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LFP [Paid] The War of the Burning Sky -- Full campaign, novice to experienced players welcome
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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 9164390" data-attributes="member: 63"><p>Hi, I wrote the campaign. I'll try to answer without providing any real spoilers.</p><p></p><p>The word trillith has an in-universe origin (meaning something like 'related to Trilla,' with Trilla being a name), but like so many things in RPGs, the real-world origin is weird.</p><p></p><p>In 2001 or so, EN World moderator Piratecat was writing up accounts of his home game. <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/piratecats-updated-story-hour-update-4-03-and-4-06.779/" target="_blank">https://www.enworld.org/threads/piratecats-updated-story-hour-update-4-03-and-4-06.779/</a></p><p></p><p>That thread starts in 2002, because there was a database wipe of EN World in 2001, and we lost a lot of old content. But in one of his posts, he had a hybrid troll-illithid (trolls as in the regenerating D&D monster, illithids being another name for "mind flayer," an iconic D&D psychic monster), for which he used the portmanteau "trillith". </p><p></p><p>The monster was not especially pivotal to his game, but I was enjoying reading about his game, and around the same time I was planning for a game of my own, and I was going to have a psychic monster. So I used the term trillith too, on a bit of a whim. Mine wasn't troll-like at all, but I rather favored the '-lith' ending, which sounds vaguely Biblical to me, like the name Lilith.</p><p></p><p>I was using my own setting for my game, I ended up using it for a few different campaigns, during which time I needed to take the 'named on a whim' trillith and give them some backstory. The character Trilla was created after I first introduced a trillith in my game. One of the campaigns I ran in that world basically had the plot of War of the Burning Sky, and when in 2006 EN Publishing decided to put out an adventure path, I adapted that series of my own home games.</p><p></p><p>A few other notes: </p><p></p><p>A lot of the trillith in the series have names of concepts, like Balance or Agony. I think I got that idea from some Magic cards that were just coming out then, the 'incarnations' from the set Judgement, which were named things like Wonder, Brawn, or Anger: <a href="https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Incarnation" target="_blank">Incarnation</a> . They were basically creatures that gave your other creatures powers once they were dead.</p><p></p><p>Piratecat's game took place in a setting he created, with the city of Eversink, which now is featured in a game he published, called Swords of the Serpentine: <a href="https://pelgranepress.com/product/swords-of-the-serpentine/" target="_blank">Swords of the Serpentine</a></p><p></p><p>I live in Atlanta, and there's actually a film production studio called Trilith here (which is used by Disney to film Marvel movies, among other things). But the name has nothing to do with WotBS's trillith. I think the studio name basically just means "three stones" - a trilithon is a structure with one flat stone supported by two vertical ones, like at Stonehenge.</p><p></p><p>TL;DR - feel free to translate it phoenetically, or perhaps do something akin to "children of Trilla." I only know a handful of phrases in Mandarin, so I can't help. Good luck, and thanks for the interest in the adventures!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 9164390, member: 63"] Hi, I wrote the campaign. I'll try to answer without providing any real spoilers. The word trillith has an in-universe origin (meaning something like 'related to Trilla,' with Trilla being a name), but like so many things in RPGs, the real-world origin is weird. In 2001 or so, EN World moderator Piratecat was writing up accounts of his home game. [URL]https://www.enworld.org/threads/piratecats-updated-story-hour-update-4-03-and-4-06.779/[/URL] That thread starts in 2002, because there was a database wipe of EN World in 2001, and we lost a lot of old content. But in one of his posts, he had a hybrid troll-illithid (trolls as in the regenerating D&D monster, illithids being another name for "mind flayer," an iconic D&D psychic monster), for which he used the portmanteau "trillith". The monster was not especially pivotal to his game, but I was enjoying reading about his game, and around the same time I was planning for a game of my own, and I was going to have a psychic monster. So I used the term trillith too, on a bit of a whim. Mine wasn't troll-like at all, but I rather favored the '-lith' ending, which sounds vaguely Biblical to me, like the name Lilith. I was using my own setting for my game, I ended up using it for a few different campaigns, during which time I needed to take the 'named on a whim' trillith and give them some backstory. The character Trilla was created after I first introduced a trillith in my game. One of the campaigns I ran in that world basically had the plot of War of the Burning Sky, and when in 2006 EN Publishing decided to put out an adventure path, I adapted that series of my own home games. A few other notes: A lot of the trillith in the series have names of concepts, like Balance or Agony. I think I got that idea from some Magic cards that were just coming out then, the 'incarnations' from the set Judgement, which were named things like Wonder, Brawn, or Anger: [URL="https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Incarnation"]Incarnation[/URL] . They were basically creatures that gave your other creatures powers once they were dead. Piratecat's game took place in a setting he created, with the city of Eversink, which now is featured in a game he published, called Swords of the Serpentine: [URL="https://pelgranepress.com/product/swords-of-the-serpentine/"]Swords of the Serpentine[/URL] I live in Atlanta, and there's actually a film production studio called Trilith here (which is used by Disney to film Marvel movies, among other things). But the name has nothing to do with WotBS's trillith. I think the studio name basically just means "three stones" - a trilithon is a structure with one flat stone supported by two vertical ones, like at Stonehenge. TL;DR - feel free to translate it phoenetically, or perhaps do something akin to "children of Trilla." I only know a handful of phrases in Mandarin, so I can't help. Good luck, and thanks for the interest in the adventures! [/QUOTE]
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