Wayfinder #9

Just a short post to brag humbly announce that you will see my creations in Wayfinder again. I just got an e-mail confirmation from Wayfinder's new Assistant Editor-in-Chief Paris Crenshaw that three out of four submissions I sent for Wayfinder #9 bestiary section were accepted. I feel flattered as there were overabundance of submissions this time. Hopefully nothing changes due to unexpected circumstances.

Wayfinder #9, like all odd issues, will be printed for PaizoCon (July 5–7, 2013, Seattle) and available as free PDF from Paizo.com store.

Wayfinder #8

A bit more than a half year later, here comes the newest issue of Wayfinder dedicated to seas sailors, piracy and, obviously, sea monsters. Three of which are mine: sea wanderer devil, storm hag and Ulat-ashad. Download and enjoy the hard work of many people.

The next Wayfinder will be devoted to Darklands. Less than two months to invent something interesting, write it down and submit.

Encyclopedia Of Fantastic Gods And Demons: Glossary

alien deity: A deity that has physical, spiritual and/or mental outlook completely different from standards of human-like mortals. Alien deities tend to be elder and/or foreign gods.

ancient deity: Also old god. A deity that predates currently or recently active civilizations.

ascendant: (1) An entity that transcended the limitations of mortality and became some sort of supernatural being. (2) A deity that ascended to divinity instead of being deity from the beginning of its existence.

aspect (divine): (1) A generic or specific facet of the universe to which particular deity is connected. A deity can have multiple aspects. Common aspects could be fire, love, courage, animals, bears, craft, tools, specific object, trade, social class, cities, specific city, specific city district, element of water, salt water, sweet water, particular river, rains. (2) A lesser manifestation of a deity, separate from the deity's primary form and awareness.

avatar: A mortal or immortal incarnation of a deity.

demesne (divine): A planar or dimensional pocket that holds the deity's personal sanctuary. The heart of the deity's realm.

demon: (1) any supernatural entity; (2) any extradimensional entity; (3) any supernatural entity that can be bound through certain magical procedures; (4) an embodiment of supernatural evil.

divinity: A vaguely defined supernatural quality possessed by some entities. Divinity includes at least some of the following traits: varying degree of immortality; being in affinity with certain aspects of the world, elements or ideas — usually (but not always) involving ability to draw power from manifestations of said aspects, elements or ideas and ability to manipulate them; being able to grant supernatural powers to others; being worshiped; being able to gain power through worship.

elder deity: A deity that predates appearance of human-like sapient beings.

elemental: A supernatural entity with body composed of elemental substances.

foreign deity: A deity native to another culture, geographical region, planet, plane, dimension or multiverse that is not part of the locally dominant pantheon.

hero-deity: A hero that ascended to godhood by performing epic deed, either directly or through veneration encouraged by the legend.

immortal: A creature that has some degree of resistance to aging and possibly disease, physical harm and other bodily, mental and spiritual afflictions. It can be inherited or acquired through some form of ascension.

independent deity: A deity that is not a part of any pantheon.

interloper deity: (1) a foreign deity that is actively gathering followers in a region dominated by another deity or pantheon; (2) any deity that tries to acquire aspect belonging to another deity.

pantheon: A group of deities connected by personal ties, family ties, shared origins, shared myths, shared worship.

patron: A supernatural entity that entered into long-term pact with weaker entity.

primal deity: Also known as primordial deity. A deity that posses inherent divinity since the beginning of its existence instead of acquiring it through ascension. Also a deity that arose spontaneously.

realm (divine): A plane or dimension that belongs directly to the deity, family of deities or pantheon. Divine realm reflects the deity's aspects and nature.

scion (divine): A mortal or immortal entity that inherited potential spark of divinity at its birth from another deity.

servant (divine): Also divine servitor. A supernatural entity that is bound to serve deity or group of deities.

spirit: An entity that lacks physical body in its default state. Many spirits are capable of manifesting tangible form or inhabiting physical vessel.

My Life As A Gamer: Computer Games, part 2

Today I'll write a few words about some of the games I played.

At first those were mostly simple damn hard platform games, some shooters, some adventure games, some logical ones and various maze-based games. There were also great fighting games. Some of the games were forgotten but some of them were remembered...

After getting an Amiga 500 the primary change was quality of games. Oh, and three new major categories of games were added: cRPGs, strategies and simulations. Ok, the last ones weren't especially important to me but two first became my favorites from now on. I won't list all the games I played in nineties – it'd be easier to just look on YouTube and check one of many videos of various Amiga games. I'll only focus on particular games that have a very-very special place in my heart.

