The Plane of Lightning & Thoughts - Fulmens - Spells of the Storm-Wracked Noosphere

In conjunction with a good friend of mine I'm helping start the Planescape challenge. For those too lazy to click the link just now, its essentially a re-imagining of various planes, but instead of directly waxing poetic about them, they are informed via the various kinds of magic that stem from them. My choice of plane was the Plane of Lightning.

Note: I'm considering one day maybe publishing these spellbooks, or making some kind of game around them. Is that something readers of this blog would be interested in?

Eric Tualle

First, some context.

The Noosphere is the term given to that untouchable, unknowable plane of existence where all ideas, thoughts, dreams, and impulses are drawn from. As a place, it is alive. It crackles with synaptic static, leaves the skin tingling with the electric flash of ideas both good and bad. This is why the Plane of Lightning is so oft called the Noosphere, as they are, in truth, both one and the same. After all, how does the brain communicate if not through electricity?

Thus, the Plane of Lightning, the Noosphere - think of it as the ever-dreaming mind of the universe itself. 

Glen Johnson
A closer idea to how the Plane of Lightning might look

Drawing on the Plane of Lightning for your magic is a dangerous affair. In order to be properly initiated into these esoteries, one must perform a certain ritual.

Take a small nail of silver, pure silver, silver newly fashioned into this shape and cleansed in water purified utterly. Take this nail and insert it into the roof of your mouth, slowly. It will hurt. You will bleed. Reduce your hit points by 2 permanently. Find a storm and there, meditate. Think. Do nothing but think. Think as it rages and ensure no rain is falling, lest you call the attention of a different, more diluted plane. Ensure that Jupiter, or your settings equivalent, is bright in the sky just beyond the clouds. Think on things you do not know. Wonder. Muse.

Eventually, the lightning shall strike. Drawn by your thoughts and the silver in your mouth is this bolt slung from a dimension beyond our own and when it falls it stakes its way into you forever and always. Your mind will be overwhelmed. Your thoughts will be wiped from your brain, alongside your fears, your hopes, your ideals; this state is fleeting, of course, no longer than a second's sliver, but in that second your brain will become the host of the Plane of Lightning.

As it is a plane, it can exist in many places at once. While it is there, you will feel it. You will know it. Roll on the Fulmen's Omen table below to see how exactly your ascendancy into a Fulmen (as those so enlightened call themselves).

Fulmen's Omen

1. The air around you smells of charged ozone, and animals scurry as your anger rises.
2. When you speak, others hear peals of thunder far off in the distance, as if a storm neared.
3. When others look at you, their thoughts are mixed with the thoughts of peoples and creatures somewhere far away.
4. People close to you feel an electric shock whenever they touch someone else.
5. When you are injured, the sound of buzzing, crackling, or hissing fills the ears of those around you, growing louder the more you are hurt.
6. Metal objects within 30" feet of you let off a soft, pale blue-white glow - St. Elmo's Fire.
7. When your eyes fall on someone, the hairs along their arms and neck stand up on end.
8. When you see someone you intend to hurt, the hair on their head begins to raise.
9. Intrusive thoughts bloom in the minds of everyone who touches you.
10. Those talking with you feel as if they are experiencing a constant stream of new ideas.
11. When you feel threatened, whoever is threatening you feels as if their teeth were vibrating.
12. Those who you hurt feel as if they can speak a new language, know a new skill, or do a task they never had the knowledge to do so before. This is fleeting; it disappears after a moment's notice.

When you become a Fulmen, you learn a single Fulmen's Secret. You learn an additional Fulmen's Secret every 15 Fame, if you repeat the meditation process of the ritual 1 month after the first, or (if your system of choice has it) you gain 2 levels. You can learn a Fulmen's Secret of a higher level if you know 1 secret of the level immediately lower.

If you repeat the meditation ritual, your hit points are reduced by 1 each time. Getting struck by lightning repeatedly, even if magic, does little for one's health.

There are other ways to learn Fulmen Secrets. Traveling to the Plane of Lightning (& Thoughts), though dangerous to the extreme, is something that Master Fulmens oft do in the later years of their lives. Likewise, by stealing the silver nail from a Fulmen's mouth and performing the entire ritual over with that nail, you can learn all the secrets they knew. Doing so, however, means that you lose whatever secrets you both did not know.

Nicolas Camiade
A Fulmen who has dabbled in other magics too.

THE FULMEN'S SECRETS

Names & Levels (using standard B/X spell levels to determine what kinds of slots to use)

Roll 1d3 when learning a Fulmen's Secret to see which you grasp from the Plane of Lightning

First Level

1. How to Become Wise as All the World's Sages
2. St. Elmo's Fire Turned Upon Those Who Dare to Know What They Do Not
3. The Painful Art of Forking Thoughts Into the Unenlightened

Second Level

1. Attract Those Crackling Thoughts that Evade You Still
2. Dim the Stars that Fork Into Endless Logics
3. Enrage Those Mindless Mortal Heavens

Third Level

1. Cast the Storm Across Mountains & Memories
2. The Secret to Erasing All Knowledge of the Sageless Heretics
3. Turn Thy Muscles Into Countless Thoughts

DESCRIPTIONS - FIRST LEVEL

How to Become Wise as All the World's Sages

Close your eyes and see naught but the roiling storm behind them. See flashes of lightning - of brilliance - and call one to you. Your hair stands up on end. Your eyes, still closed, glow so brightly they shine from behind your eyelids. All who see you see a bolt of lightning fork its way down from the heavens and into your body. Your veins burn blue through your skin; open your eyes then, and you will have a sage-like understanding of one academic, magical, or practical topic of your choice. You cannot speak to share this knowledge. If you do, the lightning escapes from your mouth and you lose your blessings. Lasts for as long as your mouth is kept shut. Some Fulmens even stitch their mouths to ensure they never lose their wisdoms.

St. Elmo's Fire Turned Upon Those Who Dare to Know What They Do Not

Lift your left palm skywards, for the left is that which masters the occult. See before you creatures that have blood, or else have iron or copper or some other metal inside of them, no matter how trace the amounts. Whisper. Whisper and close your eyes and see the storm and see them inside the storm. You do not know what you are whispering; only that there is sound coming from your mouth, and to others it sounds as if faint, distant, echoing peals of thunder are slipping past your lips. Open your eyes and see that everyone you just envisioned is glowing a faint, pale, cobalt blue. They do not know this, nor does any other non-Fulmen. Whenever you sleep, you shall enter into their mind; you will know all that they know for as long as you do, and if you wish, you can grant them knowledge that you yourself have. If you grant them knowledge, there is a 70% chance that portions of their brain are overloaded by the introduced static, making them forget 1d6 important details or memories that they know. If both Fulmen and victim are sleeping, their dreams are yours to control.

The Painful Art of Forking Thoughts Into the Unenlightened

Hold out your hand, aimed as it is towards the source of your ire. Let your emotions cascade into brilliant strikes of lightning inside of your head. Hear the echoing, pealing, roaring, angry thunders. Draw on the noosphere; hunt for information on how to kill, how to butcher, how to murder. In a flash of brilliance it comes to you; a lightning bolt drops into your hands, screaming, screeching, and in that moment you must fork it into that creature that you hate. When it strikes, the creature knows all the knowledge you just hunted for. It fixates on one method of murder. Then, that method happens. Perhaps their throat opens up just the perfect way to make a Glasglow smile. Maybe their bones suddenly break as they learn the appropriate number of hammer strikes that it takes. There is a  70% chance that they survive. And if they do, the knowledge remains with them, forever; a way to make assassins, if one has ample bodies for the coinflip.

Marta Nael.
What I imagine to be a Fulmen, enhanced with some crystal, preparing to create their assassins.

