I wish I could say that I did not see this coming, that the situation surprised me and that my decision was forced by the circumstance, but it is not so. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I sought out the aid of these unholy horrors, these mockeries of life. I sought them because I knew that no one left on this plane knew more about the crystals than they did. I am loathe to say that I decided in my heart to turn to the Thirteen, the undead lords of the city of Phet-Ray. They had constructed the most recent Veil crystal and were most assuredly in the process of rebuilding it.

Working alone in my laboratory, with Robaund at my side, I had determined that I would not be able to progress any further in my research without the aid of one more knowledgeable about the crystalization process than I had become. Robaund, whose memories had almost completely returned, informed me that it was the archlich Goron Ru that had crafted the ritual that was performed by the clerics. He also knew that Goron Ru, one of Manath’s chief lieutenants, was always seeking information on the Northern Kingdoms. Maybe he would consider trading information, the bronze elf suggested. I immediately rejected the notion, claiming that I would never work with such an abomination. But I could not fully shake the idea.

I had petitioned the Prince for as many death row prisoners as could be spared. Soon my cells were filled with murders, rapists and thieves. The Prince was a generous man; he had come to appreciate the services that I could offer him and he asked few prying questions. For many weeks after Robaund’s suggestion, I had husked scores of prisoners to form crystals. I could now store nearly a dozen souls in a single vessel without it becoming unstable. But, as I began to use them more and more, the crystals began to drain quicker and quicker. Where my first crystal of four souls had lasted a fortnight before giving out, a four soul crystal would give me but a few days peace. Visvatman was learning to overcome the defenses I was erecting, forcing me to continually redouble my efforts.

Eregant is a city of crime with harsh penalties for being caught, but I was needing prisoners faster than the Prince could produce them for me. I was nearly to the point of turning to street urchins when Robaund suggested again that I try to make contact with the liches of Phet-Ray. I steeled myself as I prepared to agree to that which I had sworn never to do. With a heavy sigh, I consented to let my bronze elf companion broker a meeting with the Thirteen.

From Eregant, I could teleport him and myself into Western Volunoptra but from there the elf would be on his own. I sent him with a letter expressing my intentions and desires and several scrolls with which contacted. I said no words as he began marching his way through the desert, but waited until I could no longer hear his footsteps before uttering a single curse and then returning to my lair beneath the palace. I awaited the message from him with both much anticipation and tremendous dread.

Days passes as I sat hunched in my personal library. I needed nothing in my laboratory, as making new crystals was all but futile and my tengu guards would ensure that none of my remaining prisoners would escape. They may be useless to me, but they were still under my charge. Also, the company of Crebain and Daidra often makes the torture of Visvatman more bearable. With Crebain, I could once again read the dusty, crinkly tomes that I had gathered since my time here. I could once again see the beautiful illuminations of temple books or the fevered hand-written scrawlings of adventuring diaries. I could see the beauty o the written word and drink in the power and nuance of each character. With Daidra, I could feel something other than the cycle of pain and deadness that had become my world. If only as pale shadows, I could feel how she felt as she watched a sunset or sang a melody. My tongue could taste nothing but ash though, when I was with her, I could almost remember the sweetness of berries and the tartness of citrus. But more than those, with her I could forget the atrocities of my life, the lives I had taken or destroyed, the blood that I had helped shed on those “adventures”, the terrible things I had experienced. I could just be; with her, there was only her and me.

How Visvatman loved those fleeting moments of joy. I am convinced that he would allow me to have them only so that my soul would not be entirely crushed, which would spoil his fun. He would quiet himself during these times of sweet reverie only to mock me the moment I was alone again. Anger burned within me and I wished that Robaund would inform me quickly of the terrible bargain that I must strike.

As I languished in my apartment waiting on news from Murmanityed, a curious coincidence befell me. At my doorstep stood the great heroes of the Northern Kingdoms, my former adventuring companions. They informed me that they needed my aid in getting to the city of Phet-Ray, that they had business there regarding the Emperor Philipi. They believed that the dragon Sorcheena had stolen him away to there in trade for the secret of becoming a dracolich. They had received this information from an oracle that they had claimed that I had lead them to only weeks before. I knew nothing of this oracle but I found it better to not ask as it gave me a perfect reason to move into Manath’s territory.

Choosing to not confuse the issue, I offered my services. It had been a tenday since I had sent Robaund out. As he had not yet contacted me, I was sure that he was dead which meant that I would need to make my own contact with the Thirteen.

Before we departed from Eregant, an Aruthien ranger arrived bearing two griffons and a message. The griffons were for Alder and Miach and the message was for all of us. Aruthien was launching an attack into Manath territory in an attempt to slow the progress northward into Spaartha and Ehrenland. There would be three simultaneous attacks by Aruthien legions on the city-states of Morag, Phylactis and Phet-Ray. We surmised that the troops would make landfall within a week, so we needed to hurry so that we could make it into Phet-Ray before the siege began. Rath was set to take charge of the assault on Morag, we were told.

I had just been handed my bargaining chip. I had wracked my brain trying to work out what I had to offer the liches in exchange for information on the crystals and, until this moment, could find nothing that I was sure would be found valuable.

We arrived just outside the city of Phet-Ray after Holly and I had cast our spells. We waited behind a sandy mesa while some tried to sneak into the city. I thought their plan was foolish but held my tongue as I had other business with which to attend. I waited until all my companions had left before contacting Robaund. He apologized for having not contacted me and explained that he had been imprisoned as a spy and was set for execution. He gave me the name of his captor, who I then contacted in an effort to reach someone with whom I could bargain. Favor, it seems, was still on my side as the name I had been given was that of one of the Thirteen, a lich known as Lethossi.

