Factions of the Eden Under Eventide

 The dreampunks have, over the course of the strange, relentlessly passing eons they’ve survived, formed tribes, and from tribes they made juntas, blocs, and sects. Though there are many of these scattered throughout the Eden Under Eventide, those listed below hold the most sway, and each has their seat in Xibalba, where sits the empty Rorschach Throne.

Alena Kuzminykh

Monarch’s Mask’d Mercy

Shadows glide gently across the Eden Under Eventide. They wear white masks modeled after their queen, hooded robes too, vantablack, thick enough to keep out the ever-approaching winter and the prying eyes of the ego-blind. They say their hands are the hands of the Monarch. The left is merciful. With it, these masked shadows strip from the dreampunks their ailments and pains. The right is less kind. Still gingerly, filled with love, the Right Hand of the Monarch is a conduit for mortality. Death is imposed upon the still living flesh of the cruel, of nightmare things, reserved for when realities go too far.

To join the Monarch’s Mask’d Mercy is to give up living as you are. Your name is now the number of a verse and the book in which it is found. Your purpose in life is to heal, and, if needed, to harm. From an early age, an acolyte is trained in the Mortal’s Monastery. It is a black, crooked building wherein those secreted within are taught the Enlightenment of Love—a teaching found nowhere else.  Dreampunks learn that their lives are born from the Monarch’s kindness, and her stern, death-dyeing touch. They are sent to the far reaches of the Eden Under Eventide on a pilgrimage of suffering where they do what they were taught to do for neither gold nor favor but instead only for a moment of shared prayer. 

Leading the Monarch’s Mask’d Mercy is Cessations 3:14. Never do they speak. What goals they have for the Eden Under Eventide are known to none but the shadar-kai, who in turn say nothing and merely watch.

Igor Kieryluk

The Dreameating Syndicate

They speak in a code that no others know. They carry with them an amber coin that they flip between their fingers, chew absentmindedly on, spin on a countertop, leave it spinning, stop it with the flat of their hand when murder is due. If dreampunks are alive, than they are life-eaters, just like everything else in the multiverse. That means it is the job of dreampunks who are savvy to this bit of selfish wisdom to steal, take, and control whatever they want. Criminals, the lot of them, spoken of as a neverending threat, or in the way people do terrorists during times of discord. Sometimes this syndicate instead uses its influence to help out its fellow dreampunks. After all, if they were to all die, there would be no more dreams to eat, and thus no life left to live.

Find the Dreameaters throughout the Eden Under Eventide. You won’t know them at first, and they won’t care to tell you what they are. They’re abnormally skilled, more than a little bit clever. Many of them are soulknives who never leave any evidence behind, or Phantoms trained by the shadar-kai for purposes kept secret since the earliest times. Yuan-Ti who become disillusioned with the progress of Xibalba’s civilization fall easily into the syndicate’s plans. Tortles jaded during their long lives, ghostwises separated from their kin—these stories are common for Dreameaters too. Some of them still care for their fellow dreampunks. But because they care, they know they have to do these kinds of things, to protect that which keeps them real, that is, their loved ones, their passions, their own dreams of the future.

All this utilitarianism doesn’t bleach deep enough to remove the Dreameating Syndicate’s sins. They still run rackets, organize crime, or get up to debaucheries and cruel magics and infernal rituals. They’ll trade the souls of the dead for promises and deals and never let regret stop them from doing it again. Beware these, trust them not, lest you know what you offer is more than what your life is worth. Leading the Dreameating Syndicate is the mythical Les Neuf Vies, a rumored dreampunk of no discernable race who has lived and died nine times over.

Igor Kieryluk

The Aberrant Bloc

It is no secret that the Eden Under Eventide is haunted still by the echoes of immortal minds long since gifted death. Those echoes call to things from the Far Realm, whom flood alien and warped through the eclipse to terrorize dreampunks. The Aberrant Bloc, born from these events, captures, shatters, and harnesses the minds of the Far Realm aberrations that litter the world. They are hunters, sorcerers, abjurers all, each one constantly training to fully harness their psionics into not just weapons, but roads to enlightenment. These beliefs make the Aberrant Bloc one of the few factions who does not wholly bow to the Raven Queen, nor her Half-Light Diaconate. Instead, they believe that it is them who should rule the Eden Under Eventide, for they are the future of the dreampunks, and they alone offer a path to ascending beyond their half-lives into a greater, more divine thing. 

This has led to no civil war, nor will it ever. The Aberrant Bloc and the Half-Light Diaconate are kept in peace by clerics of the latter. Likewise, the Aberrant Bloc is just as focused on political power as they are protecting the Eden Under Eventide from Far Realm incursions. Thus, the Aberrant Bloc has been forced to resort to more indirect methods for their influence wars. They use their protective services to garner influence, convert dreampunks to their beliefs, and therefore increase the power of their bloc. At the same time, they put on demonstrations, parades, and tours throughout the Eden Under Eventide to further preach their superiority. Never does the Half-Light Diaconate respond negatively to these events; the shadar-kai pay relatively little attention to the Aberrant Bloc.

Aberrantcists wear proudly their deformities, attained from their experiments with their captured aberrant prey. Third eyes, slime, cloaks of astral wind—these things mark them wherever they go and they take no effort to hide this. The bloc leaders, called the Mysterions, are said to be so horrifically changed that they no longer appear like their original selves. For this reason, or so the rumor goes, the Aberrant Bloc uses liaisons to communicate the wills of its leaders. 

