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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9036331" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 140: February 2000part 3/5Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Last issue's area was relatively stable despite being crime-ridden. Ondeeme, on the other hand is driven purely by cult of personality. He showed up, killed all the people in charge with large amounts of blasty magic, did the same to large chunks of the peasants, renamed the country after himself and started importing new people from surrounding countries to fill the void. For a couple of years, it turned into anarchy everywhere not being directly dominated by him, until he mastered mind-control magic that let him ensure the loyalty of his wizardly secret police force, the Slee. That's stabilised things a little, but also turned it into a terrifying dictatorship where everyone has to live in a state of perpetual paranoia. Definitely the kind of place that would benefit from some more benevolent adventurers coming in and liberating the place. But this is another multi-parter, so we'll have to wait another couple of months to have all the info and give proper judgement on how good it is. His progress just seems to get slower and slower as the years go by, and the editors have ever less ability to keep his writing concise.Llurth Dreier - City of Ooze: Eric Boyd is also delving deep into Realmslore, but gets to release it all in one big 8 page package instead of a bunch of 2 page ones. A nice big look at the City of Ooze, one of the few Drow cities ruled by Ghaunadur worshippers rather than Lolth ones. Unsurprisingly, it's a damp, sulphurous place that's pretty offputting to non ooze lovers simply due to the smell. Nine miles below the surface, (reminding us that the Realms does not have realistic temperature gradients or water tables underground) a river runs through it, although the rate has been gradually declining, causing the lake in the middle to get shallower. Long term, this might be a problem, but at the moment the mud flats revealed are perfect breeding grounds for their fungal crops. It also gives aboleth easy access to the city, and they secretly dominate many of the powerful figures and control the council, which is a big obvious plot hook for players with counterpsionics to exploit. Even so, with a lot of powerful monsters with high levels in multiple classes on top, it's not a place you could fight your way through without a whole army behind you. Best to go in disguise (including shields against mind-reading) and cause more subtle problems if you want to live to adventure another day. Another dense and interesting entry from him that reminds us he was the main guy designing high level challenges in the 3e style even before the edition change. You've got to get up pretty early to design characters with a longer laundry list of powers and the will to combine them in effective ways. If nothing in Dungeon cuts the mustard for your group anymore, he's the guy to go too for inspiration on how to keep coming up with challenging adventures for them.</blockquote>

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