TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron UK Issue 4: March 1999



part 5/5



Writers Guide: Just like the US branch, they always want more submissions, but will only accept them if they meet certain criteria. Send your idea first, through email or a letter with a SASE included. Submissions themselves must include both paper and microsoft word copies for redundancies sake. Use good spelling, punctuation & grammar, but also keep things concise, as they only have so many pages per issue and smaller articles are easier to format in. All pretty similar to the previous times they've said something like this apart from the increasing specificity of computer formats. They may make some parts of the magazine editing and layout process a lot quicker but they also bring new ways things can glitch as well. The more computers are all connected online, the more the same few programs will come to dominate simply due to compatibility requirements and network externalities.



The Horror Investigator's Survival Guide: A whole load more self aware lessons on what not to do in a horror scenario, that somehow no-one in the films ever heeds. No matter how much of a bargain it is, never buy the house built on a graveyard. If the power goes out in the middle of the night, don't go down to the basement. Never read eldritch books or solve evil puzzles. Never pull a stake out of a corpse's heart. Never split the party. Attractive members of the opposite sex have a better than even chances of getting you killed one way or another. If your car breaks down in the middle of the night, avoid the spooky mansion nearby. Going into the woods is probably a bad bet too. If your kids start speaking another language in a deep voice, just kill them now and save everyone time & grief. Maybe not the last one because that'll get you in trouble with the law even if you survive the horror scenario and asylums are not usually fun places to run your character. (looking at you, the first half of Bleak House) If you've been playing for a few years you'll probably already know these, but break them sometimes anyway because otherwise the game would stall and be no fun. So this is fairly amusing, but doesn't really teach me anything new.



Bare Bones: Our general advice column is another old canard. Think about your character's families. How many relatives do they have, are they still alive, how do they get along with them? Are their siblings on the same side, or will defeating them be one of the most climactic parts of the campaign? Do they have mommy/daddy issues, are there any identical twins in the campaign, any hidden relatives they don't even know about yet? You know the drill, all that stuff that has plenty of potential for drama, but be careful not to overdo it, or everyone'll make emotionally dead orphans for the next campaign so they can't be exploited in the same way. Another instance where there's nothing particularly wrong with the advice, but it's not telling me anything new either.



On The Trail: Instead of talking about recent conventions, this column is focussing on the recent push to do game store demos. Apparently it's not just WotC that think that's a good idea, Decipher are also running them for their various CCG's. The RPGA already does Star Wars RPG stuff, maybe it would be a good idea if they joined forces. Most of the gamers on the ground are in favour of it, it's just a question of getting the corporate high-ups on both sides to get over their competitiveness and come to an agreement. Your typical tale of profit motive getting in the way of having the greatest amount of fun. Well, if they can open up D&D to third party supplements solving this is pretty small fry by comparison, so hopefully this idea will get a positive follow-up in future issues.



Probably the most british feeling issue yet in both good and bad ways, with plenty of interesting humorous touches and a greater willingness to be honest about the flaws in their parent company, but also a feeling that they're trying to do the job of all three US magazines at once on a limited budget, cramming whatever articles, reviews, and adventures they can get in without much quality control. Still, they're definitely managing to get more out of their money than the US branch looking at the respective sizes and production values. There are lessons to be learned from that. We'll just have to see if they try to learn them before the magazines cease to exist as independent entities.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 73: Mar/April 1999



part 1/5



80 pages. All that acid black dragons breathe doesn't just get squirted from the back of the throat precisely three times a day. A little drip and sizzle really adds to the intimidation factor. Turning up in a graveyard doesn't hurt either, although zombies aren't going to add much of a challenge to a group that's strong enough to take on a dragon. I suppose they're getting into customisation these days so they might be souped up as well, or maybe there's just a lot of them. Let's find out what's inside and how tactically capable you'll need to be to have a good chance of surviving it.



