3E OdditE: Ambient Tempest (Bestiary of Krynn, 2004)

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Dragonlance has a weird relationship with the larger body of 3E material, as well as the audience who engages with it. WotC owned the license throughout the entirety of the edition, but after one of many legal back-and-forths they handed the actual work of writing and publishing Dragonlance books off to Sovereign Press, the printing company owned by Dragonlance cocreator Margaret Weis.

Because of that technically-officially-licensed-yet-also-3rd-party status, all of the 3E Dragonlance books are in a weird limbo when it comes to whether people consider them "core" or not. You rarely ever see material from them referenced alongside other splatbooks on forums and in character build handbooks. Even other settings like Eberron were talked about far more often in similar contexts, although part of that was probably thanks to differences in sales and plain old popularity. This was the early-to-mid 2000s, and Dragonlance was no longer the same hot young IP it was in the 1980s.

As a result, I regularly learn about whole new classes, spells, and feats that I've never even heard of before cracking open one of the old Dragonlance campaign setting books for the first time. It's always a fun discovery, no matter how bland or broken or just plain weird the thing in question happens to be.

Today, I'll be sharing one such find.

The Bestiary of Krynn was originally released in 2004, but owing to the hefty amount of errata and cut content that it shipped without, a Revised edition was released in November of 2006. 3E Dragonlance books were somewhat notorious for their seeming lack of close proofreading and editing, which probably contributed to their lack of popularity online. At least the Bestiary got a second shot, unlike most others.

(And it really needed the second shot, because one of the class abilities we'll be looking at today was completely nonfunctional due to an omitted word!)

In the Bestiary we are treated to all manner of nasties and weirdos. This includes an unsurprisingly large proportion of dragon subtypes, but also some beasts, outsiders, undead, and a caste of goblins mutated by chaotic magic called the Gurik Cha'ahl. It also has a suite of monster-oriented Prestige Classes, as well as rules for handling a monster PC's initial rejection and possible acceptance by any humanoid communities they adventure in, which I wasn't expecting at all. Savage Species should have done something similar, in my opinion.

One monster PrC in particular grabbed my attention, because more than being for monsters, it's for anyone with enough primal magical power.

3E Dragonlance books were mostly set during the Age of Mortals after the Chaos War, where through multiple novels worth of machinations the dark goddess Takhisis used the cosmic battle with the gods' deadbeat dad Chaos to steal the entire planet of Krynn away from her siblings. All divine and arcane magic ceased to function for that approximately 50 year period, because even wizards are dependent upon the three magical moon gods for their spells on Krynn.

During this magical dark age, mortals rediscovered the ancient "wild" sorcery that comes from the land itself, rather than from the moons. Simultaneously, they drew upon the latent power of mortal souls to develop the more internal and spiritualistic form of divine magic called mysticism. In thematic terms they're remarkably similar to different aspects of Primal magic that we would later see in D&D 4E. In mechanical terms, the sorcerer is unchanged while the mystic is a new base class presented in the Dragonlance Campaign Setting that acts like a spontaneous cleric minus the heavy armor, undead turning, and 1 domain. Kind of sparse, but still a solid Tier 2.

Even after Takhy's plot was foiled in part by a time-traveling kender and most of the gods returned to the world, these new/old forms of magic continue to exist alongside their traditional cousins. The future is uncertain and bound to be rocky, but mortals are in a better position to steer their own destinies than they have been in ages- so long as those pendulum-obsessed rich kids they call gods can stop meddling in their plaything so much.

Delving deeper into either of these ambient forms of magic to unlock their hitherto-untapped potential is the specialty of the aptly-named Ambient Tempest.

Ambient Tempest

Unquenchable, unstoppable, and, er, unclothable.

The Ambient Tempest (AT) is a 5-level PrC with 1d4 HD, 2 + Int skill ranks in a modest list, 1/2 BAB, poor Fort and Reflex Saves, and 4/5 spontaneous spellcasting advancement. Between the sorcerer and the mystic, its basic chassis is closer to sorcerer. A melee mystic would get set back quite a bit by levels in this class, though its unique abilities might make up for it to some extent. Dedicated casters who are already trying to stay out of harm's way are mostly only looking at a downside of 1 lost CL.

Qualifying for AT requires 9 ranks in Knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft, two out of a selection of magical and metamagic feats, 3rd-level spontaneous spells from either of the above classes (or a weirder pick), and either a supernatural or spell-like ability or two more of the above feats. Mystics can qualify depending on their chosen domain's granted power, while sorcerers might need a bit more work depending on if the Familiar class ability counts as (Su) or not. Something like a dragon with innate magical abilities has the easiest time qualifying for this PrC, but PC species can potentially qualify by 6th level.

Unsurprisingly there are no online reprints of this or most other Dragonlance material.
So here's a screen grab of the table from the revised PDF. Shh, don't tell Hasbro.

The three big class features of the AT are Shifting Knowledge (Ex), Ambient Secret, and Spellshaping (Ex). Their theme is tweaking or breaking many of the usual rules for spontaneous casting, which fits well with the flavor of the PrC.

Shifting Knowledge allows the spontaneous caster to dispense with the once-at-4th-level-and-every-2nd-level-after-that rule for changing out their known spells for others, and instead change 1 spell/week with an hour of meditation as long as it's 2 spell levels below your max. While it isn't as freeing as other classes like say, the Spirit Shaman (Complete Divine) that can change their spontaneous list daily, it's a big step toward making sorcerers and mystics more versatile. With enough downtime you could redo most of your spell library, and I think that's an uncommon and neat ability.

Ambient Secret comes up 3 times during AT progression. It allows you to select 1 ability from a short list, most of which can't be selected multiple times as is standard for that sort of thing. The choices are:

• Improved Metamagic, which allows you to ignore the normal rule that metamagic on a spontaneous spell costs a full-round action. I always wondered why that rule only existed for the less overpowered of all the full-casters, but wonky balance is part of why I love/hate 3E.
• (This is the ability that I mentioned was unusable prior to errata, because instead of "a spell" it just said "a". Big improvement.)
• Improved Shifting, which allows you to ignore the spell level limit on swapping spells in and out with Shifting Knowledge. Simple but good. Now your entire repertoire is mutable.
• Metamagic Feat, which is exactly what it sounds like. You may learn any metamagic feat you qualify for, and you can take this more than once if you really want.
• I'd personally avoid taking this more than once because you only have 3 secrets total.
• Shifting Knowledge, which is named exactly like the other class feature for some reason. I would've gone with Expanded Knowledge or something like that but hey, I'm not the editor. It lets you swap 1 extra spell per week and can be taken more than once. This could be really good, or just kind of nice, depending on how varied the challenges you tend to face are.
• My personal ranking puts this at the bottom—maybe tied with the bonus metamagic feat—below the other two near-mandatory secrets.

Spellshaping lets you just walk all over the normal rules of metamagic. With this ability, you can reverse your Enlarge, Extend, or Widen metamagic feats so that they reduce the spell's effect for a spell slot 1 level lower than normal. This is the first instance of reverse metamagic I've ever seen in 3rd Edition, and I love the concept. It gives so many situationally useful spells that much more utility, especially at higher levels when your lower-level spell slots start to pile up and feel less impactful. 

Imagine Narrowing a Fireball so that you don't clip your friends who are hanging around too close to the target, or Shortening all those combat buffs and debuffs that have durations measuring in the minutes/level, which rarely ever matters in a system where combat lasts less than a minute on average. It barely even feels like a cost, and that's before you get to the gravy of saving your bigger spell slots, or the hidden tech of adding one of these on top of a regular metamagic feat in order to modify its increased cost.

I've never wanted to play a sorcerer before (except for an attempt at a Greater Mighty Wallop build one time), but this PrC kinda gives me the itch to try. I'd probably opt for mystic if I was in a Dragonlance game, though. Playing a Stone-Teller of the Godless Folk would be too nifty to pass up.

You could bring in any other spontaneous caster for shenanigans, though. Imagine a spirit shaman combining daily list tweaks with the metamagic metagame, or using the Unearthed Arcana option for spontaneous clerics and druids.

Or don't, because that might be too much cheese. It won't be mozzarella nightstick levels of cheese, but at least a solid, rindy gouda.

Troika: The Spellsponge

You aren't sure if you were lucky or unlucky when the witch-hunter's spell fizzled out upon your bare skin with an inelegant schlorp. On one hand you escaped immediate, agonizing death. But on the other hand, everyone within sight of the incident couldn't shake the feeling that maybe the fanatic's suspicions about you were not completely baseless.

You've been on the run ever since. Not because you're still being hunted, although that certainly is one motivator. No, you wander because that fateful day awakened something in you. A thirst for magic that isn't academic, nor megalomaniacal, nor power-hungry. Well, maybe it's a little hungry. A hunger for spells, the look and feel of them, the sensation of intuitive knowing that fills you when you're around magic.

