kalvincent

[kalvincent]

Lizardfolk Anatomy Part 2: Visible Traits

Patterns 

The coloration of a lizardfolk's scales is partially based on their region and clan, with some patterns holding steady in family lines. In arid or desert biomes, lizardfolk scales tend toward shades of grey or brown, while clans in temperate or tropical regions are more colorful. Again, this varies by individual clans within those regions and individual families within those clans. 

Despite clan and familial tendencies, an individual's exact coloration and pattern is as unique to them as a human's fingerprint. A given desert-dwelling clan might have predominantly brown, tan, or orange coloration, for example, and a given family in that clan might tend towards horizontal stripes in their pattern. A child born from a mix of that family line and one prone to splotches of colour would be expected to have both horizontal lines and splotches, but the exact pattern will be unique to them, even among siblings.

Tail

At a glance, lizardfolk tails might seem too large and ungainly for their bodies. Indeed, a four-foot tail on a six-foot body seems excessive. But tails are as important as any other limb for a lizardfolk.

In most varieties, quick flicks of their wide tail propel lizardfolk swimmers through water, although other clans might have thinner, flexible tails more suitable for aiding in climbing. Some lizardfolk train to fight using their tail, either using it to sweep their opponents' feet out from under them, or simply bashing with it. Some few adorn the tips of their tails with blades and use these as unexpected weapons.

Tail motions are also one of the easiest ways to tell a lizardfolk's emotions - whether it is up or down, moving or stationary, braced against the ground, and so on.

Frills and Spines

All lizardfolk have spines, but the size and placement varies between lineages, and between the sexes. Spine patterns are one of the easiest ways to tell a male lizardfolk from a female, since the sexes tend to be identical in terms of height and weight.

Lizardfolk are often baffled when humans can't tell the difference between males and females, when the spines are so clearly different - males of a given lineage might have three on their chin instead of two, for example.

Frills are a less common but much more dramatic adornment. Frills can be spread or tucked away to show agitation, or simply to release or preserve heat.

Both spines and frills can be augmented in various ways, often with piercings or colored inks. As some of the only exposed flesh lizardfolk have, frills are convenient (if painful) places to tattoo.

[kalvincent]

NPC: The Troll King

There is a kingdom ruled by the Chan dynasty, divided into smaller regions: the highlands, the mountains, the coast, and the wetlands. Each region is ruled by one of the Chan brothers. A man named Allyn Nonn fled the highlands region of the Chan Kingdom, and went out into the wider world.

He traveled to an underground community of trolls, led by a great hulking troll who led by virtue of strength. Envious of the troll's physical and social power, Allyn began spreading rumours that the troll king was weak, sick, stupid, cruel, and so on. At the same time, he would publicly insult the troll, the use legal loopholes to worm his way out of fights when the giant challenged him.

Finally, furious, frustrated and hurt, the great troll fled his kingdom. No one else was willing to confront Allyn Nonn, so he took the throne for himself.

And that's the story of how A. Nonn from the Four Chans kingdom became the king of trolls.

[kalvincent]

Lizardfolk Anatomy Part 1: Back, Hands, and Face

As some of the last of the reptilian races, lizardfolk are incredibly visually distinctive from almost every other sapient race. The closest in appearance are kobolds, but the two races are actually quite distantly removed.

Scaled Hides

Lizardfolk hides are thick enough to turn aside light weapons or the fangs of the creatures they hunt. Their scales are most similar in composition to a crocodile's, though not quite so large or thick. 

The scales on their underbellies are thinner and more vulnerable, which they often compensate for by wearing chest armor made from thick leather or rough hide. Some clans even wear armor of iron or magically treated wood over their natural defenses, but many prefer speed and mobility over the extra protection.

Tooth and Claws

In addition to their natural defenses, most lizardfolk have inborn weapons strong enough to hunt and kill with. While many lineages have sharp enough claws to fight with, that isn't always the case. Lizardfolk lineages adapted to living by the seaside will more commonly have wider hands and feet meant for swimming long distances.

