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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Daztur" data-source="post: 6122539" data-attributes="member: 55680">Sanglorian: The Weaver in the Vault, not one of Smith’s best but very D&D-ish. The reason that I’m moving Smith pretty high in my rankings of most D&D-like fantasy is that he gets the life is cheap “don’t bother naming your PCs before he hits third level” feel on top of the very D&D-ish setting. Also you can trace a lot of D&D-ish elements from Vance back to Smith’s influence (not Vancian casting though). I’m also starting to see why Smith didn’t become as popular as Lovecraft and Howard. He wrote over a hundred short stories from 1925-36 (was supporting his ailing parents who died at about the same times as Lovecraft and Howard did which made Clark stop writing) and a lot of them seem really rushed. When he takes the time he can do creepy vocab-heavy Lovecraftian prose with a lot more technical skill than Lovecraft could (he has a background in more mainstream poetry and it shows) but a lot of the stories just read like he’s not really writing up to his full potential and the narration is pretty flat. Also perhaps a few too many necrophiliac necromancers <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f635.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="O.o" title="Er... what?    O.o"  data-smilie="12"data-shortname="O.o" /> Electric Wizard: meant to get the first gazetteer done this month but it looks like that won’t happen <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> . Will write up at least a skeleton of one vaguely soonish but have too many hex ideas in my head for right now and then I have to add in the new hexes into the compilation (which is time consuming since for each new hex I have to add it to the table of contents, add it to the information at the start of the chapter, add it to the spreadsheet and Appendix A, change the format around a bit to fit, edit it for grammar etc. and then go and chase down all of the connection notations in other hexes and add information to those as word continues to groan under the size of the file). So looks like next month… These two are stolen from my students. The second one is dark in the way that only something written by a smart shy 6[SUP]th[/SUP] grade girl can be. With Not a Soul to HearAdditional information about Hex 02.05 The ruins of Hoth Akbir are soaked by a constant downpour that helps feed rivers that run both west and east. But the water that falls from the cloud is not rain but rather a decanter of endless water that was left behind in the shattered ruins of the castle of one of the pirate kings that lies on a cloud that stays forever unmoving above Hoth Akbir. Hooks:-A decanter of endless water seems like a useful thing to have, why hasn’t anyone taken it? The Font of ChimaliaHex 31.19 Those who sail the Keening Sea stay as far from the White Isle as possible, which can be difficult as it moves. It is holy to Chimalia, the goddess of all chimerical beings, and the very foundations of the island are the bones of ten thousand ten thousand aberrations and monsters, some ground to pure white sand and others still protruding obscenely from the thin soil that clings precariously to the isle. But a few fools still come here and beyond the giant crab-infested beaches, the monster haunted forest, the dragon-warded doorway and the crumbling tower of shining obsidian lies a small hilltop pool: the font of Chimalia. Bones that are cast in it arise clothed in flesh, but not the same flesh that they once wore, and those who drink of it never die or grow a day older. Connection:-This is how Anselm Brucoloc (14.27.02) got eternal life. Of course drinking from the pool does not give one any immunity from injury. Hooks:-How does the island move?-Where does the doorway lead? Is it the other end of one of the closed Windows of the City?-What kind of flesh do bones that are cast into the Font receive?-Has anyone else drunk form the pool except for Lord Brucoloc? Interestingly if you look at the alignment of our major deities the male ones (Alberon and the King in Splendor) are clearly lawful, the ones with no clear gender (the dwarven ones) seem to be neutral and the female ones seem to be chaotic (She Who Waits and Chimalia). The only exception would seem to be the Green Lady who at least seems to be more neutral than chaotic but having two seemingly-contradictory aspects might be chaotic. As for the good/evil axis, Alberon and the King in Splendor are LN at best, the dwarven ones don’t seem very morally active (true neutral?), She Who Waits is pretty clearly CE, Chimalia is more CN and the Green Lady is a bit vague. I guess you could make a case of NG for her but she seems more true neutral. Overall it seems that alignment doesn’t play an especially large role in this setting, but then a lot of large scale conflicts seem to be a bit muted. There isn’t much real warfare (aside from Gore/Thring border skirmishes) and even racial conflict is a bit of a weaker force than in most D&D settings. The elves are dicks but it’s easy to avoid them and the people of Shuttered get along just fine with gnolls and orcs for the most part. Most of the conflict seems to stem for individual bastards being bastards which gives things a more personal focus which I like about this setting.</blockquote>

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