My Fantasy RPG World, Feedback and Ideas appreciated

I like the idea of making the bishopric an island in a lake.

Well the priests and priestesses of Korus are frequently called Stewards so in a literal sense, Brynn is in charge of a bunch of stewards. I haven't actually put much thought into ranks and titles.

Because one of the PCs a priest of Khemra I thought I'd start there. I thought two things 1) I'm still not 100% satisfied with this and 2) I have to go through this EIGHT more times? I do have the general notion that the three Lawful deities would have very rigid heirarchies that span the globe cylinder and the three Chaotic deities would have loose informal heirarchies with a lot of regional variation. Still working on the details of where to put the Neutral deities.

I hadn't thought about it until now but I noticed that I like to give my Neutral deities peaceful schisms where the two groups don't really fight but the don't work together a whole lot either. In the case of Korus, priests are generally split between the Stewards of the Dominion (tree hugging druids) and Stewards of the Gift (friend of the farmer priests). Brynn is of the latter. The Stewards of the Dominion would never be gifted a bishopric nor would they ask for one.

Spoiler: Ranks and Titles for Khemra's Priests

Khemra:


Dawn Order: Recruitment and training. They also handle travel arrangements.

Zenith Order: Law, advising rulers, monitoring other priesthoods. (This is the order that Keepers compete fiercely to get into).

Dusk Order: Defense and war

Day Order: Everything not explicitly given to another order. This includes presiding over actual worship services.

Eclipse Order: Favored souls are called Eclipse Touched. Eclipse Touched are supposed to monitor the other Orders and propose new regulations. The other members of the Eclipse Order are their support staff (this is usually considered an undesireable assignment)


Candidate: Person is in consideration to join the priesthood
Acolyte: Member is accepted into priesthood.

Cleric: Member is able to take on normal activities unsupervised. Many priests live to a ripe old age and are never be promoted above this level.

Aurum: Member who is able to boss around other members.

Apogee: The head of one of the five Orders.


Typically a full address would be something along the lines of "Cleric Steve of the Dawn".


Other honorifics get tossed in.

Teacher (someone who teaches, replaces Cleric)

Revered teacher (someone who teaches, replaces Pontiff)

Auger (skilled in divinatory magic, addendum)

Oracle (mastery of divinatory magic, addendum)

Scholar (expert in some form of academic discipline, prefix)


So if Steve is a book smart, master of the divination magic that instructs trainees in divination magic he would be addressed as "Scholar Teacher Steve, Oracle of the Dawn", though in most cases his students would just call him “Teacher” and his bosses and peers would call him “Scholar.” Parishioners would probably call him Oracle. If someone actually wanted to consult him as an oracle they would probably use his full tile.

 

I retroactively changed pontiff to Aurum (which is Latin for gold. Gold is important for the sun goddess). Pontiff should be the highest title.

I didn't mean to make any commentary by basing Phidas titles on Catholic titles. To be fair I turn to Catholism a fair bit for Hallisan and Khemra too.

Spoiler: Korus Priesthood Titles

Korus
Stewards of the Gift
Pastor: Full member of the Stewards of the Gift, informally they are called “gleaners”
Reverend: Full member who holds a command rank
Green: Honorary prefix for priest skilled in herbalism and plant magic

Stewards of the Dominion
Druid: Full member of the Order.
Warden: Full member who holds a command rank
Talon: Alternative title for druids skilled in combat, frequently they are shapechangers

Both Factions
Initiate: Trainee. Informally they are called “buds”
Auspex: Honorary prefix for priest skilled in divination
Seedling: Nickname for favored soul of Korus, especially if said favored soul is iterant and doesn’t claim a single territory as home.
Venerable: Honorary prefix for a priest or priestess with a long service record

Venerable Green Reverend Brynn

Spoiler: Hallisan priesthood titles

Hallisan

Son or Daughter: Trainee member
Brother or Sister: Full member
Mother or Father: Priest or priestess in charge of a chapel.
Revered Mother or Father: Priest or priestess in charge of a temple (which in turn has jurisdiction over two to seven chapels).

Elder: The highest rank in the priesthood of Hallisan. There are three elders. One in the Elven Empire, one with jurisdiction over Meckelorn and Stahlheim and one that theoretically has jurisdiction over all human temples though in reality the Elder doesn’t have much pull in the southern continents. Elders are elected from a vote of all the Revered Mothers and Fathers.

Some are pushing to create a southern Elder and a northern elder. Others are pushing to create a Grand Elder to collectively rule over the elf, dwarf, and human elders.

Harbinger: Refers to priests or priestesses whose primary temple is “the road,” charged with maintaining ties between distant temples and serving as they eyes, hands and mouth of the Elder.

Scroll head: Derogatory term for priest or priestess that has no spellcasting ability or significant combat prowess. Technically scroll heads are equal to everyone else but very few of them are promoted and none have even been remotely close to being elected Elder.

Master: Informal form of address for a priest or priestess who is very skilled in metalworking, capable of crafting permanent magical items.

Captain: Head of the local marital forces. Replaces their normal title in nearly every situation besides formal council situations. It is common for Captains to also be the heads of chapels and temples.

Spoiler: Phidas Priesthood Titles

Phidas

Order of Phidas’ Mask: The public face of Phidas’ priesthood. They do altruistic things publicly, preside over festivals and oversees recruitment.

Order of Phidas’ Shield: Handles mundane security of Phidas temples and is also charged of hunting down Void minions.

Order of Phidas’ Stewardship: This handles the day-to-day operations of Phidas’ priesthood including training, regular worship services, managing resources, and overseeing banks.

Order of Phidas’ Dagger: Order does not exist, it handles the priesthood’s dirty laundry. In reality, this order is not nearly as secret as the Masks would like. A lot of other groups know this exists.


Initiate: Trainee member.

Argentum: Full member

Platinum: Respected member, eligible to be in charge of a small temple or local organization.

Bishop: Important leader, eligible to be in charge of a large temple or critically important local organization.

Archbishop: The head of one of the Phidas four Orders within a large geographic area.

Pontiff: The highest rank. There are three pontiff, each with jurisdiction over about a third of all of Phidas’ temples in the world. Vacancies are filled by Phidas himself (or rather someone with Divination ●●●●● to ask him). The Elven Empire is not included in any of these jurisdiction.

Platinum Bishop (with some cool kind of Elven translation): The highest ranking priest of Phidas in the Elven Empire.

Spoiler: Nami's Priesthood titles

Nami

Neophyte: Trainee Member. Informally they are called “rain drops.”
Drizzle: Informal term for trainee member that is fairly far along his/her training
Priest or Priestess: Full member.
Anchor: Polite informal term for a Nami priest or priestess that maintains a permanent temple.
Stationary Rover: Slightly derogatory informal term for a Nami priest or priestess that maintains a permanent temple.

Nami’s rover don’t really have a lot of ranks and titles. Any priest or priestess can recruit anyone they want as a neophyte and training is over whenever their mentor says their training is complete. If a Rover wants to get other Rovers to follow her she cannot pull rank. To sway her fellows, she needs to either have a really good idea, lots of charisma, or a litany of impressive past accomplishment.

That just leaves Mera, Greymoria, Zarthus, and Maylar.

 

That is a pretty cool looking island. I would call the northern penisula the Dragon Penisula. I haven't figured out what the southern part looks like, but I figure out something. I don't know where I'll put it yet. Maybe make it the big island of Mondert. Mondert is going to be a bunch of islands. Sort of like a Dwarf Hawaii.

Anyway, at some point I'll try to use this island.



The PCs did get a bundle of letters that a thief stole from another thief who stole from a fence that may or may not be a treasure map. It could involve this island. That's a ways off though. The players are interested in cleaning up Fumaya and I got a big cast of characters and string of subplots. Should be enough for a couple month of game play.

 

Here's a big world building question. Can you have Watchers on the Wall with no wall?

So I brought up that in the Second Unmaking tens of millions of demons swarmed Scarterra and killed 99% of everyone before the Void Demons were eventually killed.

