Yeti

Photographs on this page by Charles Fréger

The yeti had an advanced culture before it was wiped out during the Time of Fire and Madness.  Now they exist mostly as a race of disinherited mountain bastards who sometimes have a miraculous magic item from before their fall.  They look like tall, skinny wookies with their faces hidden in their wooly hair.

All yeti can communicate telepathically with any other yeti within 100'.  They do this using their fur, which creates magnetic fields.  A freshly-shaven yeti cannot generate this field, and cannot communicate telepathically.  Among non-yeti, they are only capable of communicating in grunts, trills, hoots, and whistles, and only with difficulty.  With these unsubtle tools, they can only speak a reduced language, with a tiny vocabulary.  (This is why literal translations of yeti speech appear simple.  "Go now."  "Bad metal man.")

It's somewhat comparable to a dog trying to speak.  Even with a fully intelligent brain, they are very limited in how many distinct noises they can make.

Before the fall, they built cities atop mountains, and were famous for creating micro-climates within them.  They filled the mountain tops with forests of gossamer-leaved trees, each of which was an incubator for another micro-climate, which holds another herb.  Yeti were great herbalists (and some still are), especially specializing in entheogens and other psychotropic chemicals.

Yeti love the cold, and they love their shaggy hair, which smells spicy-sweet.  You will never find them in the warm parts of the world, except perhaps underground, where the caverns may be cold enough for ice to form.

Yeti shamans (the axle around which their entire culture revolved) were able to spend a great deal of time outside of their body.  Some of them live on still, as a race of maddeningly lucid ghosts.  The shamans also know a great deal about travel to other planes, perhaps more than anyone else in Centerra.  Most of the planes they visited were only accessible through the mind--the body must remain on the mountain top.

They were said to be allies with an alien race, with whom they sometimes traded bodies when one wished to visit the plane of the other.

But that was then.  Now, the yeti are a shattered race.  Their mountaintop homes are uninhabitable, and no longer hold breathable air.  After the Time of Fire and Madness, they became unsuccessful refugees; no other nation would offer them succor; most were killed on sight for the cruelties and experimentation that they had performed on the other races who wandered too close to their mountain home.

After the great yeti diaspora, you will find yeti living on most mountain ranges in the world in small clans.  They live in crude societies, eking out a living from the unyielding rock.  Many of these small clans have a few powerful magical items, relics from before their mountaintops crumbled.

A few other yeti exist in the cities, working as servants and mercenaries.  They mostly do their level best to stay drunk as often as possible, until they ascend into bestial old age and retreat into the mountains.

Old Age

Yetis are as intelligent as humans, and possibly must more intelligent.  However, intelligence is not one of their values.

Experiencing so many different psychic states, as they do, yetis appreciate the animal simplicity of a cruder brain.  As yetis get older, they get bigger, stronger, and dumber.  This is seen as a very good thing to happen, and many yetis look forward to the day when they are big and strong and stupid.

Lost Lykorum

When their mountaintop cities fell, the yeti were able to salvage a great deal of their resources--they were not immediately destitute.  Unable to risk warring with an established nation in their weakened state, many yeti decided to build a new homeland in the middle of the Sea of Fish.

They created the great mountain called Lykorum, which they raised out of the ocean.  This exhausted a great deal of their resources.  This was many years after they had been scattered, after the fires and infectious insanities had passed.

On Mount Lykorum, they had a second homeland.  Yetis from all corners of the world came to live there.

Four hundred years ago, the star known as the Devil's Throat exploded in the sky.  It was almost as bright as the sun.  In ancient Arkah, mages built a telescope-microscope, to isolate and focus the light from the death of the star.  The light from the Devil's Throat was used to start a small fire.

The fire was Calagnagun.

In the next part of the story, Calagnagun was a sentient forest fire, burning down cities and outmaneuvering all attempts to extinguish him.

In the last part of the story, Calagnagun was lured to Lykorum.  Once there, attempts to destroy him failed.  In order to isolate him, the mountain of Lykorum was sunk to the bottom of the ocean.  Calagnagun is a creature of alien fire, of a type not found on Centerra, and it was trapped by the mile of cold seawater above him.  It lurks still in the sunken ruins of lost Lykorum.

For the yeti, that was the last straw.  Without Lykorum, they entered a second era of homelessness, which brings us to their current era of yeti, where most know them as the crouching beasts that haunt the high passes, or--in colder climes--as the flea circus that passes out alone in the corner of the bar each night.

The Shining Land

Yeti books (always bound in a yeti's own hair, and with yeti leather as a cover) speak of a place that they call the Shining Land.  Most humans believe it to be somewhere in the afterlife, within the Kingdom of Heaven, where mortals may approach immortals and visit the souls of the dead.

The Shining Land is so beautiful that a single glimpse of it can be fatal (similar to the nymph ability).  Yeti adventurers who discovered that place and explored it did so blindfolded.  The Shining Land is not without its perils, but those brave yeti that mapped out hundreds of square miles did so on their hands and knees, groping along the ground, joined together by ropes.

Since the Shining Land is within the provinces of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Church has claimed ownership of all books describing how it is reached.  If you want to find the Shining Land, the road lies through the libraries of Coramont.

Many yeti desire a return to the Shining Land.  They believe that it holds relics of their olden days.

Yeti Magic

Devolution
Wizard Spell
If the target fails a save, they permanently devolve.  They permanently lose 1d6 Intelligence points and lose the ability to speak, but they gain a new atavistic ability.  For example, humans turn into hair ape-hybrids, and gain the ability to climb extremely well (automatically climb all climbable surfaces that would normally require a roll).

Trance
Wizard Spell
You fall into a deep trance and travel backwards in time to a point in time that you designate.  You do not change location.  If you prepare trance as a level 1 spell, the maximum distance is 3 days prior.  Once there, you have 1d20 rounds to investigate the world before you are pulled back to the future.  You cannot end this duration prematurely.  If you go back to dangerous times, people and creatures may notice you and attack.  Any damage you take (including death) is real, and persists after the spell ends.  You do not actually travel in time, merely into a reproduction of a past time, but even this is enough to be fatal.

Other popular spells among yeti:

• divination spells of all types
• magic jar
• invisibility
• tenser's transformation
• animate hair
• trap the soul

Orbital Biomes

It is a great secret, but the era before the Time of Fire and Madness was one of creation and mastery. Among a great deal of other things, the sorcerer-kings created orbital colonies.

The high elves made a great many things, including orbital colonies.  When the Time of Fire and Madness scorched the earth, the creatures in orbit did not escape unscathed.  Now the low orbits above Centerra are filled with their own, unique biomes.

Membranous forests made of enormous leaves, each one hundreds of feet across, that all turned in unison to face the sun.  Globular habitats of silico-cellulose.  Nacreous blooms of orbital krill.

And like all of the outer dark, the orbital reaches of the planet are not devoid of air.  Shitty, toxic air, but air nonetheless.  Thicker in some places than others.  There is wind in space.

