stop thinking about aquatic dragons. I figure if I write down my thoughts I can exorcise this from my brain and think about something else.

So I might play with the numbers later but I figure about 50% of dragons have lungs, about 10% of dragons have gills, and about 40% of dragons have lungs and gills letting them breathe whatever they want indefinitely.

After extensive research (me typing questions about whales and dolphins holding their breath into an internet search engine for about ten minutes), I set the guideline that most healthy dragons can hold their breath for about an hour if they are conserving energy or hold their breath about twenty minutes if they are fighting or doing something strenuous.

Most adult dragons have potent spellcasting ability. It's not difficult for older dragons to use magic to let them breathe in foreign environments either magically transforming their lungs and gills or conjuring a bubble of air or water to breathe in.

Collectively, dragons have one foot in Scarterra and one in Scaraqua, but this wasn't always the case.

In the First Age when dragons were the dominant race, Dragons originated in the center of Scarterra and expanded outward eventually colonizing the sea.

Many dragons liked to swim and many more dragons liked to eat seafood, but initially few dragons wanted to live in Scaraqua. Even when every dragon had lungs, the vast majority of them could magic to survive underwater if they wanted to.

Dragons were and are status conscious and dragons like literally looking down on other dragons or other creatures. This means that the richest and most connected dragons lived in mighty towers and mountain strongholds while the poorer dragons lived at lower elevations. There is no lower elevation than below sea level.

The first dragons to live underwater used magic to survive, often creating vast pockets of air in underwater citadels, but over time the children of these dragons started being born with gills and fins making them able to thrive underwater easier.

These sea dragons became increasingly distant from the other dragons and formed their own subcultures. "We aren't lower status, we are better than you land dragons." This was probably the informal start to Scaraqua existing as a separate realm from Scarterra.

When the First Unmaking hit, about 90% of all Scarterran dragons died and most of their buildings and cities were devastated.

Underwater, the dragons got off relatively lightly. Only about 80% of the Scaraquans died. It was still an unspeakable tragedy, but the Scaraquans dragons had enough survivors and enough buildings and artifacts salvaged that during the Second Age the surviving Scaraquan dragons created small tribes and chiefdoms while their Scarterran counterparts mostly became a bunch of bitter loners.

Scaraquans don't follow the Scarterrans view that the world is distinctively divided into a First Age, Second Age, and Third Age, but it seems like the vast majority of the aquatic humanoids that dominate Scaraqua today had their genesis in the Second Age. These groups sometimes cooperated with dragons and other times fought them.

As the elves expanded and multiplied across Scarterra, more Scarterran dragons started turning to the seas and the cultural divide between Scarterran and Scaraquan dragons became more blurred. The cultural locus for dragon kind moved from the land to the sea.

Then the Second Unmaking hit. This time, sea dragons took proportionally heavier losses than and dragons. At the very least the Demon Lords deliberately targeted any self proclaimed dragon king or queen that tried to keep an underwater chiefdom together while for the most part leaving solitary dragons alone if the dragons didn't actively resist the demonic invaders.

In the Third Age, there many dragons in both Scarterra and Scaraqua but almost all of them are solitary, rarely gathering in groups larger than mated pairs with offspring.

I mentioned that Scaraqua and Scarterra have different cultures, languages, and myths. A plurality of dragons can travel between Scarterra and Scaraqua pretty often. They can bridge the cultural gap if they want to. Most don't want to. Though if you are a Scaterran who wants to learn about Scaraqua or visa versa your best bet is to ask a dragon.

Most dragons recognize that knowledge is power and they don't want to share their knowledge of the other realm cheaply.

Scarterrans believe the first dragons were the mortal souls that fought besides the Nine against Turoch and gained a tiny portion of Turoch's power fighting besides the gods. Dragons are not to argue with humanoids disputing that they are not literally divine.

Scaraquans have a different origin story for dragons, but it similarly paints dragons as being touched by the divine, so most dragons don't bother to correct then.

Scaraquans believe that Sea, the Sea Floor, the Sky, and maybe Land are primordial forces. While Sea was spawning fish and the Land was creating some disgusting crawling things, the Sky created the first true mortals: Dragons.

Dragons are clearly creatures born of Sky. Dragons can breath fire, lightning, ice, or rarely sonic blasts. Scaraquans understand that fire, lightning, ice, and thunder all come from the sky. Of course dragons fly which also ties them to sky.

Some time ago the dragons got bored or lonely soaring through the stars alone and opted to explore the land and se though according to some legends, dragons were exiled from the sky and forced to adapt to the land and sea. Dragons don't like that story.

 

Scarterra Red

Maybe this does not matter to other people but as soon as I decided that the current year of Scarterra is 1837 of the Feudal Era of the Third Age. Year 1 of the Feudal Era was the year where Vladimir the Conqueror died. This of courses raises the question if this is the Feudal Era of the Third Age, what came before the Feudal Era?