We arranged a meeting on the plateua. I sat alone on the warm stone as the lich approached with his retinue of skeletal warriors. I knew that I could not take them all – not even half of them, I suspected – and so asked for Lethossi’s terms. He told met that he had read the letter Robaund carried and that he was intrigued as to what I could offer him. He explained how he was in position to soon strike against Goron Ru and take over the Thirteen. He felt no qualm revealing this to me as I am sure that he planned to kill me as soon as I had given him what he wanted. He then asked why I desired information on the Veil crystals and what I had planned to do with them.

Having nothing to hide from him – and being sure that attempting any falsehood would mean the end of my miserable life – I explained my situation with my torturer and how the Veil could silence him. I explained how I had developed my own method for creating crystals but that it was imperfect and that I had become desperate. If the skull that rested beneath the cowl could have smiled, I’m sure that Lethossi could have at my story. He asked me what I planned to offer in exchange for the process to make refined crystals. With utter disbelieving defeat, I informed him that Aruthien’s legions were bearing down on Manath and that they were no longer simply trying to defend the northern borders. When encouraged to continue, I began to slowly divulge the composition, leadership and timing of the assaults on Phylactis and Phet-Ray. I named for him the legions being sent, their makeup and, as much as I knew, their usual tactics. I spilled forth all that I knew regarding those assaults as the ewe her entrails to the diviner.

When I had finished, a hollow sound began to emanate from Lethossi’s skeletal frame. It took many long and nervous moments before I realized that the sound was what this abomination used in place of laughter. “You despise me, my very nature revolting to you, and yet you would sell out your fellow men for knowledge deemed ‘evil’ in their eyes? You would send them to a fate you believe worse than death to save your own sack of flesh? I will give you the information you seek, and even keep our encounter secret from your friends. I make no secret of enjoying the pain and suffering of others and I am certain that the information you desire will only increase your suffering and not reduce it. Be so warned and come.” With those chilling words his clawed hand touched my shoulder and we were in his study.

The lich made good on his promise and taught me the secrets of the ritual, correcting me where my version had erred. His hollow mockery of laughter echoed in the cavernous chamber as he explained in intricate detail the process by which their current method was derived. He explained how the procedure was tweaked based on the race of the slave and how to calibrate the runes and circles to accommodate the widest variety of subjects without sacrificing the quality of the crystal. He seemed to revel in his knowledge but more so he seemed to anticipate what was to be the ultimate key to a flawless crystal. He explained that it was the purity of the souls that made for the best crystals, that it was children who made the best subjects.

I had been prepared to sacrifice my enemies or those who had thrown their own lives away by committing capital crimes. They had forfeited their lives and I simply wished not to waste them. But children? How could I justify to Daidra that I was performing my experiments on children? I had been able to rationalize for her the sacrifice of criminals, but she would never understand how I could sacrifice the orphans she spent her days tending and treating. I was sure Lethossi could see my every thought painted across my face because his crude imitation of laughter vomited forth from him with more force than ever before. His laughter mocked me as it also damned me.

I sat in silence for what seemed like hours. I simply could not resolve myself to what this abomination had proposed. Children? It was unthinkable. I had made two promises on that winter’s day in 194 and I had already broken one of them, which now lead me to break the second. I had, in my weakness, turned to these undead but I would not let the same weakness keep me from turning back from them.

I could feel the wet of my tears being wicked away by the arid desert air. In the sickening blast of noise Lethossi used as laughter, he beckoned to his minions. It was time, he said, to put things into motion that would gain him the high tower. His parting words with me were hauntingly simple: “Your path is already forged.” My chest fell at ‘forged’. He had used an arcane word, ‘chirugo’, used only before to describe the chains that bind Gahl-tath-Urok to his whirlpool. Chains, it is said, that not even Uhel could unbind.

As he left, I knew that my companions would be in trouble, so I fled back to the mesa and waited for them. And waited. And waited. For three days I waited. It wasn’t until the crash of the first boulder against the city walls that I was alerted that something was amiss. With no companions, not even Crebain, to relate the scene to me, I could do naught but listen to the whistle of the bombardment and the sizzle of magical energy.

And their screams.

I had heard beings die before. Many, in fact. I have killed men with my magic and I have been witness to great battles, but none of that had prepared me for this slaughter. Pain and fear filled the fields around those high walls. My years of blindness had heightened my hearing and sense of smell and both were being assaulted as the might of Aruthien crashed like waves upon the rocks. Blood filled my nose and my ears. There was not even solace for those doomed men in death. I could smell the acrid tang of undead rising as the day wore on. As the clatter of bones began to outnumber the cries of men, I knew that Aruthien swords were being raised by clawed hands to strike against their former brethren.

Sunset had not even fallen before the battle had become a complete rout. Aruthien trumpets sounded, far too few trumpets, as the clang of metal began to subside. The vultures were already cawing with glee as they tore into the flesh of those who had the fortune to remain dead. I waited until morning, hoping against hope that this had simply been a first wave and that Aruthien was prepared for their true assault. But none came. Just the bickering of carrion birds over the flesh of the remaining fallen. Those whose blood was on my head.

I had killed them. All of them.

I had to leave. I needed to find solace. Redemption. Atonement for my sins. I had intended to return to Eregant, to find forgiveness with Crebain and Daidra, but it seemed that fate had other plans for me. To this day, I am unsure how I was so redirected, but rather than arrive in my apartment near the Prince’s palace, I found myself in the crumbled ruins of Mercan.

