Welcome to the RPG Blog Carnival for the Month of March, 2023, on the theme of Taverns, Bars and other places to meet.
Obviously, the important part of the theme is places to meet, this can be where the player characters hang out between adventures, where they meet up with prospective patrons, or perhaps it is where they get together for the first time (“you all meet in a tavern”).
So, let us talk about Taverns, Bars and places to meet. Some ideas: Read the rest of this entry ?
Today is the last day of the RPG Blog Carnival for the Month of February, 2022, on the theme of Something, Something, Dragons so still time to join in!
I had hoped for more participation, but this has been a wierd month with lost of distractions (especially over the last few days!).
Codex Anathema talked about the Draconic Prophecies of Eberron (in Spanish!)
Curato Alain linked to this thread on RPG Geek: Not your Usual Dragon.
My contributions were: Read the rest of this entry ?
Gollaon paced nervously as they waited in the antechamber.
“Be calm, my friend,” said Voddick. “It is not like you to be so ill at ease.”
“I just am not comfortable around . . . them,” the last part was said as a whisper.
“Well, it cannot be helped, sometimes we just have to confront those at the top of the treasure pile,” Voddick said.
“Truth. But still . . . them and their direct servants throw me off my game.”
“Take a deep breath and relax. They are just another tyrant and we have deal with many of those.”
Dragonheart Amulet
These amulets are made for members of the various draconic houses, often serving as badges of authority as well as symbols of loyalty. As symbols of the houses, they are usually worked in the colors and motifs usually used by that house, for example House Hazolai (“Highest Lightning”) works their amulets in crystal and gold designed to catch the light and envoke the image of lightning.
Voddick looked at his shield and then at the white shield born by the champion, he frowned. “Does that now seem . . .”
“Like part of a very large eggshell?” finished Gollaon. “I suspect it is.”
“Surely the only beings with eggs that size are the dragons?”
Gollaon nodded.
“I now wonder who that champion ultimately serves . . .”
Dragon Egg Shield
These shields are made from a section of a dragons egg, some are smooth, others rough, some white, others, other colors. The edges are sometime reinforced with metal and any straps or grips are magically or alchemically attached. The shield is surprisingly light and remarkably durable.
While the dragons, in theory (as well as in Imperial law and pretty much in fact as well) rule the Sea of Stars, they are fairly rarely seen, or are they?
Arguably the most powerful beings in the Sea of Stars are the Dragons, they defeated the gods and usurped mortal rulers to claim the entire world as theirs. Yet, while immortal, they are not invincible, the gods slew them in their hundreds, the Visse Conspiracy -now called the Sen’Tek- murdered scores and many more have been lost to other causes (not least to intra-draconic conflict).
Each dragon is unique but each is knowable, draconic powers follow their boodlines and with proper research a dragon’s powers and possibly weaknesses may be revealed. Confronting a dragon head-on without knowing anything about it is suicidal, confronting one with proper knowledge, preparation and a plan is just exceedingly dangerous. Read the rest of this entry ?
If there can be said to be a nexus of power in the Sea of Stars, it would be the Empress, while she was not the largest, oldest or strongest of the dragons, she was one of the most thoughtful. Further, she proved to be the one who could inspire and unify the dragons into a single terrifying purpose. Partly, she did this through promotion of the philosophy of Dominae, a philosophy that flattered the sensabilities of the dragons, and partly by being charming and convincing. (It has been argued that the Empress is the most charismatic of the dragons, at least to other dragons, but it is hard for non-dragons to know.) Once the gods were torn down, she and her Seven Stars seized the majority of divine weapons and artifacts, and the Empress used them to make herself the most powerful among the dragons through that theft of divine power.
Welcome to the RPG Blog Carnival for the Month of February, 2022, on the theme of Something, Something, Dragons.
Obviously, the important part of the theme is DRAGONS, creatures so central to our conception of roleplaying games that they are half of the title of the “world’s most popular roleplaying game”.
So, let us talk about Dragons. Some ideas:
Let your imagination soar like a flying dragon (and how do dragons fly?).
I hope you find inspiration. Please leave a comment on this post with a link to your submission. As people post link, please take a look as the idea is to share, inspire and bounce of one another’s ideas. At the end of the month, all of the links will be collected as in a hoard in a final wrap up post.
If you are not a blogger hopefully you will be still be inspired. If you start a relevant thread on Reddit or Discord or a forum or whatever, then please post a link to it in the comments so that can be shared too. The more people involved, the merrier! Let us create some wondrous things together!
My first contribution, the Dragon Empress.