Most Scarterrans accept that the Feudal Era began when Vladimir the Conqueror died. Some scholars and storytellers say that Vladimir faked his death, but (almost) no one argues on the timeline.

Here are the eras I came up.

The Little Unmaking
The Warlord Era
The Fakhari Era
The Vampire Era
The Feudal Era

The Little Unmaking: The Demon Lords were all dead, but a great many of their demonic, undead, and mutant minions were roaming the wild. Infernalism was rampant forcing the priesthoods of the Nine to organize swiftly and unify. The Barrier was still weak causing harsh winters and trickles of new Void Demons. Almost all humans and humanoids were nomadic or semi-nomadic barbarians.

Warlord Era: Small nomadic bands gradually grew and merged into larger tribes. Some tribes began agriculture in earnest. Barbarians outnumbered civilized folk about 2:1 or 3:1 There were hundreds of warlords and small chiefdoms throughout Scarterra. The grand alliance between the various priesthoods of the Nine began fracturing as different priesthoods backed different warlords.

The Fakhari Era: Some of the warlords became powerful enough and claimed enough land to legitimately call themselves kings, but the Fakhari humans dominated Scarterra politically. While they didn't always conquer all the smaller kingdom and warlords, almost everyone had to pay the Fakhari tribute. The various priesthoods of the Nine fought each other viscously. Barbarians and civilized mortals were about equally numerous. Then the Fakhari empire collapsed almost overnight.

Vampire Era of the Third Age: As different nations tried to fill the power vacuum left by the Fakhari, Vladimir the conqueror and his hundreds of vampire children made their bid for world domination. Eventually Vladimir became so threatening the various priesthoods of the Nine formed a truce to oppose him. The various free nations and tribes also allied against Vladimir. Vladimir faced coup attempts from some of his own vampiric children, and he had to deal with enemies from competing vampire bloodlines.

Note, the elves and dwarves stayed neutral during the grand conflict of Vladimir versus all of Scarterra and they were able to emerge from this era relatively unscathed.

It's not clear who among the umpteen factions united against Vladimir finally killed him.

Feudal Era of the Third Age: Civilized people outnumber barbarian people by a lot. The three major elven nations attempted a political surge to dominate the humans nearest them and were eventually pushed back. Most of nations of Scarterra use some variation of feudalism. Few will admit it, but they are using the feudal blueprint Vladimir forced on his vassals. Most of the most politically powerful nations are dominated by humans.

Before the Feudal Era, historical records are incomplete and inaccurate, so it's not clear how long these eras lasted. The lines are blurred.

The early warlords had to deal with the fallout from the Little Unmaking so it's hard to figure out where the Little Unmaking ends and the Warlord Era begins.

At one point, the Fakhari tribe were just another warlord tribe, and the Fakhari still had to fight Void minions so it's blurry where the Fakhari Era began and ended.

Some Scarterrans say the tales of the Fakhari were either greatly exaggerated or perhaps they were entirely fabricated. Most elves and dwarves scoff that humans, and ancient humans at that, could have magic and technology that far outstripped their might. Most fantastic relics and ruins attributed to the Fakhari could easily be First or Second Age relics that predate humanity altogether.

It's also noted that Vladimir and his ilk did not come out of nowhere. According to them, they were plotting for centuries and building power in secret before they began making overt moves, so they were vampires prowling dark places in the shadows of Fakhari towers.

Because Scarterran scholars cannot agree on the nomenclature (much less a timeline) for the Little Unmaking, Warlord Era, Fakhari Era, and Vampire Era, I am lumping all this together into the Red Era because I really like Scolenex's tagline, "when the Scars of Scarterra still glistened red". In-universe this "Red Era" is the term scholars and troubadours use when they discuss this time and agree to disagree on the specifics.

So if I let Scolenex or anyone else write stories about Rygor the barbarian or any other story set in Scarterra before the Feudal Era, I would call this "Scarterra Red".

Ideally an extended Rygor saga would involve Rygor dealing with warlords, Void minions, and the Fakhari. Maybe even a lurking vampire or two.

 

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wedding rains and floods
Not every Scarterran wedding tries to invoke Nami's blessing because it is believed that Nami is not necessarily fond of monogamy.

If asked, most Rovers asked will say that Nami is not anti-monogamy, she is okay with it as long as both parties agree to it without coercion.

That's a guess though, as Nami or her sprit messengers haven't spoken about marriage directly. It is rare, but not unheard of, for arranged marriages to incorporate beseeching Nami's blessing in the ceremony.

Regardless of the circumstances of a marriage, if Nami's blessing is sought, a symbolic wedding rain is usually used. Throughout all of Scarterra and especially in arid regions, soft rains are associated with the kind and benevolent side of Nami's personality.