Most of the orbital environments are pieces of Eladras, the elven sky-tree that grew from the moon down into the planet's atmosphere.  Like the rest of the world, it was shattered by Fire and warped by Madness.  Strange things swim through the bristling woods of the void.

art by Mikhail Rakhmatullin

Aventuring In Low Orbit

The easiest way for an adventurer to get into Low-Centerra Orbit is to travel to Ba Dwai La and use the portal to get to the moon, where they will be able to buy fish skins* and No Breath potions.  From there, it's just a short jump out of the moon's gravity well down to the Maze.  Any captain worth their voidship can take you.

*Fish skins = space suits.  They're covered with scales, and they're alive.

The other easy way to reach low orbit is to travel to the Grey Waste and catch the Cat's Tail when it passes overhead.  This is the remains of an old orbital elevator.

You could also summon a byakhee and ride it, but most people don't enjoy their half of that bargain.

You could also ride a dragon, but this is the riskiest task.  Terrestrial dragons tend to over exert themselves and blow up before getting any higher than 30,000 ft.

A digression about dragons: Look, dragons are highly magical creatures.  Anyone with a cursory knowledge of biology is going to tell you that a dragon would need much larger wings to actually fly.  And that's true, until you factor magic in.  A dragon's wing superheat the air beneath them, giving them a great deal of buoyancy. And once they get into open, gliding flight, they are capable of a mild form of jet propulsion along their wings.  That's how you know a dragon is really struggling: their wings start to smoke.

Drakes do the same thing, and are much faster.

Space dragons presumably do the same thing.  The only known space dragon is Forganthus Valore, who lands every ~100 years for the Hundred Year Stew.  He is a gourmand.  And after he eats the 90 million or so calories required to escape from the planet's gravity well, he departs atop a pillar of fire.

Space dragons don't look much like dragons.  Except for the fire, that's still the same.  Their bones are raw feroxite and their bellies are just pools of rocket fuel.

art by Mikhail Rakhmatullin

Orbital Forests

Eladras's green shards did not die when it was sundered.  They grew, like potatoes abandoned under the sink.  The trees are spindles of enormous leaves that rotate in order to best face the sun.

The largest threat of the orbital biome: high-velocity impacts from micrometeoroids and other debris, and handled simply by avoiding any biology with weakspots.  Any tree can be shattered; each piece will safely regrow.  The leaves--each hundreds of feet across and as thin as a piece of paper--are riddled with millions of ragged holes and scorchmarks.

The interior of these forests are the safest places.  There is some shielding from the radiation here, and most micrometeoroids don't penetrate into the forest's interior.

Parishes

A parish is a hermetically sealed township.  They are full of clans of goggle-eyed halflings (being the race best adapted to living in tiny, sealed containers for their entire lives).  Quite a few of them are primitivists, and many of them believe that the planet is only illusion--nothing lives on the surface because it has no surface.

If you were expecting space-halfings to have better technology and magic than their earth-bound counterparts, you would be sorely mistaken. The tools are foreign and the magic is strange, but most orbital halflings eke out miserable existences inside their metal tubes.

art by Mikhail Rakhmatullin

Voidborne

There are races of man who are adapted for the void as well.  You can see them sometimes, with their gossamer wings dimming the sun, flitting around the perimeters of the forests.  Their skin is metallic, to protect against the burning radiation of God's Fury--the sun.  Their horrific faces belie an alien but not incomprehensible intelligence.  They communicate with bacteria, and lack lungs.

They are huge, 20' tall, and weight about 40 lbs.  They move ponderously, like creatures at the bottom of the sea.  Only in combat do they lash out quickly, with movements that threaten to rip off one of their own arms.

They tend to ignore travelers unless they are approached, or if they've formed into a raiding party.  So, it is not hard to observe them without much fuss--perhaps a mother wrapped in the amber silk of her wings, with an infant pressed to her mirror-like breast.

Although every part of their body can be regenerated if damaged, their brain cannot, and such a precious cargo can only be protected in one way: their skulls are solid adamantine.

Undead

Oh, there are a great deal of undead in space.  The biggest hazards of that place pose no threat to those who are already dead.

Space ghouls sometimes travel in voidships like other civilized folk, but more often they just travel in ravenous packs linked together by rope.  They're all armed with grappling hooks (or a reasonable approximation).  They use these hooks to catch fleeing creatures as well as to hold their pack together.

If you approach the poles, you may be unlucky enough to see one of the lich princes, riding a ziggurat ripped from some lunar necropolis.  The lich will be at the apex, naked face gazing into the void, preparing to enter the polar blowhole and descend into the blue-lit interior of the planet.

You are, however, quite safe from vampires up here.  The sun is huge and inescapable.

Poets

You can find poets of the lunar people here as well.  They'll be orbiting the planet a few times, locked tightly inside their hedonism-shells, where they invent narcotics and drink water from the tail of a comet.  Sometimes they do poetry, as well.

art by Mikhail Rakhmatullin

More Space Suits

See also, this sweet thing by Cedric P: 

http://chaudronchromatique.blogspot.ca/2015/01/beekeeper-knight.html

Because of course there are space knights.

Human Religions and Cults of Centerra

pics unrelated

Digression: A History Lesson

The calendar begins with the apocalypse.  The date in Centerra is measured by years TFM--since the Time of Fire and Madness.  Everyone was amnesiac or insane, possessed with an insatiable lust for the flame.  Even deer would carry branches through the wood, methodically incinerating the whole forest.  Burning metal fell from the sky, wrapping delicate innards of glass and metal (this is where adamantine comes from) and volcanoes erupted everywhere, vomiting lava and smothering the sun in their smoke.

But within a generation, all this strangeness had stopped.  The rain of fire ended, and the volcanoes all fell silent.  There are no more volcanoes in Centerra, only dead mountains with cold hearts.  The only exception is Lady Hellfire, but that is outside the scope of this post.

Red: The Fire Cults

Before the advent of the Church, the continent of Centerra was studded with gods.  Not religions--religion isn't the right word.  But every city had its god, and every god, its city.

The gods were all volcano gods, voices of fire from beneath the earth.  Some good, some foul, most neither.  They spoke through fire and through wheezing shamans, gasping out prophecies with lungs full of smoke, or through holy men who spent their entire lives--from birth to death--at the bottom of a pit.

Temples were built on peaks, at first.  After humans remastered the crafts of stonework and architecture, they could finally build temples magnificent enough to lure a god down from their volcano home.  This is how humanity domesticated gods.

There were sea gods, too, but they only heard the prayers of the fish people.  They had a deaf ear for land-dwellers.

Eventually, a new religion, founded on principles of peace and charity, put the other religions to the sword.  The fire gods were driven back into their volcanoes where they were imprisoned or killed.  The fire gods who lived in their temples were kidnapped (by the physical removal of their temples) and integrated into the Church of Hesaya.  Those who still worship the fire gods are persecuted as heretics, still clinging to a demonic cult.