Lius Lasahido

Sect of Scriptures

As the shadar-kai teach, dreampunks first learned to write from giants, who used tortle shells for their runestones. With that arcane writing studied and learned, wizardry was born,  which in turn led to the dreampunks establishing order throughout the heart of the Eden Under Eventide. Those original scribes game together to make the Sect of Scriptures. With scrolls, grimoires, and holy books in hand, the members of this occult sect explore the Eden Under Eventide, recording, learning, and further establishing order through this chaotic plane. Scribing Wizards are protected by Rune Knights trained either from birth or those who were once criminals and now wish to pay off their sins. Others, such as those who make pacts with Outsiders, or who rely on the clockwork order stolen from Mechanus, find themselves joining the Sect of Scriptures as well, if for nothing else beyond learning the secrets of their magic.

Often told, the story of a sect member stumbling into a fatal yet fated doom. Curiosity is considered both sin and virtue by the dreampunks, and the scribes embody both aspects. Though their developments, always applied to a special branch called the Borromean Rings—small studio-organizations who seek to turn scribed knowledge into artifice—go far in the mission of bringing everlasting peace to the Eden Under Eventide, they also lead to slumbering monstrosities, horrible curses, and the terrifying half-nightmares that hide in those places where twilight cannot reach. Still, the allure of adventure, and to learning deeper truth, sees the Sect of Scriptures replenishing its members every Ecliptic Year.

Eight wizards stand united as the Eight Edenic Roads, whom lead the Sect of Scriptures. They unanimously agree that the Witch Queen planeswalker Iggwilv is their ninth member out of gratitude for the vast majority of knowledge she’s shared with the Sect over the last several centuries. Each of the Roads represents another school of magic, as well as another aspect of the rune writing that was stolen from the now-mad giants. Only through scholarly inheritance can this position be earned. Rare is it that this happens, and rarer is it that the Roads put their collective minds together in the Fifth-Plane Tower to solve any of the Eden Under Eventide’s numerous problems. Their own magical ventures take them far away from where their powers are most needed.

Bonhotal William

Knights of Eden

O’ great Knights of Eden, fabled are you, heralded with the dream-joy of those who venture not into the Deep Night or the Haunted Day. Only through valor, glory, skill, or heritage may one be accepted into this most supreme and chivalrous order. Once initiated, a badge, land deed, and stipend are given to the newfound knight by the Xibalban state. The ser or dame is sent off to some remote region of the Eden Under Eventide. Sometimes they are sent alongside different factions. Sometimes they are sent alone. Always are they sent with a mission to protect, slay, and purify, to abjure any wretched reality or cruel aberration, to hunt down the fey courts and free their victims and smash their glass mazes, to expand the Sublime Light that is twilight into those disturbed places where the Weave unravels into threadbare annihilations destitute just as they are absolute.

The Knights of Eden are not always treated like heroes. Many of them cause just as many problems as they solve and for this their reputations are forever besmirched. A knight may have saved some distant outpost, only to sacrifice half the population to do so. Never is this done with malicious intent. The Knights of Eden have no doom-wishes for their fellow dreampunks, nor do they view life as cheap. They simply cannot save every life, and though they try too, their failures become nooses ‘round their necks that keeps their spirits in ache, their resolve ever-sharp.

Shadar-kai from the Half-Light Diaconate appoint a Grand Cross to lead the organization, who inturn appoints ranks as needed to the rest of the knights. Xi Xa Wa is a Yuan-Ti so thoroughly invested in the survival of the Eden Under Eventide that they have sworn a sacred oath to watch over the plane until even their soul turns to dust. So far, they have lived for over five hundred years as a lingering revenant fueled by the Sublime Light.

Danil Golovkin

The Everlasting Troupe

They never sleep and they’ll never die because they’ll never need to stop dreaming nor creating nor living from now until the Eclipse breaks apart and the sun does shine for an eon that stretches from now to the end of time. Every member of the troupe has given themselves wholly to the art of creation. They have realized a deeper truth about the Eden Under Eventide, one that so many others hear but do not believe because they cannot experience it themselves. You see, all things are an illusion, and here, all things are half-dream, and thus, they are the architects of not only their own future but their very world.

Others join the Everlasting Troupe too, addicted either to their performances or their philosophies. Some become monks who change their shape or summon forth the astral self locked within all things. Wildpunks tap into the lingering traces of the immortals whom birthed them, shifting into bestial guises or unleashing souls suffused with enchantment. A ghostwise with a silver tongue will warp the thoughts with every word. A mountain dwarf with a clockwork heart will make impossible odds into absolute destinies. Splintered throughout the Ender Under Eventide this Everlasting Troupe into Everlasting Troupes each with their own ringleaders and their own rules. They tour from outpost to Xibalba and back to outposts, Unearthly Roads rolling lazily before them, trailed by their own strange musics or proceeded by the weird things they’ll let loose in the Weave to announce their arrivals.

All members of the Everlasting Troupe dress like rococopunks. Their make-up is wild. Their outfits are strange. Color splashes them in haphazard patterns that name each performer as something unique. These appearances change with the tour as the performers themselves grow ever closer to revealing their True Self.

Anato Finnstark

The Half-Light Diaconate

Mobeds—priests—gloomy, pale and cloaked in feathered black who watch and advise, teach, educate, guidance of a billion year old hand that’s set the stage for tragedy after tragedy after tragedy in the tear-dappled loop that is all time. Every mobed is either a shadar-kai or a dreampunk who has been directly educated by a shadar-kai. Devout and pious to the Half-Light Trinity these clerics, each of whom deeply embodies one gloaming aspect of the Raven Queen. Those inspired by the Monarch are educators and judges both in Xibalba and in the wider Eden Under Eventide. Mobeds forever Soothed embody peace. With a hand enshadowed by twilight they bridge the disparate yet soulbound dreampunk races. And those who radiate the Sublime Light wander far and wide like echoes rebuffed along a canyon’s walls into the outer dark where the most wretched of things are rooted out for the good of all.

