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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8712200" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 113: November 1995part 2/5Jungle Tales: The first set of Living Jungle submissions by readers finally makes it through the pipeline. Regular writer Tom Prusa reminds us that he's one of the people responsible for a big chunk of the silliness in their Living City adventures and intends to spread it here as well. Boo Two, Boo Dos, Boo Da, Boo Tue and Boo Deux were sent up Fire Mountain to placate the angry volcano spirit. Boo Two fainted in terror, and the other four sold him out to the spirit to save their own hides, claiming that he wanted to be it's servant, but was merely overcome in the moment. Accepting the deal, he was whisked away, and according to legend serves still. Underneath the comedic trappings, that's actually pretty mean-spirited once you boil it down. After the past year has been spent introducing settings that want to be more serious and continuity heavy, goofy late 80's style articles like this stick out like a sore thumb. Not a very welcome throwback. Raft Dwellers: The second Living Jungle article is a lot less irritating. An introduction to the Zantira tribe, who as the title says live most of their lives floating on the water, to the point that most of them struggle to sleep on dry land without the gentle rocking of the waves beneath them. (except adventurers, obviously) The rest of their culture is shaped pretty logically by this lifestyle; small families because you can't have too much weight on any one raft, a diet based on fish and harvesting floating plants, carefully maintained detente with the local crocodiles and a quite justified fear of the fogs of the Dreaming River. A quite decent bit of worldbuilding that they're happy to make available as an official PC option going forward. As they have a useful skillset and are neither overpowered or comedically superstitious & incompetent, I'd have no objection to using them either. The Hungry Spirit of Fire Mountain: A second trip up Fire Mountain in quick succession, this one somewhat more serious. The basic details remain the same, the volcano spirit wants regular tribute or it will visit magmarey death upon all the tribes in the neighbourhood. If the tribute is extra pleasing in a particular year, it'll leave behind a smooth shiny stone for them to take home, which doesn't seem to do anything, but gets used as an object of worship anyway. This has been going on for many centuries, so there are many different stories of how different people have dealt with it and the unpleasant ends they met when they took liberties. What's behind it still remains mysterious though, and if your PC's will ever be allowed to find out how it works or defeat it in a high level adventure. Not having to tip a big chunk of your stuff into the lava every year would definitely make it easier for these guys to advance beyond tribal level. But then they'd have to change the whole premise of the setting, so that's unlikely to happen.</blockquote>

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