Universal to all lizardfolk are sharp teeth meant for tearing and chewing meat. These work just as well for ripping out the throats of unwary warm-blooded humanoids as they do for eating meat animals. Some lineages more closely resemble monitor lizards, and they have small venom glands in their mouths to make for an even deadlier bite.

Eyes, Ears, Nostrils

Despite looking bestial, lizardfolk eyes are more-or-less on par with a human's. Their color recognition isn't quite as keen as in humans, but enough to help them differentiate between foliage and prey. Many have transparent nictitating membranes on their eyes that allow them to protect their eyes while maintaining visibility on land, below the water, in a dust storm, or even while sleeping.

Their sense of smell and taste are typically much stronger than a human's but not quite enough to track by like a wolf might. 

[kalvincent]

Goblin Society Part 3: Governance and Relations

Nomenclature

Goblins rarely complicate their lives with unnecessarily long names. If a name is easy to pronounce, quick enough to shout in joy or anger, and be fun to say, then it's good enough. Some thought may be given to what words a potential name can rhyme with, to make songwriting easier later.

Because goblin naming conventions are so haphazard, it's common for goblins to simply pick their own names once they're old enough to speak.

Leadership

In most clans, a single leader controls those below them, with force or with cunning. But this control lasts only as long as the goblins are within sight of their leader. Followers can show utter devotion to a warleader one moment, and complete disregard for their rules the next.

More rarely, goblin clans can find themselves following a religious demagogue. While the head shaman's zealotry might prove infectious for a time, few gods can hold a goblin tribe's attention for long.

Relationships

A common expression goblins use to describe romance is "easy come, easy go."

While long-term monogamous relationships aren't unheard of or even that uncommon, most goblins enjoy short-term flings that burn out in a few months or a year.

Goblin courtships vary wildly by region, clan, and even by family, but typically involve giving the target of affection something of value every day until they accept or reject the suitor. What exactly qualifies as valuable also varies. One goblin might sing increasingly flattering odes about their intended, while another might bring gifts of food. Scavenged shinnies are a popular gift among even impoverished clans.

Relations

International politics between goblins and the larger folk is… tumultuous at best. But the relations between them and other small folk is just as bad.

Goblins have a reputation for pillaging and stealing from everyone within their ranging distance, and it's well-earned. Many clans rely on raiding to supply much of their resources, and that makes it incredibly difficult for other clans to form alliances with non-goblin settlements.

In peaceful times, goblins and halflings might bond over their mutual love of travel and storytelling. In less peaceful times, those halflings start looking like easy targets.

[kalvincent]

Thanks so much! It's always really touching when I get positive responses to these.

Goblin Society Part 2: Education and Faith

Education

Here we can see the worst effect of goblins’ high mortality rate: few elders live long enough to gather and pass on wisdom, forcing many clans to endlessly learn and relearn the same lessons and talents. Skills and memories are lost between generations, keeping most goblin clans from building on existing knowledge or technology. But still they manage to preserve some basic teachings through their oldest tradition: story and song.

Clans with stability paint an even brighter picture, with wise goblins passing on their knowledge and learning to new generations. These clans develop distinct goblin culture, lore, and innovations. Over time, they can become as technologically advanced as any other race, provided they don’t fall into anarchy before they reach that point.

Story and Song

Goblin clans make simple sing-song rhymes, tell elaborate stories, make humorous poems, or otherwise preserve knowledge in a spoken format. Stories and parables teach young goblins when to sneak, when to strike, and when to run.

Goblins repeat these songs and stories around fires and before raids, cementing learnings that can stretch back decades or centuries. These stories shift greatly over time, becoming distorted with each telling, yet often retain their kernel of truth. Sometimes they pass along these snippets of wisdom without even understanding what they mean - a goblin might chant a simple rhyme about trolls to themselves, only to realize in the midst of combat that the rhyme gives the answer on how to defeat such a foe.