That ineffable feeling has sent you wandering far. Maybe somewhere in the feeling of sublime wholeness, you'll find out just how and why you randomly soak spells up like a sponge.

Or maybe you'll get to freak out another inquisitor.

The Spellsponge

Nishat by Ron Koza (formerly hvit-ravn)

Possessions

• Travelworn Cloak, stitched and patched in many colors.
• Walking Stick, inexpertly carved out of boredom.
• Knife, more for the outdoors than the battlefield but still quite sharp.
• Idiosyncratic Trinkets & Charms which don't actually do anything supernatural but help you make sense of the world and your aberrant relationship to magic within it.
• A Map scribbled with notes on local wizard schools, temples, ley-lines, etc.

Advanced Skills

    3 Second Sight

    2 Awareness

    2 Intuition

    2 Spell - Random

    1 Spell - Random

Special

When you witness a spell being cast or are targeted by a spell, you may Test your Luck to learn that spell as if you had trained a new Advanced Skill to rank 1. Additionally, if the spell is targeted at you and you succeed your Test, you "soak up" the spell and it does not affect you. You may attempt this once per week per spell. You can't use this ability on a spell you already know.

Slag & Scale

It is known how the God at the Forge created the Sun: by complete accident.

When the Trickster wished to give the smith a gift to express its love for them, it did not know how, because it could not express anything. Deceit and concealment was so ingrained in its ways that it could not even tell a truth it wanted to share. So the Trickster fell back on old habits and presented to the God at the Forge a lump of the world's worst, most impure ore. The Trickster then dared the god to create anything of beauty out of it, teasing them and doubting their abilities as a child might the person they fancy.

The God at the Forge was insulted, for pride in the craft was their insurmountable nature. So they accepted the challenge, and set straight to work. They took the lump of ore to their forge and heated it a thousand-thousand times over, in a fire a thousand times brighter and hotter than the smith had ever stoked before. So bright and hot was the forge that all the other gods and creatures of the Rift shied away and fled to the twilit places- all but the Trickster, who watched the smith work in teary-eyed awe.

The Trickster beheld as the god at their bellows began to melt away the outer layers of the ore. Molten slag flowed like rivers and cooled into mountains, yet that vexing lump of ore remained undiminished; still impure. The smith's anger burned as hot as the forge, nearly melting it to the firmament. The god finally lashed out and sent the slag crashing to their feet, before stomping away and brooding over what next to do.

The Trickster also watched as some of that discarded slag began to move. Shattered crags picked themselves up and brushed off the smaller, crumbly bits of their fellows with stumpy, blunt limbs. They looked around with eyeless heads, and soon trundled or toddled away in fear at the sound of their creator's loud grumbling.

When the ore proved too stubborn, the smith pulled it out of the forge and laid it upon their anvil in the grip of their great and immovable tongs. If all the impurities would not melt out, then they would hammer them out. The smith deliberated at length, and finally took up one of their 6,842 hammers with which to begin the Great Folding.

For a length of time that would come to be called a year, the god hammered at the lump of ore. Every swing lit the Rift with showers of sparks, and shook the gulfs to their depths. The ore was beaten and shaped, tortured and purified, until the lesser metals were dragged screaming to the surface and smote.

The Trickster watched as those flakes of hammerscale rained upon the anvil like storms-yet-to-be, only to be swept away by the calloused hand of the God at the Forge. The flakes danced and shivered like black snowflakes as they fell, twisting in the heated air currents until they landed upon spindly little arms and legs. Jagged and pointy, these diminutive creatures did not flee in fear from their creator so quickly.

But just as the smith ignored the gawking Trickster, so too did they ignore the growing audience at their feet. They seized upon the progress they made, bringing the hammer down faster and harder until their arm was a blur, and their work reached a fever pitch.

When it did, they broke their hammer upon the lump of ore and ignited something deep within it. A spark unlike any other, that grew and grew to absorb the entire sphere with a brilliance that not even the smith could withstand. So they hurled it away into the darkness, where it caught in the empty void and erupted into its full glory.

At that, the little scales yipped and fled in fear. All the gods of the Rift came to look in awe at the newborn Sun. Without a doubt, it was the greatest thing of beauty the God at the Forge had ever made. Even the dust and the dregs of the Rift thought so, and began to dance around the Sun in ever greater crowds.

But the story of how the worlds were wedded together is for another time.

For now, the God at the Forge stood and basked in the warmth of their creation, and the accolades of their fellows. They waited, proud and imperious, for the Trickster to come before them and declare its challenge met. But the Trickster did not. The Trickster could not. All it could do was conceal the ache in its heart as it stole away to darker parts, where the smith's beauty did not burn so brightly, and the laughter of gods was not so loud.

There, in the dark and quiet, the Trickster found that it was not so alone. It found there, huddled and frightened, the little bits of slag and hammerscale that the smith had cast off and forgotten in their work. They were as children without a parent, in a Rift that was no longer what it once was. Yet they were sharp and rough to look upon, beautiful like lead, cruel to the touch and clumsy in all ways. The haughty gods of the Rift would never even notice them, let alone deign to welcome them in.

And so the Trickster reached out its long arms, and gathered the slag and scales up in spindly hands that could only steal the belongings of others. And then it closed its mouth so full of lies long enough to tenderly kiss them upon their jagged little heads. And then in a voice too quiet to hear it admitted that yes, the God at the Forge had made something beautiful indeed.

That, child, is why you should always treat with respect the things we might call waste: you never know when they might hold the guarded love of the Trickster.

Or perhaps that is just another lie, meant to put fidgeting children to bed. Now go to sleep.

SotU Hack: Sojourners of the Unknown

Last month I didn't publish anything because I was flitting back and forth between three or four different things that might turn out to be major, trajectory-altering projects for me, or they might end up being nothing at all. It's hard to tell at this stage. But the tiny voice in my head that embodies all the passive-aggression of a YouTube commenter saying "you should really do X again" has gotten loud lately, so I decided to take a break from flitting and focus on finishing something small.

Incidentally I've recently learned about Searchers of the Unknown, another hackable 1-page OSR system that got its start in the late 2000s. It was inspired by the single-line, barebones monster stat blocks of old school modules. If that's good enough for the monsters, why not for PCs too? So asks the expressly minimalist SotU, before going about offering an answer. It has dozens of hacks now, and I see the charm in it. So I decided to give it a shot too.

To do that, I spent a day diving into the 2012 SotU collection. If there's a more recent edition, I couldn't find it, but even back then it offered plenty of hacks and version updates to study and compare. Most of the rules down below are tweaked or outright stolen from the various hacks found within.

The remaining rules are borrowed from D&D 4th Edition's skill challenge system, because there are no gods and no masters, and we must hasten entropy in all things.

The end result took a few turns away from the spirit of SotU, but then again that's the heart of hacking. It's a watered-down nomadic exploration flavor of game, somewhere in between my old Desolate Days idea and some of the house rules I've regurgitated in the past. It also works about as well for a cozy, nonviolent camping trip style of game. Go figure.

I did a much better job limiting myself to the right size this time than with previous 1-page projects. It still spills over a little bit in the original two-column Google Doc, but that doesn't matter so much here in Blogger because either the editor lacks the support for it, or I don't know the HTML sorcery to make it myself.

Sojourners of the Unknown

Concept

Another SotU hack that turns the minimalism toward trailblazing and discovery. Your tribe/village/community is migrating after being driven from its home by marauding adventurers. You are scouts sent ahead of the caravan to find safe passage through unfamiliar lands.
Or if possible, find a new home.

Build a Sojourner

PCs are not expert guides or hardened survivalists. They’re novices, apprentices, and surplus relatives. The only reason they’re out here instead of someone else is because the community could afford to let them go.
1) Choose a Background. Could be herder, tradesperson, musician, healer, etc. You receive +2 on all related checks.
2) Choose Traveling Gear. This gives your PC survival rate (SV) and movement rate (MV).

Gear Level	SV	MV
Unencumbered	7	10
Traveling Light	8	9
Always Be Prepared	9	8
Complete Packrat	10	7

You get a backpack, walking stick, waterskin, etc. regardless of gear level.
The party also gets 1 pony/wagon/travois/etc.
3) Roll for Hardiness (or don’t). Roll 1 hardiness die (HD) per level, or take half the die’s value. Do the same for all future HD.
4) Finish up. Choose a name, a 1-line description, and a 1-line background for your PC if you're feeling extra fancy.

Example: Nergui (3HD SV 9 MV 8, househusband, apprentice shaman) is a ruddy, reedy fellow in search of snacks for the village kids during his cheerful self-exile.

Encounters

Any discrete scenario that offers stiff resistance, like a perilous hike or a pack of angered animals, is an encounter.
You face an encounter by rolling checks. The referee determines how many successes an encounter requires to advance, and how many failures will thwart the party. Remember to fail forward and/or complicate victories.
The players are encouraged to get creative with checks, and the referee decides if their logic and applied bonuses fit the fiction.
Example: The party failed to avoid hostilities with a neighboring tribe, and decides to circumvent them by rafting down the nearby river. The referee decides 4 cumulative successes means they navigate without issue, while 3 failures whisk them far downriver, out of control on the strong current.

