#drawing a modron is really hard

[tinyabbey]

the greatest wizard of all time

ungug (gornit?) stans unite

[paragonrobits]

Go ahead and tell about the followers/recruits! I'll admit i'm mostly interested in Fallen-From-Grace, but give me the entire list! (You should draw her at some point.)

X D i might consider that!

so im putting this under read more for length

Morte: he's an automatic follower and its best to keep him, especially if you're not statted up as a combat monster, because Morte, despite his appearances, IS. He's a fighter in terms of class and he's actually got some fairly high stats. You need to do some side quests (such as one gained from helping a woman in Sigil named Ingress; you recieved a bag of teeth tat level up with Morte, and are INCREDIBLY useful since you're most likely to keep him throughout the game.) Incidentally, a thing to keep in mind is that Morte IS a chronic liar, but he is the only explicitly Good party member for a reason and while you probably can't trust him to give a straight answer, you CAN trust him with your life. Note, however, that his claims to be a mimir are highly suspect, as they're non-sapient constructs made of metal, and he's rather more similar to the namesake, Mimir of Norse mythology.

Dak'kon: He's a fighter/mage and a really strong one at that. He's probably the most straightforward combat monster in the party in a normal playthrough, and he gets even stronger when you complete his personal quest by going through the dialogue concerning his religion and backstory, which opens up as you learn from it. He's easy enough to get, too, by talking to him at thE smouldering corpse bar. He's also noteworthy in that he retroactively influenced his entire species; prior to this game they were chaotic beings, but afterwards, they were reworked to match his stoic, Zen vibe.

Annah: She automatically joins your party after a certain point in the story, and she's the main thief in the game. You can get trainign to become a thief, and she can help you spec into being a thief if you change class. (She is EXTREMELY tsundere.)

Fall-From-Grace: Again, its actually pretty easy to recruit her, and is almost story mandated; she is in fact the game's primary healer. Eventually you will go to her Brothel of Slaking INtellectual Lusts (a combination of a woman's educational college of sorts, and a debate club that invites people to different kinds of intellectual discourse; FFG has a strange sense of humor). You can recruit her, i think, fairly easily by engaging her in social discourse and doing a side quest; if you have high INT and WIS, though, you can recruit her on the spot.

Nordam: He's actually pretty easy to miss. You have to buy a specific item from a dealer in strange curios in Sigil (in roughly the same area where you can meet FFG); a modron cube, which you can play with like an action figure to annoy Morte, but you can also use it to open a portal to what is essentially a parody of dungeon delving. Torment is unique in otherwise not having much of that kind of gameplay, and it was created by modrons (mechanical spirit creatures from the plane of Order, Mechanacus) to understand adventuring. Eventually you should gain the option to make it more difficult and Nordom is hanging out in a room in the Hard difficulty; its a pretty dangerous area and can take a LONG time to navigate, so be cautious! Nordom's a weird robot guy but is also shaped like a friend. "I think, therefore I am," he says. "...I THINK."

These guys are the assumed default party; the ones most conducive to a Good playthrough, and generally assumed ot be the canon party. There are also two other party members, but you would have to choose not to take oneo f the above to bring them with you:

Ignus: The sMouldering Corpse bar has a perpetually burning body within it, seemingly delighted at its own constant agony. This is Ignus, whom you might have heard as the guy who killed an entire district in Sigil, burning everyone in it alive just to see it burn. If you find a certain item in the catacombs beneath Sigil, during a story-mandated exploration, you can use it on him to wake him up, and you can choose to recruit him. Note that while he isn't evil (and is explicitly of the Chaotic neutral 'force of nature, incapable of understanding the harm he's doing') he is still most approprirate towards an evil playthrough, and he's very unpredictable and prone to lashing out when upset.

Vhailor: Oh man, this guy. You can find him during the latter part of the game, nearly towards the end, imprisoned in a prison beneath a city called Curst. It's actually impossible to miss him, i think; he's a big spiky suit of armor and you HAVE to walk by him to progress. He is a living suit of armor, previosuly the most fanatical Mercykiller in existence, and remains so commited towards the ideal of Justice that it empowers him, even in death, and he's not actually aware that he IS dead. He is able to see the crimes of others, and gain the power to punish it, and gets along poorly with you and your party members. If you're unable to pick the right dialogue options, he may attempt to kill you. As a rule, he's Lawful Neutral, NOT Good. His sect is dedicated to the idea of murdering the concept of mercy and compassion, and he is dangerously obsessive and strict even by their standards. He is cruel, heartless and without remorse, and gets along VERY poorly with Fall-From-Grace, whom he calls 'Mercy's whore'. (For her part, she's adept enough in philosophy to essentially back him into a corner and force him to concede that point.) Its not hard to say that he and Ignus are mutually opposed to one another. I've never seen what happens if they meet, but its probably not pretty.