DESCRIPTIONS - SECOND LEVEL

Attract Those Cackling Thoughts that Evade You Still

Lift your left hand skywards, occult wand that it is. You know so little about the reality around you. But someone must. Think on what you do not know and create the cackling display. Every living creature within 1 mile and with an open roof above their heads will emit from their crowns a bolt of lightning that slings and slithers through the air to be gathered into an orb held in the palm of your hand. It burns away the skin there, singes the flesh; these are wounds that will heal supernaturally within 1d4 days time, but until they do you can hold nothing else with this limb. Now, with the lightning gathered, watch as it turns into a bolt of lightning that strikes you thusly. You will learn, from the minds of those you have sought:

• Their location.
• How to perform the skills they know best.
• Who they love the most.
• Who they hate the most.

Your personality is destroyed. You can learn nothing else, lest your brain be turned to ash. Memories will not take while this knowledge is held inside of you, but you can repeat the information freely, perhaps to a scribe to record it, or another Fulmen to learn it. Lasts for 8 seconds for every lightning bolt you have consumed through the casting of this spell. 

Dim the Stars that Fork Into Endless Logics

Choose an individual that you can clearly see. Point to them with your left hand, palm facing the ground. Lower it. Slowly. Steadily. Your arm aches. The individual will turn their attention towards you entirely but will not move. The star that is their mind dims. Intelligence spills out of them; the ozone smells, their hair rises on end, metal objects begin to glow with St. Elmo's fire that they hold. Once your hand is flat by your hip, the spell is done. 30% chance of success and if so, they are a catatonic mess, totally incapable, drooling, tongue lolling out of their mouth, unresponsive to any and all stimuli. But the moment you move your hand more than 5 degrees in any direction, their star flares and intelligence returns to them. Useful for the binding of immortals; many a Fulmen has an apprentice bind their arm to their sides so that djinn or angels or demons work not their terrible works upon the world.

Enrage Those Mindless Mortal Heavens

All lightning that is not inside the Plane of Lightning is mortal lightning. It is mindless, stupid. Easily enraged. Close your eyes. Feel the storm beating against the inside of your skull. For just the briefest of moments, let it out. A wave of skin-tingling and invisible electricity will race from your body, felt for ten miles out. In the heavens above does the storm come suddenly. Bolts of lightning will fall to the ground haphazardly and non-stop for as long as your eyes are kept closed. For every minute there is a 2% chance of someone beyond yourself being struck by a bolt of lightning, doubling for every additional minute that passes. If struck by a bolt of lightning, a creature's mind is scrambled; they will become enraged and mindlessly run about attacking everything and everyone but the Fulmen until the caster's eyes are opened. Objects struck by lightning are sundered; if wooden, they ignite.

Oliver Mootoo
A Fulmen gathering knowledge, for better or for worse.

DESCRIPTIONS - THIRD LEVEL

Cast the Storm Across Mountains & Memories

See your victim. Inhale. Deeply. More deeply still. Your victim will feel then as if they have been struck by lightning. They will know your thoughts. They will know your intent. As they try to stop you, exhale. The storm inside your skull sends a budding piece of it across time and thought directly into the mind of your chosen servant. They may mentally fight back. As they struggle, repeat this ritual - simple as it is - and finish what you have started. 10% chance of failure. When you succeed, their brains have been utterly replaced with a sliver of the Plane of Lightning - your Plane of Lightning. In all ways are they now a mental clone of you. They know they are a budded thoughtform inhabiting a body of your choice and that they come from you. Your mind-clone will serve you in all ways. The original mind is gone, set adrift in the Plane of Lightning. Only by traveling there and capturing their lightning in a bottle can you restore them.

The Secret to Erasing All Knowledge of the Sageless Heretics

Grab your victim. Kiss them. As you do so, you create a bridge between your Plane of Lightning and their brain. In that moment, every single neuron they have is attuned to the infinite inside you. Choose which to kill. You are erasing vital information from their mind. Burning those neurons to cinders so that it literally can never be used again. Steal their ability to keep their heart beating, or their lungs filling with oxygen, and so on. A perfect assassination tool, used as such throughout Fulmen history. If used on another Fulmen, begins a tug-of-war between them; the two must say a word back and forth to each other, each taking a turn. The first to finish a sentence obliterates a chosen bit of knowledge in the other's mind that has less letters then the sentence does. A complicated affair - one oft avoided by Fulmens against each other to avoid the hassle.

Turn Thy Muscles Into Countless Thoughts

Be obliterated by your own Plane of Lightning. Let loose mental blocks you did not even know were there. It will flood your body. Your muscles will be destroyed, your skeleton too, every fiber of who you are. In a flash you are gone. And in a flash, you return. The lightning created assembles the perfect form. You levitate inches off of the ground. You are androgynous. You glow with sacred genius lightning. When you move, you move as fast as a lightning bolt does - or perhaps as fast as thought. You cannot be hurt save by silver or another's lightning. You need not eat, drink, nor sleep. Never again will you wear armor or wield a weapon or tool or touch another. In your mouth, your silver stake is still there. If it is ever removed, your form dissipates; you become one with the Plane of Lightning and disappear from all other worlds forever more. A method of ascension used by Fulmens to enter the Plane of Lightning and learn secrets that cannot be contained by mortal bodies - the secrets of the 4th level.

Gary Galler
What else, but an Ascended Fulmen?
Apotheosis of Lightning & of Thought

FULMEN ARTIFACTS

Argentate Wand

Rod made of bones from the left hands of spellcasters. Covered in pure silver. Attracts lightning and Fulmen's Secrets and redirects them to someone else around the wielder. Created in the East, where all Fulmens were hunted and killed.

Deliberation Coil

A coil of plastic, wood, and silver. Hand held. Attracts a single bolt of lightning and then forks it into 8 or less people within 10 feet of it. Each person struck is continuously struck; while continuously struck, all gathered can communicate with each other in ideas, visions, and thoughts- a method far faster than verbal communication.

Fulmen's Stake

Silver stake, covered in blood-rust. Belonged to a now dead or now powerless spellcaster. Insert into your mouth and learn 1 random Fulmen's Secret.

Ideation Cloak

This cloak of wool has the static thoughts of dead Fulmens contained within it. Any who touch it are shocked. If worn, an hour later, one's body is in tune with this, and no longer shocked. Increases the efficiency of one's brain, making them more apt to learn new ideas, skills, and other talents.

Knowledge Stake

Long silver stakes inserted into the hands, eyes, feet, and sternum. For each stake inserted, increase the % chance of success for your Fulmen's Secrets by 10% and become unable to use that part of your body save for spellcasting. If inserted in the sternum, suffer from a heart attack and die within 10d100 days instead. Inserted by Fulmens who know their time is short or that a great obstacle looms before them.

Looking Mask

A cloth mask covered in a reflective substance. When worn, Fulmen Secrets cannot effect you. The mask is reflective of the outside world. Worn whenever Fulmens schedule meetings with one another, and taken off to show respect and comfortably. 

Noo Quartz

Crystals that grow naturally when a lightning strike occurs. The lightning is not mortal; it is, somehow, from the Plane of Lightning. Grows into organic matter. Increases success rates of spells by 1% for every crystal growing on a Fulmen.

Potion Catatonia

Potion made from a Fulmen's blood, captured lightning, and air from the Plane of Lightning. Once mixed, forms a moving, shifting helix in its bottle - a liquid that feels like a gas and moves like a crawling solid. When consumed, reduces brain activity to a minimum, putting the consumer into a coma for 1d4 days. Fulmens have made many tools to destroy their would-be killers. A hint to what happens to mortals who visit the Plane of Lightning unprepared.

