Project 1: Wasted Souls & Twisted Dreams

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joyblood's picture
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Project 1: Wasted Souls & Twisted Dreams

This is an outline of our first PDF book!

Wasted Souls & Twisted Dreams

Chapter 1: Hidden Evil
An introduction to what the book is about

Chapter 2: The Horde
Flavour introduction to Hordlings giving an idea of the Hordling mindset and existence

Chapter 3: Hopeless eternally
Individual Hordlings as examples

Chapter 4: March of the Horde
Hordling introduction adventures and adventure seeds

Chapter 5: Cauldrons and corpses
Flavour introduction to Night Hags giving an idea of their mindset and existence

Chapter 6: Nightmare ladies
Individual Night Hags as examples

Chapter 7: Dreams out of hell
Night Hag introduction adventures and adventure seeds

Chapter 8: Enter the Waste
Locations in the Gray Waste, related to Night Hags and Hordlings

Chapter 9: Rites of Denial
New spells, magical items and rituals connected to Night Hags and Hordlings

Chapter 10: Deeds better left undone
New skills and feats... better left unlearned

joyblood's picture
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Project 1: Wasted Souls & Twisted Dreams

Some more info on how to contribute:

Chapter 1: I’ll write this up when all other chapters are ready

Chapters 2 & 5: These are meant to be something like the introductions in „Faces of Evil: The Fiends“. The only difference is, we don’t need to stick to one text, and the lengths may vary. We should stay at three or four entries per chapter, though. I myself will definitely write one per chapter.

Chapters 3 & 6: Every entry in this chapter should contain the following:
- Name, Location, Classes (if available)
- Character background including personal aims
- The Dark: Most important secrets of this character
- Statistics (optional): For Night Hags only if they differ from the standard Night Hag entry; for Hordlings a basic stats block containing ability scores and special abilities, immunities and vulnerabilities

Chapter 4 & 7: Adventure outlines should be at least one page long, but no more than three pages. Adventure seeds can be anywhere between a paragraph and half a page. These adventures are not yet meant to spill any major darks of Night Hags & Hordlings, they are meant to introduce players and DMs alike to the feeling of playing adventures in the Gray Waste, and of how to deal with our two featured races (and what to expect from them).
I myself will write up at least one adventure outline for each chapter. The Hordling adventure outline will be about facing a „real“ Horde, i.e. a ravaging mass of Hordlings out to destroy anything in their way... but, of course, with a twist.

Chapter 8: I like how Armoury99 wrote up locations in the following thread: /forum
We should stick to that format for future locations.

Chapter 9: Spells and magic items are written up in the standard 3.5 format. Please focus on evil magic; spells and items to counter the Horrors of the Waste will be published in future PDFs.
Rituals tend to be more vague than spells, while on the same time being more powerful. Descriptions shouldn’t be in stats-blocks like we know it from spells, rather they should include a flavour description ending with the following:
- Short summary of the ritual’s effect (one or two sentences)
- Necessary parts of the ritual (short list, like „Mistletoe and the finger of a god“)
- Premises and backfire effects: What needs to be done to find out about the rite, and what can happen merely by knowing the ritual
- Characters (optional): Individual characters that know about the ritual, or that can help in finding out or performing it

Chapter 10: Skills and feats of the nasty kind, which could be learned by Night Hags and Hordlings, or teached to characters that serve them or are otherwise linked to them.

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Giddy feeling of excitement, most unWaste-like! This all looks great. Notes and comments:

The location format is taken from the 2e Planescape Box Set, if anyone want's a peak for further info. I'll summarise the guidelines here though (there's a similar-looking guide to Realms as well):

Quote:
Character. Just because it's not living, that doesn't mean a town's got no personality. Character's part the general alignment of the place, and part the nature of what happens there.

Ruler. This tells a sod who's officially in charge - name, race, class, and level - and what that supposed chief is like to deal with. Be sure to check the next entry to find out who's really in charge.

Behind the Throne. Just because a berk rules a town, it doesn't mean he's the only boss. Most times there's one or more other groups trying to pull the strings. A wise cutter takes time to find out who's really the high-up man in the local operation.

Description. Here, the layout of the town's presented so that things said later'll make sense.

Militia. Player characters seem to get messed up with the local authorities a lot. This entry tells who's in charge, what they've got to command, and just what kind of attitude they're likely to have in response to the mischief player characters are likely to cause.

Services. This is the same as the entry for realms: a listing of places to go and things to buy that could be useful to a band of danger-loving toughs.

Local News. Gossip's always useful, and a wise cutter keeps his ear to the ground. This entry gives some of the chant the locals are likely to know.

I'll definitely do at least one adventure outline for one section or another - probably expanding on one of the hooks in my previous posts.

Do you have a similar template for NPCs?

Based on this quote of Hippo's....