Trained by the Diaconate are the bladesingers. It is an art stolen from the Glass Court by dreampunks who use it against their master’s enemies. Each bladesinger is knighted by a mobed or hadur, given two blades of forged silver, taught the secrets of elven wizardry. Set loose they are like secret police, unmarked and unknown save to those with influence or the shadar-kai. Though they are servants of the Raven Queen, they are no more privy to her attentions than any other dreampunk. Thus, only through faith in the Half-Light Trinity can a bladesinger ever hope to one day meet their goddess.

The Half-Light Diaconate is the de facto ruling force of the Eden Under Eventide. They keep the Rorschach Throne empty. They balance the countless factions, listen to the lobbying of all interests, and use strictly democratic vote to determine the directions Xibalba will grow. In this way, they maintain the balance of powers, the supremacy of the Raven Queen, and the Eden Under Eventide’s unique existence as a grand stage for tragedies, revelations, and apotheoses.

Eight Edenic Truths of Eventide

By Oliver Ryan

1. DREAMPUNKS ARE HALF-DREAM, HALF-REALITY PEOPLES DIFFERENT FROM THEIR COUNTERPARTS. Though they bleed, eat, and die like everyone else, dreampunks are different at a spiritual level. Half-dream and half-reality means they weren’t evolved or created like other races throughout the cosmos. Likewise, the rules that govern many dreampunk races—like Yuan-Ti being evil—do not apply to this surreal Eden. That being said, dreampunks do have one core difference compared to other races: they do not dream when they sleep, and no one knows what happens to their souls when they die. Necromancy doesn’t work to bring dreampunks back to life either, nor do spells like speak with dead ever reach them.
2. THE EDEN UNDER EVENTIDE IS ECLIPSED BY A PORTAL TO DIFFERENT PLANES. Yet another of this world’s mysteries is its constant eclipse. No magic nor device has ever disturbed its path, and it never fails to at least partially eclipse the Eden’s sun. This eclipse is also the source of most of the world’s life. The immortals of antiquity fell through, and now the Realities enter the plane through this same entrance. While attempts have been made to block this hole, never have they succeeded, and it is a fear for many dreampunks that eventually something will invade that will spell their end.
3. FEY COURTS PLAGUE THE DREAMPUNKS WITH CRUEL TRICKS OUT OF A NEED FOR SUPERIORITY AND LOVE. Before the dreampunks were born, the Glass Court haunted the half-asleep immortals. Though they’ve long since lost their precious toys, they continue their games with the dreampunks, kidnapping them, trapping them, and torturing them until their prey either loves them or is killed for entertainment. A second fey court, the Court of Wine, does much the same to the dreampunks, but also wages a fairy tale war with the Glass Court. The debaucheries of these Outsiders is the source for many of the dreampunks’ collective woes.
4. THE WEAVE IS WARPED BY THE HALF-DREAMS OF DEAD IMMORTALS, MAKING MAGIC STRANGE. So great was the combined magical force of the dying immortals that their pent-up dreams disturbed this plane’s Weave. Mutations in magic are frequent. Non-traditional forms of spellcasting, magic manifests most often such as psionics are disturbingly common—and extraplanar influences, particularly from the entreated Mechanus, leaking Far Realm, and the courts of both fey and genie alike, all of whom are attracted to this plane’s wyrd magic, has led to unique understanding of how the Weave works. Should this power ever be mastered by the dreampunks, the potential they have to affect both their world and the wider multiverse is nearly beyond compare.
5. LITTERING THE EDEN UNDER EVENTIDE ARE SOMNOLENT SUPERNATURAL DANGERS LEFT OVER FROM A NIGHTMARE WAR. The warped Weave has littered the Eden Under Eventide with countless supernatural regions and unearthly roads. Many dreampunks throw themselves into these places hoping to learn more about their shared experience, while others stick to the arcane pathways which bind all outposts to the central City. Much of dreampunk society is based on trying to control, live with, or gain mastery over these supernatural regions—an impossible task for a likewise impossible people. Also known to the dreampunks is the reason for the violent themes shared by many of these supernatural regions. The shadar-kai call it a Nightmare War, which played out early in the evolution of the Eden Under Eventide. What this Nightmare War exactly was it never fully detailed, though rumor speaks that this is the reason shadar-kai teach the Half-Light Trinity as they do.
6. THEOLOGY KEEPS THE DREAMPUNKS BOUND TOGETHER JUST AS WELL AS IT KEEPS THEM IN CONFLICT. It is well known that the Raven Queen, under her many occult names, is what led to the genesis of the Eden Under Eventide. It is also known that she is not present in the world, having left behind only Her feathers—the shadar-kai themselves. These shadar-kai have made the central City of the world a theocracy, binding together the many dreampunks with faith in the Half-Light Trinity. Though this religion promotes a feeling of shared community and experience, the looseness of it creates wildly varied interpretations. Driven by their own beliefs in the Monarch, the Soothed, and the Sublime Light, dreampunks sometimes find themselves on evil paths or (literally) becoming monsters themselves. If this bothers the shadar-kai, they show it not; and a few rumors tell that these diametric and warped understandings of the Half-Light Trinity are subtly encouraged.
7. BLUE-SKY COAL IS WHAT KEEPS THE DREAMPUNKS SAFE IN THEIR TWILIT CITIES. When mortality washed throughout the glooming forests of the Eden Under Eventide, the elements themselves became a churning, chaotic swirl. Water broke apart stone, wind blew down forests, avalanches crushed all manner’s of budding flower. And, for the first time, ancient trees were burned, and across half-dreamed eons all that was left behind was deep-reaching veins of phantasmal, blue-sky coal. Burning this coal has led to a mystical and industrial revolution. The central city has grown gargantuan, the power of coal-fueled light beating back the darkness and giving the dreampunks agency over the night-sworn reaches of their world. As technology continues to grow side-by-side with magic’s warping, the dreampunks stand poised on the cliff’s edge, preparing to hurdle themselves into the void that is a future built from their dreams and not those of their ancestors.
8. TRAGEDY IS COMMON, BUT ALWAYS LEADS TO PEACE. The most common stories in the Eden Under Eventide are tragedies in all their many forms. A somber mood is one held by most dreampunks, even if it is sometimes buried under a hoard of wanderlust or hope. The shadar-kai teach this as good, for it means that the dreampunks lives have meaning—for themselves, their descendents, and for the Raven Queen too. Mayhaps, they say, if the dreampunks can find a way through all the tragedy, they too will become divine and join the Sublime Light. Though this teaching is considered by the dreampunks to be foolish, it has created a special mindset: one that seeks to turn all woes into future weal.

