Hex Crawl 23 #184: Valley of Mists

 Five hexes north, two northwest of Alakran.

 

Here a plain narrows into two out-thrust arms of the Scarp wonderfully coloured as if by a painter, in bands of red, pink, orange, and gold. Between these ridges huddles a pearlescent mist not normal in any  season. The moist veil lingers in its cusp, no matter how hot the sun or how violent the winds.

In the Dhuga Hills, the valley of mists is a popular end-of-life destination for many elders of a philosophical or curious bent. They go into the mists and they never leave. Others who wish to avail themselves of wisdom go in and -- most of the time -- return. It is said that in the valley you may stumble across a skull of one of the departed elders, and then it will give you the knowledge you seek, within the bounds of its own knowledge (which goes far beyond the things it knew in life). But the skull, without meaning to, for such is its nature now, is liable to add something that counts as "too much knowledge", whether it be a maddening full glimpse of the reality of the void behind the universe, or simply what your husband got up to last week while you were away in Eryptos.

The Old One-Armed Man's Monster Guide

How to balance the need to keep a not-always-level-appropriate environment fair to players, with the need to keep a sense of mystery about the campaign? There has to be a middle ground between the monster-book memorizers and the clueless neophytes who unwisely take on a troll.

Most of the people I've been DMing for recently are new to the hobby, and I've been trying a variety of subtle and not so subtle hints. I think one thing that might work is just a simple rule of thumb based on size, with cautions about oddball monsters and special powers. This says nothing about what kind of bestiary the DM is working with, but avoids some of the more obvious mismatches, as long as you refrain from throwing killer bunnies into the mix. By the way, fighters should also be able to size up the fighting capacities of other humans and beings with levels.

I ran out of room to mention dragons on this sheet, but there's no real need to, right?

Click to enlarge. Apologies in advance for the Bush-era color code flashbacks.

The Fantastic Through Obscurity

Discussion on how to keep the fantastic in adventure gaming continues, with a renewed desire and specific tips. My further thoughts ...

In information security, the phrase "security through obscurity" is used to disparage the hope that vulnerabilities can be protected by keeping them secret. In their early stages of development, many game forms achieve a sense of wonder through obscurity. Magic: The Gathering, for example, initially provided this sense of wonder through opening packets of collectible cards and finding ones you'd never seen before ... or having them show up in your opponent's deck. Eventually, like many security-though-obscurity hopes, this was dashed through the posting of complete spoilers on the nascent Internet, and through the practice that rapidly developed (to Wizards of the Coast's great joy) of buying whole boxes of product in order to get a complete set. Within a few years it was a poor collectible card game whose manufacturer did not provide rarity symbols, checklists, and eventually complete spoilers and previews.

Was there an attempt to keep the fantastic around through obscurity in early D&D? It's hard to deny when reading the Gygaxian objurgations in AD&D to keep players' noses out of the Dungeon Master's Guide. But that is already late in the day. The time of wonder and fantasy is fading, and the desire to standardize the game deals the death blow; the secrets that used to be kept in the Dungeon Master's cranium are now holy writ. In this light the railing against players accessing the mass-produced secrets sold in Barnes and Noble sounds as hollow as Canute's commands against the tide.

In the age of the Internet spoiler the sense of wonder is even more crucially down to the individual game master. In the comments on Monsters & Manuals I made a point that bears expanding here.

1. When players are denied access to the rules that let them carry out mundane tasks at the starting level, this creates a denial of mastery. You can certainly play this way, with players issuing orders and seeing what happens, in a "fog of war" kind of way. But a lot of players are used to a certain level of rules mastery; a generation has grown up with console RPGs. You don't have to deny them this all the way.

2. Expanding what I've said about high level magic spells, denying knowledge of rules and techniques found at higher levels also helps create the sense of wonder. If the game was about kung fu, then not being able to read all about what a high level Taoist master can do would help achieve this.

3. The technique in Lamentations of providing no standardized monsters or magic items points the way to a game system where the rules of the mundane are known to the players, but the fantastic elements are an idiosyncratic revelation from game to game. Yes, creating the fantastic is hard individual work for the DM. But the alternative, especially with experienced games, is a group of players who ready the oil when they see a troll, who can find out exactly how much every gland in every dead monster corpse is worth, and for whom the only surprise is tactical, not strategic.

