#3E-Beauty

[ambrosecollector]

While generally, I think the Scroll of Errata enhances the experience of playing Exalted 2e (with the notable exception of Overdrive charms), having to refer to and share another resource during character creation and play is a pain in the ass.

I'm compiling all of the Terrestrial charms and their errata into one file now, which is also a pain but it'll definitely save us time in the long run.

[shinigami-striker]

Yukiko Kanzaki B-Day | Friday, 03.03.2023

🖤 Happy birthday to Yukiko Kanzaki of Class 3-E. 🖤

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

So, I was curious about this tidbit from the Patch 5 notes and I haven't seen anyone talk about it. Turns out one of my favourite new bits of content related to my favourite character is hidden behind betraying her in the most horrid way possible. Ugh.

It used to be that if you sided with Lorroakan in the Nightsong quest, you, him, and all the elemental myrmidons (and possibly Rolan) would just fight Aylin alone - a fight that obviously lasted one round, tops, and I think could only serve to make you feel bad about what you've just done.

Now, however, a really cool thing happens - Mum Gets Fucking Pissed. And four of Aylin's cool older celestial cousins (a nice new take on Slivers for my ol' 3e heart) come down to help her in the fight.

Amusingly, they put Aylin in timeout in a moon-flavoured Globe of Invulnerability every turn, which also makes her unable to attack or do much, even with her trusty moonbeam.

So you need to break their concentration (often on more than one of them at a time) in order to be able to even touch Aylin. Everyone being very angry and protective of her is A+++.

A good roll of that 12d12 can just delete characters instantly. Beautiful.

Aylin also gets some very direct buffs, primarily Hug From Mum, and we have waited far, far too long for that:

I just found this oddly touching, that she gets to have at least this bit of very outright reassurance, even if it is under rather horrible circumstances. And ironic, of course, that if you help her and triumph with her in glorious combat (Lo!) against yet another bastard would-be captor, she doesn't, and is left to grapple with her anger and doubt and nascent feelings of abandonment:

Player: Let his demise serve as a warning to anyone else who'd seek you out. Dame Aylin: Let him be the last. If my dear mother has any mercy, she will ensure it. [Trying to stay her usual self, but her mask is cracking a tiny bit here. Privately, Aylin is dealing with a great deal of anger toward her mother, the goddess Selûne, but she's not yet willing to face it. How could her powerful mother let all this happen to her?]

Or the more determined-sounding but depressingly "no rest for the glorious Sword of the Silverlight" variants you can get if Isobel is alive:

[lunastrophe]

Prayer to Eilistraee from BG3

I found this prayer to Eilistraee in Dedications to the Pantheon - below the original English version is my attempt to translate it to drow language.

I used drow name tables from #267 Dragon Magazine to translate "Silver Lady" into something that would look more like a proper name / title than like a literal translation of "silver" and "lady". So, female prefix May- (beautiful, beauty, silver) + female suffix -inil (lady). I really like this result ❤️

Drow version of the prayer written in 3e Espruar would look like this...

...and High Drowic version - I suppose this script would not be used for Eilistraean prayer, but I really like how it looks:

If you need more info on D&D drow scripts, feel free to check my other post with some ideas 🙂

[txttletale]

Because I'm curious now, what are your favorite TTRPGs? One of my personal favorites is the Kids On Bikes system and its variants for their simplicity and ease of access for new players.

so first of all--kids on bikes is very cool. it’s a nice rules-light game with a pick-up-and-play vibe. haven’t ever run it myself but i feel comfortable seconding your recommendation. anyway here’s some of my FAVOURITE TTRPGS.

Blades in the Dark is probably my enduring all-time favourite game. it’s a little flawed in places but its core loop is pure fucking elegance at play. flashbacks (you can spend stress, a metacurrency, to have done something in the past) and resistance (you can also spend stress to evade something bad that happens to you) are two of my favourite mechanics in any TTRPG ever. every player character gets to be a competent badass while also facing real, tangible danger with every moment. not to mention an incredibly well-fleshed out and evocative setting in the gaslamp fantasy nightmare city of doskvol.

Eidolon: Become Your Best Self is a game that dares to ask questions like, ‘what if jojo’s bizarre adventure was good’ and ‘what if persona, also, was good’. characters manifest the power of their souls as weird freaks with incredible powers. the ‘reveal your master plan’ mechanic works much like BiTD flashback mechanic and a smart combat system where enemies get stronger as you fight them really makes this the perfect vehicle for creative character-driven superpower-based combat. if you subscribe to the developers’ patreon you can also get access to the draft of the second edition, which does some really cool fucking things like replacing dice rolls with a tarot draw.

Lancer is the game for people who like grid-based tactical combat. it has incredible tactical depth, well-thought out mechanics that interlace perfectly--and best of all, you get to design and customize your own mech from a truly dizzying array of options to find all sorts of fucking insane synergies between abilities like ‘teleport whenever you attack somebody’ or ‘do more damage the more you overheat’. it also has a very comprehensive suite of GM tools that make it a breeze, and even fun, to create and run a balanced encounter with clearly defined and narrativly interesting goals for both sides. i’m not too into the setting for reasons i’ve talked about elsewhere, but fortunately as long as you can accomodate ‘mech combat’ into your setting, none of the worldbuilding is load-bearing to the game’s core appeal.