As far as anyone knows, the fish people still have all of their gods.  (Although the Church has Lady Evica, the daughter and inheritor of the fish-people's creator-god.)

Blue: The Mandate of Heaven

The Church of Hesaya was founded by a mason's daughter named Ianu (or Yanu), who was divinely inspired to become the first prophetess for the Authority, the Sky-God.

I could tell you more about them, but they're basically just Catholic Rome.  Except its not called Rome, it's called Coramont.

They aren't bad guys.  They run the banks and pave the roads.  Their priests are kind and gentle to everyone, except fire cultists, who they despise.  Their witch-finders are stern and unsympathetic people who expect whatever assistance they demand, but who wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice themselves to save a life.

They practice human sacrifice, of the best and the worst.  Criminals and heretics are often killed.  Saints and great warriors are often killed.  (If a PC becomes known as a great warriors or leaders, the Church will do their best to convince them to sacrifice themselves for the glory of the Authority.  Never through force, of course, but there are many other motivators.)

At the center of Coramont is the Pillar of Heaven, a 77-story pillar of pearlescent blue stone.  It fell from heaven in 434 TFM and landed so gently that it didn't even scare the flocks of the awestruck shepherds.

The end of every pilgrimage is the Pillar of Heaven.  To gain favor with the Authority, one has only to walk clockwise around the Pillar.  The area around the pillar is choked with thousands of the faithful who constantly circle it, like rush hour traffic to get into heaven.

All that matter is how many laps around the Pillar you do.  Technically, you can walk laps around the city and it would count.  More important people are allowed to walk closer to the Pillar.  Unbaptised people have to stay the fuck away.

Inside the Pillar of Heaven is a stairwell that goes to Heaven.  It has 24242 steps.  Kings and bishops sometimes go there.  The Patriarch visits often; the Matriarch less so.  (Once considered heretical, the concept of a Patriarch is now accepted by most of the Church; he is empowered by the Authority in the East, while the Matriarch oversees the Church from Coramont.)

A thief once broke in to heaven and stole a peace of its magic.  There used to be a clerical spell called sending, but it stopped working after the burglary.

Green: Legendary Beast Kings

There are many, many nature spirits.  Their apathy increases with their power, which is sometimes considerable.  The Church calls them demons, and there is a bounty on them.

According to legend, every species of animal has a legendary progenitor that is half-flesh and half-spirit.  The Church made it their business to hunt down these great animal spirits, with great success.  The last great Legendary Beast King to stand against Coramont was the Lion Spirit, whose pelt now shades the Patriarch's flock of holy sacrificial sheep.

There is also a large bounty on information pertaining to the surviving Legendary Beast Kings.  They don't expect adventurers to actually kill one.  For that, the Church will use their paladins, decapitated saints*, golem lords**, regular golems***, and/or St. Cascarion****.  (They have a lot of experience with this.)

Especially Coyote.  They hate that guy.

Black: Zala Vacha

Lost gods don't fare well without worshippers.  They are creatures of thought and intention, and if they are forgotten by others they forget themselves.  (This is the opposite of nature spirits, who are often thoughtless and may actually diminish in power the more that they are known.)

These abandoned gods sometimes found each other and huddled together against oblivion.  They remembered for each other; they worshiped each other.  And they really, really hate the Church.

When people talk about chaos cults and black masses, this is why they're talking about.  They are the disinherited spirits of primordial volcanoes, and they attract the desperate and malicious in the same way that shower drains attract hair.

The fallen gods of Zala Vacha exist in sort of a secret commune.  To keep the playing field equal, not even their worshipers know their names or their extent.

Don't assume that Zala Vacha is made up of evil gods of war and death.  True, they have death gods (4 competing death gods, actually), but most of them are harvest gods, or gods of knowledge, the ones who fled before the Church's aggressive assimilation policy.  And many of the cultists are decent people, after all.

They can't even get back into hell, because of the Sealed Temple built in the Brimstone Waste.  (Hell is literally a series of caves.  You can walk there.  You can map it.  Everyone knows where it is.

White: Heralds of the Immaculate Morning

The guys in blue robes with a snake draped around their shoulders--that's a priest of Hesaya.  They're the good guys.

The guys in white robes with a golden sunburst motif, those are the Heralds of the New Dawn.  I've already written a lot about them, but suffice to say that they want to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and extinguish all sentience so that the world will be restarted into a glorious new era of rebirth.

The current era is a post-apocalyptic one, where Satan long ago triumphed over the true God, which caused sickness, old age, and death--tribulations that humanity was never intended to endure.  All gods are false.  Etc.

They murder whole villages, too, but they do it painlessly and gently, apologizing the whole time.

A lot of paladins, disgusted by the things that they have witnessed and performed, lose their faith in the Church and join the Heralds.

Grey?

It's not really clear what a 'god' is in Centerra.  None of them are omniscient (although some of them are very astute).  Some of them are actually pretty dumb.

None of them created the world.  Some of them are younger than the culture that worships them.  They are emotional and often very petty.

Most damning of all, is that there seems to be a clear gradient from tiny nature spirits all the way up to the gods that are worshipped, even the Authority of the Church and the Bureaucracy of Heaven.

They aren't even that high level.  HD 12 or 18.  In that range.  There are scarier dragons.  Even the Authority itself is probably only HD 20.

There aren't even clear lines of demarcation between angels, demons, and nature spirits.  Your religion's angels are another religion's demons.  (Although most of the things called demons are unaffiliated with any deity and wholly malevolent to everyone.)

No "aligned planes" are known.  Angels and demons live at locations you can point to on your map.  (Mostly mountain tops and caves, though.)

The relationships between divine power, immortality, and worship are fuzzy.

The Radiant Maiden (the leader of the Heralds of Immaculate Morning) is perhaps a goddess herself, although she denies it.

And the creature called Kesselgrave is an even more perplexing.  He is obviously immortal, has never been hurt by any attack, and is strong enough to pick up mountains.  Yet all he does is make shitty moonshine in the swamp and pass out drunk every night.  When people try to worship him, he just screams at them in an unknown language and beats them to death with a rock.  His dreadlocks smell like piss.

And yet he's defeated entire companies of paladins sent to capture him, entirely unaffected by weapons, arcane magic, and divine miracles.  (He beat all the paladins to death with a rock, too, after waking up hungover inside an adamantine coffin.)

*Decapitated saints are saints who were martyred for their religion.  The Church keeps their heads in the Cathedral of the Fallen.  They are brought out only for warfare, where they are stuck on a banner.  The more disfigured ones (burned, mangled) are usually covered in gold jewelry or plastered with holy scrolls.  The heads begin chanting and basically fight as well as high-level clerics (even if they weren't powerful clerics in life).  They don't seem to be sentient.

There's a bit of a controversy about decapitated saints--it doesn't work for saints who die peacefully in their bed.  The Church has been accused of sending their holiest, most venerable members into horrible warzones with the hope that they'll die.