On the other hand, he's ALSO so ludicrously strong he can solo the final boss entirely on his own. And he's voiced by Keith David.

Generally speaking, my advice is to not recruit Ignus or Vhailor; you CAN talk to them without recruiting them, i think. Alternatively, if you can't find Nordam, pick one of these guys as your final party member, though Nordam is ultimately the best choice. If not in terms of combat ability, at least in character. He's a sweet, confused robot cube who talks to his crossbows. Better that than an omnicidal pyromaniac or a guy who is a living embodiment of how NOT to do a Justice.

[enddaysengine]

Planer Cosmology and the Power of Perspective (Planescape)

I'm going to start this with a stupidly obvious statement. My version of Planescape has incorporated Golarion into it. Different people feel different ways about this idea and the idea I'm about to get into is not right for every campaign, nor is it right for every table.  If you're not a fan, I won't be offended.

Here's the rub that I face when I add Golarion to Planescape...  the cosmology of their planes is completely different. The  Great Beyond and the Great Wheel containing some very basic similarities, but they're are also very distinct from each other.

Let's go back even further, to the very first tabletop RPG  book I bought (well... my parents bought after I nagged them).  It was 3.5's Deities & Demigods.  Not everyone's favourite, for sure, but I have a soft spot for it to this day.  One of the neat things that Deities & Demigods did is that it included a lot of information about the Great Wheel,  but it also included a lot of information about alternative cosmologies.  In addition to featuring the core pantheon, which at the time was from Greyhawk,  it featured the Norse pantheon, the Greek pantheon and the Kemetic (Egyptian) pantheon.  For each of these, they provided a map and basic description of the cosmology that went with that pantheon. For the record, I adore maps.  Looking at each of those three cosmology maps gave me tons of ideas for stories that I could tell.

One more digression, and that I'll have set everything up to get to my point. Aethera came out last week and knocked my socks off. The Aethera solar system has a unique cosmology in two regards. First, the entire solar system is cut off from the Outer Planes. Second, it possesses an extra Inner Plane, the Elemental Plane of Wood. Now, the Elemental Plane of Wood has shown up before, as an optional plane in the 3.5 Manual of the Planes. That got me thinking, why do there have to be only four elemental planes? Wouldn't Planescape benefit from being more flexible if it includes the Chinese Wu Xing elements? The Wu Xing, or Five Agents, are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water for the record. Of course it would.  If for no other reason than that it would be less culturally hegemonic. The four elements of the inner planes correspond with the four elements that Aristotle identified. Basing your entire knowledge around them is a distinctly Western point of view.  

Perspective is the solution to all these problems. It is firmly established in Planescape that belief shapes reality. When we look at the Great Wheel cosmology, that description of the planes carries with it a particular bias. Specifically, that bias originates with the Great Modron March and likely comes down to use via the Fraternity of Order. The Great Wheel Cosmology roughly follows the path of the Modrons, with the Outlands acting as the central hub. Furthermore, this cosmology biases Sigil by placing the Spire at the centre of the Outlands. Now, we know this is intentional on the part of the writers since Sigil is an important location and because Sigilites place such an importance on their city, but remember the three rules of the planes. The Rule of Three. The Unity of Rings. The Centre of All. No matter where you are on the planes, you are at the centre of existence. Placing Sigil at the heart of the map is arbitrary, at least as arbitrary as placing Hopeless or Tir na Og at the centre would have been. Hells, you could put Dis at the core of a planar map, and it would be just as accurate (and don't think Dispater doesn't)!

So what's the point? We can deconstruct the rules and categories of planes and nothing about the Planescape setting will break. The Great Wheel has four Elemental Planes that are infinite yet bleed into each other to form a ring. Golarion has four Elemental Planes that are nested inside of each other with relatively discrete boundaries. Aethera has five Elemental Planes, featuring one that is unknown to the other settings. A prime setting that draws heavily on Chinese mythology and philosophy has a different set of five, four in common with Aethera, three with Golarion and the Great Wheel, and the Elemental Plane of Metal, which is unique to its cosmology. All of these settings can coexist in Planescape. Even if they appear to be contradictory, they aren't. The Clueless aren't clueless because they don't know anything, it's that mortals have such a hard time reconciling the complexities of the universe.