Microscope is totally different from a lot of TTRPGs in that it’s noit about playing characters, but about creating a world. it’s a beautiful collaborative storytelling tool with deceptively simple tools that can easily add up into your table creating a world that’s way more intricate and eclectic and fascinating than anything one of you could have come up with on your own. good for creating TTRPG settings but also good just as something to play for its own sake!!

Dream Askew would probably round out my top five, but i’ve just posted about that one here--so instead i’ll give this slot to Nobilis 3e, a game that might not be one of my favourite games to actually play, but is genuinely fascinating to read and sit with, a fucking masterful work of both design and literature, something that so distinctly creates a world and a tone that it’s instantly magnetic. not for everyone, but worth checking out.

[brunchbitch]

Hi! I was wondering, if you feel comfortable, if you could give an update as to how the wedding went and what your honeymoon was like? Only if you'd like to and it's not too private to share. It's more that I (and I'm sure others) were excited for you in the lead up to your wedding, and you mentioned it was a lovely day so would be keen to hear more :)

hi!! i would love to! it means a lot that people would be interested :)

overall, the wedding was amazing. the weather was perfect on the island. the ceremony garden overlooked the salish sea:

at the ceremony, we chose to do quiet vows so the crowd couldn't hear. at one point, i had put a silly pun in mine and it made A throw his head back and laugh, which made everyone laugh, and that was a really special moment. my niece read wild geese, which G had given me a copy of when i was at 3E so it was really sweet to have her there for that. A's dad officiated the ceremony (he's a unitarian minister) so that was really special. he did such an amazing job - i can't wait for the video!

the two of us went back to the room after the ceremony to just be with each other for a few minutes. we were both laughing and crying at the same time - it was an overflow of emotions!

after the ceremony, we had cocktail hour in the garden with oysters, apps, and special drinks based on our cats:

(the goats loved getting fed by the kids!)

then we headed over to the barn where we had our very cool seating chart, designed to look like a bookshelf with people's names and table numbers on the spine:

we ate dinner outside in the shadow of the barn:

my best friend (the MOH) and A's brother (best man) gave hilarious toasts. then we went inside and had our first dance! i was sooooooo nervous (it was choreographed) but one of the sweet memories i'll have from the wedding is practicing in our bathroom the night before the wedding at like midnight. did not get much sleep that whole weekend!

it was an amazingly special day, one that i will never forget.

the honeymoon was also wonderful, but VERY hot. i do not do well in the heat lol so i was kind of crabby (also going through weed withdrawal which didn't help), but it cooled down a bit the second week so we did some more exploring.

(this was our view from the hotel)

we visited an old castle, an art museum in palma, a hammam (arab baths), took a sailboat for a sunset cruise (i got sick off the back of the boat lol but it was a beautiful sight while i was retching hahahaha), and went out for dinner pretty much every night. there have been a lot of anti-tourism protests in mallorca (many people come on cruise ships and/or stay at all inclusive resorts so they're not really contributing to the local economy) so we did our best to spend money at smaller restaurants and stores. we went out for a nice dinner the final night. it was a fun trip but we were both very ready to get back home, see the girls, and enjoy as much ice water as we wanted!!!

[theuncrucified]

To celebrate the Abyssals 3e launch from @theonyxpath, enjoy a collection of some of my Abyssal art!

Starting off with my take on the Deathlord, The Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears. I channeled teardrop silhouettes and teardrop crystals with a spoopy madam aesthetic.

Say hello to Golden Lies Spewn Forth from Avarice, a Deathknight of the Lover who enjoys eating the rich (quite literally).

The Eyes of Lord Automeris, a soulsteel war fan weapon a Deathknight Moonshadow Caste used in our campaign that does willpower eroding attacks when it opens fully revealing its 'eyes'.

The Monstrance of the Lover. A gift given from the Lover to Rabzolga, the God of Slaves. As each monstrance suits the Deathlord’s intentions (the way I interpret the lore), I’ve chosen to portray this monstrance controlled by the Lover as being much like its owner.

The silk satin pillowing inside makes it seem like a luxurious bed, the soulsteel and jade construct gilded with gold. A prismatic crystalline lid allows one to gaze on the poor soul inside, whose body is trapped in an arc that mimics ecstasy by gold caressing arms that come alive and clasp the victim within. Inserted along the crystal lid, jewel encrusted needles stab into each of the victim’s chakra points, plying the Solar within for corruption. Like the Lover, this monstrance combines a beautiful and terrible aesthetic.

[littlemissartemisia]

3E

She’s beautiful

[talenlee]

3e: Sticks and Stones

ALright I’m up late and the thing I was working on didn’t work and I don’t want to fall behind on my schedule so let’s just belt out something about the ongoing grievance I have in how 3rd edition D&D treated spellcasters as a better class of people with their own higher standard of living because being able to rewrite reality at will is by no means a perk enough to justify not feeling bummed out.

Let me talk to you about sticks and stones powers.

