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306 years after Edammera’s Folly and 4810 years ago (overall culture equivalent: 2186 years ago / elfin culture equivalent: 687 years ago), the Umbral Court migrates shadow giants from Mitheeriak on the the Shadow Plane into the Ombrefell to live in Nidal. This was only 92 years before Aroden...

I published some more about a backwards House of Nature on my blog. While the previous installment covered Silvanus's bloodline and the entourages that are involved therewith, this one covers some of the other greater gods (Chauntea, Lathander, Ubtao) as well as a few assorted other gods who...

A thread from RPGnet got me thinking about what a Flipped Faerun would look like ~ a Faerun in which the gods had directly opposite alignments from standard Faerun (CG=>LE, LN=>CN, etc.) So I started by writing a little bit about the House of Nature, home to two of my favorite gods ~ Lurue and...

One thing I neglected to mention in my last post is how disappointed I am that the book never explores the possibilities inherent in Kuthite Nidalese dwarfs or orcs or giants coming from the Mindspin Mountains. I imagine that anyone with the ability to drink so deep from the well of pain before...

The section on the resistance begins with the line, “The Umbral Court does not cow everyone in Nidal.” Frankly, I don’t much imagine they need to ~ they’ve ruled in an unbroken reign for 10,00 years (culturally speaking, again, about 5000 years, the length of Earth’s written history). My...

Here's the list of divine entities I see as being allowed worship within Nidal. It's longer than my usual posts (I try to keep under 1000 words usually, but this is more like 2500), but I do hope you'll power through anyway and let me know what you think? ** Wandering Nidal are a variety of...

I like that the book notes that the lack of showy displays of self-mortification in rural villages isn’t due to a lack of belief or even of faith, but a simple consequence of the relative poverty of village life. Without the money or magics to perform or survive the big shows of pain, the folk...

I forgot to mention in my last post that the seeming structure of Nidalese government has probably created something of a blend between the ancient Roman system of patronage and some areas of Europe under the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This is significant because it can...

The book does a lovely job of quickly reminding us that the Nidalese people cannot be reduced simply to their religion. They are people, with goals and interests and needs beyond the demanding cruelties of the Midnight Lord. In addition to his priests, the Nidalese count architects, farmers...

After the caligni and the kayal, the last of the races singled out for attention barely counts, in my mind. After all, as far as I know, there’s never been a racial write-up for the velstracs. Especially since there are so many different types with such different statblocks. Here's a list of...

Yet another group of Azlanti survivors, yet another mysterious Shadow-Plane patron. Fetchlings, presumably, lived in the homeland rather than some farflung, backwoods outpost like Calignos. A little later to realize what was going on than those mountain-dwelling traders, the ancestors of the...

Way back in the long-ago time of the Age of Destiny, Azlant maintained a trading outpost in the Mindspin Mountains, no doubt in the region that separates modern Nidal from Molthune or Nirmathas. It was called Calignos, and its seers managed to predict Earthfall, literally a day before the...

Mykos Roarik (male vampire fighter 10) is the member of the Umbral Court who wanders the farthest. What race was Mykos before his Embrace? Presumably human, but why not state it? Deceptively gentle-mannered, he’s the leader of the Adamant Company, a subset of the state army (appropriately...

Next we get a sidebar with yet another pet peeve of mine >.< A description of three powerful, ancient, and mysterious beings (the Black Triune, the three horselords who made that deal with Zon-Kuthon that recreated Nidal in his image) . . . who “hold themselves remote from its day-to-day...

The god of humanity died 113 years ago (the equivalent of about 51 years ago in terms of cultural/historical processing by the multiracial society as a whole, or of about 16 years ago to the long-lived elfs ~ yes, it is very possible that your 1st-level elf PC was born before Aroden’s death)...

Evidently, the Kellid ancestors of the Nidalese were tan-skinned and dark-haired. I’ve been thinking of them as essentially Celtic (though, of course, Golarion and fantasy role-playing generally speaking seems to lack any equivalent of, say, Epona, goddess of horses) but this description, which...

Sorry to have disappeared for a few days ~ my mental health needed a spot of attending to for a bit >.< That video is, in fact, excellent! Thank you for pointing me at it! **** Now we finally get into the beginning of the meat of the book (what can I say? I’m a bit of a completionist!)...

Let’s Reads rarely have much to say about tables of contents, and I doubt this one will really buck that trend. The credits list no names I recognize as involved in this particular book, and I’ve already mentioned the two names I found most aesthetically interesting (Liane Merciel and Kiki Moch...

The next page is a rather pretty map of Nidal. Sadly, I can’t seem to find a picture of it easily on the Internet ~ everything that comes up is either not Nidal or ugly. One of my favorite things about this map is that they draw images of the common animals on it, presumably in the same...

I've long enjoyed many of the Let's Reads on this site and wanted to write one of my own, so here I go! I've been catching up on Geek and Sundry shows by means of their YouTube channel, and have just gotten to the part where they head on over to the shadow-hugged land of Nidal, which is one of...