Bloody Chalice

Any ideas for a dungeon for an all wizard party? Looking for inspiration for a fun one-shot in between campaigns

Oneshot: Latenight Brainstorming

It’s time to hit the books! 

Setup: The party are a group of incorrigible youths attending a magic school (no not that one, another one), who are facing down a big test that may or may not decide whether they’ll be forced to repeat a year.  Sadly for the party, they’re not great at school, and their only hope not to be forced to endure the humiliation of being held back is an all-night cram session before the big test. 

Cram session, as in “ cramming ourselves into a secret passage we found to the forbidden section of the library, then cramming as many high-magic tomes into our packs and hope that one of ‘em will have a spell we can use to cheat on this test.” 

Challenges & Complications: 

 Step 1: The Heist. Plan out with your party the way in which they’ll circumvent the various defenses of the library, from the insomniac upper classmen ALSO cramming for their exams, to the demonic librarian that patrols the stacks endlessly, looking to castigate any who put a book back where it doesn’t belong. The challenges should seem relatively easy to overcome, so encourage your players to think outside the box and use what their characters would know from their various classes. 

Step 2: The Secret Passage. Getting to the Forbidden section of the library is easier said that done, and requires going through a winding series of cramped and forgotten hallways crawling with spiders, alchemically mutated rats, and all manner of other minor threats. 

Step 3: The screwup. Things are progressing well trough the heist, with the party having gotten to the forbidden stacks and managed to toss a few promising looking spellbooks into their “study pile”. Then things start to go wrong: the party stumbles across one of their classmates ( the one who may or may not be the chosen one) and her do-gooder friends, Who’ve ALSO decided they need a few books from the library ( likely for worldsaving nonsense) and protest at the party sniping their supply. A squabble between the two groups attracts the attention of a demonic librarian, and the party is forced to flee through the stacks and back through the passage. 

Step 4: Study The Maelstrom Tome. Among their purloined parchments, the party discovers a magnificent book that claims to be an invaluable treatise on weather magic. Knowing that one of their proffessors was stressing the utility of such spells, the party begin perusing the book without any acknowledgement that it’s started to rain outside. Messing around too much with the tome ends up releasing a powerful storm elemental, which threatens to blow their tower-dorm down if they don’t manage to seal it back in its book. The party will have to skirmish across rainslick rooves, possibly climbing spires or  hitching a ride on one of the castle gargoyles in order to reach their flying foe. 

Step 5: The test has been rescheduled due to inclement weather.  With most of the roof blown off of the grand hall and the carefully laid out tests nearly washed away by the rain that came sluicing in, the party have miraculously managed to obtain a reprieve from their encroaching deadline. 

Future Adventures

If you wanted to use this adventure as a springboard to a larger campaign, have the story pick up some years after the characters have graduated, having moved out of their awkward adolesence on to varying other carriers out in the wider world. Have it be a reunion for old time's sakes and work with each player to figure out the trajectory of their life in the interm period. Eqch of these characters has accued their own problems, but reunited, they might just be able to scheme their way out of trouble as they once did.

Art 1

Art 2

During your exploration you stumble upon a shrine.

The electricity fills the air.

The Deity is present.

Would you like to leave an offering?

A sweet treat from a friend.

A paper star.

A broken pencil.

A piece of lint from your pocket.

Blood.

No.

Lorn's Lure is a sci-fi free-climbing adventure scale a massive megastructure in search of a glitchy ghost owl!

Lorn's Lure is out now on Steam

Gameplay Video:

I had a fucking wonderful conversation with a Director who is a trans woman today.

I originally responded to an ad of hers looking for a transfem video editor for a documentary about trans people, but I was several months late. I specifically responded knowing I may not get the gig, but I wanted to work with her on this project that I felt was so important. It was important to me as a person developing a career in film, it was important to me as a trans girl hoping to engage and give to a community I want to be a part of, it was important that a project get made that could help people like me figure out what the fuck is going on with their identities.

So I waited for a response. Eventually one came. We set up a meeting for this afternoon, and the conversation we had was euphoric. I was so anxious and in my own head about the whole thing, but when it came time to talk, I felt like I was unapologetically myself while talking to her. I didn't need to mask, or change how I behaved for her. I just was. It felt wonderful. I've never had that with another person before, I think.

We talked about film work, trans experience, and MOTHERFUCKING TTRPGs!!!!!!!!! She called me "girl" in conversation and that was butterflies in my tummy. When I mentioned I was only 3 months on HRT she unashamedly and excitedly exclaimed that my chest was going to start hurting soon, and that lack of timidity about the subject was so fucking refreshing.

She mentioned how she enjoyed taking on the role of teaching younger trans people and being motherly. I added that my friends say that I'm the same way, but that I don't really have someone to be that way for me. It was a strange feeling to realize mid-conversation that I may need something like that at all. I never felt like I wanted a motherly force in my life, but maybe as I find myself in femininity that's something I need. My husband can only do so much to help me, and he's not exactly the posterchild for this sort of thing.