Plot Hook: The Church gives the PCs the task of clearing out the old catacombs, and they'll even give you a senile-but-kindly old geezer as your guide.  One of them whispers "And we'll double your pay if Father Abernaffy doesn't make it back."

**Golemlords are the decapitated heads of paladins that have put on top of an anointed golem.  They are fully alive.  There are only about a half-dozen of them or so, and they are so in demand that they are often deployed to warzones for years at a time.  Their bodies are kept in the vaults below Angelmar.

When their head is re-united with their body for the first time in years, they tend to flip out a bit and are usually confined to their monastery for a couple weeks before appearing in public.  Their a pretty badass bunch of men and women, and every Hesayan paladin aspires to be one of them.

***Because of how they're constructed, the Church considers all golem use except for their own to be heretical.  And they have a lot of golems, most of them in storage.  They're stacked like cordwood beneath Coramont.

****St. Cascarion is the Church's only vampire saint.  (While the normally only canonize saints after their deaths, an exception was made for Cascarion because he is, technically, dead.)  He hunts witches and heretics.  He used to hunt other vampires until he killed them all*****.  He is usually overqualified for the tasks assigned him.

*****Vampires are considered extinct on Centerra.  Sure, there are plenty of vampire spawn.  The curse is still out there, and it is still contagious.  The only extraordinary powers that (most) vampire spawn have are a dangerous allergy and dietary restrictions.  It takes centuries to become a "real" vampire.

Amazons of Joruma

Class Abilities
In order of development.  Import them into your game however you want.

Razor Boomerang

This boomerang has a 50' range and does 1d6 damage before returning to your hand.  (People without this ability can still throw boomerangs, but the boomerang only returns to your hand if the attack misses.)

Fish Whistle

By putting two fingers in your mouth and whistling, you can create a summon fish effect.  (d20: 1-10 tasty fish large enough to feed you for a day, 11-13 small fry, 14-16 unpalatable fish, 17-19 this is not a fish, 20 disaster)  This ability can be used 1/day per location, and works anywhere that there are fish.

Shark Surfing

You begin play with a shark ally.  If it dies or leaves, it is possible to befriend a new one (the process requires petting and large amounts of fish).  This is otherwise like a paladin's mount spell.  You are able to ride a willing shark at full speed as long as it surfs on the surface of the water.

Some amazons choose to ride dolphins instead.

Delicious Fruit

Delicious fruit heals you as a potion of cure light wounds.  Delicious fruit must be perfectly ripened and picked within the last 24 hours.  Delicious fruit must be large enough to fill an entire inventory slot.  (Examples: Melons, bananas, bag of strawberries.)  Tropical towns sell delicious fruit for 1g, while it might cost 10g in a more tropical region.

Shark Bracer

Your shark (or dolphin) can morph into a bracer.  This bracer protects as well as a shield, except that it only functions as long as nothing is held in the off-hand.  It takes up no inventory slot, however.  It can morph back into a shark only when submerged in water large enough to hold a shark comfortably.

Whenever you are wearing your shark bracer and an arrow/shuriken misses you, you can deflect the arrow in a direction of your choosing.  If you use this to make an attack, you get a -4 penalty to it.  You can only do this 1/round.

Amazon Sense

You can sense (but not see) invisible creatures within 10'.  This lets you pinpoint their location.  You also get a sense of their movements, so if they are moving their limbs, you can attack them without penalty.

Amazon Cuisine

In their youth, amazons of Joruma are not allowed to pick up a weapon unless they have mastered the culinary skills of their ancestors.  When an amazon of Joruma cooks dinner (a process that takes 3 hours and requires ingredients costing 5g per diner, a fire, and pans taking up an inventory slot), the diners get +4 to save vs disease for 24 hours.

Amazons of Joruma are also adept at turning slain beasts into tasty meals.  At the DM's discretion a tasty monster corpse (ex: giant clam, assassin vine) can substitute for the night's ingredients.

Boomerang Mastery

When you throw a boomerang, it can hit any number of unique targets before returning to your hand.  All targets must be at least 10' apart, within 50' of you, and have clear lines between them.  Make an attack roll against each target in order.  If the attack misses, all subsequent attacks also miss and the boomerang returns to your hand.

Curse o' the Wisp

At will, you can cast a version of faerie fire.  The target is outlined by lights, making both invisibility and teleportation impossible.  The target takes 1 additional damage from all physical (non-spell) sources.  This spell lasts for 10 minutes.

Class: Amazon of Joruma

If you play in my house game and want to be an amazon of Joruma, these are the rules that you'll use.  They get templates A and B at level 1, C at level 2, and D at level 3.

Amazon of Joruma A - Razor Boomerang, Fish Whistle

Amazon of Joruma B - Shark Surfing, Delicious Fruit

Amazon of Joruma C - Shark Bracer, Amazon Sense

Amazon of Joruma D - Amazon Cuisine, Boomerang Mastery OR Curse o' the Wisp, +1 ranged attacks

Optional XP Rewards

At the DM's discretion, amazons of Joruma also get small amounts of experience from eating new and interesting cuisine.  (10xp for a minor food, 40xp for a signature dish.)  Each town has a 50% chance of having an interesting dish that it is known for, and big cities will have 2d6 such signature dishes--but these are often expensive and difficult to track down.  Monster tribes usually have at least one signature dish.  But please note that the swamp goblins cannot serve you their froghemoth gumbo if they are killed, and if they are enslaved, they'll spit in the soup and "forget" certain ingredients, subtly ruining its exquisite flavor.

Optional Starting Skills

Two of your starting skills are Swim and Cook.

Amazons in Centerra

Centerra is, nominally, a post-apocalyptic setting.  Very few terrestrial people survived the Time of Fire and Madness.  The elves survived by remaining in the upper atmosphere (in the branches of Eladras, the tree that grew upside-down from the moon).  Others survived by entering stasis.  

And some very small populations survived in isolated areas via gene control, parthenogenesis (since you only need one girl to reboot the species), and by shunning magic (which got pretty fucking weird during the Time of Fire and Madness).  The descendants of those parthenogenic micro-societies exist today as amazons.

This is the totally-logical reason for why there are so many warrior-woman societies all over the place.

The Amazons of Joruma are sometimes called blue amazons, because that's the color of their skin.  They reproduce by sleeping in the Womb of the World, sort of a primeval cave of fertility (as they see it).  It performs the exact same function as sex (genetic exchange, zygote implantation) except that it doesn't work if men are in the cave.  Also, the bizarre dreams it causes are culturally significant.

The Huntresses of Zao are the green amazons, I guess.  No one is quite sure how they reproduce, but they are rumored to have "husbands" back at home.  (In reality, they have a super-dominant X chromosome that basically just eats any Y chromosome that it encounters.  They can mate with any dude, but will only have daughters, who will also be Huntresses.)  Amazons of Joruma love food, and not just for eating--some amazons only feel comfortable falling asleep surrounded by fruit, fried fish, and noodles.