'The Great Hippo' wrote:
Every word of this is true. Anyone who says differently is a damn liar...

...I think that it would be a nice stylistic touch if all our 'explanations' began roughly the same way (i.e. something variation on the aove). Just a suggestion though, don't want to hamstring anybody's creativity... least of all mine!

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One suggestion: If Chris Avellone will allow it, perhaps Ravel should be one of the Hags in the individuals chapter? Perhaps her as of a few months before PS:T and without so much of the tie in to TNO? Just Ravel, the witch who would solve the Cage and free the Lady?

Kay
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'Hymneth' wrote:
One suggestion: If Chris Avellone will allow it, perhaps Ravel should be one of the Hags in the individuals chapter? Perhaps her as of a few months before PS:T and without so much of the tie in to TNO? Just Ravel, the witch who would solve the Cage and free the Lady?

I doubt this is possible without completely revising the Night Hags in general. Wich might be a worthy undertaking since I think the image presented by Avallone is much stronger and intense than the standart Hag. Also, there should be more room for developing individual traits of any Hag, like the affinity to certain schools or forms of magic. I remember back in PS:T when The Nameless One confronted his mortality you could choose to point out that it was just one of Ravel's creations, being all tree-like and such.

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I was also thinking about including Ravel in this book. But, I think simply putting her in the list as one of many doesn't measure up to her. She needs a bit more... excitement Smiling

What do you think about the idea of putting up a character that hints at Ravel? Maybe just another Night Hag, maybe someone close to her... or maybe Ravel herself, who has returned?

@Zeniel: Maybe you could ask Chris about this, too? Would be great to have a character entry written by him!

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Quote:
Chapter 6: Nightmare ladies Individual Night Hags as examples

Does that mean something like "most notable hags"? If so here is idea for them: In greek mytholgy there was covenant of 3 hags (probably night), with one twist: crones were blind and toothless (I think there was third thing but I cant remember what it was). They had only one eye and one tooth wich they shred with other: so when one had eye other two were blind, when one had tooth other two were hungry.

These hags were helpless without their stuff so they often ofered to helped heros who stole their stuff in exchange of stuff return (Perseus for example). But I imagine that these sisters mutilated themselwes to gain even grater power arcane.

EDIT: they were calles Graeae: or "gray sisters/witches" (but some call them Stygian Sisters and that sounds lot like Gray Waste and Night hags), and even their names are something a night hag would carry with pride: Deino ("dreadfull"), Enyo ("horror" or "devourer of cities") and Pnemphedo (wich means "alarm" or "alert" or even "unease").

__________________

One-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater says: "Monsters are nature's way for keeping XPs fresh."

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Most notable and most interesting Smiling

Quote:
But I imagine that these sisters mutilated themselwes to gain even grater power arcane.

... or they were punished.

Or both.

The Great Hippo's picture
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I think it would be far more elegant to merely hint at her without ever actually saying her name. Mention the whole branches and seed thing, as well as perhaps a few spells similar to her flavor and maybe even a mention in one part where she's referred to anonymously ("a night-hag who tried to solve the riddle of Sigil").

Just going "HERE'S RAVEL PUZZLEWELL" *statblock* removes a lot of her mythical flavor.

joyblood's picture
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Agreed - that's kinda what I meant, just didn't point it out too well Eye-wink

Zeniel's picture
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@joyblood. I'll ask him when he gets back to me on the questions. He asked me to ping him on monday about them and today he said ping recieved and hes getting to work answering them. So when thats all in the bag I'll ask him bout it.

Woo lets get to work people! We gotta job ta do! Dadadadadum!

joyblood's picture
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Project 1: Wasted Souls & Twisted Dreams

Big thanks to you! This is really a great opportunity! Laughing out loud

joyblood's picture
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Please use this thread to point to article suggestions for this project. Only suggest your own articles, of course. Eye-wink

Please DON'T post entire articles here, start a new thread for every article you want to submit for this project, and post the link to that thread here. This way we don't drown in discussion posts here... Smiling

joyblood's picture
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Chapter 2: The Horde

A Hordling to be...
(title might change later - I'm open for suggestions, please use the article thread for that)

[url]/forum]

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Just to inform everyone all the data on hordling n' hags that I could be bothered mustering is complete and ready for viewing.

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Chapter 3: Hopeless eternally
Chwizzl, the "Spitting Dog"
[url]/forum]

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Attention people, Chris Avellone has gotten back to me finnaly and the questions are ready for viewing.

@Joyblood I'll also ask him your final one if he'd like to help contribute.
To which he has just replied.

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Thoughts:

Root Wyrd aka Niflheim Druids: A group of Hag, Tiefling, etc druids that dwell near the base of the world-tree. Possibly maintaining dwellings in the crannies amongst the roots. They focus greatly upon philosophy, destiny and fortune telling.

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