Runes of Slavonia

Over the past week, I've worked on a bit of side lore for the players in my homebrew world [Akura]. The endgame is to have a rough system to allow them and any future adventurers in my custom world to craft their own magical properties, though I imagine it'll have to just be up to the Game Master's discretion what the effects of various runes do. Balancing that will probably prove far too difficult. Still, feel welcome to use the image for your own campaigns. There is also an uncolored-ish version towards the middle of the post if you want to save on ink.

The infographic goes into the abridged information on runes. Lore wise, runes are rechargeable, magical, storage cells that enhance an item in a specific manner. What the rune does depends on both the type of rune (shield, strength, life, shadow) and the type of magic placed within (fire, holy, necrotic, radiant). One example is the rune of Resurrection, which is also in the game known as the Mark of Charon. If the rune is imbued with holy magic, it can assist in healing spells and even reviving recently killed people. If the rune is imbued with necrotic magic, it causes necrotic damage and can raise undead creatures.

There are a few ways to create magical runes:

1. Gather several magical components and simply draw the runes out. This process is the cheapest; however, the runes are weaker and more unstable. Should the rune be damaged (smeared, washed away, flaked off, et cetera) the remaining magic inside will dissipate, often it is violent.
2. Gain some form of magically imbued oil. This creates a more stable rune than the first, and it is easier to change magical properties of the runes at a later date. The magical oil etches the runes, and the crafter applies magical types to the various runes.
3. One can use certain metals like silver, gold, or even bronze to forge in the runes. During the forging process the magic must be applied to the runes before quenching. This method creates the most stable of runes, which allows more power to be applied. The downside is that forging in the runes costs an immense amount of resources, simply for the need to find a runecrafter skilled enough to do it.

Runes of different types can be combined in various orders to create a new effect. For example, using the Steal and Life runes together will create a means of taking life energy from anyone that touches the rune. Adding the Combat rune before the others will mean life energy is only stolen when striking a foe with the runed object. Adding Shelter at the end [Combat, Steal, Life, Shelter] will allow for the stolen life energy to transfer to the person using the runes.

That's all assuming the above rune combinations are using necrotic magic. What would happen if the same runes were filled with fire magic? Well, the target's heat would be transferred to the wielder. Removing the shelter runes [Combat, Steal, Life] will turn the runed object into a weapon that slowly freezes the opponent with every strike.

Not all rune combinations work, nor are the same ones exactly the same. Contradictory runes could simply fizzle out or cause a magical discharge. It is for that reason runes are so costly to make, the skill required is immense. The crafter needs knowledge on forging, or at least oil etching, and also have a well of magic ready to imbue the runes.

What happens when a rune runs out of magic? Often times the puts new magic into the runes, either by themselves, or by returning to a runecrafter. Forged runes simply gather latent power from the world around them over time. Drawn runes break down and loose all power. Oil-etched simply need to be recharged manually.

I also feel like discussing Charon there on the left. Initially his side of the screen included text based around some of his origin (after all this is meant for my players). Then I considered how known of them bother with those questions, so why give them an answer they don't care about. Still, me knowing his backstory helps with portraying the character. To do that Charon was made to look injured, battered, and his very touching of the sword hilt was rusting it. I hope I did a good job of causing that effect.

Uncolored Version

This portion of the post is about how I made that picture. First I started with an image of a preexisting sword. Initially I was going to keep everything about it and throw the runes on, then call it done. However, madness whelmed over me and I began to just construct the blade and hilt around it.

The hilt was initially meant to be scythes that pointed down toward the blade. The design changed as the hilt obscured white space for the text, and as I began applying color the hilt began to look more like metal horns. The skill in the center was partially traced from another image [Death Knight icon from World of Warcraft]. The coloring of it was completely me though.

The skull was the second most difficult thing to color in. A big reason of that was to get the shading right for the various curves and divots that come with skulls, also to account for light being made by the eyes. Some of the bone, and the metal ring around it, has a faint amount of blue placed on top.

Charon was the hardest thing to draw. I have little experience drawing humanoid forms, and the amount of detail made it difficult to color. The bandages may seem white from a distance but they are more of an off-white, with a degree of shading in various places to subtly indicate where some bandages wrap over others. Much like with the leather wrapping of the sword handle, I needed to keep the black lines to help make the edges distinct from a distance. Charon's metal armor piece were larger, so I was able to just make dark shading to create that same sense of depth without black lines.

