The Lost Journals - Comments

Fiction about Ravenloft or Gothic Earth
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High Priest Mikhal
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The Lost Journals - Comments

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Post your comments about the journals here, folks. Also be sure to check back at the Ravenloft forums for more I've written.
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High Priest Mikhal
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

This is a copy-and-paste from a new thread I've started on the official D&D site. I've not gotten ANY replies so far and the whole reason I put it up was to get some input. Sheesh!

"I decided to start a new thread for discussions of the Lost and Gothic Journals. Not just so others could present ideas in a thread not already so full I might miss it, but also so I could present ideas of my own outside of the fiction.

The first one is an idea I've been tossing around for quite a while. Given that I plan on rewriting the majority of the entries for both the Lost and Gothic Journals when I put them into a Word file (then a PDF) I also wonder if I want to try and turn Alexander Dreamfire into a gestalt paladin-ninja; an odd combination, I know. But it does make sense if you think about it. He has the ability to wear heavy armor and wield almost any weapon, and abilities to fight back quite well in such. Without armor he can become a different if just as effective paladin by means of stealth, subterfuge, and skill instead of brute force. And yes, I'd change the Shining Force to reflect this as well.

Given that ninja's get (Improved) Poison Use, I'd naturally drop those and instead replace them. How about "Freedom (Ex): The ninja can now wear light armor and still use any of their abilities" and the Thousand Faces like the druid or the ninja spy in OA? His levels would also change to be about pal-ninj20/HotD10/KotC 5 and a modified CR of about 36, still high for RL but actually one point lower than he is now."

I've gotten countless more support and ideas from Cafe de Nuit and so I turn to my fellow rabid Ravenloft relishers for constructive criticism.
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Post by Isabella »

Yikes! That is a whole lot of evil lurking among the citizenry. I'm not sure exactly whether "stealing the innocence" was meant literally or euphemistically (I'm not sure I want to know) and how you'd enact laws against it if it were the former. Definitely creepy. Keep up the good work!
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

:D Thank you. I'm always trying to come up with things that are different, that go against the grain and make readers do a double-take. In this case I just asked myself, "why not make the natural evil instead of the supernatural?" From there it just progressed from whatever my (sick, twisted, and insane) little mind could come up with on the fly.
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Post by Manofevil »

Dude, you messed up. You posted a gothic journal under the lost journals.
Do us a favor Luv, Stick yer 'ead in a bucket a kick it!

So, gentlemen, that's how it is. Until Grissome.... resurfaces, I'm the acting president, and I say starting with this... anniversary festival, we run this city into the ground! :D
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Whoops! Okay, all cleared up. See folks? This is what happens when you're a cubicle convict. Your brain starts to atrophy.
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Thanks to Gleemax's mucking up the official boards, all future posts to this series will be a Cafe de Nuit exclusive. Unless they sort the worlds out again. Sheesh! :roll:
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Post by Tykus »

I guess that it stands to reason that during his reign as DL, Soth would have a "suicide by cop" moment.

By the way, where do you find the time to write both of these fanfics? I'm unemployed at the moment and even I don't have that sort of time. Or are you one of the fastest typists on the planet? :D
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Tykus wrote:I guess that it stands to reason that during his reign as DL, Soth would have a "suicide by cop" moment.

By the way, where do you find the time to write both of these fanfics? I'm unemployed at the moment and even I don't have that sort of time. Or are you one of the fastest typists on the planet? :D
Anything to escape his imprisonment, I'd reason.

Probably a lot from column B. I've been writing for fourteen years, typing all during that time. You get pretty fast with daily practice like that. I was trying to go pro for a while (still am, actually) but for now I work as a data entry drone. That's not the hardest thing to do, so I'm always getting done early. They'd increase my workload, but then they'd have to increase my pay as well. I'm happy with things as is.
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Post by Tykus »

High Priest Mikhal wrote:Anything to escape his imprisonment, I'd reason.

Probably a lot from column B. I've been writing for fourteen years, typing all during that time. You get pretty fast with daily practice like that. I was trying to go pro for a while (still am, actually) but for now I work as a data entry drone. That's not the hardest thing to do, so I'm always getting done early. They'd increase my workload, but then they'd have to increase my pay as well. I'm happy with things as is.
I'm a pretty good typist myself (the number of reports I had to write in high school and college helped), the main problems I have with writing short stories is getting them done. Two reasons, I believe I have mild AD (I get distracted) and my brain goes faster than my fingers, so I usually finish the story in my head before I can complete the first few pages or the details I have in my head I have trouble articulating in the story (sometimes it's so hard to get sensations right when you write them down). :oops: :( :cry:
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

I have many of the same problems--I come up with a story faster than I can write it and I get distracted rather easily. Not just between the fanfics I post here--I've written so much crap for Shadowrun I finally put a page on my website for it. But that's another story. I tend to forget what I may have already written, so I also have to re-read my own work time and again just to keep things consistent--and that doesn't always work.

