A while back I posted about my 4e players beginning to figure out how to assemble magical circuitry to create magical "machines" that functioned much differently from the magical items created through rituals in 4e. Plants, organs from magical creatures and magical crystals and minerals could be combined to create magical effects. This worked in a fairly straightforward manner; the blast cannons the party made from the legs of genetically-modified partially robotic giant insects and the dark organs of the larval spawn of an elder godcreature are an excellent example.
Next, the party figured out that magical energy could be transformed in the shadow world to enable magical machines to perform many more functions. They first learned about this by observing how shadow pearls in a magical shield constructed by the snake men scientists transformed raw energy and created both a repulsor beam to fly the shield as well as a laser to blast the crap out of things. I want to post more about the magical discoveries the party has made since then, but first I need to lay out some cosmological groundwork.
In my game cosmology there is the physical world, the spirit world and the shadow world. The physical world is a multiverse that I call the IPM (infinite possibility matrix) in my games (I use this cosmology independent of system - I used it for my 3e game and my Mutant Future game as well as the 4e campaign). The main thing distinguishing the IPM from any other multiversal theory is the travel of energy between different possibilities. Imagine every particle of energy in the universe somehow "freezing" in time. The planets and suns and comets stop zooming around and hang motionless, as do the electrons and protons and in turn quarks and neutrinos... and if you zoomed in as far as you could on an individual unit of energy, in the IPM you would discover that the smallest unit of energy both does and does not exist at the same time. In the frozen universe, outside of time, energy flickers in and out of existence. It is travelling outside of time between the different possible universes.
If you could somehow follow the flow of energy outside of time between the different possible universes you would be in the shadow world. The shadow world exists outside of time and the usual constraints on the forms energy can take. It could simultaneously be thought of as an undifferentiated sea of energy, and as a sea of every form that energy could take. If you followed a linear conception of time backward to the big bang, the shadow world is on the other side of the big bang if you kept heading "backward".
The spirit world is the borderland between the physical world and the shadow world. There are as many spirit worlds as there are possible universes, but there is only one shadow world. The spirit world is how/where energy leaves the universe to join the shadow world, and the spirit world is how/where energy returns to the universe from the shadow world. The spirit world could be thought of as a veil that covers the universe and defines its bounds, even as energy flows to and from the universe through the spirit world into deep shadow and all other possible universes. As energy constantly flows between the different probable universes, it is possible for networks of energy to simultaneously become sentient in the spirit world surrounding a universe. Once such a consciousness arises, it persists even though the individual units of energy that make it up are constantly in flux. These are spirits. Different sorts of spirits arise in the different spirit worlds surrounding different possible universes.
Back to magical circuitry - every universe has rules that govern how energy can behave. Anything that breaks those rules is magic. The way that magic functions is to tap into the possible forms of energy in the shadow world and make energy returning to the universe retain these shadow forms. The study of magic is the study of the potential forms of energy, how to tease out the desired form in the shadow world, and how to bring back that form through the spirit world.
Showing posts with label spirit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spirit. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Ethnographies! A DM's best friend
I admit it. I have totally lost focus. I had a specific purpose in mind when I started this blog.
I wanted a blog that I could freely publish on without having to censor myself. I wanted a place where I could reveal the unfinished side of the DM's screen, the teetering construction of notes, drawings and inspiration that existed in the moments before game night.
I wanted to talk about the thought processes that led to the fun times. I am a good DM. I say that without false modesty, and with a confidence that can only be won with the experience of pulling off the successful juggling act literally hundreds of times.
My other blog had become a place that only reflected the amazing polished creation, the session, the actual living drama, the flesh of the god of RPG's. The ongoing story, narrated by players and DM alike.
No, I wanted a blog that I could publish the unfinished bits and pieces to, without fear that a player might stumble across the blog and learn the secret before I figured out where exactly to insert it into the ongoing campaign.