It is common at some point in the wedding procession that a wet evergreen branch or something similar is shaken over the bride and groom. Sometimes the entire wedding party is "rained" on. The point is to give them a light drizzle and not a thorough soaking.

Marriage Floods
Nami is associated with both beneficent and destructive weathers. Some regions of Scarterra have "wedding floods" in addition to "wedding rains."

Essentially at some point shortly before or shortly after the ceremony the bride and groom's friends will try to sneak up behind them and dump a bucket of clean water over their heads or toss them in a clean river or pond. This is the wedding flood.

Usually but not always the pranksters will enact the wedding flood when the bride and the groom are not wearing their formal clothes.

Symbolically, the wedding rains represent the good times and wedding floods represent the bad times in a marriage. Ideally the couple weathers both in good humor.

Marriage rains are a common element in Scarterran weddings among many lands and many peoples, both nobles and commoners are alike.

Marriage floods are almost exclusively seen in regions of Scarterra that have frequent literal floods. Marriage floods are normally considered a commoner's tradition. It is uncommon but not unheard of for nobles to practice this tradition. When nobles do this, it's usually not a surprise dousing, but a planned dousing where the couple gets to change out of their formal regalia first.

If a noble couple's marriage is accompanied by a feast or festival given to the peasants than the marriage flood is often the kick off event commencing the festival.

 

Go to Scarterra Homepage
wedding darkness wards
Most Scarterran weddings try to invoke Zarthus's blessing. Even if the couple in question is not very friendly with the Lanterns, the wedding planning will involve at least a token gesture to Zarthus.

The Lanterns got their nickname because their ceremonies use a lot of literal lanterns and this is no exception.

The token gesture usually takes the form of taking a ceremonial lantern and walking around the perimeter of the wedding ceremony area the night before and/or taking a ceremonial lantern walking around the area of he wedding reception the night of the reception.

Zarthus is a bulwark against both literal and figurative darkness and this warding with the ceremonial lantern symbolically.

Unless the couple or the nation they live in is biased against Zarthus, more often than not, the ceremonial lantern is accompanied by something noisy and boisterous.

The Elven Empire is normally not very friendly with the Lanterns, but many centuries ago, the Elven Empire's predecessor nation, the kingdom of Lunatus used to be very pro-Lantern. One enduring cultural relic is the Wedding Warding Song.

Zarthus is not just a guardian against the dark but he is the patron of music, so it makes sense to use music to hold the darkness at bay.

The Wedding Warding Song is a major cornerstone of almost every grey elves wedding reception. Typically they sing it three or four times at the reception every hour on the hour, each time louder and less rhythmically than before due to alcohol consumed.

The song is observed almost verbatim at weddings in the Republic of Apseldia. The song has spread to human lands that have traded with the Elven Empire (and the Empire's non-elven subjects). Sometimes humans translate the song from Elven into Common, other times they might try to sing this in mangled Elven.

Wood elves have a similar tradition but it involves a choreographed dance. This practice has spread to Fumayan humans.

Other human nations have their own Zarthus honoring wedding songs and/or dances that they claim are developed independently of elven traditions.

Among East Colassia humans East Colassia, free form improvisational music is commonly used. Dwarves of all three major nations prefer to recite formal poems and this practice has spread to human weddings in Kantoc, the Border Baronies Region and Fumaya.

 

World Anvil has a lot of contests. Despite good intentions, I skipped the plant one.

The biggest two contests are World Ember (which I did fairly well at) and Summer Camp which is coming up soon.

Avid readers of this thread have noticed that I sometimes post random threads where I respond to a writing prompt.

The World Anvil Summer Camp event is a world building prompt released every day for July. Note there is no time limit as long as I write in July. I could finish the July 1st prompt on July 30th if I wanted to.

I'm going to try to get all the digital badges. Badges are awarded for 10, 20, and 30 writing prompt responses with 300 words or greater. There is also a bonus award for anyone fast enough to write the July 31st prompt, so I'll try for that too assuming I'm not busy.

 

Random spit balling here.

My roots are in 2nd edition D&D. In 2nd ed D&D, halflings and gnomes are very similar. For Scarterra, I thought that gnomes and halflings are so similar I don't need to have both, so I chose to have gnomes and not have halflings.

Every edition since second edition, D&D has tried to make gnomes and halflings more distinct from each other.

Since I haven't bought any 5th edition books, I rely on Runesmith to keep me appraised on of changes.



I like these gnomes a lot.

I like Scarterran gnomes as they exist now, I'm not changing them.

But I do think maybe I can take the personality of D&D 5th edition gnomes and apply them to something physiologically different.

I like the idea of passionate, live for the moment type people like this. Maybe give them a Nami affiliation. I might even put them into Scaraqua or Scarcaverna instead of or in addition to a Scarterran humanoid.

I'm probably going to give them some kind of magical super power instead of giving them steam punk aptitude.

I like steam punk, but I don't think steam punk is a good fit for Scarterra.