Speculation Censer

A censer of black glass. Melt pure silver in it. Breathe in the fumes. Allows you to communicate with a Fulmen who has ascended to the Plane of Lightning. Ask them questions for as long as you remain conscious, though the silver fumes will surely knock you out in 10d10 seconds. Used to make pacts with the Thought Lords, the Neural Gods, and the Genius Fulmens of ages long past.

Storm Razors

A pair of argentate wands with a bolt of lightning cackling between them, trapped. Wield both as a melee weapon. Swing them and anything they touch is electrocuted. Catch something between them and watch as the lightning obliterates them. 1d12 damage per turn touched or trapped. Used as an execution tool by Fulmens on those who broke pacts with the Thought Lords.

Tablet Cerebrations

A silver tablet. When in the presence of electricity, St. Elmo's fire radiates on it, revealing a map or words and instructions. Used by Fulmens to hide their now extinct orders from their hunters & destroyers.

Wisdom Bottle

Glass bottle made with traces of silver from Fulmen Stakes. Attracts lightning when uncorked. Can a single bolt of lightning, mortal or not. When uncorked, lashes out against whoever the bottle is pointed at and fades.

Piotr Foksowicz
Follow the storm to follow the Fulmen.

Alignment - Short Essay

In Eberron: Rising from the Last War, we learn that a big difference between this world and the rest of the multiverse is that alignment is not an actual force that exists. This was very intriguing to me, because that means that in other D&D settings, alignment is a literal thing, not a concept, nor a state of mind. In other words, the planes influence creatures, making them evil or good or neutral, lawful or chaotic or neutral. It is as set in their existence as their species, as it resides in their very souls. And while it can be changed, this change requires magic or it requires extraordinary circumstances, as it is a change on a deep spiritual level.

I like this. I like it a lot.

Not because I think it mirrors the real world, as it doesn't, but it opens up a lot of themes for me to start playing with. Before I get into those themes, let me go ahead and describe what each alignment means to me. Note: this is not the actual definition of alignments, and I'm not trying to debate what alignment is in canon. I'm discussing what alignment means to me and in my games.

Lawful - The need to organize, for stability, and for peace. Does not shake the boat, and fights primarily to keep the world put together in a way that allows for consistent life + a consistency in achieving a net positive.

Chaos - Raw passion unfettered, leading to constant change, the chasing of ideals and hopes and dreams, not caring for peace or stability because it is always worth it to go for a new high.

Good - The manifest need to help selflessly help others. An impulse to ensure that others are happy, that the greater good is served, that no one feels played or screwed over, for everyone to be content when all is said or done.

Evil - Hatred gone into overdrive. A hatred for the world, a need to inflict suffering so that others understand your own pain. A rage that burns and doesn't care about equality or true justice, instead wanting to selfishly get what you need, no matter the cost to others.

 by Anthony Jones
Evil feels like an infestation; worms in the apple of your brain

Neutrality - A balance between the selfish and the selfless. Understanding that in life there is good and there is evil, there is happiness and their is suffering, and that both can occur. Realization that one's alignment is not 100% descriptive, and that even evil may do good at times, and vice versa.

Unaligned - The vast majority of souls, when born, go to plants and beasts. These souls, overwhelming in number, know no alignment; they simply exist, biology dominating spirituality, living and dying and being reborn eternally until evolution comes.

So with this said, the theme I see being made manifest is this: Is it more noble to be born a saint, or to overcome one's nature for good? There is redemption in the Forgotten Realms and in other D&D multiverse games. The evil can rise, the good can fall, the law can descend into chaos, the chaotic can be forced into law. As these forces interplay with one another it is the player characters who are caught in this game of cosmic flux; a game where devils and angels compete for souls in their wars, an endless trial where they must contend with the spiritual force of their souls which weighs in on every action they do.

Will the barbarian find peace, leaving the chaotic battlefields and instead settling down into an orderly village?

Will the warlock be able to resist the evil of their Fiend patron and once again come to love others?

Will the paladin succumb to their hatred and choose to use their oath selfishly to punish others?

These are overarching things that I think alignment can question and make D&D into a pretty good story. Similar to Burning Wheel's beliefs, D&D alignment, under this lens, becomes a way to challenge the characters and to make the story very focused on their actions.

Spirit Healer from WoW.
Good is an energy to selflessly help others.

To go with this requires a little bit of worldbuilding. If I want to use this, then alignment has to be a force with origin. Naturally the planes are those origins. You have the Elemental Chaos, where the power of Law has seen it split into countless half-planes. You have planes where chaos and law both overflow, where law and good fountainhead, and both spill into the prime material planes across the cosmos. At higher levels, or maybe lower ones depending on the story, these planes should play some vital roles in the player's adventures. It is from here that their souls are decided. It is to here they must eventually go if they wish to change themselves truly.

Lastly, we have to talk about Free Will. Does free will still exist in a world where alignment is a force? Well, that depends on your definition of Free Will. Alignment does not control you, but it does tempt you. Alignment does not remove agency. Instead, it is a constant reminder, an impulse, a voice or hand guiding your actions. You can resist it. You can fight back. And by fighting back, that is how you can possibly change your soul. Can nature overcome nurture? Can nurture overcome nature? Is there a balance between the two? These are things that are decided by the players, not the DM.

Spell Slots as Hit Point Abstractions

Spell slots are limited. This is primarily for game reasons; the wizard cannot cast fireball more than X times a day, because if they could, people with swords would cease to matter, and that's not good for the game. But let's pretend that isn't the main reason and come up with a narrative reason, and thus maybe a new mechanic, for why Spell Slots exist.

By Seb McKinnon.

The Force of Magic

What laymen call magic - that is, the casting of spells, the working of rituals, and other such supernatural powers - is a deeply personal thing. Not just on the mental level, but on the physical as well. To cast a spell is to turn one's body into a channel for something utterly paranormal; to let something leave you and rearrange the world before you. This is an idea that many have discussed in a philosophy called the River & the Rain. 

The River is the actual force flowing through the spellcaster. It is that eldritch momentum that ignites a fireball in a perfect vacuum or that polymorphs a griffon's body into a comatose mouse.

The Rain is the greater force that the spellcaster is calling on. It is a metaphysical concept, an energy that permeates everything, the stuff that keeps the universe expanding, the noosphere too, and that ideas generate when conjured forth.

Together, the River & the Rain make up the force of magic. The more of the rain you can call upon to flow into your river, the more force the river has, or in other words, the spell you are casting becomes all the more powerful. This is a tangible thing. It can and has been measured by cabals of arcane workers, by congregations of divine priests, by circles of druids hidden in the hill and mist. This is, mechanically, what a spell level is. Call it a Spell of the 1st Circle if you want, or a Miracle of the 1st Order, or whatever name you can conjure forth. It all means the same thing: spell level.

And if a spell's level is tangible to the amount of force that the spell produces, and if this force is a river flowing through the spellcaster, then it is only natural that there are many limitations to spells - as many as their are limitations of the physical form.

For example, a human's max recorded jump height is 63.5 inches - a little over 5 ft or 161 cm. It stands to reason that, with little variation, a human cannot possibly jump higher than that; their biology will not allow it. So then is it true that a human can only cast spells so strong due to their own biological limit. It is a limit that can be raised with training, yes, but it is a limit nonetheless. And just as a human cannot jump their max height an infinite number of times, neither can the spellcaster cast their spells an infinite number either. Thus, spell slots.

Let's first translate this to some more interesting narrative concepts, and then see what it leads too mechanically.

By Jakub Bazyluk. A spellcaster violently letting the River flow for a spell.