I have a few ideas of my own, both on how to make the hard work easier, and how to make the hard work mean more. Next post I'll try to articulate them more fully.

The Grand Mysteries: Gold and Brown

With this post, the spell lists and mysteries come to a close.

I just want to give a peek at what's coming next. I have come to the conclusion that a) magic systems, especially sacred magic, imply a lot about their setting; b) I would rather present material that covers a variety of possible settings; c) there are three main ways that D&D campaigns typically treat the metaphysical world; d) each of these ways understands alignment differently; e) the understanding of alignment is crucial to the way sacred magic is handled.

So starting with a discussion of alignment, we are eventually going to end up with spellcaster classes and lists for three different template worlds: Sorcery World, Pantheon World, and Church World.

And now, the final mysteries of chromatic magic.

The Grand Mystery of the Golden School: The Angel of Resurrection

"Mercy given to those who deserve it not? That is the act of the fool, and of the Most Sublime" - so goes the saying that distinguishes Mercy from Justice. In the Golden School of healing and helping, the greatest mercy is contained in the Mystery of Resurrection - the restoration to full life and freedom of those long dead, or imprisoned on some far-off plane. The Angel, so the holy writings attest, need only hear the name and understand the identity of the person to bring him or her back in an instant.

Such power, exercised wholly on the behalf of another, nonetheless has its risks. Those who carefully read accounts of Resurrections will see hints at a toll taken upon the master who has invoked the Mystery - a diminishing of life in some way, the same risk of painful death as a woman in childbirth, a mysterious growing lesser even as the restored person strides about the world and grows greater.

There is also a more insidious shadow underlying the Great Golden Mystery. The simpler miracle of Raising the Dead merely calls back the spirit from its journey to the afterlife; the Resurrection brings the whole being, body and soul, back from its existence on another plane. It is precisely the unworthy - those condemned to the torments of Hell, or to the tedium reserved for the noncommittal - who most rejoice in their new life; but such people may not be properly grateful to their rescuer. On the other hand, those of good will are plucked from paradise, and the consequences of that shift are unpredictable. Saint Yvale used her profound understanding of this Mystery to have the Angel revive the legendary hero Ragnuoth at a time of great need for the Cities of the Wood. Ragnuoth, alas! had spent five hundred years purging his wrathful sins, and stepped forth as gently as a new-hatched chick, content only to tend the wounded and stir the gruel kettle while the Cities burned. 

The Grand Mystery of the Brown School: The Genius of the Earth

The final arcanum of the Brown School is certainly not something that mankind has created, so much as approached. It is spoken of as a place, an impossible place for those who do not hold the surest command of the earth and elements - a deep cavern with no entrances, a chasm at the heart of an impassable and corrupted forest, a circle of stones in the lightless and crushing depths of the sea. Perhaps in each of these places the aspirant may find one face of the Genius of the Earth, and learn from it the mysteries of the First Things, of magic before reason or revelation.

Great indeed must be the determination of the aspirant to learn these things and not feel compelled to settle down as a hermit, Protector of some sacred part of the Earth. Indeed, some who have studied the Transcendence doubt that the Brown School's Mystery is necessary to attain it; it is a dead end, they claim, a primitive first stab at magic whose final revelation ends up chaining its master to the Earth.

What is clear is that a master of the Brown School, settled or no, possesses immense powers over the whole natural world, tending towards its preservation or restoration. The best-known legend is that of the proud city of Cithar, Cithar of the high-helmeted swordsmen, who sought to honor its founder by sculpting a nearby mountain peak into his likeness. They knew nothing of the nameless Protector who held that peak as holy. A year later, Cithar was a wooded jumble of hills and rocks, inhabited by tribes of pointy-headed monkeys hitting each other with sticks, the carving's one finished eye left on the mountain peak as a grim warning.

The Grand Mysteries: White and Black

Flip back here for rationale, and move here and down for the other colors' Grand Mysteries.

The Grand Mysteries of the sacred schools of magic, White, Black, Gold and Brown, are not carved on a cobwebbed tablet in the cellars of any ruin. The quest for them must needs involve the Divine, if it exists in the world; or at the very least, must involve a contact with a Principle higher than one's own mortal self. That Divinity, that Principle, may set additional tests, quests and trials before the Mystery is revealed. Attaining a level, at least three higher than that required to cast the sixth level spells, is recommended. Beyond that, the use of each Mystery is shrouded, though their power and dangers tend to make them once-in-a-lifetime choices.

