Both of your answers were immensely helpful. Thank you.
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Originally Posted by Farland
What is a "spell gem"?
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I'll take that as a no. :P In that case, how about they are a fairly recent invention? (War is the best catalyst for innovation after all.)
I think spell gems are originally a 3.5e mechanic. It is basically a gem which has been enchanted to be able to hold a spell which can be used as an action. It's not the easiest thing to craft a spell gem, but once made, it can be recharged with new spells up to once a day by most any spell caster (who knows the spell they're charging it with). Spell gems also have levels, so a level 2 spell gem can only have 1st or 2nd level spells.
Specifically, I wanted to give one to a player to start the game. A level 1 dwarf rogue swipes it to help in his first mission across enemy lines (a rescue mission). I'll put a sleep spell or something in it. It will help explain how a handful of level 1 players are able to get out of a (semi-)heavily guarded prison area.
I'll have a section about a variant of spell gems in a post I'm working on about merchantry (I have a section devoted to gems and their pricing).
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Originally Posted by Farland
Dragonborn in Farland all started out as red. But my conception of their color is similar to yours. Their color diversified over the years, through mystical, natural, and divine blessing. So now among the evil kind, all the chromatic colors are represented, and among the good king, chromatic as well as metallic colors exist. But remember, in general Dragonborn are pretty rare outside of Wawmar.
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The plan is for a small clan of green dragonborn (and copper children) who live in the outskirts of Orland to be recaptured by the forces of the Lord of Greed. The clan is split and imprisoned separately. The player will be freed by a small group of rebels (the dwarf rogue being one of them), and will begin her personal quest to find and free her clan/family (or at least that is her plan, whether she succeeds or not is to be seen).
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Originally Posted by Farland
Hmmm, I don't personally love the idea of giant crows. What about Wyverns or some form of smaller Wyvern-like creatures lacking the stinger, if you want to make them less powerful?
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I overlooked Wyverns initially because I associate them so much with dragons (sentient beings and all that). But I think I like the idea of having "domesticated" Wyverns better than crows. And their lack of stingers could be similar to how cows have horns in the wild but not on farms.
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Originally Posted by Farland
Hmmm, if you want to keep it Canon, Wrath has 5 Cancellors who together hold the most power in the Kingdom after Wrath himself. However, if you want to retain your 7 Marshalls idea, which I like, you could easily make them the top ranking officers in his Crimson Lion Guard, his elite battalion of body guards. And it certainly would not be above Wrath to scheme against the Dweller, or maybe only one of his personalities is scheming.
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Fair enough. Though I'm a little confused about the Crimson Lions. Is it a whole legion? Because in some places it's referred to as a legion, and others as a guard. It could be both, but I'm thinking it's probably not a legion, because if the hobgoblin 1st legion is already occupying Far City, another legion there would make the city a very crowded place.
The original idea of the 7 Marshals was to have something along the lines of "level bosses". They would go around the occupied kingdoms (mostly Farland) in the place of the Lord of Wrath. It seems like a bodyguard, especially as described on the site, would just be extra strong forces needed to be overcome before facing the lord himself.
I was hoping for the Lord of Wrath to have few handpicked individuals who would go about taking care of business and even lead his troops if needed. One of which is one of the lords own sons (the strongest and smartest), a Cambion who greatly despises his father, but keeps it mostly under wraps part out of fear and part out of reluctant respect. (I want him to lead a force of Gnolls. I'd say that a "Gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu" can be possessed by any Demon, so this son of the Lord of Wrath can easily accommodate this. The Gnolls are his way of secretly building a loyal force with which to usurp his father. Intrigue GALORE!)
Perhaps rather than being directly connected to the military, they could be something like a secret police? But in that case I'm not really sure what their titles would be. Ideas?
PS. I do have a basic outline for them and am working on stats. Once I know exactly how to organize them, I'll post their info.
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Originally Posted by Farland
Okay, really cool idea. As far as making it Canon, the answer is, I am not sure. A lot of it might depend on the official write-up submitted. I am not loving the name. It might have a better chance of becoming Canon if you changed your creature to a personage mentioned in the histories, such as Seldorius of Farland, and worked it out that way.
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Im not particularly attached to the name, it just seemed like a name that mad hag would have. And the creature was my explanation for why/how she's been around for so long to collect all of these artifacts.
What if I say it's instead one of the Aelfarian mages who were researching and creating magic items back at around 3000? He/She is dabbeling in dark magic, and the effects drive the mage mad (perhaps achieves immortality by loosing their sanity, kind of a reverse lich). The mage flees into seclussion, carrying many already created magic items with them. The rest of the description I gave for Mad'am Gurgletongue would apply to this insane mage who develops a love for collecting things.
Although, one nice thing about it being a demented hag is then she can exist before humans. Thus, she could have collected King Walin IV who vanished in 10,002 er.