Unrelated Side Note: I'm looking into tackling my conundrum.

1) I like beautiful, detailed maps.

2) I would prefer not to spend a lot of time drawing a map and I am disappointed with everything I end up creating.

2.5) I am cheap.


This week I am planning to shop around for some easy to use relatively inexpensive map building software.

I feel like I'm long overdue for making an interactive map of West Colassia.

Of course my ultimate goal is to have a beautiful map of Scarterra/Scaraqua that you can click on pins to get continent/ocean maps and then click on pins to get nation and region maps and then click on pins to get city maps and click on pins to building and dungeon maps.

But, on some level I think building maps are an indulgence though someone specifically asked for a map of the Drunken Bat Inn and the Drunken Bat Inn article has gotten a better response than anything else I've put on World Anvil to date.

 

Domesticated Animals

I'd like to brainstorm some exotic domesticated animals for Scarterra and Scaraqua. Maybe Scarcaverna but I'm not 100% I want Scarcaverna to be a distinct location.

I also want to ponder, is there any domesticated animal that existed in the real world that should not exist in Scarterra.

My favorite non-fiction book is Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

When I first read it, I assumed Professor Diamond was a genius.

I've read a lot of rebuttals of his theories. There are some valid criticisms. Now I do not believe Professor Diamond is a genius, I believe he is merely a smart man.

One thing he wrote about that is hard to dispute (and he didn't invent the theory either) is that turning a wild animal into a domesticated animal requires six things.

First I need to establish the difference between a tame animal and a domesticated animal. A tame animal is a wild animal that was trained and conditioned to serve humans. A domesticated animal is an animal that can be tamed and then selectively bred to make succeeding generations more useful to humanity.

In the real world, elephants and cheetahs have been tamed throughout history but never domesticated. In Scarterra, pegasi and griffins have been tamed but never domesticated.
It only takes a failure in one of the six categories to make an animal unable to be domesticated.

It should be noted that pets, food animals, and work animals almost all domesticated animals were domesticated well over 1000 years ago. That shows that our primitive ancestors must have tried to domesticate everything if we cannot domesticate something new with all our science and technology.

The one exception for an animal domesticated in the last 200 years? Hamsters. A laboratory researcher was using them as experimental subjects. His niece thought they were cute so he let her keep one as a pet. Then the girls' friends asked for a hamster and the rest is history.

Or maybe I'm thinking of gerbils...





1) A diverse appetite

(this could be written as, if humans cannot afford to feed these animals, they won't keep them around).

2) rapid maturation

(if babies take too long mature to adulthood, humans won't bother to keep them and selective breeding will be infeasible.) This is the reason we haven't domesticated bears.

3) willingness to breed in captivity.

This is the reason we haven't domesticated Cheetah (before breeding, the male will chase the female long distance). This is why we haven't domesticated deer (if locked in a pen, deer will literally beat themselves to death trying to get out).

In Scarterra, this is the number one reason Scarterrans have not domesticated pegasi or anything else that flies.

4) docility

Do you know what animal injures more zoo keepers than any other animal? Zebras. Yep zebras. Rarely fatal injuries, but still you can understand why we have a wide variety and horses and ponies domesticated today but none of them are black and white striped.

5) strong nerves

Humans make a lot of weird noises and smells that could drive a wild animal to act up. A domesticated animal has to be able to put up with this stuff.

6) a nature that conforms to social hierarchy.

The idea is that the animals are conditioned to accept a human as their new leader.

Horses and cows are herd animals. Wolves and the dogs that came from them are pack animals. Bees are eusocial insects.

This is one rule that is not a hard and fast rules. Cats are domesticated they certainly don't have this. Silk worms don't really have any social system that I'm aware of.

Rule #2 Rapid Maturation, and Rule #4 Docility are subjective.

Remember that thousands of years ago, dragons were the dominant race in Scarterra and humanoids didn't even exist initially.

Dragons live a very long time, so for them "rapid maturation" is more lenient than for humans (and even elves). Since dragons are big and literally thick skinned, a dragon's idea of a docile creature is a lot more forgiving than a human's idea of a docile creature.

Wyverns and/or drakes used to be domesticated. Sort of a dragon's equivalent to a human's dog. After the First Unmaking, most of dragons abandoned their pets and wyverns went feral. A wyverns natural weapons are potentially fatal to most humans but are a gentle tickle to an adult dragon. Sure, you don't want to let an untrained wyvern near a hatchling or juvenile dragon, but it's not like dogs have never seriously harmed human children.

There might be some other former pets roaming around.

There may or may not be former food animals of dragons roaming around. Dragons domesticated horses before humans or elves did because they liked to eat them. They still like to eat horses. If a group of humans wants to placate a nearby dragon, they might send the dragon their broken down nags.