Exploration

All checks are made by rolling 1d20 +½ level (rounded down) +other modifiers (background bonus, etc). A result of 20+ succeeds.
Survival Checks: Knowledge and grit. Treating an injury, following tracks, identifying (and surviving) poisonous plants, befriending strangers, etc. Roll +SV.
Movement Checks: Athletics and fine motor skills. Climbing, swimming, sneaking, avoiding mauling, etc. Roll +MV.
Hazards: Exploration is dangerous. Bad encounter outcomes deal 1HD to each PC from injury, stress, or loss of resources. Disastrous results deal 2HD. Certain dooms deal 4HD. PCs recover hardiness by setting camp and resting. PCs who run out of hardiness need to be brought back to the community for healing before they can rest.

Magic

The occasional scroll, potion, wand or runed piece of tree bark bearing a magic spell can be found by the party while exploring.

Spell names imply their effects, the dimensions and details of which should be described by the players when they cast them.

A spell lasts 1 encounter and counts as 1 or 2 successes without needing to roll checks, depending on how cleverly the player uses and roleplays it.

Experience

The PCs’ community starts at level 1 with 0 XP. Each time the party reports back with new discoveries or resources to share, the community gains XP.
The community requires an additional 1000 XP multiplied by its current level to advance to the next level. There is no level limit.
The community gains 1000 XP per major discovery. Discoveries include finding a landmark, meeting another community, making alliances, recruiting new people, facing a new foe for the first time, etc.
The community also gains 1 XP per GP worth of supplies or treasure donated (i.e. not spent by the party or on the party).
When a community levels up the party shares in the benefits, gaining better rolls and another Hardiness die (or half its value). Every 3rd level the PCs each gain a new background, or improve an old one by +1.

And now, for sure, wander on!

10 Unpublished Manuscripts for your Failed Novelist (N)PCs

The study reeks of stale air, burnt coffee, and artistic self-loathing as you enter. Your eyes are slowly, inexorably drawn toward a nondescript binder on the desk. You know you shouldn't open it. Yet like the idiot protagonist of a cosmic horror story you are compelled to gaze upon that which is best left forgotten. Your eyes begin to roll back into your skull as you glance over the humbly bragging foreword. By the time you read the trite opening sentences, the maddening mediocrity has already consumed your soul.

You should have listened.

1 When's Okay to Say...?

Some people just shouldn't write children's books.

A nameless child wanders through this watercolor picture book, encountering various relatives, friends, and pets throughout the day. The child obviously suffers from anxiety and may also be neurodivergent, but the disembodied voice of the narrator only ever calls them "selfish" or "rude" for expressing their worries to other people and in turn bumming them out. The narrator goes on to teach the child how to refrain from sharing too much.

At first this works, and everyone's mood immediately improves. Every character, even the goldfish, expresses joy that the child isn't sad all the time now. Even the color palette becomes brighter and more pleasant to look at. But soon the child decides that they don't enjoy being "polite", and resume being honest with the people in their life.

This causes some sort of cancerous growth to appear in the air above the child's head, which grows and pulsates the more they share. By the final pages of the book it has split open to reveal a crimson, Sauronic eye that leers down at the child for trying to do or say anything. The kid eventually faints while hiding under a laundry hamper with their teddy bear- which the book makes sure to point out is only the child's friend because it's completely inanimate and doesn't have a choice.

"Lesson" finally learned, the child completely shuts down emotionally, and the eye shrivels up and disappears in time. The final spread depicts the whole cast joyfully embracing the child, who now has a pained smile fixed upon their face.

2 O, Mirthsome! O, Girthsome!

A questionably titled crypto-biography of the life, death, and ascension of Groesbeck the Carbunculous, a jovial god of consumption, infestation, and probiotics in an implied urban fantasy setting. Groesbeck begins the story as a lowly, put-upon fast food restaurant health inspector who is as unlucky as he is personally underwhelming. The first few chapters try to hammer this point home by showing all the ways he fails to find love, aspire in hobbies, or earn the respect of his coworkers.

This barely changes after he falls prey to the parasites in an undercooked beefalo patty. He continues to act upbeat and undemanding, perhaps to the point of delusion, even as his body becomes a ravaged hive for the infestation. His body balloons until he is confined to his apartment, and through his own placid observations it is implied that the entire building has been condemned around him as a quarantine zone.

It is at this point the parasites begin speaking to him, singing him praises and adulations for the first time in his life. They thank him for giving them life, but lament that they have so few siblings with which to play. Groesbeck takes to his new "children" quickly and tries to share their affection and positivity with the rest of the world, to less-than-stellar results.

The remainder of the book covers these failed attempts to spread the joy, horrifying and putting to flight countless townsfolk and causing an epidemic in the process. The text attempts to treat his corpulence with a degree of body-positivity, but instead comes across as fetishistic and occasionally outright shaming. Groesbeck's speech takes to a strange poetic metre by this point, and he drops the title during one of his many bombastic soliloquys.

The book ends when Groesbeck is rolled down a hill into a pit and lit on fire, but returns to life two weeks later to continue his great work at the head of an ever-growing wave of upbeat, infested converts. The final page-and-a-half is dedicated to the marching song they sing while washing like a tide over the tristate area.

Tucked into the back of the manuscript is a copy of a C&D order from a litigious game company also known for its jovial and corpulent rot-monsters.

3 X Gaiden Rinne!

An anthological deconstruction of the isekai genre. It subverts the traditional escapist fantasy and wish-fulfillment tropes of the genre by couching its sequence of worlds and stories firmly within a tightly interconnected dharmic cosmology. Every protagonist is reborn where they are because of the karmic debts their past selves accrued, and their every action is of immense consequence for the incarnation that succeeds them.

Oftentimes the protagonists (who are all sent there as a consequence of death, though none are traffic accidents) are reincarnated as denizens of the worlds their past selves cultivated. Some of these are karmic rewards, but just as many are awful revelations that the person has been reduced to NPC-levels of agency and must now endure the next visitor's whimsy; just as so many others had suffered their own time in the limelight.

Ever-present throughout the anthology is an enigmatic Pure Land buddha who oversees the protagonists' struggles, failures, and lessons. The buddha fully reveals themself in the penultimate chapter to confront the one protagonist who rises to supervillainy in their utter refusal to let go of the power fantasy they feel entitled to. The resulting clash of hubris and wrathful aspect proves cataclysmic, and the closing chapter makes the ambitious attempt at conveying a sense of blissful anatta to the reader.

4 Boli

A historical fiction "romance novel" describing the mostly physical relationship between a pair of 16th century Maldivian cowry shell divers. The story's prose, initially purple and flowery, grows increasingly stilted, jarring, and lurid as the author moves on to more and more bizarre, esoteric, or just plain immature euphemisms for sexual acts and body parts in an attempt to keep things fresh.

This is constantly contrasted, sometimes to the point of tonal whiplash, with a remarkably well-researched and in-depth analysis of the power structures and systems of oppression of the Portuguese-colonized Indian Ocean and the human toll that the cowry industry takes. As the divers' world falls apart around them, they throw themselves at one another with increasing desperation.

At about the midpoint of the story, a vague sense of magic realism rises up from background dormancy. The cowries and their shells gain voices of their own, which they use to snark at one another or make observations on the divers like some kind of molluscan Greek chorus. None of their wisdom or dating advice is heeded however, and the situation continues to deteriorate until the divers have to flee their homes and the authorities.

By the final chapter, the story's language reaches a fever pitch as the couple, their boat, and the entire exploitative cowry industry merge together into a many-limbed pataphorical orgy that then pleasantly sinks into obscurity beneath the waves of the Indian Ocean.

5 The Lay of the Cantankerous Hrütlander

Despite being called a lay, this story is not a lyrical poem told in octosyllabic couplets. It is in fact a turgid, 400-page long sword & sandals adventure novel about the eponymous Hrütlander, a towering embodiment of hypermasculinity and sullen demeanor in the lands of the Far Nørthe. He journeys down from the mountains of Hrütli-lejr, tasked by the gods to act as kingmaker for two warring clans; the Rittugids led by Chief Rittu and the Chegguderi led by Chief Klegga Cheg (or perhaps Chegga Kleg; the text flipflops on his name constantly).

Apparently "kingmaker" in this world means that the Hrütlander has moral license to betray anyone and switch sides in the conflict at a whim, which he does often and at the slightest perceived insult. The plot and the world as a whole eke out an existence in the margins between long, self-indulgent scenes of Iron Age warfare made all the more bloody by the Hrütlander wielding his highly impractical, ahistorical atgeir topped with nine blades.

