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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5236231" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 190: February 1993part 5/6The game Wizards: Oh no. No, no no no no. Iiiiiiit's Volo! If you thought Elminster was irritating, you ain't seen nothing yet. Ed Greenwood reveals his new finely veined, not quite fully matured cheese on the public. The little gobshite gives them an excuse to revisit previously sourcebooked areas of the realms and give them a second going over. After exploring north, south east and west, introducing three new continents to Toril, they're starting to close in and eat their own tail. Come on, there's plenty of place still to explore, we don't need to go back to Waterdeep yet. And do we really need so much info on the eating habits of various places. I suppose there's still more in Ed's personal notes that'll never see the light of day, and they want to get them out somehow. I do wonder who suggested this part IC format though. Since Athas, Krynn, Ravenloft, Planescape and Mystara would all use it at various points in their life, it must have been pretty popular in the TSR offices. It probably got overused over the years, and this is definitely one of the signs of that. Not an article that fills me with warm and fuzzy feelings, to say the least. Sounds of wonder and delight: Jeff Grubb follows in Ed's footsteps. In issue 123, Ed detailed the musical instruments of the Realms, now we get the same treatment applied to Zakhara. Most of their instruments are pretty clearly based on real world ones, but there's always a few weird variants. The vast majority of them are small enough to be portable, with stringed, wind and light percussion being the most popular families. Not too surprisingly, there's also magical variants. The nay of the Djinn, The Riqq of the Efreet, The 'ud of the Marids, The Rababah of the Dao and the Qanun of the spirits are a themed set of musical instruments. Each has a couple of minor powers when played alone, but if you can gather all 5, you can summon a genie army. This is obviously a big plot device to place in the campaign, and players and bad guys can compete to gather one, while genies try their hardest to make sure no-one ever does. I think that'd make a pretty decent central plot for an entire tv show, or at least a season, so despite the mundane aspects being a bit predictable, this is a pretty decent article. Unique Unicorns:  'Ello 'ello. Wot 'ave we 'ere then? A full dozen variant unicorns, doing for them what previous articles have done for dogs, imps, dinosaurs and of course Dragons. Well, it's an ideal choice if they want to appeal to the female demographic more without being too obvious. And exactly what powers unicorn horns have differs from myth to myth anyway. That leaves them with room for quite a few variants, at least one for each alignment. Another fairly obvious one they haven't done yet, so yay. Alicorns have a twisted horn, and all the usual powers plus charming and the ability to ride on air. This obviously makes them even harder to catch or kill. Bay Unicorns deploy the dread power of shaky-cam to win battles against their enemies. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Oh, and fire based magic too. They're not very nice creatures, and like to live in volcanic caves. Sounds like a nice surprise for people who think unicorns are all sweetness and light. Black Unicorns are of course utterly eeeevil and will eat your flesh. They radiate silence, can both become invisible and generate darkness, and have poisonous horns. Way to bring on a cheap death. Poor spellcasters just won't know what to do! Brown Unicorns read your mind and put people with hostile intent to sleep. Very faeish. I quite approve. Cunnequines are shiny, and can turn undead and invert your alignment. Since they're good guys, they'll generally use that to make people change their ways for the better. Unicorn hunters really are biting off more than they can chew. Faerie Unicorns are the perfect mount for pixies and the like. If their natural concealment and mind-control isn't enough, they can summon animals to help out. Good luck trying to keep them in a snare when the squirrels and bears are around. Gray Unicorns are of course true neutral. In the interests of balance, they have that classic equalizer the ability to make you suffer any damage you inflict on them too. Once again the dramatic irony is strong in this one. Welcome to the justice zone, fae style. Palomino Unicorns fill the LE alignment axis and have fire powers. They probably won't get along with Bay unicorns then. Natural rivals and all that. Pinto Unicorns <s>ejaculate</s> shoot rainbows from their horns. How very very my little pony. They also generate illusions, making catching them a crapshoot between humiliation and death. Send all the twee lot to the Gray Waste. Sea Unicorns are the equine equivilent of selkies, able to assume a narwhal like form or a horsey one. Like a disproportionate number of water monsters, they can control the weather, so expect ship-destroying storms if you mess with their herd. Unisus are a crossbreed between unicorns and pegasi. Flutter Ponies! :fangirl squee!: Sorry, no avoiding that this is one of the most obvious cheese ideas evar. Zebracorns take their camouflage abilities to a logical extreme by being able to shapeshift. They may even assume human form and walk among us. While not evil, they're as stubborn as natural zebras if you try riding them. They'll go when and where they wanna go. As with the earlier sea monster collection, this is a nicely mythic collection that manages to both seem logically derived and still pull a few surprises, as well as having the just about right quotient of cheese for my tastes. I think this lot would be quite usable, really making people think twice about trying to hunt unicorns. Oh, the cautionary tales that would be told. Hee.</blockquote>

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