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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 3986127" data-attributes="member: 20323">Witching GroundsOk, I went back to the drawing board, and here's what I came up with...Witching GroundCore Ethos: Benighted heroes raise the phoenix banner against oppression, but in these haunted lands the real fight is for personal redemption, liberation, and awakening.Heroes: Lysander, eldest son of Thane Bayethdeir, is a devout Knight of the Chalice, emulating Saint Elaesin through his charitable works, and renowned for rescuing clergy during the Great Fires. What folks don’t know is that Lysander, in a fit of jealousy, abandoned his best friend to die in a well and he walks the “holy path” to atone for his grave sin.Nettle is an acerbic ranger hardened to the guerilla warfare the peasant revolutionaries wage against the remnants of the empire. One of the cauldron-born who escaped servitude to the Hag Queens, he carries the spirit of a ghostly crusader who died fighting Nettle’s ancestors; Nettle struggles to find peace with this animating spirit while exacting his revenge on the Hag Queens.Sulys is a doe-eyed faun, an ingratiating guide to the Avel Wold with a voice like a babbling brook. However, there is something forced about his good will; in fact, Sulys is one of the glimmerfolk – conmen illusionist bards – and was cursed by the wood hag for his prodigious lies. Sometimes lost travelers never return from the Avel Wold, left to the wood hag who Sulys appeases to avoid his gruesome fate.Urathne, an eladrin heir to the Everautumn Throne, has the blood of witches in her veins, and is one of the greatest intellectual minds of her day, conducting alchemical experiments that push the frontiers of magic and science. Her dark secret, if revealed, could destroy her reputation and end her life – Urathne is slowly being possessed by a warlock in the Mirror World.Threats, Conflicts & Villains: The Church negates the peasants’ belief in an afterlife, defacing village idols and graves, even as it provides aid to farmers and guards religious pilgrims. Meanwhile, within the Church a debate rages about the nature of grave sins, and the threat of a sectarian fracturing is imminent.The throne of Lost Darsidar has been vacant for over a quarter century, but recent competing claims to the throne are rapidly polarizing would-be heirs along racial lines. Euphides, the masked oracle of Darsidar, refuses to acknowledge any of the claimants.Ravaging mercenaries like the Farseer and Skullhelm Banners, once imperial soldiers, occupy villages when not fighting in nobles’ feuds, depleting larders, press-ganging youth, and hanging imperial loyalists.Scions of the Witch Queens plot for a return to the halcyon days of High Witchcraft, allying with shadow fey – hags, satyrs, redcaps, goblins, trolls – who seek to subvert society in their image.Witch-finders of the Empire hunt down those with the gift for magic, to twist them to the Emperor’s will.  Holy Inquisitors flush out cultists and warlocks, using ruthless tactics to achieve their ends. Courtiers with secret ties to thieves’ guilds and occult secret societies, manipulate events to seize power. All the while, the rakshasa simmer in the Mirror World, waiting for the chance to restore their Silent Empire.Nature of Magic: Mysterious and fluid, magic is a force of change in the world of Ythra – like a stone cast into a lake, the more powerful the spell the further ripples will be felt. Yet magic also obeys rules of familiarity and sympathy, and wizards and witches alike make use of foci and components. Magic is also bound to times of power (phases of the moon, seasonal celebrations, meteor showers) and places of power (sacred groves, faerie cairns, dragon thrones).What’s New: Heroes carry dark secrets – personal quests which can destroy them or remake them like the phoenix born from its ashes. Secret societies and cabals lead the resistance against the empire, each with a different vision for utopia and a different motive for heralding the phoenix’s return.</blockquote>

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