Musing about D&D

Skaska Haich, tiefling bard This blog is mainly about my take on a "generic setting" for D&D, but setting-specific posts may crop up every now and then. Operated by cirnineball.

[skaskahaich]

Draeden

(art by Larry Elmore)

Draeden are creatures of great size (ranging from about 30 to 60 kilometers) and obscure origin. If one were to overcome their psionic cloaking, they would appear as a wrinkled mass with two defined halves and a number of tubes emerging from both ends. With capabilities that rival, if not exceed those of most deities, one can be glad that these entities make themselves hard to come across. They despise all elemental matter and therefore make their homes in the empty outer reaches of the material or the quasielemental plane of vacuum. Chant has it that they might be related to the elder brains.

[shipburner]

mind flayers get a lot less morally fraught IMO when d&d canonically has sentient creatures that can grow their brains back. a troll could be like “a sharp pain in the skull followed by an hour of unconsciousness once a week, and in exchange i get a really smart friend who can blast people with their mind? sounds like a fair deal to me!”

[skaskahaich]

drow: the largest group of elves, their psyches are roughly in tune with those of humans. their cultures, like those of their kin, have a strong focus on arthropods, particularly arachnids in the case of the drow.

waudalven: psychic signatures of the drow as expressed by a living forest. they are extremely protective of their woodland homes and are mentally hyperactive, making them difficult to interface with for most sapients, and highly visible to psionically attuned creatures. due to this strong psychic presence, they were the first to commune with the fraal

[skaskahaich]

illithid: originally the aquatic kopru, were altered by the influence of alien elder brains to the point that their limbs atrophied, and they were reduced to tadpole-like creatures for the brains to feast upon. as interstellar adventurers discovered these spawning pools, some careless individuals got attacked by these tadpoles, attracted to their relatively fresh brains as opposed to the ancient elder brains. unexpectedly, this process triggered the first few cases of ceremorphosis, overriding the victim's mind with that of the "mind flayer" and melding the two bodies together

gith: retroactive name for a thrall race altered by the mind flayers to work as soldiers, laborers, and potential hosts. broke off of the mind flayer empire in a grand revolt that dismantled a large portion of their captors' territory

oortling: a mind flayer thrall race altered to serve as a psionic food source. their presence attracted many parasites from the ethereal plane to mind flayer settlements though, which led to large scale abandonment of this breeding project. oortlings branched off into the fraal, a species much more adept at tapping into their psionic potential

[skaskahaich]

Ocean Strider

(art by Matt Cavotta)

Ocean striders are giant (20′) orca-like humanoids that roam the seas. Related to elfkind, they too tend towards protecting their environment from outside forces, be it through diplomatic or violent methods. They often have a symbiotic relationship with pods of darfellan, employing them as enforcers within their oceanic domain, in exchange for protection and mithral equipment.

[skaskahaich]

Darfellan

Darfellans are a species of orca-like humanoids often at odds with the sahuagin. In Stormwrack, they are essentially depicted as humans with black/white skin, but I decided to take a slightly more animalistic approach. Another change I’m making is that they do not descend from were-orcas, but rather a common ancestor shared with ocean striders.

I also think they should have more animals at their disposal besides the expected orcas. It’d be fun to have them ride around on creatures such as the vortices from After Man.

[skaskahaich]

Skaska

Name: Skaska Haich Species: Tiefling (Abyssal) Classes: Bard 1 Affiliation: Team Craterside Setting: Krypty (by cluc)

Skaska is a travelling bard who had to flee her hometown of Ängelfort due to accusations of having murdered Jarl Zumdrug. She has an intelligent cockroach companion named Hate of Cats, and a xixchil partner named Zoomy.