Smoke rose from the city as, even still, buildings burned and crumbled to the ground. It had been months, nearly a year, since the oni had overrun the city and driven those who had legs westward to Perdaith. Some had remained to die in defense of their homes. Others remained to die because all else had already been lost to them. Knowing that my own stealth would be insufficient to escape the notice of the Kami patrols that toured the city, I cloaked myself in magic. I began to explore, searching for a safe haven for the night. I fully intended to leave in the morning when I had refreshed my spells. Again, fate had other ideas.

After nearly an hour of exploration, in which I confirmed that the ruins I was in were Mercan, I began to ascertain my location in the city. My errant teleportation had dropped me into the remnants of the temple district, my home for too many years. Though it was in utter ruin, it was an odd comfort to be home again.

Nostalgia and ash filled my nostrils as I made my way through the temples. Many people believe Perdaith to have been the headquarters of the Mishyan temples in Barloz. To an extent, it was. The largest temple to the goddess resided there as did her largest open library. But one would be mistaken to believe that size has any correlation to power for a Mishyan. A whisper could fell an entire kingdom. It was here in Mercan that Barlozian Mishyans called their heart. It was here that the Vault was located. And it was to the Vault that I was headed.

The Vault is a secret repository of knowledge, only accessible by a select few priests of Mishya. I had been given limited access to the Vault on three occasions during my tenure as temple archivist, and only to file away documents that the priesthood deemed too dangerous for public knowledge. Never was I allowed to extract any of this information. I still remember the way to the door and I had believed that it would surely be emptied, but that it would provide a secure place to rest the night. Oni and other Kami forces still patrolled the city and I had no desire for an unnecessary fight.

When I arrived at the secret doorway, I was surprised to find it shut and locked. I uttered the passcodes that I had remembered and, sensing no one around, entered the chamber. It did not smell nearly as musty as I expected for something that had been abandoned for nearly a year. Before I could realize that it had not been abandoned as I had predicted, an oppressive tingle coursed through my body. Failed magic. There was a priest still here guarding something and he had chosen to guard it against me. Another moment passed before I pinpointed the target and bound him with my spells. As I approached the unnaturally still form of my attacker, a familiar scent filled my nose. Tannin. Just as I had still worked the forge when I was not in the temple, Irvan Ulgrim had continued his trade tanning leathers. I was certain that this man before me was Ulgrim, the man who drove me out of the temple with whips. He had called for my head and now he was here, alone and completely at my mercy.

He struggled without success against my bonds, while I pondered what to do with him. How I had hated this man for so many years. It was he who had sparked the events that had lead me down this dark road. How I wanted to end his life, but I knew that he would be useful to me. If he was still here, a chief priest of Mishya, then clearly something worth guarding was still here. Something secreted away by the good disciples of the Wise Lady. Something that surely I would need.

It took less effort than I expected to bend his mind to my will. Either he was much weaker than I remembered, or I had become much stronger. Either way, Ulgrim was soon obeying my orders. I had him begin collecting parchments and scrolls, every document in the Vault pertaining to crystal magic, the oni and the Book of Dark Knowledge. I merely had to suggest that losing them to the Kami would be worse than losing them to a fellow Mishyan. He gathered them for me, bringing texts I had barely even heard rumors of and several that had been confirmed to not exist. I stored them away in my haversack. When he gathered all that I had compelled him to bring me and more, I once again held him with magic. I was nearly exhausted of power and knew that I would not be able to prevail in another battle and Ulgrim would not flee. I am certain that I could have magically compelled him to leave but I needed his silence more than for him to simply leave. At this point he knew too much.

My swordhand is not very steady and I had not used it since struck blind. I had to take my time, but the blade that I had crafted did the job. He only released a small gurgle before he died. It took nearly another minute before the effects of my spell wore off and his lifeless form collapsed onto the stone floor. I checked his vital signs before taking a single tour of the chamber. I was once again completely alone.

As I settled in a corner for an uncomfortable sleep, I began to wonder. I had wished so long for Ulgrim’s death. I was sure that it would be a satisfying experience but I had felt nothing. I guess I had gained one thing from the continual torture I experienced; I was no longer a slave to petty vengeance. I still knew not what I would do with the dreadful revelation from Lethossi but I believed that these documents I had collected would give me a way of escape. In the morning, I prepared my spells and returned to Eregant where Crebain and I set upon deciphering the scrolls and tomes I had collected.

We have yet to glean anything terribly useful from these texts but we have only just begun and several of them are in languages that neither Crebain nor I have properly learned yet. It seems that we have much work to do before anything new can begin.

-M.E.

Crebain had taken to accompanying me less and less on these excursions. He said that someone needed to stay behind and keep Daidra company. I knew that he was lying but I had ceased to care. He could stay with her if he chose. It made study slightly more difficult, but I am never really alone anyway. Where Visvatman had left me in the Pale, he had taken up the loss and had begun to torture me all the more. I had become accustomed to the anguish and completely ceased to care for the fate of my mother. I never really knew her, so why should I care that she chose damnation? My only concern is that her punishment seems to be linked to my own fate.

A fate which I intended to change.

The Prince had actually given me two missions in Lindur. The first, as I had said, was to simply study the ways of the people and their success in repelling Manath. This mission was straightforward and public. The people in their simplicity hide no secrets about their lives. They will gladly blather on about their insurrection and escape and how the gods intervened on their behalf. But this was only my public persona. The second mission was much darker and more secretive. And it required much more subtlety on my part. It was a secret that I was sure that most, if not all, Linduri knew but of which none would speak openly. They had lived under it for most of their lives. The Veil.