The Librarians of Asria are the grey amazons.  They reproduce by using a magic item that has no other purpose.

The Stranglers of Casmir are the gold amazons.  I haven't written them up yet, but they are famous for strangling people with their hair.  They can reproduce in true parthenogenic style, but these daughters are clones of the mother and are marked for a low caste.  They also have the option to change their gender to male, where they can then engage in hetero-sex and classic DNA recombination.  This process is only allowed for the nobility, and so their society looks horribly misogynistic from the outside.  They're also the only one to be highly urbanized and possess a major seaport, where they sell slaves and magekilling services.

AHAHAHA
I can't believe that dolphin surfing is a real thing.

What's That Noise?

What is this blog about?  I'm not too sure about that myself.  I play a lot of DnD, and I think about a lot of DnD.  So, one reason to have this blog is to have a place to put my thoughts in order.  Another reason is to share with the internet-people.

I have three settings.

Centerra is the stereotypical fantasy setting.  All the unicorns are rotting abominations, the richest person on the planet is a dragon merchant, and psychic dragons control the dreamscape from a vast subterranean ocean.  Some of the highest level things around are orcs.  You can climb to the moon by climbing its dangling tail.  Most of the world is monotheistic, and worships Iasu, the blue-winged angel.  The calendar starts in the Time of Fire and Madness, when everything was on fire and everyone was insane.  Pretty standard fare.

Magic is rare, there are no apparent gods, no teleports, resurrection, or even undead in the normal sense.  I'd call it gritty fantasy if there wasn't so much weird shit in it.  Themes are cliche-punting, transformation, subtle post-apocalypse, evil humanity, sex, and decay.  I also try to keep it "hard fantasy", where everything is internally consistent and makes strict sense given the laws of the world.  Which makes it hard to fit all of the gonzo shit in, but that's why I have other settings.

Duscuro is infested with gods and flirting with aliens.  Formerly a "nature reserve" established by vast and ancient (but still mostly human) powers, the planet was guaranteed to remain in a natural, uncivilized state because 1) the humans were engineered to be idiots, 2) dragons were engineered to wreck everyone's shit as soon as people started stacking bricks, and 3) there's a set of immortal fleshbrain death satellites ringing the world that will drop lasery sky-death as soon as there is any deviation from the accepted norm.  All of these failsafes failed spectacularly very quickly, and part of the campaign consists of figuring out why.

Gods are tangible, accessible rulers, who speak through wooden manikins.  They rule city-states like kings, not some distant ethos.  One of them, the god of warfare and agriculture, exists on the material plane like any other schmuck in order to better enjoy the things he loves.  The gods wage wars against each other in order to stamp out the loser's religion and absorb their portfolios.  All of this takes place under a pair of binary suns that cause four-year winters when the colder sun revolves in front of the warm sun.  This is bad, because there are tribes of things in the mountains--half of them are undead, half of them are alive, but you'd need a doctor to tell the difference--who get all Genghis Khan when it gets cold, and start trampling cities under their ultra-mammoths made from normal mammoth corpses.

Noxious America is 1930's America forty years after the fall of humanity due to sudden, cataclysmic immigration of "gods" from tentacled dimensions  It's a mix of Lovecraft and maybe even pokemon and noir. And definitely a lot of Americana.  But it's not post-apocalyptic.  Humanity has fallen, but other things have risen in their place.  It's a time of optimism, dance halls, gangsters, speakeasies, gnashing death, droning abysms of madness, and writhing degeneration in dark corners.  From Satan's gigantic, poisonous corpse in Arizona to Skethriman Scolex's combustible corpulence hovering over Fatland.  It's last call for the human race, before the doors lock behind us and we face the night.

We're pretty sure it's Satan's corpse, anyway.  That's just what everyone calls it.

It's the least developed of all my settings, and also the one I'm most into right now.

Other Things might also appear on this blog, including but not limited to: engineering, architecture, art, fiction, and stupid things that North Korea does.

A Few More Words on Dwarven Culture

Dwarven Religion

Dwarves don't worship the dwarf god.  There are no dwarven gods (possibly because no dwarf has been creative enough to invent any) and in fact, the whole notion of gods usually requires some explaining in the first place.

Hesaya is the primary religion of the dwarves, just as it is the primary religion of the entire continent of Centerra (although it takes a few different forms).  Like everyone else, they indirectly revere Zulin, Prince of the Upper Air and directly worship a multitude of local priests and slave-gods.  But how do you get dwarves to worship an air god?

Missionary: "What is better, the earth or the air?"

Dwarf: "The earth, because it gives us toil, tombs, and bread."

Missionary: "But does not the act of digging create an air-filled tunnel, which allows you to access more of the earth?  You claim to love the earth, yet you strive for its absence."

Dwarf: "Harrum.  This does not seem to be entirely untrue."

And so this is the root revelation of the Dwarven Covenant: that goodly dwarves will never escape the cycle of rebirth and enter the Heavenly Mansions of Truth.  Instead, goodly dwarves will simply be reborn as dwarves, to dig in the endless earth for all eternity.

One knock on effect of this philosophy is that each dwarf believes that they are already the best lifeform possible.  There is no hope for a better life, because the dwarven life is the best life for them.  This leads to a great deal of civil contentment and smugness.

Note: If you're a regular reader of this blog, don't try to follow Hesaya too closely.  It's gets rewritten every couple months because I can't make up my mind.

The Dwarven Crusades

Given the Hesayan predilection for antonyms and inversion, it is entirely possible that the Riddle of Air is not a metaphysical one, but a physical one.  And it is possible that the answer is to be found downward, rather than upward.

And so the most devout dwarves engage in the Quest to Find God, which mostly involves digging as deeply as possible.  It's a cross between mining, a never-ending pilgrimage, and the Crusades.

There are multiple, concurrent Under-Quests.  Each one is a legion of dwarves digging to the center of the world, supported by supplies from their surface cities.  In the centuries since they started, the front of this ant-line has moved deeper and deeper into the Underworld, leaving dozens of empty cities and cathedrals behind them, abandoned as they build new ones deeper and deeper.

Quite of few of the Dwarven Crusades have become lost, and the fate of these unknown, eternally digging colonies is not known.

Dwarven Gender and Sexuality

Dwarves have no concept of gender, and struggle to discuss sex.

Male and female dwarves look identical, unless you get them naked.  They are completely unromantic when sober, and marriage and conception is something that is usually performed in the service of their king or council.

The non-creative, work-obsessed dwarven psychology disappears entirely when they are drunk.  It is during these times when dwarven acts of passion are committed.  These include marriages and joint mortgages, but they also include more traditional one night stands (which are usually accompanied by a lot of fumbling around with belts and beards, and a lot of speculation whether the other dwarf's hardware is a "bolt" or a "nut".  Not that it changes the outcome much, except when it comes to pregnancy.)

They don't have gendered pronouns.  The closest thing that they have are the concepts of craftsdwarf and miningdwarf, which they use as translations for 'female' and 'male' respectively.