Editorial: The editorial is quite unsurprisingly devoted to the climax of their series of adventures. They've had an overwhelmingly positive response, although there are still a few complaints that two months is too long a gap between them. Even fairly large ones like this aren't 8 weekly sessions large so it's a good thing these adventures are designed episodically so you can do other ones between them. This leaves them keen to do a follow-up, but also likely to change things around a bit next time. Maybe they'll do a full issue full of connected adventures so you get the whole series in one go. Maybe they'll do a bunch of low-level adventures revolving around the Sleeping Dragon Inn. Maybe they'll do something involving more general worldbuilding. All depends what they get the submissions to support. So they're not sure where they're going next, but at least it probably won't be boring. One of the best destinations to be heading for when you're an adventurer as who wants to keep on going over the same old already cleared areas?



Letters: First letter is in favour of not just keeping up the wide variety of adventures, but using the magazine to do some proper worldbuilding as well. Settings are big business these days, why shouldn't they jump on the bandwagon?

Second is in favor of both putting the cover artwork on another page unobscured and the general style of the Mere of Dead Men series. The forgotten realms can become a silly over the top place sometimes and it's nice that they've avoided that.

Third wonders what's in the diary referred to in Dark Magic in New Orleans. That was meant to be cut for space reasons but obviously they didn't cut all the references. It's not as if they could have run a page less of advertising or something instead.

Fourth is another person who has no problem using the adventures in Dungeon for a wide variety of systems, and would likewise have no problem with them publishing a wider variety of systems too.

Fifth thinks that if they do adventures for more exotic settings, they should include a few notes on how it might be refluffed for other milieus. That'd increase the odds of them actually being useful and inspire more readers to hack adventures instead of playing them strictly by the book in general.

Sixth is also in favour of fusing a wide range of influences into your own world, both in terms of settings and the people writing in them. If Dungeon became the same few writers over and over it would wing up suffering for it.

Seventh talks about something completely different, the tendency for NPC's to nearly always have average or better HP. The DM can't be expected to play dozens of NPC's at once as smartly and distinctly as players do their single one, so HP inflation is a natural way to insure they don't die too quickly and make the fight an anticlimax. Most DM's will wind up fudging the rules for the sake of a better story at some point or another.

Eighth is another one who has no problem changing adventures to fit their campaign, and therefore no problem with ones for specific settings and other systems. If the core story is good, you can change the mechanics at your leisure and still get something good out of it.

Finally, praise for Challenge of Champions for doing something different and being very easy to use with a brand new group or one with an irregular schedule. People who want everything to be "realistic" medieval fantasy are straightjacketing everyone else's experiences. After a whole edition in which every monster had an ecology section whether it needed it or not I can quite understand why some people would be sick of that.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 73: Mar/April 1999



part 2/5



Quoitine Quest: Another Celtic adventure? That's actually got more adventures in here now than some settings that got full gamelines. Like much of the source material, it's time for an adventure where the main monsters are too powerful to fight head-on, so you'll need to negotiate with or trick them to accomplish your objectives. You're hired by a wizard to get hold of the titular quoltine, a type of rare stone that's particularly good for creating magic items with. Unfortunately he only knows it's rough location so you'll have to search the area and ask around for more clues. Off you head to Windholm Peninsula, only to find there's half a dozen other little problems that need solving there and you'll probably pass through most of them before reaching your actual objective. A pack of worgs threatening the sheep. A castle occupied by undead nobility who haven't even noticed their own death. A sleeping Galeb Duhr which has some useful information, but only if you wake it up in the right way. Some rather cranky ravens, miscellaneous wandering monsters, and eventually you'll make it to your final challenge, an Xorn that doesn't want to give up the quoltine, but would very much like to go home to the elemental plane of earth, so it'll leave it behind if you can expedite that. Or you could figure out a way to steal from it or trap it and kill it, y'know, the typical adventurer solutions. A pretty decent example of one of their common formulas, the sandbox for low level characters to wander, with plenty of emphasis on encouraging roleplaying and puzzle solving rather than making combat the first solution to every problem. Very usable, but not groundbreaking in any way.



