#Paths Beyond

[enddaysengine]

So this art. Probably doesn’t surprise you it’s ended up in @nwodsecondchances2e‘s queue because those are some werewolf vibes. But that’s not what care about right now.

I’ve been meaning to do a Paths Beyond yearly update, but between work, kids, trips to emergency rooms, and drafts for Scion it hasn’t manifested yet. And it might, but this piece of art really brings out all things I wanted to talk about.

After a year (ish, I’d know I fell off the wagon around the summer) of writing Paths Beyond, hooks, I think I want to shift its focus a bit. Still have Planescape as one of its touchstones, but also draw on other bits of weird fiction and RPGs. And this piece of art encapsulates that perfectly. A cult of esoteric werewolf diviners straddling the line between life and death doesn’t have to involve the planes. And yet that is the perfect tone for Paths Beyond.

More thoughts later, but y’all I am hoping it gets weird around here.

Jessica Cioffi

[tokkimins]

twenty six

[prideprejudce]

the scenes of rhaenyra and alicent going to each other this season, desperately trying to halt fate even though they have always known deep down they are stuck with seeing this to the end. the future visions of the game of thrones universe and how everyone is stuck in their own destined deaths for a story hundreds of years beyond their own lives. alicent and rhaenyra being just two girls wearing blue who might have been soulmates in another life but are now too clouded by their own paths to save each other anymore

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Heartbreaking Goodbye.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[theladysunami]

I had a very odd dream where a train (or bus?) I was on got yanked into another world. While my dream had nothing to do with SVSSS, it did have my waking self thinking about how hilarious and/or horrifying such a thing could be as an AU.

Imagine Shen Yuan riding the subway, train or bus one day, when something happens and his whole car gets yanked into the world of PIDW. Nobody else in the car knows anything about PIDW, so Shen Yuan finds himself with the self imposed task of keeping this eccentric group of strangers alive in a weird world full of demons, monsters, and aphrodisiac plants.

The group’s first assumption would probably be that they’re still on modern earth, and just got teleported somewhere. Their second assumption, if they come across common folk, might be they somehow ended up in the past.

Then they run into some monster, or people riding on swords with specific uniforms, or a commoner mentions a name or event only Shen Yuan recognizes. The rest of the party debates what sort of Xianxia or Wuxia world they’ve ended up in, while poor Shen Yuan sweats bullets. He knows exactly what world they are in, and they are so screwed.

I have this image of poor beleaguered nerd Shen Yuan successfully protecting and leading this group of primary school kids, their cute teacher, and a handful of grannies and grandpas, while all the other adults and older teens keep wandering off and getting themselves in trouble.

[enddaysengine]

My controversial Planescape hot take for a long time has been the setting is better without alignment! Both for cRPGs and ttRPGs.

I am blessed by the fact Pathfinder has now done away with it post-OGL, and Pathfinder has tons of Planescape fans on its freelancer team.

I think if I was doing a Planescape CRPG in the modern day... Much like how BG3 did away with alignment in favor of "do your companions like you," I think... I'd honestly go for something like Torment: Tides system, except tie it to the Factions.

[lesbianslugreaction]

Post-Seine Valjean whenever Javert leaves the house: Surely he has realized he can do much better than an ugly old convict like me. I have continuously tainted him with my presence, and he secretly despises me. He has left Paris already. He is getting his beautiful hole creamed by some despicable, horrendous man. He is mine, but I cannot have him. I detest whichever lucky man gets to have him. It is his right to leave me. He should go; I deserve it. Should I starve myself to death?

Javert whenever he leaves the house: I🫃cannot❌ wait😫to➡️return🚶‍♂️home🏡so😌my🫦hot🌶️beefy🍖dilf🎅boyfriend👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨can🥫dick🍆me🥴down⬇️

[thedeadhead]

student suvi gets distinguished honor roll at Banners

ergo,

steel gets a “my child is a distinguished honor student at Banners” bumper sticker and slaps it on the butt of the epiphany

@quiddie

[adastra121]

Bad End: The Fall

Summary: It's my Hound!MC Alon's birthday, so I made some sketches of them and Mhin based on the scene from Transformers One! For context, the idea is that Vere has gotten himself free and went on a rampage in the Senobium, slaughtering students and clerics alike, and destroying the labs and archives, along with all hope of finding cures for Mhin and Alon's respective curses. In the midst of the massacre, Vere finally made Mhin lose control of the monster within them and they have transformed into a crow monster hybrid. There is a brutal and bloody fight between them but Mhin has finally defeated Vere and is about to kill him, when Alon, their partner, stops them.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s over. He lost.”

“So did we! We lost everything because of him — I have to do this!”

“No, you don’t. Look at him, he's down. He's no longer a threat.”

