On Yuan-Ti and Orcs

On Yuan-Ti (including Medusa and Naga):

- Orcs warned humans not to do it, and do it they did.

- After feasting on the flesh of the Coatl out of revenge and anger, the curse was placed. The tribe of humans known as the Yuan-Ti would become twisted and would be hunted as monstrosities until they were all destroyed. So this curse came to pass.

- The curse stripped from the Yuan-Ti their emotions. It left them with nothing but logic, so that they could form no true alliances in the world. It turned many of them into monstrosities called Abominations, or half-twisted Malisons, or the reviled and godlike Anathema.

- But it made something else, too. If one accepts that they have sinned, then a curse is naught but a natural progression of things--a step on a ladder to deification. So the Yuan-Ti ascended even further, and many of them became Feathered.

- A Feathered Yuan-Ti has coatl feathers that bloom from their scalps or their ears or their arms and necks. These feathers give them emotions, and these feathers give them strength. Therefore, there is a Feathered Elite that rules the Yuan-Ti. They look nearly completely human, save for their serpentine eyes and the feathers proper. They call themselves Ouroboros.

- The Ouroboros rule Yuan-Ti society, which is condensed-yet-scattered. It is condensed, as there is one Serpent City, and that Serpent City is a place of intrigue and nightmare, where the Feathered Elite dance a dance of midnight assassinations and constant death with their nightmare-speaking Anathema kin.

- Yuan-Ti society is scattered because Purebloods and Malisons have injected themselves into every culture across the world. There, they weave a Conspiracy with the aid of Drow. This Conspiracy keeps all other creatures away from the serpent city and the truth of Yuan-Ti existence, for they know that if discovered, they would be destroyed utterly.

- There is a Yuan-Ti religion. When they were cursed, they experienced the first nightmares. In those nightmares Yuan-Ti discovered the Night Serpent. They know it will consume all things that do not nightmare, and thus they seek to one day awaken it, to prevent their curse from ever destroying them, for no thing truly wishes to die.

- Yuan-Ti Nightmare Speakers infect the minds of those that get too close to the truth. If you have nightmares, it is because you've met a Yuan-Ti recently and did not know it. The nightmares will terrify you, make you change what you're doing, make you question yourself--and thus the Yuan-Ti remain protected.

- All Yuan-Ti are afraid of losing their curse. Their minds, stripped of emotion, cannot process happiness, and thus they do not know that if they leave the shade of their doom that they will once more be whole. Instead, they full give themselves to their sin, for someone on fire will not be touched by someone safe. Their logic is twisted, but indeed it works.

- Feathered Yuan-TI know emotional fear, not just instinctual fear. They will not give up the powers they hold, nor their feathers, nor their grip on Yuan-Ti culture, for they are afraid of death if they do. Thus, they will often bring in third parties to Serpent City to use as pawns in their games of snake-eat-snake--their Ouroboros Games.

- Some may ask why Yuan-Ti hold sway over snakes. Snakes are wise creatures, whose scales can be read for great knowledge, and who know the ways of medicine and surgery. But if one knew why, they would know why the Yuan-Ti sinned and devoured the Coatl, and they keep such information hidden inside of countless nightmares, all scattered among countless brains.

- The Yuan-Ti know how to spread their curse. Purebloods do so, creating cults and then leading the cults off into the wilderness, from which they never return. These souls are turned into broodguards or Purebloods themselves through methods I will not speak of here.

- Every 52 years, an Anathema, an Abomination, a Malison, and a Pureblood all undergo a ritual of cannabilism. At the end what emerges from this disgusting orgy is a single creature--an Ouroboros, one of the feathered elite.

- Orc oral traditions speak of the Yuan-Ti and their sin. For this reason, Yuan-Ti never approach Orcs, and Orcs are always hunting for the fabled Serpent City, so that they may destroy it and free these humans from their shackles.

- Medusa and Naga are different factions of Yuan-Ti.