Now in the Third Age, instead of millions of demons, there are Void Demons in the low thousands haunting the mortal plane.

This is mainly so adventurers (ie PCs) have very scary bad guys to fight periodically but presumably since Void Demons are the enemies of all life, and even the evil deities fear them, everyone wants Void Demons eliminated as soon as possible.

Presumably there should be some kind of organization that's mission charter is to protect the mortal plane from demons but HOW?

In Game of Thrones, the White Walkers and their undead minions could not fly or swim and they all came from one wide but narrow strip of land meaning a large wall could (in theory) contain them. My Void Demons can fly and swim. They come from the poles which means that a wall to contain them would need to encompass the circumferance of the planet, and you'd need one for both the north and south pole. That's just not feasible, even in a high fantasy setting and I'm shooting for a medium fantasy setting.

Let's just cover how Demons work. The Void is separated between the Near Void and Far Void. The Near Void is pretty small. Roughly a ten to twenty mile band around the poles. It's dark and rocky and very cold, but it's not inherently harmful to mortals on supernatural level. The Far Void drains the life force mortals to death within minutes if they don't have some form of magic protection. The Far Void is where Void Demons spawn or more accurately coalesce.

Between the Near Void and the Far Void is the Barrier. The ground is anchored with pure silver and above whereever the silver touches is a wall of wind. The wind is no more harmful than a stiff breeze to mortals but it's like a wall of buzz saws to demons. Any part of a demon that touches the Barrier gets amuptated.

Note because of silver's relation ot the Barrier. Void Demons are vulnerable to ordinary silver weapons but silver is hardly an insta-kill weapon. The first lycanthropes were created by Void Demons so they inherited a vulnerability to silver. I am as of yet, undecided if vampires and/or other undead will have a vulnerability to silver weapons. Their ties to the Void is a lot more indirect.

But the Barrier is not abosolute. Holes pop up in from time to time opening up for a few seconds or a few minutes and demons obssessively wait at the edge of the barrier hoping a hole will open up near them. More powerful demons are nearly always larger than less powerful demons, so more powerful demons require bigger holes in the barrier to sneak through.

Void Demons have inhuman patience until they don't. They can wait for months, years or decades until they snap and they have to snuff out a mortal soul right now. Once Demons pass through the Barrier they enter the Near Void and they try to find others of their kind seeking strength in numbers. They gather as many Demons as they can before they opt to enter the mortal plane. At which point they may b-line for lands on the coast, or they can patiently fly or swim far to the south to surprise mortals far from the poles.



So lets look at the cast. The bottom level are the Faceless which are the undead husks of mortals killed by a demon's energy drain attack. Faceless are like ghosts but with no identity. They look like grey humanoids with no distinguisable features. Because I like literal names, they have no eyes, ears, mouth or any facial features at all (though they can still hear and see). They drain social attributes to heal and feed their bottomless hunger for an identity. Faceless glow when they are feeding on life energy and they fade when they take damage.

They can do very simple ambushes and may try hit and run tactics if a foe is clearly powerful, but their tactics are never particularly sophisticated and their sense of self-preservation is low, primarily centered on getting to eat again. Faceless cannot harm Void Demons but only very powerful Void Demons can command Faceless. Most Demons are content to create Faceless and leave them to their own devices.

Mortal necromancers can magically command Faceless but no necromancer yet has managed to artifically create their own Faceless. Few have tried. Relative to their low power level, Faceless are stubborn and difficult to control and even most necromancers draw the line at practicing infernalism.

I'm on the fence whether a Faceless can create another Faceless or if I should let that be province of Demons alone. I'm leaning towards no.

Spoiler: Typical Faceless Stats

Willpower 3 Lethal Soak 0

Strength 3/0, Dexterity 4, Stamina 3, Charisma 1, Manipulation 1, Appearance 0, Perception 2, Intelligence 1, Wits 2

Abilities: Alertness 1, Athletics 1, Brawl 2, Dodge 1, Stealth 3

Special: Incorporeal.
-Undead, subject to turning, immune to sleep and charm.
-Turn Resistance 3 (total 6 dice with Willpower)
-Touch attack inflicts three dice of social attribute damage.
-Each dot of attribute damage inflicted lets a Facless recovers or adds a health level. Health levels over a Faceless’ normal maximum disappear after Willpower hours.

Targets who lose every dot of social attribute are slain.

Health Levels OK, OK, OK, OK, Destroyed

Fun asside, during the Second Unmaking hordes of Faceless killed about as many mortals as the demons themselves. Very few mortals had the magic capable of harming incoporeal creatures so the Nine stepped in and created thousands and thousand of silverwood trees.

Silverwood trees are evergreens with a slight silvery tint. Their wood seems to have silver veins in it. It's not real silver but it's pretty, smells nice and is rot resistant. More important, silverwood is solid to incoporeal creatures. This allowed for the easy construction of weapons to harm Faceless and sheets of silverwood prevented Faceless from bypassing fortification.

It took the Void Demons a long time to figure out where this wood was coming from. It was only late during the Second Unmaking that the Void Demons started chopping down and/or burning silverwood forests but that point most of the Demon Lords were already slain.

Today silverwood is still sought out by adventurers who might encounter incorporeal foes and silver wood is useful as a regent in potions and whatnot, but now silverwood is valued for reasons beyond it's utility. It's relatively rare and it's pretty, so rich people like to make things out of silverwood for conspicuous consumption. "His table is made of silverwood!?!" Even among the peasant classes, keeping a tiny silverwood chip is considered a good luck charm.

Naturally people of all stripes want to cultivate silverwood which is not difficult but the trees do grow rather slowly. Most silverwood groves are claimed by royalty, dragons, priesthoods, or similar powerful groups.



Void Demon Soldiers
Common Void demons are androgynous humanoids roughly as big as muscular humans. They have dark grey skin and wings. They have large black eyes that sometimes glow faintly around living creatures, small ear holes, and no visible nose. They have no mouth.

Common Void Demons seek out the nearest living creature they can sense and attack. Without the direction of a greater demon, they will almost never run away barring truly hopeless odds though if scattered they will seek to regroup before attacking.

To their eyes, everything is twilight but living creatures and to a lesser extant plants glow faintly while creatures with souls glow brightly. Their eyesight is very poor when it comes to nonliving things.

Common Void Demons will unquestioningly obey the orders of any higher ranking Void Demon even when taking suicidal orders.

Spoiler: Common Void Demon Soldiers Stats

Willpower 3 Lethal Soak 4

Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4, Charisma 1, Manipulation 1, Appearance 1, Perception 2, Intelligence 1, Wits 2

Abilities: Alertness 1, Athletics 1, Brawl 4, Dodge 2, Intimidation 2, Stealth 2, Tracking 2

OK, OK, OK, -1, -1, -3 Destroyed

Claws: Strength +3


Energy Drain: If a claw attack is unsoaked, subject takes a point of physical attribute damage. If a subject is grappled successfully, target loses one physical attribute per turn even without claw damage.

Each dot of attribute damage inflicts and recovers or adds a health level to the Faceless. Health levels over the maximum disappear after Willpower hours.

Targets who lose every dot of physical attribute are slain. Sapient creatures killed by Void Demon’s energy drain sometimes become Faceless themselves. The odds of becoming a faceless are the victim’s Willpower x 10 as a percentage


Wings: Void Demons can fly and hover even though their mass looks too high to fly with their wings. They can still fly when magic is being suppressed.

Telepathy: Void Demons can talk to other Demons within a range in miles of the highest Wits of the Demon network. Demons can talk to mortals telepathically if they so choose (though they rarely do)

Life Sense: Void Demons get a -1 difficulty bonus on Perceptions rolls to detect living creatures. This is boosted to -2 bonus if the target has a soul. Void Demons can track living creatures by sniffing out their positive energy. Difficulty 6 assumes a small group of adventurers with about four hours’ head start. Modify the difficulty up or down based on size of group, distance, and age of the trail accordingly.

Their ability to detect nonliving things is not great but they can generally avoid walking into stone pillars and whatnot.

