#astral dreadnaught

[1stprototype]

"You shouldn't play Palworld because they blatantly ripped off creature designs from Pokemon!"

Meanwhile the most iconic monster in one of the most important video games of all time and the grandfather of all first-person shooters:

[zathalen]

The astral dreadnought in the spring rain #warhammer #warhammer40000painting #warhammercommunity #warhammerpainting #warhammer40000 #warhammer_40k #warhammerminiatures #miniaturepainting #warhammercommunity #scifiminiatures #midjourney #midjourneyart #midjourneyartwork #midjourneyai #dreadnaught #astral #astraldreadnought #giantrobot #robotmini #flowers #flowerart #like #explorepage #follow #celebrityartist #innerpeace #aesthetic #realism #escapism #feelthemagic #aiart https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpw8rdhOv4g/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[yourplayersaidwhat]

(One shot that turned into a campaign)

Me, bard/angelic succubus (talking about astral dreadnaught)-I’m gonna polymorph it into an exact version of it with a dick

Me(still talking about astral dreadnaught)-Ima be nice and warm in its foreskin

[beingatoaster]

that astral dreadnaught will Remember This

[critterino]

Ever since I first heard the term astral dreadnaught I’ve felt bone deep, psychological, soul sinking fear. Why? I don’t know. There’s just something about the personification of the hungry dark, the idea of being consumed, not killed, not tortured, not dominated just devoured that puts my hackles up, and the idea of *something* *alien* coming from beyond the known, beyond the stars, from nothingness… that’s compounding that fear.

I doubt Predathos is a astral dreadnaught. For one I doubt Matt would tie himself to a stat block like that, but two, from a mechanics perspective it doesn’t seem nearly powerful enough to kill a god. But the fear. That I get from astral dreadnaughts is so much in line with the few things we know about Predathos, that I can’t think about bells hells at all without getting a twinge in my gut or without goosebumps. And none of my friends are caught up and I need to freak out to someone.

[unlettered-heathen]

:D We'll get to see an Astral Dreadnaught in all it's captive glory as the Nein float into it's mouth

[vintagerpg]

The Manual of the Planes (1987), by Jeff Grubb, is my favorite of the orange spine AD&D books, despite it reading a tiny bit like stereo instructions. Within is the foundation of D&D’s great wheel of the planes, one the game’s singular creations and the foundation upon which Planescape would eventually be built.

To be honest, I am not sure this book could have been written in a less technical way. Folks did, eventually, but when they did, they had the benefits of more space and not being first. As the initial attempt to construct a conceivable multiverse that contains all known worlds, energies and religions – a daunting task – I think Grubb acquitted himself very well. His background as a civil engineer probably helped.

It isn’t entirely an original work. Portions of the planes had been described in modules like Q1. Some material had previously shown up in Dragon Magazine – the great wheel was introduced in Dragon 8, Ed Greenwood tackled Hell in 75 and 76, while Roger Moore took on the Astral Plane in 82. Grubb had to reconcile all this material, while also establishing the planes as interesting places to visit, the feasible home of many monsters and the wellspring the delivers magic to the prime material. Again: no small feat.

In a way, I think the book’s inscrutability added to its mystique. After all, real world occult tomes explaining the secrets of existence aren’t exactly easy to read either.

The art plays a big role, too. Jeff Easley’s cover is a classic, made more so by the fact that book never gives details on what that terrifying monster is (we’d have to wait until Planescape’s Monstrous Compendium II in 1995 for that info). Inside is a bit more Easley, but the star of the show is Mr. Atmosphere, Stephen Fabian. You should know at this point how much I love his art, so I will spare you another rhapsody.

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[pinacoladamatata]

Im have a crazy speculation for that living city in the astral sea

[pagesofkenna]

the Quori of Eberron look like mini astral dreadnaughts

[zathalen]

Mr dreadnaught doesn't want war today. #midjourney #midjourneyart #midjourneyartwork #midjourneyai #midjourneyminiatures #warhammer #warhammerfantasy #warhammercommunity #warhammerpainting #warhammer40000 #warhammer_40k #warhammerminiatures #miniaturepainting #warhammercommunity40k #warhammerpainting #warhammer40000painting #astral #dreadnaught #astraldreadnought #giantrobot #peaceful #badassart #serene #meditate https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpy_STNufy_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[flossingh]

We can pull open its mouth and go inside of it?

[canarydraws]

Queen of shadows

If you were interested in the story I was sharing in my last post about my dnd campaign, I’m gonna pick up in the story under the cut!