By L-E-N-T-E- S-C-U-R-A

EDEN UNDER EVENTIDE - Building a Fantasy World Relying on the Magic of Tasha's Cauldron to Everything

 This world began from an idea: what if a setting was designed around the magic of the new Tasha's Cauldron to Everything subclasses. So, what would a setting look like filled with psionic powers, rune knights, reality-is-an-illusion principles, and other weirdness? The result is this Eden Under Eventide. 

By Adrián Ibarra Lugo

EDEN UNDER EVENTIDE is a high fantasy world of surreal, mystical magic wherein a diverse society of half-dreamed races must navigate a world of alien danger, chaotic fey, and shadow-birthed nightmares.

There are ten available races in Eden Under Eventide. These races are split into two groups of five: the DREAMPUNKS and the REALITIES.

DREAMPUNKS (the half-dreamed peoples, born from the divine deaths of insomniac immortals)

• Loxodons
• Tortles
• Yuan-Ti
• Ghostwise Halflings
• Mountain Dwarves

REALITIES (Outsiders from other worlds)

• Shadar-Kai
• Githyanki
• Githzerai
• Eladrin (DMG variant)
• Humans (including Tiefling and Aasimar).

Realities are often seen by Dreampunks as dangerous individuals who add another chaotic variable to their lives. However, due to shared elements in the Dreampunks cultures, attempts at peace are often made; but the Knighthood of the Owl’s Eye keeps a strict watch over all Realities, abjuring them from Eventide if needed without a second thought.

The default races allowed to be played are the five Dreampunks and Shadar-Kai. Gith of both forms normally arrive in arms (as they are hunting down some Far Realm thing), thus making them unlikely to remain in Eventide for long. Eladrin hail from the fey courts and are seldom accepted without great suspicion. Humans are reserved for Outsider characters—rarities to the extreme, usually only one or two in the world at a time.

EDEN UNDER EVENTIDE is a sprawling forest of supermassive trees, at times stabbed with mountains or gouged out with fathomless lakes that brood underneath a permanently twilit sky in which sits a total solar eclipse. At times the thing eclipsing the sun will move, allowing more light; however, the eclipse itself never ends. Littering the world are isolated strangities built from the Dreampunks magic (or that of the fey or something else); lone clocktowers rising gargantuan into the sky where sorcerers create miracles; the dens and burrows of immortal beasts who accepted not the Raven Queen’s gift of mortality; vast and labyrinthine mazes of glass where the fey trap Dreampunks in hells of endless trickery.

The Dreampunks of Eventide, despite their different natures, have a rather unified culture. This culture has its variations, splits into subcultures and so on, and is scattered across the plane and connected by Unearthly Roads that shorten the impossible distances. Some groups of Dreampunks choose to remain isolated, with wandering monkish loxodon moving seismically through the dim forest valleys, or circles of wildfire-worshipping dwarves hidden in the hearts of immense coal engines, whose light lines brass-forged streets of furtive, half-dreamed cities.

Binding this all together is the Half-Light Trinity - the default religion that is interpreted again and again in ever more different ways throughout the Eden Under Eventide. Below is the genesis myth of this strange faith.

By Zuzzana Wuzyk

THE GENESIS OF THE EDEN UNDER EVENTIDE

As told by the shadar-kai, and their Gloom Weaving Mobeds

“From out the darkness she waltzed, our Gloaming Queen, dance partners too, death and memory. We followed Her into this twilit world, flew down as ravens from the abyss of its eclipse born on beams of dusk and dawn. You were not here yet. Nothing but a dream in the heads of immortal things that neither slept nor could wake. To each of those immortals our Queen did visit. She washed their matted hair, cleaned their bedsores, infected as they were by the curses that only lives lived too long could throng. With us, she shoo’d away the fairies, their Court of Glass, who dance in plague of all us still.

“Then, she answered the immortals’ prayers.

“Each one was given the gift of true sleep. Mortality was pressed upon their souls with raven feathers. As they died, their heads split open, and out flowed their endless half-dreams, hallucinations, weirdling sleep paralyses. They flooded this immortal world in a great chaotic press, horizon to horizon, fading and dying and breaking apart, warping the world into this.

“Our Queen watched. Then she left. She departed with no commands for us, no task but to experience what was destined to be our suffering. We who were left are we who watch. Though queenless, we have shaped this eventide garden with what wisdoms she left behind—the Half-Light Trinity.

“First there is the Monarch, the predominant aspect of the Goddess and Creator. It has no memory of the past, only the thing needed to reach the future. Through the Monarch inside all of us, we impose order upon Eventide, soothe the chaos, create a stable ground for life to thrive. Know this as our Mother.