A big divide in dwarven culture exists around the concepts of those who obtain raw resources (the miners) and those who refine them (the crafters).  This schism is large enough that dwarves often lament their irreconcilable psychologies ('craftsdwarves are from Venus, miningdwarves are from Mars').  And like human genders, these labels come with a host of stereotypes and cultural expectations.

Craftsdwarves tend to care more about their appearance and be more assertive, for example.  (The appearance thing is not to be understated; some miningdwarves are filthy, and spend decades without beds, baths, or razors.)

Dwarves use craftsdwarf and miningdwarf as stand-ins for 'woman' and 'man' in private, or around humans if they are still largely unexposed to human culture.  This is because miningdwarves are usually away from home, doing hard labor, while craftsdwarves rarely travel too far from their hearths.  This is the most salient detail dwarves notice when trying to tell apart human men and women.

They struggle to notice boobs and timbre.  Gender just doesn't sit very close to sexuality in the dwarven headspace.

The biggest oddity is that dwarves sometimes change professions throughout their lives, especially in the miningdwarf to craftsdwarf direction.  This leads to odd questions, such as:

Dwarf: "You repaired that saddle excellently.  Are you planning on becoming a woman in a few more years?"
Man: "The fuck you say?"

It is rare, but not unheard of, for biologically female dwarves to adopt human culture down to its gender roles.  These dwarf-women shave their beards; other dwarves usually mistake them for halflings at this point.

Dwarven Names

Dwarves frequently identify themselves according to what their labor produces.  Here are some sample names for a miner, gemcutter, and warrior.

• Brevigon the Calcite Strand
• Tivik the Smagdarine Eye
• Korlag the Nine Orcs

First names are reserved to intimate friends.  Those who meet Tivik had best become accustomed to addressing the dwarf as "The Smagdarine Eye" for a while.

<digression>This is similar to how dragons identify themselves by their hoards, or by the most valuable item in their hoard.</digression>

Dwarven Rulers

Being non-creative, sober dwarves struggle in leadership roles.  For this reason, dwarven kings are never kings themselves.

They are known for kidnapping clever people and forcing them to rule the dwarven kingdom.  (They are good at detecting duplicity and schemes.  They are non-creative, not stupid.)

But they sometimes engage in the practice of shackled kings.  This is when they summon a clever devil and force them to become their king after extracting a lengthy and comprehensive contract has been drawn up.

And not just one devil-king.  They usually get a hold of several devils and force them to work at cross-purposes.  (Pitting the Devil King of Infrastructure against the machinations of the Devil King of Military keeps the devils working in the dwarves' interest.  Most of the time, anyway.)

The only time that dwarves are ruled by dwarves is when they have a Council of Drunkards.

Upside-Down Colonialism

When dwarves invade a place, they usually kill all the underclasses, but preserve the nobility.  The captive aristocracy is confined to their houses, but is generally allowed to continue going on as they always have.

They are attended by dozens of servile dwarven war-butlers, armed with daggers in case the old nobles try anything funny.  The children of these nobles grow up in a city that is 99% dwarven.

The former aristocracy will be depended upon to run the administrative tasks until the dwarves figure out how to take over these things themselves.  Then these human families will be ushered into service industries: masseuse, psychiatrist, and bards (roles that dwarves struggle with, or despise doing).

Dwarven Debts

Dwarves have a great love for contracts and courts.  They have a great many of each.

Debt is something that is common to many dwarves, and they frequently incur a mutual debt in order to cement a treaty or a marriage.  It is a revered--almost holy--tradition.  Since one dwarven family might be richer more than another, or they may be unequal when it comes to repayment, it is often that one family slides into debt to another.  A large proportion of dwarves are born with huge debts.

This isn't seen as too onerous, since it is honorable work.  It only requires fourteen hours of labor a day for several decades, and then the dwarf is free.  Working your way out from under a large debt is immensely respected among dwarves, and is accompanied by parties, laurels, and all the tasteless beer they can drink.

Dwarven Prisons

Dwarven prisons are always fortified labor camps.  This is also not seen as too terrible, since there is always work to do and the work is always tallied accurately.  Sometimes a human is condemned to a life of hard labor in a dwarven work prison, and the dwarves will wonder why the human cries so much when the sentence is read.

The second-most terrible thing you can do to a dwarf is to cut off their beard.  The single most-terrible thing is to cut off their hands.

Even dwarves in solitary confinement are given bricks to stack or a pile of straw to sort.  Lacking that, dwarves go insane, and will smooth the walls until their hands bleed, or slip into the idiosyncratic madness known of fleshmining.

Dwarven Madness

More than any other race, dwarves tend to go insane.  There is a lot of genetic pressure on their behavior, and it creates a lot of psychic friction.

Stable colonies of insane dwarves are known as the duergar.

But there is an upside to this madness.

It is well-known that magic items (aside from scrolls and potions) are only created by a master craftsman in a mindset of great instability: fear, love, and of course MADNESS.

Dwarves are also the most likely of the races to allow madness to run its course.  Mad dwarves are often sealed up inside their homes and given the materials needed to perform their crafts.  A close eye is kept on them, and they usually send for the healer when the mad dwarf begins headbutting the floor monotonously or eating their own beard.  This is why dwarves have more magic weapons than anyone else.

They also sometimes die from overwork, but this is something to be revered, like starving to death because you gave all your food to hungry orphans.

Dwarven Tombs

What do dwarves do when they have no work to do?  When there is an absence of gems to cut or metal to work into armor?  There must be a release valve somewhere, for the overflow.

And this is the function of tombs in dwarven society.

A dwarf's most prized possession in their tomb.  The usually begin digging it when they are very young, and they will slowly excavate it throughout their entire lives.  They like this because it is concrete and (relatively) impossible to steal.  It is eternal.

And so every dwarven city is surrounded by a halo of tombs, most of which are occupied.  This also helps with their brand of ancestor-worship.

If you do a great service for the dwarves, they will probably reward you with one of the royal tombs.  (The laborers who built the royal tomb are already buried under the floor.  It is their tomb, too.)

Humans who would prefer to have territory, money, or soldiers instead of a royal tomb are usually given these lesser honors, with a shrug.  Who can understand the minds of humans?

Remember. . .

According to the high elves (who alone have a history that predates the Time of Fire and Madness), dwarves were created by them be a race of asteroid miners.

I've been thinking a lot about dwarves lately.  Hopefully this will make the beards stop.

See Also:
A Few Words on Dwarven Culture
The Dwarves of Mt. Doldrum

Lady Evica

 

You'll find her in the lakeside town of Havenholt, where she lives. The easiest way to approach her is after Sunday mass, when all of the parishners gather on the lawn and patio to talk and exchange the week's news. They stand in small circles, talking with the deacon, inquiring about each other's health and the weather. They might say

“That's two masses in a row that Grocer Hammond has missed. I hope he isn't ill.”

or perhaps you will hear

“Daley, get away from the fountain. You're bothering the koi.”

