D&D General D&D: Literally Don't Understand This

From Tales of the Radiant Citadel:

Divas attack the crowd at the Thornapple during their March of Vice performance.

Kala has been lurking near the Thornapple, looking for opportunities to strike at Zenia. She found her opportunity with Diva Luma, tainting the diva’s glitter—a feature of the diva’s performances—with rage-inducing biza’s breath.

Diva Luma uses the assassin stat block, but her only weapon is her wicked, high-heeled shoe, which functions as a Shortsword attack without poison. The other two divas use the scout stat block and attack only with broken bottles that function the same as their Shortsword attack. As the divas are all under the effects of biza’s breath, they each randomly make one melee attack against Zenia or a character on their turns. All three divas fail their saving throws to resist the poison affecting them for three rounds. On the fourth round, they overcome the effects of biza’s breath and groggily stop attacking.

Sounds like (somewhat) typical D&D shenanigans to me.
 

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It's the high-heeled shoe that turns me off. This and the TNT plunger detonators, the museum cafes, the heat metal hot plates. Things are so modern in D&D that I think we could add stoplights, payphones, and garbage trucks to Waterdeep and very few people would make note of it.

Maybe it's just the just the evolution of dungeonpunk. Maybe it's dungeonpop.
 

It's the high-heeled shoe that turns me off. This and the TNT plunger detonators, the museum cafes, the heat metal hot plates. Things are so modern in D&D that I think we could add stoplights, payphones, and garbage trucks to Waterdeep and very few people would make note of it.

Maybe it's just the just the evolution of dungeonpunk. Maybe it's dungeonpop.
This was my complaint about some of the art in the Radiant Citadel book when it first came out. I know it's meant to be all non-Western European cultural stuff, but even then, it just all feels too "modern" - like it would belong more in a d20 Modern sourcebook rather than a D&D one.
 

It's the high-heeled shoe that turns me off.... Things are so modern in D&D....

I hate to tell you this, but the modern high-heeled shoe has its origins in 10th century Persian equestrian footwear. Elevated shoes of various sorts have been around since the European Dark Ages.

Oh, and by the time of Henry VIII, high heels were worn primarily by men, for fashion, and taken as a symbol of masculinity.
 
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