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Category: Creations

This is category for stories and art I make.

Setting Project: The world of Ballad

So, I have had a stressful life of late. I distracted myself by coming up with a new campaign world. Some people drink, I apparently come up with fictional worlds. 

Ballad is a high fantasy setting. It is leaning into a lot of mysterious magic rather than the notion of magic like technology that you find in Eberron or Ravnica for instance. I also started with the premise that humans were rare. The assumption in most settings is that humans are the “us” stand-in and not innately magical. They are the neutral default and all other races are alterations on the human base. This is problematic and should be discussed, but I will save that for a different post.

I started thinking about a world where that was not the case. Where all the sentient races were actually magical and the humans were the distrusted rare species. Sort of like how Tieflings and Drow are presented in several other settings.

Once I had that decided, I chose to go ahead and write some world rules. This would help me come up with a vision of what the world would look like. I had a vague notion but I need to define the edges of it.   

The Kingdom of Durnam

This post is an experiment. I will do a second part soon. My favorite gaming supplements over the decades have been the ones with an in character commentary. This is my attempt at that sort of thing. Here is a travelogue style bit from a scholar traveling through the Kingdom of Durnam. I have included a random encounter table at the bottom, and some other game information. I also made sure there are some story hooks in there.

This is set in the post-apocalyptic setting I have written about in the past. It is hundreds of years after the giant Space Gods came and reeked enormous havoc on the world. The Hollow Mountain Library, found in what is now Cheyenne Mountain sent our narrator out to survey distant lands and see to the state of the world now that civilizations begin to reform out of barbarism.

Fiction: Vasilisa the Beautiful and Baba Yaga’s Light

This is a short tale I wrote as a writing  project a while back. It is a retelling of an old Russian folk tale. It is interesting to take and old story and reframe it. I did some further polishing before posting it.  I hope people like it.

 

 

Come closer, says I.  It is time to tell the story of Vasilisa, the Beautiful, and of her terrible light.  It is time to tell of her journey and troubles, of the old crone, Baba Yaga.  I will not bite, my children.  Not yet, at least. This is time for a story.  There is time enough for you to land in the cook pot later, yes.

Yet another take on Kalashtar for 5th edition

I recently offered to run the alternate, off-week, D&D game for the group I play with on Tuesdays. I would be the fill in guy for weeks when the normal DM did not want to run. My offer was generally greeted with some enthusiasm. The normal DM and another player expressed a desire for Eberron. Now, I love me some Eberron.  I could wax rhapsodic about it for days.  It is a setting with a wider range of setting conventions than are found in Forgotten Realm. And then there is Sharn: City of Towers.

That said there are some issues with running it in 5th edition,  at the moment. Some things just haven’t been written yet. They only now released The Mystic (see also Psionics) and the Artificer. They do have some race stats for some of the races, like the Warforged, on the Wizards of the Coast site. Others have not been done. Also Dragonmarks have been accounted for, but I feel like they need some clarification. I will tackle those another time, but the race I was asked for was Kalashtar. There are some fan versions out there, but nothing definitive. I figured I would take a pass at it.

A Guild Tale

“I need your help,” the voice called to Kenet. The place was dark about him, and memory eluded him. Where am I, he thought? He cast around the place, looking for something to tell him where he was. Dim fog filled the air, and shadows stretched across towards him.

 

The figure stepped from shadow. It was Ele, her slight form cloaked in little more than shadow. She looked at him with sad, loving eyes. Her broken and blood-splattered hand reached for him. The deep cut in her throat made a sickening movement and spilled blood with her every breath. Her lips moved as if to tell him something, but Kenet only heard the sound of wind.