The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice part VII

With some days to go before his next meeting with the museum scientists there wasn’t any other urgent business at the moment – which was a good thing, since he didn’t have too much time to spare before he had to be back in Yu-Shan to run the Factory-Cathedral. If he hadn’t been friends with [...]

Exalted – Storming the Gates of Yu-Shan

The first, and most generally accepted, way to get to Yu-Shan is to take one of the usual gates. It is, after all, a pocket-dimension of its own, so a “gate” is pretty well guaranteed to come into it somewhere. Sidereal teams are issued minor artifacts – Guarded Doorway Openers (GDO’s) which are equipped with [...]

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part VI

The next morning Charles dropped by the museum bright and early, complete with a file folder full of complex explanations – and the grass to give to the hipparions. He had checked, it seemed to be made to make them grow even healthier. It might still have been meant for him of course, but his [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 166 – Chilling with the Cat Clan

While the mind of an Ourathan Elder wasn’t something that human minds were yet equipped to comprehend, some of S!vrah^’s more… basic musings might translate something like this. S!vrah^ had not seen such a reckless and unethical maneuver in many eons. Many of the early Openers in a races history would be hatchlings or subadults [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 64

The Mrs Beasley – as a highly radioactive wreck – continued to plunge every more deeply into the intergalactic void, with what was left of its own drives and those of the Zomogoostar and the Ratsoogomoz thrusting it onwards into the darkness. Already tens or hundreds of thousands of light years beyond the final stars, [...]

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice, Part V

Closing down the main production line smoothly and a final round of inspections after everyone else left made a plausible reason to make a habit of staying behind, and that made it easy to work on private projects after hours. That almost seemed to be expected actually… It took four of the Coatl to help [...]

Atheria – a Smorsgasbord of Darklord

Atheria – How do Darklords do their Stuff? Editorial0 has been looking into the Lesser Dark Lords of Atheria. On Atheria, where ritual magic comes with knowledge, the ritual of Drawing Down the Dark – asking the aid of the dark powers – is simple and easy. Sadly, while mortals often want to pay for [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 63

I awoke to find Virstris standing over us in the early morning light. She looked like she had a rough night judging from the scrapes, but didn’t seem the least bit hungover. (Virstris) Well aren’t you two a cute couple! (Valerie) Just a bit tired from performing for the crowd last night. Any word on [...]

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice, Part IV

It was a day or two before things got eventful again – time enough, at least, to finish up with his own tools and to get some agents – both mundane and supernatural – out looking for the odder ingredients on his list. There’d probably be some explaining to do over the hipparions eventually, but [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 62b

Lazlo had spent a fair amount of time probing what was left of Huriel’s mind… That was risky to his own sanity, but they REALLY needed to know where he’d hidden all his clones. The ones out in the galaxy beyond the stasis field were almost certainly already gone – but he turned out to [...]

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice, Part III

It was easy to see that the staff of the Factory-Cathedral had their doubts about their new boss. A lot of the people in Yu-Shan looked odd, but “god-blooded kid” really wasn’t one of the guises that gods used – and it didn’t lead them to expect much. Sure, they’d gotten tied up in projects [...]

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice, Part II

Charles was too excited to sleep much – and so he was up very early indeed the next morning. With rough list of ingredients on hand it was time to consider priorities! Well, first up, the things he couldn’t yet make (like that Folding Ship) went straight to the “maybe sometime later” pile. Things he [...]

Exalted – Hearthstones V

Black Opaline Inkstone (Water or Wood, * to *****): This simple, shallow, bowl-shaped stone shimmers with a thousand internal colors, threading through the crystalline black matrix of the stone. When a pen, or writing brush, is touched to the stone, a thread of color will flow into it, filling it with any desired ink – [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 165 – The Siege of Barrataur

Back in Barrataur in the Forgotten Realms, the Dark Elves of Barrataur were having problems… It wasn’t so much that the local surface-dwellers didn’t trust them. They’d known that THAT was going to happen. It was the attacks and raids. The Sun Elves hadn’t been to helpful – and, while the Moon Elves had sent [...]

Special Investigator Nimh Tahl’s Field Report – Session 62a

Down on Coruscant, Jacob was somewhat disappointed to find out that the resistance was going out of business before it really even got started. It had started gathering as soon as the republic fleet arrived and it had become obvious that there was nothing left to lose – but it had suddenly become quite unnecessary. [...]

Eclipse Pathfinder – The Sorcerer

This time on “how to build it in Eclipse”, it’s the Pathfinder Sorcerer. That’s a little more complicated than some of the other Pathfinder builds so far, but it’s still just a matter of tweaking the standard build. Pathfinder Sorcerers… Lose six skill points at level one (-6 CP). Lose their automatic access to a [...]

Versus – Sean K Reynolds and Editorial0 on Crit Stacking

This is in response to both Mr Reynolds and Editorial0′s articles. Mr Reynolds math is quite good. The trouble with crit-stacking isn’t that it’s unbalanced, or even that it’s “too good”. It’s that it’s incompatible with the assumptions that D&D runs on. From way in the beginning, D&D combat has been ablative. No, that’s not [...]

The Immortal Rants of Sean K. Reynolds – “Keen and Improved Critical are too good if they stack!”.

Editorial0 has contributed a set of article-replies to some of Sean K. Reynolds rants about third edition design decisions. Those decisions have heavily influenced a lot of game designs since, so I’ll be putting those up – along with some additional comments. To avoid excessive reprinting, you can find the general introduction to this series [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 61b

Deep inside the second-stage stasis field masquerading as a black hole, Ben and Jacob were bringing the Sabership into position near the galactic senate building. Inside, trapped in an instant, Huriel was in the midst of using the pyramid technique to channel the massed strength of Coruscant – and perhaps it’s entire solar system – [...]

Classical Archetypes VI – The Priest

Superficially, priests vary wildly with their culture and faith. They range from total pacifists who literally would not hurt a fly to folk who will skin you alive as a sacrifice to their god. They believe completely different things, dress wildly differently, speak and read ancient and esoteric tongues (or at least use some obscure [...]