Reading and Writing

An often repeated tidbit about goblins is that they have great superstitions surrounding reading and writing, and that they frequently believe that writing a word down causes it to be pulled from your mind forever. This is at least partially true. 

Few goblin clans have much use for reading and writing, since every day is focused on survival in the harsh climes they inhabit. A story can last a hundred years but a piece of paper is lost to a single spark, so why waste time scribbling when you could be singing? In areas where goblins clash with bigger folk, they might develop superstitions centered around the written word and its association with wizardry (which is very rarely mastered by goblins). These superstitions also crop up as a push-back against other races trying to force literacy on goblin-kind.

This isn’t to say that goblins never learn to read or write, but rather that on their own they rarely see the point.

Religion

Goblin religion is absolutely befuddling, and is a topic of endless debate in niche scholastic communities. This confusion goes both ways, as most goblins are confounded by the idea of organized religion. More often, goblins as individuals (or sometimes as families) pick unique objects of worship.

Goblins can commonly be found to praise and pray to impressive ancestors, powerful monsters, natural phenomenon, wandering demons or angels, or almost anything else. Fire tends to be a common area of concern within goblin worship, possibly due to the importance of communal gatherings around fire in goblin society, but others might bend knees and pray to mountains or even rain.

This hodge-podge of religious fervor makes goblins extremely resistant to religious conversion, especially since goblins are prone to becoming bored of praising the same deity over and over.

Goblins who have lived among longshanks (the bigger races) their whole lives do sometimes pick up the religion of those around them. Even this adopted religion tends to be a bit à la carte, however. Praises to one god might get mixed in to hymns to another.

[kalvincent]

Goblin Society Part 2: Education and Faith

Education

Here we can see the worst effect of goblins' high mortality rate: few elders live long enough to gather and pass on wisdom, forcing many clans to endlessly learn and relearn the same lessons and talents. Skills and memories are lost between generations, keeping most goblin clans from building on existing knowledge or technology. But still they manage to preserve some basic teachings through their oldest tradition: story and song.

Clans with stability paint an even brighter picture, with wise goblins passing on their knowledge and learning to new generations. These clans develop distinct goblin culture, lore, and innovations. Over time, they can become as technologically advanced as any other race, provided they don’t fall into anarchy before they reach that point.

Story and Song

Goblin clans make simple sing-song rhymes, tell elaborate stories, make humorous poems, or otherwise preserve knowledge in a spoken format. Stories and parables teach young goblins when to sneak, when to strike, and when to run.

Goblins repeat these songs and stories around fires and before raids, cementing learnings that can stretch back decades or centuries. These stories shift greatly over time, becoming distorted with each telling, yet often retain their kernel of truth. Sometimes they pass along these snippets of wisdom without even understanding what they mean - a goblin might chant a simple rhyme about trolls to themselves, only to realize in the midst of combat that the rhyme gives the answer on how to defeat such a foe.

Reading and Writing

An often repeated tidbit about goblins is that they have great superstitions surrounding reading and writing, and that they frequently believe that writing a word down causes it to be pulled from your mind forever. This is at least partially true. 

Few goblin clans have much use for reading and writing, since every day is focused on survival in the harsh climes they inhabit. A story can last a hundred years but a piece of paper is lost to a single spark, so why waste time scribbling when you could be singing? In areas where goblins clash with bigger folk, they might develop superstitions centered around the written word and its association with wizardry (which is very rarely mastered by goblins). These superstitions also crop up as a push-back against other races trying to force literacy on goblin-kind.

This isn’t to say that goblins never learn to read or write, but rather that on their own they rarely see the point.

Religion

Goblin religion is absolutely befuddling, and is a topic of endless debate in niche scholastic communities. This confusion goes both ways, as most goblins are confounded by the idea of organized religion. More often, goblins as individuals (or sometimes as families) pick unique objects of worship.

Goblins can commonly be found to praise and pray to impressive ancestors, powerful monsters, natural phenomenon, wandering demons or angels, or almost anything else. Fire tends to be a common area of concern within goblin worship, possibly due to the importance of communal gatherings around fire in goblin society, but others might bend knees and pray to mountains or even rain.