So, to preface go check out my post titled “Cosmolian Red” if you wanna hear the events leading up to this (warning for eye trauma and drug mention). A lot had just happened. Lucéena learned Weiss killed her dad and then tripped on drugs so hard she saw an astral dreadnaught which proceeded to pick up their hiding place and yeet them a considerable distance into a tower. It was a rough crash. Thankfully after a revivify to our rogue and a group healing spell from our cleric we all made it out in relativly one piece. We were able to catch our breath and see that our little hut had crashed through a wall and we were in the middle of a long hallway scattered with statues. We’d actually broken a few on our way in and as Lucéena went to inspect them she got.. memories? I think she recognized some of the people they were supposed to be but she didn’t remember names.

By this point she didn’t see the stars of the astral sea anymore and her eyes had stopped bleeding so Lucéena began to walk down one way of the hall to further inspect more of the statues. Our wizard Echo went with because the party’s fighter was just wandering away with blood still drying on her face and exploring on your own was clearly what we didn’t need lol. We eventually came to a balcony where we saw that we had indeed reached the Citadel of Shadow. The city stretched below us, massively small, and there was movement among the buildings that turned out to be monsters, not people. It was here that Lucéena had another memory. She was standing in the exact spot she was now but she was smaller and she was holding someone’s hand. With all these memories, she couldn’t doubt that she had initially been raised here.

And while the two of them were talking, they were approached by guards, an older shadar-kai man who looked like an advisor, and the ruler of the shadowfell herself Queen Amali (described as the lovely art above depicts). All of whom wanted to know who tf we were and why and how we had broken through the wall of her palace. With some attempts at civility and a charm spell or two from Echo, we eventually led her back to our group where she invited us to join her in her dinning hall. During dinner the older man was starring daggers DIRECTLY at me as we tried and ultimately failed to explain our mission of retrieving these clone/artifacts. To cover up a misstep in the conversation, Echo ended up saying we were here to look for Lucéena’s famiy 🥲 Lucéena was NOT ready to be put on the spot and also wasn’t 100% sure she cared to find the family that abandoned her but the queen was like alright let’s do that.

Like the mysterious and powerful elven lady she is, she booped luceena’s forehead and suddenly all of her childhood memories came rushing through her mind. She saw memories she hadn’t thought of in some time and others she’d swore she never recalled. Eventually we got to the memory Lucéena had glimped when she was standing amongst the broken statues. It was a man was leaning over her and asking someone out of her line of view what her name was. A voice replyed this time and said Isla, Lucéena’s middle name. She also got another name “Alune” which she repeated out loud. The man who had been staring daggers at me all this time paused for a moment and said that was the name of his wife. Lucéena tried to play it of like ‘oh I met her once’ but everyone was looking at her like they expected something so she ended up leaving the room.

SO, fast forward a little bit the party is in a guest room the queen had given us for the night trying to figure out how we’re going to bring back up the subject of the clones or if we should just steal them. The advisor came in and introduced himself as Gendren Lovelace. After some awkward talk he also said that he was pretty sure he was Lucéena’s father. He suspected when he first saw her because she apparently looks a lot like his wife. Alune had been a general for the queen but she wasn’t remembered too kindly in these halls because she’d apparently cast a curse on the citadel.

BUT I now have descriptions for Lucéena’s biological mom and dad and you know what that means? It means it’s time for family portrait 2 electric boogaloo! Gonna find some time for that… some time. Honestly the session ended right after some of these revelations were made so I have a lot of questions and I’m sure my recount doesn’t make the most of sense. For example Lucéena never got another chance to interrogate Weiss. But perhaps by the time I can make the og family portrait I will have enough of the pieces to present to y’all with a mostly complete family story. Like how Lucéena came to live with the Rowans from being the young daughter of a general in the shadowfell. And why her mom apparently put a curse on the city that turnes it’s residence to stone.

[beingatoaster]

me, looking at stat blocks: I can't make my party fight a whole Astral Dreadnaught. Yeah it's CR 21 so on paper they could, but it feels like something that should be way, way more intimidating than these stats, so I feel like I'd have to blow it up into something way more powerful, and at that point it'd overwhelm them.

me: unless....