The Statement of Ownership shows an enormous dramatic rebound over the course of last year. With average sales of 31 thousand and last month ones of 39, they've nearly doubled their circulation in a single year, putting them at just under 2/3rds of Dragon's. The combination of an editor who's willing to take risks with the format and whatever they're doing to get stuff in stores and catch new reader's eyes is evidently paying off bigtime. If they keep up that kind of growth they'll have shot well past their old high water mark by next time we see this.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 73: Mar/April 1999



part 3/5



Eye of Myrkul: The mere of dead men series has already gone on longer than any previous attempts at continuity in here. Now the finale also squeaks past their record for biggest single adventure as well, at a full 32 pages. (although quite a bit of that is all the exposition about the history of the area that was only hinted at in the previous 4 adventures, how it was created and why it has so many ruined places now suitable for adventure, plus several new spells and magical items.) After getting into a comfortable routine of accepting missions from Sir Justin, doing them and getting your reward, Sir Justin is kidnapped while you're out by our cover star, who wants the PC's to get him a macguffin from the ruined temple of Myrkul. This is obviously a bad idea, but since you're probably not strong enough to beat him in a head-on fight, plus you still have no idea where Sir Justin is even if you did manage to kill him the party is probably going to have to go along with the plot anyway. It's time to venture into the very worst depths of the swamp to reach the Uthtower. You'd better have recovered at least one of the Rings of Myrkul from previous adventures, otherwise you're going to find this a lot harder as it's packed with undead and some of the ancient magics are keyed off them.

There's also multiple complications that make this not just a straightforward dungeoncrawl. First is that your "employer" is hedging their bets by sending another (evil) adventuring party after the same goal. Unless you're very fast they'll catch up with you at some point during the adventure and then you'll have to decide whether to fight them for the prizes or work together temporarily. (while watching each other for betrayal) Second is that certain actions in the dungeon can wind up strengthening or weakening Myrkul's power. If you weaken it too much, you'll break the curse on the mere and make it a substantially less hostile place, but the dungeon will also slowly collapse, forcing you to make a hasty escape even if you haven't explored everything yet. If you strengthen it, you'll probably get the better treasure short term, but you also set things up for further trouble in the long run.

You're faced with a similar choice once you get back, as while they won't betray you, just giving the dragon the macguffins will allow them to go ahead with other long-term plans and result in Sir Justin giving the PC's a good bollocking in the debrief, as he'd be entirely wiling to sacrifice his life to fight evil. To get the best ending you should figure out some way of getting the drop on them and winning the fight now you've had time to prepare. So while this is slightly more railroady than previous instalments, it still offers you plenty of choices, not all of which are obvious, and at least some degree of moral ambiguity as well. Whatever route you take, it leaves you several ideas for further adventures involving the mere and it's inhabitants, so despite it technically being the ending you now have plenty of material to create follow-ups with. All in all it works pretty well as both an adventure and a bit of worldbuilding, although despite it's size it's nowhere near the longest adventure they've ever done in terms of actual play length. There's still plenty of room for them to escalate further in terms of both overall adventure path length and scope of challenges in future attempts.



Nodwick's party turn on Sir Justin at the debriefing because what kind of monster would make Piffany cry no matter how much they screwed up the adventure's objectives?

 

[(un)reason]

Well, I guess we've made it to three years of this thread now. Polyhedron approaches it's last few years, but we've still got a long way to go before Dungeon is completed. Let's see if we manage to make it all the way.



Dungeon Issue 73: Mar/April 1999



part 4/5



Side Treks - The Necromancer's Pet: After all the complexity of the last adventure, we go back to the fairly basic quandary of finding a creature that needs help, only for it to turn out to be evil. You come across a bulldog being attacked by werewolves. It's barely alive by the time you get rid of them and any decent party will want to save it. Suckers! It's actually the ex-familiar of a necromancer, and has a bunch of magical enhancements, mostly of a vampiric nature. It can drain your HP, and will do so during the night, leaving party members with lower HP than you think. It can bond it's life to one of the party members, so 50% of any damage it suffers goes to them instead. When caught out and they try to fight it, it can feign death and come back to trouble you again if you aren't thorough with destroying it. Your basic no good deed goes unpunished situation to encourage players to be a little more ruthlessly paranoid next time. Of course, in Ravenloft, you're in just as much trouble with the dark powers for attacking people in genuine need, so they can screw you both ways, but oh well, no-one ever said being an adventurer would be simple or easy. This definitely falls into the category of adventures that are an entertaining read, and could also be useful as general worldbuilding as it has a new spell & magic item in, but shouldn't be overused, as making the PC's paranoid about everything bogs a campaign down. A little screwage goes a long way.