This hodge-podge of religious fervor makes goblins extremely resistant to religious conversion, especially since goblins are prone to becoming bored of praising the same deity over and over.

Goblins who have lived among longshanks (the bigger races) their whole lives do sometimes pick up the religion of those around them. Even this adopted religion tends to be a bit à la carte, however. Praises to one god might get mixed in to hymns to another.

[kalvincent]

Goblin Society Part 1: Reputation and Freedom

Reputation and Inclination

Goblins as a people have a reputation for greed and hoarding, malice and cruelty, larson and arson, and general destructive tendencies. But they have also been described as curious, helpful, kind, and community-oriented. The truth is that all of these are true across the various goblin communities, and sometimes all at once.

Goblin culture is incredibly diverse, more so even than human cultures. The sole unifying trait of goblin society is freedom. The level of freedom that goblins live under could be described as excessive, even to races who highly value the concept (like catfolk and halflings). 

Ultimate Freedom

Goblins communities have little in the way of law, and what laws they do have are often ignored. 

The closest parallel to goblin society is human children. Goblins act like young children with no supervision, making up and discarding the rules of society whenever the whim strikes. A group can join together in humble devotion to sing a psalm to a benevolent god, and then set a farm on fire in the next minute.

Some clans exist in a constant state of violent struggle, fighting and raiding at the behest of a warlord. Others are more benevolent, with all goods being shared between members based on need, with little concept of personal ownership. The unifying trait between these two groups is anarchy.

Boredom and Hunger

The most dangerous thing for a goblin to be is hungry or bored. Most goblins are likely to immediately rectify such a situation with little regard for the consequences that would follow.

A hungry goblin will eat, irrelevant of who the food belongs to, and a bored goblin will find entertainment. This can come across as reckless and cruel to outsiders, but doing whatever feels right is the modus operandi in goblin society.

That's not to say that goblins cannot or will not learn society's rules, but few goblins really see the point in doing so. Following one's urges is natural. If you're hungry and there is food, why bother saving it? If there's a pig wandering around town, why not jump on its back and try and ride it? 

The flipside to their clinging to freedom is that goblins often end up on the wrong side of the longshanks' laws. Consequently, goblins frequently perceive the concept of a criminal code and penal system as pointless and cruel.

[kalvincent]

Goblin Physiology Part 3: Digestion and Metabolism

From raw or spoiled meat to freshly roasted fish, from tubers to fermented greens, goblins can eat and digest nearly anything. This is necessary to power their fast metabolisms, but the mechanics of it are quite complicated.

Teeth and Stomach

Goblin mouths are fronted by a row of triangular, fang-like teeth, but they also have a row of molars and premolars in the back for chewing plant matter. Because they have to grind their jaws to break down plants, their longer front teeth occasionally bump into each other and get chipped, resulting in the typical “jagged teeth” that people associate with goblins. Fortunately, goblin teeth have an interesting biological quirk: rather than being stuck with two or three sets of teeth, goblin teeth fall out and regrow endlessly throughout their lives. Their large mouths and replenishing teeth serve their endless hunger well, allowing them to eat almost continuously.

Studies and dissections show that goblins have a particularly long intestinal track and quite strong stomach acids, which enable them to digest almost anything (even bone in small enough quantities). This longer digestive system might explain why goblin torsos are proportionately larger compared to halflings or humans.

Metabolism

Goblin metabolisms are faster than a human’s, which means that they are often quite hungry. Ideally, goblins will sleep for more than half the day in order to conserve energy, but during periods of high activity they will eat almost constantly. This is somewhat mitigated by their efficient digestion that makes use of more of the available nutrients in their food. 

This fast metabolism gives bursts of energy that allow goblins to run extremely fast or fight for their lives. In more agricultural clans where daily hunting is unnecessary, this metabolic speed often results in jitteriness, restlessness, and sometimes anxiety. Goblins often have difficulty sitting still for long periods of time, and often prefer periods of fast activity interspersed with long rests.