As it has happened, this blog has kind of become my default 4e blog, because I was just beginning to dabble in playing and DMing D&D 4e when I first started writing this blog. This has meant that I have, indeed, been censoring this blog so as not to blow some major secrets of the campaign. It has also resulted in some session recaps, which are (of course) exactly the finished process kind of stuff that I was trying to avoid with this blog.
I want to get back to the unfinished and process-oriented goals of this blog. This will probably mean less material directly focused on the unfolding events of my 4e game, and more posts on my observations as a DM and wanna-be game auteur. Or maybe it will mean that I quit giving a shit if any of my 4e players see this and post anyway! Maybe a simple warning at the beginning of a post.
But enough about that. Today I want to talk about ethnographies. An ethnography is a written description of a human culture distilled from the research of an anthropologist. You can find ethnographies at any used book store in a college town. They almost invariably look like the one below, varying only in the subject matter and the color of the cover.
They will typically be about 100 pages in a format very similar to the LBBs. They will contain a distillation of a human culture which can easily be grafted onto any race in your campaign world. They contain a cosmology, not just gods and spirits, but a description of how the divine is viewed, and interacted with, and impacts day to day life. They will tell you about a human adaptation to an environment, culturally and technologically, that enables the culture to derive sustenance from the land. They will contain descriptions of ceremonies and feasts. They may contain titillating details of secret societies, fraternal organizations, magic spells and witcrcraft. But most importantly, they will teach you that EVERYTHING that we take for granted as "normal" would most likely be completely different in a monstrous or alien culture. What does brother or sister mean? I assume that you and I share a similar definition for that term. What does marriage mean? Are humans immortal (can they die from natural causes)? If it surprises you that the answers to all of these questions vary dramatically across human cultures, than I suspect the fantasy cultures and monsters in your RPG life are probably far too vanilla.
I use my ethnographic collection much more often than I use my vast RPG library, and I have never paid more than $10 for a single one (and most were far cheaper, if you don't mind a dinged up cover or high-lighter covered text). As an example, the players in my 4e campaign have been getting to know the Yanomamo indians of Brazil and Venezuala as they are presented in Napolean Chagnon's famous ethnography, Yanomamo: the Fierce People (at the time of my typing, this link leads to an amazon.com page for the exact same edition I own, pictured above, used, 11 copies, starting at $1.90!).
The party has been staying in a Yanomamo village for several weeks of game time, and one party member has even completed the ritual fasting and drug taking requirements to become a shabori (sort of like a shaman, basically someone who has invited a spirit or hekura to live inside him [this is a male tradition] which can then be exhorted to cause harm to enemies or protect allies). I have implemented the Yanomamo cosmology with the 4e mechanical engine quite easily and effectively. Hekura cost the permanent loss of a healing surge when they call your chest their home. They grant an encounter power that can be used as a minor action, and in my game, that encounter power is related to the particular manifestation of energy that the hekura represents. I tend to use real world sources as inspiration, not doctrine, so I riffed on the idea of hekura a little bit. In my 4e world, hekura are tiny spirits that each represent one particular form that energy can take - so there are lightning hekura, curative hekura, disease hekura, fire hekura, dance hekura, song hekura, etc.
This post has almost made me want to do a series of posts drawing from my collection of ethnographies. A distillation of the ethnography into the bits that are most interesting for game play. I would probably start with the Igbo of Southeast Nigeria. Or possibly the Mardudjara aborigines of Australia.
I wanted a blog that I could freely publish on without having to censor myself. I wanted a place where I could reveal the unfinished side of the DM's screen, the teetering construction of notes, drawings and inspiration that existed in the moments before game night.
I wanted to talk about the thought processes that led to the fun times. I am a good DM. I say that without false modesty, and with a confidence that can only be won with the experience of pulling off the successful juggling act literally hundreds of times.
My other blog had become a place that only reflected the amazing polished creation, the session, the actual living drama, the flesh of the god of RPG's. The ongoing story, narrated by players and DM alike.
No, I wanted a blog that I could publish the unfinished bits and pieces to, without fear that a player might stumble across the blog and learn the secret before I figured out where exactly to insert it into the ongoing campaign.