Nearing the end of our conversation, she told me to keep in touch and ask any questions if I need. But then she mentioned that we could go to get our nails done together sometime soon (I'd mentioned my experience with hand/nail dysphoria from a few days ago). I shut down. I stared at my screen through to her silently for a moment. I then stuttered, trying to answer. She asked if I was okay and if she overstepped any boundaries. I admitted that I needed a moment to restart my brain. Then I explained that I don't have any feminine friends to do "girl stuff" with. I've never been able to before. The idea excited me beyond belief. I said yes emphatically. I almost started crying a little, to be completely honest.

We said goodbye, and I closed the call.

Im doing a little tiny cry now, I feel so fucking good. I feel so proud of myself for trying for this and sticking with it. Proud of myself for not canceling because of my anxiety. Proud of myself for allowing me to be me unapologetically with absolutely no fabrication for the pleasure or comfort of another person.

Writing this now in bed. No other plans until later tonight. That call took a lot of my energy. Time to rest.

Night night💜

Hello! I've been batting around an idea for a warlock of the undead whose patron is an eldritch Far Realm entity, but haven't been able to find much in the way of official lore for the plane. I would love to hear your take on the subject, if you had any ideas for the landscape and inhabitants and such!

Planescape: The Far Dead Realm(s)

So for those not in the know, the far realm is the d&d cosmology's designated corner for lovecraftian shenanigans, being the default origin of most aberrations as well as anything particularly "madness" related or stuff too weird to fit into the morality based system of planes.

I'm not a big fan of the far ream ( insert joke about me being too weird to fit into the morality based system of planes) because it makes the entry level cosmic-horror fan mistake of conflating tentacles with the unfathomable and paints things beyond human perception as innately hostile and entropic.

To me, the astral sea is the place where all that far-realm weirdness should live, being that its the place where thoughts become physical heedless of any physical constraint. There’d naturally be alien environments that were hostile to life native to the material plane, either in that they were unsuited to conventional biology, or operated on a different set of physics/math/coherence to more traditional reality. That said, it does serve our storymaking to have a bad place from whence things can come from/be banished to, so for that end I'll let you in on my own version of the unknowable plane: The Dead Realms

TLDR: The dead realms are a cosmic junk heap, myriad realities that have become unstable or suffered through an irreparable apocalypse and have inturn scoured or abandoned of mortal life and the gods that oversee them. Seeking to avoid further disruption of the cosmos, the great entities which govern the astral sea quarantine the dead realms in their own fold of space. Cross contamination renders the plane into a simmering cauldron of chaotic energies, as civilization plagues and reality storms crash against eachother with the tomb-prions of world eating gods as backdrop. Any breach of the realms’ containment could lead to potential doom, as anything that can survive the end of multiple worlds is likely more than capable of ending a few on its own.

Ironically, the reason that the asker can’t find lore about the far realm is that its on purpose, and that’s sorta the problem: The far realm was written to be intentionally vague, hearkening to unseen and unknowable horrors of the lovecraft mythos.  The problem with that is that as part of the greater dnd multiverse ( atleast the default one) the far realm is a place you theoretically CAN go, and given that some of the game’s biggest baddies originate there, meaning that there needs to be more about the plane than a simple gesture at it being gross and full of tentacles.

Compare the thematic weight of a party visiting the far and dead realm(s): The former is weird, surely, but other than horrifying chaos, the far realm doesn’t really say anything. On the contrary, both heroes and their players can understand the dead realms as a forewarning of what happens if they fail in their cosmic level responsibilities, and see echoes of their own desperate struggles among the ruins.

Geography:  The process of transposing multiple worlds into a single plane is not a gentle one, even more so when many of those worlds do not share an underlying model of reality. The cracked remnants of planetary bodies float together like asteroid clusters, while flat-earth geographies impose themselves on space at awkward angles like planes of glass, or weave through it like ribbons of a shredded map. Remnant kingdoms are scorched as newly arrived worlds bring their stars with them, and blighted seas spill from one celestial body to the next like wine spilled across a table from a tipped glass.

Its junk drawer architecture, a dumpster into which broken worlds are heaved with no care for their condition or where they might come to rest, slowly ruining eachother like kitchen scraps heaped upon old clothes layered over discarded furniture

Inhabitants: Despite their name the dead realms are not empty, besides the monstrous scavengers Vast wastelands conceal remnant holdouts and the decaying lairs of senile god kings. Only those great authorities of the cosmos decide when a realm is beyond saving, and those left behind on it are considered forfeit to save the greater cosmos from the horrors they endure. That said, there are other entities that live in the maelstrom, and they are far more threat to a wandering party that’ve become stranded in the forbidden realm:

Kaotori*: Once a group of arcane explorers who sought salvage and secrets from the oldest reaches of the dead realms, they were lost in the depths where time itself had begun to rot. They trickled back one by one, transmuted into resin soaked horrors and scattered across the centuries both before and after they left. Stripped of all but a few scraps of their previous identities, the remnants of their former lives knaw at them like the ache of a rotten tooth, which the Kaotori are desperate to extract. Turning their wicked power to the task, each Kaotori combs the cosmos for any trace of its former life, looking to extinguish the source of these memories that it might finally know some twisted form of peace.