“Then there is the Soothed, the heart of our God-Queen, and all hearts of Eventide too. Death and sleep, a concord among the dreamed. The Soothed is our peace, our destiny to maybe wake again—to sit under shaded boughs of primeval trees in succulent, sublime silence. Know this as our Sister.

“And lastly, there is the Sublime Light, the artha of all us in this Eden Under Eventide who must wander under the gated eclipse, the hollowed sun, protected in our immortal mortality, knowing that sleep will come from which we will never wake. Know this as our Soul.

“Through the Half-Light Trinity, embodying it, worshipping it, becoming it, dreams transformed into something else. You became peoples, scattered but now gathered, few and than many.

“Legacy to the Queen, in Her name only, swilah.”

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.

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.

In Realms Forgotten & Bloody: The Moon, Lycans, & Boons

The Silvered Marches  are moon-blessed and moon-cursed. It is no coincidence that minted coins are based off of phases of the moon, or that highways are called moonways, or that silver is found in abundance here more so than anywhere else. Nor is the plague of lycans in her forests and hills a wholly natural cruelty.

In this blog post, I'm going to expand the setting of the Silvered Marches in terms of roll tables and luff, as well as some interesting and frequent boons, curses, and lunar magicks.

Three Manifestations of the Moon.
From left to right, the Waxing Child, the Night White Lady, and the Waned Princess

THE MOON & SILVER

In the Forgotten Realms traditional canon, Selune is the Goddess of the moon, also known as Our Lady Silver, the Moonmaiden, Night White Lady, and She Who Guides.

Religion in the Realms Forgotten & Bloody is a bit more complex, but before we get to that, Selune has to be addressed in full.

Selune's original name has long since been forgotten. Her creation story, that her and the goddess of darkness Shar are the first twins and deities, has likewise been lost to time. These ancient tales may not be true at all. But it is known that there is but one true Moon in all the universe; all others are her children, born from prayer itself when the various worlds, planes, and multi-verses were created.

The pronoun her is not truly accurate for Selune. While her manifestations are almost always female, Selune is sexless. Manifestations appear this way due to the creation of the many moons across the cosmos. To many mortals, such a thing appears feminine and motherly. Essentially, it is the cultural beliefs of those that acknowledge her that have shaped her physical form. This is true of all deities.

Selune's identity changes with the waning and waxing of the moon as well. This has in turn birthed a number of quasi-deities and lunar powers, and has led to powerful souls across time joining her and co-opting some of these identities. The Drow moon goddess The Dark Danceri, for example, was a Drow who escaped the curse of Lloth by joining Selune and becoming one of her phases. Likewise, the Raven Queen, known in the Silvered Marches as Quaca, Queen of the Moon joined with Selune's New Moon phase in hopes of one day finding her tragic true identity.

In the Moonwood, the only living animals are wolves.
All others are ghosts that wolves consume.

Because of the multi-identity nature of the Moon, religions, powers, curses, and blessings that manifest from it are as varied as they are many. These many identities congeal in the Silvered Marches--the first place the moon's light ever shone upon. It is, for all intents and purposes, Selune's home, her cradle, her grave, and her prison. Nowhere else in the Realms Forgotten & Bloody does the moon shine as bright, as truly, and no where else does it have such an effect on the Weave.

The Dark Side of the Moon, though unknown to the people of the Silvered Marches, is a colonized place. It is here that drow Matrons build their Celestial Gardens, medusae petrify demons and devils to add to the moon's size, illithid plan secret invasions, and shadar-kai looking for tragedies build grim outposts. This is a setting for another time, however.

LIST OF LUNAR ASPECTS RECOGNIZED IN LUARAR

Below is a list of Lunar Aspects--the various identities the moon takes on--that are recognized in the Silvered Marches. Some are bard's tales, others deities, some are scriptures, and others rumors of supernatural wanderers.

• The Waxing Child, a cultural hero who is said to go on adventures at night. Many children play pretend as her, and she is a loved protagonist in many plays.
• Our Night White Lady, a woman of power invoked by lovers and women in labor at night. Midwives pray that she does not take women away from their children during birth.
• The Waned Queen, a tragic figure whose stories represent the dangers of silver-healing. The story goes that she practiced silver-healing to save her wife, and in doing so turned her into a werewolf.
• Quaca, Queen of the Moon, a raven-masked aspect of the New Moon, central deity in Moondancing, and thought to create tragedies during the new moon.
• Silver Scriptures, a central tenant in Weavism focused on silver-healing and silver-based rituals. Teaches that silver is where all arcane knowledge originates.
• Fenris, Eater of Hope, an aspect of the waning moon and believed by Moon Druids to be the moon's central aspect; father of all wolves, mother to all lycans.
• The Moonmaiden, a crying, wandering woman of pale silver. It is said that whoever shows her love becomes a great leader, but inevitably dies a tragic death.
• Our Lady of Silver, a mythological avatar of the moon that represents the aristocracy's arcane right to rule. Merchants carry statues of her wherever they go.
• Sariel, Course of the Moon, the chief servant of all phases of the moon, guider of silver light, brother-friend to owls, and hope's shepherd. Tattoos and pendants of him are worn, and offerings made to owls in search of greater wisdom. Believed to be the one who taught humanity how to chart the course of the moon and learn many of its secrets.
• Elah, a war-deity whose lances of moonlight and falling stars are worshiped by the Bedine nomads of Desert Anauroch.
• Innkeeper Luna, a mythic innkeeper whose inn, the Sweet Dream is said to appear before those who need respite desperately.
• Dannan, Who Hunts Cities, an ancient archdruid and the first to become a lycan and ascend to his palace on the Dark Side of the Moon.
• Silvadin, Who Wanes and Waxes, the god of rebirth in Lunagricultism. Said to be he who first turned the moon, and he that guides all souls back to the Silvered Marches.
• Miada, Mother of Moonrises, avatar of the rising moon and goddess of agriculuture in Lunagricultism. Said that it is her light that enriches the soil of the southern parishes.
• Selune, the First Moon, believed by those who worship old faiths to be the true identity of the Moon, and warrior-goddess who wages an endless battle against the night sky.
• The Dark Dancer, guiding patron of surface-living drow and half-drow who is said to inspired song, dance, and to create masks needed.