Creature of the Void: Void Demons are immune to negative energy damage and cold based damage. They are never healed by positive energy unless they steal it but they cannot be harmed by healing magic the way undead can.

Silver Vulnerability: Silver weapons inflict two bonus dice of damage against Void Demons, soakable normally.

Void Demon Sergeants
Physically Void Demon Sergeants are very similar to common Void Demons, but they have somewhat larger eyes. While only slightly more powerful physically, they are much smarter. They are usually seen telepathically commanding Common Void Demon Soldiers. Under their leadership, common Void Demons will use far more sophisticated tactics and fight more defensively.

They are brave and do not fear their own destruction, but they do seek to slay as many living creatures as possible for as long as possible. Void Demon Sergeants will unquestioningly obey the orders of any higher ranking Void Demon even when taking suicidal orders.

Like lesser Void Demon soldiers, Void Demon Sergeants senses are geared towards snuffing out life and souls but their sensory acuity is so advanced they don't really have the clumsiness and dull senses of their lesser brethren around nonliving things. Winter and Death Demons have similar acute senses.

Spoiler: Void Demon Sergeant Stats

Willpower 5 Lethal Soak 4

Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 4, Charisma 1, Manipulation 2, Appearance 1, Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 5

Alertness 3, Athletics 3, Brawl 4, Dodge 4, Intimidation 3, Investigation 1, Leadership 1, Stealth 3, Tracking 3

Health Levels OK, OK, OK, OK, -1, -1, -1 -3 Destroyed

Energy Drain: If a claw attack is unsoaked, subject takes a point of physical attribute damage. If a subject is grappled successfully, target loses one physical attribute per turn even without claw damage.

Each dot of attribute damage inflicts and recovers or adds a health level to the Faceless. Health levels over the maximum disappear after Willpower hours.

Targets who lose every dot of physical attribute are slain. Sapient creatures killed by Void Demon’s energy drain sometimes become Faceless themselves. The odds of becoming a faceless are the victim’s Willpower x 10 as a percentage

Wings: Void Demons can fly and hover even though their mass looks too high to fly with their wings. They can still fly when magic is being suppressed.

Telepathy: Void Demons can talk to other Demons within a range in miles of the highest Wits of the Demon network. Demons can talk to mortals telepathically if they so choose (though they rarely do)

Life Sense: Void Demons get a -1 difficulty bonus on Perceptions rolls to detect living creatures. This is boosted to -2 bonus if the target has a soul. Void Demons can track living creatures by sniffing out their positive energy. Difficulty 6 assumes a small group of adventurers with about four hours’ head start. Modify the difficulty up or down based on size of group, distance, and age of the trail accordingly.

A Void Demon Sergeant's senses are much better than common Void Demons so they have no problem spotting fine details of non-living objects.

Creature of the Void: Void Demons are immune to negative energy damage and cold based damage. They are never healed by positive energy unless they steal it but they cannot be harmed by healing magic the way undead can.

Silver Vulnerability: Silver weapons inflict two bonus dice of damage against Void Demons, soakable normally.

Winter Demons
Winters Demons are about twice the weight of common Void Demons and half again as tall. They have a cold aura and often frost the air, ground, or objects around them. Instead of legs they have a mass of tentacles.

In addition to being able to direct lesser demons to use more sophisticated tactics in warring against mortals, they will focus on wide scale destruction as much as they focus on souls. They will use their cold powers to blight crops for instance.

Spoiler: Winter Demon Stats

Willpower 6 Lethal Soak 6

Strength 6, Dexterity 3, Stamina 6, Charisma 1, Manipulation 2, Appearance 3, Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3

Alertness 2, Athletics 3, Brawl 4, Dodge 4, Hearth Wisdom 1, Intimidation 3, Investigation 1, Leadership 1, Stealth 2, Survival 1, Tracking 3

Arcane Magic: Invocation 4, specialization in cold attacks (40 quintessence)

OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, -1, -1, -1, -1, -3, -3, Incapacitated, Destroyed

Energy Drain: If a claw attack is unsoaked, subject takes a point of physical attribute damage. If a subject is grappled successfully, target loses one physical attribute per turn even without claw damage.

Each dot of attribute damage inflicts and recovers or adds a health level to the Faceless. Health levels over the maximum disappear after Willpower hours.

Targets who lose every dot of physical attribute are slain. Sapient creatures killed by Void Demon’s energy drain sometimes become Faceless themselves. The odds of becoming a faceless are the victim’s Willpower x 10 as a percentage

Wings: Void Demons can fly and hover even though their mass looks too high to fly with their wings. They can still fly when magic is being suppressed.

Telepathy: Void Demons can talk to other Demons within a range in miles of the highest Wits of the Demon network. Demons can talk to mortals telepathically if they so choose (though they rarely do)

Life Sense: Void Demons get a -1 difficulty bonus on Perceptions rolls to detect living creatures. This is boosted to -2 bonus if the target has a soul. Void Demons can track living creatures by sniffing out their positive energy. Difficulty 6 assumes a small group of adventurers with about four hours’ head start. Modify the difficulty up or down based on size of group, distance, and age of the trail accordingly.

Creature of the Void: Void Demons are immune to negative energy damage and cold based damage. They are never healed by positive energy unless they steal it but they cannot be harmed by healing magic the way undead can.

Creature of Cold: Winter Demons do not have the flexibility of mortal arcane casters with Invocation and can only make cold based attacks.

Silver Vulnerability: Silver weapons inflict two bonus dice of damage against Void Demons, soakable normally.

Death Demons
Death Demons are about twice as tall as common Void Demons and weigh about four times as much. Instead of legs they have a mass of tentacles.

Death Demons are intelligent enough to employ a wide variety of tactics, but their favorite strategy is to quietly collect large quantities of undead minions over time then overwhelm their foes with numbers in an overwhelming surprise blitzkrieg.

There are many classes of demons that are larger and stronger than Death Demons, but Death Demons are the largest and strongest of the Demons capable of entering the mortal plane during the Third Age.

Spoiler: Death Demon Stats

Willpower 8 Lethal Soak 7

Strength 7, Dexterity 3, Stamina 7, Charisma 2, Manipulation 3, Appearance 3, Perception 4, Intelligence 4, Wits 4

Alertness 2, Athletics 3, Brawl 4, Dodge 4, Hearth Wisdom 1, Intimidation 3, Investigation 1, Leadership 3, Medicine 2, Stealth 2, Survival 2, Tracking 4

Arcane Magic: Necromancy 5, Invocation 4, specialization in cold attacks (72 quintessence)

Spells: (1) Disrupt Undead, Chill Touch, (2) Create Lesser Undead, Ray of Enfeeblement (3) Create Undead (4) Wave of Pain, Blight, Speak with Dead, (5) Create Greater Undead, Command Undead,

OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -3, -3, Incapacitated, Destroyed

Energy Drain: If a claw attack inflicts any unsoaked damage, the subject takes a point of physical attribute damage. If a subject is grappled successfully, target loses one physical attribute per turn even without claw damage.

Each dot of attribute damage inflicts and recovers or adds a health level to the Faceless. Health levels over the maximum disappear after Willpower hours.

Targets who lose every dot of physical attribute are slain. Sapient creatures killed by Void Demon’s energy drain sometimes become Faceless themselves. The odds of becoming a faceless are the victim’s Willpower+2 x 10 as a percentage

Wings: Void Demons can fly and hover even though their mass looks too high to fly with their wings. They can still fly when magic is being suppressed.

Telepathy: Void Demons can talk to other Demons within a range in miles of the highest Wits of the Demon network. Demons can talk to mortals telepathically if they so choose (though they rarely do)

Life Sense: Void Demons get a -1 difficulty bonus on Perceptions rolls to detect living creatures. This is boosted to -2 bonus if the target has a soul. Void Demons can track living creatures by sniffing out their positive energy. Difficulty 6 assumes a small group of adventurers with about four hours’ head start. Modify the difficulty up or down based on size of group, distance, and age of the trail accordingly.