As it has happened, this blog has kind of become my default 4e blog, because I was just beginning to dabble in playing and DMing D&D 4e when I first started writing this blog. This has meant that I have, indeed, been censoring this blog so as not to blow some major secrets of the campaign. It has also resulted in some session recaps, which are (of course) exactly the finished process kind of stuff that I was trying to avoid with this blog.
I want to get back to the unfinished and process-oriented goals of this blog. This will probably mean less material directly focused on the unfolding events of my 4e game, and more posts on my observations as a DM and wanna-be game auteur. Or maybe it will mean that I quit giving a shit if any of my 4e players see this and post anyway! Maybe a simple warning at the beginning of a post.
But enough about that. Today I want to talk about ethnographies. An ethnography is a written description of a human culture distilled from the research of an anthropologist. You can find ethnographies at any used book store in a college town. They almost invariably look like the one below, varying only in the subject matter and the color of the cover.
I collect ethnographies, and I think any DMs reading this out there in blogland would be wise to do so as well.
You see, the thing is, people are crazy. You may think you have a wild imagination. Your late night inspiration, your fantasy creation, pulled from literary inspirations, movies, from past campaigns... sorry to tell you, it doesn't hold a candle to the real thing.
With that in mind: Ethnographies are the DM's best friend!
They will typically be about 100 pages in a format very similar to the LBBs. They will contain a distillation of a human culture which can easily be grafted onto any race in your campaign world. They contain a cosmology, not just gods and spirits, but a description of how the divine is viewed, and interacted with, and impacts day to day life. They will tell you about a human adaptation to an environment, culturally and technologically, that enables the culture to derive sustenance from the land. They will contain descriptions of ceremonies and feasts. They may contain titillating details of secret societies, fraternal organizations, magic spells and witcrcraft. But most importantly, they will teach you that EVERYTHING that we take for granted as "normal" would most likely be completely different in a monstrous or alien culture. What does brother or sister mean? I assume that you and I share a similar definition for that term. What does marriage mean? Are humans immortal (can they die from natural causes)? If it surprises you that the answers to all of these questions vary dramatically across human cultures, than I suspect the fantasy cultures and monsters in your RPG life are probably far too vanilla.
I use my ethnographic collection much more often than I use my vast RPG library, and I have never paid more than $10 for a single one (and most were far cheaper, if you don't mind a dinged up cover or high-lighter covered text). As an example, the players in my 4e campaign have been getting to know the Yanomamo indians of Brazil and Venezuala as they are presented in Napolean Chagnon's famous ethnography, Yanomamo: the Fierce People (at the time of my typing, this link leads to an amazon.com page for the exact same edition I own, pictured above, used, 11 copies, starting at $1.90!).
The party has been staying in a Yanomamo village for several weeks of game time, and one party member has even completed the ritual fasting and drug taking requirements to become a shabori (sort of like a shaman, basically someone who has invited a spirit or hekura to live inside him [this is a male tradition] which can then be exhorted to cause harm to enemies or protect allies). I have implemented the Yanomamo cosmology with the 4e mechanical engine quite easily and effectively. Hekura cost the permanent loss of a healing surge when they call your chest their home. They grant an encounter power that can be used as a minor action, and in my game, that encounter power is related to the particular manifestation of energy that the hekura represents. I tend to use real world sources as inspiration, not doctrine, so I riffed on the idea of hekura a little bit. In my 4e world, hekura are tiny spirits that each represent one particular form that energy can take - so there are lightning hekura, curative hekura, disease hekura, fire hekura, dance hekura, song hekura, etc.
This post has almost made me want to do a series of posts drawing from my collection of ethnographies. A distillation of the ethnography into the bits that are most interesting for game play. I would probably start with the Igbo of Southeast Nigeria. Or possibly the Mardudjara aborigines of Australia.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Snuff Demons, Hekura, and little magic monkeys that grant you immortality if you eat their crushed bones
Yup, its been a while since I posted about my 4e campaign. That does not mean shit has not been happening! The party has finally made it across the imposing 30,000' tall mountain range to the verdant jungle beyond that slopes far away until it finally meets another ocean. Along the way, exploring a forgotten temple they found 20 miles under the mountain along the tunnel they were following, they accidentally released a great elder being.