The bronze elves have created and powered various Veils for centuries. My research into the Pale lead me to discover that the destruction of the first Murmanityedi Veil is what created this rift in the planes two millenia ago. Since then dozens of separate Veil crystals have been created and destroyed, each one leaving ruin in its wake. Cities fell; peoples were destroyed; time and reality were altered. The city of Sharbal, which has been ruins for over twelve hundred years, was the sire of one of these crystals. Irradiated by the burst of magicks when their crystal collapsed, every single occupant was immediately removed from existence. To this day, the stones at the site still pulse with residual eldritch energy.

It took months, but I would not relent in my search. Since I first laid eyes on the Veil almost two years ago, I knew that I needed to explore its secrets. Now knowing that it was connected with the Pale, which had silenced my tormentor, that desire had been rekindled. He may have filled my thoughts, but he did not control my actions. I had made this assignment from my employer into a personal quest. If the Pale could block him, then surely there was a way for a Veil crystal to do the same.

I was able to gather scraps of information here and there. Half finished sentences uttered by old Linduri, pages only partly removed from ancient texts, legends and hearsay were the most substantial sources I could find. Independently, each one was useless and together I was not sure that they amounted to much. But I had to try.

I was in the militarized city of Ardoren, patronage of Vultan, when my only solid clue was discovered. I had been granted access to their military prison and spoke with the prisoners of war there. I have no idea why the fools there had left them alive, but I am grateful that they did. One, a bronze elf cleric, had actually been involved in the creation of the most recent Veil crystal, the one the ranger Rath had shattered. This elf had gone quite mad and spoke as if he himself no longer existed. He spoke of how the elf – that is, himself – had been tasked with the “conversion” of slaves. He told of how the elf pulled the soul from the slave and sealed it in a reservoir.

The part I found most intriguing about this process was that the slave was not truly killed in the procedure. Both his soul and mind were stripped from him but the body continued to function. With the proper magicks, this body could even be used for basic labor. The Manathites had created the perfect slave and the perfect defense. These husks, as the elf called them, were branded and sent back to their tasks. The western kingdoms had it wrong. The Murmanityedi – and the Manathites who followed them – were not slaughtering thousands of slaves to power their war machines. These elves were no different than Fir when he binds the souls of earth elementals to his mechanical golems or Ossius of Barloz when he binds the souls of Chatalize’s damned to animate his minions.

With this I had found my way out. My way to shut down Visvatman for good. I just needed some test subjects. And I had figured out just where to get them.

Fleera, matron of Ardoren, had become rather fond of me in my time in her city. She was fascinated with my tales of the west and my adventures. Despite being the chosen of Vultan and commander-in-chief of Lindur’s army, she was still a mephit at heart, whimsical and curious. I used her fascination with me to secure the release of all of the bronze elf prisoners in her jail. She agreed to turn them over to me as long as I promised that they would not be released back to their home country. I had no intention of releasing them anywhere. I intended to use them for my own crystal.

It took some work when I returned to Eregant, but I was able to secure a laboratory for my studies. When the prince realized what I had discovered and what it could mean for him, he was willing to give me whatever I needed. The first thing I needed was space and the second was simply time. Time with the cleric and time alone. I found plenty of both beneath the Prince’s library. Rooms that had once been used to translate works were now dormant. Halls that once housed thousands of tomes and scrolls were now empty. I had been given a new domain and all others were forbidden from treading there.

The chambers used for translation were now housing my prisoners and the storage halls were rapidly filling with my notes and theories. I had hired something of a prison guard to make sure the elves stayed in their cells and received enough food and water so that they did not die before I needed them. I spent two solid weeks writing, studying and questioning the bronze elf cleric. I had named him Robaund, which means “empty” in New Skosian. He was capable of giving me much of what I needed to begin tests, but not everything. He did not create the ritual and only performed portions of it, so there were gaps in his knowledge. Some, it seems, had also been lost when his mind collapsed. I simply had to begin experimenting.

My prisoners were a finite resource, so I knew that I couldn’t begin with them. I started small, with rats. The city was full of them and trapping them was simple. Starting with what Robaund knew and what I was able to gather from my scraps from Lindur, I started systematically experimenting on extracting the soul of the rat without killing it. My first trials were utter failures. Necromancy was not something I had studied much, so I had to draw inferences from what I knew of summoning and binding. It took me a week of work, 20 hours a day, to reach my first success. Were it not for my ring of sustenance, I’m sure that I would have taken a full month for that success.

But it was only a small success. I had extracted the soul from the rat and it still remained alive. It took me dozens of more trials to succeed again. Three days to begin to do so reliably. I had not yet learned how to properly store the souls or make them fuel the crystal, but I was on my way. Robaund was some help with the crystallization process. This was his portion of the ritual. He had also become more cogent and had returned to using the first person when referring to himself. He had become something of a friend down in my laboratory. I would be sad to see him go when it came time.

It only took six days to perfect the crystallization process for the vermin souls. At this point I thought that maybe I would not need my prisoners after all. But the crystals I had been able to form seemed to lack a certain quality to them. There were like a lamp with no fuel. They looked the part until you tried to light them. I spent days wondering what was wrong with my technique. I poured over my notes and rituals and could find no errors in them. I then realized that my flaw was not in my procedure but rather in my source.

The Murmanityedi clerics processed thousands of slaves a day to power their crystals. If using anything less than sentient creatures would have worked, they would have done so. They were not wantonly husking slaves. The slaves were the only things that would provide the right fuel. Whatever was in an elf that was not in a rat was the key; the crystal needed minds.