Immune System

Given their proclivity for eating spoiled food and living in unclean conditions, it should come as no surprise that the goblin immune system is robust. The extremely low pH of their stomachs reduces the risk of parasites, and helps reduce the bacterial risk. Unfortunately, these traits do not guarantee good health, and goblins can be carriers or victims of an array of ailments. 

The most famous disease that people relate with goblins are goblin pox and yellowtongue sickness. The first is a bacterial infection that rarely bothers goblins but can be quite damaging to those interacting with them (especially for humanoids who eat food cross-contaminated with goblin waste). Yellowtongue sickness, however, is exclusively damaging for goblinoids, and caused the collapse of an entire goblinoid kingdom in just a few years.

[kalvincent]

Goblin Physiology Part 2: Senses

Goblins are evolutionarily adapted to dark environments, such as deep caves or nocturnal hunting. The development of their senses indicated that goblins have traditionally been a combination of ambush hunters, gatherers, and carrion feeders.

Hearing 

With their long, pointed ears, it should come as no surprise that a goblin’s sense of hearing is quite keen. Their keen hearing is especially tuned to higher frequencies like a dog’s. Many clans take advantage of this fact by crafting high-pitched whistles that they can hear from a mile away and that many other humanoids cannot hear at all.

Their strong sense of hearing also helps them as ambush predators, allowing them to monitor how much noise they make as they move through underbrush or other cover.

Sight

Goblin sight is comparable to a human’s in normal lighting conditions, but it really shines in dim light and darkness. It literally shines, as goblins have the reflective layer in the backs of their eyes that is common to most nocturnal hunters. Their pupils also expand to fully eclipse their irises, allowing them to get the most out of even tiny sources of light.

Goblin raiding parties might be almost entirely invisible in the shadows, right up until you see dozens of sets of glowing eyes in the dark.

Taste and Smell

Goblins have a relatively poor sense of taste and smell, which is just as much of an evolutionary benefit as their keen sight. Because they’re able to digest most foods with little negative effect, goblin cuisine can sometimes involve food a human would never consider putting in their mouth.

This has resulted in the stereotype that goblins seek out and eat garbage, which is only partially true. A goblin in a desperate situation can eat food that would sicken larger humanoids, but that doesn’t mean that’s what they would choose to eat. A goblin might also eat food that’s past its prime without noticing that it has started to sour, but they don’t seek rotten meat deliberately.

Goblin cuisine makes use of strong flavors to compensate for their weak taste buds, which makes it nearly unpalatable to many other races. Vegetables pickled in extremely vinegary brine and fermented foods are common in goblin diets, as well as meals seasoned with as many spices as they can get their hands on.

[kalvincent]

Goblin Physiology Part 1: External Anatomy

Goblins stand about as tall as a gnome at three feet, but tend to weigh somewhat less as a result of their incredibly fast metabolism. Goblins have short limbs for their torsos, but still move faster than most gnomes and halflings. For some reason, despite being half the height of a human, goblin heads are about the same size, and tend to look disproportionately large on their small frames.

Their ears are pointed and even longer than an elf’s, almost reminiscent of fey, but their noses are often small and up-turned like an orc’s. But their narrow, jagged teeth look more like a piranha’s than any other humanoids’.

Skin and Eyes

Goblin eye color is almost always red or yellow, and their eyes tend to be rather small and beady compared to their enlarged heads. Their eyes are adapted for dark environments, and reflect light like a cat’s, which can give them quite a menacing appearance at night.

While laypeople often assume that green is their universal skin color, in truth goblin skin tones vary based on their environments, not unlike that of elves. Green, grey, and blue are the most common, but people have also reported pale white and charcoal black skin tones in certain goblin clans. 

It’s unclear whether these variations in skin tone are as evolutionarily adaptive as elven camouflage skin, or whether goblins of separate clans simply had random melanin mutations. While this second theory would be implausible for most races, goblins have extremely high rates of genetic mutations, for reasons unknown.