Ankhegs are horse-sized burrowing insects. They were not exactly domesticated but dragons kept them around to eat the dragon's trash, provide poop fertilizer to their crops, and aerate the soil with their tunnels. They were no threat to dragons, but wild ankhegs occasionally kill humans and horses in the Third Age.

Chimera are mortal beings. They are free willed and intelligent at least compared to animals. In other words they are above animals in cognitive ability, but they are below dragons, humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes.

Dragons treated them as farmhands, they essentially filled the same niche as sheep dogs, and occasionally war hounds. This arguably crosses the line from domestication into slavery, but this didn't bother most dragons. Even in the Third Age, a dragon that will acknowledge the soul in humans and other humanoids (and thus worthy of a modicum of respect) is likely not to acknowledge that chimera have souls.

Again, so I have a fair amount of former domesticated animals of dragons roaming around, but I could always use more.

Scarterra Confirmed Domesticated Animal Roster

Scarterra definitely has dogs, cats, horses, cows (dairy cows and work oxes), donkeys (and mules), goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, bees, silk worms.

Right now, I figure the two staple food animals of Scarterra are pigs and goats. At the very least, pigs are omnipresent in the places PCs are frequenting now.

Scarterra probably has yaks, llamas, and reindeer.

If I create a "new" food animal, the main story purpose is to showcase "Scarterra is a fantasy world." This applies to all new domesticated animals.

I kind of want to create a dragon's equivalent to a egg laying hen and have a tiny amount of them survive into the Third Age where they are kept by humans or elves.

They are not as efficient to feed and keep as chickens, ducks, and geese, but some nobles view it as a status symbol to serve their banquet guests extremely large eggs.

If I create a new work animal or transportation animal, in addition to show casing fantasy, I can open up terrain that would not normally be open.

I'm not sure Scarterra needs a riding animal apart from the horse, though I'm thinking that maybe orcs and northern human barbarians could ride rein deer or something similar.

I do think Scaraqua could use something similar to horses though I don't want to go a cliched as having people ride giant sea horses.

I think Scarcaverna would be harder to justify horse-like creatures, but if I did have some kind of widely used riding animal it should probably either be based on an insect, arachnid, amphibian, or lizard that scale vertical surfaces.

Scaraqua probably needs something equivalent to a pig. A domesticated food animal that is very easy to feed and keep in small space

Scaraqua probably could use some equivalent to a ox, a work animal that can occasionally be eaten. I like the idea of giant crabs dragging barges of cargo.

Scaraqua could use some sort of equivalent of goats, chicken, or dairy cows that can produce an edible by-product Scaraquans can readily harvest.


I have also been pondering animals with an exotic by-product. In the real world we have bees and silk worms.

In Scarterra/Scaraqua I could have animals that regularly produce reagents. Though I would have to limit this in some way so reagents would still be hard to gather. A hypothetical sheep with magic wool would probably have very slow growing hair, reproduce slowly, and mature more slowly compared to an ordinary sheep.

The same thing would apply if I something laid some kind of magic eggs.

The owner of said animal also has to hire trustworthy guards to safeguard the magic critter 24/7 because everyone would want to steal it.

 

I covered frog goblins a bit on page 45 of this thread. Frog goblins are goblins infused with hte elemental essence of water. I briefly mused on air, fire, and earth goblins and LoR said this.

This percolated in my brain slowly.

Today my brain revisited this and started brainstorming a new type of goblin.

jumping goblins
Jumping goblins are a mutation of the common goblins that appeared fairly recently after several goblins changed after being exposed to magical energy laced with primal air elemental energy.

Jumping goblins are primarily distinctive from their unusually large legs and their supernaturally huge leaps.

They are also excellent climbers and are as sure footed as mountain goats.

Most goblins value strength and cunning and jumping goblins are no exception, but the most status is given to the best jumpers who are often the best warriors too.
Basic Information
Biological Traits
Jumping goblins look like common goblins but there are legs are about twice as long and thick as an ordinary goblin. Their legs are sort of awkwardly like a cross between a frog and a kangaroo.

The usual green hues of goblin skin are washed softer with whites, blues, and rarely gold and silver overtones.

Jumping goblins can jump about three or four times as far and as high as common goblins without breaking a sweat, and their normal walking incorporates a lot of tiny hops. Beyond these casual jumps, goblins can accomplish 3-6 supernaturally augmented jumps every day, jumping so far they seem to be flying.

Super jumps are physically taxing, so the amazing leaps of jumping goblins are great for quick escapes but not very useful for long distance travel.

Average jumping goblins can pull off three or four great leaps before needing a long rest while the strongest and toughest goblins can pull off six or seven such leaps.

Jumping goblins are not much smarter than regular goblins, but they have great instincts when judging distances and wind conditions so they rarely miss their target when performing a super leap. They are also uncannily accurate long distance marksmen though they rarely have access to quality bows and crossbows.
Additional Information
Geographic Origin And Distribution
The jumping goblins first emerged in the The World Seam Mountains and have been growing in numbers taking up a larger and larger area of the mountain range every generation.