I started with the soldiers first. They had the weakest minds and I needed to be as scientific as possible. I needed to know what level of sentience was needed to power a crystal. If a simpleton would do, then getting replacements would be easy; most criminals are fools. However, if I succeeded first with an academian or an arcanist, then I might end up wasting town down the line husking a fool.

I lost the first two subjects recalibrating the rituals. I expected there to be differences between the soul of a rat and that of an elf, but what those differences were, I could not be sure. I had nearly a dozen subjects, including Robaund, and couldn’t successfully power a crystal until I had amassed four souls in a single crystal. Ranking them in intelligence put four warrior souls in that crystal. The remaining five elves were all casters – two clerics, two wizards and a sorcerer. I left Robaund aside and extracted the four remaining souls into another vessel for comparison. It was only slightly stronger than the warrior crystal.

I had found my solution. A final solution to the terror of Visvatman. He had been relatively quiet through my experimentation but was now making quite the show. I simply laughed at his petty attempts to increase the reality of my visions. All I needed was to disrupt the crystal into my tome and he would be silenced forever.

Or so I thought.

I used the crystal fueled by the casters, since it was the more powerful of the two, and produced the warrior crystal to the Prince as the produce of my work along with eight perfectly obedient servants for his personal use. The miniature Veil that I had produced worked, but it did not last. After one week, I began to have nightmares of my mother’s torture again. After two, the voices returned. By month’s end, Visvatman’s torture had returned completely. I had already turned over the first crystal to the Prince and I cannot get it back. I only have Robaund remaining and his single soul will not be enough to produce a viable crystal. I need more prisoners, and soon.

-M.E.

Some months back on one of these adventures, we were summoned by the Newholmite Braden to aid him.  Things, as they are everywhere else, were awry in his kingdom.  The oni who had marched through Rothgorod and into Barloz had stopped and were besieging the gateway city to the floating island of Newholm.  The city was impossibly gorgeous in its immense cavern.  Built on an outcropping in an underground lake, this city was embroiled in magic-fueled combat.  Drakes and oni filled the air, their fire and spells casting eerie shadows on the cavern walls, while the lichen covered walls cast a sinister green glow on the macabre dance of battle on the cavern floor.  The flames that were consuming the city crackled as an undertone to the song of steel that was being performed below us.

Later, when we had freed the floating island from its forced migration, I saw my first Draconis.  Astride her silver dragon, her red and blue armor glinting in the sunlight, she was grinding her blade, honing its edge.  It was no mystery that she was preparing herself mind and body for the wave of full war that was about to crash on her shores.  She was magnificent and beautiful and I hated her.  She was connected to a great power and it brought her freedom and tremendous honor, while I was connected to an even greater power and it has brought me nothing but slavery and intense sorrow.

There was, however, a single window of clarity in my continual madness.  Several months past, while aiding my companion’s kingdom in the transport of a secret item, fate diverted me.  My tormentor was struck powerless in this realm when the domain of Kern brought us to a place known as the Pale.  It was as marvelous as it was vexing.  Nothing worked as we had intended and we were hounded by great horrors, but for the first time in nearly a year it was quiet.  Visvatman had no words; he couldn’t even speak and even his visions had left me.  There my eyes were as they should be, sightless and cold.  I was at peace there and I had no desire to leave.  If only my sweet Daidra had accompanied me, I would not have left.  Amongst the bebilith and the primordial elements, we would have made our home.

I was forced to return to the land of mortals.  I find what little solace I can in my two friends and our small home in Eregant.  It is not much but it supports a small private library for the three of us and there is enough noise that I am never left alone with my thoughts.  I spend most of my days in the prince’s library, often accompanied by either Daidra or Crebain.  I have taken up time as a scribe and translator for the current prince.  He finds me useful and lets me have full access to his library.  I have taken something of an interest of late in a small nation on the west coast of the former Murmanityed Empire.

They are surrounded on three sides by the once powerful nation, where once they had been slaves.  Constantly tormented fromt he east by the bronze elf generals and minotaur tribes.  The refugees have managed to establish themselves a sanctuary.  Occasionally merchant-mercenaries arrive in the city with news or people from this liberated nation known as Lindur.  The prince has given me leave to journey there and explore the lands.  I know that he will ask me to do something for him while I am there, for the prince is no fool.  I care not what is is, but I desire to know what it is that keeps this beleaguered nation from buckling and being overwhelmed.

I dare not believe that hope has once again taken residence in my heart, or my torturer might surely double his efforts.  But I cannot deny the fire in my heart that many hard months had extinguished.  Maybe my salvation lies across the broken sea.

-M.E.
X——-  (Crebain’s mark)

My most recent (and most complete) homebrew attempt is a base class known as the Prelate.  It started as a slight tweak and modification of the 3.5 Heroes of Horror class called the Archivist.  Playing one in our current Pathfinder game has shown me that, with the proper overhaul, it could fit into the setting and system very well.  So I began chopping, altering, changing and adding to the original class until it bore only a superficial relation to the original class.  I feel that my alterations have done a lot to balance the class from being one of the most (if not the most) powerful classes in the 3.5 system to something properly balanced around the level of the Pathfinder Wizard.

My creation is available for review over at the Pathfinder Database.  In case you are unaware of the Pathfinder Database, it is “a collection of fan-created submissions for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.”  My submission is known as the Prelate and is available for review and critique.  Let me know what you think.

