1. PrC Document. It will one day be an actual document, like Jon's, but in the mean time it will be several PrCs posted on Nyt's site. Some may not appear yet and will only exist on this board since they're not finished.
The PrCs are:
Spirit Incarnate (druid)
Matched-Pair (gladiator)
Montare (gladiator)
Black Sand Raider (open to anyone)
Others will be added as they are created. Each will be linked into my sig once they have a home.
2. Net Project: Illithids of Athas. Right now the rules are done but the fluff, dozens of pages of it, isn't. Until my muse comes back to work, or a creative partnership comes into the picture, the net project will be on hold indefinetly.
Originally posted by Pennarin
2. Net Project: Illithids of Athas. Right now the rules are done but the fluff, dozens of pages of it, isn't. Until my muse comes back to work, or a creative partnership comes into the picture, the net project will be on hold indefinetly.
You'll have to send me a copy of that. ;)
Wouldn't mind helping either where I can.
Originally posted by Dawnstealer
Very cool. This brings up a good point, though: has anyone thought about going through all the 2e DS books and writing up prestige classes on all of the kits (or at least the cool ones)?
I have, but I lost focus on that after I did most of the gladiator handbook ones.
Originally posted by Dawnstealer
Very cool. This brings up a good point, though: has anyone thought about going through all the 2e DS books and writing up prestige classes on all of the kits (or at least the cool ones)?
Some 2E kits were just fluff anyway, a kind of character plot device (is that even a valid concept??) and port badly to 3E PrC mechanics; some examples of it I gave in that thread where the arcanamach is mentionned.
. Net Project: Illithids of Athas. Right now the rules are done but the fluff, dozens of pages of it, isn't. Until my muse comes back to work, or a creative partnership comes into the picture, the net project will be on hold indefinetly.
Nice. I had Illithids on the other side of the silt sea. I named the area the Sundered Regions. One of the locals there was a place called "The Lands of Eternal Dusk". Basiclly it was a huge area that was covered in a dome of shadow call the "dark copula". No one deared enter. I had a Illithid city located there where they had all types of horrors goings on. They even had half-giant sized illlithid.
I need to scan the map I drew of the Regions. It came out pretty good.
Originally posted by Sysane
Nice. I had Illithids on the other side of the silt sea. I named the area the Sundered Regions.
Considering the number of people that are interested in the "other side of the Silt Sea", I wisely chose to put the illithid homeland in a blind spot in the maps.
If you look at Cyrus9a's maps, the homeland is between 'DSR-Known World v1' and 'DSR-New Region v0.5'. Its the region directly east of the Obsidian Plains, the stretch of land south of the Silt Archipelago and the Valley of the Cerulean Storm. On both those maps the region is hidden south of the map. Its not currently drawn on any map, official or not. I thought putting it there would make it acessible to the Tablelands, yet one would have to cross the Obsidian Plains; reason enought to explain that illithids are not seen in the Tablelands. Also, the coming happenings with the undead of the south would tie in events with the illithids and the Tablelands.
Originally posted by Pennarin
If you look at Cyrus9a's maps, the homeland is between 'DSR-Known World v1' and 'DSR-New Region v0.5'. Its the region directly east of the Obsidian Plains, the stretch of land south of the Silt Archipelago and the Valley of the Cerulean Storm. On both those maps the region is hidden south of the map. Its not currently drawn on any map, official or not. I thought putting it there would make it acessible to the Tablelands, yet one would have to cross the Obsidian Plains; reason enought to explain that illithids are not seen in the Tablelands. Also, the coming happenings with the undead of the south would tie in events with the illithids and the Tablelands.
Oooh, I really like that!
Current projects:
1. PrC: Montare. I am still waiting to finalize the PrC, now split in two near-identical ones, the Montare and Char-Montare. Its on the boards if you want to check it out.
2. Template: Kraai. A new undead that walks the same path as the kaisharga, morg and t'liz.
3. Template: Surke. Another new undead, not as powerful, that "is sometimes created when a truly ambitious creature dies unexpectedly. The desire for power is so strong that it keeps the spirit alive. Surke relish the new chance to still attain the power they sought so greedily.
Surke appear as they did in life, but have an expression of deep-set obsession on their faces. Their eyes shine with a mad light when in pursuit of their goal. They appear somewhat transparent and part of their spirit exists in the Gray, giving it a slightly grayish tint to its skin.". It is to be a more general type of undead, who has for advantage to be able to choose one or two Undead Special Attacks and Special Abilites (or receives Power Modifiers for the Undead Special Powers table). In exchange it has more weaknesses than most undead, with one that is specifically detrimental to its continued existence.