Creature of the Void: Void Demons are immune to negative energy damage and cold based damage. They are never healed by positive energy unless they steal it but they cannot be harmed by healing magic the way undead can.

Creature of Cold: Death Demons do not have the flexibility of mortal arcane casters with Invocation and can only make cold based attacks.

Silver Vulnerability: Silver weapons inflict two bonus dice of damage against Void Demons, soakable normally.

Any event, I think I got some good dungeon monsters here, but I'm not sure how well meaning kings and priesthoods would deal with Void Demons.

All I got right now is the idea that the Church of Phidas, which is known to be greedy and miserly will be uncharacteristically generous selling or giving away magical healing and weapons to aid adventurers who fight minions of the Void. While one would not expect a Lawful Evil deity to take point in the fight against the Void, Turoch's last words were roughly along the lines of "When I come back I'll kill you first Phidas" and he takes that very seriously.

The second most enthuisastic demon fighters might be the Church of Zarthus. As the moon shines through the darkness, so must Zarthus' lanterns shine upon hidden to evils to expose them. If I get around to writing novels set in Scarterras it would be fun to create an odd couple/buddy cop story about a priest of Zarthus and a priest of Phidas as a demon fighting duo basically because Zarthus and Phidas hate each others guts and "Demons are bad" is the only thing they agree on.

On the other hand. Every sane person hates and fears Void Demons. Killing Void Demons is something every priesthood will endorse and every king will nod approvingly at.

Anyway it's a fun idea, but I don't think I'll introduce this odd couple into the game I'm running. The PCs are pretty indifferent to the Church of Phidas and the Church of Zarthus. For them to be interesting characters I have to introduce the characters to players so immersed in my world that they will be surprised to see a Lantern and Mask working together. Otherwise it's just me saying. "The pairing of these two guys is rare." which isn't half as cool if the players don't comment on that before me. Right now we are still in the "Remind me what Phidas is the god of?" phase.



I might as well cover vampires because I mentioned them in passing.

Short version, a lich wanted to created powerful free willed undead warriors so he crafted a mystic artifact called the Blood Stone which created the first vampires. The lich died and his vampire minions went their separate weapons. Vampires created by the Blood Stone, aka True Vampires, can walk in the daylight with no problem. Vampires who were created by another vampire, while still formidable, are not as powerful as True Vampires.

Spoiler: Long Version is this

Origins of Vampires

Spoiler: The Lich Malthian Creates the Blood Stone

In the Second Age, few elves were more potent than Malthian. He was a powerful wizard both mystically and politically. He served as vizier to three successive monarchs. He served his lieges providing sage advice and solving problems as a magical trouble shooter. Malthian was a staunch foe of the undead for most of his life, but Malthian was growing very old and Mathian’s ego was such that Malthian believed the kingdom would fall without his assistance. He undergone the forbidden ritual to become a lich to preserve his life. He hid his new undead condition with illusions for many decades.

Since his own undeath helped the kingdom by keeping him alive, he figured further undeath research would help the kingdom more. He envisioned a world where undead warriors could handle all of his kingdoms fighting, so as to not to endanger the living. Some living people had to die to help his research but his efforts would ultimate save lives in the long run.

Suspicion stemming from Malthian’s unusually long lifespan led people to begin digging. They uncovered his dark experiments with creating undead soldiers and revealed Malthian’s new condition as a lich. He had to fight his way to safety killing many his own countrymen. Malthian believed his experiments were reasonable and would have been accepted if he were still alive. Malthian believed he was typecast as being evil for simply for being a lich. While it is true that every lich before him was evil, Malthian knew that he was not.

It made sense to Malthian, it takes great strength to keep ones morals intact after becoming a lich and most spell casters didn’t have Malthian’s peerless strength of character. Therefore all the other liches were clearly evil. Once in exile, he began researching the spiritual decay lesser mortals suffered after becoming liches. He also began hunting down and killing every other lich he could find. This was purely an altruistic act and those detractors that say Malthian was only interested in looting the libraries and laboratories of his vanquished foes are dirty liars.

He destroyed four liches and captured one other before other liches became threatened enough to overcome their innate distrust of each other and band together against him. The cooperative efforts were still strained by the liches’ distrust of each other, all of them were willing to throw the others to Malthian if necessary. Malthian was able to destroy three more liches even in the face of unified opposition.

He defeated liches far more often than that this, but he was generally thwarted from destroying them or capturing their phylacteries. Eventually an organized effort against him succeeded, forcing Malthian to abandon (and detonate) his primary sanctum. He chose to abandon his crusade against inferior liches and laid low for about a century or two. Once Malthian was no longer a clear threat, the alliances of convenience against him splintered and the remaining liches when back to their independent ways.

Then the Second Unmaking happened. Energy draining nihilistic demons crossed the Barrier in untold thousands and brought the civilizations of the Second Age to ruin.

Malthian realized his belief that his kingdom couldn’t survive without him was wrong, it was really the whole world that needed him. After a few skirmishes with demons, he decided his ability to smite demons with spells was insufficient to thwart demons when the demon hordes could augment their strength by turning their energy drained victims into undead slaves. He began research a means of immunizing people from energy drains. His plan was to create a living undead hybrid, immune to both negative energy and the corruption that undead conditions inflicted on people who lacked Malthian’s moral fiber.

While most of the living wizards battled demons and most of the undead liches were trying to either steal demon power or were still plotting against Malthian, Malthian was locked in his laboratories. He experimented on bound demons and periodically made expeditions to explore the Void itself. He also kidnapped elves and a few members of other races to experiment on. He made sure to use mortals that would have just been probably consumed by demons anyway, so Malthian was morally justified. He was saving lives really.

While Malthian was locked away in his labs, the last demon lord was slain and the Second Unmaking was officially over. Malthian created his desired living/undead hybrid but he was centuries too late for it to impact the Second Unmaking. Malthian made his breakthrough when humans were already well on their way to displacing the elves as the dominant race of Scarterra. That didn’t bother Malthian much. The humans would need his help even more than the elves did, and demons were still entering Scarterras in small numbers. It was only a matter of time before they came back in force.

Malthian opted to create undead warriors in lieu of spell-casters figuring that magic users were in general more prone to corruption. Malthian wanted to create self-sustaining undead warriors but eventually conceded that it was impossible to create free-willed soldiers that didn’t require some kind of sustenance. These warriors required the blood of the living. Malthian decided that was acceptable. The loss of a few humans and demihumans would be a small sacrifice compared to the thousands more the vampires would protect.

He began magically impersonating a living human wizard and began searching for highly skilled warriors of great moral character, preferably those with experience fighting demons (who were still a frequent threat in the early years of the Third Age even though the demon lords were dead). Malthian was careful to select soldiers who would do be able to do more good with their abilities than their hunger for blood would cause them to do harm (or so he believed).

Malthian created an artifact called the Blood Stone to facilitate a mortal’s transformation into a vampire. Eventually one vampire discovered that he could pass the vampiric condition onto progeny without using the Blood Stone. Malthian destroyed both sire and childe and forbid unauthorized creation of new vampires.

His vampires didn’t get much time for do-gooding before some of Malthian’s more persistent lich enemies penetrated Malthian’s anti-scrying defenses and finally discovered what he was doing. His foe/foes also discovered that the vampires were not nearly as magically protected from spying as he was. After spying on his vampire lieutenants, a rival lich recruited a suitable vampiric turncoat.

Malthian was set up and destroyed, along with his phylactery and several of his vampiric minions. The Blood Stone was missing and presumed destroyed. Vralic, Ralark, Lorshellis, and Vladimir survived. Most of them started broods of vampires. The four original vampires are said to be immune to most of the traditional banes of vampires including sunlight.

Spoiler: Lineage of Vladimir the Conquerer

Lineage of Vladimir the Conqueror

Vladomir’s was a tribal chieftain of an early human tribe decimated by demon attacks. He gained Malthian’s attention after leading the battered survivors of his tribe in a mission of vengeance on the demons that wiped out their kin. He also had a view of the strong needing to rule the weak for their own good which Malthian approved of.

