The Azurth Adventures Digest is Here!

The first issue of the Azurth Adventures Digest is now on sale! Twenty-eight full color pages at 5.5 in. x 7.75 in. with art by Jeff Call and Jason Sholtis. There are random tables for the generation of quirky Motley pirates, a survey of interesting and enigmatic islands, and a mini-adventure on the Candy Isle. Plus, there are NPCs and a couple of monsters, all straight from my Land of Azurth 5e campaign.

Get the pdf here or go here for the print edition. (The link is also in the sidebar.)

For those of you interested in Mortzengersturm print editions: Once the first printing of the digest is sold and shipped, I'll again by selling Mortzengersturm. You can email me to get on the "waiting list."

French Talislanta Art

While the English language Talislanta books are (currently) out of print (but official available for free here) the French translation of the game is still going strong, and apparently has some pretty cool art. Check these out:

The Ur

Phantasians

Mondre-Khan

Wednesday Comics: The Hanging Tower

The Hanging Tower is a short graphic novel (graphic novella?) by Sam Bosma. It's the story of "an old knight in search of a lost girl in a run-down fantasy world" according to the copy, but I might instead describe it as an aging adventurer facing her past (and some of her former comrades) in a world where magic is beginning to fade. The plot and the stories execution bear no small resemblance to the Western genre, an effect accentuate by the fantasyland's material culture, that's like the medieval world being quickly replaced by the turn of the (20th) century and a landscape reminiscent of the American Southwest. There's a bit of loss, a bit of regret, and a laconic over-the-hill badass with some good lines.

Oh yeah, and Sam Bosma's art:

Wizardly Imp-erfections

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the mysterious absence of Kairon the Demonlander Sorcerer but otherwise the usual crew. Their investigation of the rampaging iron woodsmen had led them to the mill, where they discovered an invisible imp. It got away before they could capture it.

Our heroes still had no idea what was going on, but they knew Gargam the misanthropic wizard had told them the Snarts were captives of the woodsmen, and that was not the case. They made their way back to his dilapidated house, giving the remaining woodsmen wide birth. Waylon the Thief spied on Gargam through the window and saw him writing in a great tome. They knocked on his door and told him about the absence of Snarts and the imp. 

Gargam was his usual charming self. He professed no knowledge of the imp, but didn't seem particularly surprised that his assertion about the Snarts proved false. He quickly shuts the door in the party's face, but they decide to put him under surveillance and camp out nearby. When nothing has happened by morning, Waylon and Shade move in to pull a breaking and entering. They are surprised by Gargam's cat, Orias.

Art by JarrodOwen

The cat creates an illusion of itself, then jumps at them, growing in size to over two feet long. Erekose runs in to help, and the three make short work of the fast moving animal. Gargam shows up to acid splash them before they can deliver the coup de grace.

With Gargam's feline familar as a hostage, they demand answers. The wizard reluctantly admits to botching a devil summoning spell he got in correspondence with the Warlock of Lost Lake (now deceased). Gargam hoped to summon a fiend to destroy the mill (he loathes the townspeople) and have the blame put on the Snarts (who he hates). Instead, he got a mischevious imp that promptly ran away and monkeyed with the iron woodsmen, making them cease obeying commands.

The group forces Gargam to perform the ritual and summon the imp again. The imp admits to his had behavior, which he finds very amusing. He begs for his freedom and promises to leave the area. Shade is having none of it. This despoiler of the forest is facing his end. The party fries the imp with scorching rays, sending him back to the Nether Realms.

Next they track down the remains woodsmen and destroy those four, though as always they are tenacious opponents. Shade has a change to use the figurine of a bear she acquired back in the gelatinous dome.

After a brief talk with the townspeople, our heroes once again head out for Rivertown.

A Fae Mist O'er Hangs the Ghostlight Fen

The Ghostlight Fen presents a feature common to this world, but a greater danger in this place, the substance the current human inhabitants often call "magic" but their ancient progenitors called "fae." In the parlance of the original human colonists fae is a system, perhaps even a network, that spans the entire planet and can manipulate matter and energy in accordance with the will of the user. The indigenous species are born knowing how to manipulate this system in various ways, but other can learn to control it. Control is the keyword, and the system is psychoactive and will respond to unconscious mind as easily as the conscious.

Indeed, theorists in ancient times speculated that the fae was a created rather than natural phenomena and the demons from the unconscious of its creators destroyed them, leaving only their creations (the ieldri and others) behind.

Fae permeates and surrounds the world, but in some places it collects and goes awry. Some of those bad places were caused by overstressing the system, as the ieldri sorcerers did in their desperate war against the ylthlaxu. Others may be places where it has just broken down with time. The Ghostlight Fen seems to be one of the former type.