4. New concept: Athasian Hivemind. Taking from Andorax's superb conversion of the BoVD Hivemind concept to 3.5. Kicks ass!
5. Character background: Farcluun's history
Free Year/Event
-13,920 Illithids settle the salt-water marshes south of the Sunrise Sea. They lay eggs in the water and feed the tadpoles masticated food while adults hunt at night.
-12,895 With their increasing mastery of psionics comes domestication of insect colonies that can produce food for the tadpoles, freeing the adult population for other activities.
-12,885 Illithid psions discover on the Hiriman highlands a Nature-Bender retreat from the Blue Age.
-12,884 When those studying the base do not report back, a group is sent to investigate.They find the brains of their comrades absorbed into a rhulisti construct, which is now imprinted with the illithid’s intelligence and personality. Illithids bow to the great intelligence and wisdom of the construct and make it their greatest leader, the Orekam.
-12,801 The Orekam makes great strides in the Way of the Unseen and starts deciphering the lore contained in the retreat, written in the ancient halfling language. An illithid civilization rises up from the marshes and highlands.
-12,698 The Orekam creates the first elder brains, inspired from its own structure and budding from its substance, as a means to produce life-shapes. The experiment is a success.
-12,315 Trading roads are constructed through the marshes, opening economic ties with the rising powers of the Green Age, leading to fruitful cultural exchanges. Illithids emigrate to the centers of Green Age civilization.
-11,154 Start of the height of illithid civilization; will end with the advent of Barien.
-10,912 An enormous earthquake rocks the land as fire and ash can be seen rising north in the Sunrise Sea. Parts of the highlands collapse and the Nature-Bender retreat, the anchor point for the Orekam, is lost.
-3,542 Cleansing Wars begin. Barien starts his war on illithids everywhere.
-3,535 The sea begins turning to silt, rain makes itself increasingly scarcer and the marshes are drying up. Illithids begin a massive construction project and exodus to subterranean nests cloistered around sources of water.
-3,306 Barien’s war machine reaches the former marshland’s area.
-3,301 Elder brains devise ceremorphosis as a mean to bring tadpoles faster to maturity to increase soldier numbers. Over the years all other Rebirth races in the region become known as thralls as illithids enslave all that do not flee and capture enemy soldiers to obtain living bodies for ceremorphosis. A vast program of enslavement is carried on the neighboring savage dromite clans, whose members make formidable psionic warriors.
-2,310 The Sea of Silt expands and swallows part of the ancestral lands.
-2,012 Illithids are slowly but surly losing the war. In an attempt to find a weapon that could decimate their enemies, the greatest elder brains delve into the Nature-Bender memories the Orekam left them. They accidentally unleash a terrible plague-weapon that spreads far before dying off, but not before rendering sterile all intelligent creatures in the region.
-2,011 In the chaos and confusion that ensues the plague, Barien pierces the front’s defenses and makes his way to the greatest city-nest, Oshul. In desperation the elder brains of Oshul make a last attempt at salvation: they pool all the illithid’s minds of their city-nest together and connect them to their own, forming a hive mind. Their combined psionic might decimate Barien’s army and mortally wounds the champion. With his last breath Barien curses the illithids with powerful sorcery. The curse makes its way through the hive mind to all its components who waste away in the ensuing days.
-2,010 With half of what remained of the race annihilated, the remaining illithids and elder brains relocate to farther areas. Of the nests that existed, only a handful remain and their oldest and greatest cities are gone. A few dromite thralls escape to their lands and spread civilization to their race.
-2,002 The end of the Cleansing Wars.
-1,990 In the ensuing years, the surviving elder brains devise a mean to procreate again by creating new tadpole-producing elder brains. The old elder brains divide their own gray matter amongst the new, imparting knowledge. The populations of the other Rebirth races in the area slowly dwindle to nothing after a few decades as their members grow old and die without progeny.
-1,923 The illithid race rises from the ashes of destruction. With the help of the elder brains the illithids try to recreate their pre-war society, but much knowledge as been lost. Illithids will never again be as great as they were. Over the hundreds of years that follow, they maintain isolation from the other Rebirth races even as their feelings of hate fade away.
-1,752 Dromite clans become united castes that initiate savage gorilla warfare to protect their borders from further illithid intrusions.
-1,737 Illithids build fortified camps on the border between illithid and dromite lands from which they lunch punitive strikes and collect dromite thralls.
[...]
Do you wish the rest of the illithid rules to be posted or the timeline to be more fleshed-out?
So did you figure out what the earthquake was all about? ;)
Do you wish the rest of the illithid rules to be posted or the timeline to be more fleshed-out?