Magical Exhaustion

As the River flows so too does the spellcaster's body suffer wear and tear. Their neurons, during the casting of a spell, are firing on every possible cylinder. The complex network of bacteria, fungi, and cells that makes up a living being are all, for that moment, uniting their potential to one specific purpose. Such effort does not go unpunished. Eventually, a spell caster will expend all of their spell slots and be left with just their own, natural, mortal selves.

What does this look like? It is different, yet always the same. A feeling that one's heart is beating slower - that their blood is thinner than it was before - that their stomach cannot digest food or liquid. Thinking is done through a haze as memories are rebuilt and personality traits reestablished by the previously overloaded mind. It will feel like your nails are loose in their cuticles; like your bones are only barely attached to their joints.

In other words, it is not a pleasant feeling. Not like being exhausted, but similar, thus its simple term of being magically exhausted. No spellcaster likes it. Many avoid casting their last spell so that they can avoid this state. In games where they only get one or two spells a day at early levels, it is a state frequent. In exchange for being able to blow a door open or warp someone's perception of you, you just feel like abject shit.

Below, a d12 table. Roll on it when you spend your last spell slot. This effect is lost when you regain any spell slots. These effects are in addition to the above description.

1. Your eyes are weakened; you see low detail versions of everything around you.
2. You lose all sense of temperature except for a spreading, extreme heat inside of you.
3. You vomit immediately, and can keep no food or liquid down for long.
4. Memories of specific things, such as people's names, your favorite color, or the name of where you are disappear.
5. Your personality is eroded, leaving you bland, neutral, and unimpressed with things around you.
6. Natural instincts like fear, pain, and anger are gone, significantly mellowing your reactions.
7. When others look at you, they forget what you look like, sound like, or act like the moment they look away.
8. Your name is damaged; others can only remember and refer to you as either the first or last letter of your name.
9. Non-magical things that you touch sometimes slip through your fingers as if they were never there.
10. Your thoughts leak out of your head and into others around you.
11. A magical, aurora-glowing sweat drips off of you and rises as steam too. Whatever it touches - clothing, grass, other's skin - it steals away its color.
12. You continuously cry, though these tears you shed are more akin to blood than anything else.

A night's rest, a week's rest, whatever your rest is allows your body to heal, and thus the magical exhaustion ends.

Exhaustion serves as a way to note that you are growing stronger. Magical exhaustion is no different. Eventually, your ability to let flow greater rivers for longer duration will mean that magical exhaustion is harder and harder to come by. And just as muscles grow visibly larger, a spellcaster grows a greater presence the more powerful they become.

By Seb McKinnon.
Magical Exhaustion is similar to feeling as if you are fading away, mist in the sun.

Eldritch Presence

Eldritch Presence is the concept coined that shows how powerful a spellcaster is. It is an aura about them - a non-visible force that is felt in the minds of those close. The higher the spell level that the caster can cast, the more powerful their Eldritch Presence is.

It feels like looking at a sky where stormclouds are just creeping on the horizon. Like looking around and seeing a gentle wind pick at the trees and grass as the grey above grows ever darker. A gravity that does not pull you inwards,and a force that does not push you away but that threatens almost innocently. It sets your hairs on fire, waves of goosebumps racing from shoulder to hand. Cats will bristle if this force is malignant. Your hair will stick to your head, as if you are sweating. Glass fogs, blades become sharper, colors more vivid. Most noticeably of all, your thoughts will race. Faster and faster will you think as if something was empowering your mind in ways never before felt. Like an adderall drop, a hit of speed.

These effects are slight for neophytes. Even for those well-versed, able to cast magics entering into the third, fourth, fifth levels can they be written off by the ignorants who know not what Eldritch Presence is. But beyond that, it is tangible. It is a pressure. It makes the commons bow to the wizard, the king sit more rightly in their throne, the guards ever more guarded.

Hard it is to put a range on such an effect. The range is your sight. If you can see a powerful spellcaster, you can feel their Eldritch Presence. If they are close enough to you that you can hear their voice then you are close enough to feel their strength.

This is why dragons, demons, angels, and all other manner of superior creatures can confidently stare down a battalion of soldiers and not be harmed. So great is their Eldritch Presence that it halves the force of sword swings, makes arrows miss wide. Force field of Rain. Armor of Power.

And if this is how it feels to hold magic, and if magic protects you from certain death, then so too can magic be seen similar at hit points - abstraction of life as it is.

Guild Wars concept art.
Strong Eldritch Presence can even make others perceive you as something beyond mortal.

Spell Slots as HP

Spellcasting characters no longer have hit points. They instead have spell slots. If they are a half-caster (ranger, paladin) they are uniquely equipped, as now they have their starting hit points and their spell slots to protect them.

When a creature/character (hereafter referred too just as a creature) would suffer damage while having at least 1 unspent spell slot, they instead take no damage unless the damage die rolls either its max number or is above 6 + the amount of spell slots unspent, whichever is higher.

Example: if a 1d8 longsword attack is made against a wizard with 1 spell slot, the longsword needs a 7 (6 + 1) or 8 (max number) to hit. If the wizard has 2 spell slots, only an 8 will hit. If a 3, only a 9, thus requiring a modifier of some sort to deal damage.

If the damage meets one of these two criteria, the spell slot is lost.

If a creature is Magically Exhausted (no spell slots), any damage die rolled against it knocks the spellcaster out and either kills them or leaves them dying, depending on your exact ruleset. If they have hit points, then those instead are effected until the same situation occurs.

This makes magic-users more difficult to kill if they are completely fresh, but essentially makes them nothing better than dead meat if they are out of spell slots. Resource management is all the more difficult now, as you are spending hit points. It will become important for a spellcaster to find a way to regain spell slots more quickly, if not at least temporarily, in order to stave off death for just a while longer. But it also empowers spellcasters when fresh to take on big risks. They can match the great warrior in a duel so long as they allow the River to flow free and to flow hard.

By Seb McKinnon.
Even a little girl, enriched with magic, is mighty as the armored soldier.

Temporary Spell Slots

The following methods can be used to regain temporary spell slots; that is, spell slots that disappear when your normal spell slots are regained. You cannot have more temporary spell slots then you have maximum spell slots.

Places of Power, such as shrines, altars, magical lairs, old arcane battlefields, moonless nights with the right constellations, etc etc, can be meditated in for 10 minutes, regaining 1d4 spell slots. 

Rituals & Sacrifices if you are a divine/miracle caster can be done in the name of your Power/Divinity, allowing you to regain 1 temporary spell slot per miracle you know.

Eldritch Cannibalism can be done on a creature with Eldritch Presence. Drinking a dragon's blood or eating a captured pixie will give you 1 temporary spell slot per HD the creature has.

Contracts & Pacts & Deals can be made with a creature with Eldritch Presence. In exchange for a favor, they lose 1 spell slot and you gain 1 temporary spell slot. They cannot regain their spell slot until you lose your temporary one. Temporary spell slots gained this way are added on top of your maximum spell slots and do not disappear when you regain spell slots, instead only disappearing when the favor is completed or you die.

Various esoteries, like blue goldstones, opals with polished fire, or the tears of a heartbroken siren can be used similar to health potions, granting 1 temporary spell slot.

By Seb McKinnon.
The River can flow from one to another in pacts and rituals.

Cantrips & Other Outliers

In some games and traditions, spellcasters have access to cantrips - low level magicks that require little effort to use. If you can cast cantrips, you are using your Eldritch Presence to shape reality in a minor way around you. Even when Magically Exhausted does a spellcaster have at least a little presence, and thus can cast cantrips. Cantrips have no bearing on a spellcaster's hit point abstractions.