I will have to do a separate post about this incident, or perhaps ask Mike (the player of Tilia the albino minotaur in the campaign) to write another guest blog post detailing his decision to drop a magical fungus (that he knew fed off of magical radiation and water and could grow with breathtaking rapidity in the right conditions) into a closed series of flooded tubing leading down to a contained elder entity that was doing very little else but radiate intense magical energy which was being trapped and siphoned by the magical wards and systems in place around it. This thing was called Kariki Kalos by those who built the temple and here is what it looks like (the jellyfish like cap is 3000' feet across, the main body from tentacle tip to the top of the cap is 3500', and the long stinging (radiant and lightning damage) tendrils stretch out up to 15,000' behind). A "light organ" inside the cap emits a burning beam of light and from each lidless eye (18 in all, in a circle around the gaping mouth) a ray of darkness is cast.
But that is not what I want to write about. On the other side of the mountain now, the party has taken up with one among many independent, but loosely organized (by kinship, trading and raiding ties), bands of an indigenous human population that call themselves "the fierce people". After an initial tense and frequently hostile confrontation with an overwhelming force of fierce warriors brandishing bows and blowguns, many with glowing red or black eyes and red or black slime oozing out of their noses, the party finally fell in with an older shabori (shaman) who had foreseen their arrival and was eager to question them.
The shabori, Titsi-Waa, somehow managed to intimidate the waitari (chieftain, literally "the fiercest") that was confronting the party. The shabori puffed himself up as much as his lame leg would allow, and then something strange happened. His chest began to expand and swell, as if something was inside it. Then his eyes flashed and the waitari big man backed down, called to his men, and ran off up the mountain pursuing the original mission of glorious death while fighting an awakened god.
While this was happening, Tilia pulled down the Goggles of Arcana that she had made last session (from small black crystal disks she discovered behind each of the 18 eyes surrounding the central mouth of the larval form of Kariki-Kalos - the party was beset upon by many of the 30' larval monstrosities, which emitted beams of darkness from their eyes and a blast of burning light from their horned tail). These give her a bonus to Arcana checks performed while attempting to diving the nature of a magical occurrence. Looking with "magic vision", she saw four tiny humanoid creatures (hekura) living inside the old shabori's chest. One of these was performing a magical incantation, growing and swelling and changing in form as it did so. Tilia was able to divine something of the rough nature of each hekura; one was a protective charm spirit, one (the active one) was a malicious curse spirit, one caused sickness and disease, and one cured such ailments.
Later the party learned that the hekura are a race of spirit beings that live in the spirit world. Places in the real world marked by large isolated boulders, or rocky mountain sides, are frequented by hekura in the spirit world. You cannot persuade hekura to live inside you by going to them in the physical world. You must visit them in the spirit world and sing to them and dance until they voluntarily enter your body, draining a small part of your physical essence but greatly enriching your ability to interact with the spirit world.
The fierce people visit the spirit world primarily through the use of a snuff made from the bark of the ebene tree ground and mixed with saliva and ash. This mixture is then dried and pounded to form a snuff that is shot through a tube into the nose of the recipient. There is no attack roll required to hit the recipient if the snuff is taken in this manner. Part of the inhaler's soul (the noreshi) leaves the body and, attached by an umbilical energy chord invisible to the inhaler and unbreakable to all others, must reside in the spirit world for 2d4 hours. If the noreshi wanders too far from the body and is lost, or cannot return in time, the noreshi can be come separated from the body and a serious and invariably fatal illness will set in unless the lost noreshi can be found and recaptured.
[mechanics sidebar: the cosmologies of my campaigns rarely resemble any printed "official" version too closely. In this case, you could think of the "spirit world" of the campaign as the shadowfell and feywild of 4e rolled into one, with a good dose of what the astral sea is supposed to accomplish in 4e as well.]