The world itself is a fictionalized mythic Scandinavia, written with about as much nuance and understanding of the source material as you might expect from a high school metalhead who plays far too much Skyrim. The land is cold and inhospitable except by the tribes of barbarians who grow huge, muscular and/or buxom on nothing but beef and ale that they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of. The Rittugids and Chegguderi are introduced as being irreconcilably different from one another, but the only differences that come through in the text are their hair color (blonde and brunette in contrast with the Hrütlander's "glowering red"), and which side of the body they start on when sacrificing a living person to their god Wōdyn.

At the climax of the story, the much-anticipated three-way (battle) between Rittu, Chegga/Klegga, and the Hrütlander is unexpectedly cut short by the appearance of a sorceress who reveals herself to be an ale-wench whom the Hrütlander previously tried and failed to bed. She kills the chieftains and hurls the Hrütlander into a tear in the spacetime continuum, sending him back to the early Jurassic Period where he promptly falls into the middle of a savage territorial fight between dinosaurs that had no business being in the same time and place as one another.

The closing text boldly proclaims that the story will be continued in the sequel, Gondwanalandmansaga: The Saga of the Man from Gondwanaland.

6 Maul Punx

A so-called "dystopian suburb punk toxo-romance" set in the distant year of 199Y, in an alternate reality that split off of our own when the cult classic 1989 teen dark comedy Heathers was directed by Stanley Kubrick as originally intended by the writer. The film stayed as niche as the original, and the world at large remains almost identical to our own. The major difference is that this timeline divergence inspired a subculture of especially disaffected suburban youths.

Not content to passively criticize the world around them, a coalition of Midwestern punks, goths, and a few nerds begins an uprising in which they burn down several McMansions and a car dealership before invading and fortifying a mall to repulse the authorities. This course of action becomes almost immediately the correct choice when an overworked lab assistant at a nearby military base accidentally unleashes a bioweapon that turns the majority of the town into zombies.

What ensues is a mix between awkward romance as two youths (a trad goth with an interest in taxidermy and the bassist for an experimental emo-shoegaze band) take a liking to one another, action-horror as the undead besiege the mall, and a rather unsubtle critique of American consumerism- the zombies all moan "maaall" instead of "braaaiiins", among other hints.

The couple turns out to be an unhealthy fit for one another, with jealousy and codependency quickly taking root between them. Still, they decide to stick it out together through the siege, frequently speaking the cynical adage that they're "better off dead (together)". Ironically, they end up being the few left entirely unscathed when they fall back to the roof of the mall under the unrelenting zombie assault.

Eventually it is revealed that the zombies are weak to loud music, which the youths take advantage of until exploded undead heads have painted the majority of the parking lot. They also get a radio antenna working on the roof, which allows them to discover that uprisings similar to theirs occurred all across the Midwest at around the same time. The mall survivors pass on the secret to countering the outbreak, and the dawn rises on a very odd new world.

7 Reorigination

The novelization of a screenplay that was dubbed simultaneously too technically difficult, visually boring, and audience-alienating in premise to perform. It follows a pair of advanced, cephalopod aliens bound to their life support shuttles as they float in high orbit above a backwater planet and ruminate on the extinction of their entire species. One, a historian named the Preserver, laments the folly and hubris of their people. The other, a bioengineer named the Caretaker, tries to devise a way to save the species from death and genetic bottlenecking.

The Caretaker eventually hypothesizes that they could insert their DNA into the genome of one of the modified and accelerated subject species on the planet below, essentially hijacking them and creating a new hybrid designed to replace the originals. The Preserver balks at this idea, citing how their systems-spanning empire fell apart precisely because they wouldn't stop meddling in the development of other species. They say that they deserve to die out as a warning to others if they will not stop repeating history like this. The Caretaker counters that they can still learn from their mistakes as long as they're not all dead, and that the loss of all their accumulated wisdom would be a tragedy for the whole galaxy.

What follows is a long, increasingly bitter philosophical debate over free will, ethics, and the burden of knowledge. Eventually the disagreement comes to a head and the two aliens fire their shuttles' weapons at one another. One of the ships is fatally damaged and its life support shuts down after some remorseful parting words; the other stays intact enough to putter down to the planet's surface.

It is left deliberately unclear which of the aliens survived; either the Caretaker violated their oath to protect and cultivate life by killing their fellow and taking advantage of their own charges, or the Preserver was ironically the one who ultimately consigned their species to history before trying to create a lasting warning for other sapient species.

8 Omnilect

Presented as a found diary with occasional margin notes from the "finder" character, this alternatively uncomfortable and outright goofy book details an anonymous linguist's spiral into mental illness and a paranoid world of conspiracy theories.

The linguist was recently kicked out of their university for a series of violent outbursts, as well as their increasingly vehement belief in a Tower of Babel-esque theory of the origin of human language. To prove this theory correct and unearth the supposed global conspiracy threatening it, the linguist goes on a globetrotting academic tour despite barely having enough money to feed themself with.

According to their theory, the original human language was split into all existing language families by some cataclysmic event in prehistory. Mankind's destiny can only be reclaimed by reconstructing this ur-language. This must be done by purging all of the false words from the world and finding the "true words" hidden in every language; approximately 1 word per lect. As an example, the true word of the modern French language is "peste" in the sense of a bratty child, and absolutely every other part of the language can and should be thrown out, excluding cognates or loanwords now "owned" by other languages. There are as many exceptions as there are rules to this theoretical language, and the linguist often interrupts the flow of the story to explain them at length.

The linguist's pet theories and other eccentricities often put them at odds with the other people in their travels. They constantly alienate themselves from others while making little if any progress in their search, leading to a worsening mental crisis and more than one physical altercation for extremely specific reasons. One dispute escalates into a fistfight with a group of Neo-Nazis for their "crypto-Saxon revanchism" (rather than because they're, you know, Nazis). Another scuffle nearly gets the linguist hit by an irate New York taxi driver for insisting that dumplings be called farts, from French farce for stuffing. Toward the end of their journey, another incident involves the linguist ineffectually slapping people with a karakul cap at the Al-Salam Festival in Australia until they were arrested and escorted off the premises, ranting all the while about the "Idiqutic erasure" they saw in modern definitions of the word Uyghur.

Somehow, the linguist never catches a criminal charge.

The linguist eventually decides that the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon must in some way be the key to proving their theory. They illegally cross several national borders through Eurasia, before finally pausing to rest in a hidden camp in the Altai Mountains on the Sino-Russian border. The linguist believes they are being hunted by one or both governments for the knowledge they possess, and the diary ends as they resolve to seal it in a waterproof container and plunge it into a nearby lake to retrieve later.

The epilogue shifts point of view and describes how the diary and the abandoned remains of the linguist's camp were found by an equally anonymous hiker. The hiker guesses that the camp is decades old by the time they finally find them, and doubts that the linguist got what they were searching for. The hiker proves unusually adept at decoding the diary, which is revealed to have been written entirely in the linguist's own neo-Babelian conlang, which consists of a grab-bag of vocabulary from thousands of languages living and dead, all awkwardly stitched together on top of a grammar that vaguely resembles Esperanto.

The hiker debates destroying the diary, and remarks upon how strangely prescient the linguist was at times, before going home and sitting down for a plate of mutton farts.

9 Huginn, Where's Your Muninn?

Another children's book, less reprehensible in premise. Huginn & Muninn, the pair of ravens who fly across the world acting as spies for Old Norse mythology's Odin, have become separated. This is bad news for the little birds, because they rely upon one another to be a single functioning unit. Huginn (whose name means "thought") has all the smarts, but it's Muninn ("memory") who remembers everything.

The reader guides a clever but easily disoriented Huginn through several locations in the Scandinavian cosmology, helping them solve challenges that range from riddles and logic puzzles to fully articulated pop-out games. Surprisingly mythically-accurate portrayals of various saga stories can be seen playing out in the background of each page as the reader goes along, though Huginn is comically oblivious to them.

Ultimately, Huginn and Muninn are reunited after they find the latter trapped in a rather easily unlocked birdcage right outside Fensalir. Apparently they were pranked by one of Freyja's bored cats while the Vanr was visiting Frigg for brunch. The ravens embrace, thank the reader for their help, and then take wing together to tell Odin all that they've learned.

The book still hasn't found a publisher, despite its admitted charm. The most commonly cited reason in rejection letters is content deemed inappropriate for children. It probably has something to do with that one background illustration with Loki and the horse.

10 Substition

A "sub-supernatural thriller" detailing one government agent's very bad day.

The story opens with our protagonist, Agent Tomris, sitting at her dinner table on a drunken Thursday night with the muzzle of her pistol tickling at her soft palate. As Tomris mentally prepares to repaint the apartment walls and ceiling in Reptilian Brain 117, her life flashes before her eyes. These memory vignettes form the bulk of the story.

Tomris became obsessed with the supernatural early in life, and chased any avenue by which she could prove it real. This hunt became increasingly more desperate the older she got, as more and more magicians and occult traditions failed to deliver. Eventually she was on the cusp of giving up hope, when she found the Agency.