In some games and traditions, spellcasters eventually can learn to cast a low level spell as if it were a cantrip. This is a feat of great power. If you can only cast a single spell like this, treat it as if it were a cantrip. But, if you are, say, a demon with multiple at will spells, your Eldritch Presence is never truly diminished. The only thing that can kill you is a magical weapon of some sort or a spell being used to destroy you when your limited spell slots are spent. Mortal forces cannot.

By Seb McKinnon.
No steel nor arrow will kill that with Presence Eldritch as This.

Drow & Lloth - A Retelling of these Poisonous People

This blog post is a reimagining of both Drow and a different lens then "gods are people too." This draws on religious symbology similar to the Nahua (Aztec Empire), where gods are ideas and symbols to be worn, channeled, and used.

The Nature of Divinity

This post cannot continue without a quick meditation on how I see divinity.

The divine, ie gods, angels, and their various servants and miracles, are not single-bodied entities. A god is unlike a creature; they do not have one form, one face, one name, nor one identity. To believe that a god has a stable form is the same as believing that water is water and ice is ice and that there is no overlap. In truth, there is nothing but overlap.

Let us ground this idea a bit more. When praying, you are not praying to a distant - albeit powerful - entity in another dimension. Instead you are praying to a flowing Power that manifests as you need it to manifest. This is what a miracle is - a manifestation of that Power. Thus, if someone were to see a god walking the world on two feat, what they are seeing is a miracle, no different than seeing someone brought back from the dead or water turned to wine.

This flowing Power has a personality. Just as the Power is too great to be stuck in one form, so too is the personality too mercurial to be defined as one thing. In this way, a divinity can display many different traits and identities despite being the same thing. Most pantheons are in fact a single Power interpreted through a suite of different perspectives. Religions based around a single Power are no different in reality, despite their seeming desire to be seen as one instead of many.

In a desperate bid to weaken divinity some have stated that worship is their lifeblood. This is untrue. A divinity has wants and it has limitations. Though it it incredibly powerful, these limitations are unique to it as opposed to creatures such as ourselves. So then, why is worship seen as a fuel for divinity? Worship is the act of communing and making Power manifest. In other words, it is the only way the Power can communicate with the world. So, if more people worship and pray, there is more communication, thus more miracles, thus the divinity is in a better position to get what it wants.

Worship and prayer need not be limited to only verbal orisons. Rituals and symbols are just as good. Thus, any religion worth its salt is filled with both in order to maximize the manifestation of miracles. These rituals and symbols, of course, must be relevant to the divinity in question. And though some symbols may be shared between divinities, it is wise not to try and mix and match. Heresy is punished wrathfully by the Powers that be.

I guess if you could "see" a divinity's true form, it might be something like this?

The Origins of Lloth

Drow are old and ancient and spiteful beyond comparison. It is ingrained in their flesh and blood, in the very heat of their bodies - that is, their souls. And living as they do buried in the bedrock of the world, where neither sun nor star nor moon can see, surrounded in the veins of the earth with things terrible and undeniable, things that gnaw at the world's roots like worms in the rotten tree, they found themselves horribly alone . And to be alone, with just their magics and their spite to protect them, they were prey to any and all else.

This is how Lloth found the drow: alone and desperate and dying faster and faster.

She came to them as a miracle. Their infravision saw a great heat surround them and that heat turned into spiders infinite and these spiders joined to form the woman known as Lloth. There She banished their predators and hollowed them a cave to call home. She protected that cave with the daemons that served Her, and with knowledge older than any living creature she helped the drow fashion a city deep in the veins of the earth.

But for one thing did Lloth ask and this She wanted above all else: food. The first sacrifices were thus of beautiful drow women and then rebellious drow men and then of the many predators that still harried the drow, even in their new utopia. This led itself to a culture symbolic of Lloth; a culture of trickery and lies and slavery and ritual sacrifice. From their Spider Queen they learned to weave webs of enmity and bloodlust and these webs have not stopped catching the doomed since their very first making.

Eons passed. The drow are long lived, you see. And communication with Lloth grew ever more detailed. Thus, the religion has taken on the form it has today. 

A miracle-manifestation of Lloth.

A Quick Summary of Lloth Worship

Below is a quick summary of Lloth Worship's core ideas. Though the drow have no name for this religion (for it is interwoven with their identity now, and thus to be a believer is to be drow) you can refer to it in your games as "Web Worship," "Spider Heresies," "Ink Belief," "Llothism," or "Drow Major."

The Mother is Matron & Heart. Lloth's primary identity is as a mother, matron, and queen. Thus, drow women exist in a society that puts value on them above that of males. It is believed that the femininity of a drow empowers them with a cunning mind, a quickness to learning, and an ability to more effectively manifest any of Lloth's many miracles. A drow woman may have many mates, is seen as virtuous if she has many children, and is considered powerful if she has destroyed rivals and subsumed their own legacies. Drow men who are born intersex, transsexual, or non-binary occupy a similar but different status. These individuals are seen to live in the same holy fringe as Lloth herself. Often times this leads to them becoming oracles and soothsayers, aids and confidants, and other similar positions of shadow-power.

Heat & Touch are Holy Language. Drow are famed for their highly detailed infravision, which allows them to see even minute details in the Veins of the Earth. Compounding this is their highly developed touch. A drow can know a person by their footsteps, and distinguish materials by simple touch. This has become interwoven with the idea of the spider's web, which in turn has lent itself to a philosophy of omniscience and omnipresence. Drow sacred text, which take the form of different gems and stones being heated in different ways, are worn by drow as symbols that communicate their feelings, their loyalties, their thoughts, and their believes. Amethyst earrings heated by spell to room temperature is a warning that the wearer will curse any who cross them, whilst quartz amulets drastically cooled are a signal that the wearer seeks violence, war, or bloodshed. As drow can percieve these signs from some distance and sometimes even through walls, it has led to a society who debates not through speech but through symbol. Likewise, heatless creatures, such as the dead, are seen by drow as being unknowable and dangerous. Creatures that exude great heat - but not enough to be fully inflamed, as that is blinding - are considered perfect sacrifices to Lloth and the matrons. Drow skin, with its cool colors reflecting little heat, has also led to a stratum of stereotypes. Darker skinned drow are seen to be chosen by Lloth herself to bring food and virtue to the drow, while drow with violet or grey skin are thought to be bastions of vitality perfect for miracle-work and self-sacrifice.

All Life is a Web Spread Far. The hunt for food is never ending, and thus the trickery needed to capture it must be the same. From the moment a drow is born they are given true names and false names. They are taught lies and then have their worldviews shattered to better show them what they must do to others. They are put into situations where they must make quick decisions about the lives of others and that if these decisions do not benefit the drow then they must suffer the consequences. This has created a culture of silver-tongued, quick-witted, and overtly roguish people. Their communications are encoded and their minds are trained to concoct schemes interwoven with other, deeper, greater schemes. It is virtuous to create conspiracies to sabotage other drow houses. It is a sign of great strength to wage a war of disinformation and to win. And it is an act of self-actualization, of true and utter drowness, of complete euphoria to reveal to a victim the drow's trickery at the moment of the victim's destruction. To not do so is a slight; it says to the victim, you are so inconsequential that you need not know of this moment. Were it not for such an act being capable of materializing miracles, it is doubtful such a conniving, pompous people could thrive as they do. But there is another layer to this too. The web is connected. All who are on it respect all others who are on it. If a plan fails, then it means many more have failed too. In this way, drow will help each other with their conspiracies, for to do so is to both help themselves and the drow as a whole.

