Thursday 24 October 2024

THE SELV


Hwæt! This tale begins in those earliest days when the Elves first awoke, when the world was not, and all things were beautiful. And the elves, whose fascinations were infinite, came to gather around those things most worthy of their admiration - the glimmer of the newborn stars, the newly shifting arms of clear, unfurling nebulae, the song of the cosmic breath as it passed over the flowering expanse, the glittering gemstones that scattered the twilight meadows and the mysteries of those magical processes by which creation unfolded before them. And through these gatherings, the first communities came to be and all was fair, equal and just, for all were lords and ladies of their own commonwealths of universal wonderment and splendour.

That is, save for One, HE, who was above others and whose name, now unspoken, once meant 'Most Beauteous of Creation'. HE became as a great king, HE who was the fairest of these beings, without blemish, without trace of weakness of limb or mind, vitality or song and whose grace and glory were unmatched. HE, who had come to master all of these elven fascinations, came to gather around HIM many fellow elves who basked in HIS perfection and supplicated themselves to HIS will. In turn, HE was their champion. For it was HE who slew those unknown horrors that slobbered and clawed their way from the world before. And as HE stood, victorious in battle, over their manyfold dead, HE was among the first created to feel disgust - dread. Yet further pained, HE pondered; do putrid beings foretell of what was to become of MY new world?


From then on, HE sought ways to preserve the purity and perfection of the starry, flowering realm. For it was HE who was the first to entreat the gods and HE sang of an end to the unfolding creation - that peaceful perfection abounded, and that beauty could be preserved, should but Creation cease. These songs went into the starry void without answer, nor echo. And so, HE looked with disdain at the first dawn of the neonate sun, and to HIM, the arrival of the unpocked moon was a blot on the glimmering meadows of the sky. And soon fear and malice formed in his ageless heart. So, with the wilting of the first flower and as fresh maladies first sapped the limbs of elves - with the appearance of beasts, bristling and chitinous, teeming in the roiling mud and the apes that gibbered in swelling trees - HE knew what fate HE must pursue. Such creations, both tangible and intangible, would serve only to corrupt HIS beauteous visage and pockmark HIS perfect earthly realm. And so, claiming HIS beauty as HIS right to command Elvenkind, HE proclaimed this curse to freshly afeared elves; 

“Woe unto the Creator’s creation! Woe unto the scabrous beasts that mar its face! Once pure, now befouled with crawling, hideous life - scarred and made unclean by prankish entropy! My realm shall be untainted and unmarred! Therefore, I, who am more splendid than the Sun, nobler than the Moon, fairer than the fairest star, shall be the hand to hold back the loom of Creation and by my will shall the march of time be stayed, and beauty live eternal!”

And upon swearing this terrible oath, HIS followers leapt straightway to HIS side and took the selfsame vow together, striking down any who refused. And red with spilt elven blood shone their drawn swords in the glare of the weeping, child sun. Quickly, then, they did away, down into the heart of the world. Down HE led HIS followers, deep within, and under the earth where reality remains strange, and where time itself might be kept at bay. There, in the abyss, HE wove HIS own realm, one preserved from Creation, touched only by the decay of his own heart and shaped by HIS deranged will and unspooled mind. So it was, and as strange aeons ebbed and flowed, HE and HIS followers basked in their endless spiralling beautification. There, in the deepest of all places, they preened and warped themselves beyond elvenkind, seeking to surpass the beauty that, in elder days, they had once found sacred. For they are now the Selv, starry and strange - scintillating, stelliferous entities of an eerie, alien fairness - cold, cruel and desirous.


So, it would remain, but unfurling creation could not be hidden from forever. Save for the Creator, the weird ways of the deep earth know few masters, and so, after untold Ages, the underworld's groping tendrils - its dungeons and dark places - have begun to pierce the Selv's uncanny garden-realm. Now, up through the earth; by secret fae-paths, forgotten ways and hidden elven-doors, do the Selv slink furtively to the subterranean fringes of our mortal world. Ancient folk emerging into an Age of dearth and misrule - knowing only deep magic, and the lore of the earliest dawns, the Selv know little of our myth-removed Age. Truly, their imperious sneers survey all Creation with disgust and curiosity - for you should consider yourself accursed the Selv know you not. For the keen fascination of their elven forebears beats still in the Selv’s wicked hearts, yet their study is born of self-superiority and is filled with malice and revulsion. 