Sensations...yeah, those can be hard to describe. I had to study others to get a feel of how to do it, and even then I'm still working things out (horror and its sensations are particularly tricky). And I share a secret with everyone here: the stories evolve as I write them. I'm not meticulously plotting out every future post or how the story goes from entry to entry. This is true for literally every entry I make; the story writes itself. I just ask "what would the characters do?" and go from there. The results are often as much a surprise to me as it is to the readers.

With 4e scant days away I'm just waiting for my gift set to arrive so I can study the new rules. It's also an excuse to start the compilations I've been planning since I'll no doubt have to rewrite a few entries. Does anyone know what the fonts used in the 3.x books are? And where I could download them? I liked how they looked and I'm going to convert things to PDF format once I finish the Word docs.
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Post by Tykus »

Yay, Kalidnay! Whatever you write, I'll probably end up using in my campaign.

Just an idea: an obsidian mine that taps into the negative energy of the Deadlands (maybe even a portal), maybe resulting transformed obsidian miners. For some reason, it just seems appropriate to me.
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Tykus wrote:Yay, Kalidnay! Whatever you write, I'll probably end up using in my campaign.

Just an idea: an obsidian mine that taps into the negative energy of the Deadlands (maybe even a portal), maybe resulting transformed obsidian miners. For some reason, it just seems appropriate to me.
Deadlands...I got into DS when it was being sold in e-format for four bucks a file on Wizards, and I can't remember the Deadlands (and sadly I've lost all the files :(). I get an image from the name--and the fact this is black volcanic glass--but please refresh my memory?
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Post by Tykus »

High Priest Mikhal wrote:
Tykus wrote:Yay, Kalidnay! Whatever you write, I'll probably end up using in my campaign.

Just an idea: an obsidian mine that taps into the negative energy of the Deadlands (maybe even a portal), maybe resulting transformed obsidian miners. For some reason, it just seems appropriate to me.
Deadlands...I got into DS when it was being sold in e-format for four bucks a file on Wizards, and I can't remember the Deadlands (and sadly I've lost all the files :(). I get an image from the name--and the fact this is black volcanic glass--but please refresh my memory?
I'll do better than that: I'll provide you with a link: http://www.athas.org/products/totdl. There's a pdf on the right side of the screen when you scroll down a little. And the stuff is official, the site is the Official Dark Sun site.Granted, it's an MC but it does expound a little on the Deadlands under certain entries. I'll have to check my files but I think I might have some more information. For what I remember of the Deadlands, Rajaat was attempting to open an elemental portal using some his life-shaping magic in an attempt to create a reverse-Brown Tide. Instead, he got a nearly unstoppable wave of "obsidian-petrification/transformation." It was stopped, but the region is quite expansive (from some maps I've seen) and had some bizarre effects (such as watching skeletal fish swim through obsidian that used to be lake water, all the while you're standing on top of it looking down. And the obsidian wave did extend into the Silt Sea (not on the original or revised map from the boxed sets) creating a region of obsidian Black Silt. One curious trait is that of the "Spirit Web" (I think)--undead created in the Deadlands can't leave. [Pretty good doing that from memory]

Given the DPs penchant for portals out of the demiplane are in dangerous places and usually have a destination of an even worse place, I came up with the idea of a portal to the Deadlands in Kalidnay that leaked some obsidian energy slowing transforming the surrounding materials (flesh included) into obsidian. This gives Kalidnay an inexhaustible obsidian mine (which still needs iron tools to mine properly) and makes a death sentence even more horrific (admittedly, what would prompt Thakok-An to send someone to the mines as punishment instead of the arena is something I have yet to figure out as she needs to have regular bouts in the arena if she wants to keep her domain and people alive.
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Post by High Priest Mikhal »

:D This is gonna be good reading. And it fits with the story; I don't want to reveal it all, but needless to say Thakok-An, as DL, detects Alexander all too easily and he ends up leading the templars away from Rudolph so he can do what he needs to do. I had already planned on a trip to an obsidian mine (for obsidian priest's bullets; unlike the ones in LM, these don't have an Attack penalty 'cause they're lighter and stronger). The Deadlands will be a nice little twist. Thanks, Tykus!
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