Jumping goblin clan have tried migrating outside of the mountains but their jumping prowess is far less useful in open ground. As of yet, every attempt has ended with the clan in question being wiped out or driven back into the World Seam Mountains.
Civilization And Culture
Major Language Groups And Dialects
Jumping goblins still speak a variant of Elven and Grauen that is near indistinguishable from the common goblin dialect, but it naturally includes many words describing rock formation and wind condition that affect jumping.A few unusually intelligent goblins can speak Common or Dwarven, but this is fairly rare.

Jumping goblins rarely bother to talk to other races, so it seems likely that some goblins knew these languages before they started mutating.
History
It's not clear whether the first jumping goblins emerged underground or above ground, but most jumping goblins avoid spending long periods of time underground.

Even in the relatively spacious caverns found underneath Scarterra, they have less room to jump around underground than above ground.

While the jumping goblins are not consciously aware of this consciously, the elemental essence of air permeates their bodies and souls and they are most comfortable in high elevations feeling the wind on their face.
Interspecies Relations And Assumptions
Jumping goblins are a growing nuisance to everyone living in or near the The World Seam Mountains, primarily Stahlheim, Meckelorn, and the Border Baronies region They are not overtly murderous or bloodthirsty. Unlike mainstream goblins, jumping goblins are not seething for revenge against elves, humans and/or dwarves.

Jumping goblins are thieves, not killers. They will waylay travelers in rocky areas, grab some loot or livestock and leap away with their ill gotten goods. dwarf rangers especially hate them.

Jumping goblins are opportunistic bandits, but they are capable enough hunters and gatherers, so they can and do survive without looting or scavenging from civilized folks.

When jumping goblins leave the World Seam Mountains, they tend to die horribly. If they exit the mountains west they will find themselves run down by Kantoca cavalry. If they enter the The Great Colassian Tundra, it's a race to see if orcs or starvation kills them first. If they survive the tundra long enough to reach the forests of Codenya, the wood elves will find them and pin cushion them with arrows.

It has been speculated, especially among the Children, that if jumping goblins could get safe passage out of West Colassia, there are many rocky, hilly places in Scarterra where they could thrive, but few people are willing and able to smuggle jumping goblins to the East Colassian Mountains or the rocky wilderness of Penarchia and if a helpful group of humans volunteered to help a tribe of jumping goblins migrate, the tribe probably wouldn't believe them.

 

Bone Crunchers

I was daydreaming at work about a fleshing out a fantasy version of a super chicken.

Here is a picture of a real world ostrich egg compared to chicken eggs.



My plan is to make the eggs at least as big as ostrich eggs, probably bigger.

At it's core, my end goal is to create a farm animal that dragons kept around to harvest eggs from. Much like real world humans have kept chickens around for many centuries.

I figured that during the First Age, these giant chickens were so widespread, that even though a great many species went extinct during the First Unmaking and the dragons were more concerned saving themselves than saving their livestock, there were enough of these super chickens scattered about Scarterra that the species survived into the Second Age.

A few dragons started breeding them again, a few elves and other humanoids bred them again. When the Second Unmaking hit, most of the super chickens were killed but enough people took efforts to protect livestock that a few of these creatures survived and careful breeding has led them to rebound in the Third Age.

The super chicken's wild ancestor was a scavenger. It's a true omnivore able to eat meat (fresh or rotten), fruit, vegetables, grains, and they have tough digestive systems allowing them to not be picky eaters. They are also very resistant to poisons.

Super chickens do not taste like regular chickens. Their eggs are purified of toxins, but adult super chickens are pretty toxic unless they eat the super chickens in a juvenile state (they get more toxic as they get older). To make their meat safe to eat, they need to be cooked multiple times, magically purified, or alchemically treated. Either way their meat doesn't taste great (though modern dragons with their amazing digestion systems still like to eat them).

While they eat about anything, they are naturally scavengers so a human can keep a super chicken with little risk of the large creature trying to eat their master. Their favorite food is bone marrow. They will chew through (and eventually poop out) a bunch of indigestible bone to get a small amount of marrow. So I'm not sure what their official name, but their nickname given to them by dragons is bone crunchers. It's also how bone crunchers were domesticated. They can placated into docility by giving them some bones to munch on.

While they are not picky eaters, they eat a lot. I'm not exactly sure how big the eggs are but if you do math and compare the cost of keeping chickens compared to how many humans you can keep fed from eggs, a super chicken costs twice as much as a regular chicken (at least when you factor in that you cannot really eat it after it's too old to lay), but some people are willing to pay extra just for the novelty of feeding a large group of people with a single egg.