All is Food. Feeding Lloth is a holy act. She is a divinity with a deep and great appetite, however, and one that is not easily slated. Thus, all things must be seen as food in order to appease her (and the matrons who rule in her name). Such a viewpoint has led to the drow seeing all living things, including each other, as a potential sacrifice to keep their people alive. In turn this has enabled them to commit great atrocities. When one no longer sees another as something sacred, special, and worth preserving, they are quick and absolute in their destruction of it. All the tales of the horrific things drow have done owe their truth to this one universal belief: all is food, and food must be eaten. Do not expect mercy from a drow because of this. Do not try and conceive of lengths they cannot go to. If it means attaining sacrifices and slaves, the drow will sin blacker sins then any ever before witnessed.

Wearing Symbols is Deific. To wear the symbols of Lloth is to become Lloth. Matrons and other religious leaders are thus treated as if Lloth herself is communicating to the drow. Generals, slave masters, and other important drow likewise adorn themselves in these symbols, and thus too are Lloth's physical manifestations. Below, a list of possible worn symbols:

1. Manifesting two additional pairs of arm, for four total limbs.
2. Embedding six gemstones into the forehead and face, representing the eight eye's of the spider.
3. Keeping venomous spider pets underneath one's tongue.
4. Adorning one's limbs in dangling glass and jewels, mirroring captured prey wrapped in cocoons.
5. Wearing the shrunken heads of sacrifices offered to Lloth.
6. Flowing garments of spider silk.
7. Fungal incenses and perfumes with a scent similar to blood mixed with roses.
8. Curved daggers, similar to a spider's fangs, hanging from the neck and shoulders.

Drow Miracles are Predatory & Spiteful. A drow survives because others do not. That is the way of the Veins of the Earth, where life cannibalizes life, uncaring of how precious or rare it may be. Thus, all drow miracles are then predatory and fueled entirely by spite. The more a drow hates a victim, the more it feels wronged by it, the blacker the thirst for vengeance in their mind the more potent, the more poignant the miracle that they manifest. In this way, there is little difference between a drow miracle and a drow curse. Below in the section detailing Drow Predations & Spites, you can find examples of these miracles. Note that a drow prayer will never ask for forgiveness, mercy, or compassion. Instead prayers will ask for opportunity, advantage, and insight.

In the Greater Cosmos, Naught But Danger. Lloth has taught the drow paranoia. In her scriptures, the entire cosmos is a place of endless danger, where all things will wrong the drow, all things will hurt the drow, and all things will destroy the drow - all to simply be above something else. Locked underground in the Veins of the Earth whilst filled with spite endless it is hard to shake such a primordially violent belief. Their home, Menzoberranzan, is the only haven in all the universe where drow are free to live unshackled by the hatred of other peoples. Though this is untrue, such a xenophobic mindset has only whet the blades of drow imperialists. They destroy other cultures they find, enslave and sacrifice what they can, and leave peoples alive only so that they may continue to provide them tribute. 

Rebirth For All Drow, Always and Forever. A drow that follows Lloth (for there are other drow, on the surface, who worship the moon and have secret afterlives on the dark side of that celestial traitor) will be reborn by Lloth after their death. All drow souls are connected to her through a spiritual web; when born, a blood sacrifice is done, where in some of Lloth's daemonic essence infests the drow. This is why drow are so accepting of assassination amongst each other, and of drow-sacrifice to Lloth. Every soul will be reborn, and so long as she exists, nestled in Menzoberranzan's shrines and idols, in her people's symbols and prayers, the drow will never go extinct, their predations never ended.

A matron of Lloth who embodies all of Her divine poison.

The Eighty-Eight Prisms

The Eighty-Eight prisms is the name of the Lloth holy text, created by the first generation of drow to serve Her.

As the name implies, these are eighty-eight gemstones weighing roughly 10,000 pounds each. The prisms are cut with a near impossible level of detail, and are heated to turn each one into another chapter of the overall holy text that comprises the core of Lloth's worship. From a young age do Drow spend countless hours touching and meditating around the Eighty-Eight Prisms, divining the secrets of their heritage, their afterlife, and their core belief. Likewise, at the heart of each prism is another daemon; a servitor of Lloth who whispers into the ears of entranced drow who come here to worship or learn. These daemons are called the Psalms.

While the full contents will not be disclosed here, every drow is taught to recite different prisms by heart depending on their trade. Matrons are forced to learn the entirety of the text by heart in order to gain access to the High Miracles (7th level +). Other drow carry small gemstones embalmed with choice bits of information that they can draw from with but the barest brush of a finger.

This technology has revolutionized to all forms of drow communication. Every home carries prisms inside of it encoded with different information. Essentially, these prisms are the books of drow society, containing stories, tales, facts, and secrets. And inside each personal prism is another daemon, allowing Lloth to know all that her people know, forever more.

A saboteur turned oracle late in their spiteful life.

An Assortment of Angels

Lloth is an old divinity. During the course of her existence she has birthed many a great creature to serve her, and these great creatures remain now, her angels, her daemons. Their forms are crafted from the molten earth below the Veins of the Earth and their souls are but a sliver of Lloth's own. Occasionally truly virtuous drow are ascended too, joining her pantheon of daemon-angels.

Their core form is a melted rush of eight-eyed flesh. It boils and roils about, tentacled, watching, like candles made of meat forever burning an invisible flame. When given purpose they take a form.

• The Sabouteuth look just as drow do, though without faces. They speak through whispered telepathy and weave webs between their fingers that burn with heat. A Sabouteuth will capture whatever it is Lloth wants captured - usually a sacrifice of some sort - wrap in her divine web, and spirit off to the demon pits at the center of Menzoberranzan. They have 1 HP, a thac0 of 9 (or an AC of 10), and no method of attacking. Sabouteuth move through shadow and stone as if it were open space.
• Eggsacks are just as they sound. They appear mysteriously inside of corpses or in hidden places and hatch. Each spiderling carries a message and they will swarm a drow to tell them some desire belonging to Lloth. Then, they will fade into green vapor and then into nothing, only the bitter smell of rot left behind.
• Drider's are half-drow (who are faceless) half-spider monstrosities. Each is fashioned from the heat-soul of a heretical drow and the daemon-angels that Lloth has spawned. They appear only to destroy heretics, to fight off predators too great for normal drow, and to enforce her will upon the rebellious and foolish. A drider has no face and does not need to breathe. They have 6d6 HP, a thac0 of 2 (or an AC of 18), and attack with spear-sharp legs (1d8 * 8) or a greatsword fashioned from the bones of their once-drow lower half (2d6).
• Messiah Daemon are rare, only called upon when the drow beseech Lloth to eradicate some great foe. A daemon will manifest and sleep with a matron, impregnating her with itself. The birth is a six-armed, white-furred monstrosity that grows to an abominatable eight feet in height within eight hours of time. Loyal only to its matron mother (and to Lloth), the Messiah Daemon will speak only the Eighty-Eight Prisms and move to violence against any who oppose its creator(s). A Messiah Daemon has 10d10 HP, a thac0 of 0 (or an AC of 20), and attacks with all six arms in an attempt to rip its victim apart (each hand dealing 1d10), or utilize its breath weapon: a silver, heatless fog that fills a target's stomach with dozens of eggsacks that hatch, swarming the victim's innards with spiders.

A Sabouteuth carrying a sacrificed artifact back to Lloth.

Hierarchy of Drow

It took generations for a hierarchy to form. As the drow expanded, and as their power required more structure to be properly used, a hierarchy formed amongst them. This system of class-power is stratified but it is not impossible to move up and down the ranks.