First Samurai: A platform game telling the story of a valiant samurai that follows a vile demon across the time to avenge his master. The game had excellent music, intro in times when they were novelty and a bonus instead of being expected integral part of the game. It was also quite hard requiring lots of effort to master. Being able to play the game from the start to the end without losing any life filled me with great sense of accomplishment. Oh, did I mentioned that since I was fascinated with Japan since I watched Shogun as a child?

Yo Joe! Nicky Boum, Lionheart, Turrican 2, Assassin... All shared the qualities of First Samurai – they were hard (but not Nintendo Hard) platform games with great music and I loved them as much as First Samurai. I could list a few more platform games but these were the best.

Civilization: The game that started a whole lineage of games (ok, honestly the grandparent was Empire, which I played too but Civilization made the difference). For those who don't know that game (both of you). Sid Meier's Civilization is a strategy game where the player leads a civilization from a stone age to modern times, deciding about exploration, colonization, diplomacy, wars and scientific research (as a side note, in all Civilizations and kindred games I tend to focus on scientific research and ignore other aspects until I have desired military technology and can use it to overcome enemies. This strategy tends to backfire with aggressive neighbors near the starting area, however). Some of the Civilization's major descendants were Master Of Orion, Master Of Magic and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, all of which I greatly enjoyed many years later.

Populous I & Populous II: Strategy games in which player takes a role of a god leading a tribe of worshipers and battling other gods. Second part used Greek Pantheon, allowed for determining your deity's abilities and greatly expanded the number of available spells divine interventions. Those who read previous blog entries might recall that I read Greek Mythology as a kid a lot. Yes, the second game had great appeal to me.

UFO: Enemy Unknown (known as X-Com: UFO Defense in America): No, not the recent remake. The original UFO/X-Com. One of the best games mixing tactics and strategy into wonderful combination that ate hundreds of hours of my time. The player leads an international team dedicated to fighting growing alien threat, intercepting alien vessels, hunting alien infiltrators, battling alien invaders, saving civilians, gathering alien equipment and reverse engineering it to have a chance of protecting the Earth. From time to time I want to GM a session or two based on the game. Maybe someday I'll come to that.

Syndicate: Another game where the player leads the combat team fighting tactical missions with strategic overview of the world between the missions. Except the tactical missions are done in real time, instead of saving the Earth from aliens, we were conquering the world for our corporate overlords and killing civilians when they run into line of fire did not penalize our mission in any way (except missions where particular civilian is to be escorted... by the way, civilian AI in escort missions was comparable to NPC AI in modern MMORPG escort quests but at least it had excuse of being powered by 8 MHz processor). Strategic part of the game also included investing money into scientific research providing agents with more powerful weapons and more efficient cybernetic implants. Can anyone notice a certain pattern in games I like?

Hired Guns: And here we break with the pattern. Hired Guns involved no scientific research. Instead, player was leading a group of four mercenaries through a series of locations on a planet named Graveyard. The final goal was to acquire four fusion cores and rigging them to detonate in the final mission. Hired Guns was a combination of a first person shooter and a tactical game. The closest game that I can think of was Space Hulk (which I never played). Intro music was brilliant, despite being quite simple it was capable of creating a sense of tension that matched the game wonderfully.

From the Hired Guns we can smoothly move to Dungeon Master. This is one of the classic cRPGs, and in some ways the classic cRPG. Four heroes traveling in the dungeon's depths, solving puzzles, looking for secret passages and hidden triggers, defeating monsters and gathering equipment, until they reach the McGuffin required to defeat the Big Bad Evil Guy. But wait, how does it differ from Hired Guns? Well, for starters it's fantasy instead of SF. There are some other factors involved. Hired Guns used food as healing resource. Dungeon Master and its spiritual descendants instead require the characters to eat and drink from time to time to merely maintain their strength. Combat is less based on the player's agility and more on the characters attributes, which increase with experience (note that the player's agility and timing still plays important role in most Dungeon Master-like games). Dungeon Master itself tells a story of group of champions traveling into the depths of the dungeon to defeat Black Lord Of Evil Lord Chaos. It also happens to be story behind other classic cRPGs of that time inspired by Dungeon Master: Black Crypt and Eye Of The Beholder with Black Lord Of Evil Lord Chaos replaced by evil cleric Estoroth Paingiver and beholder Xanathar respectively. I'd like GM a classic dungeon crawl based on one of those games someday but I am afraid I am lacking enough players with necessary amount of interest in dungeon crawls that could be gathered at the same time with enough free time to play through it.