Sariel, Course of the Moon.

• Argentilunacies, Silver Dragon of the Citadel, a legendary silver dragon who once fought alongside the dwarves of the now empty citadels. Disappeared hundreds of years ago, believed to have joined the moon out of despair for losing so many friends. Prophecized to one day return and smite the Nether Mountains with moonlight flame.

Silver: The Moon's Gifts to the Silvered Marches

Silver is literally the physical body of the moon. When melted, it is the moon's blood. When solid, it is the moon's bones. Thus, silver has a number of magical properties well-known by the educated.

That being said, note this: silver is not the end-all be-all. Though a cornerstone of the Silvered Marches and a cultural power, its true strength lies in the hands of the upper castes; the wealthy and aristocrats control 99% of silver flow. Rare is it that peasants gain access to the benefits of silver not provided by clerical temples, the Conclave of Silvermoon, or the governments themselves. Mining silver, because of its importance, is also a vert respectable job. While many poor do it, the money they make it but a sliver (sometimes literally) of what the powers that be do.

Because of this, cultural belief has expanded to value more than just the Moon. The warsmithing, agriculture, hunting, and arcane study are other important cultural artifacts in the Silvered Marches.

Argentilunascies is said to have breathed a
 storm of silver blades upon his foes.

Supernatural Properties of Silver

• Silver is receptive to enchantments. Most magical artifacts found in the Silvered Marches are made of silver, or contain silver portions.
• Undead cannot stay corporeal in its presence, and must flee or be destroyed. For every 10 minutes an undead is exposed to silver within 5 feet, their maximum and current hit points decrease by 10.
• Cursed creatures, including undead and lycans, are purified when silver touches them. Creatures that are cursed, are undead, or are lycans are vulnerable (take double damage) from silver weapons.
• Silver can be used as an arcane focus for arcane magic, and a divine focus for divine magic.
• 100% purified silver can be consumed. It extends one's life, makes them more magically inclined, and positively improves mood.
• Working with silver can infect one with supernatural abilities. Many sorcerers owe their power to a life working as a silver miner.
• Suits of armor made of silver grant advantage on rolls to withstand spells.
• Polished silver mirrors are not only integral scrying tools, but serve as prophetic tools if the right rituals are done.

Character Benefits of Carrying Silver

• For every 10 pounds of silver you carry, gain +1 additional hit points.
• Consuming 1mg drop of 100% purified silver (worth 1 full) restores 1 expended spell slot.
• Silver jewelry grants advantage on being possessed.
• Charms made of silver and given the proper rituals provide advantage on saving throws against being cursed.

Using Silver in Rituals

• Using silver in rituals that require expensive material components halves the price of the ritual.
• Rituals using silver done on the Full Moon are completed in half the time they normally require.

Silver-Healing

Silver-healing is an age-old tradition in the Silvered Marches, now taboo. By using silver in medicine, a host of diseases can be cleansed, the mind can be focused and made stable, magical potential can increase, and physical abilities are heightened. However, silver is horribly addictive when used in this way, and addiction leads to lycanthropy. Those who provide silver-healing are called silver-doctors, the silver-gilt, moonmen, or shades.

Finding a silver-doctor requires spending at least 5 fulls in Silvermoon. This amount of money will earn their attention. Likewise, one must sign a waiver stating that if they grow addicted, they are liable for immediate, unquestioned execution. Because of these reasons, only foreign powers and the absolute rich can ever afford silver-healing of any form.

A silver-doctor will provide healing that takes 8 hours of time. The process is strange; a drip of molten silver, cooled through spells, is set up as an IV drip into the arm of the recipient. Prayers to the moon and arcane spells are written onto the body in silver ink. Over the course of the 8 hours, miraculous healing can be done.

For every session of silver-healing done, make a saving throw (Wisdom DC 15 or vs poison). On a failure, you have the seed of addiction. Make another saving throw for the next 10 days when the moon rises if you do not receive additional silver healing. If you fail more than you succeed, you are addicted and will pay any amount to receive more silver-healing. After a month, make one last saving throw (Wisdom DC 20 or vs death). On a failure, you become a lycan. On a success, make another 10 days of saving throws, as per the above rules. If you ever succeed on more saving throws than you've failed during these 10 day periods, you break your addiction.

Silver-healing is how resurrection is done in the Silvered Marches. If you are brought back to life, you have an automatic addiction to silver-healing until broken.

 Cooled silver kept liquid is famed across Faerun.

Services Provided through Silver-Healing

Additional fulles are added to the initial 5

• Restore all HP (including putting maximum HP back at its normal amount) - 2 additional fulles.
• Restore a lost limb - 1 additional full per lost limb.
• Cleanse or restore mind to sanity - standard price.
• Enhance mind (gain +1 Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma modifier) - 3 additional fulles.
• Enhance body (gain +1 Strength, Dexterity, and Constiution) - 3 additional fulles.
• Enhance magical ability (gain an additional spell slot at a level you can cast) - 2 additional fulles per spell slot level.
• Polish magical ability (learn a cantrip) - standard price.
• Gain magical ability (gain 1 level in magic-user or sorcerer) - 5 additional fulles.
• Become powerful (gain +1 class level) - 100 additional fulles.
• Break curse - 2 additional fulles.
• Resurrect - 100 additional fulles.
• Become hearty (immunity to disease/poison for 6 months + gain 30 hit points) - 10 additional fulles.