The Setting Sun: Rakshasas are just the best (or the worst, depending on your perspective) for a mystery adventure. No risk of a bad save penetrating their disguises, they either automatically no-sell your magic with their resistances or they don't. (although the failure of more subtle divinations is at least a confirmation they're not just a regular guy in itself, but that still leaves plenty of options, not all that mean they're automatically the villain.) A trio of them have taken over the temple of Pelor in a remote town on Greyhawk's Wild Coast. Ironically, the thing that's aroused suspicion is that they're actually really good at their job, as mind-reading means you always know how to meet people’s expectations, they can defend the place from marauding humanoids at no threat to themselves, and the number of people they secretly eat is less than the casualties before they arrived. The higher-ups want to know what's going on (and since divination isn't one of their spheres, can't find out the easy way) and find out if their methods could be useful elsewhere. The rakshasas will do their best to fob you off, claiming the protection is provided by a simple spinning top that they're pretending is a powerful ancient artifact that repels evil as long as it's kept spinning. (that doesn't show up as magical because it's just that awesome and mysterious.)

If you take this at face value and go home there's obviously no adventure. If you don't, or decide you've spent all these weeks trekking out here and might as well see if there's any dungeons nearby to delve before you go home, then you have a pretty decent little sandbox to play in, as you could solve this by detective work aboveground, or by venturing down into the catacombs and coming across the rakshasa's stash of secret slaves, which they're using to dig for actual artifacts with. (the reason they came here in the first place) So this is nicely flexible, and like the other big adventure this issue, thinks about the long term consequences of your actions as well, providing further adventure possibilities whatever choice you make. You could easily save the day but wind up making things worse long-term for the general population, now they've lost both their protection and their fake but comforting spiritual guidance. That's the kind of complexity I approve of. Another adventure that's turned out pretty well overall.



Nodwick has seen enough genuinely impressive artifacts that a spinning top holds absolutely no wonder for him.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 73: Mar/April 1999



part 5/5



Faerie Wood: We finish things up with another quick one that's actually smaller than the side trek despite not having the branding. While wandering through the woods you come across a gnome selling very realistic wooden sculptures. He's actually in possession of a wand of flesh to wood and has been using it on the local faeries. If you buy anything from him, you'll soon encounter them, very angry indeed. (and even if you don't they'll still ask you for help in a less hostile way) They'll use their sleep arrows on you en masse, tie you up, and only release you if you promise to go back and deal with him, preferably finding a way to turn all the people he's already lignified back. Fortunately, the wand has a reverse setting, so as long as you don't break it in the process of killing or capturing him it's actually pretty easy to get the best ending here. So this is the same basic idea as one of the adventures from issue 68, only shorter, simpler and more whimsical. That's a bit soon to be repeating the whole artist petrifying things and selling them as regular statues schtick. A pretty mediocre way to finish things off that loses another point for the rapid rehash. I think this one was probably picked just because it was the right size to fill out the page count after the massive central adventure.



An issue in which the long adventures are both excellent and boundary pushing, while the short ones are far less impressive, it's obvious where most of the effort was spent this time. I guess that cements that we have vast numbers of short standalone adventures by now, so it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid repeating themselves with more ones and that adventure paths are the future. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what they come up with next, even if it'll probably take a while for the next big thing to show up since they haven't already planned it out in advance.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 135: April 1999



part 1/5



36 pages. This time, their two color printing scheme chooses bright lime green for the second one, which is not particularly great for the readability. Looks like we're fighting dragons again, although at least this one is somewhat smaller. Or maybe it's the guy that got big, since we're supposed to be having a godly theme. Let's find out how esoteric the contents are this time.



Notes From HQ: Despite all the organisational revamps WotC has done since they took over, there's still a few troublemakers. So it's time for another lecture discouraging cheating. If you forge or copy certificates we WILL catch you sooner or later, because we have a database to double-check things with. If we find you've been reading the adventures before playing them, or running through them more than once, even with different characters, you'll also be in big trouble. Those are the big two clearcut violations they really don't want to see, but of course there's plenty of things you could do that aren't technically cheating that still make the game less fun for everyone else at the table, and violating the spirit of the rules is also a bad idea. This is why you don't play with Baatezu, they'll ruin the game even if they stick to the letter of the RAW. So show a little more consideration for what makes a game good for everyone and things'll go much more smoothly. Nothing particularly surprising here then.



