Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by GreenWood »

I do have to respectfully disagree with Mr. Mangrum however. I do believe that Gothic and Cosmic horrors are compatible. Carefully woven together, they are mesmerizing. That is a discussion that would take a lot longer to articulate. The idea you have is superb! What instills fear in an Illithid heart? How awful that would be!
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by GreenWood »

Nothri, was there a lot more information about Bluetspur in the Forbidden Lore boxed set? That's the one commenly called the Black Box, right?
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by nothri »

Forbidden Lore was a separate boxed set that contained additional rules that the original Black Box did not provide. Fear, Horror, and Madness checks, if I recall correctly. Also, psionics, conversion rules for Dark Sun characters entering RL (and Kalidnay), first time Tarokka Deck is introduced, and several secret societies. There isn't a LOT of information of Bluetspur, no. But there is this.

"The Ildi'Thaan want to discover the lost
secret of their ancestors. They seek after
the 13 texts of Thaan, which together describe how to recover the ancient knowledge.

With this knowledge, they believe that they can
lay claim to the treasures of Bluetspur. More
importantly, they believe that it will open up the
secrets of the mind. Anyone reading the texts
will supposedly be granted power to make
wizards tremble.

About 150 years ago the people of Thaan
once lived on the slopes of Mt. Makab. They
knew of the horrors that lived below the rocks,
but were able to survive there nonetheless.
They were protected in some unknown manner
from this danger. According to legend, one day
a dense mountain fog descended upon their
lands, swallowing them whole. When it lifted,
the Thaani people were gone. Villages and
towns were left empty, devoid of any human
life.

Not all were in their homes that day. Those
people in the fields or away from their home town or village survived. They knew nothing of
what had happened to their family and friends.
Gpon entering the towns and villages, they
found them deserted. There were no clues as to
the whereabouts of the citizens of Thaan.
That first night after the discovery of the
horror, everyone left alive suffered from
horrible nightmares. Many of them went
insane, gibbering about unspeakable monsters
slithering up from the depths to devour
everything in sight. Those Thaani who were still
sane fled the mountain, convinced it was
haunted by the spirits of the missing.
Their once-friendly mountain was now ringed
by a wall of mist. Half-formed aberrations
drifting through the fog convinced the people
to keep moving. Finally they found refuge in
the lands of Barovia in the town of Immol.
According to the legend, there were only 13
survivors of Thaan. Some stayed in Immol,
while others moved on, restlessly searching for
some place to hide from their own memories
and haunting dreams.

Before going their own ways, the 13 survivors
created 13 texts. When gathered together, they
would reveal the whole tale of the Thaani,
including the secret of their power over the
elder masters. If even one text is missing, the
rest are useless. Each survivor was charged
with safeguarding a text."
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by DeepShadow of FoS »

I intended to have one of the major NPC's of Dominia a Thaani, and get into some of the Ildi'Thaan in her backstory.

Probably more evidence that I was biting off more than I could chew.
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by nothri »

DeepShadow of FoS wrote:I intended to have one of the major NPC's of Dominia a Thaani, and get into some of the Ildi'Thaan in her backstory.

Probably more evidence that I was biting off more than I could chew.
Hope I'm not intruding on a touchy subject here. I was wondering if you could elaborate on what you planned for the Ildi'Thaan. Also, do you anticipate the Dominia article seeing the light of day at this point? Again, forgive me if I'm out of line with that question- I don't wanna be the asshat who pesters the author for the next story. Just curious.
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by nothri »

I wonder, should the guide feature a ranking system like Ghost Magnitudes, Mummy Ranks, Vampire Age Categories, and so on? Perhaps call it something like Distortion or the like. A rough measure of how alien and warped a Horror is compared to contemporary mundane reality. The greater the Distortion of the being, the more dangerous it is and the harder it is to look upon without going mad. But by the same token, the further removed from the natural world the more limited the Horror's ability to function within our reality. Beings possessed with a Distortion of one or two can exist within our world with relative ease, although they may find the sun too bright or the air too cold to truly be comfortable here. Level Five Distortions are limited to very specific situations, such as a millenial alignment of the stars or elaborate rituals carried out by servants to twist reality enough to allow them to function for a limited time in this world.
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by DeepShadow of FoS »

nothri wrote:
DeepShadow of FoS wrote:I intended to have one of the major NPC's of Dominia a Thaani, and get into some of the Ildi'Thaan in her backstory.

Probably more evidence that I was biting off more than I could chew.
Hope I'm not intruding on a touchy subject here. I was wondering if you could elaborate on what you planned for the Ildi'Thaan. Also, do you anticipate the Dominia article seeing the light of day at this point? Again, forgive me if I'm out of line with that question- I don't wanna be the asshat who pesters the author for the next story. Just curious.
You're fine. I pick up the manuscript every few months or so and try again. It's about that time again.

My intention was to include many things in the periphery of what I was writing, to stoke the imagination, and the Ildi'thaan was just one of them. The NPC in question was a Thaani woman who was turned into a vampire by Lyssa Von Zarovich during the events of Thoughts of Darkness, only to be traded into the service of Dominiani after that fell through, eventually becoming his masked assistant Dr. White. She had been one of the Dreamspoken, a Thaani who grew up with wild psionic talent and dreams of their forgotten past. She embraced vampirism as an escape from the maddening dreams, and many years later she recognized another Dreamspoken who had taken a different tack and disguised himself as one of the Vistani as he honed his powers. By that point, she was Dominiani's preeminent authority on psychosurgery, and it was her idea to amplify the man's prodigious psionic talent by amputating his limbs and eyes.