New Magical Item: Silvered Spellbooks

Wondrous item, rare (attunement required by wizards or other spellbook-using classes)

A Silvered Spellbook.

A Silvered Spellbook is given to the Silverhands of the Conclave of Silvermoon, as well as to adventurers who prove themselves as positive impacts on the Silvered Marches. It is a spellbook bound in silver, whose pages made of liquid silver that become stable when read or written upon.

When attuned to a Silvered Spellbook, it serves as an arcane focus. Spells cast while using the Silvered Spellbook have advantage on spell attack rolls against undead, lycans, or cursed creatures, who also have disadvantage on saving throws against these same spells. The Silvered Spellbook also counts as 40 pounds of silver and grants the various properties mentioned above when used, save for the suit of armor property.

LYCANS

It is peasants that bare the brunt
Of lycan cruelty.

Lycans, known regionally as the moon-kissed or moon-hated, are shapeshifters born from the moon itself. Or, to be more accurate, their obsession and interaction with the moon.

The first moon-kissed are recorded as having appeared nearly 2,000 years ago. Strange rituals were done to consume the moon's light, leading to a bodily change into that of a wolf--the beast that first worshiped the moon and her first champions. These rituals are known now, but forbidden in all cities as taboo. It is simple: by imbibing large amounts of silver, the shift begins to happen.

It is akin to possession, this shift. With the waning and waxing of the moon, your mind grows erratic. Predatory instincts blossom in your chest, your sense of who you are ebbs and flows, as does your memory, your love, your respect for others. At the peak, when the moon is full, the wolf erupts from within. Your skin breaks apart, hair grows through, your teeth elongate--you become a werewolf in true; moon-fanged, angry, no longer caring of friend or foe, hateful of all outside the moon's shadow.

Intelligent Lycans are spoken of in rumor, superstition.
They're said to be conspirators seeking to spread
their curse as far & wide as possible.

Across the history of the Silvered Marches has the imbibing of silver been used for various purposes. Increasing one's life, gaining more strength, improving one's magical talents. Churches have built up around this imbibing and silver-healing is something that Luarar is famed for. But the dangers have long since outweighed the benefits. Addicts who become lycans have torn apart the countryside more than once, and many of these monsters still haunt the southern parishes. Thus, silver-healing is offered only to the rich few, and only in small amounts, and closely watched over with the threat of execution hanging over the heads of those that abuse it.

The Moonwood alone is exception to this restraint. Druids of the Circle of the Moon who worship their namesake and wish to have a seat amongst her power freely consume raw silver and ethereal ghost-flesh. In doing so, they gain the power to shift into powerful animals, namely wolves and direwolves. All Moon Druids are werewolves. Inside of their precious forest, they freely hunt and indulge in their addictions, hoping to grow closer to the Moon proper. They are led by the legendary Fenris--an aspect of the moon born in the Astral Sea who fell to the Realms Forgotten & Bloody who knows how long ago. Under his hateful shadow do they thrive.

Rare is it that these Moon Druids leave their Moonwood. They trade lumber, meat, and skins in exchange for silver and stay to themselves. Those that leave are hunted down by their kin and dragged back to these secretive haunts. During these times, Silvermarch's Knights in Silver are told to protect the southern parishes from the appetites of super-packs descending from the forest. Though careful not to bring too much ruin with them, every time a super-pack descends is a time of calamity where many inadvertently end up dead. More on Moon Druids in a future post.

Werewolf hunting is common north of the Nether Mountains.
Only desperate adventurers take such jobs.

Most horrendous of all is the ability for lycanthropy to spread. A werewolf's fangs are the fangs of the moon. Any that their pierce has a chance of becoming moon-kissed themselves. There are known cures to this, but the herbs needed are found either far beyond the Silver Marches or deep in the Moonwood. Thus, the most often cure is simple execution.

If You Are Moon-Kissed

1. While the moon wanes, you become morose, depressed. You reject things you once enjoyed, people you once loved, and only feel satisfied at night and when outside.
2. While the moon waxes, you grow aggressive, angry, and lash out easily. You no longer care for the things you once cared about; responsibilities evaporate, alongside respect for others.
3. While the moon is full, you transform. You shed your skin as a snake would and your anger towards those that are not moon-kissed blossoms into a violent rage.
4. While the moon is new, you regain all sense of who you are. Often this comes with guilt, despair, or liberating freedom.
5. Once you've enjoyed this cycle once, you can choose to embrace the moon, allowing you to freely transform into your werewolf and direwolf forms; or, you can reject the moon and suffer this cycle again and again until you eventually fall in, die, or are cured.
6. If you embrace the moon, the moon retroactively possesses you so that you were always possessed. You forget your life beforehand, and your entire brain is reworked to be a lycan in true.

Curing Lycanthropy

Embracing the moon is synonymous
With fiendish worship in Luarar.

• Limeflower, found in the Moonwood, Chult, and across the Sea of Fallen Stars, eases the cycle, allowing one to remain relatively stable. If enough is taken, and mixed with numerous other herbs, incenses, and strange rituals, silver bleeds from your body, taking with it the lycan's curse.
• Delving into the Underdark and the Veins of the Earth makes it impossible for the cycle to take hold. You are always in your "moon wane" state-of-mind and, if you can resist going back to the surface (a saving throw of Wisdom or against spells death every 12 hours), you vomit up silver & curse alike.
• Remove Curse or Greater Restoration or a Wish all strip the curse from the body.
• Death & resurrection sees the body reborn without the curse.