The party also eventually learned that the red and black eyes and snot of the warriors they encountered in the jungle (already ferocious looking with faces painted black and large plugs of tobacco in their lips) were caused by beings known as "snuff demons". Summoned by snuffs artfully composed of ground seeds and powders, the snuff demon marked by red eyes and mucous is known as an aihal and the one marked by sunken black eyes and dark mucous is known as aihan.
Snuff Demon Aihal
After being summoned inside the nasal passages, an aihal snuff demon grants the inhaler the ability to see in the dark as if it were daylight, +2 to hit and damage with basic ranged attacks and the ability to make an extra basic ranged attack once per round as a free action. Until the aihal is expelled in a dark red mass of goo, the inhaler take a -5 penalty to Will defense.
Snuff Demon Aihan
After appearing in the nasal cavities, aihan radiates a fear aura 2 in which all enemies take a -2 penalty to hit. The inhaler also receives +2 to hit and damage with basic melee attacks and the ability to make an extra basic melee attack once per round as a free action. Until the aihan is expelled in a black mass of goo, the inhaler take a -5 penalty to Will defense.
Little Magic Monkeys that grant you immortality if you eat their crushed bones:
Let me say here that my players have a nasty habit of rolling critical successes at all the critical times. Nat 20's, and even natural 30's on the once a session roll of the d30 that every player gets (check out my sidebar to the upper left, Order of the d30, if you don't know what I am talking about), abound in my game. Dunno how or why, this has just been one of the luckiest groups I have ever seen. So the group had just managed to somehow avoid a sure confrontation with an angry allosaurus that had ambushed them when they found themselves in the midst of a wildlife stampede. The fierce people had united when the side of the mountain blew off, and thousands of warriors beat drums and spears against trees as they marched to the mountain to do battle with the great god that was supposed to rise up during the end of the world. They drove the animals and dinosaurs of the jungle ahead of them.
Tilia, ever interested in collecting, examining and cataloguing the flora and fauna of the new world, took this opportunity to collect some animal species.
So Tilia rolls a nature check (I usually use checks like this as a rough barometer to see how well a player succeeds, rather than a simple yes/no, succeed/fail target number skill check) and gets a natural 20. I decide on the spot to introduce an interesting creature to the scene that I hadn't figured the players would run into for quite a while. Nearly impossible to catch, blindingly quick and possessing the ability to run on air as if it were solid ground, the tiny tsoru-tsoru (fast fast) monkey is as intelligent as a human but has a nearly immortal lifespan. Cooking a tsoru-tsoru in a stew, boiling it down until there is nothing left but bones, and then grinding those bones and eating the resulting paste grants near immortality and great resistance to physical and mental damage. The party learned this when the host village that they were staying at began loudly demanding that Tilia cook the tsoru-tsoru and share its bones.
A nature-lover through and through, and already aware of the creature's intelligence, Tilia was loathe to acquiesce to her hosts' demands but also wanted to avoid upsetting them. Tilia began questioning the monkey (with the aid of the comprehend languages ritual that has come in handy so many times for Beautiful Bob the face man of the group) and soon found out that the tsoru-tsoru (like all young adults of its species) had to remain in the jungle until it had caught enough "lightning bugs" to "last it a lifetime in the cloud city" where the tsoru-tsoru had "sorcerers more powerful than you can imagine". Some back and forth questioning with the village elders revealed that the lightning bugs spoken of by the monkey and a very valuable spirit creature called a spirit beetle by the elders were the same thing. Tilia arranged a deal where she would let the monkey go if he would promise to deliver a weeks catch of lightning bugs, which could apparently be used as one-use magical batteries, to add potency to a magical attack or effect or to create and power a one use magical device. This was made much more poignant by the presence of the pregnant mate of the capture monkey, who had followed the party through the jungle and was hiding out at the smoke hole rim of the thatched roof which enclosed the circular village. Reunited at last, the couple dissapeared into the jungle and the party turned their attention to more pressing matters...