In case you don’t know why I am in love with this program, let me take a few moments to tell you. First, I love character creation. I love, if only for a few moments, building the back story and personality of a new character. For a long time, I used to have to build these characters by hand and it would take hours per character with two or three books laying about me. Now it just takes my laptop and about twenty minutes. This has been a huge time saver when making opponent forces for our regular gaming group.

That is another of the wonders of this program. I paid the extra $15 to add the entire Pathfinder Bestiary to my Core Rules (which come with the purchase of the software). So I can now customize almost any creature that I want. I can add hit dice, templates and class levels to whatever creature I would like. So, when the players run into a bearded devil (handily identified by the cleric), they might expect it to have a bleeding attack and that weird beard thing, but they probably wouldn’t expect it to also have a couple of barbarian levels complete with rage abilities. I love the diversity that it allows me to throw at the players, which keeps them on their toes.

I can then take these newly modified monsters and output their created data in lots of useful formats. Obviously there is its own format, but it can easily be saved in XML to be edited later. You can also output the character data as plain text, BBCode, html or WikiText. This format ends up being identical to the format used in the Pathfinder Bestiary. This is super useful if I am running custom bad guys alongside stock monsters.

There is some functionality that I have not attempted to utilize yet. According to the fine folks at Lone Wolf, I can edit pretty much anything in the software to reflect our houserules. For example, at our table we give fighters 4+Int skills per level, rather than 2+Int, and we give extra iterative attacks one point of BAB early. I could go in and make these changes to my software so that it can reflect our table’s preferences. It also is supposed to allow me to custom create classes and creatures. I’ve not needed to do any of that yet, but I like that it is available. However, having not done any of this, I cannot say whether this is a simple and clean process or a cludgy and complex one.

Lastly, Lone Wolf is continually expanding the software and doing so without charging an arm and a leg. At least in my opinion, the software and expansions are very reasonably priced and very simple to acquire. Looking at the post over in Paizo’s forum, you can see what their future plans are for Hero Lab.

In short, I really like this program and I know that it has really enhanced my gaming experience. I don’t have any ties to Lone Wolf or Hero Lab other than being a now loyal customer. You can download and purchase Hero Lab here.

Via io9.

I have spent my time here in Eregant trying to put together the pieces of my now shattered life.  I have been struck blind and, for the first time in my memory, am having to relate my soul to another.  Her name is Daidra and she has become my window back into the world.  Before I can tell that story, I must tell another.

Nearly two hundred years ago, before the invasion of Nagul, two vile peoples met.  Far to the east in the nation of Kami, the great oni peoples took to battle against the bronze elves of Murmanityed.  A heated war raged between the two nations, though over what issue or offense my texts have been unclear.  The Kami were successful in driving the invaders out but not before the elves could strike them at their very core.

The Kami are a very mystical people and do not worship the gods of the west.  Instead they offer their fealty and sacrifices to powerful beings who choose to manifest themselves on this plane as totems and artifacts.  Each city and village has a guardian totem, as does each noble house.  The Murmanityedi knew this and knew the devotion that the people had for them, so they captured one of these spirits to take as a ransom.

They meant it as an effort to turn the invasion back in their favor.  Their clever plan might have worked had the elven couriers arrived to deliver the ransom demands.  Again the records are unclear but the envoy never arrived at the oni general’s camp so the Kami never received the Murmanityedi demands.  What likely would have halted the war enraged it further.  Both sides believed the other barbaric and cowardly and any hope of negotiation and respectable war was lost.

The Kami were able to drive Murmanityed from their lands but the invaders took with them their prize.  I have reasoned that the artifact, a large book, knew what it was doing and allowed itself to be kidnapped.  What happened to this book over the next several decades is a mystery, though I believe the spirit known as Visvatman to have waited quietly, biding his time.  He waited in ambush like a venomous snake.

Visvatman knew that the bronze elves would not worship it but try to wield him as their tool, so he chose not to reveal his power to them.  He made himself as innocuous as possible and was soon relegated to a storeroom in the back of a palace among the other forgotten spoils of war.  For seventy years he plotted in the darkness waiting for a receptive people to liberate it.

These people were the Barlozians.  They stormed the Murmanityed palace and looted its coffers.  Wagons of treasure were hauled back to Perdaith to be sorted and apportioned.  Visvatman saw this as his opportunity to begin his work and brought itself out of hiding.   The archmagis of Barloz saw the raw potential of this artifact but, not knowing its origin or history, he decided that he would have the book copied and studied.  This isn’t exactly what the book had intended.  He could not exert his power through duplicates but he could not erase its contents or he would lose his attachment to this plane.  He could however rearrange its contents obfuscating his true nature and purpose.  The wizards of Barlox, he decided, were too strong of will to fall prey to his charms.  He was also now in a foreign land and needed time to learn the people so that he could discover their wants and desires, their hidden dreams.

The artifact had become known as The Book of Dark Knowledge, as were all of the copies, since it was found among the peoples of the dark tongue.  Copies of the Book were distributed to all of the colleges throughout Barloz to see what new wonders could be extracted from them.  The great thinkers of the country took to pouring over them hoping to unlock the cipher.

Over the next decade wondrous new things were created, the greatest of which were the Crossway Gates, the portals that link the western nations.  Inherent in the very nature of the spirit were the ideas of travel.  Even hidden and obscured, the ability to teleport was written on every page.  Hundreds of other magicks were extracted from its pages but none were as impactful as the Crossway Gates.