And those first men to behold the Selv, to be held tranfixt upon their cruel and sickly-beauteous, shimmering forms and meet with terror their gaze, glowing with the light of underworld stars. With piercing eyes that burn darkly with contempt that wrinkles not their statue faces. 

For the Selv, mortal men are as insects before a collector’s pin, as boils before a studying surgeon or yet, with greater terror - impure clay before a master sculptor.  For many warped men, uncanny and statue-faced, with the light of the heavens springing from their mindless eyes, do lope and lunge and tear and toil at a world they now reckon as odious and unworthy. No creature, high or low, shall escape their desire - for even bats of strange angles that carry the glimmer of stars, do flutter on gossamer wings from the constellation-lit caves of the Selv.

HE lives still! Brooding against an ugly reality, in the impossible depths of the living earth within his shrinking realm, scheming. HIS goals are many; to learn of the created world and the lengths of its completion, its nature, and the nature of its inhabitants and how they may be best made beautiful or excised as a gardener might snails. Whispered voices, in deep tombs, hiss in slender tones of a great ‘War of Disgust’ against reality, when the Selv have found some means to bleach back Creation and start afresh. And yet, a needling thought, spry against the vastness of his ancient memory does pain HIM, quietly - are the Selv, his children, those ancient abominations that he did HE slay at the dawn of all things?


The Selv
Stats as Elves, (though something more special may be in order) adjust HD depending on the age of the particular Selv (HE would have the stats of something from Deities and Demigods). Selv differ from Elves in the following regards:
In combat, they always target the ugliest thing first, who they will usually attempt to slay. 
They speak to Elven PC’s before all others. 
They will attempt to capture and study those they do not exterminate.
They glow a cold white light and their weird and stunning beauty means the Selv always surprise their opponents. They are as swift and light footed and can almost always cover a great distance before being spotted. 
They inhale and exhale but once a day, they do not blink, nor sleep. They are sustained by very little, often eating a single petal per day. 

The Beautified:
The uncanny and ethereal workhorses of the Selv. The Beautified can use the stats of any creature, save that they gain +1 to ALL rolls and are unable to use any mental, spell-casting or force of personality unless instructed by a Selv to do so. 
Any creature can be beautified by the Selv using a ritualised version of a modified Polymorph Other spell. This usually takes place after an intense and unpleasant period of examination. The Beautified are always under the thrall of the Selv as a race.   

Some notes on the Selv as a faction:
The Selv are a faction designed to be able to be placed into any deep corner of any underground dungeon or adventure site. Their Selv-ways may even connect several distant dungeons across your campaign map.
Lacking the numbers to wage direct war on reality the Selv do begrudgingly seek non-Selv allies, promising beauty, exquisite gems and deep lore in exchange for favours or artefacts of great power that may aid them in the destruction of reality.
Their hierarchy is organised by most to least fair though these miniscule differences are not noticeable to non-Selv. The Beautified are essentially lobotomised works of uncanny valley art and are the lowest rung of Selv society. 
The Selv hate disease and are easily disgusted to the point of violence.  
For naming conventions take typical Tolkienesque elven names and ‘extend’ them by duplicating vowels and or consonants in weird ways. 


Myself and an elite cadre of skellington appreciators and OSR bloggers coalesced in the spirit of this spooky season to gift each other content. This was organised by Empedocles of Elemental Reductions. And glad I was to accept the call to write archaic, ape-tolkienesque nonsense in very long and unwieldy sentences! OK, my actual prompts were:
The Fall of a Great King
Beauty Rotten from the Inside
The Curse of Being Forgotten
And the format was: Faction. So, I attempted to do all three. I hope you are pleased, anonymous friend!