This dysfunction manifests itself several ways, but most particularly: peculiars and visitants. Peculiars are small, discrete areas of reality distotions generated using these tables. Visitants are more pseudo-encounters of weirdness using these tables. The chance of coming across these in a given hex in the Fen per day is as follows:

Green Fen Hex: Peculiar - 20%, Visitant 5%
Pink Fen Hex: Peculiar - 60%, Visitant 30%

Spellcasters and Fae: All arcane spellcasters (not just sorcerers) are subject to something akin to a wild magic surge. After casting a 1st level or higher spell, a roll of a 1 on d20 requires a d100 roll on the table in the 5e PHB. In green hexes, this roll is only required for the first spell cast by an individual caster per hex. In the pink hexes it is required for the first spell of each spell level cast by an individual caster. Clerical casting is only affected in pink hexes and in the manner of green hexes for arcane casters.

Inspirations: The concept of the fae was inspired by C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy, but also borrows from the some of the rationalizations of magic in Hite's Trail of Cthulhu: Rough Magicks, details of  Forbidden Planet (1958), and Roadside Picnic.

Reskinned Monsters of Ghost Light Fen

Here are some monsters that will likely appear in upcoming posts on the Ghostlight Fen hexmap. Some of those, I'll probably give "official" stats at some point, but they can pretty easily be approximate (or replaced) with some existing monsters.

by Wayne Barlowe

Skarzg
Sometimes they run on four legs, sometimes on two. They are gaunt things, like greyhounds the size of men, if greyhounds had rubbery, scabrous hides, and beaked faces full of nightmare teeth. They are very hard to kill, and they will eat anything. They live like animals, but they have speech and are cunning and cruel. [Treat as a troll.]

Gog
Four-haired, fur-covered savages. Their faces are noseless and their skin hangs somewhat loose, which might have the effect of making them appear a bit comical--to someone unacquainted with their propensity to violence and rumored anthropophagy. The variety found in the Ghostlight Fen have indigo colored pelts. [Treat as orcs, with chiefs like bugbears.]

Matagot
Otherworldly creatures with disturbingly human faces and pantherine bodies. They are not to be trusted. [Treat as a Rakhasa, though on the lower end for hit point.]

by Tom Kidd

Bandaryegs
Arboreal, lemurine creatures whose sneak-thievery is nuisance but whose mockery and incessant whispering has uncanny effects on the minds of humans. [Treat as a monkey or similar small animal, but that have an ability like the 5e spell vicious mockery and a troupe may cause an effect similar to dissonant whispers.]

Hexcrawling Ghostlight Fen - Settlements

These relate to the hexmap presented here.

0503 Draum (pop. 80); no real leader but Godo Shrune is a likely spokesman): Actually an abandoned manor built by a successful treasure-hunter, Draum is haunted by squatters who spend their days in deep reverie brought on by use of the muhrdzu fungus that grows nearby (0505). The mushrooms are eaten directly, made into a snuff and then snorted, or for an even more potent effect, smoked. Some rooms in the manor house and in derelict outbuildings hold bodies with clusters of muhrdzu mushrooms sprouting from them. These are the remains of those who wasted away thinking their bodily thirst could be quenched by dream refreshments or starved disdaining the tastelessness of mundane foods compared with the viands of fancy. The living Draumites trade the muhrdzu for food and other necessities.

0207 Gamory (pop. 325; Glatis Malva, Matriarch of the Malva clan): The old, inbred, and sometimes feuding families of Gamory abide through canny exploitation of the grove of black hroke trees planted by their ancestors (0208). The trees’ blood-red sap is valuable in the manufacture of healing salves and hemostatic poultices. Ironically, the Gamoryites are secret adherents to an outlawed cult of human-ieldra transformation, that of the Night Carapaced Mother, that practices human sacrifice by exsanguination in a secret place amid the trees.

0211 Wollusk (pop. 550): Wollusk was built amid the ruins of an ancient fortification from a more lucent age when humankind still possessed much of its ancient technology. A large portion of a wall of some sort of ceramic stands between the town and the Fen,though the ends of its crescent seem to have been melted by some great heat. The town has a larger inn and better facilities for travelers than might be expected for its size, as it serves as a base for treasure-hunters, but none would be reckoned more than middling quality.

Zeniba by Jason Sholtis

Two factions vie for control of the village. Zeniba “the Shrewd” (Fighter 4) styles herself “Mayor-Prefect,” but was originally hired as a bodyguard for the last person to officially hold that office. Her gang is known as the Medioxumate Devils and is based in the cylindrical keep of the ancient fort. She is opposed by the faction of Sodmos Thalur the Vintner. He owns the inn, the tavern, and the brothel serving the two. No wine is consistently available in Wollusk, but Thalur has a monopoly on the sale of muhrdzu snuff and muhrdzu tea, which he adds to whatever spirits are available (typically the local beetle milk mead). Thalur has more men at his disposal (perhaps 20-25) but Zeniba’s 10-12 soldiers are more skilled (treat as Bandits).