I'd like to see the timeline and history fleshed out.
So did you figure out what the earthquake was all about? ;)
No... I read it several times. I'm sure something should correlate, but I'm about to pass out from exhaustion!
So I didn't try to explain it, just used it as a kind of ancient Great Earthquake that ruins the, lets be honest, too powerful illithid civilization of old. Then Barien comes in, softens them up a lot until you get the actual illithid civilization, one that is as powerful - no more - than the Tablelands' civilization.
I mean dont you think if the Illithids were really that powerfull in the Green Age period, that Rajaat would have selected a Champion for them( when I say Rajaat, I really ment the creator of the DS setting)
You wrote:
-12,315 ..... Illithids emigrate to the centers of Green Age civilization.
Which to me is the Tyr region--not the land East of the silt sea...right??
I'm not implying that you did but if you ment by that, that the Illithids emigrated to build another empire in the tablelands, the creators of the setting would have officially selected a Champion for the illithids anihilation--dont you think?--. which they didn't because the first box set focused on the tableland(Tyr region) and the second box set expanded the world but never mentionned any illithids. )
Dont get me wrong. I realy like the idea of Illithids on Athas but althought your timeline above is a great add-on to the introduction of the mind flayers, I see a few flaws i'd like to mention.
Fist I'd like to suggest the following.:
-12,315 ..... Illithids emigrate to the centers of Green Age civilization.
I suggest that they emigrate as traders thus just a few of them (not enough to build their own city and all.) Why? well imagine a city of mind flayers which their diet consist of brains. Dont you think all those dissapearances would evoque suspitions from the other races?? But with just the trading posts, the ''feeding'' would be less apparent thus unnoticed or merely seen as part of every day's life on a world as harsh as Athas (well maybe not as much in the green age but every cities has their own murderers and such.)
Flaw #2
-12,698 The Orekam creates the first elder brains, inspired from its own structure and budding from its substance, as a means to produce life-shapes. The experiment is a success.
This means that the Illithids had Life-shaped of all kind with which they could ''trade'' and get richer and more powerfull beyond any other race.
If I can make a suggestion that would nullify all I have wrote above, make their migration to the east of the silt sea,not the center of civilisation. (well, to my logic, on Athas, the center of the green age's civilisation was situated in the Tyr region otherwise the creators would have focus their setting elsewhere on Athas for the campaing
) To me' this would end what i shall call the conflict between your timeline and the official history of the tyr region.Oh! and Pennarin, thank you for having kept Barien as the Champion for the illithids. ( I also made him much more potent in psionic rather then arcane art but it is not a must. just some fluf idea which would have made Barien The logical chosen one for the task at hand against a psionic race.)
Each point at a time then:
1.
I mean dont you think if the Illithids were really that powerfull in the Green Age period, that Rajaat would have selected a Champion for them
This is the part I'm not clear as to what you mean. You are aware that, in our little shared DS reality, we both have a Champion Illithid-Slayer, Barien. That is evident. So I guess you most mean that, since an Illithid Champion did not appear in The Wanderer's Chronicle list of Champions, then that it means that the illithid presence in the Tyr Region was about null in the Green Age. I agree partly: yes its logical, but we must never forget that we have the right to add new Champions if we want to, even if the setting's creators did not feel the need for that particular Champion in the first place; but I also only posted the Timeline, not an explanatory history, so the references are at best vague on anything specific.
The actual deal that isn't written is that a) do illithids eat brains? or have they always done so? are they still doing it? b) I mention cerebromorphosis as a war development, since its appropriate to mention it in the Timeline, but it also shows that illithids do not use it as a normal reproductive method, so one less horrific custom for illithids of the Green Age.
2.
to my logic, on Athas, the center of the green age's civilisation was situated in the Tyr region
Still is in my book. The Fey had their ancestral forests at the far south of that region, and the Tari had their Capital there. So I have my illithids settle (like everyone else they come from the Pristine Tower, farther north) an area of salt-water marshes east of the Fey lands.
3.
If I can make a suggestion ...., make their migration to the east of the silt sea,not the center of civilisation. .... To me' this would end what i shall call the conflict between your timeline and the official history of the tyr region.
I will have none of that. I did not start on this project to map out Beyond The Silt Sea! . I started with the idea that illithids, on the model of the Fey, settle pretty much in one locale, not that far off I might add. They latter made contact with the Green Age civilizations out there.
4.
I suggest that they emigrate as traders thus just a few of them (not enough to build their own city and all.
Just like you could find halflings in Green Age cities full of Rebirth races, so could you find illithids. They were scholars, traders, the usual deal for a people, like the Fey, which lives in pretty much one place. I assume they built small villages, near salt-water lakes in the Tyr Region, but nothing important or overly visible. No mass exodus either.