I am also submitting this to the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by the great Tim Brannon of The Other Side blog - the theme HORROR AND FANTASY.



Sunday 25 August 2024

The Ape, race-as-class

 

And lo! From the ancient depths of misty primeval jungles and the murky, antediluvian, ruined worlds beneath our own, there emerged the Ape! Hirsute, thick-thewed and sullen-eyed, to humble mankind as it did in ancient days and shall again - now, to tread the jeweled thrones of the earth under its grasping, prehensile paws.

Thursday 1 August 2024

Words! Linguistics, Etymology and Onomatology - Blog Carnival Roundup

Throughout the entire RPG blogosphere in July 2024 this mysterious incantation was muttered, chanted, ululated unerringly and with great enrapt fervour: "Words! Linguistics, Etymology and Onomatology!" Below is an individualized account of those poor fellows who succame to the call and whose incredible verve and creative curiosity allowed them to create some pretty cool blogposts.

Once again my time hosting the Carnival has been rather rewarding. This month there was a total of thirteen entries which is pretty good. Find details about signing up here. Also check out the August 2024 Carnival 'It Came from Beyond Time'. Now, on with the roundup. Below is my roundup of all the entries received and a couple of entries I received late for my previous time hosting the Carnival; Anthropology and Archaeology. I'll do so through little micro-blurbs and sharing a thought or two on each post.  As for the etiquette of reading this roundup, take your time - there are a lot of blogposts to read, leave some comments on the author's blog, consider a follow, it's always appreciated - the Carnival is foremost about building blogger camaraderie after all.


Game Design Pattern: Concept Crafting by Maxcan7: 
- Maxcan7 of Weird and Wonderful Worlds brings us a post on Concept Crafting - a system that uses words as building blocks. Maxcan7 wants to spread the word for Concept Crafting through the RPG Carnival and I support it. Playing with and combining words is certainly something I really enjoy. My most successful blogpost by all metrics; Naively Simple Alchemy uses similar concepts as does its oft overlooked cousin Naively Simple Mad Science.
- I've long been intrigued by Maxcan's use of Concept Crafting for Mechs. One thinks of the components and armaments of giant robots to be these mechanical things rooted in technobabble, but when concept crafting is used for machines like Mecha, it gives them a quite surreal and dreamlike quality - which is wild and cool. 
- Check out Maxcan's post and deep dive some of those links. See if Concept Crafting tugs your creative strings, it might have given me an idea for a madlib-esque cooking minigame. 


Code Talking by Throne of Salt
- Throne of Salt reflects on using the cipher of the Navajo code talkers as a particularly successful puzzle in a  campaign of theirs as well as discussing its implementation, potential improvements, and suitability for games set in real-world-inspired settings.
- Using codes and ciphers is certainly a puzzle I had not actually considered up to this point and I'm interested in trying something going forward. In the comments of Throne of Salt's post Skerples makes a good point about book based codes, If you personally have any other code ideas, please leave a comment on Throne's post, I know we'd both like to read them. 

- It's conlang time! What fellow doesn't want to, or hasn't already tried to make their own language? I know I have. July's Carnival has given Sofinho the impetus to begin his own conlang journey and he begins with a syllabary
- It's an ambitious task but Sofinho is really going for it, check this out.  
- Watch this space, wherever there is an Entry #01 an Entry #02 is sure to follow 👀. 


RPG Linguistics by Benign Brown Beast
- Benign Brown Beast suggests streamlining language in D&D by reducing the number of languages characters have to learn by emphasizing the narrative function of a language over cultural/racial diversity.
- The list of languages suggested is a very fun and novel idea and can be fluffed out in many different directions and will generally make you go 🤔.

AND Saying Magic Words
- In this post (which is a good companion to the RPG Linguistics post above) we explore the potential of integrating language with magic in D&D. Could certain spells  grant the ability to speak specific languages?
- I'm used to Lotfp style languages that don't predetermine a player's languages at character creation which certainly helps with the problems Benign Brown Beast sees - after 6+ months of play my current character can speak 16 languages for instance. That said, the system doesn't really cater to magical of extra-planar languages which is where this post could really prove useful.  