The Agency of Paranormal Research & Development is a secret department of the United States government, founded shortly after the end of the Second World War when it was discovered that the Germans and Soviets had similar programs. Emphasis 'had'; one was disbanded soon after the war for lack of progress, while the other was lost in a shipwreck on route to Argentina.

The Agency is also a colossal failure by all metrics, barely kept on life support by its shoestring budget and the efforts of overworked agents. It is forgotten and overlooked as much as it is secret. But Tomris joined the Agency's ranks anyway, to get closer to the supernatural.

There, she learned the greatest and most terrible truth of her entire life: the supernatural was extremely real- and also extremely boring. After nearly a century of research conducted across the globe, dozens of examples of paranormal activity were known to and even housed by the Agency. But most specimens are frustratingly unimpressive, and their underlying rules and explanations remained elusive.

For example, one of the first objects new agents are introduced to is the first to be discovered by the Agency: the Orb. The Orb is a seemingly plain sphere of tin 27.8cm in diameter, seated on a table in what has since become someone's office after the department went through another facility downsizing. The Orb is completely ordinary in all parameters, except that it weighs ~12% less than it should. Its composition and physics have been rigorously tested, but no light has been shed on why. It's... just a slightly light ball of metal.

Other impossibilities prove to be equally unimpressive: a stone coin that, when flipped, seems to accurately answer and even predict any Yes/No question related to someone's shoe insoles; a man from Milwaukee who can spontaneously generate over 15 liters of water from nowhere but only by sweating it out during moments of extreme stress, discovered because he was an acapella performer with stage fright; a corgi who cast no shadow so long as no one was looking at him (Mr. The Pippers was more of a beloved office pet than anything, and died of old age decades before Tomris's arrival), etc. Their natures are impenetrable, and their applications are useless, especially to a shadowy board of directors who would rather can the whole project already.

While the work is gratifying at first, the crushing reality of the situation (plus the long hours and lousy pay) start to take their toll on Tomris. She begins to question her entire life. So what if the paranormal is real, if all it is is this? What's the point? Why would the universe suck all the magic out of magic? This depression, combined with a B-plot about her caustic, estranged family, eventually brings Tomris to her dinner table with gun in hand.

The narrative snaps back to the present just as she begins to squeeze the trigger. But the positioning of the gun triggers her gag reflex, causing her to pull the gun out at the last moment. She survives, and the bullet only grazes her upper lip. A moment later, she receives a phone call from the Agency: a recently exposed cult might actually be onto something.

The point of view then abruptly shifts to that of a nameless six year-old girl who is being held captive by the so-called Order of the Grey-Litten Ingress, a millennialist cult dedicated to a being, energy, or concept (or all of the above at once) referred to as "Abiding in Silence". She and another two-dozen people of varying ages and backgrounds were kidnapped by the Order, and are slated to be sacrificed to pave their way into the next world.

The cult leader is interviewing each of the sacrifices before the ritual, and takes a keen interest in the girl's sharp tongue and wit. They engage in verbal sparring, debating the nature of knowledge, the question of salvation, and whether or not the cult's patron even exists. Slowly, the girl gains the upper hand on the cult leader. By the time the Agency is knocking down the doors to the cult's compound (after a lengthy delay spent squabbling with local law enforcement over jurisdiction), he is reduced to a catatonic wreck endlessly lamenting that 'magic is dead'.

In the final chapter the PoV switches back to Agent Tomris. The disorganized cult is subdued, nothing unnatural has a chance to happen, and all hostages are recovered- with the exception of the girl, who takes off into a nearby wetland upon the Agency's arrival. Tomris pursues her and gets lost for what feels like hours. She finally finds and tries to coax the girl back, saying they can reunite her with her family. The girl gives Tomris a smirk, then viscerally merges with a nearby mangrove tree, which proceeds to stand up and crabwalk its way deeper into the swamp.

Tomris finds herself back at the compound with another agent snapping their fingers in her face, saying that she had "zoned out" for a minute there. Disturbed but exhilarated, she contemplates what this encounter might mean as she changes the bandage on her lip.

RBL Interviews: Hlao of Irrib, Coherent Shambler Disease Patient

[Preface: Hlao is a resident of the greater Irrib area, centered on the Western Branch of the lower River Khesh. He has been afflicted with Coherent Shambler Disease (CSD) for approximately twelve years, and is the longest-living known CSD patient by far. CSD, known by many colorful names, is a little-understood disease that attacks the nervous system of humans and, allegedly, certain ungulates. It is characterized by loss of bodily control from the neck muscles down, and a tendency toward lapsing into extended periods of low energy or borderline-catatonia when not in proximity to other humans unaffected by CSD. When in proximity to uninfected humans, a sufferer of CSD tends to violently lash out with lethal force, albeit not intent. The subject remains in full control of their mental faculties, but cannot exert physical control over their own body except to breathe, speak, blink, etc. The ultimate cause or vector for the spread of CSD is unknown. Theories include parasites, airborne toxins, emotional trauma, and even divine punishment. People with CSD tend to be killed immediately after their illness manifests, either in self-defense by their would-be victims or as a precaution by local authorities. That Hlao has been kept reasonably safe and healthy without any major incidents for more than a decade is very rare.

Hlao lives in a repurposed farmhouse located on a cousin's property. He is in his late thirties. He has short, messy hair beginning to grey at the roots. He is secured at one end of the room in a large, padded chair equipped with about a dozen reinforced leather straps to detain him. The only part of his body that is free is his head, which swivels and bobs slightly from years of slow neurological deterioration. As I enter the room his head snaps upright and his feet begin to kick. His fingernails have been freshly cut and filed, but the deep grooves dug into the armrests beneath his hands indicate that he is not always so well-manicured. His wiry muscles tense and strain hard enough beneath his long tunic that I fear he'll rip a tendon, but his gaze is clear, bright, and peaceful. He offers a cautious smile my way, but quickly averts his gaze and looks into an empty corner. I sit down at a stool placed close to the opposite wall away from him. His handler, apparently a friend, reminds him that they will be right outside, and takes their leave. We hold our conversation in raised voices to account for the distance between.]

RBL: Thank you again for reconsidering my request, doh¹ Hlao.

Hlao: I rebuffed you in haste the first time, doh Litte. I'm sorry for that. I assumed that anyone who wanted an interview with me would be like the last one who did.

RBL: I assure you I am not here for anything outside of your consent and comfort. I take the ethical strictures of my training very seriously. I simply wish to know more about you; not your condition. Besides, I have not paid off any of the town magistrates in order to see you.

Hlao: That last part is the most reassuring. Thank you.

RBL: Out of curiosity, who was this last person to "interview" you? I may have the means to file an official complaint about any misconduct on your behalf, if you so wish.

Hlao: To be honest, I don't remember him very well. I tried not to remember him or the examination for a long time, and eventually it worked. He's sort of a... pale, ghostly blur. I do remember he was from Serminwurth, or at least said he was. His name was M-something. Maren or Murzin or something like that.

RBL: ... Ah.

Hlao: Ah? Ah what? You know him?

[Hlao leans his head forward with sudden interest, his chair gently squeaks as he animates more]

RBL: I know of whom you speak. He is no longer a licensed practitioner of, well, anything.

Hlao: Well, that's good to hear. I hope he landed in a poorhouse.

RBL: He continued to study CSD for some time before he... ran afoul of certain ethical constraints. Last I heard, he floated down the Khesh and disappeared.

Hlao: Good. Drop-heads take him and keep him, I say.²

RBL: Er... quite. Now, may we begin the interview? I just have a few questions I wish to touch on.

Hlao: Sure, sure.

RBL: Please introduce yourself, in as many or as few words as you like.

[Hlao pauses at length, head gently lolling from side to side until he speaks]

Hlao: My name is Hlao. My village doesn't have a name, but it lies close enough to the town of Irrib on the Western Branch, that many of us tell outsiders we are from there. So I am Hlao of Irrib. I come from a family of farmers. They farm riverbed gourds. I used to farm with them too, but stopped when I became sick twelve years ago. I have one brother and four sisters. My siblings' children are learning how to read.

[Hlao straightens up in his seat to say that last part with some proud emphasis. It is the first time he has held eye contact so far]

RBL: That is wonderful to hear. Have they read anything by Tirti Naorut?

[Hlao grins in surprise]

Hlao: She is the littlest one's favorite. She says she wants to go to Nambar to prove the fairytales are real.

RBL: Oh, I remember feeling the same way... Now, could you describe a typical day in your life?

Hlao: I sleep in a special bed that is made to restrain me, so that I cannot hurt anyone or myself. It was made by one of the woodworkers in my village. It is one of a kind. I have a few chairs that I can sit in, too, but they are not as special. They are like this one here; repurposed from surgeons' or torturers' chairs- if there is any difference between the two. They are not as comfortable as the bed.