Chicken eggs end up on the breakfast plates of peasants and princes alike. A peasant family, even a slave family, could easily afford to keep a few egg laying chickens for the family. Poor people don't eat bone cruncher eggs normally but they might get giant eggs at wedding feasts.

I cannot put my finger on it, but I like the idea of bone cruncher eggs being served as a wedding food.

Because a single egg can feed ten or more people and bone crunchers lay a couple eggs at once, you need a large group of people ready to eat your eggs.

So I'm thinking most bone crunchers are attached to a castle or a town butcher shop. Butcher shops or castles both produce a lot of food scraps they can use to feed the bone crunchers and castles have a large staff to feed while butcher shops can sell eggs in town.

Whatever bone crunchers used to be, their wild ancestors are long since extinct. Their wild ancestors were big tough scavengers, but the dragons bred them over time to be less mobile, less ferocious, and produce bigger eggs which led to them being larger, fatter, and slower in body and mind.

The biggest question that is rattling around my brain is what does this super chicken look like? Bird, reptile, feathered dinosaur, scaly dinosaur or something else? Even though they are kept around for their eggs, there is no reason they need to look or act like actual chickens.

I'm leaning towards dinosaur-like. Like a big wussy tetradactyl that lost it's ability of flight.

But this opens up a lot of implications. I'm not sure if I want to open this can of worms. If I make bone crunchers based on dinosaurs, this raises the implication that Scarterra used to have lots of dinosaurs, either in the First Age or the Age Before Ages.

I like dinosaurs. That's why I gravitated towards Lizardmen and that's why I like writing Lizardmen fluff pieces.

But a fairly loud voice in my head is telling me that Scarterra does not need or want dinosaurs.

Hypothetically if I had dinosaurs, they would be mostly extinct. I could have some secret dinosaur island somewhere, but I think what would be better is a pocket extra-planar realm that Korus created to stash the dinosaurs. Which is cool because it allows non-connected adventures into dinosaur land or it allows a magic user to summon dinosaurs from somewhere but if Korus created his own extra planar dinosaur island, it raises the question "Why don't most/all the extinct creatures have their own private extra-planar island?"


Sidebar, while a great many rich people (or poor people splurging for a special event) like the novelty of serving their guests giant eggs, I figure most bone crunchers would be owned by people who venerate dragons. The Swynfaredians love to boast about their draconic heritage, they speak Draconic at courtly events, and try emulate dragons as much as possible. Ergo, because they heard that ancient dragons ate bone cracker eggs, they want to do so too!

I figure just like with chickens, most female chicks are kept alive so they can lay eggs and most male chicks are culled with only the bare minimum of "roosters" kept around for breeding stock. Like with chickens, bone cruncher roosters are probably more aggressive and harder to deal with.

Given that a single bone cruncher hen can feed a small castle, that the owners of bone cruncher hens probably cannot afford to keep their own rooster and would need to outsource stud roosters.

A Scarterran could probably make a good living (though it would be a lot of hard work) to haul bone crunchers up and down Scarterra.

Thoughts?

What should bone crunchers look like? How big should they big? How big should their eggs be?

Note that I don't want bone crunchers to be magical creatures. They are livestock that produce freakishly large tasty eggs.

Should Scarterra have dinosaurs?

Should Scarterra have extra-planar wild life sanctuaries?

 

I had a nice dinner at a casual dining restaurant and I thought about Scarterran dinosaurs, then my brain migrated to Scarterran giants.

Lets talk about Scarterran giants. I want to expand the roster. I have two giant sub-species established and two in the "they exist in my head, but I haven't made them official yet."

Since I'm leaning towards giving Scarterra a bunch of extinct dinosaurs, I don't have a problem creating extinct giant subspecies too. Though I do admit that an extinct race probably doesn't need near as much detail as a non-extinct race.

First off, I figure Scarteran giants tend to be between 8 feet tall and 14 feet feet tall. A 14 foot giant would be atypical and would be to giants what Shaquille O'Neal is to humans.

So basically, a giant is twice as tall and eight times as heavy as a human (I'm following the square cube law). While they are roughly humanoid, giants have proportionally thicker and stockier limbs than humans to support their increased weight, plus you know, magic SCIENCE!

It's big enough that giants are terrifying large and powerful, but they are far from invincible.

During the First Age, giants were the number one thurakel of the dragons, to the point where a great many dragon nations had more giants than they had dragons.

Dragon royalty might have dozens of giants serving them.

For poorer dragons, an entire family of might have to make due with the giant equivalent of a single beloved butler.

So far I have two giants subspecies that survived into the Third Age are brute giants and scale giants. Short version is that brute giants are vaguely sasquatch-like humanoids that served as menial laborers during the First Age and that are vaguely sleestak-like humanoids that were grunt cannon fodder warriors during the First Age.

Read the hyperlinked articles if you want the full details.