Similarly unknown is the reason why goblins grow little or no hair. Their heads have at most light fuzz, while the rest of their bodies are almost entirely hairless. Most don’t even have eyebrow hair. A commonly accepted reason is that goblins evolved in subterranean environments where hair was not beneficial, but it seems unrealistic that even those who have lived in cold climates for a hundred generations would still be hairless.

Development

Goblin development is fast and sloppy. They reach their full height at around eight years of age, and considered fully adult by ten. Being as goblins mature twice as fast as humans, goblins can increase their numbers incredibly quickly, which can put them at odds with other races when they expand too far. This, combined with their tendency to accidentally have more children than they can reliably sustain, can push goblin clans to raid and make war against their neighbours, usually to their own detriment.

Goblin cells reproduce quickly but imperfectly, so even a goblin who was well fed and kept from violence would likely not live past fifty years of age. Their shorter generation time also seems to come with a bizarre drawback: goblins are far more likely to be born with a mutation than humans or elves. While this can often be as benign as a different skin or eye color, it can also manifest as cancer. Goblins with visible mutations are often perceived as being a good omen by their peers, as these deformities are seen as blessings by gods or demons.

[kalvincent]

Skill Challenge: Use Magic Device

While exploring a massive underground complex that houses an arcane cult (or another, similar kind of hostile force), the party comes to a dead-end section with a passage leading straight up. The walls are almost perfectly smooth, and nearly impossible to climb.

Fortunately, the cultists keep a scroll of fly on a pedestal by the vertical passage for the occasional (demonic) visitor that can't fly on its own. The scroll’s caster level is 5, so the DC of a Use Magic Device check to activate the scroll is 25 (DC 20 + CL).

Each attempt takes only a standard action, and failure has no real repercussions, except that on a roll of a natural 1, the spell fails and can't be attempted again for 24 hours. That kind of delay might give the bad guys enough time to get away, or prepare a counterattack.

Raising the Stakes: One or more stone golems (CR 11 each), are a short distance behind the party, and closing in. There's not much time (a matter of rounds) to successfully trigger the scroll of mass fly (CL 13) and get the whole party up the shaft before the construct guardians corner them, and the DC of the skill check is 33.

[kalvincent]

The final part of the Skill Challenge Series will be up on Sunday, and the Gnomes series is wrapped up just after the end of #gnomevember.

As this year rolls over, a few more projects are in the works, and I'm hoping to keep a steady stream of content coming even as Tumblr descends into turmoil (although I may take a break until the new year, depending on a few factors).

As always, happy rolling.

An Update

First off, I’d like to apologize for the random, non-gaming posts I I reblogged. They were supposed to go on my other (primary) blog.

But I now have the Skill Challenge series complete, which is scheduled to post one per Sunday until mid-December. In the meanwhile, I’m working on a new Racial Analysis series (or two), which will hopefully go up before the skills series is over.

As always, thank you to everyone who is following, and for your support.

[kalvincent]

Skill Challenge: Swim

The worst part of having their ship attacked wasn't fighting the pirates (and their sahuagin allies), nor was it watching their captain be executed. No, the worst part was being pushed overboard and left to the mercy of the ocean.

The ocean has been calm so far, so there's not too much difficulty staying afloat, at first. The coast is a mile and a half off, which represents about two hours of swimming. Each hour a character spends swimming they must attempt a DC 20 Swim check, or else take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage from fatigue.

Raising the Stakes: The water is frigid, so each hour the character spends in the water they must attempt a Fortitude save (DC 15 and then 16) or take 1d6 damage from the cold and become fatigued, and thus worse at swimming. Worse yet, the shore is home to a hostile clan of kobolds, so the characters must try and conserve their strength (and hit points) if they are to survive the encounter.

[kalvincent]

Gnome Society Part 3: Relations and Innovations

Gnomes don't particularly fit in with other races, much to their own bafflement. The fact that the taller races see gnomes as so odd and confusing is itself confusing for gnomes. They try to assimilate into new cultures, but often can't help but stand out - they sing too loud, dance unabashedly, make magic, and delve deeply into their obsessions. In short, they live out loud, and many wonder why others can't or won't.