Eye Of The Beholder II: Eye Of The Beholder sequel changes little in the way of gameplay, except it began outdoor... And by outdoor I mean in a dungeon with trees painted on its walls. It added a few features and was more interesting when it came to puzzles and the story.

Both Eye Of The Beholder games were made by SSI in early nineties and had the honor of being official AD&D/Forgotten Realm games. Before them SSI released a series of AD&D games using older game engine today best know as SSI Gold Box. It included series of games taking place in Forgotten Realms and a shorter series of Dragonlance games. Gameplay was significantly different from Dungeon Master and its spiritual descendants. Turn-based combat required no agility but much more tactical skills and luck with computer-generated dice rolls, the exploration part was much easier and starvation wasn't an issue. Plots of the game, while mostly provided in the form of text and often referencing entries in game journal, originally provided as printed book together with the game, was well developed and quite absorbing. In fact I am currently GM a Pathfinder campaign based on Pool Of Radiance game.

The last two games I'd like to mention today will be Amberstar and its sequel Ambermoon. Those two games were created by German group Thalion, who happen to be creators of Lionheart mentioned above (and in fact Valdyn, the Lionheart's protagonist is special guest star and optional party member in Ambermoon). The first game tells the story of a young adventurer who learn that to save his world from demon prince he must travel all around the continent gathering thirteen pieces of the titular Amberstar and then defeat the demon. While the protagonist defeats the demon, not all goes well leading to the second game taking place some eighty years later. The first game character's grandson ends with saving the world from unexpected threat again, in better graphics. The second game is also full of various references to the first part, rewarding player for remembering minor details from the first game (regretfully it punishing as "cheating" coming to one conclusion that is rather obvious to anyone who played the first part). Again this is a game I would gladly use as a basis for a short campaign.

Next time I'll write about some of the memorable games I played after moving from Amiga to PC.

Spear Of Dragondoom

Thousands of years ago, when the humankind was young and inexperienced, unable to protect oneself from the ravaging monsters before capturing protective gaze of deities, an unnamed village was a part of hunting territory of a pack of rapacious dragons. Its denizens for generations were incapable of stopping the beasts from devouring their herds or even their children. One spring, a young but already renowned hunter reached the seaside while roaming the wilds. There he heard a voice that advised him how to release the village from the predations of the beasts. Following the instructions, he crafted a trap in one of the mountain valleys using a freshly killed deer as a bait. When one of the wild dragons came, attracted by the scent of blood, the trap was triggered crushing the dragon with avalanche. The hunter took the bones, the teeth, the heart, the tongue, the blood and the vicious saliva of the dragon. He used the bones to craft the spear, tempering the shaft with dragon blood and making the head out of a strange stone that was left on the beach for him by the mysterious voice. The heart and the tongue he ate, as instructed earlier by his unknown patron, gaining the strength and cunning of the beast. He grounded teeth and mixed with the saliva and certain herbs to brew a venom with which he poisoned a few sheep and used them as bait for the rest of the pack. When the beasts came and teared the sheep apart and devoured, they grow slow and sluggish allowing him to move out of his hiding with his new weapon and deliver a killing blow to each of the monsters. The first and the second died before even noticing the danger, the third one evaded a few blows but finally fell. Only the last dragon regained its senses enough to fight back, delivering a mortal wound to the hunter before bleeding to death from multiple wounds. The hunter was buried by his folk and hailed as a champion and savior and later the people started to worship him as a hero and a deity. His spear was kept in the village to be wielded against future threats for many generations, until the village grew into town and then a city and finally turned into crumbling ruin many generations later.

And here are stats for those who play Pathfinder or D&D:

The Dragondoom (Minor Artifact)

Aura strong conjuration; CL 12th

Slot none; Weight 6 lbs.

Description: The Dragondoom is a spear made of polished dragon bone with the head made of blackened, scorched metal shard. It acts as a +1 dragon bane spear in anyone's hands but it grows in power if its wielder uses it to slay a true dragon, the older the dragon the more powerful the spear becomes.

• Killing a young or older dragon improves the weapon enhancement to +2. From now on it grants immunity to frightful presence of dragons.
• Killing an adult dragon improves the weapon enhancement to +3 and grants the wielder benefits of Evasion special ability against draconic breath weapons.
• Killing a very old dragon makes the spear +4 weapon. The wielder also gains Spell Resistance 11 + character level against draconic spells and spell-like abilities.
• Killing a great wyrm allows the weapon reach epitome of its abilities. It enhancement bonus rises to +5 and deals maximum damage to dragons.

