mythrilpencil

[mythrilpencil]

Yoooo this is so cool! The idea of breaking the regions down into seasons/hair colors is very interesting—especially with the special 5th season—and makes the map very pretty!

I’m also very intrigued by the different peoples described for each area. Lots of animal-like-people, it seems.

Who wants to see my super complicated worldbuilding map for the planet I've been working on since 2019.

[mythrilpencil]

Who wants to see my super complicated worldbuilding map for the planet I've been working on since 2019.

[mythrilpencil]

Had some more fun with charts the other day—this one for visualizing how different D&D races/species would be related to each other in my D&D setting.

Also, for the ones labeled “mutant”: that can happen naturally or unnaturally in this setting. Natural mutations are most often the Planetouched races, and are typically the effect of Aether Infusion compounding over generations (kinda like trace chemicals building up over generations in some species irl but instead of chemicals it’s magic energies). Unnatural mutations are usually the result of some crazy mage at some point in time messing with stuff they shouldn’t.

No one knows how the dragonkin happened, nor really what exactly they were.

And there’s not enough records of how many of the different strains of animalfolk happened.

[mythrilpencil]

Had way too much fun nerding out the other day and charting out how different languages would be related in the Aether ‘Verse D&D setting I’m playing with worldbuilding

(The arrows indicate heavy influence, but not direct relation)

Bit of context: Aetheric is the conlang I’ve been working on for a while; it’s the foundational language of magic and of the entities native to the Aether—sometimes called Aetherites or Aether Spirits—across my Aether ‘Verse worlds

And in this setting, Celestials, Fiends, and Fae are different factions of Aetherites/Aether Spirits

[mythrilpencil]

He’s off on the war front!

The first season of the campaign kinda maybe ended with us accidentally sparking what could have been a world war, so he got called off by the military he was already a part of to fight.

So now he and Puff (his bird) are gonna be causing a lot more explosions.

My D&D party over time

So I joined a campaign my first Fall semester at my university, and I’ve been drawing our characters as we proceed throughout the campaign:

Us at the beginning of the campaign

Us at the end of the first Season

And us in the early half of the second Season

[mythrilpencil]

And here’s the party by the end of the campaign! (For now…)

My D&D party over time

So I joined a campaign my first Fall semester at my university, and I’ve been drawing our characters as we proceed throughout the campaign:

Us at the beginning of the campaign

Us at the end of the first Season

And us in the early half of the second Season

[mythrilpencil]

D&D party introductions pt 2

Sky (my character)

Air Genasi Storm Sorcerer/Tempest Domain Cleric

Alignment: NG

Fun fact: Sky has seen two of the campaign setting’s deities in person so far: Mohre, the god of war and storms; and Nelasi, the goddess of wind and music. One of them is the one responsible for her being an Air Genasi instead of a half-elf via a curse; the other is the one she follows as a cleric.

Aoife

Dwarf Werebear Ancestral Guardian Barbarian

Alignment: NG (was CG-ish before becoming a Werebear)

Fun fact: Aoife once got drunk on what we call Horneater Black—fermented oil—and blacked out with one shot. She promptly got kidnapped, replaced with a floating rock until the party realized what happened. Cue rescue plotline.

Aeon

Half Dragon Moon Druid/Kensei Monk

Alignment: CN/CE (“depending on the day and who’s involved”)

Fun fact: Aeon’s father is a bronze dragon the rest of the party befriended close to the end of the first “season” of the campaign. Our introduction to her was said dragon dumping us over her house, us helping her fight off some shambling mounds, and her exclaiming: “Why does Dad keep dumping people on my lawn!?”

Xandra

Half-Elf Order Cleric/Hunter Ranger

Alignment: N

Fun fact: Xandra’s introduction to the party was her literally sliding through a window and shooting one of the enemies we were fighting at the time. Her player had been just sitting in the room with us, and I had been under the impression that she was just there to hang out. Nope!

[mythrilpencil]

D&D party introductions pt 1

Avel (aka Arrakiel, Cadon, Terron…)

Aasimar Celestial Warlock/Draconic Sorcerer

Alignment: LN-ish (started the campaign as LE, according to his player)

Fun fact: his player kept Avel’s race, alignment, and secondary class (sorcerer) a secret for the first little bit of the campaign. I figured them out shortly before he revealed them during a massive naval battle.