First the origin of the term. The psionics system of 3rd edition was a beautiful beast and also a complete functional failure. Its presence was demanded implicitly by being a thing that existed in 2ed and people liked, while its exclusion from the core of content was demanded explicitly by being a thing that existed in 2ed and people hated. It was a sci-fi thing, unlike the flying airships and unsupported towers made of glass that the rest of the fantasy genre had going on inside it. The psionic system has two distinct forms; the version that launched in 3rd edition proper, and the followup version in 3.5.

3rd editions’ psionic system had a lot of things in it to try and make sense of things that seemed like they should exist in a story, which included an idea of psychic combat. That was where two psychic characters could give up their actions to tangle with one another in a sequence of paper-rock-scissors-laser-godzilla in an attempt to determine who had the bigger brain, who had dedicated the right resources to it, and crucially, who hadn’t decided to spend a few turns using their actual powers to do actual damage or inflict control. Seriously, psychic combat was a hilarious system because it was only useful for psychics who both wanted to fight one another and deplete each other’s power points. Just using powers on one another, like by say, using psychic powers to bombard the other person with lasers? A lot more effective. But don’t worry, there was also the silliness of psychic combat folding in the Illithid power Mind Blast which is a cone stun that lasts for 1d4+1 rounds, aka ‘probably enough to kill anyone or get away from anyone.’

Yeah, player characters could have Mind Blast, at a certain level. It was the only thing anyone ever bothered with in that system.

Along with that system was a collection of psionic powers that all relied on different stats to make sure the spellcaster had to feel rounded. They then could use these well rounded stats to cast psionic powers which were quite mediocre compared to magical spells of their level, and also because of those rounded stats, likely to fail. The entire system was built on ‘hey, here are nice ideas, why don’t we do this’ and the answer coming out pretty evidently in the first playtest.

Anyway, in the Expanded Psionics Handbook in 3.5, Expanded from the Latin meaning ‘not a pig’s arse’, the rulebook decided to instead make the psychic spellcasters into what they always were: spellcasters. Spellcasters needed things like a familiar stat structure, feat support, prestige classes that advanced spellcasting, powers that scaled, and of course, eventually, as with so many things in 3rd edition D&D, gear support.

The Expanded Psionics Handbook introduced the power stone and the dorje. A power stone is an item that has a single use application of a power in it, imbued by the caster at some point. If you can manifest the power in the stone, you can use the power stone. A dorje is a power stone, but a little waggly stick. The waggly stick could have lots of charges stored in it. That is to say, power stones and dorjes are fundamentally, scrolls and wands, as every other spellcaster in the core rules had at the start of the edition.

All psionic manifesters had a limited pool of spells – sorry, powers – they could cast – sorry, manifest. Anyway, these spellcasters were like sorcerers, who could only cast a few spells and that meant that these items that expanded your available spells were super useful. This also meant there were spells you didn’t necessarly want to know wth your limited choices, but you could spend some of your gold to expand on that. Spells cast out of dorjes and power crystals were cast as weak as they could be – minimum caster level, minimum stat, so for a 1st level power, it would be the duration, range, and effect of a level 1 caster’s version, and the difficulty class to use it would be a dc 10. Not great stuff for offensive powers, you want to be able to put oomph behind those yourself.

But say, Comprehend Languages? Or Knock? or Object Reading? Spells that just give you information and aren’t cast under time pressure for combat? Nobody cares about the difficulty of those. You might as well have those in these convenient forms and never bother learning them for yourself. In the process this creates the vision of a marketplace supplied by the small number of psions who do actually know those powers and learned them entirely to supply everyone else with them through dorjes and power stones, which is, at the least, a little funny.

This led to the term ‘sticks and stones’ powers; powers you didn’t need or care about in most situations but you’d stick some of them in your backpack for convenience when you needed them later. This meant that over time, psionic characters would have a swiss army knife of toys for every out-of-combat situation and it was for a time, criticised.

It was criticised, because it was encroaching on the wizard.

Yes, that’s right we’re back there! We’re back at it! Becuase the problem as described was the problem of one character having too much versatility, and in 3rd edition design, the character who had too much versatility was the wizard’s niche. Wizards had been crafting spells into spellbooks and onto scrolls at the end of every day since day one of 3rd edition. They even got the feat to do it for free! Their spellbook was the biggest, and had the most weird niche things! The game even had rules for wizards that pointed out how sensible it was for a wizard to develop their own unique versions of existing spells!

The whole point of stick-and-stones powers is that the powers systems had things that existed in two non-overlapping fields of play, and then expected you to spend the same limited pool resources between them equally even though one of them could get you shanked by a drunken gnoll.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[feastingonfanfiction]

A masterlist menu of fics to feast on

Welcome to the masterlist menu full of fics to choose from, currently requests/asks for the chef in the kitchen are currently open (don't make me regret opening asks)

Current characters my brain likes to think about:

Twilight: The Denalis(Tanya, Kate, Irina) Alice Cullen, Rosalie, Bella

Marvel: Wanda Maximoff, Natasha Romanoff, Kate Bishop, Valkyrie, Carol Danvers

Tanya Denali x Reader:

One shots:

Nothing so far

Series:

Waiting on the red string of fate:

Warning: THIS series be angst unless you read it to ending 3b, that one ending is the only not angst one currently

Part 1 waiting on the red string of fate

[Hanahaki route]:

Part 2 searching for you and finding flowers in throats

Part 3a [first ending] falling in flower fields never to meet

[Alt endings]

Part 3b found you, fights, and figuring this out

Part 3c Sprouting roots, into hearts, arguments, and it's all torn apart

Part 3d Night time strolls to Mother Nature's call

Part 3e Found you in Flowerbeds

Part 3f Beautiful strangers, drunk conversations, and back alleys

Part 3g Surgeries and Surprises

[theinstagrahame]

Another month and a bit, got some more great games coming through! It's time for the indie/small press RPG mail call round-up!