After Malthian’s death, Vladimir declared that with most of the demons gone, their role should be to shepherd mortals rather than simply fighting their battles for them. He was met with reactions ranging from indifference to hostility. Vladimir was the first vampire to sire new childer after Malthian’s death. He was also by far the most prolific of all the original vampires siring more vampires than all his siblings combined. Then his progeny had progeny until Vladimir had an elite army of vampires to try to impose his vision of order on the entire world. For over a century he conquered all before him, provoking most of Scarterra’s mortal nations to unite against him.

Despite many setbacks, Vladimir seemed to be slowly wearing down his opposition. His conquests land holdings exceeded that of any single mortal nation in the Third Age. World conquest seemed achievable as he turned the most powerful members of his living opposition into new vampiric vassals. It was at this point that his rival True Vampire, Ralark, finally caught up to him and slew him.

All of Vladimir’s childer agreed that vampires should rule the world and everyone of them viewed themselves as Vladimir’s rightful successor. This of course led to civil war. No vampire petty lord could achieve dominance over the others. Mortals that formerly were formerly fleeing and hiding from Vladimir’s forces took advantage of the vampire civil war to turn the tables against their oppressors.

The vampires did not stop fighting amongst themselves even in the face of a unified mortal opposition. More vampires died at the hands of their own then to mortals. Ralark and Lorshellans also picked off Vladimir’s brood whenever they could be found. Vladimir’s vampire kingdom was destroyed in less than a century.

Beset on too many sides, the surviving Vladimiran vampires scattered to the four winds either setting up petty fiefdoms in very isolated locales or started impersonating living humans in isolated areas. Despite all their losses, Vladimir bloodline still vastly outnumbers the other blood lines.

Spoiler: Lineage of Vralic the Hunter

Lineage of Vralic the Dark Hunter

Vralic changed his name after the reality of his new condition became apparent. His original name is known by no one today apart from Vralic himself and maybe the other surviving True Vampires. He was originally a barbarian elf ranger, said to be the last solitary survivor of a clan wiped out by demons. His tribe believed that those who died an honorable death in battle would get a blessed afterlife. After his transformation he became utterly obsessed with seeking an honorable death in battle. After Malthian’s death, he entered the Near Void seeking to slay every demon he could find with the hope that one of the demons could best him in combat. Unfortunately, with no blood to be had in the Void, he couldn’t travel far from Scarterras since a death by starvation would not be honorable. Also, given that he had no life energy to steal, Void Demons actively avoided fighting with him.

After over a century of not finding any worthy challenges this way, Malthian traveled to the Aetherial Realm to beg/demand the Nine’s help. Maylar promised to give Vralic the secret to his honorable death in battle if he could defeat Maylar’s champion. Vralic beat said champion in an epic dual. Maylar told Vralic that he would meet his warrior’s death in single combat with a mortal and no other circumstance.

Vralic set up a territory around a forested area surrounding what was appropriately named the Challenge Cliffs. Vralic stalks the area for prey and guards his territory. On certain days of the year, Vralic reveals himself to would-be challengers. Everyone loses, but if Vralic deems a challenger put a good fight, he turns them into vampires instead of killing them outright. The details of Vralic’s Saga are known to few. The savage tribes near the Challenge Cliffs know that if they go there and fight well the Dark Hunter will make them stronger. By this point the thought of beating Vralic doesn’t actually cross the minds of most challengers though Maylar will supposedly bless whoever beats him, most of his challengers simply want to become vampires.

Vralic’s progeny rarely if ever create vampires of their own. Some say Vralic hunts down and destroy unauthorized grand childer and their makers, others say that his childer are barren. They usually become lone agents of destruction or they rise to positions leadership in small warlike groups. Vralic’s progeny are usually but not always warriors form uncivilized lands though warriors from civilized lands are welcome to come to the Challenge Cliffs if they so choose.

Spoiler: Ralark the Loyalist

Ralark the Loyalist

Ralark was the first warrior to be undergo transformation from the Bloodstone. A human fighter of legendary skill and bravery, believed to be a non-inheriting son of an early king. After Malthian’s death, he dedicated himself to seeking vengeance on Malthian’s behalf. He personally struck down two ancient elven liches but remains convinced his master’s betrayer is still at large.

After fruitless searching for evil liches and his treacherous vampire siblings, Ralark decided to move on to enforcing Malthians edicts. He spent centuries hunting down demons whenever he could find them. When he couldn’t find demons, he targeted lesser vampires (since their creation was never authorized by Malthian). On rare occasions, he has intervened against other creatures that Ralark deems evil.

When he has a choice of prey, he prefers to feed on the most morally reprehensible prey he can find, or the very old who are likely to die soon anyway. All else equal, he also prefers to feed on non-humans and non-demihumans. He is ever a pragmatist and believes that his life is valuable enough that he can rationalize drinking anyone’s blood when he has need. Ralark moves from place to place impersonating a regular human fighter, moving on whenever new threats call him elsewhere or he can no longer keep feeding habits unnoticed. He is seen less and less over the last few centuries leading some to say that he is waiting in hibernation or someone finally killed him (or he finally killed himself).

Spoiler: Lineage of Lorshellis the Successor

Lineage of Lorshellis the Successor

Lorshellis was an elven fighter known for her tactical acumen as much as her personal fighting ability. She wanted to stay loyal to Malthian’s goals and worked with Ralark for a time before the two had a falling out. The way she saw it, Ralark didn’t fully understand how Malthian was willing to make sacrifices for the greater good. Lorshellis believed that with Malthian’s death, it was up to his loyal followers to bolster the ranks of the vampires.


After fruitlessly searching for the Bloodstone, Lorshellis began making lesser vampires directly, always screening her candidates carefully. At this point there were already lots of lesser vampires of other lineages who were spell casters. She decided it was foolhardy to not bring in spell casters of her own when the opposition had spell casters. She tends to screen spell casters more carefully than non spellcasters and Lorshellan vampires who are spellcasters are still fairly uncommon. Lorshellis calls herself and his progeny the Malthian vampires. Other vampires call them the Lorshellan vampires.


Lorshellan vampires are few in number and geographically dispersed, but they do their best to maintain communications with each other. Most strive to protect the weak (especially from other vampires) to make up for those they kill feeding. Unfortunately, some can’t reconcile their thirst for blood with their desire to do good deeds. Many Lorshellans become recluses or suicidal. Others fall down the slippery slope of rationalization until they become petty bullies and tyrants, some have even allied with members of Vladimir’s or Vralic’s broods. Lorshellis does not have the ability to completely police her own ranks, but she will usually find and destroy any fallen Lorshellan if they get the idea in their head of embracing a large brood of minions.

Spoiler: Lineage of Dalak the Dark One

Lineage of Dalak the Dark One

Dalak was a human fighter of common birth who managed to make a name for himself surviving difficult battles that killed most of his fellow soldiers. Eventually he gained enough of a reputation for valor to attract Malthian’s attention. Said to be the most charming of the original vampires, it’s believed Dalak’s silver tongue caused Malthian to overlook his weak moral character.

After Malthian’s death, Dalak tried to convince his fellow vampires that they had no more ties to mortals. He narrowly avoided being killed by the others after this pronouncement and fled. Dalak eventually joined up with one of Malthian’s lich foes. The lich in question was one of the rare infernalists attempting to conspire with the creatures of the Void. Dalak became his lieutenant.

His new master had a citadel in the Near Void but Dalak could not remain there long because he needed blood. He serves his new master covertly in Scarterras, but his master operated on a very slow time table and rarely gives orders. That gave Dalak a lot of time to work on his own projects. He turned created far more vampires than his master guessed. Dalak recruited as many wizards as he could. He ordered his minions to focus on researching an alternative for sustenance to drinking blood. His goal is to be able to survive indefinitely within the Void. Once able to do so he will replace his master and be the lead collaborator with the demons during their next great incursion.