Werewolf Benefits

• While transformed, you gain the Strength, Dexterty, and Constitution ability scores of a werewolf, an additional 30 hit points, and a werewolf's attacks and features, as per your system of choice.
• Silver weapons do double damage to you.
• While not transformed, you gain an increased movement speed of 20 feet, and +1 to your Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution modifiers.
• You lose all respect for material goods and non-lycans, to the point where you think killing them is better than letting them live in their wretched state.

CREATE A WEREWOLF NPC

Roll on the following tables to create a werewolf for your games.

Life Before Transformation

1. Silver miner.
2. Farmer or farmhand.
3. Magic-user at the Conclave of Silverhand.
4. Adventurer.
5. Knight in Silver.
6. Noble or aristocrat.
7. Religious acolyte, cleric, or cultist.
8. Moon Druid,
9. Merchant.
10. Foreign visitor.

Why You Transformed

1. A broken mind required silver-healing. You became addicted.
2. A broken body required silver-healing. You became addicted.
3. Hateful of your own weakness, you consumed silver to prove you were strong.
4. A super pack descended and left you marked and your family dead.
5. A ravaging lycan crossed your path and left you cursed.
6. Praying to the moon for aid, you found yourself moon-kissed.
7. Desiring freedom from society's chains, you went into the Moonwood and joined the druids.
8. Wolves haunt your dreams, and eventually you became one.
9. After killing a direwolf, it cursed you to carry on its legacy.
10. You wanted revenge on someone more powerful than you, and threw everything away to get it.

Omen Heralding your Arrival

1. Wolves gather en masse, howling to a moon no other can see.
2. The moon is visible in the sky despite the fact that it is day.
3. The moon is clear, even during the Season of Thunder when clouds hide the sky.
4. Silver begins to melt and form strange puddles on the ground.
5. There is total silence, as if all animals were hiding.
6. A strange howl cuts through the night wind.
7. Ghost doe run across fields, fleeing something vicious.
8. Sudden anger blossoms in the minds of all who worship the moon.
9. Like a wall of electricity slammed into you, every hair along your spine stands on end.
10. Bloody claw marks stain tree, soil, and home alike.

Your Horrific Howl Sounds Like

1. A hundred wolves howling at once.
2. Flesh being torn and bone broken.
3. The death cry of a deer being eaten alive.
4. An avalanche of snow and ice.
5. Silver blades clashing against silver blades.
6. White noise, crackling.
7. The pleas of their last victim.
8. The scream-chanting of a hundred cultists.
9. An explosion, never-ending.
10. The hateful rage of a woman twice scorned.

Color of your Fur

1. Snow covering a bloodied corpse.
2. Dirt turned to mud by viscera.
3. A night sky bathed in starlight.
4. An aurora twisting underneath the moon.
5. Shadows over snowcapped mountains.
6. A man's chest torn open.
7. Blackness found only on the dark side of the moon.
8. Tree bark clawed by an alpha wolf.
9. The ethereal white of a ghost doe.
10. Darkness in which the golden eyes of a wolf shines.

Unique Ability

1. Having eaten so much ghostly flesh, you can become ethereal at will.
2. See trails of blood-smell leading towards living creatures.
3. Your shadow is a lycan too, leaves your body, and hunts alongside you.
4. Your shed blood becomes 1d4 silver direwolves that aid you in your hunts.
5. When howling to the moon, prophecies of the night's hunt fill your mind. Gain advantage on all attack rolls against 1 target of your choice.
6. Claws and teeth made of silver allow you silver's bless'd properties.
7. Those that hear your howl must save (Wisdom or vs paralysis) or be consumed by fear and become paralyzed.
8. Can cast the spell moonbeam fired from your mouth.
9. Can scale surfaces as if a spider.
10. You teleport into shadows at night.

Lycans grow more monstrous the longer they go without feeding;
And more twisted the longer they go without silver.

BASIC MOON RELIGIONS

While Lunagricultism and Moondancing are the two most popular religions in Luarar, they will get their own blog posts. Below, some basic shared pslams of moon worship are given, as well as blessings and boons.

Basic Pslams

• Bless'd thou who judges not by sex, not by destiny, not by work.
• Wicked are thus those who hunt without eating.
• A sliver of silver is worth only the love in which it is handed to another.
• At night, turn off all lights not needed for art and appreciate the glow of Our Night White Lady.
• Children under 10 years wane and wax law and chaos; of no crime are they guilty, but a lesson must be taught.
• Let those who ask for succor find it, so long as they have teeth and not fangs, love and not hate.
• Tragedy is to life as water to the seed; fortune comes, fortune goes, and wisdom is born.

Worshiping

When you finish a rest and say an earnest prayer to the moon (including any of its aspects), your GM rolls a 1d6 and gives you the following. This happens once every 24 hours, and does not happen with every prayer.

GMs, when a player makes a prayer and is eligible for one of the following benefits, roll d% in secret. Roll under their level + each prayer they've made since the last to roll on the table below.

1. A boon or blessing from the Dungeon Master's Guide.
2. An additional spell slot between 1st-5th level.
3. A free hit die for regaining hit points.
4. A d20 is rolled. You can replace 1 roll of your choice (yours or someone else's) with the number rolled before you finish another rest.
5. Dancing Lights appear and float around you, the tears of the moon itself.
6. A wolf leaves an uncommon magical item at your feet. It turns into silver dust when you begin your next rest.

A Moondancer in the midst of an arcane ritual.