Much more to come. Trying to even MENTION all the plot threads that are out there, just tempting the players with all their juicy glory, would take quite a while, let alone fully describing them.
I will have to do a separate post about this incident, or perhaps ask Mike (the player of Tilia the albino minotaur in the campaign) to write another guest blog post detailing his decision to drop a magical fungus (that he knew fed off of magical radiation and water and could grow with breathtaking rapidity in the right conditions) into a closed series of flooded tubing leading down to a contained elder entity that was doing very little else but radiate intense magical energy which was being trapped and siphoned by the magical wards and systems in place around it. This thing was called Kariki Kalos by those who built the temple and here is what it looks like (the jellyfish like cap is 3000' feet across, the main body from tentacle tip to the top of the cap is 3500', and the long stinging (radiant and lightning damage) tendrils stretch out up to 15,000' behind). A "light organ" inside the cap emits a burning beam of light and from each lidless eye (18 in all, in a circle around the gaping mouth) a ray of darkness is cast.
But that is not what I want to write about. On the other side of the mountain now, the party has taken up with one among many independent, but loosely organized (by kinship, trading and raiding ties), bands of an indigenous human population that call themselves "the fierce people". After an initial tense and frequently hostile confrontation with an overwhelming force of fierce warriors brandishing bows and blowguns, many with glowing red or black eyes and red or black slime oozing out of their noses, the party finally fell in with an older shabori (shaman) who had foreseen their arrival and was eager to question them.
The shabori, Titsi-Waa, somehow managed to intimidate the waitari (chieftain, literally "the fiercest") that was confronting the party. The shabori puffed himself up as much as his lame leg would allow, and then something strange happened. His chest began to expand and swell, as if something was inside it. Then his eyes flashed and the waitari big man backed down, called to his men, and ran off up the mountain pursuing the original mission of glorious death while fighting an awakened god.
While this was happening, Tilia pulled down the Goggles of Arcana that she had made last session (from small black crystal disks she discovered behind each of the 18 eyes surrounding the central mouth of the larval form of Kariki-Kalos - the party was beset upon by many of the 30' larval monstrosities, which emitted beams of darkness from their eyes and a blast of burning light from their horned tail). These give her a bonus to Arcana checks performed while attempting to diving the nature of a magical occurrence. Looking with "magic vision", she saw four tiny humanoid creatures (hekura) living inside the old shabori's chest. One of these was performing a magical incantation, growing and swelling and changing in form as it did so. Tilia was able to divine something of the rough nature of each hekura; one was a protective charm spirit, one (the active one) was a malicious curse spirit, one caused sickness and disease, and one cured such ailments.
Later the party learned that the hekura are a race of spirit beings that live in the spirit world. Places in the real world marked by large isolated boulders, or rocky mountain sides, are frequented by hekura in the spirit world. You cannot persuade hekura to live inside you by going to them in the physical world. You must visit them in the spirit world and sing to them and dance until they voluntarily enter your body, draining a small part of your physical essence but greatly enriching your ability to interact with the spirit world.
The fierce people visit the spirit world primarily through the use of a snuff made from the bark of the ebene tree ground and mixed with saliva and ash. This mixture is then dried and pounded to form a snuff that is shot through a tube into the nose of the recipient. There is no attack roll required to hit the recipient if the snuff is taken in this manner. Part of the inhaler's soul (the noreshi) leaves the body and, attached by an umbilical energy chord invisible to the inhaler and unbreakable to all others, must reside in the spirit world for 2d4 hours. If the noreshi wanders too far from the body and is lost, or cannot return in time, the noreshi can be come separated from the body and a serious and invariably fatal illness will set in unless the lost noreshi can be found and recaptured.
[mechanics sidebar: the cosmologies of my campaigns rarely resemble any printed "official" version too closely. In this case, you could think of the "spirit world" of the campaign as the shadowfell and feywild of 4e rolled into one, with a good dose of what the astral sea is supposed to accomplish in 4e as well.]
