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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5644864" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997part 7/8The dragon's bestiary: A tied in entry here, as they detail talisman servants from Netheril. Magical automation is a topic that's been covered in here before, but it's not often you encounter a society that takes full advantage of it. If the Realms and all it's lost empires destroyed by malfunctioning magic are any indicator, there may be a good reason for this. Still, they left plenty of cool stuff behind. As long as you only use it, don't try and replicate it & sell it you should be fine. Caravan Servants serve as both beast of burden and possibly place to live as well. They don't need feeding either and have enough volition and loyalty to act independently to help you, so one of these is a hell of a lot more handy than a mule. If you meet a wizard with one of these don't kill it when you kill him. Gladiator Servants fight your opponents with style, until they go psycho and attack everything, including you. A textbook example of let the buyer beware. Mystran servants have a bunch of magical abilities to help them serve as guardians better. They too have their quirks, but are unlikely to be a problem for their masters, aside maybe from adding a little comic relief to proceedings. A quite good set of creatures really. The ecology of the mongrelman: From one of the sexiest creatures in the D&D universe, to one of the ugliest. Which is a pretty interesting distinction, when most humanoids tend to have an average charisma substantially below human. Awkward, short-lived (even shorter when you consider how many of their children are stillborn or die shortly afterwards because they just weren't viable) and oppressed by everyone, mongrelmen really are the bottom of the kicking pile. Course, much of this is because they just sit there and take it. They have a number of tricks that mean if they were more aggressive, they could easily deal with the likes of goblins and orcs, and their class learning abilities are well above average. But no, they were bred to be stoic, and stoic they shall be. Rather sweet really, and certainly makes them stand out against the usual ravening hordes adventurers have to deal with. This also answers the question of where they come from with a neat little twist that both makes their personalities make more sense, and makes them seem even more tragic. And finally, we get quite a bit of new crunch, good for both players and DM's. Another excellent ecology, hitting both the crunch and fluff buttons square on. The doldrum days of the early 90's seem well behind us in this department. Ellcia. More bright anime adverts to break up the flow of the magazine. The statement of ownership is halved in size again, to make it even harder to spot. Not surprising, since this year of chaos has really done a number on reader confidence. Particularly hit has been the number of subscribers, which is down by over a 6th. With average sales of 53k, and last month ones of 49, they seem to be starting to flatline. Lets hope next year brings some serious improvements on this front. KotDT divides the party. This is what happens when you don't read the instruction manual for dealing with deities. Hiding in shadows is easy when the shadows are big, as they are in swordplay. Dragonmirth also features some serious equipment, but they still can't use it all at once. Floyd has some more serious exposition.  And the plot thickens.</blockquote>

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