So yeah, this was also a retcon of the Thinker from Bleak House.

Anyway, I hadn't developed much of the Dreamspoken beyond the above, but I was going to try and work in a little sidebar on them in her bio. They were the Thaani answer to sorcerers, spontaneous casters with psionic rather than arcane powers, and the Ildi'Thaan sought them out from among the other Thaani and tried to help them cope with the burden. Many of the Thaani were wise to the dysfunctional nature of their "help," hence many of the Dreamspoken ran away from them. Not sure about the exact nature of their maddening dreams, but IIRC the original Ildi'thaan writeup talked about that. Given that this sounds a lot like my previous attempt at Kalashtar, I'd like to spin these in a very different direction.
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by nothri »

Wanted to offer some ideas about chapters I’d include in this work. In no particular order.

1. Humanity- a discussion on the human mind and what becomes of it as knowledge of eldritch horrors and their alien societies increases. Madness, certainly. Danger of drawing their attention? Likely. Physical degeneration or the acquisition of horrid Magics or mental abilities? Sure why not? End it with a look at mortal groups that study, oppose or worship the many Horrors of the world.

2. Architecture. Odd subject but bear with me. One danger of the eldritch horrors is their mental abilities. So depicting them in paintings, masonry, song, or using their bizarre language can draw their attention- a human mind that looks on their depictions is dimly aware of them, and that awareness can be a door for the things to enter. Worse is the architectures of the things themselves, unbound by traditional mathematics or known spaces and often amplifying mystic and psychic potential of thinking minds.

3. Physiology. I would make this a grab bag of horrific features and body horrors. Basically a series of horrific physical features that make up most of your favorite aberrations with the potential for the DM to pick and piece a unique horror together from the list.

4. Unnatural abilities. Same as physiology. List of known powers of many aberrations mixed with original twisted magic of the writer.
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by Mistmaster »

This is a classical Lovecraftian approach, more knowledge equalř less sanity. I do not share such purview, in my hopínion is the lack of understanding which breeds horror. The more you know the less you fear.
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by Wolfglide of the Fraternity »

On the other hand, the more you know, the more you realize how insignificant and doomed you are. A lot of people cannot handle that. Compound this with the realization that the laws of nature are localized falsehoods violable by monsters so unlike us that we cannot begin to understand their goals, and you wind up with the destruction of sanity and security by an increase in understanding.

Sure, you need knowledge to combat the darkness, but when the knowledge cannot provide any sort of edge and gives you nothing short of reason to despair in the face of the cold, inimical universe, what is there left to do but break?
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by nothri »

Mistmaster wrote:This is a classical Lovecraftian approach, more knowledge equalř less sanity. I do not share such purview, in my hopínion is the lack of understanding which breeds horror. The more you know the less you fear.
Classical Lovecraft, yes. But not just Lovecraft. Gothic horror is certainly no stranger to forbidden knowledge man was not meant to know, and Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll hardly ended up happier as a consequence of their expanded understanding of the world.
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by Mistmaster »

Wolfglide wrote:On the other hand, the more you know, the more you realize how insignificant and doomed you are. A lot of people cannot handle that. Compound this with the realization that the laws of nature are localized falsehoods violable by monsters so unlike us that we cannot begin to understand their goals, and you wind up with the destruction of sanity and security by an increase in understanding.

Sure, you need knowledge to combat the darkness, but when the knowledge cannot provide any sort of edge and gives you nothing short of reason to despair in the face of the cold, inimical universe, what is there left to do but break?
My argument against that is that insignificant and doomed is another classical Lovecraftian approach I reject; once you have the knowledge you do have an edge; every living being, no matter how alien have understandable goals, from survival to conquest; plus we are talking about a fantasy world here; a Wizard is already able to violate the laws of nature. Again it's a matter of understanding;breaking can happen but is not a must and plus alien beings once understood can even be befriended; in the case of aberrations theyr Evil is often fruit of the inability of empathize with creatures they see as inferior; that can be helped.
nothri wrote: Classical Lovecraft, yes. But not just Lovecraft. Gothic horror is certainly no stranger to forbidden knowledge man was not meant to know, and Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll hardly ended up happier as a consequence of their expanded understanding of the world.
They had expanded knowledge, not expanded understanding; Frankestein did not understand his creature, not really; and Jekyll did not understand himself, or he would not have tried to separate what is meant to stay united. It is not the knowledge, but the use you do of that knowledge the problem.
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by Wolfglide of the Fraternity »

In a world with relatively commonplace magic and wizards bending their minds to do it, it can be expected that alien creatures are going to be relatively less sanity-damaging. However, I maintain that the day you truly understand Yog-Sothoth is the day you cease to be comprehensible to other humans.
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

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Yog-Sothot? A very nice person, if a bit obsessed with his collection of universes.... :D
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Re: Van Richten's guide to Eldritch horror.

Post by GreenWood »

There was a entry in the Far Realm section of the Manual of the Planes about a group of Wizards that created an outpost there. They ended up with spiders in their brains, literally. Even with magic and armed with arcane knowledge, there are things beyond the comprehension of a mortal mind.
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