5.
Why? well imagine a city of mind flayers which their diet consist of brains. Dont you think all those dissapearances would evoque suspitions from the other races?? But with just the trading posts, the ''feeding'' would be less apparent thus unnoticed or merely seen as part of every day's life on a world as harsh as Athas (well maybe not as much in the green age but every cities has their own murderers and such.)
Ahh, the Big One. Great question/problem. I don't imagine Green Age illithids eating sentient brains, or needing such a specific diet as a racial requirement. Primitive illithids would have eaten the brains of their enemies in the first years of their existence on Athas, yes, but that would have changed as soon as the Rebirth races - illithids included - had started to mature, say a few hundred years after the Rebirth. After that maturing, they would have gone past that and settled for eating animal brains. The part about eating sentient races' brains in D&D is a way to ensure that mind flayers do play out, everyday, the villain's role they've been given. But in DS, even the evil and disgusting trolls have been turned into proud, smooth gray-skinned, rock-worshipping farmers. Afghan has continued on that proud tradition in having the goblin race in the Silt Archipelago's Timeline be very civilized, war-like, yes, but still civilized. So no dissapearences in Green Age cities amongst the citizenry I'm afraid.
6.
This means that the Illithids had Life-shaped of all kind with which they could ''trade'' and get richer and more powerfull beyond any other race.
I did not write it down in a file per say, but here it goes. Each race in DS has its own peculiarities: elves run, dwarves focus, humans are xenophobe but capable, halflings are feral, ...
What are the peculiarities of illithids, one might ask?
I wanted them to be partly the way D&D showed them to be, but also to be different. Its the different part I still haven't figured out perfectly yet.
But I do know I want them to have had, and still have, life-shapes. You see, ever since the Orekam - a creature partly a life-shape itself - designed elder brains as a means to produce life-shapes, the illithid race has been on a new course. The elder brains' ability to produce life was later studied by...the elder brains themselves, so as to learn to produce actual illithids after the sterility plague, and not just life-shapes.
Illithids should not have Nature-Master grade lifeshaping mastery, and they don't, breathe easy. The nature of the lifeshaping knowledge is mainly war-centered since it came from a Nature-Bender retreat. But it took the genius of the Orekam to decipher the retreat's archives and over a century to start applying that knowledge. Even then the Orekam could not lifeshape, nor reproduce the organic equipment the rhulisti used. So he budded a simulacrum of himself from his own flesh, bringing about the first elder brains, and in doing it used the most simplest forms of lifeshaping that it could grasp to transform the elder brain in that moment of budding, so that it would be able to produce life, which the Orekam was himself incapable of.
The Orekam used the fact that the budding elder brains needed illithid brain matter (just like the Orekam needed brain matter too) to grow to full size, as a bridge to access the illithid's reproductive system (reproduction is coded in the flesh of the illithid brains, and elder brains, being partly made of that flesh, can access that capability).
Here we get a bit of trivia: Nature-Masters could not create life, but could only modify existing life. The reason why they changed themselves during the Rebirth, instead of having a Creation. But Nature-Benders did dabble into unholy lore, so everything is possible with them. They obtained some results into creating actual life by incorporating a life-producing organism (rhulisti) into a lifeshaped construct (prototype Orekam). They could manage impressive things with that technique.
From now on the elder brains would be able to produce sterile tadpoles that would mature into the myriad of life-shapes whose archive designs the Orekam adapted to the best of his intelect and knowledge into a form the elder brains could internalize and spat out as a tadpole/life-shape; elder brains playing the part of universal assemblers (if you know the term).
With the loss of the Orekam and the retreat, most of the lore was lost. With the Cleansing Wars, more again.
Illithid's life-shapes were mostly weapons, armors and sensing apparatus. They stayed within Illithid Lands, as decreed by the Orekam and latter on by the elder brains. So no trade there. Just like the Pyreen and Fey had this secret connection with the Land that they could have shared with the rest of us, making the world a better place, they didn't.
CONCLUSION: Are illithid's mouth tentacles and weird diet a result of elder brain tampering, adding tentacled life-shapes to illithid design until they became part of the race? Mystery not yet solved.
Why don't we hear about illithids in the deep and not so deep past? History is mostly Tyr Region-specific, plus one had to cross Fey territory to get to Illithid Lands, or go by boat. Later on, during the Cleansing Wars, but still partly at the height of Green Age civilization, the Dead Lands were created, pretty much cutting off access to their lands. Later Barien came, so that pretty much settled the problem of recognizable ruins or records.