On Orcs

Female orc

- Before men, after elves, before dwarves, after stars, Orcs walked the earth proud and feral.

- All cultures that men have, descended from apes as they are, come from Orcs, who once herded those apes and protected their ancestors when the world ended once before.

- Orc oral traditions stretch back throughout the 4 apocalypses that have claimed the world; all the way back to the days of the dinosaurs, which were tamed and rode by Orc Amazons into battle.

- Orcs were targeted by elves, but the Orcs were resistant. They beat and smash and killed, and the elves found no emotions to harvest nor beauty to steal, and thus they left the Orcs alone when better prey manifested in the stars.

- Orcs know that the heights of civillization strips away the primal heart. They saw it happen with many races that have risen and fallen, and warned apes that the same would happen to them, and yet now look at humans, whose primal heart is gone, and who rule a cold world because of it.

- Orc men are goblins; Orc females are linked in this picture below. Hobgoblins and Bugbears are Orcs too, but of a different breeds with different cultures who worship ugly things best unmentioned. Orc women, however, are stronger together then all of these groups combined.

- Orcs know that the Muses that teach and inspire reading and writing have been poisoned by something older, and thus neither write nor read. Everything that must be said is spoken, screamed, or played.

- Orcs wage war because they know that bloodshed keeps the apocalypse from coming again. They wish not to relive the Extinctions they have suffered in the past, and they will kidnap and sacrifice and decapitate as much as needed to protect their children and families.

- Orc War has become a sacred ritual in this instance. There are seasons for war and seasons for hunting. During hunting seasons, Orcs are surprisingly peaceful and worth talking too.

- Orcs share not the psychology of humans. They are older things who know the value of instincts, and do not have the ability to entertain higher, complex philosophical motions. Ideas such as a nihilism and mental illness are foreign to them.

- Orcs are still surprisingly intelligent, but in ways of spatial awareness, understanding how others think and react, in knowing when the weather will come and when a heart will stop. Many Orc Medicine Drinkers can tell you when your death day will come--for this, they are valuable to kings and artist alike.

- There are many Orc cultures. Some prefer the life of roaming hordes, others as simple nomads, and others still set up shop in abandoned dwarf work cities. But make no mistake--they are different from us, and they know it, and they are older too, and they will have no problem killing us if we threaten them with Extinction. They have killed the Gods of Old and will kill them again if need be.

On Dwarves and Elves, Light & Dark

On Dwarves

Little weird bastard 1

- Dwarves were designed, not born.

- Dwarves are workers before all else. When a Dwarf is thinking "What will I do today?" it is actually thinking "What work will I begin/complete/polish today?"

- Dwarves do not feel happiness or grief. Instead they feel only three emotions: anger (when their work is harmed or interrupted), greed (when they see a way to begin newer, better work), and satisfaction (when they complete is work).

- Dwarves range in size from the size of ants to around 4'11" in height. They are grey-skinned, red or black eyed, and covered in hair.

- Dwarven gods are Gods of Work. These gods have been built by the dwarves; they have built Gods of Smithing, Gods of Sculpting, Gods of Killing, Gods of Brewing, Gods of Breaking, etc, etc.

- Dwarven Godsmiths die when their god is finished. The god goes on to inspire dwarves to perform the type of work it represents.

- Dwarves are monstrous. Never forget this. They care not for the life of outsiders, as outsiders interfere with work. It is for this reason that dwarves are so dangerous.

- Dwarves do not dream. Dreams distract dwarves from their vision.

- It is every dwarf's vision to achieve their magnum opus someday--a work of such utter magnificence that no other dwarf can create it. Few have been made, and each is powerful beyond imagination.

- Dwarves are not scientifically minded. They do not experiment or study or learn. They simply work, and absorb information as if through osmosis.

- Dwarven Gods are the reasons dwarves create new things. Godsmithing is creating something that creates something, which is why Godsmiths are seen as divine and holy.