“He needs to die! Can’t you see that?”

“This won’t cure either of us! Don't do this, Mhin. Don’t be the monster he says you are.”

…

“…You need to move out of my way. Before I move you myself.”

“Mhin—”

“MOVE!”

“Stop—!”

!!!

...

“No…”

“No, no, no, you idiot! Why did you do that? Why?”

Your blood is on my hands now.

You’ve made it my fault.

You’ve made me into the monster…

All to save him.

“Partner…no…”

…

…

…

“I'm done saving you.”

.

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[enddaysengine]

Zoaem (Paths Beyond)

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for lantern archons, so I'm pleased that their Remaster equivalents are the first things I get to tackled out of Monster Core. Zoaems, or ring archons, occupy the low-level minion niche on the archon org-chart. They aren't particularly bright, but they are trained in Religion, so they know their theology and the outer sphere beyond heaven's slopes. Their second skill is Acrobatics for flight and darting through an enemy's square. The third is interesting though - it's Intimidation. My instinct says a celestial use Diplomacy instead, and indeed that's what the lantern archon had as its third skill. My guess is that Paizo is rolling with how outright eldritch the new archons appear, so every single one of them excels at scaring people. There’s also that whole “be not afraid” thing from the Bible, which works so much better if Archons are terrifying.

Zoaems are the least uncanny archons, but they still have plenty of latitude to be eerie and weird. The default zoaem is a series of spinning, winged rings surrounding an inner light. An easy way to customize their appearances would be to vary light within them. The obvious approach would be to make the inner light a sun or a star, but anything which sheds light could work. A haunting or occult oriented zoaem could have one or several candles floating in their core. Another, who escorts souls to the Boneyard, may have ivory rings spinning around a luminous skull. Of course, there is also the classic - a giant unblinking floating eyeball that stare at all who pass.

After the serial killer Bartrum the Bloody escaped his sanitarium prison in Ustalav, a group of archons took matters into their own hands. The band tracked down the murderer, but he proved too much for them, slaying the divine host one by one. The final celestial standing was Elijah the Daring. The zoaem took the fight to Bartrum, rushing him with eye-beams blazing. Some how, the confrontation ended with the two merging together, creating a being with a mortal body, and rotating rings in place of a head. This creature, Bram the Bright, wanders Avistan trying to reconcile the conflicting impulses within its soul.

Legends say that in the Universe's early days, all ring archons were a single potent demigod who fractured themself to thaw unholy powers. The ring archons keep the birthplace of the original Zoaem secret, but make frequent pilgrimages there. The best way to find it is to follow the zoaem who bring blessings to their kin, the immobile bastion archons.

Ncuti the Jeweller (entrepreneurial nonbinary ring archon) wanders the streets of heavens shore with their extra dimensional shop. While they sell baubles of all types, Ncuti’s typecast itself with its speciality - it loves magic rings. They pay a premium for unique rings, both mundane and magical, and keep a bounty list of particularly infamous magic items from across the planes.

[kremblor]

I cannot make gifs nor get a decent picture of it. However, in the episode where Trevor's brother comes and Isaac gets into dinos. At the end when Isaac makes his dino comment and all the ghosts walk away .... Hetty walked towards vault.

Im either gonna start headcanoning that its become her hang out spot to isolate away from the others or need a proper map of this manor because I do not recall anything else being that direction she walked.

[ascnsionismx]

Mathias wasn't really avoiding Suresh, he just didn't want to talk to him yet. During the days where he was healing, he was told that some of the places that got destroyed were on Lightless and Lotus Eater territory. It was very unfortunate to say the least, and Mathias made sure to send a payment to each gang to cover any of the damages. Of course he didn't go and see them face to face, he just wasn't up for that yet. Then Mathias went away for a week in order to bring order to his life again.

Now that he was back, in a far better mood, he went to find Suresh. Meeting the naga at one of his clubs was easy enough, even if Mathias didn't look at the entertainment the same way he once did. 'Cause deep down he felt like none of them could compare the the person he was in love with. He waited patiently until he was taken to one of the private areas of the club, the same place he'd always meet Suresh. It looked out at the dance floor and all the bodies moving together. It was intoxicating.

He sat down, and folded his hands in his lap. The skin on his hands were healing a bit better, but the tips of his fingers still looked blackened and frost bitten. At least around Suresh, Mathias didn't have to hide that much.

Mathias stared down at the crowd of people and smiled, "God, looking at them makes it seem like Mardi Gras never even happened".

@naga-raja-suresh

[r0semultiverse]

Hey, Jake & Jack fans, is this anything?

Both men imprisoned (literal & metaphorical).

Both offered an out from their current predicament by an outside force (arguably in the case of Brain Ghost Dirk).

Both have loose ties to Lord English visually.