1. Matron Marqueeses  - The eight matrons who are either oldest, most pious, or most powerful of the many matrons. Their council speaks as one, and speaks as Lloth.
2. Messiah Mothers - The various matrons who have birthed Messiah Daemons. They cannot be commanded by any save the Mother Matrons, but each has their own mission which they must attend to with their spawn.
3. Matron  - The title given to the female head of house. A house consists of eight drow families united by either blood or oath.
4. Oracles & Diviners - Non-binary and MtF drow more often than not become oracles, soothsayers, and similar such figures.
5. Silk Countesses - The formal title of drow who are both masterful hunters and faithful religious acolytes. 
6. Daughters - The name for the standard acolyte of Lloth. Daughters lead rituals for other drow, and are the go-to liason between divinity and drow.
7. Cocoon Marquis - Male drow who hunt, fight, and enslave for Lloth. The Cocoon Marquis are males who, unlike the others, have been blessed by Lloth with authority over others and some measure of miracle.
8. Whispering Brood - Young drow who are slowly being initiated into the secrets of Lloth attend to the older daughters and various other members of the hierarchy.

Beyond this, drow positions are based on role and duty, and not so much their religious connotations. 

A Silk Countess - the blend between warrior and holy woman.

Drow Predations & Spites: Miracles of Lloth

If you play a cleric, than these miracles are for you.

At 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th levels, instead of learning a spell, you can instead learn a miracle. Consider these more powerful than normal spells, themed to your divinity of choice, and gated by more than just spell slots. These miracles are level gated; higher level characters who sacrifice more wealth and power to Lloth are rewarded with one of her many secrets. A miracle may be used by rolling 1d8. Add to the roll a +1 modifier if any of the following conditions are met beforehand:

• 1,000 gp worth of wealth, or creatures totaling 20 HP, were sacrificed to Lloth less than an hour beforehand.
• The would-be victim of the miracle has defaced a holy object or is a heretic in the face of Lloth.
• More than 100 drow will die as a direct result of the miracle not manifesting.

If the roll is an 8 or higher, the miracle manifests.

Miracles work essentially the same as spells, but produce effects purely in line with what Lloth as a divinity is. Once any miracle is granted, another cannot be granted that game session - divinities are strange and fickle in their responses. Likewise, if a drow beseeches a miracle and does not roll an 8 or higher more than twice, they cannot beseech another; Lloth has forsaken them for now.

LIST OF MIRACLES BY LEVEL

1st 

• A Song to Share my Pained Destiny to All ; a Hymn to Earn their Vengeance
• Crawling Forward in a World of Hateful Heresy 
• Punish Them for Denying My Righteousness, My Life, & My Truth

3rd

• Blood-Hot Trail of Those that Curse Revealed to Me
• Incense that Creeps with Secrets
• Wounds Upon Thy, Overflow with Poison

5th

• All my Spite ; a Dirge of my Vengeful Suicide
• From About Me Comes HER Hunger-Revenge
• Overflowing Secrets Pool in Mine Mouth

7th

• Demise Comes for Me, but to You Has It Loved
• From Your Webs Hang All You Love
• YOUR Children, Here Now, For All to See

9th

• Cocoon of Faith to Rebirth All the World's Spite
• Here Be the Haven, the Nest, the Future
• SHE Places a Kiss Upon Thy's World

A Daughter performing a ritual honoring the spite of all her kin.

MIRACLE DESCRIPTIONS

1st Level Miracles

A Song to Share my Pained Destiny to All ; a Hymn to Earn their Vengeance

You must view your life as the life of the oppressed, the attacked, and the lonely. Your must see your friends as enemies, and you must see everyone's friends as their enemies too. Appalled by the bloodthirsty nature of all bonds, sing. Sing loud and sing keenly. Sing to Lloth of your disgust at this treacherous cosmos and sing for her to show to all who walk it that your vengeance is owed and they must learn why. In answer to your vindictive hymns, all around you will be envenomed by your worldview. They will grow hostile to all that they see, save you. And they will act to destroy each other in order to accomplish the revenge they never knew they needed. When this miracle manifests, its divine effect does not end for 10 minutes, after which all involved are aware of the atrocities they have now committed. First used by a generation of drow enslaved by surface dwellers and who sung to Lloth for freedom.

Crawling Forward in a World of Hateful Heresy 

Why is it that you are so righteous and yet so beaten down by all that exists? Why do you suffer? Why are you dying? And it is at that moment, where you are fearful of death, where you feel that there is no way forward, that the miracle manifests. In these conditions you must reaffirm to Lloth the truth of your drowness - that no matter what, you will crawl forward, to give her food, for Her, for all the drow. And in response to your devotion, She will turn your body (and all you carry) into liquid shadow, and you will melt into shade. While in this heatless, textureless existence, you crawl forward. Those who see you see shadows of spiders on the wall with no source. Nothing can hurt you. Nothing can stop you. And until you feel safe again, you will not resume your existence as a drow. First used by a young hero who had food in a time of starvation but was blocked by an enemy too great for them to conquer.

Punish Them for Denying My Righteousness, My Life, & My Truth

When someone or something has tried to kill you and no retaliation works know that Lloth will come to your aid. Curse that murderous thing with all the spite inside of you. Hate it truly, utterly. Your hate will bring Her attention to that creature and you will find, in your garments, hidden as if it were always there, an amethyst dagger, warm as if alive, writhing shadow burbling inside its countless perfect facets. Attack with the dagger. It will never miss. When it slides into the body of whatever bastard sought to end the life of a holy drow, the blackness will invade it - Lloth will invade it. Their eyes will turn black, their skin too if they have it. Their bones will become hollow and brittle. For  eight months and eight days and eight hours of time will the antagonist suffer with every movement and thus go rigid and still. Prepared perfectly for sacrifice. First performed by a Cocoon Marquis whose sacrifice rebelled mightily.

3rd Level Miracles

Blood-Hot Trail of Those that Curse Revealed to Me

Something has evaded you. It has left you in a state most compromised. You cannot find it. Revenge cannot be exacted. You have exhausted every resource at your disposal and still it is gone. How dare it. The audacity. Name this temerity and beseech Lloth. Offer a bit of your blood from the tips of each of your fingers - no more than eight, though. Touch your eyes directly. Pull them away and your infravision has changed. You see brighter then all else the heat trail of the fiend who wronged you. It could be prey for a sacrifice, or the assassin of a cherished kin. It could be the trail of someone who took from you a prism, or who overheard a secret never meant to be uttered. Their trail leads directly to them, and so long as you move upon it you move with great speed - thrice that you normally could, as do any companions with you, and none of your lot grow tired either. The trail disappears when the spite fades or the creature dies. First performed by a young girl whose Matron was assassinated and who was denied her revenge.

Incense that Creeps with Secrets

Lies thick as stone barricade you in a prison of conspiracy. There are things you must know. All who keep those things from you keep them from Lloth and they must be taught the vanity of their impudence. Take the skull of a drow assassinated. Break it to pieces in your hands. Ask Her why the names of these fools insist on lying to you. Discover with surprise that the skull breaks into dust, into fine grave dust, into grave dust so fine it blooms outwards, is alive, moves with purpose. Inside this grave dust float Lloth's children. The smell of roses and blood twinned. All who know the secret that you wish to know will smell this incense. Lloth's children crawl into their ears, their brains, bite their thoughts. Whispers fill your head. The truths that were hidden from you for so long. Only answers a single question, but will bring you the thoughts of eight creatures to solve this riddle. First used by an Oracle-Vizier whose matron was surrounded by politicking enemies.

Wounds Upon Thy, Overflow with Poison

For one creature whose heart still beats and whose heat still burns does your hatred overflow. You see it. You see that it is hurt but it has not the grace to die or be sacrificed as it should. But it is hurt. It has suffered a wound to its flank or its arm or its face or something else entirely. If that wound would respond to your hatred it would overflow with poison. And so it does. Reach towards the wound. Tell Lloth how much you hate this thing. Tell her how it should be blighted and torn apart and left here in the bedrock of all creation to rot and rot and die and rot. Your eyes glow violet with heat. Poison bubbles in the open wound of your victim. It screams in pain. Poison flows from it, burning flesh black as drow skin. For every point of damage it has received so far, it receives it again so long as you remain conscious to hate it. When it dies, no soul is released; the poison damns it to lie here, forever suffering, until the end of all time lest an exorcist appear. First used by a Daughter whose mates killed her pupil and left her half-dead.