- The first dwarves were forged from the core of the planet. They work their way up, shaping the mantle, then the crust. Cities, forges, fortresses, etc, found underground are always dwarven made.

- The greatest enemy to the dwarf is the vampire.

- Dwarves do not have society as we understand it. It is best decribed as they are organized by the work they make, but there is so much nuance there that only their eyes can see and only their minds can understand through the work they've done.

- Dwarven Monarchs are strange, near-eldritch things indeed. Their hands can turn stone into dragonslaying spearhead with little time, and their vision sees only how to turn something into many greater things.

- Dwarves are sexless. When two or more love each other, they redirect their work into designing another batch of dwarves who will continue their work.

- War is a form of work, and many dwarves are skilled at it.

- A dwarf who grows too greedy will succumb to dragon sickness and destroy themselves and any other dwarves they meet. These Dragon Sicks are exiled and left alone by the rest, as they interfere with the work.

 On Elves

- They are the blood of God. The Elven God, of course, which is a god of many things, such as Poetry, Rebirth, Butterflies, Wrath, etc. They are not this God's children--they are its blood given form.

- They have neither stable sex nor what we would call gender roles. At one moment they can be biologically male or female or some place in between. This is because they are Poetry, and Poetry is Motion, and therefore Elves are motion too.

- Elves, being Motion, change forms as they age. They begin as sprites and pixies and then become luminous faeries and then what you know as an elf. Beyond that stage, they become weird and strange--horns and weird forms and odd elements grow from their bodies. And this leads to the next point.

- All of what we know of as "Fey" descend from Elves. The Archfey of Satyrs is an ancient elf whose children took on its form and, over time, were no longer elves but instead something else. This is why all fey are so wildly different, but also so starkly similar.

- Elves feed off of emotion. When they eat something, the act of eating it just makes the emotions of their prey more raw. In essence, the actual biological act of eating is like adding spice to food--the food being emotion.

- Humans have the most diverse pallate of emotions. Therefore, Elves (and Fey) hunt humans. The Wild Hunt is but one aspect of this. All those Fairy Tales are also hunts--a Fairy Tale is literally just an Elf (or Fey) creating a situation to feed on the most emotion possible.

- Elf society cannot be understood in any terms as we understand society. They live too long, change too much, think too far ahead. For this reason, Elves are not really playable characters--it's the same as playing a Star or a Devil or a non-sentient Worm.

- The pretty pictures and the nice courts, etc, are all just Fairy Tales too. Elves feed on other fey just as they do humans.

- Because of all of the above, it would be safe to say that Elves are an Apex Predator. Were it not for the gun (holy be that instrument) then humanity would have destroyed itself in its wars to push back Fairy Tales and the like. But a .50 caliber round is a great equalizer, and so, for now, Fairy Tales are rare, and elf hunts rarer still.

On Dark Elves

- If Elves are the blood of the Elven God, then Dark Elves are its nightmares. They murdered their parent in its sleep and burst from its skull dark and twisted. This is what began the War of Grief--that endless war between Elves and Dark Elves.

- The word Drow is a curse created by Elves to distinguish themselves from their estranged siblings. The Drow embrace this curse, as they themselves are curses.

- Elves feed on emotion, and do their hunts through Fairy Tales. Drow feed on Conspiracies, and hunt through lies, deceit, and subterfuge.

- Conspiracies of all kinds are created by Drow. They enter into the dreams and nightmares of things, or they slowly insert themselves into society, and they spin lying webs inside and in this way they prepare their food.

- Drow have a very organized and hierarchal society. This is because Elven Society is loose and fluid, and Drow, as Elven equals, wish to be a force that terrifies them so. The Melniboneans from the Elric novels are just one of many Drow societies.

- Because Drow are Elven nightmares, they are able to become Nightmare Gods. These are greater than the Archfey, but fewer too, but they are horrific and inspire naught but terror and doubt.

- Drow have stolen and perverted much that the elves once held dear. Many butterflies have been twisted into moths, flowers into fungi and slime, suns into eclipses, golden cities into half-real mirages. Yes, the War of Grief has had consequences for the elves, and in that way the Drow are always winning.