Anyway... I usually wake at dawn. Even in my sleep, I can hear other people getting up and moving around. I don't go to sleep around other people. My friends and relatives—my handlers—help me move to a chair and feed me breakfast. Sometimes they use a long spoon made from a broom handle to give me food, but that is only if my body is feisty that morning. Most mornings I am behaved, so they can feed me by hand. Everyone who knows about me, associates me with the giant spoon, though.

[Hlao laughs ruefully]

Hlao: Washing and dressing are still difficult. But we are leaving those out here.

RBL: Of course.

Hlao: Later in the morning, if the weather is not too bad, they will take me outside. I can walk with bound arms, and my legs will not cause too much trouble. Not anymore. I like to go for walks. So they tether me with ropes, and someone will walk where I've asked to go, and my body will try to chase them down. It keeps me exercised. And we all enjoy it- as long as the person in front of me is faster.

I spend most of my time at home, though. I don't really go places. I like to listen to stories while I sit. Stories or music. Anything that passes the time. But my handlers have to leave me alone in my room often, to give my body a chance to stop tensing up and fighting my restraints. When they do that, I close my eyes and... imagine things. Cities, languages, worlds. I imagine myself out there, experiencing them. Sometimes I can even wiggle my toes.

[Hlao looks down to indicate his sandal-clad feet, which are still making the same impotent kicking motions toward me as before]

RBL: What sorts of worlds and languages do you imagine?

Hlao: Why do you ask?

RBL: That sounds fascinating to me.

Hlao: Pssh. It does not.

RBL: I would not be out here if I did not value places and peoples, and the words they speak.

Hlao: Mmh... you know how they say that magic is like a sea?

RBL: Yes, that's one theory I'm familiar with. A metaphorical ocean of spiritual essence with the occasional godhead rising out of it like an island.

Hlao: It is like that, but... much more. I am there, standing on the "water", or sometimes swimming in it. I see the land rise up out of nothingness like the bobbing islands from Nambarish sailor tales. I sink my hands into the loamy ether and then rise up with it, into the sky. Into creation. I am there to see the first fires flare up and be quenched. The first to hear the burbling pits that stew with life. I stand like a stone, or drift like a cloud, and watch the world move around me. Sometimes it is like our world- sometimes it is our world, and I can walk it differently.

But other times I fill it with my dreams and nightmares. The words they speak, too. The screams and songs and profanity that they use every day, until one day no more mouths are left to speak them. I wander the emptiness afterward, and dwell on what has ended that never even existed. And then when everything else has crumbled away, the world sinks back down into the sea and only I am left.

RBL: ... You might want to consider having these imaginings written down.

Hlao: Why?

RBL: It would make a good story for people to read. Your niece, perhaps?

[Hlao scoffs initially, then stops to think]

Hlao: ... Hmm. I would need to trust someone with my private thoughts. Or learn how to write more than my signature with my teeth.

RBL: Did you not just trust me a moment ago?

Hlao: But that was... well, you are more... hmm. I will think about it.

[Hlao fidgets more than usual]

RBL: Shall we move on?

Hlao: Please.

RBL: Where do you usually hear stories or music from?

Hlao: My handlers, and other people who visit.

RBL: Tell me a little about these visits.

Hlao: Sometimes people visit me. Most of them are people from Irrib or beyond, who come to watch and study me. I don't like them. But they sometimes bring gifts and food that my friends and I need. They can't look after me for free. So I put on a friendly face and tolerate them. I almost broke loose once. That scared them off. It was funny.

[Hlao smiles impishly]

I like it when my family visits me. I may see them every few months. They tell me how the farm is going, and how the children are growing. I hope that someday my little niece will visit to read me some of her stories. Her mother won't let her, though. She is afraid of me. She... when I first got sick, I almost strangled her husband—my brother—to death, right in front of her in their bed. I don't blame her, though. Maybe in a few more years. My brother forgave me. He visits me the most. 

RBL: Tell me about your brother.

Hlao: He is set to leave and start working his own stretch of riverbank with his branch of the family in a few years. Our parents' farm passed to our eldest sister some years ago, and he has been saving up and doing favors ever since. So many families split their plots up smaller and smaller between siblings over the generations here, until you have barely enough land to feed yourself with and your second and third cousins don't even know you. Then one of the rich city people come around and offer to pay you half of what your land is worth, so you can leave to go and work for them on their tax-farms for even less. But he doesn't want that for us.

RBL: That sounds rather noble of him.

Hlao: I would go and help him if I could.

RBL: That sounds rather noble of you, too.

Hlao: Pfft. I just want out of this chair.

[Hlao and RBL both laugh. Hlao clears his throat and licks his lips]

Hlao: ... Doh Litte. A favor of you?

RBL: Yes?

[Hlao lolls his head in the direction of a nearby pitcher of water sitting on a table]

Hlao: I need a drink.

RBL: ... Oh! Of course.

[RBL pauses his live recording here]

[RBL set his notes down and crossed the room to the table. He found a small wooden cup to fill with water, then approached Hlao. Hlao's hands and feet tensed more than usual, curling violently as the proximity of another living person sent impulses through his body. Hlao just kept his eye on the water. RBL hesitated momentarily, then leaned in and tipped the cup to Hlao's lips. Hlao drank in loud, draining gulps that emptied the vessel in a few seconds. He belched, and nodded appreciatively at RBL]

RBL: Oh, erm...

[RBL produced a handkerchief and gingerly dabbed away the water that dribbled down Hlao's chin.

Hlao: What a gentleman.

[Hlao chuckled]

RBL: You are uh, welcome.

[RBL returned to his seat. Hlao's body relaxed somewhat]

[RBL resumes his live recording here]

RBL: Tell me about your friends? Forgive me, I just sort of took their presence for granted until now.

Hlao: The people who act as my handlers? They were old acquaintances from before I first got sick, but they became real friends after the fact. They renovated this house for me, and take shifts keeping me company. They're decent. They don't fake smiles around me. I appreciate that. One of them is a cousin we never lost touch with. The other three are old drinking buddies. We don't drink together anymore, though- my body fights the beer.

RBL: How so?

Hlao: I don't know. It's like it knows what drink does to it- dulls its reflexes and makes it less able to attack someone. I went sober after the first year when I kept popping loops in my chair to fight off a kurshaz³ of beer.

RBL: Do you miss alcohol?

Hlao: It was bad, the first few months. But it was bad for a lot of other reasons, too. Not so much now. I switched to tea.

RBL: I am sorry to hear that.

Hlao: Which part? The trouble, or the tea?

RBL: ... Yes.

[Hlao snorts]

RBL: What other creature comforts do you enjoy?

Hlao: After the harvest season ends and the river branches reflood, people here do everything they can with their gourds. Make bottles, ferment the greens, dry the flesh for later, whatever works. But I like the seeds, roasted. Go to Irrib during the festival and try some for yourself- but make sure they don't use too much salt and oil. That drowns and ruins all the flavor in them, mmh?

[Hlao inclines his head at RBL with the gravest of expectations. RBL nods solemnly]

RBL: Light on the oil and salt.

[Hlao nods, his head bobbing and drifting hard to one side. He stares off into space for several moments, then drifts back]

Hlao: May we finish soon? I am getting tired.

RBL: Oh, of course! Forgive me, we can stop now if you would prefer.

Hlao: No, no. I can finish.

RBL: Very well... Let me see. Ah, yes. I think this will do. What is something you aspire to? Is there a particular dream of yours that you hope will come true?

[Hlao dwells on this question at length]

Hlao: I have been told that we do not attack other people who are sick. Do you know if that is true?

RBL: Hmm... Yes, I believe so. In all the literature on the disease that I have read, none has ever suggested or shown evidence that infectees react aggressively to one another's presence. That is part of why infections in isolated areas can come as such a sudden surprise.

Hlao: I would like to meet another like me someday, then. And I would like to spend time with them. Even if we just stood still with nothing to talk about... I just want to be in another's presence where we aren't a danger for once. I would like that very much.

RBL: Of course. I... I will make sure your words are heard.⁴

Hlao: Thank you, doh Litte. I thought you were odd when you approached us. And you are- but you are also an enjoyable visit.

RBL: That is my single greatest aspiration in life.

[Hlao laughs again]

RBL: Before we finish this, are there any parting words that you would wish to share?

Hlao: You mean something I want to tell your readers?

RBL: Yes, I suppose I do mean that- all four of them.

[RBL laughs weakly, then clears his throat]

Hlao: Be good to your family, whether it's the one you're from or one you find yourself in. They might be the ones holding your spoon someday.

RBL: Thank you, doh Hlao.

[Live transcription ends here]

¹ An informal honorific commonly used in and around the alluvial plain on the western bank of the lower River Khesh. Comparable to "mister" or "boss".

² I chose not to confront my interviewee on this issue because I am his guest and he has already been a surpassingly gracious host. Additionally, I did not want to jeopardize the project by breaking from the interview to lecture him. But it should still be stated somewhere that the Sayaula do not appreciate any of the epithets derived from their cranial shape, and I believe their use should be discouraged.