The other issue with Charon was what color palette should he have. I didn't think his armor should be grey, as that would blend with the sword hilt he was on too much. I also couldn't get his hood and robe to be a shade of black; rather, I couldn't make it look appealing. I decided that I would use the tarnished bronze color of the adjacent skull ring for his armor, but darker. That way it would give off that Charon's armor was old and lost its sheen over time, same for making his hood a light gray, to make it appear his clothes lost color. The red was just placed to break up the grey and white colors on his form.

The final touches were the low opacity colors placed over Charon, the skull, and the runes below the hilt. First-off, I kept the rune of resurrection free of the glow effect simply due to how the light blue clashed so much with the amber surroundings. The light blue represented magic that came from Charon, as the same colors wisped out through his bandages to signify how barely kept together the death god is.


I used the color blue for him, simply because I had arbitrarily chosen that color earlier on in the campaign for whenever necromantic magic was used. It's my way of keeping some consistency amongst imagery. Other glowing runes represented their category. Green for the elements and general nature magic, purple for more arcane magic, yellow for holy/life magic, and red for more maleficent magic. I also tried to keep the particle effects of the runes different to help distinguish them.

Thanks for reading.

Atypical Characters: Rogue Sage

A tall figure in grey cloth and darkened leather sneaks through the hallway of the manor. The waning gibbon etches light past velvet curtains. A twinkle of tarnished copper streaks off the figure's scales that still show. She reaches the study and pulls out a lone molted book. With graphite and parchment she furiously etches down key phrases and notes from the bookmarked places. It wasn't the first night Sora came to gather this vital information, and it won't be the last. She places everything back in order and leaves, within a week her newest research material will be completed.

Rogues are often thought of to be sleek and nimble beings in fantasy,so a decent start to break the mold is to pick a dragonborn, which ranged from six to seven feet tall. For this character I started off with personality because ability scores and personality don't have to align at all. They can just be used to help get ideas flowing.

The charlatan and criminal backgrounds are better fit for a rogue, but I wanted to try something new. I picked sage because it can leave upon a background where the character is educated. The character likes research, has probably taught at a place of learning, and might not have much experience doing rogue activities.

I also gave a neutral good alignment for added complexity. Its easy to imagine an evil or chaotic character stealing something. Evil doesn't care about people's feelings, and chaos does whatever it wants even if it does care. Neutral just tries to get by, and good does the morally best it can. Having a neutral good rogue means the character will pick the moral option most of the time, whether it works within the bonds of the law or not is only relevant if breaking the law will get them in trouble.

It is meant to imply the character will only take on safe jobs, jobs that have little chance of failure. But, also jobs that in the end are doing good, at least what they find good. That's why in the opening to this post the character is just copying information from the book. If they took the book, the owner would go looking for it. If caught, the character is charged with breaking and entering not burglary. Its a rogue that plays it safe, and they aren't necessarily motivated by gold but by a thirst for knowledge.

Thanks for reading, as always.

New Page: Homebrewed

Alright, I made a new page which I will update more over time. The page is actually going to contain notes on the custom world I make people play Dungeons and Dragons in. You are more than welcome to borrow ideas from it. That will be all for now, but there will be a new Atypical Character posted next week, as I made 3 new ones and modified some of the older ones for that Ruination of Bran version 2 module I'm making.

Edit: I also changed the site layout a tad. Hopefully navigation will be easier for y'all.

Homebrewed: Akura

Atypical Characters: Empathetic Villian

Been a while since I made one of these posts, but there will be more to come. For my Ruination of Bran V.2, I'll making a series of atypical characters that will go with the module. Hopefully I'm not putting too many eggs in the same basket. The main aspect of what makes this character atypical is their personality traits for the class. Please meet Krannark Holloweye.

As you can see Krannark is a Half-orc Warlock who is Lawful Evil. For the most part that seems straightforward. Half-orc starting stats are more designed toward melee combat [+1 Constitution and +2 Strength]. But, it's reasonable to use one as a warlock because in the Forgotten Realms [original] setting for D&D Half-orcs still here whispers of the Grummash, chaotic evil orc god of storm and war.

Krannark though is not exactly a bloodthirsty creature. His alignment is lawful to show there are clear and methodical methods to his actions; furthermore, his personality trait is, "I feel tremendous empathy for those that suffer." For an evil warlock that seems odd. Empathy implies that he feels or understands the feelings of another. Does that make him knowledgeable on other people's motives and actions, is that why his charisma is above average?