Die - Bizarre Love Triangles: I generally love Rowan, Rook and Deckard's work, and really enjoyed the roughly half that I read of The Wicked and the Divine by Kieron Gillen. So, the original book was a match made in heaven for me. The promise of a Collectible Card Game adventure for it? Done. Sold. I'm there, and sign me up.

Inevitable: I think a lot of people had similar reactions when they pulled Inevitable out of its box: Whoa, this is big. The last few books have been closer in size to the middle row of books, but there's apparently too much ruined Western Arthuriana for one book to contain. Played this on a stream, it's good.

Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast: I honestly can't wait to dig into Yazeba's, because it seems like the kind of game we need more of. It's that Found Family experience, the whole character-based gameplay that people love, but also designed to really keep things fresh even on repeat playthroughs. I'm really curious to finally dig in.

Wickedness: This was offered as an Add-on to the Yazeba's Backerkit, and I was intrigued by the pitch: You and two other players form a coven, and you do queer witch stuff. It's a beautifully made book, and I've got a lot of friends who I think would dig it.

Songbirds 3e: I picked up an earlier edition of Songbirds in an Itch Charity Bundle, and was really intrigued by the game. Snow does amazing things with layout and vibes, and is a really excellent game designer. I really wanted that edition in hard copy, but never found it, so a third edition was an instant get.

Kids on Bikes 2e: I know KoB mostly through the Brits on Bikes podcast, and I really enjoyed the system. I love systems that make use of all the dice in interesting and fun ways, and I really couldn't wait to see what a new edition would look like.

Apocalypse Keys - Doomsday Delights: I've recently been reading the Hellboy comics, and thoroughly enjoying them. I also already have Apocalypse Keys, which does an incredible job of making the comic even more queer, so completing the set with the fun stretch goal books was kind of an obvious call.

The Wolf King's Son: Vincent and Meguey Baker make amazing games, including the engine that runs so many of the games I like. I've been following their recent series of zines, and this popped up in that feed. I haven't checked out Under Hollow Hills, but even based on what I've seen from this, it's a must-have.

Pitcrawler: Wizards are the 1%, and we Pitcrawlers, disposable adventurers, are here to rob from the rich. It ticks all my boxes, and it looks good doing it. The campaign also hit while I was about halfway through my Magnus Archives listen, so it was an instant back for me.

Outliers: Everything Sam Leigh makes slaps, so yeah. Weird corporate science horror? Solo adventures? Hell, even the Far Horizons Co-op association really got me.

Here we Used to Fly: Picked this up also because of @partyofonepod, who played a really beautiful and bittersweet episode with the creator. I have always been a little too anxious as an adult to consider breaking into an old theme park, but I definitely have my share of fun memories of them as a kid. I'm also starting to envision other games this would pair really well as an epilogue to, should I ever get back into the AP scene.

Another game has arrived in the mail since I started this, but that's gonna be next month's first game, I guess!

[xxxdragonfucker69xxx]

The Abyssals crowdfunding campaign closes in about 24 hours.

I did not get to hourinblack all their charms. As penance, I am going to skim just the end of each charmtree, and tell you about the biggest, coolest power of each tree. I am also going to do this for necromancy because i am a necromantic slut.

ARCHERY:

World-Wounding Darkness: Shoot a hole in the world, leaving a black hole that sucks people in. This isn't actually near the end of the tree but it caught my eye and I was like holy fuck.

Heart-Numbing Spike: When you shoot someone, wound their ability to care about things.

Last Days Portent: Shoot out the fucking sun. Kills the lights over the battlefield. If you're being goth about it, kill the lights for miles around.

ATHLETICS

Mountains Become Dust: Physical scale is no longer a limit on feats of scale or destruction.

Light-Killing Stride: Move faster than someone. Didn't ask how fast they moved, you move faster than them.

Temple-Shattering Ruination Curse: Destroy a building to curse the land, making it shadowy and blighted and supernaturally scary. if you were being intense about it, it becomes an abyssal demesne, a permanent upwelling of goth energy

AWARENESS

All-Seeing Overlord's Lair: Extend your senses throughout your stronghold, you can't be surprised inside and your ghostly sentinels (you know, the wraiths you cast to patrol for you) can roam throughout

Morbid Inspiration Witness: Find inspiration in " the morbid, the eerie, or the darkly beautiful: an albatross dropping dead in flight, three  black cats crossing the same street in sequence, lightning striking a distant temple." That inspiration grants you bonuses on various projects, and also makes you care deeply about it. This is enhanced by further charms like Fervent Caprice Fever and Unrelenting Obsession Genius

Piercing Gaze of the Unmaker: Pick a place within, like 20 miles. You see it like it's your lair and you're there. Or maybe you want to cast your gaze on your rival instead? they are going to feel a crawling sensation up their spine from your gaze through <3

BRAWL

Illustrative Overkill Technique: When you kill or incapacitate a guy, it's so fucked up you can use it to threaten anyone else. Or like blow up a building or whatever

Explosive Gore Eulogy (!!): When you do that ^ you can also use their corpse as a weapon. Jesus christ.

