Even Further D&D blatherings
Dec. 26th, 2008 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weirdletYes, yes, this is hardly the place. But it's my blogspace, therefore no one is going to read it but me, and I need *some*place to put these things that isn't going to get lost in the shuffle of multiple word documents.
I realized what I could really do to get that feel of 'weird ancestry' for sorcerers- bloodlines. Not just bloodline or heritage feats, mind, which are honestly sorely lacking- but the Unearthed Arcana thingies. I just found this neat little D&D wiki that lets people put up both regular Open Game License stuff and homebrew work- the homebrew's a little variable, but this is *useful*.
Would it be required for a sorcerer or other character to take a bloodline? Hardly. But it's an option and it's something that, in the background of Alucia, pops up a lot. Not in every village, every generation, but it happens often enough that frequently, people will know the signs, if not always what to do about it- and not everyone gets in enough practice/living/PC levels to enhance their genetic inheritance to dramatic levels.
I think the people who live along the edge of the Northern mountains in Alucia tend to share a common plight, despite their being in different countries along the length of the border- dragons. In my world, dragons are pretty dumb until and unless they reach a great age, at which point they are capable of breeding with each other. Such great wyrms are legendary, verging on the mythical- nobody's been that far into the mountains and come back to tell tales. But along the way to reaching that point, dragons may be beasts but they are highly magical beasts, and borrowing evidence from the mass of templates, bloodlines, and classes related to having their genes- dragons are also slutty. They'll nail anything that moves, and possibly anything that doesn't. The mountain-folk are where a lot of dragon-blooded sorcerers come from, and there will definitely be instances of having to deal with carnivorous, scaly sheep and fire-snorting bulls. This is part of why Alucia had such a good base to start from when it first started organizing and sending out soldiers into the world- they drew strongly from the local peoples who were blase about having to defend their lands with pitchfork and scythe, and wrestle abnormally tough and magical animals into domesticity. Farmers from the mountains are tough.
Fey bloodlines belong more to Svartlunders, although anyone with elfin ancestry can pop up with traits that belong more to their mysterious progenitors- the elves that humans meet are outcasts from Underhill, cast out without names, powers or memories, not even true immortality. But if the legends are to be believed- and the people who live in Svartlund believe in it religiously, because it's been what keeps them indoors at night and with horseshoes on doors- then genuine fae are frightfully powerful, even as they are rare and tricksy. With the elves and half-elves having had several centuries to wander where they whist, these can pop up in random villagers.
Demonic or devilish bloodlines are rarer and more disturbing, and tend to come more from Akyos, which is slightly Egyptian, slightly fantasy-Arabian/1001 Nights, and all falling apart. Once the height of civilization, the nobles have lost power over the last few centuries, and the thieves' gangs and guilds have taken over. A long, long time ago, it used to be the norm to make pacts with demonic or devilish forces in order to gain power, as demons and devils are just as immediately potent and often more willing to talk face to face than some gods. It's not necessarily a matter of good vs evil or Divine God against Unholy Devil- just different tribes of other-planar beings, each with their own shtick. Fiendish blood used to be a sign of nobility, even royalty- but those bloodlines have faded, for the most part, and the old rituals to join a house to a particular fiendish lord are hard to come by and even harder to pull off. But sometimes, just sometimes, someone can find a way to attract the attention of a being from the harsh, terrifying underworlds and otherplanes, and offer up something to make a bargain...
Celestial bloodlines are a little more rare, but not impossible. For the most part, the only people purported to have a divine lineage (At least celestially divine- plenty of small kingdoms that have been absorbed into the empire used to say their kings and heroes were god-bred, though these might turn out to be exaggerations or association of local monsters or devils as minor deities) are the Emperors and their immediate family. That does not preclude other unions of divines and mortals, but celestials are often not so hot to spread their influence into the mortal realm as other, more earthly or expansionist beings.
....
A friend of mine has run his own homebrew world for a few years now, loosely based but strongly founded in things like A Song of Ice and Fire, and in it, sorcerers are absolutely forbidden, it's a dissecting offense to be one. Of course Erika (friend of mine, got me into D&D in the first place) and I had to play them- we made up a couple of brothers passing as wizards, and it was great fun.
I wanted to keep some of that flavor of 'sorcery is weird, innate but called unnatural', without it being a complete forbidden thing. Local villagers might get very creeped out, but the Empire of Alucia is founded on the principal of taking anything that works and making it work for them- there's a movement to collect potential sorcerers and teach them in an academy headed by a noted and highly-ranked sorceress herself, wherein there can be specialized and individual attention given to each student, as well as a greater knowledge of how to deal with manifestation safely. That's another part of the flavor I wanted to include- sorcery is innate to the person casting magic, but not necessarily natural to their human-based anatomy. Accommodating the changes required to do such things is a bit of a rough ride, and not necessarily without consequences. Although there are no mechanical enforcements aside from player-policed min-maxing and the one ability in the sorcerer variant I'm thieving that lets you take ability damage for metamagic, sorcerers have a reputation as being a little crazy. Some people put it down to the sickness of manifesting, especially with the old wives' tale that the worse the sickness, the more potential for power.
The official Search and offer of scholarship has been going on for many years, but it's still a relatively new thing in the sense of tradition- sometimes people are unwilling to send their children off to a school that isn't as structured as an arcane academy or university, such as those that produce wizards. Then there are those who are unhappy with the reputation of the schoolmistress, the Lady Atia of Green Mountain, who is a notorious woman and subject to many rumors.