The above fills in the character's motives. Ignoring the parts meant to accommodate the Ruination of Bran module, the warlock is clearly on a path of pragmatism. He wants to ultimately do good, hence why a chaotic good deity like Titania is giving him power. Krannark knows there is a price to power, while he feels for the pain of others he also knows that what pain he causes now is nothing compared to the vision he saw.

Some might argue that a character that is so chaotically good becoming lawful evil is unrealistic, but this is a path Krannark has been on for twenty years. He still feels somewhat bad about those he must hurt for the ultimate goal, which is why he tattoos himself for every sentient being he kills. Krannark is meant to come across as a complex character that would be fun to role-play.

When it comes to combat, Krannark is a glass cannon/paper tiger. As a warlock he'll have plenty of spells that will be strong through his charisma modifier, and as a half-orc he has decent strength for melee. His low dexterity makes him easy to hit however, being a warlock he also has very little health. The racial feature Restless Endurance offers some cushion should Krannark fall in battle. He also has decently high intimidation and more importantly Fey Presence. Those two skills could easily be used to get him out of fights.

A suggested manner to play Krannark is as the schemer of the group. He is lawful evil, so he will work with the group even if they are good alignments because they are a means to an end. Lawful characters like structure and hierarchies. Krannark wants to be at the top or at least control the top because that is where more power lies. If the party does something he disagrees with however it is very likely the warlock will use his downtime to tie up loose ends. He's not petty enough to actively cause harm for the party or betray them, having useful underlings is hard to achieve, but he does believe that the ends justify the means.

In combat, Krannark would most likely stay towards the back of the fighting, as he has low hit points and armor class. -1 to initiative will also make it more likely Krannark won't be moving to the front of the group during combat. I gave him three dagger [could choose any simple weapon and get two daggers] because he didn't need much range capability due to cantrips. It can be useful to have daggers to throw as a last desperate act, or to test for traps. For similar reason I forsook the option to start with a light crossbow and instead picked a sickle. The sickle is more because I don't see it used much, and he probably using it to harvest herbs for his herbalism kit.

Thanks for reading, I'll see about making a few more atypical characters for future posts. Also to use them in a test run of the Ruination of Bran module I'm making them for. Reason being, I don't know what an appropriate starting level would be for them. The test run(s) will help with balancing as well.

See you next week.

Ruination of Bran v2 Update

Cover Art

Ruination of Bran is progressing quite well. Most of my work on it so far has been adding content in the form of lore snippets and pathways for players to take. More specifically if statements for likely things the party would try E.G. "If the party wants to here a story from the book. . . <a short fairy tale on the founding of Bran>."

Redone Version of Shops Area

There have been some formatting changes implemented as well. Many have been switching pictures around, changing section/ subsection orders, and so on. I try to keep the information given as brief and concise as possible to avoid information overload for the Dungeon Master (DM). Following that there have been a few custom maps created to compliment the module.

Pontoon Fight

There isn't a map for every situation yet, nor do I think it will be entirely necessary. Ruination of Bran does what it can to take into account a DM will be the one using it, often stating that something is up to the DM to decide. That is why after monsters or other nonplayer characters (NPCs) are stated there is a page marker for where in the Compendium section the related stats are, along with said page number being linked. Though, I will admit there are no return links, for many are reused and it would take considerable space.

There are changes to the stats of the many custom NPCs in the Compendium section as well. The original module was made when I had only beginner knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Many of the attack descriptions are inconsistent and mistake hit chance for the average damage. Next is the Challenge Rating. I don't bother with it when I DM, but others do. It will need to be made balanced and given to all the NPCs. Most work needs to be done on custom NPCs, which there are many.

Proper Action set up

The module still hasn't been properly tested for balancing issues, my core D&D group hasn't been able to meet for some time. I will most likely need to take some of the character archetypes I plan to add to the Module [as optional characters for quick pick up games] and just roll through part of the module with them. Below is a list short list of character s I want to add. Some of them already exist due to my Atypical Character series, and the rest will probably be used too. Too many provided characters are the overused [highly effective yet overused all the same] archetypes you'd get doing the Quick Build option in the Player's Handbook. I want to give players an experience, and these more unique race/class combinations should do it.