The Grand Mystery of the White School: The Angel of Justice

The Angels of sacred magic are Presences that embody a Principle, within or beyond the Divine. Any manifestation of them to the senses is both fleeting and profoundly awe-inspiring: a vast shadow, a footfall with a sound as of an army, an addictive smell of petals and incense.

The White Angel champions the principle of Justice. Its Mystery consists of a petition to right a wrong, balance the crooked, forgive a mistake. The aspirant before this Angel must be sincere, must be persuasive, and above all must be right. The powers of Justice are legendary and approach those of the fabled Great Gray Mystery, the Wish.

But the White Mystery represents a fearful departure. Until now, the White powers of the aspirant have not been used impartially. They have been used to protect self and friends, blast the evil and those considered evil. The danger of the White Mystery is this: that justice is impartial. Justice may not see things your way. "Give back the children of Vadia the Notched Rose," petitioned her former comrade, a mighty hierarch whose name is lost, "it is not just that the plague should take all three but leave the mother to grieve." And, miracle! they came to life; but as they stood restored in the graveyard, passing goblin bandits slew them, just as Vadia had slain goblin children without mercy in her days as a freebooter. The decision of the Judge is final.

The Grand Mystery of the Black School::   The Angel of Death 

This is the deciding point for the practicioner of Black Magic. All the grimoires bound in human skin celebrate this achievement as the Triumph of Death, the chance to sit on a skeletal throne and rain vengeance down upon enemies heretofore distant or resistant.

A different possibility is mentioned by the few White Magic scholars who choose to mention the dire Angel of Death. Having abused, defiled, and added prematurely to the ranks of the dead many times over, the necromancer, approaching this Mystery, is given a final choice to stand with the Law of the Universe or defy it. In defiance, he is granted a grim, land-ravaging Triumph full of dancing corpses and tolling bells. But no true Angel of Death appears, just a lawless counsellor spawned of the sorcerer's own desires that will eventually either destroy him or condemn him to eternal misery as a lich.

With submission to the Law, the Angel appears in true aspect as Monarch of the Kingdom of the Dead, and grants the necromancer a painless, instant, inviolate death. In exchange, he may take with him three mortals by name, whoever or wherever they may be.

One Black tome (the fabled and possibly spurious Melanchiridion) claims it is possible to swear to both Law and Chaos, and reap eternal undeath that can end when it becomes wearisome, together with three flawless assassinations. Whether any aspirant has tried this audacious move, the Melenchiridion does not say.

The Great Mysteries: Silver and Gray

The Great Mystery of the Silver School: Gate
In the apex spell of Silver magic, the dual functions of summoning and travel become one; a two-way rift in the universe permits the caster to step through to another plane of existence, or to call any denizen of that plane to appear. Unlike the lower level spell of planar travel, many more planes than the ones enumerated in theology can be visited. The perils of both summoning and travel, as always with Silver magic, should be quite clear. The claim that the Silver Gate can also be used for time travel is less clear, but the words of the sage Dzemaclua may help illuminate this arcanum: "For know that there are planes in which the poison dagger missed King Atroban, or the comet collided with the mountains instead of the great city of Naun. And so there also must be planes in which everything happened as in our world, but a hundred years later."


The Great Mystery of the Gray School:  Wish
This is it; this is The Spell. The culmination of all magic, but also its essence: your will changes the world. Unlike the world-altering powers given by stubborn genies or magical artifacts, the Wish spell is said by nearly all authorities to be foolproof. You are not convincing something to do your will in a language easily twisted, rather, it is the language of your mind that expresses your will, and so mote it be. Curious, then, that the tales of great archmages bandying about Wishes simply don't exist. On reaching the Great Gray Mystery, it seems one either Transcends or simply vanishes. The conjectures on this point could fill a book, but the most common are that: a part of the magic of the Wish obscures its own existence, shaping reality so completely that its effects seem wholly natural; the user of the Wish splits off into a childish universe of instant fulfillment, in which all others are mere puppets, while life in reality goes on; the Wish meets all your desires at once, spoken and unspoken, conscious and unconscious, and anyone with even a hint of subconscious death instinct ceases to exist. Indeed, perhaps the way to Transcend from the Wish is simply not to use it.

