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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Daztur" data-source="post: 6103468" data-attributes="member: 55680">A Being of Salt and ChalkHex 09.09 The builders of the Forgotten City-State (22.25) were a cunning race, some even say that they were the race of god-men who lived before elves and orcs were sundered (17.17.05 see “The Beauty of Olga Pignose,” this entry isn’t in most recent compilation but will be in the next) but that is a pack of lies. Their magic was great for their very homes were built from the bodies of sandlings and clay golems served their every need. But their city was dry and spare for they had no soul for beauty so to acquire artists they built a great seawater fountain and drew from it being of salt and chalk (briefly mentioned in 33.04) from the cold realms of the demons down under sea. These elementals of salt and chalk were masters of art and plucked from the peoples of the earth the most beautiful maidens and most handsome youths to adorn their masters’ city, their skin turned to alabaster and their forms molded and refined to bring out beauty that never existed in life. When the old forgotten city-state fell, the beings of salt and chalk crumbled to dust or lurked in brackish pools but the greatest of them broke free after some few centuries of effort. One of these was blowing across the lands that are now the Freeholds, seeking out the ocean it had been severed from so long ago when it caught sight of a human girl more beautiful than any statue. It blew out of a cloud that night and with the voice of the south wind the being of salt and chalk called out to the girl, granted her heart’s desire and won her love. But when her lover came to embrace her it cringed away from her soft damp flesh, her gaping pores and her wet fishy eyes. If only she had the skin of true alabaster and the grace of an elemental, then it could love her. And so the being of salt and chalk took thirteen great lizardman shamans and bound them to the drinkers mouth (04.02) and had them cry out in voices that only children and secret things can hear (see 50.26) for a year and a day until a being of soot and ash emerged from the fire of the earth. There they bargained in elf wings and dinosaur feathers, in dead men’s love and innocent hate, in the hearts of kindly elves the spleen of cowardly orcs until at last a bargain was struck and the being of salt and chalk won a heart of black diamond.This it placed within the chest of its love so that she would live even after it turned her skin to alabaster. And live and sing she still does, but even a black diamond heart cannot turn a human into an elemental and as her limbs turned to stone they stiffened and moved no more (see is now the “haunted” statue of 10.09). The being of salt and chalk stays nearby in a quiet woodland pool from which he occasionally emerges to tear apart beautiful things. Or at least so says the Sparrow Knight, but he has been known to lie (see Sanglorian’s entry above). Hooks:-How much of the story is true? If it is true why has nobody broken the statue open and taken the black diamond heart?-Who were the people of the Forgotten City-State anyway?-There are demons down under the sea?-Who was the girl and how did the elemental win her love?-The voices of lizardmen are too high-pitched for (adult) humans to hear. What does this have to do with them being able to call elementals? I thought elves were the ones who usually summoned them?-What does all this have to do with the art of packmaking (33.04)? General thoughts about elementals: what are elementals in this setting anyway, it seems to have become a convention to refer to them as “being of X and X,” we have Sanglorian’s pactmaking post and old references to elves summoning bunches of them to beat down the Verlimes but not much else. Here’s some elemental ideas: <a href="http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.kr/2013/03/on-ecology-of-elementals.html" target="_blank">http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.kr/2013/03/on-ecology-of-elementals.html</a> What I’m leaning towards is having them be bits of the world that are alive rather than interlopers from another plane but if you have another idea feel free to run with it. Responses to Sanglorian:-1.17 and 2.0 are the same thing, the only difference is that 2.0 has the art moved around a bit to reduce white space. Version 2.01 will be up by the end of the month with this month’s batch of hexes and more art. I can post what I have now if you want, I’m a bit behind but not THAT much (just entered in the Pactmaking post). I’m planning to get cracking on new compilation/gazetteer come April which gives me some time to get caught up on entering stuff into the compilation and do another sweep-through for art (still a lot of stuff from the F**k Yeah Vintage Illustration tumblr that I haven’t entered in yet).-Thring and the Barrier Range would be fine. To do the Barrier Peaks will have to rope in a bunch of Chimalia/Alberon/Tiamat stuff though since the eastern fringe of the Range hits on them.-For the generator I like what you’ve been doing and we might have to raid even more bizarre spells from D&D with PS. I might tweak it a bit, would want to allow people to use their own spell lists to maybe some entries like random spell of 1[SUP]st[/SUP] level etc. Maybe also we could have a random inbreeding table…</blockquote>

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