³ A vessel and associated colloquial unit of measure roughly equal to half a liter. Literally a "thin one".

⁴ I should not get his hopes up with promises to seek out another patient. I have no idea what sort of hurdles this would require, if it is even possible.

3E OdditE: Urban Druid (Dragon Compendium, 2005)

Click here to return to the OdditE archive.

This series won't have very many class variants in it. There were just so many, and most of them change very little about their base classes. Which is perfectly fine for narrowing down the type of character you want, but it's not so much to write about unless I wanted to compile a list of them. Which I don't.

The Urban Druid is one big exception to that rule.

I only recently looked at this class for the first time precisely because of all the other variants and ACFs floating around out there. For the longest time I automatically assumed that the Urban Druid was just another one of those minor tweaks from Unearthed Arcana like the Whirling Frenzy Barbarian or the Thug Fighter- one or two modified class abilities to fit a slightly different take on things.

But when I stumbled across it while browsing dndtools, I learned that I was very wrong. The Urban Druid by James Jacobs is from Dragon #317 (later reprinted in Dragon Compendium) rather than UA, first of all. Second, instead of being a normal variant it's a complete overhaul of the Druid class that alters just about every single class feature in service of its new theme.

And it does that while still being nifty!

The Urban Druid

I'm surprised that Paizo link still works.

The Urban Druid is divorced from other druids despite sharing a fundamental principle with them. Whereas other druids value natural life, often favoring different manifestations of it like forests or oceans or what have you, urban druids see each city as not only a valid environment alongside all others, but as a single living organism unto itself. Civilization is opposed to nature, sure, but in the same way two neighboring biomes are opposed. A desert can swallow up grassland or a forest can dry up and expand over a bog, but one isn't inherently an enemy to the other.

The idealistic urban druid feels the same way about the city's place in nature. They may be opposed, but they need not be in constant conflict with one another. These manifestations of civilization deserve the same sort of guardianship as a grove of trees might receive, and that is where the urban druid comes in.

The mechanical differences are immediately apparent, starting with the equipment and skill list.

Much like a rogue, urban druids can equip rapiers, saps, crossbows, and short swords alongside druidic mainstays like the club and quarterstaff. They favor discreet weapons that don't draw attention or cause a panic in crowded city streets that may or may not have open carry laws.

They are limited to padded, leather, and studded leather armor, though notably they do not have a religious or supernatural limit on what kinds of material their weapons and armor are made from. Thus an urban druid can wear any suit of armor whose Armor Check penalty can be brought down to -0, even if the text says they should only have armor under  +4 bonus as a possibility (which is the first time I've ever seen gear proficiency gated expressly by number bonuses). Rock that mithral chain shirt, you miracle-hobo.

Urban druids gain a slew of socials skills to add to this faint whiff of rogue, like bluff, gather information, knowledge ( local), perform, and sense motive. They also lose their more nature-oriented skills like animal handling, knowledge (nature), etc. Personally I find the loss of spot and listen greatly lamentable, but the change was intended to make the urban druid more of a face character, and it accomplishes that- especially considering how important Charisma is to the urban druid.

Urban druids us Charisma as their casting stat instead of Wisdom. They get a whole new spell list that heavily features utility, crowd control, a little bit of charm and enchantment, and interacting with objects and constructs in a variety of ways. The list includes a few new spells, like Susurrus of the City, which allows you to ask questions of an empty building like it's a genius loci. That's what the big ol' brick face up at the top of the post represents.

The spell list also gets Repair Damage at every level, which was brand-new at the time of Urban Druid's original publication. Fortunately, they don't replace Cure Wounds spells. Urban Druids can also cast Repair spells spontaneously, replacing the base druid's Summon Nature's Ally ability. It's less powerful by far, but there are only so many places in a city you could pull a rhinoceros out of. Spontaneous Repair spells could be terrific if you and/or the party are Warforged, though.

The other thing thematically separating Urban Druids' magic from their more natural counterparts is where they receive their spells from. Normal druids receive their magic from nature, which bestows it upon them much the same way deities give clerics their spells. Urban Druids, meanwhile, gain their power by tapping into the spirit of a city. This living creature of streets and rooftops is a gestalt of all its citizens' hopes, fears, and dreams; a divinity of mortals' own collaborative creation that might not be conscious, but certainly isn't lacking in purpose.

I want so much more content delving into this concept. It's like an amped-up version of Shivers from Disco Elysium, or if the city of Revachol herself was a distant goddess.

From here, Urban Druid (UD from now on) class abilities can be divided into two categories; tweaks to base druid abilities, and full replacements for them. In the first camp we have City Sense, Disease Immunity, Favored City, Urban Companion, and Urban Shape.

City Sense is a flat +2 bonus to gather information and knowledge (local) checks. I've talked already in this series about how I hate class abilities that barely amount to a single newbie trap feat. It's not very exciting or useful. But it replaces the similarly uninspiring Nature Sense of the base druid, so it is what it is. Moving on.

Disease Immunity replaces Venom Immunity, because you're admittedly far more likely to contract a respiratory or waterborne disease in a populous, vaguely medieval city than you are to get bitten by a snake or huff exotic flower pollen. No notes.

Crowd Walk is the Woodland Stride of the concrete jungle (brick jungle? half-timbered jungle with a fading white plaster infill?). Except instead of not being slowed down by difficult terrain, the UD gets a +4 bonus to whatever check is involved when they're trying to pass through a space occupied by a hostile creature. It's basically the Mobility feat, except it extends to other things like making an overrun or tumble check. Better than City Sense, at least?

Favored City is exactly what it sounds like. It replaces and progresses similar to the druid and ranger's Favored Terrain, granting you a bonus in up to 6 cities of at least Small Town size or larger (according to the DMG). Favored City grants the UD a sacred bonus to bluff, diplomacy, gather information, and intimidate, making them even better at facing. It also gives them a decent +2 to Will saves besides.

Much like favored terrain, favored city can be handy or functionally useless depending on where you go in your campaign. A game that takes place entirely within a major city like Sharn or, gods forbid, Neverwinter, will see favored city activated just about all the time. Games where you're only in a city in between adventures make it more of an insult. I do appreciate that the ability extends across an entire city instead of just areas or neighborhoods, as I've seen with urban class features in other games. Pathfinder 1E, I think?

Oh, and did I mention that the skill bonus from favored city is keyed off of the UD's Wisdom modifier? The ability score they just dropped as the all-important casting stat in favor of Charisma? It wouldn't be 3E without a little bit of Multiple Attribute Dependence, I suppose.

Urban Companion is a modified Animal Companion that advances at the same rate, except the list of available companions is very different. They get the standard dog, pony, and snake options at 1st level, but no wolf, camel, aquatic options, etc. Instead they can pick things like centipedes, spiders, and rats. At higher levels instead of accessing an increasingly insane list of dire animals like dinosaurs and elephants, they get an increasingly insane list of giant vermin, animated objects, and just straight-up robots like hammerers or pulverizers. They can also get an otyugh at 7th level, which opens up potential for the municipal waste disposal druid of your dreams.

Like the change to spontaneous casting, the urban companion list is another flavorful downgrade. The list isn't bad by any means, and you can probably get pretty creative with animated objects. But the base druid wins out thanks to outside support: years of Monster Manuals and other splatbooks added to the list of animal companions and animal forms they can choose from. But as a class variant limited to a single magazine article, the UD gets no such love.

Speaking of animal forms, Urban Shape is quite something. Like urban companion, the animal options provided are extremely limited. You also do not gain plant or elemental forms at higher levels. Instead, to start off you can turn into any animal or vermin from the urban companion list, or any humanoid.

Now humanoids tend not to have the most powerful abilities baked into their species, nor would you be able to use them while urban shaped if they were supernatural or spell-like in nature. But this still allows you to turn into any humanoid you're familiar with. And with a +10 to Disguise checks from this being a modification of the Alternate Form ability, you can even impersonate individual people with this ability. You basically turn into a doppelganger for a few hours a day with urban shape. The synergy between that and an urban campaign with a Charisma-focused kit (not to mention the fact that you're still a full-caster) is spectacular, and I'm curious what kind of cheese you can age with this.

At higher levels, urban shape allows the UD to turn into an ordinary object (in case you've ever wanted to do a stakeout as a fencepost) or an animated object (in case you want to end said stakeout by staking somebody). Or, hell, just become the mimic house from that one internet copy+pasta. Again, the combat power level is diminished compared to base druid, but the flavor is kept to nicely.

And, honestly, it's still 2/3rds of a CoDZilla so the power drop isn't that much to worry about.

As I mentioned, the other group of UD class abilities are entirely new, rather than being modifications of existing stuff. They are Alley Fighting, and Information Network.

Alley Fighting is weird. It would fit way better on an Urban Fighter if such a variant existed. The UD gets a +1 to attack rolls in confined spaces, and ignores cover from attacking around a corner in melee. 