And that's a wrap. Oh wait ... "clerical" and "druid" magic? OK, OK, fine, but after a short break from the spell lists.

The Great Mysteries: Yellow, Red, Blue

The next three Great Mysteries leave the realm of the mind and enter the realm of reality, issuing the ultimate commands to matter and energy.


The Great Mystery of the Yellow School: Polymorph Any Object

With the words of the Universal Transmutation, anything becomes anything else. Well, not really; the rule to be followed, so they say, is that one aspect of the object, be it form, soul, function or substance, remain the same. Thus, the miracle attributed to Chimedd in the siege of Cuasa, who turned a row of children's slingshots into a battery of catapults, preserving their function; or to Xeba in the days of the Tlanite Dynasts, who turned her enemies into perfect gold statues of themselves. The opportunities for greed loom limitless, but the cautionary tales are severe. Chimedd ended up embracing change with all his being, a congeries of flesh and organs, scrabbling on the floor. Once her devalued gold no longer bought loyalty, Xeba was fed a paralytic drug by the new enemies she had made by killing the old enemies, and dipped, alive, in molten platinum. One intriguing clue to the nature of the world, from the lore of this Mystery: "Though ye turn a statue to a man, ye have not created life, merely awakened it; though ye turn a man to a statue, ye have not yet extinguished him, merely put him to sleep."

The Great Mystery of the Red School: Disintegrate
What better destruction can one want, than the complete and unconditional evanescence of matter? Hence the pinnacle of Red magic is found in this straightforward spell, whose workings are a beacon of clarity in the fog of misinformation surrounding the Mysteries. The doom of the Red Mystery is likewise spelled out without embellishment in various legendaria. Use upon use, the area of effect increases uncontrollably, until its radius exceeds the range of the spell and the caster joins his victims in oblivion. The existence of the Great Pit of Zethyus is attributed to the repeated use of this Mystery to ward off a horde of foes, by an archmage unknown and unburied.

The Great Mystery of the Blue School: Create Life
With this most sacred rite, the final Words of Creation are whispered into the seeker's ear, granting the power of the Gods. It is taken for granted, that all the bizarre hybrids, sickly aberrations, cruel abominations, and freakish whimsies that crawl beneath the stone ceilings and moonless skies of the world owe their existence or their lineage to this Mystery. One and all, those who fail to transcend at this most dangerous of leaps along the path are destroyed by their creation. The means of this doom can be original; they speak of the half-elven adepta Euryth, who cobbled together a tiny ailment to eradicate the Orcs and fell its first victim; or of Agzu Ad Bastor, who pined to death after being spurned by the ideal female companion he had created.

The Great Mysteries: Purple, Orange, Green

The Great Mysteries, it is rumored, are a path of eight spells: one for each of the Schools of Magic.

Each great Mystery is the culmination of its School; the ultimate and final insight, and the very School's transformation into something different. If the path is walked, and the eight Mysteries learned, the doors of the Cosmos open wide for the archmage; Transcendence beckons.

Scores of sorcerers, finding the limitation of the sixth level of spells too much for them, have taken up the quest and set foot on the path. Many have fallen by the wayside, laid low by the temptation of misusing these great powers. To stay one's hand and reach Transcendence is the safest and at the same time the most difficult way. Only three, it is said, have done it since the world began.

Indeed, some say that the Great Mysteries of the Black, White, Gold and Brown schools must also be encompassed to reach the legendary final state of Transcendence. If so, then Transcendence is remote indeed; in this broken world where the Mysteries are scattered among the wizards of Man and the priests of the Gods.

The Great Mystery of Purple Magic: Master of Reality

This may be the first Great Mystery , as Purple is the most basic school of high magic. Or maybe the last, as the very essence of all magic is to impose the form of will on the world. Altering all in sight, the master of the Purple school crosses the boundary between seeming and being, and creates a section of the world anew for all who believe. A village of hovels becomes a knightly palace; wet swamp becomes baking desert. Emlo the Chrysanthine created a fool's paradise; Gramnion created a hell for his enemies. Both of them failed to transcend. One believed too much in his creation and became one with it, the other dwindled to a phantom shape, believing too little in himself. This is all that is known of this mystery.

