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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5720645" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 252: October 1998part 6/8Nodwick makes a second appearance. And then dies again. Hodey hum. PC Portraits: Our 14 little pictures this month are in theme, portraying adventurers that might want to investigate ghosts and other undead. This means there's a surfeit of individuals that either look haunted or shifty. More moisturiser, less eyeliner! <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" /> Still, do you want your adventurers paying more attention to their grooming than their combat effectiveness? And at least we're pretty chesecake free this time round. Arcane Lore continues to cast it's net a little wider, this time heading off to Ravenloft. Another one fitting for the time of year. I guess they still have no shortage of those kinds of submissions, with White Wolf still nipping at their heels. Hopefully that'll mean the quality stays good. The book of the Requiem is developed by Azalin's lackeys to tie in with his recent metaplot attempts to escape the dark demiplane. It has plenty of spells he knows, and three new ones he obviously can't. Mind control via blood, buffing via blood, which can be reversed at the caster's whim to ensure obedience, and a priest spell to harvest life force from worshippers for the big rituals that he's plotting. All seems to slot into established history fairly neatly. The Tome of the Shackled Mind is a nasty little book of mind-control effects from Dementlieu. As with far too many magical tomes like this, it has it's own agenda, and will control you as much as you control others. Its two new spells are both evil variants on standard mind control, making people <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> up their lives with desire and paranoia, hopefully to your benefit. The Revelations of the Prince of Twilight is a clerical book, produced by a maddened monk. It's another trap, that'll wind up with you getting soul-swapped with an eldrich monstrosity from who knows where. You really don't want that. So all of these are pretty inventive, but none are really player-suitable. Oh, the dilemma. Have fun with your villainous experiences. The ecology of the ghoul: Welcome to the kingdom of the ghouls. You thought that we were merely filthy scavengers, haunting graveyards, feasting on corpses, and not afraid to make a few more corpses should you stray into the wrong area at night. You were oh so very wrong. Heavily inspired by the works of Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, Wolfgang Baur gives us a lengthy and atmospheric ecology that takes a familiar monster, and makes it into oh so much more. If you follow the right rituals, you too can join the ranks of unhallowed dead with your mind intact. Oh, the forbidden things you can learn if you do! Oh, the fun we shall have, singing blasphemous chants to dead gods, and dancing for days on legs that feel no fatigue. Let me still your flesh. Let me free your mind from petty mortal concerns. Let us taste the delicious brains of those who would not understand together. Yeah, this is good stuff, if not quite as cool as the similar treatment of aboleths in issue 131. This stuff may be a bit cliche, but that's because it works. One of the big hooks about the undead is the omnipresent danger that you too can become the monster, all too easily. And once you do, the things that they do won't seem so bad, somehow.</blockquote>

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