She dresses conservatively, like her peers. Her long auburn hair is usually up in a bun, or in a braid beneath a headscarf. Her dress will be brown or navy, perhaps with a small carnation on the breast, and it will reach all the way down to her black leather patents.

A short veil may shade her eyes when she faces east, towards the lake and the morning sun. Her face is young, but not girlish. Her skin is flawless and her lips are full. Her jawline is a graceful, subtle curve, like the neck of a swan or the keel of a courtship canoe. Her eyes shine like sunlight on the water, and her laugh is as clear and dulcet as a bell. Her dress is bulky, but it carries a few hints of the voluptuous physique beneath it. In speech, she is modest, playful, and warm.

She is terrifyingly beautiful, but that is no surprise, since she chose the shape of her body. Shapeshifters rarely settle for the unremarkable.

Her nature is not a secret to the inhabitants of Havenholt. They have forgiven her monstrous origin.  But more than that, they love her.

The Cubes That Saved Everyone

 The Time of Fire and Madness had finally come, and the whole world strained underneath it. 

Strange lights fell from the night sky, started strange fires, and then leapt away again.  Many summoned them, but not one of the Serpents responded.  Flesh rebelled against its masters, and the stars trembled in their matrix.

The wonderful city of Avadeiga was dying.  The crops had all burnt up, and the animals had begun rotting while they were still alive.  When the graneries were opened only a fetid must was found inside.  Some fled to what would become the Madlands.  Others began an open rebellion (after all, the regium did not go hungry).

Amid this chaos, the wonderful theurges peered forward and saw a time when the fields would grow again.  It was no so far away.

But the wonderful logicians pointed out that it was still too far.  They would be dead and forgotten before sanity returned here, or anywhere.  Anything that preserved them over those long years would be subject to the same corruption.

And the wonderful mathematicians had an idea.  If the forests would be incinerated, then they must become seeds.  Numerous and subtle and redundant.  A million points from which the forest could someday regrow.  A book could be reduced, and so could a man.  With all of their power and wisdom, could they not reduce a city in the same way?

And so a messenger was sent to the granaries, to summon back the wonderful biomancers.

The Grid

Fresh leylines were placed.  The entire city was wired with a three-dimensional grid.  It was split up into cubes, each one 10' by 10' by 10.  Each cube would be reduced and encoded.  And when the time was right, the code could be used to reconstruct the original.

The code itself would be written in the germline of an organism.  The organism could multiply and grow, and as it did, it would create more copies of the code.  The people of Avadeiga would be saved a thousand times over.

For the organism, they chose an ooze.  

An ooze can survive in the cracks inside a rock, subsisting on the small amounts of moisture and organics that filter down.  You can set an ooze on fire, but unless you are careful to burn every last bit, some bit of jelly will escape and regrow.

All the apocalypses piled on top of each other would not be enough to extierpate the last ooze.

And so each germline (there were about 40,000) encoded a 10' cube of the city--another sector on the hard drive that backed up a everyone.

Gelatinous Cubes

If you gather enough gelatinous cubes in one place, you can observe this behavior.  They'll congregate, exchange names ("234-68-3"), assemble into the shape of the original city, and test for quorum.  

If quorum is reached, the cubes will form a continuous chrysalix (a chrysalis made from multiple primary organisms) and begin differentiating into the people, buildings, books, and plants of Lost Avadeiga.

If quorum is not reached, the cubes will reconvene at the next equinox.

The cubes behave like regular oozes in most respects, but when they are engaging in these programmed behaviors, they are entirely systematic.  They can respond to certain command-phrases, and can speak a certain number of fixed statements.  The most famous ululation of the cubes is "ZOOG!", which is their SYN-ACK initiator.

The voice is that of Avadeiga's Principle Biomancer, Yevanon, whose voice has been inscribed on the germline of every gelatinous cube, in order to be poorly reproduced on the vibrating facets of the cubes.

Carnosus and the Vudra

Gelatinous cubes have reached quorum at least once before, many centuries ago.  The result was the Madlander city of Carnosus, a shifting labyrinth of self-assembling cubes.

While the inhabitants originally hunted for more cubes to rebuild their city, subsequent generations cared little for their parents' struggles.  New houses were built where the old ones were not, and the lost generation was forgotten.  The sages of Avadeiga had completed their resurrection, but it was woefully incomplete.

Instead, the future generations turned their attentions towards mastery of the oozes that birthed their city, and abandoned the idea of a fully resurrected Avadeiga.  The result were the vudra and the sludge vampires (an exiled clan of the vudra).

Mutant Cubes and Weaponized Cubespawn

 Any system composed of cooperating subunits is subject to exploitation when on of the subunits chooses it's own success over the success of the system.

Cancer is a clear example of this.  A cell (and soon, a group of cells) exploits the body's systems in order to acquire more blood, more food, and more growth.  Local success, systemic failure.

Some gelatinous cubes are known to be mutants, and are capable of spawning flawed copies of Avadeigans when advantageous.  In most cases this amounts to nothing more than spawning a confused, aggressive version of one of Avadeiga's inhabitants.  Once the cubespawn has served its purpose (usually by killing the cube's enemies) both will be reabsorbed.

Cubespawn usually die quickly if left on their own.  The same mutations that allow them to be spawned without quorum also tend to inject fatal defects into their own germlines--missing eyes or digestive systems. 

At the same time, cubespawn should be viewed as rational humans in their own right.  They knew that their doomed city would be cubed off and encoded in a gelatinous matrix.  Is it any wonder that they assume that the cube is their ally in these fights?

There are also gelatinous cubes that are far more intelligent than the others.  Their primary mode of conversation is to carry around a skeleton and use it for pantomime.

by Scott Harshbarger

7 Myths Everyone Believes About Druids

Listen, you've got it all wrong.

Frequently, the picture you see of a druid is some green-haired boy scout cavorting atop a white wolf, or gazing soulfully into the eyes of a moose.  They're depicted as serene bringers of balance and peace, who live in harmony with all life.

Nope.  No.  Nein.  Druids are creatures possessed by the cold spirit of Nature.

Druids love natural spaces.  It's even fair to say that druids feed on them.  They feed on the snow that falls on ancient pines.  They feed on the weevils gnawing on roots.  They feed on the hunger in a wolf's belly.

Because these things are Natural, they are Good, for at least one definition of "Good".

Then what is Bad, in the eyes of a druid?  Why, all the things that destroy the natural order.  Rationality, math (druids hate math), language, money, metallurgy, fur trappers, philosophy.  The philosophy of a druid is "no philosophy".  And true, druids use language to talk among themselves, but it is always tinged with a bit of self-loathing for this reason, a reminder of their distance from Nature and from what is Good.

Nature is red in tooth in claw.  Nature is hungry and rapacious.  Nature is self-absorbed.  Does a panther care about anything beyond it's own well-being?  And because these things are Nature, they are also Druids.