Han

Half-Elf Battlemaster Fighter/Scout Rogue

Alignment: CG

Fun fact: Han had 3 cats inside his head—a sphinx familiar from the first dungeon, the soul of our first major antagonist, and a Sphere of Annihilation. He worked with an NPC friend to safely remove the Sphere of Annihilation. (And we only made the Sphere a cat because of the gag)

Alden

Human War Magic Wizard

Alignment: CN at best

Fun fact: his player once insisted on keeping a kill count during a large encounter, prompting the party to gang up on him afterwards to make him change his alignment from CG to CN. Alden is now fighting on a war front, increasing his kill count, while his player is off serving a mission.

[mythrilpencil]

Forgot to share this here earlier, but I drew the character I’m planning on playing in an upcoming campaign! She’s an Oath of Glory Paladin.

I also have drawn her without her mask, but I don’t wanna post that quite yet (my group has access to my tumblr now and I don’t wanna spoil my secret yet lol)

[mythrilpencil]

Sky’s Journal 2

(cw: mentions of blood and murder)

———

I was right to be terrified.

A horde of living shadows and skeletons moved through our camp last night. Some 15 or so people in our caravan died from those shadows just…moving through them. They seemed to be migrating to the hole in the basin between the two buildings.

Theome was found missing, too; his minder was strangled during the night. Avel doesn’t think Theome himself did it. But it was clear Theome disappeared willingly to follow the shadows like some sort of madman.

So by morning me and the others went into the hole ourselves to try and find him.

I swear that place was like a haunted crypt. The room just below the hole had a locked trapdoor, unlocked by two tile-keys of sorts we had to retrieve from down two locked doors. 

The whole place was filled with horrid undead and traps like I’ve never even heard of. A Minotaur skeleton. These monstrous shadow mastiffs. Yet somehow those weren’t the most terrifying things in the place. 

Avel gathered a bunch of the moss for some reason from one of the riddle rooms.

At the end of the second hallway was a large room with nothing but a brazier, a bag of cards, and a burnt cat corpse. The room shut us in. I was so scared we’d die in there, either suffocating or getting crushed as the room shrank. Eventually Alden used a Wand of Secrets he’d found earlier to divine the solution. With each card of Hearts, the cat corpse revived? And once we burned 9 of them, the cat—miniature sphinx, actually—was revived and the room freed us. Han named the sphinx Mr. Stubbs before he disappeared.

Once unlocked, the trapdoor led to a staircase that led down to a long sandpit. More writing like that on the Seat of Evil—but infinitely worse—was everywhere. 

We eventually managed to survive the sand pit, its traps, and the doors. Theome was in the next room. 

Turns out he’s absolutely mad.

He’s a Harorai extremist, enchanted to be “docile” by the Prismatists until he freed himself. He’s following some prophecy, involving binding the four elements to blood from this plane. Apparently I fill the “Son of the Sky” role, but have been protected by ancient magics? Oddly Han wasn’t part of it, but the rest of us were.

He used blood from me, Avel, Alden, and Aoife to alchemical give himself multiple arms, and then activated a central pillar despite everyone else’s best efforts. I was too terrified to move.

Four horrifying elemental beasts came out of the cylinder. The Set Beasts. Theome escaped with them, apparently killing anyone back at camp that tried to stop him.

Avel made the five of us sign a contract, binding us to stopping those abominations. 

Then Mr. Stubbs reappeared, telling us that the Beasts will be heading south. They’re after these divine artifacts called Shards of the First. And we have to stop them now. 

But how?

[mythrilpencil]

You are never letting a WIP rot. You are doing it a service. Your WIP is a sourdough starter and the five words you wrote that one day were all it needed to sustain itself. It will bubble and be ready when you are.

[mythrilpencil]

Edge 100% does; that’s most of the point of his story, especially at first. He accidentally teleports to this new world that works way different from his old one and has to figure out how to function in a world not actively at war. Even by the end of the story he’s still often gonna be the odd one in any room just by nature of being an android, but he gradually finds some sort of place for himself. He also grows to be very protective of his new world.

