Things Are Not Too Sweet on Candy Isle

Our 5e Land of Azurth campaign continues: The party set sail for the Candy Isle, hoping to find Gwendolin Goode and her campanion, the pirate Black Iris. They are accompanied (somewhat reluctantly) by Black Iris's former first-mate, Rarebit Finn. He tells  then he sent Iris and Gwendolin to the Candy Isle by telling them it was the landing site of the Confection Perfection, the candy of the gods said to have fallen from the table of Queen Urania herself.

They find the Candy Isle easy enough, and Black Iris's ship Vixen is anchored in the lagoon. Cog brings his ship through the opening in the rock candy reef and comes along side. The Vixen is abandoned, but for the corpse of a crewman killed by a spear tipped with peanut brittle. Our heroes take the remains launch and go ashore.

The beach is made of luster dust and powdered chocolate. The trees have fronds like fruit leather. Our heroes follow the tracks of humans that seem to be followed by some nonhuman prints. They soon find the jungle holds dangers other than too much sugar: they encounter a giant gummy constrictor, ribbon candy centipedes, and sugar-sucking stirges.

The also find curiously abandon villages and at least one more dead pirate. At the crater, which they presume to be the place where the Confection Perfection fell, they find the body of a red gummy tribesman. When crossing a chocolate stream, they run into a patrol of more such tribesmen armed with peanut brittle-tipped spears, but Kully uses a sleep spell to nullify most of the them.

At the base of the large volcano on the side of the island opposite the lagoon they see an ancient temple made of cyclopean fudge. At its base is a large village--perhaps over a hundred tribesfolk! The group pulls back to consider the best plan of attack as they're convinced Gwendolin is in the temple.

The Historicity of The Witch

I got a chance to check out The Witch this weekend and it was well-worth it. It's a well-executed historical horror film that eschews the jump scares and other tropes of most modern horror in favor of building a sense of dread. (It perhaps resembles in some ways It Follows though in style not content.) Though its a very different film, it would probably make a good double feature with A Field in England.

Anyway, my friend Jack wrote a good review here.

Robert Eggers, the writer-director, emphasized historical accuracy in the film, even down to sampling dialogue from period references (though unfortunately, we do know which specific ones for which piece. Maybe an annotated screenplay will be released?). Here's a post on an early American history blog reviewing the Witch's portrayal of witches compared to period beliefs in the early colonial area.

The New York Public library put together a resource and reading list for the film, including the works Eggers specifically mentions in interviews.

Thedabara the Vampire

Here's an excerpt from the upcoming Mortzengersturm, the Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak:

Thedabara, former chanteuse, actress, and member of the undead, is most often found in her chamber beneathed Mortzengersturm's manor reclined on her chaise, reading a book of decadent poetry, with a glass of brandy mixed with blood (her preferred way of taking nourishment, these days) in her pale hand. She has grown old in the way of vampires who do not fight back against the dwindling of unlife with ever-increasing wickedness, and so she spends most of her time in repose and reminiscence. Her wickedness is more the kind of self-absorption seen in fading celebrities, made only a little less tolerable by her tendency to violence and blood-drinking if she is not indulged or accorded the deference she feels is her due.

She drinks blood only once every few weeks and finds hunting a bother. She entertains visitors beyond Mortzengersturm (and he is a less than ideal conversational partner, as he is as much an egotist as she), much less often. She will greet any party cordially, perhaps offering them a drink (not carrying that she has no more than 4 glasses). Then with exaggerated gestures and dramatic diction, she will regale them with stories of her past exploits on the stage—so long as they will sit and listen.
It is certainly possible for a party to take their leave of her, without provoking her to petulant violence, but it will take a great deal of care.

Here's Jason Sholtis's old school stats for Thedabara:
HD 9, hp: 48, AC 2 [17] Attk: bite (1d10+ level drain) Special: change form, summon wolves/bats, charm

Wednesday Comics: Storm

The next installment of Storm will start next week. Today, check out some art from the series:

A peak into "The Green Hell," the volume after next.

A transformed Ember amid weirdness in the volume "The Seven of Aromater."

Taxman

Working on my taxes this weekend made me think of this class Weird Adventures post: "Death & Taxes."

Nobody in my game ever ran afowl of the Taxmen. Maybe next campaign.

Blackmoor College for the Adventuring Arts

I've been enjoying The Magicians on SyFy, but between it and Harry Potter, I wonder why magic gets all the good schools? There are three other core classes after all.

I'm envisions a fantasy wainscot in the modern world where kids with aptitudes in any of the adventuring arts get trained to save the world that hates and fears them from the monsters from below. And have a lucrative adult career doing it.

I've mused on modern monster fighting before and the existence of dungeons in the modern world (and so have others), but a school for training adventurers is an angle I had never considered. I think it adds an interesting additional element.

Outlaw Velocipede Gangs of Azurth

art by humei YE

In the eastern plains of the Country of Yanth in the Land of Azurth, there are nomads with an unusual mode of travel. These rovers have tamed giant, fast moving arthopods of an unusual sort: the velocipede (as they are called) possesses not a single leg for locomotion, but instead have wheels in place of the usual limbs. It would be quite appropriate to assume some thaumaturgy is responsible for this state of affairs, though the origins of the velocipede are obscure. The nomads keep the breeding and handling of these beasts likewise cloaked in secrecy, presumably to hold the advantage of velocipede-assisted high speed travel for themselves.

The nomads tend to be dispersed in bands or gangs, typically with some totemic banner to unite them. They accessorize their gang livery with things like horned helmets, long hair, and exuberant mustaches. A boy is not counted a man among them until he has tamed his first velocipede, and a woman who wishes to be respected and viewed as equal is well to do likewise. While it would be unfair to say the rovers are universally bandits or raiders, few are at all adverse to these vocations, and they all look down upon the farming or commerce engaged in by more settled folk. The velocipede riders will sometimes hire themselves out as escorts or mercenaries, at least for a time. They will not kill a bard or minstrel, though they will certainly frighten or tease one whose music doesn’t meet their raucous tastes.

Velocipedes: are large creatures, with ability scores like carrion crawlers, though not the attacks other than bite. Their speed on their 6-10 (depending on size and age) wheels is 50 ft. They have a trampling attack similar to a warhorse. They make sputtering noises like Speed Buggy, which their riders claim to understand.

Children's toy based on stories of Velocipedes, bearing little resemblance to the real creature