Additionally, when the wielder of the weapon participates in killing of a true dragon he may eat its heart to gain bloodline powers of a draconic bloodline as if he was a sorcerer of a level equal to the killed dragon's CR.

The Horned Toad Of Keld

The Horned Toad of Keld is a divine anomaly amongst the ascended deities. Originally it was a familiar of an archmage from the land of Keld, infused by its master with powerful enchantments that made it much more than a mere animal. Together with its patron, it lived long and grew stronger and smarter than any mundane toad. In a sense it ascended to higher order of existence than the one born to even before its master, following many other adepts of his trade, decided to follow the ancient path and reach for the divinity. It took the archmage many more years of studies, gathering exotic ingredients, experimentation and other preparations before he deemed oneself ready.

On the eve of carefully predicted astrological conjunction the wizard sent away his apprentices and closed oneself within the tower he build years before in the anticipation of the ritual he was to perform. The knowledge of the following events is sketchy, however, for the only witness of them is the Toad itself. It is know that the magician died while casting the final spells. His death should end the familiar's life as well, but instead, through an unexplainable quirk of magic, the bond connected to the gathering divine power. For a moment, the Toad was familiar of divinity itself. In a heartbeat, the barrier between mortal and immortal existence was breached. The Toad became the familiar of deities and the deity of familiars.

The Horned Toad Of Keld is enigmatic entity. Amphibiously inhuman and yet vaguely familiar for it lived a lifetime as mystical extension of a human wizard. Usually indifferent towards mortals, shows a degree of affectation towards mages and ascended deities. It has no real priests as it grants no magic of its own and no organized temples. It is willing to enter pacts with wizards empowering their familiars with spark of divine power, however, and many familiar-owning wizards keep a small shrine to the Toad.

As other young ascendents, the Toad often manifests directly, appearing as a pony-sized, grey-skinned toad with head adorned with pair of antler-like horns. While it does not speak directly, it can communicate with a form of telepathy resembling the one used between familiar and its master.

Test Of The Starstone: The Truth

Those of you who know Golarion, the Pathfinder RPG's default setting will be probably interested in hearing the true story behind the Test Of The Starstone and Ascension of trio of mortals to godhood.

Dramatis Personae: Aroden (God of human culture, innovation and history, the last member of the mankind's first and greatest civilization, ascended prior to described events), Cayden Cailean (adventurer, hero, womanizer and drunk), Iomedae (virtuous if somewhat self-righteous paladin), Norgorber (mysterious thief) and Thais (prostitute with a golden heart, friend and occasional lover of Cayden).

The described events take place in the Starstone Cathedral in the Absalom where Aroden placed the Starstone after he recovered it from the depths of the sea.

Aroden: Behold! I have raised Starstone from the depths of the sea and placed it in the temple of Absalom where the worthy ones can taste my cookies! *Places cookies of divinity on the table*

Norgorber: *sneaks behind the Aroden's back into the temple and steals the cookies of divinity from the table*

Aroden: Dammit! Who stole my cookies?! *bakes another batch of cookies and places them on the table*

Cayden: *stumbles into the temple while drunk* Ooh! Fina-hic-ly! Shom snnach tho my dr-r-r-ynk! *grabs some cookies*

Aroden: Dammit! Cayden, you washed down my cookies WITH ALE?! How could you! Ale does not suit them at all! What barbarian could eat cookies of divinity with anything less than Azlanti semi-sweet red?! When I will be blessed with worthy connoisseur?

Cayden: OHai shweetheart, wanna some? *shares the cookie with Thais before getting to bed with her*

Aroden: You shared the cookie of divinity with whom?!

Cayden: *licks his finger* That was helluva of a cookie! Oh, theres some cr-r-rumbs left... Hey, doggie-doggie, hey doggie-doggie...

Aroden: *facepalm* Why do I even bother...

Iomedae: *enters the temple passes the test, eats the cookie*

Aroden: with anticipation Well, how was it?

Iomedae: Well, a bit undercooked. It could use more cinnamon and some raisins. I would add Arcadian chocolate instead of Vudran coffee too.

Aroden: angered That's it! I quit! Bake them yourself if you think you can do better!

The real proceedings of these three Ascensions were revealed on Paizo messageboard while discussing the circumstances of Cayden making Thais his divine herald. I would like to thank all the participants of that discussion for inspiration.