Yellow initial glow & Gamzee involvement too.

Sometimes a guy just needs to explode (same pose too).

Both dual wielding weapons.

That same said weapon type (for Jack Noir) having killed Jane Crocker.

It's really looking like Jake is going to do her in.

I would also like to point out that we've had interactions involving these three (Jane, Jake, and Brain Ghost Dirk) before that consisted of similar topics & themes.

Brain Ghost Dirk implying that he's just there as moral support, a manifestation of Jake's powers, and as a coping mechanism. Jane also talking about ruling an empire with him while talking down to him, similar to how she saw and/or still sees him in Beyond Canon's Candy timeline. Jake also being uncertain about doing anything to harm her despite all the bad things she's doing.

Brain Ghost Dirk going away tells us that Jake's more hopeful than he's ever been. This is the moment where he is the most sure of his decisions than he's ever been in his life, whatever those decisions may be in regards to Jane and how to handle this situation.

He is probably going to shoot Jane down, quite literally. I would also argue that after all this time, the lad isn't beating the Lord English allegations. We might as well have a parallel of him killing Jane much like how Jack Noir killed her right before he got possessed by Lil Cal & given some of Lord English's immense power.

Alternatively maybe we'll get to see what the power of hope or hope bullets can do to someone whose done so much wrong & come so far off the deep end in terms of moral wrongdoings. Maybe with every shot that hits her, she'll begin to be swayed to the side of good & start to self-reflect.

I'm still not fully convinced that Gamzee actually cured Tavros' peanut allergy, I mean just look at the panel.

This could absolutely be interpreted as Jake injecting his hope power into the epipen and by proxy injecting both his power & the epipen into his son! If younger Jake is strong enough to defeat Grimbark Jade, then adult Jake might just be strong enough to defeat a peanut allergy is all I'm saying! In fact, now that I'm rambling about it, this seems like the more likely outcome is Jake's hope power swaying or (in the very least) confusing Jane mid-fight. Hope bullets, they would look cool & would be pretty strong!

The power of believing in others & wanting things to change can be a strong tool indeed, Mister English.

If there's one person who still believes in changing Jane's mind (or bringing her back to proper canonicity depending on how you interpret the recent lore), it would be Jake English, the believer.

Okay, maybe this is something! Tally ho!

[azaracyy]

a lesson on good karma digimon survive week 2024 day 4: supporting characters

[insanostyle1231]

my professional bg3 villains tierlist

[enddaysengine]

Yes to Chronicles of Darkness! Mage had a big influence on how I ran PS before I swore off on WotC IPs. We intentionally made sure that PS: Torment got name checked in the inspirational media for Mummy 2e as well.

Pathfinder’s Great Beyond draws a lot of inspiration from Planescape as well. Amber Stewart, who wrote the cosmology originally, is a massive fan and there are a couple of Easter Eggs to her PS actual plays scattered about.

The new PF2 core book, Rage of Elements, is also very planar heavy, focusing on the elemental planes of the inner sphere! It not just covers similar content to PS, but it feels like a Planescape book too! Probably not a surprise if you know Jessica Redekop, one of the lead writers, is also a massive PS fan who did a lot of work in keeping the setting alive in the 3e days.

I’m… hoping (?) to get something about running planar campaigns in Age of Lost Omens on Pathfinder Infinite at some point. I really wanted to get it up before Planescape 5e dropped, but that isn’t happening at this point. Anything I write hear based on it is filed under the “Paths Beyond” tag.

what with the new Planescape book coming out, for 5e, me being trepidatious about that, what with recent 5e quality, and me not being the biggest fan of 5e, and not wanting to give money to wizards, what else is available for that sort of planes-hopping weird fantasy

short of going back and getting books from Ad&d:2e for Planescape what are the other options?

I'm fairly sure "Troika" does some plane-hopping type stuff, but I've never really vibed with OSR, also Troika is really really weird

KSBD has an RPG, "Broken Worlds" I think it's called, I love the setting, Throne is similar in some ways to Sigil, kinda (not really but kinda), but it's PbtA, not for me, Moving on

"The Strange" honestly makes the best use of Cypher Systems' strengths, but I'm always going to want a bit more crunch than Cypher has, and I'm never going to be a fan of its xp as metacurrency thing, also its plane-hopping is not quite the same

"Age of Sigmar: Soulbound" looks great, like super cool, mechanically about the right place as far as crunch goes for me, I have my critiques of the setting (it could do more to lean into the planes also sigmarines are Dumb) but we don't need to get into that (it's probably the best option here)

you can do a bit of plane-hopping in Mage: the Awakening, or Exalted, but neither setting is built with that in mind, much as I love both systems

looking for systems with integrated settings or settings for systems that are not PbtA, FitD, or Fate