Life-Annihilating Castigation: Pyreflame your attack and multiply (!!) damage by your opponent's wound penalty. If you get their ass they explode with pyreflame from within, and if it kills them their ghost burns up on the spot

Void Avatar Embodiment: Now with 0% prana! Envelop yourself in the void, dealing aggravated damage on touch and withering ranged attacks away. Also you're as close to death as you want to be <3

BUREAUCRACY

Hateful Scorn Panopticon: when you use Accursed Overlord Authority to inspire hatred in your followers, you can sense when any of them encounter your enemy, and where.

Rotting Palace Proclamation: Reveal that you embedded a traitor in a rival organization. Or was it someone we knew all along?

Iron Tyrant Reign: When you do that Accursed Overlord thing, if it's a Defining Principle you can carve it into the world as an Old Law: everyone who hears or reads it must follow, words bleed through coverings or hover like fire in the air, the mindless dead automatically obey

Suffer No Betrayal: When you do the Panopticon, you can also count people who've broken your laws as enemies. You can immediately gain Defining Hatred... and possibly carve that as an old law with Iron Tyrant Reign? That isn't in the charm im just reading between the lines

CRAFT

Malicious Mechanism Mastery: Jesus this one is a cartoon supervillain bit. Reveal that an enemy has stumbled into your trap! If it's a corpse-based trap, it's worse!

Fivefold Malice Curse: Lay a curse on something you make, for instance if its bearer breaks an oath or acts against one of your principles. and if they trigger the curse they get blasted by your Bleak Expiations, aka Abyssal Limit Break aka You Cannot Escape The Goth

Soul-Tarnishing Treasure: Instead of an overt curse you can cause it to inspire vice, a sword demanding bloodshed or a chalice inspiring drink. You can't be totally free of this unless you give the object up

Drawn to Death's Beauty: When you use Magnificent Cenotaph Allure to imbue something with emotion, you can also fill it with the mesmerizing lure of death, so that people wander towards it like a will o wisp and cant look away

Betrayal-Spurring Gifts: Annatar their shit socially if you've given them something you've made. &btw cursing that shit is free

DODGE

Hanging Shrike Focus: Dodge up into the air and float back down, or fall on your enemies maybe

Queen of Killers Pirouette (!!): dodge so good you turn it back on them, like fucking zelda's neutral-B in smash

Tenebrous Cloud Dissolution: DRACULA FOG its fucking dracula fog

Breath-Seizing Mist: Hey how would you like it if dracula fog was inside your lungs

Icy Sepulcher Entombment: When you cause someone to despair at hitting you the ice literally grows around your heart and then freezes them over. The freezing stuff is actually pretty early in the tree but this is setup for

In Awful Glory Crowned: When you bring them to despair with Frozen Fears Blossom you can also drain their Willpower, and if you drain it all they become obedient to you. Unless they're unimportant in which case they might just fall over dead, turn into a ghost, and then be obedient to you

INTEGRITY

Freedom In Chains: If forced to act against death's chivalry or your principles, brood about it, then break free

Clarity in Hatred: Shaping defense if you're mad enough

Immortal Malevolence: If you've enshrined an intimacy with Eternal Enmity Approach, you can care so much that you simply do not die. Wake up the next sunset completely healed, but you can't use that intimacy again

INVESTIGATION

Heart-Haunting Condemnation: Scrooge a bitch. Nightmares and omens reinforce your accusations.

Bleak Justice Malediction: If your victim of the above draws on Ties to resist giving in to your accusations, the haunting spreads to those people and things too. If they die they haunt your victim. You can fully Book Of Job somebody here.

Omniscient Spymaster's Web. Know something. Your people told you. You think anyone can keep a secret from you?

[darklordazalin]

Azalin Reviews: Darklord Ivana Boritsi

Domain: Borca Domain Formation: 684 BC Power Level: 3/5 skulls Sources: Ravenloft (3e), Domains of Dread (2e), Secrets of the Dread Realms (3e), Domains and Denizens (2e), Realm of Terror (2e), Gazetteer 4 (3e), van Ricthen’s Guide to Ravenloft

Ivana Boritsi is the second Darklord of Borca, usurping her mother, Camille Boritsi when she committed matricide via the traditional Borcan means – poison.  In 740 BC the Grand Conjunction caused Borca to absorb Dorvinia, her cousin Ivan’s Domain. Currently, Borca is ruled by these poisonous noble cousins, but today I am only going to address Ivana’s descent into Darklordom.

Camille wanted nothing more for her daughter to mirror her in every possible way. An admirable goal. What parent would not want to see their legacies carried forward in their heirs? Installing hatred in one of the Bortisi bloodline should not be a difficult task, yet Camille failed to mold Ivana into the man hating daughter she desired.