Both brute giants and scale giants mostly dwell in remote wilderness hunting and gathering. Brute giants mostly try to mind their own business and scale giants occasionally decide it's a good idea to pillage stuff from humanoids.

I want Scaraqua to have at least one giant subtype that survived into the Third Age. The aquatic dragons were poorer and had less status than the land based dragons, but they still would have had some thurakel. I'm thinking of making the giants either builders (skilled labor) or general all-purpose servants. Maybe one of each. Maybe originally they would have menial laborers and warrior giants very similar to brute giants and scale giants, but with gills. Originally my thought was to only have one aquatic giant type (nicknamed sea giants) but now I suppose Scaraqua has room for more than one type of sea giant.

I'd like to create a subtype nicknamed the death giant. I'm not sure if death giants used to be brute giants or they used to be scale giants or they are the last twisted remnants of a now lost giant sub-race from the First Age.

Anyway, during the Second Unmaking, rather than kill a group of giants, one of the demon lords had the idea to give them a deal.

"Pledge yourself and your descendants to our cause and you can live."

In fact, this "offer" could have been given to many different types of giants. Over generations, the Void based mutations probably overtook what ever original physical and psychological traits they possessed.

So a few of the armies of the Void Demons had giants in them. A lot of these giants died fighting their masters' battles, but a lot of them didn't.

The remnants that survived into the Third Age became the death giants. While they are (usually) no longer being ordered around by demons, they are still obligated by their ancestor's Faustian bargain to deliver souls to the Void. Death giants have all the physical strength of giants, plus they have an energy draining attack.

Besides the fact that everyone hates them and will kill them if possible. Death giants have been tainted by the Void so long that their fertility is low. So each generation is slightly smaller than the last.

There are a few dozen death giants roaming the remote and desolate regions of Scarterra, but their days are numbered. They will almost certainly be extinct within a few centuries, but in the mean time the PCs can kill one or two if I need to throw something very nasty against them.

Anyway, if anyone has ideas for interesting giant subtypes I can include. Let me know.

 

Revisiting Scarterran Dinosaurs

I don't know if Scarterra has some isolated "dinosaur island" or dinosaur filled extra-dimensional realm, but my friend and main advisor Eron, said that having dinosaurs as animals would fit with the First Age having dragons as the dominant species.

Without having Korus or another one of the Nine specifically intervene to save dinosaurs I cannot see many First Age dinosaurs survive into the Third Age.

Oh, for the record, I'm thinking Scarterran dinosaurs would probably have had some feathers and be warmblooded, so they aren't going to die simply because the climate turns cold (though they probably prefer warm days to cold days)

First a population of dinosaurs have to survive a world filled with dragons.

First off, even before civilization existed, an expanding humanity drove many species into extinction. I don't see why dragons wouldn't accidentally or intentionally drive some dinosaurs into extinction as their own growing kingdoms swallowed up more and more land.

Seconda population of dinosaurs have to survive the First Unmaking.

So you got volcanoes, hurricanes, tidal waves, earth quakes and more exotic storms like meteor showers and rains of fire. That's going to kill a lot of dinosaurs, but it's not going to kill all of them.

There is the issue that the First Unmaking killed a bunch of dragons, giants, beholders, chimera, and kobolds (probably other mortal creatures too but they are still mostly in the maybe file).

If you are literally starving, you probably aren't going to worry about environmentalist issues. That means a lot of hungry mortal survivors of the First Unmaking probably hunted a lot of the surviving dinosaurs for food.

Once the First Unmaking is over, the pockets of surviving dinosaurs (if any) have to deal with emerging elves who may or may not purposely or accidentally hunt the dinosaurs into extinction.

Then you got the Second Unmaking. While the Void Demon armies didn't go out of their way to kill animals unless it was convenient, so they (usually) weren't going to try to wipe out dinosaurs just because they can, but remember that there are tiny pockets of desperate mortals huddling in isolated places trying to survive.

The elves and other mortals would probably not hesitate for a second to kill and eat a dinosaur they encountered during the Second Unmaking.

Assuming, a species of dinosaurs survived the Second Unmaking, they probably would survive humanity because Korus or another of the Nine could intervene, but right now I'm just thinking the bone crackers are the only or practically the only dinosaur to survive.

Maybe a few little ones, like velociraptors. Real velociraptors were nothing like the Jurassic Park depiction. The JP dinos were actually based on Deinonychus.




Dinosaurs like that might be an interesting footnote, but they wouldn't be able to fill the niche of a big scary monster for adventurers to fight.

I could put some aquatic dinosaurs in Scarqua, but there is a lot of prehistorical eras of cool aquatic creatures I can steal from paleo-biologists. I don't necessarily need to put dinosaurs in the sea.

Aquatic dinosaurs still have to deal with hungry dragons and sea giants potentially hunting them to extinction. Water dinosaurs also could get killed and eaten by hungry merfolk or hungry karakhai (who both popped up some time after the First Unmaking).