#Arch Magic

[vintagerpg]

Friends, our time with Mayfair’s Role Aids line of D&D supplements is rapidly coming to an end. It’s been a wild ride! There is some terrible crap and some works of sheer genius (many of the latter are criminally overlooked), and honestly a surprising trend of beating TSR to the punch. It was a good line, all in all, and I will miss it.

This is Arch Magic (1993), one of the very last Role Aids box sets. It is an ambitious product. That’s fucking Dave McKean doing the cover art, a clear acknowledgment of how the ’90s had changed the aesthetics of RPGs. The interiors are all Roger Raup.

There are lots of things inside, which divide into two piles. The first is source material that seeks to push D&D magic far past the standard power levels into the astounding. This box wants ultra high level spells (reaching to 15th level) to inspire awe and I think it mostly works, at least on a conceptual level. The sample spells are suitably muscular. Enslave the Sky, for instance, gives the caster control of the weather, the ability to fly and active surveillance of any creature out under the open sky. There are new wizardly abodes, rules for grimoires and incredibly powerful new artifacts (like the Singularity Engine, which can make anything).

Then there is an adventure that takes players on a whirlwind tour of some of the wildest places I’ve seen laid out for a D&D game this side of Planescape. And on the other side, too. The Macrodome, the City of Bone and the Gibbering Cave maps are all instant favorite RPG maps. Holy crap this stuff is good — a suitably grand swan song.

[baddiesplug]

SHE A BADDIE ✨

[illustratus]

Christmas Eve by John Ferguson Weir

[toyastales]

Arches National Park

The park's arches and other formations were created over millions of years by erosion and weathering. Rainwater dissolves carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, creating carbonic acid, which reacts with the rock and breaks it down. 

[spiralhouseshop]

Big restock on titles from Troy books in our catalog this week!

Check out all the Troy Books titles we carry here!

[automatictimemachinedreamland]

[hfhmjfyuhgtygh]

magicag girl banilla

Shadow Milk coming soon

[maeviuslynn]

Beautiful illuminated pages of the Book of the Law by Steffi Grant. These pages are found in the Ninth Arch by Kenneth Grant.

[emptykitkat]

Surana is insane bc as soon as she discovers something with magical abilities that she doesn’t have, her brain is immediately like “eat it to gain it’s powers.” And she never wants to, she thinks it’s disgusting and she’s better than that… but she’s curious and scared of failure so she always eats it, and the worst part is that most of the time yeah it kinda works.

Here’s an incomplete list of things that Surana has injested at one point or another that she probably shouldn’t have:

Joining juice, obviously

Regular darkspawn blood. Separate form the joining. It was a powerful emissary.

Various dubious potions from her time as an apprentice and while traveling

Dragon blood

A lil sprinkle of Andreste’s ashes, just to see what it tasted like (bad)

Some of the crystals that Shale uses, after grinding it up into a power

Demon blood

Tbh she did take a lil sippy of dragon Felemeth’s blood too

Improperly labeled salves

Avernus’s mysterious potion, before even meeting Avernus. She saw it on the table with a label about unlocking Grey Warden abilities and it was down the hatch

She 100% drank a little bit of all her friends blood. To see if it would give her a better blood magic connection to them so she could keep them safe.

Small doses of poisons. After recruiting Zevran she wanted to make sure that she knew what they tasted like, just in case.

Alistair’s cooking

Weird spring water from the elven ritual site in some abandoned ruins.

Ok yes she drink a little bit of abomination Uldred’s blood. She put it in a little vial after killing him and kept it while debating if she should drink it or not, before ultimately drinking it.

Werewolf blood. She was curious if it would turn her into a werewolf or not because of the whole Grey Warden thing. (It didn’t)

Not much from the deep roads actually. Except for this weird glowing rock about the size of a dime. She did swallow that for unknown reasons

Not broodmother blood. That’s where she drew the line.

Whatever “Oghren’s special brew” is

She tried eating one of the flowers that she gave the kennel master back at ostagar because she had a spare

Paper from a book because the spell in said book told her too (that was actually a prank that some older kids in the circle played on her)

She ate a leaf from the branch that the great oak tree gave them

In awakening the list expands even more. The girl drinks marsh water she’s so weird

[thetaxicabber]

Chapter 19 art for Voyagers of Time and Shadow!

This amazing art by @giselsann-opencommissions I'm so excited to continue getting art for this series! If you've read it let me know which scenes you'd like to see! :) 

“Poppy?” Evie’s voice is choked, barely above a whisper. "Is that really you?"

Poppy tilts her head to the side, blinking her wide brown eyes. “Hello Evie. I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too…” Evie blinks and rubs at her eyes. Surely, she’s hallucinating. Poppy is dead, left behind in her time. This isn’t real. She hit her head or something. There's no possible way she's talking to her friend.

“James!” Sirius shouts with joy as a man places his hand on his shoulder. Evie had forgotten Sirius was here with her. The man standing in front of him looks just like Harry with those round glasses. He’s in Hogwarts Robes, Gryffindor colors. “It’s really you. Prongs…”

“Padfoot, I am so glad to see you.” Sirius breaks into sobs as the pair embrace.

Evie looks around, trying to get her bearings. Just any sense of where she's at. But this entire place is white. There are no walls or ceiling in sight. There’s no sky for that matter either. It’s bright but not blinding anymore. The ground is hard beneath her feet, but also colorless. Wherever she is it is not London anymore. But she knows she’s never been here before. Her wand is held in a tight fist in her hand, acting almost as an anchor to herself. “Where are we?”

“A place between,” Poppy answers coyly and the girls watch the two friends embrace. Sirius keeps patting James on the back, an expression full of bewilderment. James and Sirius break apart, James is laughing at something Sirius said. Evie can see the affection the pair have for one another. Sirius looks years younger with a smile like that. Evie would never believe he lived for years in Azkaban prison like Harry had told her.

[baddiesplug]

RUBI ROSE 🌹

[iheartyaya]

Digging you out

[justgleekout]

Do people even still like Hogwarts!klaine?

[flanprinz]

Go..... my adachi edit... 🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲

[bel-afrique]

Arched in the light

lexijanay

[spiralhouseshop]

Big restock from Troy Books at the US based Spiral House Shop at Portland Button Works!

Check out all of the books we carry from Troy Books here.