"Planars got a lot of words for 'ethereal'" by Xaosseed
- This headying post pairs quite well with the above writing of Benign Brown Beast. It deals with Xaoseed's own feeling towards using languages in games that align somewhat with my own; "that names, words, places and the like are the outputs of generic fantasyland slush and not actually backed by anything meaningful and thus not worth digging deeply into". But what to do about this? Perhaps a setting's language could be influenced by extraplanar connections, inhuman perceptions or cultural contact? 

AND Your great-grand-elf's elvish: long lives slowing language change
- Xaoseed highlights how the presence of long-lived species, such as elves, dragons, and giants, in a fantasy setting can influence the stability of languages over time and how this might affect your world building. 
- The post makes me think of some slumbering dragon in a lost cave who is the last fluent speaker of a extinct human language, a lost tongue that the players have to learn in order to save the day or steal a blue jewel or whatever. 


The Onomasticon Quernorum by Beneath Foreign Planets
- A post in which I give some obvious and meandering tips that I did or did not follow when coming up with the names for the Onomasticon.
- Over 900 names for a setting you know little about!
- Might inspire something?


How to Make Your Game In Tense by Cryptic Keyway
- Do you know what the Prophetic Perfect Tense is? You should, It's cool. 
- Do you you want to know how to use it in your games? I'm going to. 
- Here is my prophecy rendered in Prophetic Perfect Tense; "You read this post and enjoyed it, it made you want to add some prophecies to your own game".  


On Names by Empedocles the Wizard
- Empedocles presents some very good and clear advice on the topic of writing and generating fantasy Names. The post is practical, useful and festooned with interesting links. I particularly liked Kate Monk’s Onomastikon which was valuable to me when creating my own Onomasticon (it has a great URL too). In fact, this post is so good I edited my own post down and referred to this one instead.
- Empedocles has also done a lot of the work for you having created this d100 Random Name Prompter
- I love the notion of 'nominative destiny', it's much classier and precise than my phrase of 'definitional baggage'. 


Languages of the Sea of Stars by Sean H
- Sean shares some detail on the linguistic landscape of their Sea of Stars setting and the languages spoken therein along with sharing some practical thoughts and experiences with using language in game.
- Sean highlights the benefits of having a lingua franca for your game but what really interested me was how this common tongue can impart so much setting info and tone so simply, the Sea of Stars Imperial Tongue's origins bely interesting historical implications.  
- The other languages referenced in the setting each sound intriguing and almost function as plot hooks or rumours in of themselves. 


The Cool, Coded Version of Name Generator: Morpheme+Word+Epithet' by Dozens
- Inspired by my very own post Morpheme+Word+Epithet, Dozens has coded it up in a way I could not. They have properly factored in honorifics as well as introducing more variety by using different combinations of the eponymous Morphemes, Words and Epithets. 
- I am very grateful my work could inspire others to build upon it, and wish to say a personal thanks to Dozens. 


- TRAIPSE solves his struggle with toponyms; Never run out of place names with this one clever trick!
- A good companion alongside the prosoponymic thinking of Empedocles' post and my own. 
- Generally check out this cool fellow's cool blog. 


Anthropology and Archaeology Latecomers
 
- Hex Brawler might just turn your perception of conflict on its head. 
- The academic snippet Hex Brawler has selected is just right. 
- I need more of this kind of violence in my setting. 


- Enrich your world and dungeons with archaeology!You might know of dungeon rooms as being either trap, treasure, monster, empty, special or any combination of the above but have you ever considered archaeological?
- Pity Crit proposes the begins for a true archaeological minigame of sorts wherein the players quite literally uncover abstracted 'fragments' of lost civilizations and use those fragments to uncover knowledge about said civilization. Pretty cool stuff. 
- Pity Crit also gives plenty of examples of finds from their own lost empire and they're all pretty cool. I particularly like the weird Lacunae Crest.