DM's Workshop: The Half-Sidhe

Taking another whack at a relatively new race, here is a 5th Edition-ization of the half-sidhe.

DM's Workshop: The Soulbound Construct, 5e style

Last week, Wizbro released a sneak peek at the pages for creating races and sub races for the 5th edition of the game.

So, working off Keith Baker's first-pass at the Warforged, I've taken a stab at 5th-editioning the Progeny.

Magitech of Blackmoor: Beacon Stones

Beacon Stones

A beacon stone is an ovoid-cut blue dragonstone, specially attuned to the Keysong siren of a Blackmoor military base or facility. Normally, they merely function as maintenance and service Specialty AIs, coordinating service of hardware and upkeep of a facility and its compliment of vehicles, as well as the garrisoned flights shrikes and choirs of sirens.

From the Time Beyond Years

“Look upon it, child!”

Hands that had wiped tears from my eyes now tightly gripped my own, tearing them away. I squeezed my eyes even more tightly shut.

“Look!”

In draft: Musings on the Nature and Relationship of Beings Aetheric and Fey

Being composed entirely of Thought, in stepping through the Aetheric boundary, SHADEs expose themselves the other Spheres of Power. Without a body of Matter, they are vulnerable to the ravages of Energy, which seeks to disperse their essence. Time limits the duration of their visit to the Prime, as well as imposing severe burdens on their ability to re-form in the event of an Aethershadows’ dispersal.

Before she found the link between difference engine luxography and its occular-harmonic effect on Aetherforms in the Prime Material, Rowena experimented with the reflective properties of various substances as either doorways or shelters.....

From the Play by Post: Act 2, Scene 3 opens...

The Prologue: 300 Years Past: Hyborean Rim, UIC Forward Offensive Encampment, Spring, UC 1688

“That was no route, it was a regrouping. I told her! I told her not to pursue them!”

Parchment, quills, and thin panes of readingglass flew about the mobile CIC. Ink spattered walls, console portals, and command staff alike. Those who’d served with the Silver Lady knew enough to take cover beneath tables and paperwork.

Thorn's Blackmoor: Filling Gaps

Five years. It doesn’t seem like a very long time, but in the case of a prolonged and ongoing writing project, it seems… endless. Thorn’s Chronicle has only spanned a matter of months. The adventures of the Handmaidens, not even a week. (Well, two thousand years and a week.) Likewise, the action of the first two acts of the Throne of Stars campaign.

Crystal Chronicle: An Inkling

“Fine. Keep it,” I sniffed. “It’s wrong, anyway.”

Lea dropped the book, almost as quickly as she’d snatched it away. It was difficult to tell if the puff of dust that rose between us came from the book or the carpet.

Her sniff of disdain was interrupted by a sneeze.

From Rowena's Crystal Chronicle: The First Glimmers of Reflection

Editor's Note: It is no small task, reconciling four thousand years of memories and dreams; of sorting through those dreams, to pick out which were genuine and which were shadow experiences of the Progeny. Battles, demons, and deaths -- thousands-- no, hundreds of thousands of them. How she could bear the pressure of them, I do not know. I had the luxury of spinning those memories forward, of glancing away, setting aside my work transcribing to wander the grove. There are stretches of weeks before I could go back to the work. But she has entrusted me with this task, the one last thing she wished for. How could I possibly refuse her, who had given up everything, except hope?

In the works: Design Diary: The Echo and the Reflection

A couple busy work weeks atop deadlines for the inaugural issue of Threshold have put the breaks on several writing projects.

Certain revelations in the play by post over at the Comeback Inn have made certain characters' pasts a little more clear. I suppose now I have to nail down even more back story for two NPCs, the Empress of Pop, Aimeel, and Blackmoor University's Chief Archivist, the S.H.A.D.E. dubbed "Ivy."

Be on the lookout, for some thoughts on the origins and original plot purposes behind Rowena's Echo and Reflection.....

Nova, the Twilight Maiden

The Shadowmaiden. 
The Twilight Lady. 

Rowena was not alone, in the creation of a reflection based on a misunderstanding of the Travelers' technology. But whereas her First Shard's fusion with a SHADE created the entity known as "Ivy," Leansethar's First Shard was touched with that twins' affinity for Matter, rather than Thought.

The being known as "Nova" would not attain a physical manifestation until the activation of Andahar's Engine. While every other living being in the Kingdom was burned beyond ashes, their spirits trapped across the Fusion Boundary in Andahar Onyx, that catastrophe was the key that freed Nova.

From the PbP: Kingsman

image source:http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/97666971#/d1j4xyl

Kingsman is the Blackmoor equivalent to chess, or go. The board consists of a twenty-five square by twenty-five square grid checked off in two different alternating colors. Each side has a fifty-piece “army,” with each piece or pair of pieces having its own movement and attack patterns. The game ends when either all the pieces are captured (called a rout), or when one army outmaneuvers the other, either leaving only openings that would mean the pieces are captured (being in check), or outright blocking all the available moves (being check-mated). Capturing the Kingsman’s piece is automatic victory (called a (capital-C) Capture), is the shortest way to win, but is also the most difficult of victories to obtain.

Noblemen of the Thonian Empire would frequently make wagers, with each having to give up gold, or lands, or slaves with the capture of pieces from the board. In more than one occasion, marriages were determined by victories. It is said that Leansethar's terms of marriage were that her suitor had to defeat Rowena at Kingsman by all victory methods (route, check, check-mate, capture) in four consecutive games.

The only known instance of any victory against Rowena was by the Great Svenny, who won by Capture in an otherwise rout-oriented game in 1020 UC. The match took seven months to complete, and Svenny had only three pieces left in play. 

Rowena subsequently challenged him to an alternate version of the game, played on a hex grid, with her single Kingsman surrounded by 150 pieces of Svenny's choosing. That game took three years to play out, and Uther's daughter won by rout. Unfortunately, there is no record of the moves used. It took the bank of fifty difference engines working in tandem twelve years to come up with but a single iteration, in the Last Days.

Needless to say, Leansethar never took a husband.

Nuwmont 6, 998 AC: Sisters

Aurora sighed, and rose, the ceremonial knife at the ready. But Silva sang out the sealing note again, and the orc’s jaws dropped slack.

Gilliam drew his foot back to take another kick at the thing.

Reblog: Thonia, Blackmoor, and the Fey: Fairwind's Attraction

Originally posted 29 January, 2011

Not all of Uther’s time was spent crusading from one end of the Kindgom to another. One of those well-known secrets was that he enjoyed mingling with his people, often times rubbing elbows at one tavern or another in Blackmoor Town.

Reblog: Thonia, Blackmoor, and the Fey: Chasing the Fallen Star

“A sound like all the giants of the North raising their voices in a mighty roar, joined by the dragons: not even this could describe the sound of the falling star as it streaked across the sky. The night was lit as if it were day, and when the star met the horizon to the south, the earth quaked down to its very bones...”

Reblog: Thonia, Blackmoor and the Fey: The Heiresses

“We were not delicate songbirds, to be kept caged and sheltered by the Seneschal. More often than not, it was one of the King’s Companions or the Fetch himself that wound up fishing one or the other of us from the center of one mess or another. I, at least, did not have to be plucked from the moat.”

--- Rowena, Firstborn Heiress of Blackmoor

Crunch: Magic: Tenser's Transformation

Named for the battle mage who first unleashed the spell in the Second Afridhi War:

Tenser’s Transformation

CL/Dr 6, MU 7

Range: 10’ per level

Duration: Special (see below)

Area of Effect: One or more Daughters of Uther (see below)