The young, influential Ivana desired the experience of ‘true love’. Bah. Overrated dribble best left in fairytales. In her search, she found Pieter – a poetic and musician. He, however, showed no interest in Ivana, so naturally she took to pursuing him like a relentless zealot.  He, like the gloriously vain artist he was, only took interest in Ivana when she expressed interest in his art. And so, Ivana became one of the first groupies in Ravenloft…

Camille, seeing her daughter find ‘true love’ in this musical hack, decided to demonstrate to Ivana just how horrible all men truly were. She pretended to be Ivana and came into Pieter’s bed under the cloak of darkness. When Ivana discovered them together, she was devastated. Camille quickly convinced Ivana that Pieter had seduced her and Ivana should kill him for it in the Boritsi fashion.

Ivana saturated her body in a powerful poison that did no harm to her, but allowed her to kill Pieter with a single kiss. Camille had finally obtained the man-hating, poisonous daughter she always dreamed of. Ivana, however, did not see her revenge complete until she mother suffered the same fate as her lover and with Camille’s last breath, Ivana became the Darklord of Borca.

Now, her body is permanently seeped in poison. Ivana is in her 60s, yet appears no older than 18. A gift bestowed upon her by our tormentors, allowing her to stay young and beautiful without the curse of undeath. There is, naturally, always a price for their gifts and though Ivana may give all appearances of the innocent and beautiful young woman, part of her true nature is revealed by the unnaturally and sickly shade of blue that stains her lips and fingernails. Though Ivana hides these blemishes beneath lairs of makeup, I would not be surprised if she was able to convince the Borcans that blue lips and nails are the latest fashion craze.

When she succumbs to mortal slumber, Ivana’s horror is revealed – she appears as if she died from poison – swelled face, protruding and blackened tongue, and the pallor of a blotted corpse. Perhaps this is why she ensures the death of any lover she takes for fear they may see her as she truly is.

As a ruler, Ivana is more interested in funding her lavish lifestyle and manipulating countless courtiers for her to seduce and destroy. When Borca absorbed Dorvinia, Ivana was more than happy to let Ivan take over the political concerns of their realm.

5e Version

In van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, Ivana’s story has changed in some ways and remained the same in others. In this version, both of her parents earned her scorn. Her father for favoring male heirs over herself and her mother for successfully seducing Pieter from her. After Camille’s betrayal, Ivana created aromatic toxins and killed all of her brothers for the crime of being favored by her father and her mother for seducing Pieter.

When her father lay on his death bed, he named Ivan Dilisnya as his heir. Now, of course, Ivana assumed this was because he was a petty man…but perhaps killing everyone with poison in a rather unsubtle means clued your father into your true nature, Ivana. Though, Ivan is a rather poor choice as an heir as well. With his final word, Ivana released another toxic gas and killed her already dying father and their countless servants. A rather pointless act, but it earned her a Domain and the taint of poison beneath her skin.   

[chronotsr]

No. 6 - D3, Vault of the Drow (August 1978)

Author(s): Gary Gygax Artist(s): David C. Sutherland III (Cover), David A. Trampier Level range: Average of 10, preferably party size 7+ players Theme: Underground exploration Major re-releases: GDQ1-7 Queen of the Spiders; Dragon #298 and #300 (kind of), Drow of the Underdark (even less so)

Fuck I love old module covers. Again the later revision (the blue one) changes the art to be less gloriously trash, which is a shame. The cartoony sketch era is not long for this world, C1 (Tamoachan) represents a pretty noticeable change in art style towards the kind of THIN YOUR PAINTS looking characters in color. We have another year of modules before they make the art less silly.

In re-release news, again we get a very lightly altered treatment in GDQ Queen of the Spiders. Less well known though is a section in Dragon #298 (immediately after Paizo took over) on the Vault of the Drow, although it is…almost entirely setting material, which makes it actually somewhat faithful to D3. What makes it unfaithful to D3 is that it takes place after the events of 1e/2e DND and doesn't contain any of the pre-Vault materials of D3 or the Egg of Lolth section.

Drow of the Underdark is a similar situation, but curiously uses totally distinct materials (like yet another map of the city), but contains even less information about the non-city parts of the Vault. Still, it's interesting seeing 3e-style treatments of D3, and if nothing else it gives you some damn visuals of what Erelhei-Cinlu actually looks like.

The module starts with a recap, and also a brief note as to how to get to the titular Vault of the Drow. Apparently you are now avowed nemeses to Drow, despite plenty of routes to the contrary. We'll also find out later that we're actually enemies to only one bloc of Erehlei-Cinlu Drow. We get the same list of warnings as the previous 2 modules, which themselves contained a lot of warnings from the G series, so this is our 6th time reading some of these bulletpoints. Strangely, apparently "because of the chaotic nature of the dark elves", active raiding parts of the town won't rouse organized resistance to the party, Light spells don't work right here (they go dark and brownish), and Drow resent even the slightest natural-ish light. The upshot is that you can get away with a lot of bullshit.

Our random encounter tables have been updated to reflect being past the main Depths foes of kuo-toa and the like, it's mostly Drows and monsters from this point on. Well, and undead. And bugbears. And trogs. And trolls. And slaves, of course. So mostly just that Kuo-Toa are gone? Svirfneblin are listed with the random encounters despite not actually being on the random encounter list? Anyway.

