#termaxians

[dwimmersworn]

"Inside the office, the characters found Jasper -- dead and nailed to the ground with long spike made of silvery-black metal. Brother Candor recognized that this was the Final Torment of Turms Termax, the one from which he escaped by divine ascension. Naturally, this led him to believe that cultists of Turms had slain Jasper"

Grognardia, Dwimmermount Session 11

Jasper is murdered relatively early on in Maliszewski's original Dwimmermount campaign, but he's still around in mine (at the time of writing). Termaxian cultists have been hassling him, but as yet have stopped short of outright murder.

Dwimmermount has a lot of backstory, factions, and NPCs, but few prescribed plot beats once the campaign is set in motion, so it's only natural that events will play out differently. In the last few (in-game) days of play, the Termaxian cult and one of the rival parties have come much more the fore, so I'm expecting them to pop up with greater frequency now.

[dwimmersworn]

Argent Twilight

Last week I posted that I'd found a proofreading error in the Dwimmermount book, causing some confusion over whether the Termaxian cult should be properly called the Azure Twilight or the Argent Twilight. I thought argent was a better fit, as it better evoked the description of azoth, a silvery-black metal crucial to the campaign.

This old session report from Maliszewski's first campaign seems to confirm I was correct:

Conversation with Saidon eventually turned to Jasper's murderers, whom the cleric identified, without explanation, as members of the Argent Twilight [...] a cult of zealous worshippers of Turms Termax, dedicated to preserving certain esoteric secrets from unbelievers and whose methods included assassination. 

Dwimmermount Session 13, Grognardia, June 2009

[dwimmersworn]

Something in the twilight

I think I've found a proof-reading error in the Dwimmermount book -- totally understandable in a 400+ page tome.

In the Muntburg section, a Termaxian group is mentioned: the Azure Twilight. Later, in the description for the Brazen Head magical item, it refers to "groups like the Argent Twilight".

Neither term, nor any other something-twilight, appears anywhere else in the text as so far as I can see, so I'm pretty sure these two are referring to the same group.

In my campaign, I'll go with Argent Twilight, because:

In heraldry, argent is the tincture of silver, and belongs to the class of light tinctures called "metals"

Wikipedia

This plays in very nicely with Azoth, one of the major plot-points of the Dwimmermount campaign:

The most precious substance known to man, azoth is a lustrous, silvery-black liquid

Dwimmermount, Appendix F: Azoth, p. 379

These seem to fit together so perfectly I'd be surprised if argent wasn't the intended choice.

I probably wouldn't have noticed this except through play, and it lead to a little research, and this is exactly the sort of puzzling out I was hoping this project would lead to. Not error-checking, but a deeper reading and understanding of the text.

Update, 8 January 2023: I've found some evidence that Maliszewski would agree with me; argent was the word he used in his original campaign.