That's it. The bonus doesn't even scale with level.

The ability to ignore cover might be good if you maneuver and do a lot of ambushing, which is something the UD can pull off decently well in a city. It's still such a weird ability, even more niche than the rest of the variant.

Information Network on the other hand, is the culmination of the UD as a surreptitious guardian of the city with eyes and ears everywhere. The UD gains a network of informants who cut gather information checks from a full day down to a mere half-hour. Additionally, just about every event of interest that happens in one of their chosen cities will come to their attention within a matter of hours. This is the kind of kingpin spy network that rogues would have gotten, had 3rd edition kept the convention of every class founding some kind of stronghold at ~10th level. There's so much roleplay potential here, and I love it.

The Urban Druid was a very enjoyable discovery for me. It's a fun, different take on very familiar old mechanics, and it makes the idea of playing a game set entirely in a city slightly less anxiety-inducing to me, which I assure you is high praise.

I would have liked it if it the lore of the class supported them being part of the larger culture of druids, perhaps with a nod toward the idea of living in harmony with nature, but coming from the other direction than what we usually associate druids with. Because as it stands, urban druids feel weirdly divorced from their namesakes, as well as all other nature-themed classes, to the point that maybe it would have made more sense to call them something else and then in the description say in passing that they are "like the druids of the city" or something.

I dunno. I've probably been binge-watching too many urbanism videos on YouTube again. Now I want a base druid and an urban druid working together to create a nice green city with extensive parks, sustainable energy sources, and mixed-use zoning. Throw in a plotting NIMBY cult and you've got yourself an adventure.

Quick aside: I started this post by saying I wouldn't talk a lot about alternate class features, and I'm afraid I was kind of lying.

In researching the urban druid for this post, I came across an ACL from Cityscape, which is an invaluable resource (or maybe a terrible burden of knowledge) when you're trying to trudge through the crunchiness of an urban campaign in 3.5E. This ACL is Voice of the City, available to druids, rangers, and spirit shamans. It drops Wild Empathy in favor of the ability to communicate ideas to creatures whom you don't share a language with, and honestly I wish I could trade City Sense or Alley Fighting out for it. It fits the urban druid so well, even if its speak language skill is redundant with the variant's skill list.

3 In-Universe Board Games to Kill Time with

So your protagonists are nerds and hobbyists just like their players, and you have to populate the shelves of a little specialty shop the party insists on visiting. You don't need each one to have a fully fleshed-out ruleset like Three-Dragon Ante or Dragonchess, but you still need an idea to run with for each- you just need some names and concepts, and if the PCs bite, you can fudge the rest.

Well, we've got the names and concepts, and you—presumably—have the fudge.

Dvürgfest

Appearance: Frothy beer practically spills out of the box art as dozens of highly insensitive dwarf stereotypes smash their tankards together around drenched wooden tables and roaring firepits. Enormous mouths open in raucous laughter and sausage-like fingers point as one of their fellows coughs during a chugging contest and sends a geyser of aerosolized booze across the scene. A warning label shaped like a slightly off-kilter wooden tavern sign requests the utmost responsibility from any and all players in bolded Sans Liability font.

Back-of-the-Box Blurb: Oi, laddie! Ye look like ye hae a strong stomach. Why don't ye an' yer mates pull up some chairs an' a keg! What are we celebratin'? Why, Dvürgfest ay coorse! It's always Dvürgfest!!!

Contents: 12-page rulebook, 6 shot glasses, 1 reusable writing tablet, 1 fifty-charge wand of Conjure Alcohol with a 50% chance of missing 1d6 charges- the box was tampered with, and either the store manager or a customer abusing the returns policy used the wand a few times.

Prep Time: None, Play Time: Variable, dependent upon the constitution of the players.

What It Is: An Irresponsibly Good Time.

True to its name and advertising, this is a drinking game with little in the way of skill, challenge, or even chance. You pick a game from the book or set your own parameters for sips and shots on the tablet, and then get to work on your night. One player has the distinction of being the "Brewmeister" who keeps tally and uses the wand for refills, but they are not exempt from drinking either. The wand can conjure a small variety of alcoholic beverages depending on the magic keyword spoken while activating it, ranging from a potent pilsner to a highly combustible rum. The wand also has around 50 charges, which is hopefully enough for several games. There is a form and address in the back of the rulebook for ordering wand refills- you may notice the wand constitutes 90% of the cost of the game, and that just getting drinks at the pub would be cheaper.

Consequences: All participants must Save every hour of play or wind up dangerously drunk. Even the "winner" becomes decently tipsy at the end of the game. Any penalties for inebriation are in full effect, and the following morning all participants must Save with disadvantage or else wake up severely hungover.

Capital

Appearance: The letter 'C' explodes off of the box in a font several dozen sizes bigger than any other text on the box, to make sure absolutely no one misses the fact that the C in Capital is capitalized. Disembodied hands rake through a dragon hoard's worth of gold coins and jewels underneath it, surrounded by a halo of industrious vignettes depicting fleets of trade ships, smoking factories, well-to-do gentlemen, statuesque workers striking handsome poses as they labor, etc.

Back-of-the-Box Blurb: Become a merchant prince! Grease the wheels of industry with the sweat of your brow, make daring investments, and live a life of high adventure in high society with your fellow players... at least until you claim it all for yourself!

Contents: Folding board, 216-page manual, 4 sets of obnoxiously nonstandard polyhedral dice carved from the bones of an animal species that has since become critically endangered, 3 twenty-count decks of event cards, 500 building/worker/currency tokens.

Prep Time: 3-4 hours; Play Time: 30 minutes to 2 hours

What It Is: Friendship Ruiner.

The grueling setup time is the result of the game's extensive random generation rules. You don't play in the same world from game to game- each one is created from scratch with its own economic and sociopolitical variables in play. The entire global economy is simulated, with greatly varying degrees of depth and realism therein.

Players, too, have their fair share of prep work. After determining first-come-first-serve turn order, each player generates their merchant prince ("or princess!!", as the rulebook rather proudly declares numerous times, always in italics with exactly two exclamation points). To create a prince(ss), one must also create five generations of family history, fortune, inheritance, and "good breeding" that leave the player with a wealth (or dearth) of bonuses and point modifiers. To cap it off, the merchant begins play with a random starting gift/investment of money and liquid assets. These gifts are determined using open-ended polyhedral dice rolls that can explode multiplicatively, and can often (around 40% of the time) result in a player acquiring most or all of the game's currency tokens, thereby winning the game before play has even started.

The actual game is played on a rather cheap, flimsy board. (Deluxe editions of the game use carved hardwood of questionable legality that raises the price fivefold.) The board depicts the nondescript metropolis of Fortuna, studded with rings and boxes for game pieces and stacks of special event cards. Players compete in several industries while committing corporate espionage or naked acts of aggression against one another and trying to win the local government to their side. Alliances are supported, but they are designed to be fast, loose, and brief. Wealth tokens can be spent on various ventures, or wasted in acts of conspicuous consumption that give you influence points and favors among the aristo-plutocracy, to be spent later for even more wealth.

The final tally is its own game, full of byzantine rules for point calculation dependent upon world-generated modifiers, as well as any changes that occurred over the course of the game.

Consequences: At least one character will develop a deep animosity toward another—most likely the winner, or the most ruthless player—for one day thanks to this game. They must Save or else do nothing to help whenever preventable misfortune is about to befall the target of their righteous indignation.

At-Home Adventure

Appearance: The box's eerily photorealistic cover art depicts a ragtag band of misfits not unlike the PCs, gathered around a table where they are poring over books, reference sheets, and a grid board populated by figurines that resemble miniaturized versions of themselves, albeit markedly different in minor, idealized ways like height, physical appearance, or gender. The figurines seem to be coming to life, animating into flesh and blood out of their former ivory and pewter states to do battle with a group of ruffian figurines undergoing the same transmutation.

Back-of-the-Box Blurb: Enter the battlefields of Imagination!

Contents: 10 meters of grid paper, 5 sets of 6-piece polyhedral dice, 248-page "core rulebook", 129-page "referee's manual", 10 "sample adventurer" brochure-booklets, 100 character sheets, dice rolling tray, privacy/reference screen, 100 paper tokens, catalogue of ~20 optional supplement books available for order.

Prep Time: Meta-variable; Play Time: Indefinite

What It Is: Hyper-Simulationist.

This game so perfectly replicates the "real" world of the campaign that the PCs use the exact same systems and mechanics to play it that you and your players use to play them, albeit with a few terms replaced by suspiciously specific synonyms. The PCs may even create characters who are uncannily perfect twins of themselves. The board game essentially becomes a mesagame- a game within the game whose distinction from "reality" relies entirely upon a thin veil of cognitive dissonance.

Consequences: The entire party must Save or else experience a spiraling existential crisis as they begin to consider the implications of living in a world that can be simulated so perfectly. They can almost hear your dice rolling...