- Many think Drow would be ugly, given their nature. But no. The only thing that terrifies the Elves when it comes to beauty is a beauty greater than theirs. And so Drow are impossibly perfect in so many ways, to the point that the most beautiful are, like their cities, half-real--phantasms that seduce and trick.

On Wizards, Sorcerers, and Necromancy

On Wizards

Bachelor pad

- Wizards are to fantasy worlds what millionaires and billionaires are to us.

- Imagine it. You have your wizards tower, or your cursed keep, or your dragon lair-front property. You have the power to call gold from the ground and access to planar treasures. You have more in common with your fellow, equally rich, equally culturally-powerful wizards than you do some peasant asshole complaining that goblins stole his potatoes.

- Wizardry is one part mystery, one part daring, and two parts narcissistic ego. People don't become wizards for altruistic reasons, and if they do, they forget those reasons fast. Being able to fling fireballs and teleport at will does that to you.

- While the rich in our world exploit everyone for money, wizards exploit monstrosities, weird beings, and magical deviants for their mysteries and power. Thus, their relative inactivity in the normal operations of day to day life means they have little impact on it. Basically, everywhere is a third world country and wizard towers are the only first world countries around to them.

- A wizard's power comes from two things. 1.) Their intellect. Their synapses are finely tuned and their capacity for knowledge large enough to properly contain the complex contents to weave a spell. 2.) Their spellbooks. A wizard's true prestige is measured not by their many dungeons, the amount of traps in their towers, or the many chimera they've created, but instead by their library of spellbooks. As a rule of thumb, each level of a spell requires half a book to write. Some spells, such as Contact Other Planes or Find Familiar, are many volume monstrosities. A wizard's personal spellbook condenses information that they call upon, but the library is where this is all kept.

- Memorizing a spell is a process. Over the 8 hours, sometimes 8 days, it takes to do so, the wizard in question reads through their spellbooks. This process causes them to experience the equivalent of a DMT trip--their souls open up, they hallucinate, and they are interfacing directly with the laws of physics that they wish to bend. Should a non-magically adept person attempt to read a spellbook, it's like reading a series of nonsense poems with strange images interlaced.

- Cities where wizards live are cities of intrigue, oddity, and power. They are fabulously rich there, of course, but rare is it they take a ruling position. A wizard's presence, however, attracts the supernatural much how a fire at night will attract every cold bastard for miles around. Beholders will set up shop in underground tunnels, elves will begin to weave fairy tales in the slums and in noble bedrooms, drow will make conspiracies, and factions will vie for ownership over the detritus the wizard throws out and no longer needs.

- Wizards do not contribute to armies (usually). This is for the fact that two wizards can very easily annhilate one another. There are a billion ways a level 5 wizard can kill another level 5 wizard. It's best not to attempt. And, sadly, every wizard has a rival. Every move they make is usually being tracked by at least 3 others interested in what they're doing.

- Because of the above, the more powerful the wizard, the more mundane their life becomes. Oddly enough, once you're rich and relevant and can summon forth illusory dragons from the shadow glades, one develops a taste for the simpler things in life. This applies up through the first 15 levels of the game. After that, once a wizard has learned a 9th level spell...

- A wizard with 9th level spells has tapped into something that has twisted a fundamental part of them. These powerful men and women don't even look human for the most part; those that do are usually hiding what they really are. High level wizards are unheard of not because they are rare (in fact, they are frighteningly common), but because they have detached themselves from our world much like the Buddha has, and occupy a realm all their own.

- A wizard isn't really considered a wizard until they've earned a lot of money and have their own library--no matter how small it is. This usually means that any wizard below 9th level is considered an extended apprentice, learning the ropes of the high life. These apprentices are usually concerned with all kinds of petty things, like saving their daughters from Falhast (Barker) or stopping a Red Wizard from turning their loved ones into zombies.

