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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tristissima" data-source="post: 8020625" data-attributes="member: 6162">Tiny content warning: there’s a bit of gruesomeness in the very last sentence that might be difficult. Please take care of yourselves.There’s a fortress in the southern Mindspins that seems made of shadows and probably houses velstracs performing strange rituals. It’s called the Hall to Broken Dream and will be detailed later in the book.Chelish diplomat Perevill Hesperix made his home in a rather Gothic manor between Ridwan and the Umbral Basin. Much like the Chelish family that founded Dauphenal Vineyard, Perevill’s family lost all claim on the manor when they lost their lives for backing a House other than Thrune in the Chelish Civil War. Its new owners, the Umbral Court, ignored it until an agent of theirs named Celefin of Pangolais, a LE female half-elf wizard 15, bought it 30 years ago. Her vocal support of the Belevais Doctrine has convinced the undead contingent on the Umbral Court to block her ascension. Once Celefin realized this, she withdrew and retired here in disgust.Celefin has become a scholar of anti-undead warfare, even publishing on the subject under a false name and corresponding with foreign worshippers of Pharasma and even Sarenrae. Her careful adherence to Nidalese law, shows of (probably honest) loyalty, and powerbase have protected her so far. But there are definitely people on the Court itching to punish her.The House of Lies is one of my favoritestest locations in Nidal. In the northwestern Uskwood overlooking the Usk River, it hosts a quintennial competition of untruths in which the greatest liars, braggarts, and con artists compete. It’s a carryover from the cultural openness of the Shadowbreak and will be detailed later.Icebow Bridge is the home of the Library Without Light, where the texts brought by Azlanti and Thassilonian refugees fleeing Earthfall 10,000 years ago brought into Nidal. To this day, they are not organized but randomly stores on the Library Without Light’s shelves. Written in a hundred languages (most long-dead), the library contains an almost unimaginable amount of all manner of knowledge from a world that, simply put, no longer exists ~ the rituals, genealogies, naturalists’ notes, and even the maps are unrecognizable today. Nonetheless, people come from all over Avistan (and probably Garund, Casmaron, and even Tian Xia, I would imagine) to study these texts. Anyone can petition Master Librarian Hale Craggox, a NE human investigator 4/wizard 2 to study here among his many acolytes and apprentices. Of course, the folk of the Library are filled out with at least one member of the Umbral Court and three or four of their agents. It’s considered a very prestigious assignment.As I’ve said before, I simply adore the idea that Nidal hosts more ancient knowledge than any other nation in Avistan, as it gives PCs a reason to go there while disincentivizing a righteous murder spree against the evil pain-lovers. Pitting taste and possibly alignment against advancement of goals is a classic conflict. It’s nice to see the investigator get some play here, too. It’s one of my (too many >.< ) favorite classes in Pathfinder 1st edition and is art of a larger trend in Paizo’s game design that I really enjoy. It’s something that attracted me to Exalted, as well (squeezed in between squeeing at the glorious intersection of shounen anime and classical epics) They’ve often done a simply brilliant job of writing classes, archetypes, monsters/race, and the like that reference unexpected inspirations ~ the investigator being essentially Sherlock Holmes, which is one of the least D&D things I can think of, but also stuff like the magical child archetype of the vigilante ~ and then find ways to integrate it into the setting and expand their conceptual space. I’ve used the investigator, for example, to represent a 17th/18th-century style naturalist before. It also lets you bash together disparate ideas in a way that’s very D&D and yet feels organic and appropriate to the setting. One of these days I’ll play that caecilia magical girl vigilante character, which is to say: what if Ursula from The Little Mermaid became Sailor Moon in D&D? Poor unfortunate souls, indeed… The scarred monks of Nidal train at the millennia-old Irogath Monastery, literally carved into the side of the Mindspin Mountains. A knotted maze of monastically bare chambers whose doors can be in any of the six directions (yes, including up and down) twists among itself with only stone benches unadorned with cushions for reading and others for sleeping. Unexpectedly and delightfully, its noted that the monks eat delicious food, but that the torture comes in the infinitesimal nature of their portions. I love that detail, and it fits in with a lot of my understanding as an aspiring polytheist nun of how monastic devotions work, at least outside of a Catholic context. It’s not about rejecting pleasure or the world, but maximizing one’s ability to delight in it. Of course, for Kuthites enjoying the pain and discomfort is more of the focus than the old canard, “A mundane person can drink as many kegs of ale as they like and stay stone sober, but a magician can get drunk off the mere sight of a glass of water.” But I think there’s not much difference between the two, and that’s a large part of why I love Nidal. For extra sadism, snowmelt flows through some of the rooms, channeled into beautiful kinetic sculptures. Oddly, these sculptures also make heavy use of the light effects of the water (presumably, glints and rainbows).Merinda the Striped (such a good name), a LE human monk (scarred monk) 8, is the Mistress of the monaster, and she is said to be able to see one’s devotion to the Midnight Lord or any of the heresies against him with steady eye contact. Rumors ascribe any number of tortures and horrors to the inner chambers, including the lovely image of previous monastic hopefuls, maimed yet living, serving the ordeal by taking out their agony and envy on newer contenders. None know successful aspirants receive for enduring these tortures, save for a brand of a spiked chain on their back and access to the scarred monk archetype from Horror Realms. Said archetype replaces high jump, wholeness of body, abundant step, and empty body with the monk’s choice of several “mortifications”. My favorite are doll face, in which the monk removes their face and from then on can steal porcelain doll versions of corpse’s faces for intimidation and can shift the doll to look like people’s loved ones, and tongueless master, which allows monks who wear their own tongues on a necklace to steal people’s voices with a punch in order to be able to speak with that person’s voice (they can’t speak usually).</blockquote>

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