The Barlozian king Greco ordered that the original tome be locked away in his vault, to protect it, and that only the copies would be read and distributed.  This angered Visvatman.  He did not want to wait anymore.  Eighty years had passed and he could feel his power slipping away.  He drew up as much power as he could covertly muster to alter his path.  He charmed fate and he was misfiled and another tome was placed in the vault.  He knew not where he would go, only that he would remain free.

The book floated around Barloz for nearly the next half century.  It exchanged hands a dozen times and Visvatman took what power he could from them, but he found them either too dim for his purposes or too set in their ways to be swayed.  The book spent much time in Bardoon before being transported to the temple of Mishya in Mercan.  They had just received a new priest in charge of their archives and he had asked for new texts to be brought in from around the kingdoms.  This priest was me and this is where my story intersects with his.

I was a young man with an insatiable thirst for knowledge but I didn’t have the wisdom to temper it.  The original Book of Dark Knowledge disguised as a copy arrived at my temple and I was immediately drawn to it.  I was the perfect target, though he calls me his protegé.  I was intelligent enough to understand his plans an uncommitted enough to my faith to carry them out.  It pains me to dictate these words, but they are truth.

I have already related the story of my early experiences with the book and the eventual expulsion from my temple, so I will not recount them here.  Just know that none of those events happened without the will of Visvatman having some hand in them.  My adoration of him had given him strength – as my fear of him now does.  Even though I know his true purposes and I feel that I have become his prisoner, parts of me still follow him willingly.  I fear that I am being lead to the slaughter but I continue to follow anyway.

As to how I know my captor’s true intentions, I am now able to tell that story.

While exploring the library here in Eregant with Crebain, a voice came to me.  It introduced itself as Visvatman, a name I had not yet learned.  The voice had a familiar quality to it while being still being entirely alien.  The voice explained that it was the spirit of the book that I carried with me and that it was revealing itself to me because I had passed his tests.  He said that I had seen past his shifting words and through his devious charms.  He claimed to be pleased with me and wished to offer me a “boon”.  He offered to return my mother to me.

I had known my mother only through stories from my father and what vestiges of her had been passed on to my sister.  I knew her to be a quiet, graceful woman who was strong of heart and mind.  Before the final years of his life, my father would often wax poetic about his “sweet Mira”.  In his last year, she had become an obsession for him.  Because she had died giving birth to my sister and me, I never knew her personally but I still loved her dearly.  Often I would sit and wonder wistfully about what she was really like.  I knew that, because she had died a natural death and that nothing now remained of her, I would only be afforded this opportunity if we were to end up in the same afterlife.

My book offered me the ability to change that.  He promised that I would be able to see her again and that I could even speak to her.  He promised that I could do so whenever I wanted and he promised me that I would not be harmed.  I knew Visvatman to be powerful and capable of things nothing else I knew could do.  I probed and questioned him and, as far as I was capable, I deemed him to be dealing with me truthfully.  I have since discovered that his truth was not free of deception.  He had been truthful to me because he knew the explicit assumptions I would make and the questions I would never ask.  I have long suspected that I would find my final destination to be one of the hellish afterlives but never had I considered that she would.

My father had told me how my mother had been a follower of the war gods.  She was of the house of the great general Salawin and his family would follow them.  It seems, however, that Ulmira had a darker side.  She had a quick and calculating mind and loved puzzles and mysteries.  This lead her to begin to dabble in the realm of Hylarr.  The goddess specializes in the greatest puzzle of all, a puzzle in which the pieces are actively resisting being put in their places.  At first it was just a small trick here and a harmless deception there and soon she became hooked, trying to make more intricate and complex plots and increasingly dangerous scenarios.  Her capture by the Jarls and rescue by my father were a result of one of her plots.  Her entire marriage to my father, it seems, was a failed ploy to manipulate the entire royal house of Aligindel.  She had become a secret high priestess of the goddess of the moon during this time.  Olwyrd herself had promised my mother that the greatest manipulation of the age would be hers.

My mother was told that her death would come with the birth of her children and that her death would drive her husband mad.  She was told that his madness would cause the destruction of Firforge and would open Barloz to invasion from the east.  This invasion would destabilize the nation and the aid offered by Spaartha and Aruthien would result in the division of Barloz between the two liberators.  The former Barlozians would eventually rebel against their occupiers and that would further destabilize the western kingdoms.  Olwyrd promised her that the far reaching effects of the plan were beyond understanding but that she would be the lynch pin to it all; she could die knowing that her actions would manipulate entire nations.

With this, my mother’s fate was sealed.  I now know her fate firsthand because Visvatman brought her to me.  Or rather, he brought me to her.  For the last thirty and more years she has dwelt in the realm of Hylarr.  Though I had hoped that she would be able to return with me, I knew that it could not be so, but I had not prepared myself for what I would experience.  I do not think any mortal is capable of preparing themselves.  My sight became filled with blackness and then with a confusing landscape of wonder and despair.  It was still and littered with soft pinpricks of light.  All around me I could hear the rasped breathing of the insane.

I was brought to my mother.  She lay curled on a stone whimpering, long dry of tears.  She was surrounded by comforts and riches that would be the envy of any living person but she would have none of them.  She would not even touch the food offered her even though she was gaunt with starvation.  I tested the cushions and they were soft and warm.  I sampled the food and it was delicious and filling.  I tried to comfort my mother as she murmured to herself but she could not be consoled.  She kept reminding herself that these pleasures around her were not real, that they were another trick.  She refused my aid and raved at me calling me a “spectre” and a “ghost” and telling me that I was not going to fool her again.