Dalak’s followers are few in number in order to keep a low profile. Few living beings are even aware of Dalak’s brood (who normally impersonate Vladimir’s bloodline if discovered) and fewer still know what their intentions are. The other vampire founders are aware of his intentions to ally with demon kind, though they do not know specifics. Other vampires generally kill Dalak’s progeny every chance they get. Even Vladimir’s lineage finds Dalak’s brood revolting.

I am still working on the specifics but I figure there is going to be a set powerset for all vampires but each lineage gets at least one unique power to them. The True Vampires would of course have insanely powerful stats, such that they probably shouldn't appear in most RPG adventures.

Of the original twelve True Vampires, only five vampires surivived long enough to sire lesser vampires, but that's not set in stone. If I come up with another bloodline concept I like I can up the cast to six or seven.

 

The Watchers on the Wall was a Game of Thrones reference.

I actually didn't answer that one. Basically everyone killed the demons. Once it was clear that the Void Demons were out to kill everyone and everything, every living creature started fighting back. You know now in movies there is often the sole survivor from a devestated village growing to become a powerful and vengeful hero. Basically there thousands and thousands of hardened badasses avenging their fallen parents, children, spouses, etc.

That is really really cool. Very metal.

It's too cool. If these dragons are flying to the rescue it doesn't leave many Demons for PCs or story protagonists to fight.

 

I guess i don't need to have more than five or six of these guys alive and kicking.



Anyway, update on the actual game. We had two active players and one passive players, now we have two active players. So it's a game for two PCs. No biggie, they are two of my very best friends I like hanging out with them.

So Neshik the gnome has this skill set: friendly talking, aggressive haggling, healing magic, minor enhantment on items, potion and scroll making, minor divination magic, modest regent hunting

Aramil the elf has this skill set: Swords, bows, invocation magic, keen senses, modest wilderness skills, modest social skills, modest stealth skills, minor abjuration magic.

So I finally transitioned from random monster hunting to my actual story of political intrigue.

Spoiler: Summary of the last session we played

he son of the Lord of House Zimoz belatedly arrived to slay the monster the PCs already took down. He invited Neshik and Aramil to the castle as a reward for killing the tree monsters murdering their people. The PCs refused a modest gold payment because they found out the realm was pretty cash strapped. They just took shelter and provisions as payment. Lord Zimoz gave a large donation to Neshik's church and asked for them to send a fighting cleric to replace the one from the Church of Hallisan who bailed on them.

The lord let them use his alchemist's lab (and his alchemist) for free. So Neshik took his supply of regents and brewed a bunch of healing potions. He also brewed potions for the Lord using the Lord's regents but charging no markup (Lord Zimoz really likes the PCs now). Up until this point, every free moment was either spent acquiring regents or turning regents into healing potions. They still have quite a few potions. Neshik also led a worship service to Khemra where he praised Lord Zimoz as a wise and just leader.

Then they went south, visiting the lands of Lord Frymar. Neshik bartered several healing potions for a wand of Curse Disease/Cure Poision because the tree monsters nearly poisoned them both to death last time and they didn't want to repeat that problem. Curing poison is not something Neshik can do by himself.

Neshik bought some more regents by trading the gemstones they got from the evil priest of Maylar they battled a while back. Thanks to his great haggling roll, they got a sweet deal.

While Neshik was doing all that. Aramil was hitting up taverns for scuttlebutt. He found out Lord Frymar is not oppressing or starving his peasants but he is fairly well off due to his mercantile dealings and he has not shared is good fortune with his fellow lords who are beleagured by many problems. Frymar was recently the victim of robbery but this seemed liked an isolated incident. Since Frymar didn't seem to be suffering as much as the other nobles, the players opted not to stay to track down the robbers.

Lord Frymar's men found out this gnome and elf were spending hundreds of gold in his town, so Lord Frymar, ever the businessman, invited them to dinner to see if they were valuable business partners. They weren't really valuable partners, but Lord Frymar bought a couple healing potions, and Neshik rolled a great haggling roll and actually managed to talk Lord Frymar into paying a 10% premium. Then Frymar gave Neshik's god a token donation, and the PCs left.

The PCs ride to the capital with no problem. Neshik compares notes with the local head of his religious order, Jaromir. Jaromir brings up the idea that Fumaya has a lot of problems. One elf and one gnome cannot really stop a Swynfaredian invasion or take on hundreds of orc barbarians but they might be able to take a bite out of crime.

Neshik opts to monetize their stock of healing potions, for money and weapons and stuff, while Aramil hits the taverns to see if he can passively get any information about the wave of crime. Eventually Neshik ran out of commerce stuff to do and joined the information search.

Neshik is a folk hero and a religious icon to the goddess of Law and Order, and he has distinctive golden skin making him immediately recognizeable whereever he goes. Aramil is just some elf. That means while Neshik has superior social skills to Aramil, Aramil is still far better to talking to the seedier elements of the city without tipping them off (and Aramil is good at spotting and avoiding pickpockets and robbers). As a folk hero to gnomekind especially, Neshik was able to get a lot of useful scuttlebutt by buying gossipy gnomes drinks in bars.

My favorite part of the session is when a criminal started tailing Aramil because he was asking a lot of questions. Aramil caught wise, detoured to a bar. The tailing guy handed off Aramil to a second tailer to hide what he was doing but Aramil was still wise to this. So he made up a pretense to chat up the guy following, acted like a dumb wood elf on rumspringa and got his would-be stalker to get drunk, abandon tailing him, and slip where a fence operated.

Between the two player's investigations, the players now know.
-The PCs do not know that there is a secret doppleganger involved, but they now know the two main aliases that Etch uses. Remember Etch is pretending to be two rival crimelords. I also named the two fake crime families the Guild of Shadows and the Black Hand.
-They know that King Henryk cut back on his royal frivolties to save money and some of his ex-employees are working with the Shadows or Black Hand. They just don't which ones yet.
-The PCs know that the Royal Quartermaster has a gambling addiction and would be vulnerable to bribery and blackmail because of this.
-The PCs have a list of several names of ex-employees of the king who might be in league with the Hand and/or Shadows. They only checked off one name on the list who shared a lot of useful information for a mere ten gold. Silly bards.
-The PCs know one shop that is used by some fences.
-The PCs have some speculative rumors on which nobles are faithful and which are lecherous adulturers.
-The PCs know the two sentence summary for all the major noble houses. These are their strengths, these are their fairly obvious problems.

We got a good start.

Spoiler: Potential Bug in my Homebrew System, Potion Economics

If I took my homebrew game system mainstream, I would need to come up with some kind of rigid guidelines for treasure. Shadowrun and all forms of D&D have charts to figure out things like If the ecounter is X difficult, you should make Y amount of money.

Right now, I'm pretty casual about treasure. My players are roleplayers, not metagamers. They want to do heroic deeds. Neshik wants to glorify his patron goddess and Aramil wants to clean up his family's tarnished reputation. Neshik gives away healing potions like candy. He has only recently started selling and trading potions for money.

So the healing potions Neshik deals costs about 200 gold piece in raw materials and can be sold for 400 gold pieces. If Neshik gets an exceptionally good roll he can make two potions for 200 gold pieces worth of ingredients. He's also a great haggler meaning he can finangle the market prices. He can buy the 200 gold pieces of ingredients for 150 gold pieces and sell the potion for 450 gold pieces. This also requires Neshik to rent an alchemist lab or befriend a local lord with an alchemist lab but that is not super difficult.

Hypothetically, if the players and their characters were not selfless adventurers but were mercenary adventurers. Not evil, just moderately interested in self advancement, the game would become very boring very fast because logically, they would buy an alchemist lab and just manufacture about 500 gold pieces of profit every week.

The PCs got way more gold making potions and selling them then they got from actually adventuring. Which led to the question "Are potions overpriced?"

I kind of want to say they are, but to be fair, at least half of Neshik's skill points were dumped into skills and attributes that either help him make potions or help him sell potions. Neshik is pretty near helpless in a fight. That's why he needs the elf.