The party also eventually learned that the red and black eyes and snot of the warriors they encountered in the jungle (already ferocious looking with faces painted black and large plugs of tobacco in their lips) were caused by beings known as "snuff demons". Summoned by snuffs artfully composed of ground seeds and powders, the snuff demon marked by red eyes and mucous is known as an aihal and the one marked by sunken black eyes and dark mucous is known as aihan.
Snuff Demon Aihal
After being summoned inside the nasal passages, an aihal snuff demon grants the inhaler the ability to see in the dark as if it were daylight, +2 to hit and damage with basic ranged attacks and the ability to make an extra basic ranged attack once per round as a free action. Until the aihal is expelled in a dark red mass of goo, the inhaler take a -5 penalty to Will defense.
Snuff Demon Aihan
After appearing in the nasal cavities, aihan radiates a fear aura 2 in which all enemies take a -2 penalty to hit. The inhaler also receives +2 to hit and damage with basic melee attacks and the ability to make an extra basic melee attack once per round as a free action. Until the aihan is expelled in a black mass of goo, the inhaler take a -5 penalty to Will defense.
Little Magic Monkeys that grant you immortality if you eat their crushed bones:
Let me say here that my players have a nasty habit of rolling critical successes at all the critical times. Nat 20's, and even natural 30's on the once a session roll of the d30 that every player gets (check out my sidebar to the upper left, Order of the d30, if you don't know what I am talking about), abound in my game. Dunno how or why, this has just been one of the luckiest groups I have ever seen. So the group had just managed to somehow avoid a sure confrontation with an angry allosaurus that had ambushed them when they found themselves in the midst of a wildlife stampede. The fierce people had united when the side of the mountain blew off, and thousands of warriors beat drums and spears against trees as they marched to the mountain to do battle with the great god that was supposed to rise up during the end of the world. They drove the animals and dinosaurs of the jungle ahead of them.
Tilia, ever interested in collecting, examining and cataloguing the flora and fauna of the new world, took this opportunity to collect some animal species.
So Tilia rolls a nature check (I usually use checks like this as a rough barometer to see how well a player succeeds, rather than a simple yes/no, succeed/fail target number skill check) and gets a natural 20. I decide on the spot to introduce an interesting creature to the scene that I hadn't figured the players would run into for quite a while. Nearly impossible to catch, blindingly quick and possessing the ability to run on air as if it were solid ground, the tiny tsoru-tsoru (fast fast) monkey is as intelligent as a human but has a nearly immortal lifespan. Cooking a tsoru-tsoru in a stew, boiling it down until there is nothing left but bones, and then grinding those bones and eating the resulting paste grants near immortality and great resistance to physical and mental damage. The party learned this when the host village that they were staying at began loudly demanding that Tilia cook the tsoru-tsoru and share its bones.
A nature-lover through and through, and already aware of the creature's intelligence, Tilia was loathe to acquiesce to her hosts' demands but also wanted to avoid upsetting them. Tilia began questioning the monkey (with the aid of the comprehend languages ritual that has come in handy so many times for Beautiful Bob the face man of the group) and soon found out that the tsoru-tsoru (like all young adults of its species) had to remain in the jungle until it had caught enough "lightning bugs" to "last it a lifetime in the cloud city" where the tsoru-tsoru had "sorcerers more powerful than you can imagine". Some back and forth questioning with the village elders revealed that the lightning bugs spoken of by the monkey and a very valuable spirit creature called a spirit beetle by the elders were the same thing. Tilia arranged a deal where she would let the monkey go if he would promise to deliver a weeks catch of lightning bugs, which could apparently be used as one-use magical batteries, to add potency to a magical attack or effect or to create and power a one use magical device. This was made much more poignant by the presence of the pregnant mate of the capture monkey, who had followed the party through the jungle and was hiding out at the smoke hole rim of the thatched roof which enclosed the circular village. Reunited at last, the couple dissapeared into the jungle and the party turned their attention to more pressing matters...
Much more to come. Trying to even MENTION all the plot threads that are out there, just tempting the players with all their juicy glory, would take quite a while, let alone fully describing them.
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