The Great Mystery of Orange Magic: Oracle
Some speak of this mystery as taking the form of a book ... a brass head ... a talking beast ... a magic mirror. Curiously, the spell is also written of as being "found" or "owned" and not "cast." Whatever it may be, the Oracle answers all questions put to it perfectly. Surely there must be limit to the number of questions per day, though the histories do not speak of any such limits. The stories of those who failed at this level imply that the Oracle eats at the mind with each question; Bellagrance went insane with the knowledge she could not stop herself from uncovering, while Fra Ugo ended up with his mind a blank, having to ask the Oracle even what his own name was at the end.

The Great Mystery of Green Magic: Mind Swap
It is fitting that the ultimate expression of domination of one mind over another should involve the actual exchange of mind for mind. The duration of this spell, though unknown, is also irrelevant when used for its most audacious and atrocious purpose: to transfer the mind of a senescent wizard into the fresh body of a youth, who then ensures the death of the former body, sealing the bargain and cheating the Reaper. Sometimes, a thin moralism is imposed over the vile act. Thus, the lich Karces, tired of his old bones, transferred himself into a black gem of great price perched atop a treasure hoard, justifying his possession of the eventual victim's body as a punishment for greed. One could go on living for millennia in this way, spending a lifetime in each body, a lifetime in each place. Many have, and still do, quietly. But such an attachment  is a sure way to lose the Path ... remaining only the master of the human mind, never going beyond, feeling old even at thirty, losing a small piece of the soul with each addictive transfer.

Level 6 Magic Spells: The Limits of Common Knowledge

Maybe you can tell from my last post I was kind of getting tired of the idea that all the high-level spells should be codified and splatted out there for all players to see and figure out from day one. It's the same kind of instinct that makes me loathe the "Deities & Demigods" approach to divine power. If everything can be reduced to a known stat block, then everything can be munchkinized, starring now at a delayed-adolescent power trip near you. Power and knowledge should not translate to omnipotence or omniscience, at any level of viable play.

In other words - let's see more of the approach taken by the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide, when it presented the abilities of its legendary artifacts as blanks, waiting to be filled in idiosyncratically for each campaign.

Anyway, the comments gave me some neat ideas for how to suggest designing magical schools and societies. And this makes me realize that the most helpful thing I can do is provide tools for people to customize, rather than dictate how everything works exactly, because magic systems are so inevitably tied up with a GM's own ideas about the setting.

And now, the last spells you learned about in any kind of detail from your classes at wizard school.

1	Chain Lightning	Red	30’	None	(Dex)
12d6 damage, drop 1’s and damage another in 30’, etc.; save for half damage
2	Force Field	Blue	90’	1 day	None
Creates up to 60 sq. ft. of invisible, invincible wall in any shape
3	Legend Lore	Orange	0	0	None
Reveals history of item or place at hand
4	Hand of Doom	Blue	90’	1 hr	None
Creates 6’ floating hand to block, hit or crush foes for 4d10 damage
5	Major Summoning	Silver	90’	1 day	None
Summons 1 monster of  7th level, or two 6th level monsters.
6	Meteor Swarm	Red	90’	3 rds	(Dex)
Creates 4 6d6 damage fireballs, each 40’ radius; save for half damage
7	Petrification	Yellow	30’	Perm	(Con)
Turns living being to stone or reverses petrification
8	Plane Walk	Silver	3’	None	None
Caster takes self and up to 5 other beings to another plane
9	Power Word (+)	Gray	90’	-	-
Adding 2 to spell’s level, a spell effect originally on 1-3 beings affects all within 60’ arc.
10	Reverse Gravity	Yellow	0	1 hr	None
Things fall up, up to 100’ square; damage = 1d6 / 10’ fallen, max. 10d6
11	True Seeing	Orange	Sight	3 min	None
Cuts through all visual illusion and concealment
12	Perfect Disguise	Purple	0	1 day	None
Perfectly duplicates appearance, garb, voice, manner of known person

As you gain character levels past, um, whatever level your version of the rules has you learn your first 6th level spell at, you still gain spell slots at level 7, 8 and so on. But those are just so you can memorize powered-up versions of level 6 and below spells, using the Gray School booster effects. New spells at those rarefied levels are not so easy to gain ...