Eldrazi*:Like beetles skittering over and through a fallen log until it is mulch, the aberrant broods known as the Eldrazi toil endlessly to return the material of dead worlds back into raw stuff of creation, dismantling matter, magic, and creature alike until all they touch is cosmic dust. Mostly harmless if left at a distance, Eldrazi do not distinguish intruders into their domain from unprocessed worldstuff and their domain extends ever forward so long as their is material to reclaim.

Ancient automata: The engines of forgotten ages still stir on many abandoned worlds, whether they be crystaline consiousness of superhuman intellect or the derlict mechanisms of a single tinkerer

Feral Celestials: while many angels are content to wander from task to task, there are those so dedicated to their divinely ordained mission that they choose to go “down with the ship” when the time comes to ring in the apocalypse. After their particular endtimes have come and gone, these entities slowly begin to waste away, being reduced over time to becoming avatars of strange faiths, or hunting through the wilderness little better than beasts. 

Outergods: Whether  they reign over a destroyed worlds, were imprisoned within one,  or maybe  just like the vibe, the dead realms are full of outergods, which make up the only pantheon for those desperate souls stranded in the expanse. Kronos the cannibal god reigns over lands of dust and ruin, Cezil’Tek holds entire worlds in still and silent loneliness, While Shub-Nuggurath and her brood flourish in toxic swamps and fleshy jungles, just to name a few

* You can find 3rd party stats for these creatures online,

Adventure Hooks:

After falling trough an unstable portal or getting lost fucking around with teleportation, the party find themselves stranded in the dead realms, specifically in a barren desert landscape with a half-buried city built into some wind-scarred cliffs their only landmark. Far off in the distance, amid an alien sky, they can see a massive purple-green cloud approaching, which is in fact a rogue ocean displaced from its original bed that will come crashing down on their desert world in a matter of days. With time running short and an entire city’s worth of secrets to distract them, the party must comb through the ruins for a means of returning home lest they drown along with the desert world.

Following scraps of planear lore and desperate to protect their home from an otherworldy threat, a party of spelljammers must slip past the watch of the celestial authority to salvage pieces of a planetary warding system. This system allowed another world to stave off the threat in the past, but didn't’ stop its original architects from falling prey to the whiles of an outer god and leading their world to doom from within. Now situated among the junk drifts of the dead realms, this fallen world is slowly being eaten away by eldrazi as the last zealots of the outergod look for cruel and desperate ways to stem the tide.

Monstrous aberrations comb the countryside, attacking villages, searching for something, pushing the party into cooperation with a goodnatured  wizard who was exiled from the circle of mages for his curiosity about forbidden magic.  During a moment of heroic sacrifice, the wizard inadvertantly opens a rift to the dead realms and ends up falling through, becoming lost in time and space and eventully transformed into a kaotri... the very same kaotri that has spent centuries combing through the multiverse looking for this particular kingdom. Warped irrevocably and wracked by the pangs of a now recursive present, this Kaotri now seeks to wipe its once home off the map, and just use that recently opened dead-realm portal to do it.

Art

by the way i fell in love with the little map marker drawings when I saw them at their biggest size because look at them they're adorable, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone share them before so here they all are in their original size. The first two images are from the base game, the last one from SotE.

tw: body horror, blood

vin and human

Hey. You. Trans girl who's had quite a bit of breast growth but feels insecure because of the way they sit. Most cis women's breasts don't sit naturally with perfect squished together cleavage. All cis women whos breasts do sit like that will not sit like that naturally for longer than a decade or two. It's all in the bras. Most good bras don't make your breasts sit like that because they're made to support the weight, not to display them perfectly. Get a push up bra. Trust me. If you wanna maximize the squished together eye candy factor you need to get a push up bra. There are many options to choose from because millions if not billions of cis women have that same insecurity you do. Your body isn't incorrect. Your body is perfect. You were just fed an unrealistic ideal like every other woman

I have this arbitrary line I need to cross before I can congratulate myself and come out as trans to my friends and family. I just need to think im pretty for longer than a fleeting second. I need to live a day feeling pretty and go to sleep feeling pretty and wake up again to feel pretty again. And then maybe I'll be able to say "I'm ready".

But what if that agency is taken from me? What if I am pushed before I'm comfortable. What if my breasts grow too large to keep hidden. Or my parents ask me about my girlish tendencies before I even begin to think about how to discuss it with them?

I dont know what to do then. I'll bumble through it and need to live uncomfortably until I hit that arbitrary milestone that dictates when I can be myself, unapologetically, anywhere and everywhere.

It hurts being called a son. A boyfriend. A nephew. A grandson. Referred to as a "Lord" at a renfaire instead of a Lady. It makes my heart sink and my gut wretch. Whatever positive energy I have flushes away.

But I can't bear the discomfort of living my truth in a way that makes myself cringe, because if I cringe others will too. It's silly. So many braver souls do it, and with such confidence that I am jealous and dream fantasies where I live their lives.

It's fine. I'll manage. Someday I'll meet my arbitrary milestone. One day my mother will have a daughter.

I said this months ago but I'll say it again: if you're transgender you HAVE TO LIVE