Race	Class	Description
Human	Barbarian	Ranged/ Stealth
Tiefling	Cleric	Trickster Domain
Half-Orc	Warlock	Low Int High Evil
Dragonborn	Rogue	Surprisingly sneaky
Dwarf	Fighter	Axe-thrower
Gnome	Druid	Bad at his job
Halfling	Ranger	Has no combat spells
Elf	Monk	Pacifist
Half-elf	Paladin	Oathbreaker

Fin

Asteria Rising: Update 6

This post will be a tad rushed as I was quite busy this weekend. In all honesty not much progress has been made with Asteria Rising due to my focus on the new Ruination of Bran. I will take time to state some ideas fluctuating in my head, and maybe by next weekend have a preview of more work on Asteria Rising done or Ruination of Bran version 2.

I had a sit down with my sibling whose head is less in the clouds. Bouncing ideas off, I found that my initial concept for a super complex disease system wouldn't work. Namely because this is supposed to be me making the game I and my core D&D group would want to play. Half of us have A.D.D. and four-fifths have their children begging for a butt whooping at every session—complex rules don't work with us because we can never stay focused on them.

To sum up an hour-and-a-half conversation, I went and reconsidered why I was making this game. The first reason was to have a Science-Fiction environment for playing D&D. Looking back through monster ideas in my memo App. I saw that all monsters were meant to be semi-realistic. That is a key factor of Science-Fiction—time is taken to make things believable—just hoping for suspension of disbelief alone would be Space-Fantasy.

My second reason was to make the wilderness dangerous. Looking through videos, mainly by the Web DM and Mathew Colville YouTube channels, there are references to old school D&D where just making it back to town was an achievement in itself. More importantly during my first campaign that I ever ran for D&D we skipped the wilderness 95% of the time.

My core D&D rarely got to meet, so whenever we had a quest the players wanted to just skip random encounters and keep any story telling to set the seen to a minimum. However, two of our better sessions dealt with random encounters. The first was for a one session quest where the party needed to investigate a new disease that was hitting very precise economic and military areas in town.

The party went to the first town on the road, did some investigating, murdered all the survivors, then kept traveling to the Night Owl's Inn. When they set out, I rolled for some hostile creatures I wrote down the week before. First day they [the party] were just told they felt like they were being watched in this open expansive grassland. That night I just mentioned there was a hawk in a tree looking at them. Second day, the hawk was circling them. They would scare it off, then it would come back from a different direction and hour later. Second night of what was a three day trip they set a whole field on fire in the direction the hawk went. Next the party marched down and got ambushed by a Deranged Ranger [hawk's owner]. Their main tank/healer the cleric in plate armor almost died. They all felt like they earned that victory as it was harder than the premade questcentric fight that came after.

The other time I did random encounters was more them being allowed to choose where they went in a region known as the Deadlands in my campaign world. They choose a random town on the map; I rolled for the number and types of minions. Then they fought a 12 shadows and some ghouls. After that they fought wraiths on their way up a tower to battle a Lich who used Death Ward—instantly killing one of them. The party had gained really powerful magical artifacts from a previous dungeon. Nothing had ever been able to hurt them afterwards until that moment. The wilderness was suddenly scary for the first time.

In both cases the looks on my players' faces was far more engaging and satisfying than most of the boss fights we ever experienced. They weren't expecting the fights, they didn't know what they were going in for, and they sure as heck felt accomplished/relieved when it was done. I disliked skipping these random encounters so often, but the players wanted to progress in the story and I obliged them. Making a game where the focus on exploration and what you find during was and is again a primary reason for Asteria Rising to be made.

So, I'm going to cut a lot more out of the game mechanics. Specifically things like that disease set up, the challenge rating system for monsters that D&D had because the players need to figure out something is dangerous on their own. Removing it will actually reinforce them being characters on an alien world who don't know what they are facing. In retrospect, I will need to make a section in the game document full of tables to randomly roll a monster to just patch together. I will keep having 3 classes with 2 sub-branches each. I will also need to find a way to create a very robust weapon and armor system, since there won't be a textbook of spells like in normal D&D.

I'm also considering reworking the Bonds, Ideals, Flaws, Personality Trait, and Backgrounds that D&D had. My players don't really role-play much. I like role-play as a plyer myself, but I don't stay strict to it. Making just a background option that changes starting equipment and having an overall alignment might be better. In other words, keep Alignment, Background, and player made Backstory, cut the rest. We'll see though as this is barely even an alpha stage I'm in on Asteria Rising.

Thanks for reading, hopefully I have something neat for you next week.