That was when I knew.  She had tried all her life to manipulate others into being her pawns and now she was doomed to a life where she was so paranoid that others will do the same to her that she refuses even the truth and goodness offered to her.  I was awash with more pity and anguish for her than I had ever felt for any being in the whole of existence.  I wanted to leave and I bid Visvatman take me home.  But he would not.

Rather, he revealed to me that I could not leave by any effort of my own.  I had accepted his “gift” and he would release me whenever he saw fit.  Even now my eyes are filled with the plush prison my mother had locked herself into.  I thank Mishya that my ears no longer have to suffer my mother’s sobs while I stood impotent to help.

I began by stating that I knew Visvatman’s purposes for me.  He tires of his parchment cage and has fought from himself a new host.  When he arrived in the west a century ago he realized that we held no respect for objects but praised only their makers.  He now intends to break  me down , hollow me out, to make me an acceptable vessel for him.  He has given me full knowledge of this because he knows that I can do nothing about it.  No mortal can cure me of this living hell and it is only a matter of time before it eats away my soul.  I know that even death is not an escape because I know that a fate worse than Ulmira’s awaits me.

I write, or rather dictate, knowing full well that my only hope is oblivion and Visvatman has promised that to me.  It is a sad day when the thought of oblivion warms your heart.

-M.E. via Daidra Iascaire

It’s a bit over the top, but it does give you a sense of what real medieval combat would have looked like.

If you come across someone swinging one of these, you want to be sure that you have either a high dex bonus, or are wearing some serious armor.

As you might already be aware, full-casters are generally much more powerful than non-casters and druids are pretty solidly powerful, even among full-casters.  Pathfinder has done well (in my opinion) of powering down druids, but one-on-one, a druid is still more powerful than an evenly leveled fighter.  The animal companion plus summoning spells make them a more than formidable adversary.  So why bother with fighters when you can just raise armies of druids (and clerics and wizards)?

Our first problem when answering this question is that, in Pathfinder, your basic NPCs are given the stat array 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 with no mention of how those stats should be best arranged.  With this we concluded that it is more-or-less evenly distributed, with one in six people having any particular stat be that 13.   Since a 13 wisdom will let you cast 3rd level spells as a druid or cleric, wouldn’t 16% of the population be prime candidates for militarized divine spellcasting? And another 16% primed to be wizards?

The second problem we run into is that we have no built in controls on how common the various heroic PC classes are.  The rules make vague statements that most people fall into one of the NPC classes (commoner, warrior, expert, aristocrat and adept) but there is no hard and fast rule saying that they can’t be of heroic PC classes.  Gone are the 1e days of stat requirements to play classes (17 charisma to be a paladin, anyone?) so why not take a level in ranger or barbarian or fighter instead of warrior?  Why not take cleric levels instead of  adept?  What makes the NPCs take NPC classes?

This kind of thinking leads toward an end that we, as our gaming group, do not desire: the Tippyverse.  If you frequent the Giant in the Playground message boards, you may have heard of the DnD universe created by the poster Emperor Tippy.  For those of you who haven’t heard, this thread explains it relatively well.  Basically it is a world were RAW is Law and the logical extensions of a world wherein magic exists and costs nothing but time and coin are explored.  It’s a magocracy to the Nth degree.  Our group does not want this.  So how do we fix it?

My first solution to this conundrum was to decide that the stat arrays were not evenly distributed.  In a pseudo-medieval society, your basic person is going to be best served by a high constitution.  Yes in a magical setting, clerics, bards, druids and adepts exist and can cast curative spells, but they aren’t around all the time and not every midwife has levels in them.  People die from injury and disease.  Those who have that 8 in constitution are much more likely to die than the ones with their 13 there.  Secondly, because every street corner doesn’t have a wizard on it offering to solve your problems with a few arcane spells, manual labor still needs to be done.  Fields need to be plowed; tools need to be made; things need to be lifted and carried; a decent strength score is probably well prized among the common folk.  Essentially, natural selection has made it such that the stat arras are skewed towards the physical stats rather than the mental ones.

The second solution that I arrived on (which still is contended by Wolfgod) is that the PC classes are just less common.  My reasoning is that, even though as players we think, “I want to be a cleric” or “I’d like to play a barbarian this time”, the people in the world don’t make that conscious decision.  They simply do stuff and then their actions are translated into classes, feats, skills and such as best modeled by the rules.  The rules of the game, as I see them, are like the laws of physics in our world.  Physics does not force an object to fall when I drop it.  Physics describes how the object fell and can help me predict what other falling objects will do based on centuries of data.  In the same way, being a fighter or cleric or druid was not a conscious decision by the character, but rather a reflection of the decisions that he made in his life.  With this outlook in mind, the NPC classes are just easier to fall into.  It’s easier for your average soldier to have made decisions that made him a warrior instead of a fighter or for your skillful NPC to be an expert rather than a rogue.  My basic viewpoint is that not all priests are clerics and not all soldiers are fighters.  Most are NPCs and a select few are specialized PC classes.

With these two constraints in mind, we have gone to building the various armies.  We are still hammering out the finer points and balance issues, but our basic conclusion was that the vast majority of an army needs to be made up of rank-and-file guys with spears (or swords or whatever) and that spell slingers are a small minority.  We are setting a fluid limit of no more than 5-10% of your force can be casters and I would eventually like to see a rule that states how many of your infantry need to be warriors instead of fighters/rangers/barbarians/paladins.

If you have any comments or advice on how best to achieve our desired low-medium magic world, I’d love to hear them.  We are always looking to make our world fit our vision for it and would like to have reasons why it has developed and remained that way.

Here’s parts one, two, three, and four.