Table Talk: This is mostly dedicated to decathlon updates, talking about the winners of the most recent competition, which we'll see printed later on in the issue, the deadlines for the next few, and introducing an all new challenge. Design a yacht for the Raven's Bluff dignitaries to sail the sea of fallen stars and throw parties on! Just how magical or full of 4th wall breaking humorous references will the submissions be? Well, it is the forgotten realms, so you have plenty of leeway there. The number of clubs participating continues to be a little anaemic though, with only 9 scoring any points so far. A little sidebar also complains about the lack of letters and survey responses. They're going to all this effort to get more useful feedback and not getting enough to do any serious statistical analysis on. Despite all this hard work they're not really seeing the growth in engagement they want, and you know what WotC does to underperforming departments? Well, we'll get to the consequences of that in a few years time. One of those instances where it's pretty depressing living in the future and knowing there's no happy ending to the story.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 135: April 1999



part 2/5



Member Spotlight: Databases are apparently a big deal at the moment on both sides of the pond, as they put the spotlight on David Papay, the guy who runs the Living City one. Mildly surprised they don't use the same one for the UK and USA branches but I guess they can get quicker response times this way. He's been part of the RPGA since 1982 and was personally recruited by Frank Mentzer, making him one of the very earliest members. Despite this, he only started playing Living City in 1994 and doing the database work in '96. If anything, he plays more Dragon Dice than D&D, as that feels less like a job these days. You've got to be careful not to overdo a hobby by turning it into a job and burn out on it. Another reason why the RPGA should keep on supporting other games even if the number of people playing them is only a small fraction of D&D. It keeps them from leaving entirely when they need a break and they're more likely to come back later if they're still playing in the same social circles.



Internet 101: This column gets in theme, giving us a bunch of links focussed on cults. They're not going to comment on the big religions, but the little ones, particularly ones like Heaven's Gate that have already imploded are fair game. How to identify a cult, the usual techniques they employ to get people to join up and stick around, the ways they can go horribly wrong. (in ways that are good for an adventure) As usual, only 2 of the 8 links are still functional now, the rest being long gone, or in one case converted into domain parking redirecting to a dating site. Another one that's far less useful today than it was at the time then. You'll have to google some fresh links if you want to find out about the state in the art in religious kookery.



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Our alphabetical tour reaches the city of Myrinjar. This is definitely on the more tyrannical end of things, controlled by a pair of powerful wizards who use their magic to inflict inventively horrible fates on people who dispute their rule. (or simply don't pay the high taxes they use to fund their research.) Random scrying, sending dream visions en masse when they want to send a message to everyone in the city, transforming transgressors into monsters and setting them to guard places, it sounds like a pretty high stress place to live. Definitely one that could do with a group of wandering adventurers to set things right, preferably one who recognise that a lot of the challenges they'll encounter on their way hate their masters and will be very pleased if you turn them back and let them join in the revolution. Stock up on your dispels and divination counters if you want to win the day. Another good example of what happens if you let high level evil spellcasters go unchecked and give them time to build up a big stash of magic items and contingencies. Eventually they'll screw up an experiment in the pursuit of ever more power and blow themselves up, going by the cycles of history in the Realms, but that's small comfort to the people caught in their rule for centuries and then blown up along with the rest of the country. Very much business as usual for a high magic setting then, which does at least make for plenty of adventure opportunities for characters of all levels. I can easily see how this could be expanded out into a full hundred-odd page sourcebook/adventure, like many of these entries.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 135: April 1999



part 3/5



City Stories: As usual, this column focusses on a particular temple in Raven's Bluff. This time, it's the inventor god, Gond. A lot of places want nothing to do with him due to the large number of explosions his worshippers cause in their pursuit of new clanky mechanical things. Raven's Bluff isn't nearly so conservative. A cleric of Gond was the architect of the city walls (which probably explains why it's only walled on two sides ) and they've been part of the approved civic religions for centuries. They did manage to blow up their temple a couple of decades ago, but managed to finish an even bigger, shinier one recently so they've obviously got no shortage of funding. A significant percentage of that is apparently kid's toys, where you can just invent cool looking stuff without worrying too much about the practical applications. (as long as it's not too hazardous to play with, because all it'd take is the wrong rich kid losing an eye or finger to get a campaign going against them.) So they're relatively popular here because they stay connected to the community and emphasise the fun side of invention over holing up in your lab for years chasing some quixotic goal. That gives plenty of opportunities for adventurers to interact with them and get involved in the latest hunt for the right material components, or even join the priesthood and proactively create their own custom gear that'll let them adventure in style. The map of the temple isn't particularly detailed this time, but the description of the 4 main priests is pretty good, making them all interesting and distinct. Overall, solidly above average in worldbuilding and general game usefulness for this series.