- Wizards take on apprentices easily enough. It's always easier to entertain yourself supernaturally with friends who take on the psychic load for you. There are lots of petty level 1 or 2 wizards in the world, capable of casting a handful of spells, but most of them get themselves killed because they bite off more then they can chew. Because of this, it's rare that magic effects the common people. Apprentices only come through town to make a few gold before getting offed by some asshole bugbear because they learned "Jump" instead of "Magic Missile."

On Sorcerers

Young savant

- Sorcerers are never from here, always from elsewhere.

- Sorcerer ways are always strange and have one step in a foreign superstition that strikes you as odd but almost sensible.

- Sorcerers never speak a fluid tongue, but a syncretic mix of languages, just passable enough for you to understand.

- Sorcerers put no stock into gods or demons, but fear their power all the same.

- Sorcerers lust not for power or for wealth but instead for a tighter control on what they are. What they are is what makes them separate from you.

- Sorcerers always have a tick that involves some distant custom that strikes you as wise.

- Sorcerers will talk you out of gold and favors just as easily as a snake did Eve in the garden.

- Sorcerers are quick to help, especially if one of their many taboos have been broken.

- Sorcerers do everything you do, but one step to the right or left; their tea is made with strange beetles, their foods spiced with crushed kobold bone, their clothes dyed with the pituitary glands of gnolls and wyverns.

On Necromancy

More necromancy, less lung cancer

It's a common belief that certain magics can bring people back from the dead. This is incorrect.

- It's a common belief that there is an "Afterlife," and that death is a "journey." This is also wrong.

- It is true that spells can resurrect a corpse, but once Death has danced with you, you can never return. You are always dead. Even if your lungs work and your eyes can see and your mind thinks, you are dead, hollow, ashen. Your skin will feel like wax. Food will taste like chalk. Spellcasting physically hurts an organ inside of you that doesn't exist.

- Learning necromancy is dangerous. Memorizing a spell that involves calling the attention of death can be fatal to the untrained mind. Few apprentices go down this path because of what it can do.

- This is why magical healing is rare, even if it comes from prayers. Death cannot be corralled. Stitching flesh back together might just make her want to tear it apart even more. Many have had limbs reattached only to be utterly savaged by some violent coincidence. Most cultures have superstitions that say that being healed unnaturally just leads to more violent wounds, and they are right.

- Speaking with the dead is like trying to convince a starved tiger not to bite out your throat. The spell holds the spirit back, but the mental load is incredible; this is why such a seemingly simple feat earns usually only a simple yes or no answer.

- Some necromancers have been bought into wars in exchange for the dead. The true necromancers, the skilled necromancers, abhor such things; playing with the fear-charged flesh of a ruined soldier never ends well.

- Curses are a form of necromancy. Every curse is the same, even if its execution is different; with a snap of your fingers or a cooing of a poem, you call the attention of Death or her Dead on someone and they work their magic on them. This is why breaking a curse is so difficult, because you need to hide that person from Death's gaze, or so the philosophy teaches.

- Many cultures believe in a soul. That is a half-true belief. There is something that puppeteers the flesh and that can be drawn on, but when the flesh dies and rots so does this thing. Calling it back or manipulating usually kills parts of anything that's imbibed that soul; plants, mice, ants, parts of someone's brain or heart, etc. Usually this process is incomplete when a spell is cast, partially explaining why raising the dead is always such a mockery.

- Lichdom. How cruel a thing to do to yourself. To be a lich is to be a Cenobite from Hellraiser. You've flayed your spiritual nerves in such a way that you can no longer connect with other things, no matter how well you understand them. Few master necromancers go the way of the lich out of fear of what the soul-flesh will do to them.

- Necromancers are, in some ways, Death's favorite people, for all Necromancy spells call her attention to someone to dance with. This is why Lichdom is even possible, because she is not wont to lose one of her favored dance partners.

- Lots of wizards see Necromancers as either really eccentric and cool or as hacks.