We have a few canned encounters.

The first one is, suspiciously similar to the Drow checkpoint in D1. It's basically the same. I'm not going to cover it again, it's just the D1 checkpoint but with the weird Battle of the Sexes angle removed.

The second one is a bizarre encounter -- a succubus is pretending to be a statue, a Drow vampire is glamored to look like a songbird, and the whole cavern is glamored to look like a beautiful grove. The vampire is, obviously, named Belugos, because fuck it why not name the vampire Bela Lugosi? They're gonna do their level best to make the players turn around without fighting, but the odds of the whole party failing the charm person AND not finding this suspicious is 0%. Their mesmerized gnome servant completes the Dracula reference.

It's passingly mentioned in their treasure notes that, Bela Lugosi lead-lined a box to hide magic items from magic detection. So that's our newest data point in the "we have to have rational explanations for magic" series.

I guess she always goes nude. She's also nude on the revised edition back cover, which I'm sure got someone in trouble with their parents in 1985. This is one of your two possible routes into the Vault, by the way.

The other way is through a giant spider trap. The only thing of note is the idol of Lolth you can find that gives you a variety of neat powers (but slowly turns you into a giant spider).

In the vault proper, we have some fun special qualities. Everything is simply a different color here, for starters -- modified by your vision type. The ceiling is literally a kind of radioactive parody of the heavens, complete with "stars" and "moons" being played by particular types of rocks and lichens. Everything's got a vague red hue, except the roads which are enchanted to be lightly blue to drowish eyes -- that's what those magical glasses from a few modules ago do, they help you see drow-enchanted markers.

The place is lit with growing shrooms, for all the light that'll give you. A lot of the random encounters give us little glimpses into drowish life, from the lumberjacks clearing fungi for food, leather, et c., to drow nobles on a hunting party, to merchants feuding, to kuo-toan spies lurking in the river.. A good amount of love went into these tables, which I really wish was the norm. "There are bugbears, they have these items and this leader" is a pretty lame encounter good only for punishing slow moving. That being said, this adventure loosely implies Bugbears are Polish? What?

D3 is actually super sparse on artwork, and this is the best one we're going to get all module. This is the Black Tower, which overwatches a chokepoint to everywhere in and out of the Vault. If you have a drowish medallion, you can just saunter on in, enjoy your Evil Elf TSA checkpoint experience, then go about your business in the Vault. The medallions are coded by noble/merchant house, which means that your party just automatically became affiliated in a highly partisan city! Woe betide you, sucker that approached the tower openly hostile, cus they're guarding it with the GDQ series' perennial favorite: hand ballistae, and if you linger around the tower when the alarm goes off Gary straight up tells you to declare Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies because 300 drow troopss show up. Very cool, Gary!

So this is when D3 gets Complicated.

The best part of the Drow are is how much they plot. The worst part of the Drow is how much work that plotting is to run. 24 different families are all circling around each other, looking for weaknesses, allying and warring with one another. I think you would literally need multiple relationship maps to keep them all straight. The above list is actually only about two-thirds of the total relationships between houses, the rest come later with the noble house keys.

So, this tiny picture is the only visual we get of Erelhei-Cinlu. Well, that sucks. OK, well, let's presume you don't go in through the front gate, because that's obviously suicide, what then?

I'm sorry, what? The doors automatically sense your race and summon a demon with no ability to disarm? Fuck off, Gary. You have to go through the Black Tower. You have to get a medallion. You have to go through the Front Gate. You have to fight Lolth instead of the Elder Elemental God. Fine, I go through the front door.

E-C's description is exhausting to read because it's one of those times Gary just vents his orientalist, misogynist biases. Women are in charge? The men aren't buff?? There's sex workers??? Get me my fainting couch!

A lot of ink is spilled on the treatment of slaves, half-drow, non-drow, et c. Tragically the actual appearance of the city is not commented on very much beyond "it's very mazey" and "it's dark". E-C is perpetually 5 seconds from collapse at all times, but also hilariously stable. RIP to anyone dumb enough to rebel here.

Understandable.

E-C's section is a fairly rote "city that sucks" so let's move on.

Ah, the Noble Houses section. There is no way to put this gently, so let's rip the bandaid off. This is so much information that it's overwhelming (8 noble house houses with equipped npcs, special magic items, motivations, room counts, et c.) but also so little information about each individual house that you're going to have to heavily homebrew huge chunks of content.

For example, the first listed House is Tormtor. We know they're:

Rank 7 in the Nobility Hierarchy

They've bought off the head of the Male Fighters' Society.

Allied with Eliservs House, the unnamed Prism and Chain Clans, & indirectly to the unnamed Coiled Whip, Bars, Star, and Bone clans

They on the up and therefore unpopular with the other nobles

Have 6 unnamed nobles ruling the house

Have 6 named and 7 unnamed magic items.

But…what is special about this house? Why are they so ahead? What does their palace look like? Why would you go to it? How could you possibly interact with the alliance and enemy system, as a non-drow?

These descriptions are just not useful, and by the time you have written out enough information on all 24 families you have made the actual module into a footnote. Those later write-ups of E-C can't save you either, because the timeline advanced.