Wolflords of Malar: Having looked at the faith pushing the limits of technology, we go straight to the other extreme, as priests of Malar are generally not fond of civilisation and it's trappings, wanting to tear all that down and rewild the world into a massive happy (for them) hunting ground. This is particularly the case for the wolfwere branch, which don't even need to worry about clothes and weapons to be effective hunters. They've been undergoing a serious expansion lately, as Malar killed the Great Wolf Spirit, and since wolfweres aren't particularly bothered about ideology anyway, most of them saw which way the wind was blowing and switched religions. (granting better priestly spheres probably doesn't hurt either) So this is one group your PC's probably won't be able to join, (and definitely not in Living campaigns) but offers a fair amount of plot potential as adversaries. Wolfweres are able to mix up sneakiness and savagery quite effectively as it is, adding on an increasing number of their ranks with priestly spells makes them even more flexible in a way that will become much more common next edition. We're gonna need even more cold iron.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 135: April 1999



part 4/5



Shamanic Weaknesses: Shadowrun also has a whole ton of animal shaman types with various appropriate powers that can be a real nuisance to a group of runners. Fortunately they also come with thematically appropriate weaknesses and tendencies towards stereotypical behaviour. And if there's one thing the internet is good at, it's spotting patterns in data and disseminating information. So here's one of their mostly IC chatroom discussions where a bunch of runners discuss how best to take out a troublesome spellcaster. Watch out for the ones that are prone to frenzy because they can be a big liability in a team. Pride, greed or overly obsessive following a particular cause are also relatively common. Of course, since it's a public chatroom, there are also more than a few shamen there who lack a sense of humour about their own limitations or ideology, which means the moderators need to step in to ban them for making personal attacks. So this is pretty funny, and a good reminder of how the internet used to be before stricter registration procedures and long term bans made most websites a little more sedate, because the people who flame out at the slightest provocation have already been banned repeatedly and learned to be a little more diplomatic in stating their opinions or gravitate to the same few cesspools that do still allow open abusiveness. It's also a good reminder that giving your character mechanically enforced flaws makes them more interesting than just adding ever more powers and higher numbers as you accumulate XP. Not hugely useful to me as once boiled down it's system-free advice I've seen many times, but it's still a good implementation of the concept that's extra amusing for being very of it's time.



Gifts from Below: Erik Mona has been appearing in the letters pages and lists of top players for several years now. Now he gets his first article in here, on one of the topics that'll become a lot more common when he gets in the editors seat. Time for a look at some more of the unpredictably dangerous magic items that come from the Abyss, which also allows him to add more lore about their creators in the process.

Flame Amulets of Alzrius give you blasty powers and immunity to fire, but are near impossible to take off, and eventually compel you to go to a place where you'd cause maximum devastation and explode like a balor, taking the souls of everyone fried straight down to said demon lord. If you've done your research you definitely won't want to put them on, although using minions as suicide bombers seems a pretty effective tactic for the cunning evil overlord as long as you have someone lurking nearby to pick up and reuse the amulet afterwards.

Bloodmarker weapons are less of a double-edged sword, inflicting unhealing wounds and dragging the souls of anyone killed with them straight to the abyss. Not that useful for PC's since they usually kill enemies straight away, leaving no time for wounds to fester, but very annoying when an enemy has one, especially when you're several levels down in a dungeoncrawl and don't have access to magic to fix the problem.

Relics of Unlife give you undead controlling powers, at the not too surprising price of gradually becoming ever more undead-like yourself. Give it up after 3 months while the benefits still outweigh the penalties. Another one that's probably more trouble than help to PC's, but an excellent plot driver in the hands of an antagonist.