I realized what I could really do to get that feel of 'weird ancestry' for sorcerers- bloodlines. Not just bloodline or heritage feats, mind, which are honestly sorely lacking- but the Unearthed Arcana thingies. I just found this neat little D&D wiki that lets people put up both regular Open Game License stuff and homebrew work- the homebrew's a little variable, but this is *useful*.
Would it be required for a sorcerer or other character to take a bloodline? Hardly. But it's an option and it's something that, in the background of Alucia, pops up a lot. Not in every village, every generation, but it happens often enough that frequently, people will know the signs, if not always what to do about it- and not everyone gets in enough practice/living/PC levels to enhance their genetic inheritance to dramatic levels.
I think the people who live along the edge of the Northern mountains in Alucia tend to share a common plight, despite their being in different countries along the length of the border- dragons. In my world, dragons are pretty dumb until and unless they reach a great age, at which point they are capable of breeding with each other. Such great wyrms are legendary, verging on the mythical- nobody's been that far into the mountains and come back to tell tales. But along the way to reaching that point, dragons may be beasts but they are highly magical beasts, and borrowing evidence from the mass of templates, bloodlines, and classes related to having their genes- dragons are also slutty. They'll nail anything that moves, and possibly anything that doesn't. The mountain-folk are where a lot of dragon-blooded sorcerers come from, and there will definitely be instances of having to deal with carnivorous, scaly sheep and fire-snorting bulls. This is part of why Alucia had such a good base to start from when it first started organizing and sending out soldiers into the world- they drew strongly from the local peoples who were blase about having to defend their lands with pitchfork and scythe, and wrestle abnormally tough and magical animals into domesticity. Farmers from the mountains are tough.
Fey bloodlines belong more to Svartlunders, although anyone with elfin ancestry can pop up with traits that belong more to their mysterious progenitors- the elves that humans meet are outcasts from Underhill, cast out without names, powers or memories, not even true immortality. But if the legends are to be believed- and the people who live in Svartlund believe in it religiously, because it's been what keeps them indoors at night and with horseshoes on doors- then genuine fae are frightfully powerful, even as they are rare and tricksy. With the elves and half-elves having had several centuries to wander where they whist, these can pop up in random villagers.
Demonic or devilish bloodlines are rarer and more disturbing, and tend to come more from Akyos, which is slightly Egyptian, slightly fantasy-Arabian/1001 Nights, and all falling apart. Once the height of civilization, the nobles have lost power over the last few centuries, and the thieves' gangs and guilds have taken over. A long, long time ago, it used to be the norm to make pacts with demonic or devilish forces in order to gain power, as demons and devils are just as immediately potent and often more willing to talk face to face than some gods. It's not necessarily a matter of good vs evil or Divine God against Unholy Devil- just different tribes of other-planar beings, each with their own shtick. Fiendish blood used to be a sign of nobility, even royalty- but those bloodlines have faded, for the most part, and the old rituals to join a house to a particular fiendish lord are hard to come by and even harder to pull off. But sometimes, just sometimes, someone can find a way to attract the attention of a being from the harsh, terrifying underworlds and otherplanes, and offer up something to make a bargain...
Celestial bloodlines are a little more rare, but not impossible. For the most part, the only people purported to have a divine lineage (At least celestially divine- plenty of small kingdoms that have been absorbed into the empire used to say their kings and heroes were god-bred, though these might turn out to be exaggerations or association of local monsters or devils as minor deities) are the Emperors and their immediate family. That does not preclude other unions of divines and mortals, but celestials are often not so hot to spread their influence into the mortal realm as other, more earthly or expansionist beings.
....
A friend of mine has run his own homebrew world for a few years now, loosely based but strongly founded in things like A Song of Ice and Fire, and in it, sorcerers are absolutely forbidden, it's a dissecting offense to be one. Of course Erika (friend of mine, got me into D&D in the first place) and I had to play them- we made up a couple of brothers passing as wizards, and it was great fun.
I wanted to keep some of that flavor of 'sorcery is weird, innate but called unnatural', without it being a complete forbidden thing. Local villagers might get very creeped out, but the Empire of Alucia is founded on the principal of taking anything that works and making it work for them- there's a movement to collect potential sorcerers and teach them in an academy headed by a noted and highly-ranked sorceress herself, wherein there can be specialized and individual attention given to each student, as well as a greater knowledge of how to deal with manifestation safely. That's another part of the flavor I wanted to include- sorcery is innate to the person casting magic, but not necessarily natural to their human-based anatomy. Accommodating the changes required to do such things is a bit of a rough ride, and not necessarily without consequences. Although there are no mechanical enforcements aside from player-policed min-maxing and the one ability in the sorcerer variant I'm thieving that lets you take ability damage for metamagic, sorcerers have a reputation as being a little crazy. Some people put it down to the sickness of manifesting, especially with the old wives' tale that the worse the sickness, the more potential for power.
The official Search and offer of scholarship has been going on for many years, but it's still a relatively new thing in the sense of tradition- sometimes people are unwilling to send their children off to a school that isn't as structured as an arcane academy or university, such as those that produce wizards. Then there are those who are unhappy with the reputation of the schoolmistress, the Lady Atia of Green Mountain, who is a notorious woman and subject to many rumors.