And this led into a world building question. Supply and demand in this case depends on how many people have the ability to make healing potions capable of healing severe damage.

I figured only a tiny percentage of the population has any spellcasting talent at all. At most, half of these are divine spell casters. I have twelve different spheres of divine magic. Most spellcasters are lucky to get a high degree of skill with two. To make healing potions, you need a fairly high rating in Healing and Crafts. I figure that out of a million Fumayans maybe two dozen people can make healing potions. Maybe two or three of them have the supporting skills to make healing potions as quickly as Neshik. If level three healing potions have a 20% markup instead of a 100% markup I'd probably need to have at least a few hundred people of Neshik's ability level rather than a few dozen.

So in that instance, a 100% markup from materials to the finished product seems reasonable, but maybe I should have more NPCs that are capable of making potions. I'm just concerned that if more people can brew healing potions, that means there are probably more people who can animate zombie hordes, transform into giant bears or alter the weather with a word.

In D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder, it seems like every thorpe has fifty super badasses in it. It changes the nature of the world. You can tell a good story whether or not the player characters are one in a million.

Anyway, the game is in beta test. If I have to drastically change the cost of potions, I'm fine with that. If not, I'm fine with that too.

Anyway, my players are not the sorts of people to exploit a loophole for power gaming, but a good gaming system should be somewhat metagaming resistant.

And I'm realizing that I should not peg my magic item pricing system to what D&D uses but I need to peg it to something.

 

I like the way you think, but I'm saving "ingredients you have to quest for" for more permanent magical items.

At certain points, I have said, the market is saturated, you cannot sell more potions here. Also, along those lines, no seller of regents has an infinite stock. Even D&D 3.5 has limits to what you can buy in a small place. To my understanding, D&D 4th edition didn't bother with paltry details like that.

My friends and I discussed this. We ultimately decided not to give potions a shelf life because we don't want to keep track of that. Especially if you end up with nine otherwise identical potions with different expiration dates.

Within the game universe, potions probably do have a shelf life, and the characters can keep track of that but the players don't have to. Just like we don't make players take their shoes to the cobbler when the soles wear out.

Indirectly. At least it got my brain whirling. I thought back to a White Wolf Dark Ages book that did some research on real world economics at least with nobility. They had a section on income producing land. They generally talked about income in terms of what you can buy with it.

I'm going to use the baseline that a knight typically has a strip of income producing land to his name that in the span of a year can produce enough income to cover the replacement cost for his armor, lance, sword, warhorse, and maybe a mace or other backup weapon. That means they are in the ball park between 1000 and 3000 gold coins depending on how nice their gear is (armor is by far the most expensive part of their gear). Coincidentally a knight's annual income is also what a captured knight is typically randomed for.

Now I know there is a lot more potential noble titles but I'm sticking with Knight < Baron < Count < Duke < King.

I'm going to use knights as a baseline to ballpark what a Baron, Count, Duke or King gets for income. Obviously Fumayan nobles are going to hover around the bottom end of their respective income range.

They PCs already met two dukes who both made a donation to the Church of Khemra out of courtesy, and we set the standard that 25 gold from the richest duke is somewhat of a pittance donation and 250 gold from the poorest duke was incredibly generous.

And I also thought about the Dark Sun setting, where steel is so rare that metal weapons and armor that they are basically a stand-in for magical items. I remember a line in the saying that a "A sorcerer king could afford to commission three or four suits of full plate armor per year if he wanted to....or he could add another wall around his city."

I'm going to use that principle that nobility can get a hold of magical items but not easily. I don't know about barons and counts, but at the very least I'm giving the dukes a few family heriloom magical items. At the very least I can peg magic item costs to what nobility could theoretically afford (though some magic should be be functionally priceless). In this case adventurers would sort of be like noveau riche.

 

That's definitely on the list of criteria for making permanent magic items but I don't plan to put that limitation on potions. Though some potion ingredients can have requirements like "The herbs must be harvested under the light of the full moon" but that is part and parcel of harvesting regents. In cases for potions you can harvest the ingredients once under special circumstances and store them for later.
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I know fantasy worlds love to have multiple moons but I'm sticking with one moon because I have one moon deity. I would like to work astrology in somewhere though I haven't pegged the details down much. I got something sort of like the Chinese zodiac where they have a year of the Dog, Year or the Dragon, Year of the Rat. Etc.

Scarterras has a nine year zodiac with a year for each god, Year of Hallisan, Year of Khemra, etc. If a family or couple especially likes one deity they will try to time things so their babies will be born in the year of their favorite deity. Others take pains to avoid birthing children during the years of deities they don't like.

The Nine are also going to have their own zodiact whose position in the sky also corresponds to the location of their personal Realm since the Nine collectively live in the metaphysical realm of the sky along with the souls of their worshippers. I'm still working on the details of the afterlife, especially the big questions of "What happens to polythesists in the afterlife" and is there some kind of equivalent to Tartarus. The Void does catch some souls in the afterlife, but only if they are tainted by Void energies in life. Even the evil deities of the Nine don't normally want to let souls slip into the Void.

I also haven't figured out if the movements of constellations have local effects like the notions of modern astrology (which I have much dislike for in real life but admit they work in a literal fantasy world).

I agree with your line of thinking. The way I figure it there are four sources of political power in most nations that jockey for power.

Nobility and Royalty
Priesthoods and Temples
Guilds
Powerful adventurers and retired adventurers

In most cases the most cases the real power is split between the noblity and either the temples or guilds as their primary power with the third group as a marginalized third wheel.

Adventurers are usually X-factors. The lines are blurred though. Since the eldest son usually inherits all lands and titles, and the eldest daughter usually gets the best marriage, you got to put your second and third born kids somewhere. A lot of these extra children of nobility end up joining a priesthood or leveraging their high born education to become a powerhouse in the guilds. Or they become adventurers.

Likewise, a lot of divine spell casters become adventurers or ply their trade in the guilds.

And of course adventurers who make a name for themselves can get marriage offers or awards of honorary titles from noble houses as the nobility want to win the loyalty of these powerful individuals. Temples of course can hand out flowery titles or bestow magical items on powerful adventurers they want to win the loyalty of.

Guilds are far from toothless, but I think they are less able to bribe or coerce adventurers than priests and nobles. I figure guilds mostly infict their price gouging on nobles and commoners. The easiest way to corner the potion market would be to corner the regent markets. Since the people who make potions are usually powerful magic users it's hard to boss them around, but you could make it difficult for them to get ingredients. Hard to do in Fumaya because there is a lot of wilderness land that is only nominally claimed by the nobles. You'd only be able to control regent harvesting in a place where forests are also policed (you dare to kill a king's deer!).

Anyway, here is the guidelines I set for how rich are the rich people.

Noble Rank--Yearly Income--------Knights

Knight ---------1,000-3,000 gp
Baron---------3,000-8,000 gp--------1-4
Count---------5,000-12,000 gp--------2-8
Duke----------7,000-70,000 gp--------4-20
King-----------15,000-300,000 gp-----6-100

The Dukes and kings have a very wide range of incomes because they could be raking in the money or all their lands and wealth could be tied into the realm. The more knights and wizard and clerics and other powerful minions a lord has in his retinue, the less gold he's got to spend on other things.

At the moment it would probably be best to not deal with magical items or crown jewels and the like. Near-priceless treasures that would be extremely difficult to sell. At best, these treasures probably shouldn't exceed ten times their annual income.

 

DISEASE



So I always considered boiling water to purify it as being pretty low tech, but internet research tells me that this is an innovation from the nineteenth century. That's very recent.

In the real world medieval era (and earlier) it was generally known that sanitation leads to health. At the very least foul smelling things are unhealthy.

Throughout history (and even today) people have said that disease is often a punishment for sinful behavior or the product of demons or similar beings.

Anyway, since I have my short term story needs set up, I need to think about disease in a larger sense.

To sum it up in one sentence. Scarterras has disease because Maylar is a jerk.

Should my world have germs? Should illness be an essence in the air? Should illness be primarily or entirely the result of malevolent spirits.