Sky has also felt generally out of place her whole life, largely just because she’s an air genasi when she should have been born a half-elf. She faced a lot of persecution growing up because of it. She struggles with it the most during the campaign, as things about her nature and her family’s past get revealed, but I like to think that she eventually finds a place with her family (chosen and blood) after the campaign ends.

Does your oc feel out of place in their world?

[mythrilpencil]

Sky’s name is actually a nickname! Her actual given name is Yawen, but her childhood friend Satoru was the one that came up with the nickname of “Sky.” Growing up, only Satoru and her father would call her Sky, and even then they only did so in private. She started going by Sky publicly basically right before the campaign, after evading her retainers and catching a different ship than the one she was supposed to catch.

She doesn’t currently have any other nicknames, really, but the wind goddess Nelasi did call her “little gust” when she appeared to her once.

Does your oc have a special nickname given to them by someone?

[mythrilpencil]

Sky’s Journal 1

———

Things have certainly been…interesting since I arrived at Rin Fa a few weeks ago.

Met a tabaxi archeologist named Theome in the port’s library shortly after disembarking; entertaining man, if a bit frazzled. Has no arms; uses Mage Hand instead rather extensively. 

He told me about the expedition he was heading into the desert to seek out a “Temple of the Set”. So I requested to come along; sounded like fun! It was supposed to only be a few weeks there and back.

I found out rather quickly that Theome had hired a…rather colorful crew for his caravan’s defense: Aoife, a dwarf woman with an oversized sword and a drinking problem; Alden, a Zeboiim officer apparently on leave; Han, a mercenary man; and a man from Etonteur, Avel. He’s our designated healer, but he’s rather cold. And rude.

Father’s taught me to not pass judgment too quickly on those from other nations, though. So I’ll try.

Regardless, our caravan traveled through the desert reasonably uneventfully—barring a run in with some raiders whom we ended up taking prisoner. It was either that or let Avel release them into the wilderness with no chance of survival. 

Eventually we made it to these ruins of an incredibly ancient city. At its heart was the Temple of the Set Theome has been seeking. He had me and the others I mentioned earlier investigate it and clear out any traps that might be there.

It was incredibly scary. The first building we investigated was infested with skeletons, but it also had writing all over. I used some of my magic to read it; it kept mentioning stuff about “One then was Two”, “Two killed One”, “Built this place for the Two”; lots of stuff about numbers. And death. 

And apparently that building was dubbed the “Seat of Evil.” Suddenly I began doubting if this expedition was a good idea. 

The two sphinx statues in what I can only assume was a courtyard weren’t quite as terrifying, at least. Avel found a Bag of Holding in one of them. The other one had a map.

The other building we investigated—apparently the “Sea of Reeds”—wasn’t quite as terrifying. The walls would conjure creepy black vines if we got too close to them, sure, but we managed to avoid them. Inside was some sort of wishing well; me, Avel, and Aoife tossed some coins in and magically got coins in our hands in return, which was interesting. Alden sent his familiar into the well, made it swallow some gold, and then had it return to him and spit it out. Gross. But he had to do it that way because the well’s pool was enchanted somehow to summon stuff should a coin break the water’s surface, according to Avel.

We reported our findings from the two buildings to Theome earlier tonight when we got back. I’m nervous about what we may find tomorrow. 

[mythrilpencil]

Sky’s Journal 0.5

———

I had that nightmare again last night. The one of that dark storm destroying home.

I woke up in the middle of the night because of it, then went to the deck to try and clear my head.

I could have sworn I saw a shadowy face in the water, as if backlit by something. 

The captain spotted me out and about; asked me what I was doing. And it ended up being quite oddly fortunate that I was awake, as a storm quickly came over us. Somehow I knew where its eye was, and I directed the crew towards it. It was…very strange.

We’re safe now though; shouldn’t be too long until we make landfall. 

But last night haunts me still. I just hope it isn’t some sort of punishment from the gods for procrastinating the assignment Father gave me. 

———

Thus begins my recounting of the Hunt for the Set Beasts campaign!

[mythrilpencil]

MOOD!

[mythrilpencil]

Han has a tendency to drive Sky nuts, so she’s flipped his cloak over his head at least once during the campaign.

And with the reveal that they’ve been surprise siblings the WHOLE DANG TIME and Han knew but never said anything until AFTER the main campaign…suddenly the irritation makes a whole lot more sense