Notes: This will be the fourth time the Sea of Stars has hosted the RPG Blog Carnival, the first time back in May, 2017 with the theme of Occult Mysteries, the second time in February, 2019 with the theme of Making Magic Wondrous, and the third was February, 2021, on the theme of Divine Artifacts.
Thanks to Daemons and Death Rays for hosting the RPG Blog Carnival last month on Political intrigue, Courtly drama and Factions.
Image The Seven-Headed Dragon, Fairy Tale by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Illustration by Kay Nielsen, 1925, from the United Archives, and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
With the release of Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, Dragonborn have recieved a rewrite and minor improvement, mostly. So, I have decided to give them a slight rewrite to bring them more in line with the, slightly increased, power level of the “new” dragonborn. You can read the background of how the Dragonborn fit into the Sea of Stars here.
The update game mechanics follow, they are as presented in the SRD except for:
Age. Newly hatched dragonborn grow rapidly with an appetite to match. They walk hours after hatching, attain the size and development of a ten-year-old human child by the age of three, and physically reach adulthood by around fourteen years but are not considered adult until they pass through some sort of coming of age ritual. They can live to be as old as one hundred and fifty years but violence often cuts this short.
Size. Dragonborn are often taller and heavier than human a human of equivalent height, though some are more sinious. Their draconic ancestry is quite obvious. (Size Medium.)
Names have power and true names have the most power over a being, power to shape and control the very nature of that being. It is said the the Empress collected the true names of all the gods before she went to war with them. So, naturally, dragons have become very protective of their true names but none more so then the Empress herself, even before she embarked on her planning to overthrow the gods, she was hiding evidence of who she was and would be. Indeed once the dust had settled after the Sundering, she invoked a great ritual that erased any knowledge of her true name from anywhere in the Sea of Stars; Aa lesser version of that ritual hunted and obscured all references to the true names of her closest agents, the Seven Stars, who run the Imperial Government. In is thought that the only one who knows them now is the Empress.
This has not stopped people from hunting for those true names, after all, they are among the most valuable pieces of information in the Sea of Stars. Lines of scholars have pursued esoteric lines of research across generations, to no avail, or if they have had any success . . . they have not revealed it. Which would be sensible all things considered.
The Empress is careful about the security of her name, herself, the Imperial House, her treasures, all of it for she understands the concept of Nemesis, the due justice that falls to those that succumb to hubris. The Empress considers herself the nemesis of the gods and has no intention of being the next turn of the wheel. She watches for plots and conspiracies, gathers information, develops new techniques for defense and obsessively watches for the return of divine powers to the world. Of course, she understands that someday she will fall, it is that knowledge that drives her to make it as difficult as she can for any who try to drag her down. As she says, “I spent a millennium planning to overthrow the gods, if you intend to overthrow me, you should plan on putting in at least half that much effort before you make your move.”
Notes: The Empress is full of tricks and plans, she did not claw her way to the top of the world just to be pushed out by the first challenger that came along.
Photo (da) Nemesis. Nicolai Abildgaard. Statens Museum for Kunstnull. license CC0 – http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
While gems and gender do not seem to have much in common, they are examples of one thing that dragons care much about, gems, and one they care very little about, gender.
Dragons enjoy anything valuable,be it knowledge, art or precious metals and gems, but the precious metals and gems, the elements of a classic hoard are very important. The spiritual energy of the draconic “soul” resonates with and is reflected by gems and precious metals, producing soothing harmonies and pleasant dreams. The “songs” are sweeter and the dreams more pleasant if the gems are cut and the metals are worked.
Gender, as a construct, matters not at all to dragons. While biological sex matters, somewhat, in matters of reproduction, dragons perceive things purely as a matter of dominance, the sex or gender of the dominant partner is irrelevant, all that matters is who is dominant. Dragons treat others in the same way, the important fact is that the dragon’s dominance is acknowledged and others are submissive to them. They expect people to do what the dragons want them to do and have little patience with societal rules that say people with these bits cannot do that or people with those bits must do this if it gets in the way of what the dragon wants done. Though as very few dragon care to manage the societies they rule that closely, most continue to follow whatever model they had before the Sundering, only slowly changing.
Even in humanish form, the dragons tend to follow the same model, dominance is the key and people should do what they are good at to bring greater wealth and glory to their draconic overlord. Some dragons indulge in pleasures of the flesh while in humanish form, and while some dragon prefer sexual partners of one biological sex or another, most those that enjoy such things are sexual omnivores.
Notes: Just a pair of thing I wanted to discuss that fitted under today;s letter. The Sea of Stars is a very different world from ours in places.
Photo IMG_1223.JPG, Creator pwarne, used with License CC by-nc 2.0.
Sea of Stars RPG Design Journal 