By reading the whole thing and taking notes you reveal that there are two blocs (the Tormtor-Eilservs bloc and the Despana-Kilsek-Noquarto bloc) and a handful of neutrals waiting for a clear winner to back.

The Eliservs are the first rank house, headed by Eclavdra, and their big plot was pivoting from Lolth worship to Elder Elemental God worship because the Lolth priestesshood didn't back Eclavdra's claim for Queenship. Remember Eclavdra? The text explicitly says that if she died in G3 she was cloned (eyeroll) by her consort. Why organize the events of the G series? To get more EEG converts and attain Queenship. An extremely risky plan that we will discover in T1-2 and A1-4 is more plotholes than plot.

Like,

Eclavdra's house is about to fall before you showed up.

She's in charge of the Giants

Eclavdra's fall would signal an end to the Giant incursions

There is no longer a reason to deal with the Giants

There is no longer a reason to deal with the Drow

There was no reason to do any of this

The EEG temple is actually the one from G3, so you've even already punished the Drow before D1 even started! And also, how exactly is that possible? The route to the G3 temple and the route to D1 are 51 miles apart?

I have read quite a few suggestions on how to un-fuck GDQ, and my personal preference is this:

Flip every House's religions, EEG to Lolth and vice-veras

The Giant plot is Lolth's, and Eclavdra's sister is acting for her

Regardless of G1-3, Eclavdra is about to win the secret war for Queenship via the Lolth cult.

A unified Erelhei-Cinlu is a threat and must be stopped

Anyway, having now shredded the politics in here, we move onto the dungeon-dungeon.

First, the Egg of Lolth, which is the broader Lolth zone in Erelhei-Cinlu. Yada yada yada spider sacrifices, orgies, et c. It's all very rote. The head priestess of the lesser temple (not the greater temple!) has a lot of money but not so much magical items -- a weird quirk of D1-3 is that there are basically no magical weapons, so your fighter is probably livid by now. Then, we enter the Great Fane of Lolth, which is to say the greater temple. And we will go into keyed mode:

The temple itself is pagoda-themed, in case you haven't guessed that the Drow are supposed to be vaguely China-themed yet. Naturally trying to climb around and not dungeoncrawl properly promptly punishes you by being suddenly attacked by a giant pile of gargoyles and shadows.

Every depiction of Lolth, even from this second-release copy I'm using, is just….truly sad. Why was "monster but animal head" so common for so long? It's not scary or weird or funny, it's just lame?

The walls are decorated with fake halloween spiderwebs, so this whole place feels like Spirit Halloween. The actual Fane itself is weirdly empty?

Like an evil confessional, all the council chambers have secret spying rooms.

You run into a fake Lolth illusion who pranks the party, which is really not helping the Spirit Halloween vibes

If you walk into a painting of the Demonweb Pits, you just instantly die (or skip directly to Q1 if your GM hates you -- general consensus is that Q1 is bad and that you should just use the pre-planned D3 version of the Lolth fight)

Finally, as you enter the dungeon part of the dungeon (which is actually pretty small by late-game dungeon standards), there is a passive fear aura and all the spiderwebs are now made of onyx and silver, which means your party is going to have a field day with the chisel.

To my great shock and happiness, there is a drow dissident here! And he's good! And won't backstab you! He is neutrally aligned and wants to reform drow society. Good for him! There's a messed up enchanted silver cage which essentially magically webs a victim in a sort of metaphorical representation of a true spider enwebbing their prey. It's a cool visual!

Lolth just kind of, hangs out in room D5. She isn't doing anything. If you kill her, she drops an egg with plot items for Q1, and geases you to walk through that one painting. No save, of course. Lolth herself is a "hard to hit, high resistances, low HP" affair, but also she can heal herself for 50% three times a day, so she is triple dipping on difficulty (in this biz we call this "deeply unsportsmanlike" but I'll give a pass for a demon queen being bullshit)

There's no real reason to go up. Lolth is down and you have no reason to believe good shit should be up, but if you do anyway you will find a variety of random people wandering around with magical goodies, like the high priestess and the commander. It's implied the priestess has been fucking a demon?

Your taste is a lot different than mine, ma'am.

Naturally the treasure room for the fane is hilariously trapped in like three different ways, including with permanent dust of disappearance. Inexplicably, there is a talisman of lawfulness that, if combined with some diamonds, tells you how to reach Lolth. Why was there a talisman of lawfulness in the treasury? Why does it tell you how to get to the demonweb pits? Why does it write in drowish runes?

Finally, you find a wharf with a boat in it. It's trapped with the previously mentioned sentient statue, but hey -- you now have a galley that you can only use on the Pitchy Flow, Svartjet, and Sunless Sea (in an unexplained way). Good luck with the 66 ghouls, 6 ghosts, and type 2 demon!

That's, that's it? Again, D3 reads like a tiny setting book larping with an obligatory dungeon at the end. The Fane is the blandest dungeon thusfar, and G2 was already pretty lame. Still, it is not lost on me that you could form an entire campaign in the Vault's materials, and it might even be good if you relax the "Drow are ontologically evil" quite a bit and allow your party into the factional fighting.

Next time, Tomb of Horrors! Possibly the most over-discussed module is actually a quite early one. See you then!