A Cocoon Marquis emerging again, reincarnated into something spiteful - a miracle indeed!

5th Level Miracles

All my Spite ; a Dirge of my Vengeful Suicide

For so long have you nursed in the core of your heart, in every ounce of blood, through every iota of heat you produce - you have nursed an enmity for all things. A spite so deep and so justified that try as you might you could never communicate it truly. And from just the barest spark of resistance from someone or something else does this hate becoming an all-consuming rage. A conflaguration of damnation. And it makes you sing. Sing as beautifully as you can. Lloth will sing with you. Your voice will change to hers, and inside of it the voice of all drow can be heard. Singing itself is a ritual. A spell. You are trying to communicate what you are to some wretch before you. And in the midst of the song, its mind will drown in the beating waves of your anathema. Unable to cope - for what living being could other than the holy drow? - it will suicide. It will slit its own throat in order to stop the madness. There is no other course, lest it plug its ears and pray to its own distant divinities.  First used by a Matron whose daughter was taken by some drake. The drake learned its lesson from her sorrowful rage-dirge.

From About Me Comes HER Hunger-Revenge

All the world has turned against you. You are broken. Your weapons are shattered. Your poisons are useless. You are hurt. Death comes for you; predator in the gloam, eyes twinkling with heat, with fire, cool as black. On your hands and knees you must go. Beg for Lloth to kill this thing. Beg for her to eat it. Not to save your life, but because you cannot do your duty, and you must invoke her to do it for you. Mercy through servitude is blessed. The walls will melt. The ceiling, the ground. Spiders the size of cavebears will emerge. Do not look. Do not dare look upon HER when you have failed to uphold your end of this bloody, eon-long bargain. Listen only. As everything around you is killed and devoured by these arachnid angels. Then they fade - the cave left empty as if you were ever the only one there. First used by a Matron whose entire house had abandoned her. They paid the price for their selfishness.

Overflowing Secrets Pool in Mine Mouth

There are things no living thing can know. Things only Lloth can know. Lie down. Fall into a trance. In that trance, see yourself standing on a great web in the deep darkness, a web that glows with heat, a web that stretches out into the infinite abyss. Ask this void a question. A true question. A question on the nature of the cosmos. A question of complete knowledge, esoteric and eldritch. Wake in pain. When you come out of your trance do not close your mouth. Inside of it, spiders swarm, and one by one each turns into a drop of poison that singes the tongue black. When they are all gone, speak - and what you speak will be the answer that you seek. First used by the original Messiah Matron, who knew not how to get the revenge she so lusted for.

7th Level Miracles

Demise Comes for Me, but to You Has It Loved

Wrap a thread of spider silk 'round your neck. When you die, with your dying words, ask Lloth to take as sacrifice not you but that which has killed you. Undone comes the silk from your neck. Your wounds disappear. If you had lost hit points, or were cursed or diseased or poisoned, you are no more. Instead, that thing that struck you a mortal blow suffers from every ailment you have ever suffered. That spider silk is wrapped 'twixt its neck. Watch as it is pulled upwards, into the stone, into the shadow. See a great heat there. Feel in your bones the mighty presence of something truly Impossible. That is Her. Lloth. You cannot look away as she eats that which has killed you. Never in your life will you feel as vindicated as you do now. First used by the very first drow that encountered Lloth and became her mate.

From Your Webs Hang All You Love

For a foolish reason has another living thing placed a curse upon you. Aware of this, you sought Lloth to dispel and turn such wicked evil. Name that which has cursed you, or name the curse itself. On a prism, create an effigy of love. Name it after the curse. Wrap it in spider silk and consume it. Wait. Eighty-eight hours later, the first will come. A spider the size of a drake will crawl from the ink of the underdark and with it will be a eight cocoons. It will leave them here, hanging from the shadow. Each cocoon has inside of it the still conscious, barely alive loved one closest to the curse-giver. Do with them as you will, so long as they are eventually sacrificed to Lloth proper. If the curse-giver comes for revenge, their loved ones will plead for them to stop, knowing that the curse-giver's life can be taken for theirs to continue. First used during a war between houses. Lloth manifested this miracle for the one that fed her better drow,

YOUR Children, Here Now, For All to See

With eyes seeing only hate gaze upon the heat of a thing that has killed eight drow. Knowing that you yourself are too infantile to take revenge, instead fashion a prism and take it to the Eighty-Eight. There, listen to the Psalms. Listen to their anger. Take the prism in hand and offer it to one. Watch the thing in your hand turn black as a heatless cave. Crush it into dust, beseeching Lloth for the most virtuous child she can spare. Watch as the dust rises in whirls and know that those whirls are your miracle. They solidify. The Drider stands before you seething. It sees only that thing that you have gazed upon, and it leaves with haste to destroy it. If it fails, know it will reform eight days later before you. It will drink of your blood, leaving you only half-alive, before going again to kill its foe. So it will do, again and again, until its victim is dead. First used by a Marquees to doom a wyrm most horrible.

Your Brother; your Savior

9th Level Miracles

Cocoon of Faith to Rebirth All the World's Spite

In your hands is the corpse of a drow most honorable. Flay the skin, devour the meat, break the bones to dust, and leave the skin out for an hours time. Watch as spiders flock to it. They will wrap the skin into a ball and seal the ball into a cocoon. Silk so thick that it is mucous. Touch it. Feel a heat inside. See a heat inside. The ball swells pregnant. Eight days pass, then eight more. It is the size of a drow now. It is one thing, slime-encased, an egg just laid. The heat inside is formless. Boiling like poison in the pot. Cracks open and gunk slithers out. The rebirth steps afterwards. Drow, reincarnated, reborn into the world for one reason: to destroy that which led to its death. A revenant of scorn. Empowered with all the miracles of Lloth and capable of wielding them without mistake. Chosen by Her. Loved by Her. This drow will continue its mission and every time it is destroyed it will be reborn again, here, at this spot, emerging ever more spiteful, ever more powerful. First used by a Messiah Matron to return to life her daemon child.

Here Be the Haven, the Nest, the Future

There must be eighty-eight of you, just as there were eighty-eight drow in legend when Lloth blessed them. The eighty-eight of you must hate all else. You must be alone. You must be on the precipice of death. Sacrifice one of you. Then another. Do this for eight days. When there are but eight drow left, the cave they are in will expand. Lloth herself will shape it. She will turn stone into home and darkness into love and air into web. A new city will be created and those sacrificed reborn and the eighty-eight of you will repopulate this new haven. The future expands. The drow continue. First used by Lloth herself to make Menzoberranzan.

SHE Places a Kiss Upon Thy's World

As you lie dying, say this -

"O, Lloth,

Whom from cave-dusk made Haven, and

From poison made water, and

From me made me -

O, Lloth,

Who sits in the heart of eight amethyst

Seeing those beyond and suffering from their cruelty,

Please, from your lips -

O, Lloth,

I am dead

But you will not let me die

For you love me

As I love -

As I love -"

And there She will appear. Rising from your shadow just as she did the primordial stuff of the universe. Smile on her face. She knows why you pray. Lloth herself, Goddess of Conspiracy, Murder, and Sacrifice, will seek out that one thing you hate most. She will kiss it. And in doing so, she will utterly destroy it - and all that get in her way. First performed by a child who was taken from her home and killed by a villain most horrible.

All the world's life for Her hunger.