Maylar is one of the Nine. Maylar is the god of disease. I don't want to make him a Nurgle clone. Maylar is not just the god of disease, he's also a sort of god of low warfare on murder. He has much in common with Khaine or Khorne as Nurgle.

Maylar is a Chaotic Evil bully but he does have some positive traits. He embodies not just decay but the renewal that comes after it. He sincerely believes the adage "That which does not kill you makes you stronger." He is practically the only one of the Nine that never holds a grudge if some mortal kills a bunch of minions since anyone who can do so proves that he or she was strong. He is the patron of hunting and animal husbrandry, things which aid in survival. Granted on some level he wants people to learn that killing and subjugating lesser creatures is the path to strength, but civilization still depended on humans eating meat, at least historically.

So bottom line is I don't want Maylar to look like a bulbous fat sack of puss. Disease is one of the things Maylar does, it's not the only thing he does. But Maylar could have spirit minions that look and act like Nurgle demons. On the whole I prefer stealthy spirits of sickening air then bulbous pox monsters, but I'm open to suggestions for spirit concepts.

On the other hand a part of me wants to have disease spirits be fairly rare. For instance, Nami controls the weather and she has spirit minions that embody particular aspects of weather, rain spirits, snow spirits, etc but at least 90% of weather happens without a spirit intervening.

In addition, mortals can influence weather or disease. One of the twelve spheres of divine magic is weather control. Every divine caster can theoretically learn the Weather domain but Nami's priests and priestesses get a substantial difficulty break when they cast it.

Likewise one of the twelve spheres of divine magic involves divine wrath which includes mystic curses, diseases, and at the higher levels direct smiting. Any divine spellcaster can learn it, but Maylar's priest get a substantial diffiulty break when they cast it. Some Maylar priests like to run extortion rackets where they magically infect people and then sell them the magical cure to the problem they caused.

Just like most weather doesn't need a spirit or priest to direct to occur, I need some kind of system to have disease occur.

What should the SCIENCE! vector for disease look like in Scarterras.

Bad air? Mystical essence of disease? Microbes? Elemental forces being out of balance? Something else?

Related note, but a small one. In Scarterras, should boiling drinking water purify it? Should mortals be aware of this? If boiling water purifies it I'm sure the goddess Mera would tell everyone about it. She's is the goddess of water, medicine, and purification. Part of the reason Maylar hates her but mostly he hates Mera because she coddles the weak.

EDIT: Another thing I should ask is this: How common should disease be in Scarterras. Less common, more common, or roughly equally common to the real world medieval era. Keep in mind there are a bunch of supernatural entitites that can cure disease and a bunch of supernatural entities that can cause disease but neither group can be everywhere at once.

 

Gaunts it is.

No my Creature Compendium has fewer than 100 completed entries and it's currently weighted towards fairly mundane stuff (16 entries are for ordinary animals like horses, cats, dogs, swarms of rats, etc)

I have a stub of a D&D Monster called a Plague Spewer in my Maybe Monster File but I haven't statted it yet. In D&D it's an undead giant that spreads disease by contact, beat things to death with it's mighty fists, and it vomits up live swarms of rats.

Maylar isn't a huge fan of undead seeing them as lowly pawns at best, but I figure Maylar would like rats. Rats are vicious fighters, consumate survivors, and vectors for disease.

The slate is clean. Maybe I will go with spores.

This could kick sand in the face of his rival Hallisan who encourages the proliferation of helpful tasty mushrooms to aid his favored children the dwarves. Maylar has many enemies, not just Mera. Nami is the only divine sibling Maylar likes. He views Greymoria as being useful to him in a cold pragmatic fashion (Greymoria mirrors this) and he tolerates Korus.

I was originally going to have everyone stand side by side with the deities they like best but I cannot make a circle that way if I don't put Korus in the center and I don't want to because while Korus is the deity that no one hates, he is not really the leader and shouldn't be in the center.

I figure the Zodiac layout would be used as the baseline for how old school temple districts lay out their temples. In such a district, the Nine temples are arranged in a circle around a central courtyard which is shared and used for holiday celebrations. Note, while such a layout is traditional, a majority of cities don't put all the temples in one place. It's more common in villages where they don't have enough people for full temples, only simple shrines.

Or let them pick. Favored souls are born during their deity's year disproportionally often, especially for the three lawful deities. Favored souls of Khemra are only born during Khemra's zodiac year (three or four in the world typically). Every 81 years years, Khemra has an "Ascendant Zodiac" year where a dozen or so favored souls are born). Neshik is a favored soul of Khemra.

Spoiler: WITH A DARK SECRET

Neshik's player (who I am pretty sure doesn't visit L-O but better safe than sorry). He took a bunch of exotic Merits including a special aptitude towards healing magic which Khemra's casters rarely possess among other things.

He also took a bunch of Flaws including amnesia. He doesn't know where he is from or who is parents are.

That's because his mother was a Khemra spirit of healing who fell in love with mortal cleric and they had a half-spirit child. Half spirit children are relatively common in Scarterras, but Khemra has forbidden her spirit servants from engaging in such couplings. Even more scandalous, Neshik was born...outside of Khemra's Zodiac year.

Neshik didn't ask to be born and he is living avatar of her power, so he was not punished for his parents' misdeed, but Neshik's parents were. I haven't figured out their full punishment, but they are barred from speaking to their son. With Neshik's amnesia, everyone assumes he was born during Khemra's Zodiac year.

I'm probably going to have Mama watching him from afar.

Fun tangent, Zarthus the Chaotic Good god, does not worry about his zodiac year much, favored souls are born to Zarthus pretty much at a constant rate but during Zarthus' zodiac year, his favored souls are usually born into familiess that dislike or even hate Zarthus, they are often the rebellious children of ironfisted rulers. A lot of nobles try to avoid having children around this time. At least one such character is trying to sabotage the Swynfaredian invasion of Fumaya from the inside.

I did find some old scratch paper I jotted out for the zodiac year. In this early draft, rather than aportioning the zodiac year to pair deities with their friends or keep them away from their rivals, Maylar called dibs on the year one spot because he was the least injured in the fight with Turoch. The others followed suit and basically quickest first turned into this.

1-Year of Maylar
2-Year of Mera
3-Year of Korus
4-Year of Nami
5-Year of Greymoria
6-Year of Khemra
7-Year of Zarthus
8-Year of Hallisan
9-Year of Phidas
>1-Year of Maylar

Might as well stick with that because I cannot think of anything better at the moment. No one is particularly happy with that seating arrangments and since no one is happy, that means it's a good compromise.

Seems reasonable.

That's just as well. In a way, Mera is the direct opposite of both Greymoria and Maylar.

Maybe, but I prefer the Void not exist in the sky.

I was pondering some kind of Hades scheme. I am still not sure how afterlife tiers would work. I prefer something like the Asphodel fields instead of Tartarus or the Fields of Punishment.

I could have something like Tartarus, but to be sent there a mortal would have to offend ALL the gods. It's hard to imagine how someone could irrevocably anger both Maylar and Mera, let alone the other seven all in one go.

This was more based on D&D but I guess it can still work for my homebrew but my original idea was to have the Aetherial Realm (aka the sky) exist as it's own plane with a bunch of animals and trees that glow with silvery starlight. D&D 3.5 has fiendish (demonic) and celestial (angelic) versions of normal animals that mainly exist to be summoned by spells. They are slightly stronger and much smarter than the normal animals they are based off. I created a D&D 3.5 monster called Aetherial animals so wizards and clerics could summon a similar fighting monster.

My current concept is that the Aetherial realm has lots of starry empty space, but the Nine would each have a castle or walled city for their own personal realm. Maybe some kind of pseudo realm around their city or fortress that is technically neutral territory but falls indirectly under their influence.

At some point I need to figure out the afterlife but since my world doesn't have people coming back from the dead or casual planar travel like D&D usually does, it's not a short-term problem.

The Syracusia carried corn in Ancient Greece? I thought corn was New World crop. That was at least 1500 years before corn was cultivated in Europe.