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

Tharizdun, the Somnovem, and Psionics

tl;dr I think Lucien (and to a lesser extent Obann) wield abilities from a new school of magic based on Psionics and derived from Tharizdun

Mechanically Lucien’s abilities have been a puzzler. Matt may have simply selected a batch of powers without fitting them into any larger structure, but that’s not his style. I’ve seen the theory that they’re based on a Beholder’s suite of eye-rays, but he hasn’t used a single ray-attack yet and I feel like he would have busted out at least one against Gelidon. Plus Lucien’s not the only one. How did Obann control Yasha for so long, and in a way that robbed her of autonomy? Standard control spells in D&D like Dominate Monster work by charming the target, inclining it to follow your commands, rather than letting you puppeteer them directly. How can Lucien take over his teammates at will? Why didn’t his anti-magic cone disrupt his own abilities like it did those of his teammates? I think it’s because there’s another school of magic in the mix, and I think it comes from Tharizdun.

Consider the origins of arcana. The main schools of magic spring from the gifts/teachings of the Prime Deities in the early times of creation, and the Luxon gifted/taught dunamancy. So why shouldn’t Tharizdun, the Luxon’s dark mirror, have a school of magic too? Tharizdun’s been humming along in the background of Campaign 2 literally since day one, a rising tide that drives creatures to devour. I believe he’s ultimately behind the Somnovem as well, corrupting the city as it wandered the Astral Sea where his influence is strongest and now reaching back through them to the Prime Material plane. Now that we’re coming up against Tharizdun’s avatar (or avatar’s avatar, if it’s reaching through the Somnovem) it makes sense to run into this new school of magic the same way we encountered dunamancy when venturing into Xhorhas.

If Tharizdun does have a school of magic, what would it be like? I think it’s based on psionics. Psionics in D&D mechanics are a class of arcane-ish abilities that draw power solely from the user’s mind and include classic psychic powers like telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. While some monsters and NPC races in vanilla 5e have psionic powers (mindflayers, the gith), playable psionic classes are only in Unearthed Arcana (UA), D&D’s testing server. UA material is frequently revised, experimental material D&D’s designers want feedback on; the Artificer class, for instance, was published as UA a few years before being finalized in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. My guess is Matt used the Unearthed Arcana Mystic class published in early 2017 (later deprecated) to build his own school of psi-magic that we’ll discover over the course of the campaign.

Tharizdun itself is a creeping, seeping insanity that likes to find a crack in someone and worm its way in, so it makes sense that magic from Tharizdun would focus on the mind, madness, and control. It’s fixated on eyes, a classic theme in psionic abilities. Tharizdun’s influence is strongest in the Astral Sea - in base 5e lore it’s even the creator of the astral dreadnaughts - i.e. within a literal ocean of dreaming psychic energy governed by thought and will that’s home to the main psionic races, the githyanki/githzerai. The Somnovem, who were obsessed with both the Astral Sea and cultivating the unknown powers of the mortal mind, likely stumbled into the beginnings of psionics, and now they’re a hideous maddening entity of pure hunger rampaging around covering people in eyes. Oh, and don’t forget that the Somnovem opening a back-channel to Tharizdun would be an excellent reason for the Prime Deities to smite Aeor clean out of the sky before the Chained Oblivion got through. It’s Tharizdun all the way down, my dudes. And Tharizdun’s got the brain powers.

In Lucien’s case, his killer psychic touch attack being psionic would explain how he could use it when inside his own antimagic cone (beholders have their spellcasting eyes on tentacles outside of said cone). A few of the Mystic class’ disciplines also line up well with his demonstrated abilities: Telepathic Control has options that resemble both what he uses to take over the Tomb Takers and what Obann used on Yasha; Mantle of Awe grants abilities related to charm, persuasion, and drawing attention; Third Eye would give him truesight plus fun tricks like tremorsense and see through walls; and Nomadic Mind both gives him Find Creature and would let him create a movable magic sensor similar to a scry-eye that he could use when near the M9 to watch them indefinitely.

WHICH LEADS US TO ONE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT QUESTION: now that Caleb and Beauregard have eyes, can they learn psionic abilities too?? Int and Wisdom are the two psionic caster stats used by the githyanki and the githzerai respectively, and those are Caleb and Beau’s high stats. WILL BEAU LEARN TO PUNCH PEOPLE WITH HER BRAIN. I NEED TO KNOW.

[spawnofwitches]

heyheyhey, remember when Jester banished Vokodo to the Astral Sea and he came back screaming and shitting himself? Fjords astral dreadnaught didn't scare him much so I don't see what could've shaken him so bad. But like looking back on what happened just after they killed him...I think he saw the city. We don't know how long Vokodo had been on Rumblecusp, maybe he went back to the place he ran from, and saw that it was under new, hellish management. Just a thought.

[elphael]

they put champagne in the astral dreadnaught 😭