People like to categorize and stick things in cute little conceptual boxes. Every year, I have an hour long discussion with my students about how we say there are "ionic" bond and "covalent" bonds in chemistry, but in reality, those two categories aren't separate, they are a continuum. Chemical bonds will have a variety of properties, some ionic, some covalent, based off of the differences in electronegativities between atoms and the two specific chemicals involved with the bonds. It takes them time for this idea to sink into their brains. Planescape likes its boxes for planes as well. Inner, Outer, Transitive, and Prime. Anything that doesn't fit into those boxes either gets labelled as a demiplane (like the plane of dreams or time) or as a planer pathway (like Mount Olympus).

Is that fair though? How are these planes less of a plane than those four main categories. Going all the way back to my Deities & Demigods days, I think that there is a strong argument that Mount Olympus should be a proper plane of its own.  Mount Olympus overlaps with parts of what the Fraternity of Order calls the Prime, Elysium, Arborea, The Grey Wastes, Carceri, but that part of the plane exists in none of those places. If you asked a Divination spell where you could find Zeus' Domain, it could give the answer of either Arborea or Olympus, depending on the diviner's point of view, and both would be true. It is important to note that this doesn't mean that Mount Olympus or the Great Beyond cosmology is "just" a subsection of the Great Wheel.  Rather, all three cosmologies are accurate and correct,  focusing on the aspects of the planes that are relevant to the worldview of the people who created those particular maps.  Creating a 100% accurate and inclusive map of the planes is likely impossible. The multidimensional geometry of planar cosmology is too complicated. We can only look at it from certain points of view, and there is much to be gained by changing  our perspective to look at the universe in a different way.

What is to be gained through this exercise? A big benefit to storytellers would be flexibility. This allows for many different types of worlds to be incorporated into a Planescape campaign, offering the diversity that is a hallmark of the setting. Creativity could be another benefit. New stories could easily spring forth simply by looking at an alternate configuration of the planes. Even if they don't, they could provide a unique personality for a particular NPC whose worldview is different from that of the PCs. Imagine an archon becoming convinced that the PCs are clueless rubes because they think there are four elemental planes,  and how could you have air be an element when metal and wood aren't. That is memorable!  The last benefit is sensitivity. Despite it being fuel for flame wars, I like to be able to include contemporary religions as an option in Planescape,  but forcing them to conform to the Great Wheel strips intricacy and nuance away from the philosophies and metaphysics that act as the root for those religions.  Metaphysical maps are often extremely important to the esoteric and mystical aspects of any given faith. If you do not allow the faith's cosmology to exist, you erase the richness of that culture. Furthermore, it appropriates culture,  and there is a certain arrogance to disregarding a religion's internal cosmology and declaring that "this is the way it really is in my world!" It is humbler by far to have both metaphysical configurations be true simultaneously.  Even if they appear to be mutually exclusive,  you are dealing with the Planes. If you can't believe six impossible things before breakfast, you just aren't going to cut it.

[nerdarchy-blog]

It goes without saying, if you are going to have a channel called Nerdarchy part of that is going to be okay with being called a nerd. My longstanding character Rellion of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons is kind of a nerd. His expertise, which he has three of, are History, Arcana and Investigation. Apart from being a book nerd he is also a D&D linguist. Sadly it never seems to work out for him as the Dungeon Master always is one step ahead of me. But looking into the languages for D&D it is really hard to get them all.

Learning all the D&D languages in neither a quick nor easy task for the budding D&D linguist.

Languages for D&D

First thing I am going to do is list the languages, where they are referenced and then afterward we can talk about how to use them.

Firstly are your standard languages. These are the languages for D&D that are going to be common around the player character races as well as the easiest to learn should you desire to do so: Common, Dwarvish, Elvish, Giant, Gnomish, Goblin, Halfling, and Orc.

Not listed in the language section but in the classes there are two secret languages that take some work to get if you are not in the right class. These are Thieves Cant and Druidic. These secret languages are fun and can be useful in establishing credibility in certain situations or getting into certain areas you might not be able to normally.