Gnomes look up at the lumbering giants that are humans, and think them not creative enough. They see dwarves and wonder where the joy and imagination are, and think the elves enjoy all the right things for all the wrong reasons. Halflings are the closest in size, but are too slow and passive compared to most gnomes.

Gnome society, such as it is, adapts and shifts faster than most would believe, which serves to increase the chasm between them and other humanoids. Gnome inventors churn out new innovations at breakneck pace, which are quickly integrated through society, even when they are less effective than current technology.  Newer is better, and gnomish art and architecture evolve as quickly as their technology. New techniques and styles quickly appear and become popular, only to be replaced or integrated into new styles that develop.

Magic follows a similar path, and gnomes invent new arcane styles faster even than the elves, but rarely pursue it with the same dogged patience. Magic is in a gnome's blood, and it is this very innate wild spark that enables gnomes to excel in magic, but also pushes them ever on to new tasks.

[kalvincent]

Skill Challenge: Survival

A small band of orcs has abducted several villagers from town. If the party wants to find the villagers before they're sacrificed, eaten, or sold as slaves, they'll need to track the orcs back to their mountain lair.

The gravel paths count as firm ground, which means a base DC of 15 to track with Survival. But there are eight orcs and four villagers, which means the DC is reduced by 4 (-1 per three people in the group being tracked). The final DC is only 11, but the party has to be moving at half speed, and each failed check forces the party to spend an hour looking for the trail again.

Raising the Stakes: The party needs to track the the raiders through the mountains proper, with no sign of their quarry but what bare rock can tell (a base DC of 20). What's worse is that the orcs already have a full day's lead (+1 to the DC for a total of 17).

The orcs are followers of a demon lord of dusk, and sources indicate that once the worshippers get the captives to their cave, they'll begin sacrificing one per evening. Moving at half speed, the party can't risk failing their survival checks if they want to make good time, and they might even have to track through the night (a +3 to the DC) if they want to have a chance of saving all the villagers.

[kalvincent]

Gnome Society Part 2: Hearth and Home

Unlike most races, gnomes do not generally organize themselves within classic societal structures. Gnome cities are unusual and gnome kingdoms almost unknown. Left to their own devices, gnomes tend to spread evenly throughout communities that allow them. Where gnomes do meet, cacophonies ensue.

Visitors are often overwhelmed by wildly coloured banners, overlapping music from multiple bands, groups of singers and performers, scents from hundreds of gardens, and a variety of merchants and cooks hawking all kinds of goods. Rarely will gnome settlements be divided by class or profession, instead having craftspeople and traders set up shop wherever they fit. In short, gnomes tend towards absolute chaos when they gather.

Gnomish homes are either completely cluttered or meticulously organized, with nothing in between. The most common trend in interior decor is turning every room into a work area so that the owner can start working on a project whenever the mood strikes, rather than risk losing an idea while they run to the correct room to work in.

Gnomish homes are another way that gnomes differ from the halflings they are often compared to. Most gnomes are very particular about their spaces, and are much less likely to simply walk into someone else's house. Gnomes can have difficulty cohabitating, as they tend to use every available space as storage (which is often carefully organized in a way that only that gnome could understand), whereas halflings as a people prefer living in close confines with others.

That's not to say say that gnomes aren't sociable. Like anyone else, gnomes can be antisocial or not, though their quick wit and quirky behavior can easily charm or repel those around them.

[kalvincent]

Skill Challenge: Stealth

The captain of the guard has the party in her sights, and is grilling them in the middle of a busy street with questions they can't or won't answer. When she is momentarily distracted by a younger guard asking for her attention, the party has an opportunity to slip out of her sight and fade into the crowd.

Because the party has to move fast, everyone takes a -10 penalty on their Stealth check (as if the captain had been distracted with a Bluff check).