Every druid's dream in life is to become a giant grizzly bear, fat and unchallenged.

Dragons, Part 3

 Here's Part 1 and Part 2. 

First, here are some things that people believe to be true about dragons.  

The Doctrine of Draconic Apocalypse

Dragons are the divinely sanctioned executioners of the world.  On the day of ordained apocalypse, the dragons will be empowered, and they will burn the world with fires that can never be extinguished but will only grow and spread.  Everything will burn.  In the end, even the dragons will burn (and this is why they are fire-resistant, not fire-proof).

Until that time, they are content to remain in their Desolations, where they serve as a divine instrument of instruction, teaching humility and fear.  The mightiest may challenge them, and steal some of their treasure, thus allowing the brave and the cunning to gain gold so that they may change the world.  In fact, many kings and great souls began their careers with a chest of stolen dragon gold–as the Authority intended.

Dragons may be challenged, but they can never be defeated.

The Theory of Aurocentrism

Dragons want gold because people want gold.  In places where people do not have the same desire for gold, neither do the dragons.  When people want things other than gold, so do the local dragons.  

People and dragons are local mirrors of each other.  But whose desires occurred first?  Why do we lust so much for gold?

All dragons want gold, therefore all humans want gold.  This extends even to animals, as it seems that all animals covet the rare metal.  Crows have been observed hoarding golden items in their nests.  Even cows enjoy having gold leaf on their horns, and have been observed resisting its removal.  Gold is universally valued, and this value is an extension of the dragon’s own.

The Theory of Wealth and Sin

Each elder wyrm represents a type of wealth, along with a type of sin.  Thus, people are poisoned by the emanations of these great wyrms, each of which inspires a great weakness of subhumanity.

Lagazotz, the Scornful Wyrm

        The desire to be free and unbounded.  Pride.

Beyoc, the Ancient Slug

        The desire to undo one’s mistakes.  Gluttony–since the great wyrm’s predilection for lightly spiced-and-oiled elephants is well known, he is the most likely to be “friendly”.

Tar Lath Lien, the Serpentine Surpreme

        The desire to be loved.  Lust–it is commonly said that Tar Lath Lien has become enraptured with something outside of the mortal sphere.

Grox, the Gravethrasher

        The desire to avoid pain.  Sloth.

Calaphon, the Many Splendored

        The desire to be someone else (dissatisfaction with one’s own body and role).  Envy.

The Theory of Decelestialization

Dragons are degenerate versions of the celestial serpents, or perhaps their children.

The Heresy of Primitive Celestialism

Primitive Celestialism maintains that Centerra was repopulated by the celestial serpents, which ended the Time of Fire and Madness and stabilized the incoherent world.  They arrived here from a distant location, beyond the outer stars.  They were not just beasts but vessels, and from their stomachs they disgorged the nine races of subhumans that populate Centerra today.

The celestial serpents then either birthed the elder wyrms or became them, and instructed the first temple-builders, establishing a peaceful world-wide religion that lasted until it was usurped by the heresies of the Prophetessa (may she live again).

Modern Celestialism is a branch of mainline Hesaya, and is (cautiously) sanctioned by the Church.

<sidebar> I started building Centerra in July of 2010.  Celestialism and the Serpents actually appear in August of 2010, among the earliest batch of entries I wrote when I was unemployed.</sidebar>

The Elven Theory of Dragons

Dragons are degenerate organic spaceships.  The fact that they appear reptilian is an anomaly, a type of essential corruption that they are susceptible to.  In their original forms, they were nothing like they are now.

The pre-dragon vehicular corpus was able to manipulate combustion, necessary for propulsion.  The fire breath of dragons is an atrophied corruption of this original ability.

The modern world has lost the methods to control these ancient tools (although rumors of dragon-controlling orbs do exist).  In the absence of any legitimate authority, the instincts of the predraconic vehicle-soul prepares for evacuation: collecting valuables, securing its area against threats, and remaining fueled at all times while awaiting a legitimate command.

The Theory of Auric Degeneration

Dragons are created by greed.  When a person accumulates enough gold, their greed grows proportionately, and so they gather more gold.

Gold is inherently magical–this is why so many spells require gold as a reagent.  And when enough of it is gathered in one place, it is capable of consuming the owner along with itself, turning them into a dragon.

This also explains why alchemists are able to convert dragon brains into gold (specifically, a subtype of gold called salangata).

A lot of Caliphon is inspired by Shin Godzilla (2016)
especially the unused ideas and ending (spoiler)

Caliphon (Elder Wyrm)

Cataphractus, The Many Splendored, The Ever Living, The Conflagration of Flesh

There have been more attempts to destroy Caliphon than any other of the elder wyrms.  Although Caliphon has been distracted and driven off, she has never been destroyed.  The nearest attempt was Lord Wreybellon’s Moonstone campaign, which successfully chained her to the ground.

To their surprise, the Many Splendored gave a great exhalation, then a shudder, then breathed no more.  Her eyes turned grey as they dried out.

Later on, they would move the great corpse, and then discover that that Caliphon had given birth while she had laid there chained.  Her offspring, seemingly serpentine in form, had burrowed away from the location with great rapidity.

Within days, a new dragon had returned to Caliphon’s desolation and had resumed her roles there.  The new dragon was slightly smaller, yes, but by all accounts it was not a child who had fled the chains, but Caliphon herself.

The great corpse was extremely light.  It was dismembered and moved to Bospero, where it was studied.  Trophies were made, and the great body was prepared for display.  During the victory feast, the bones and teeth of Caliphon cracked open, delivering draconic abominations to the festivities.  Among the dead were Lord Wraybellon and his wife, Cardinal Rontagel.  Their three children were carried off by the creatures.  Their fates are unknown, but most claim that they were carried back to Caliphon.

While all dragons are able to guide their growth and development, Caliphon seems to be able to control this process far more than her peers.  Her anatomy is fluid, and seems unbounded by any known limitation.  When decapitated, she grew two heads from the stump.  Afterwards, the two heads fought, and the larger consumed the smaller.  She has been observed to double in size in the space of a day, and even to birth smaller versions of herself to pursue prey into caverns too large for herself.

Her flame is the flame of mutation.  It does not burn, but it changes.  Its effects are the most potent on flesh, but all objects are affected.  Swords become twisted.  Stones become brittle.  Trees fall over and degenerate into cones of many-limbed “mushrooms”.

Nothing less should be expected from Caliphon, first-born and mightiest of the elder wyrms.

Caliphon’s Drakkencult

They sometimes guard Caliphon’s eggs.  These eggs hatch in times of need, always with an offspring perfectly suited for the drakkencult’s purpose.  The city of Caliphon's cult is said to be among the most beautiful of all.

Those that are favored somewhat, are given gifts of form.

Those that are favored most are eaten.  They live on inside her, and speak from her throat.

Chameleodrakes (Drakes)

Laterally flattened 800 lb predators with chameleon tongues.  So great is their camouflage that they function as if they were invisible.  Incredible climbers.