Next up are the exotic languages and you get just as many as the common: Abyssal, Celestial, Draconic, Deep Speech, Infernal, Primordial, Sylvan, and Undercommon. Most of these are either planar or special. Undercommon is spoken almost exclusively below the surface and Sylvan is spoken in the wilds and the Feywild.

So the easy part of my research was done. I only explored one book and already I was at 20 languages. Almost half a dozen over the 16 that Rellion has learned so far. Looks like he has a long way to go.

So intrepid adventures, what was next, I dove into the Monster Manual. I knew there had to be more monsters that spoke their own language. I was blown away by what I had found — it was a lot. There were 15 new options I think most player characters would not even consider: Aaracokra, Bullywug, Gith, Gnoll, Grell, Hook Horror, Modron, Otyugh, Sahaugin, Slaad, Sphinx, Thri-kreen, Troglodyte, Umber Hulk, and Yeti.  Some of these make a lot of sense to me and some I would as a DM say might be impossible for a normal humanoid to be able to properly speak. Understand, sure, but not speak. Things like Umber Hulk and Hook Horror would have too much clacking for a human mouth.

For the true D&D linguist

Now the research gets harder and the results fewer. For the remainder of this, currently all-inclusive list up to the point of Mordenkeinan’s Tome of Foes, this was what I was able to find. Some of these other languages would appear in multiple locations but I did not go in release order just whatever was within reach as I finished one book and went on to the next.

In the Unearthed Arcana – Centaurs and Minotaurs

Minotaur is a new language. Not sure we can count that as they get Abyssal in the Monster Manual.

More monster languages

Ice Toad – Tales from the Yawning Portal, Rise of Tiamat

Grung – Volo’s Guide to Monsters

Vegepygmy – Volo’s Guide to Monsters

Ixitxachitl – Out of the Abyss – I can’t pronounce the creature let alone speak their native tongue.

We also get a small handful of cultural options

Thayan – Tales from the Yawning Portal,

Olman – Tales from the Yawning Portal,

Primal – Tales from the Yawning Portal,

Netherese – Hoard of the Dragon Queen

If you count all of them and think that one character could learn them all that totals to 45. WOW!! I would not have guessed that. But now I see that my goal of learning them all is impossible. Oh well. Have fun with it anyway. So what does a player who has interest do? You are left with two simple options. If you go warlock, the Eyes of the Rune Keeper Eldritch Invocation allows you to read any writing regardless of language. Simple — 2nd level warlock where you get your first Eldritch Invocation you take this and you are good.

Another brilliant option is taking the feat Ritual Caster. You can take other useful spells with this but the most important is comprehend languages. So you have to have Intelligence 13 and choose wizard to make this work. But let’s face it, if you are considering going down this path you are probably making an intelligent character. The spell lets you read any writing you touch and understand any language you hear.

Neither of these options are perfect, because they do not allow you to talk back. For that you need the 3rd level spell tongues.

How to comprehend languages for D&D

Now that you have digested all of that stuff, how can you use languages properly in your game. If you have not done it personally, you probably know someone who has played the game without knowing Common and you have to figure out how to communicate. It is a challenge and it can be fun but it gets tedious after a while so be careful with it. But if you do it, it can be a blast for a session as the players at the table sign, write, draw, and make a fool of themselves trying to communicate with each other and NPCs.

Outside of this languages represent something to the people to speak it. All it takes is to do some travel and see how people treat you when you speak their native language or not. You can have valuable information able to be found out because the captors thought you did not now their language when this whole time you have been listening to them insulting you and planning what you were going to do as happened in Game of Thrones.

You can have cultural languages in your world. You might call Common the Trade Tongue or something to that extent. This would be a way for the humans of your world to be different and make their cultures stand apart. Then when you travel across the world and the player characters do not know what the natives are speaking they are met with challenges, or you get to reward the player who took that language for their character and highlight that choice.

There are so many ways to make what is a small section of this wondrous game special and unique. You could have a area with a puzzle that if a certain language is known they get a clue. You could have a book that can only be read if you truly know the language — magic does not work and they would have to spend time, energy, and gold to learn the language just to read the book.

I am sure I could go on for a while on this one but I think I have rambled enough.  How do you use languages for D&D in your game?

Until next time, stay nerdy!

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Curious what the proper greeting is in Ice Toad? Looking to banter in Hook Horror? #DnD linguists have a lot to learn to comprehend all the languages! It goes without saying, if you are going to have a channel called Nerdarchy part of that is going to be okay with being called a nerd.