Orion wrote:Frank,
What did the Kalashtar get out of this deal with the Qori? Was having no afterlife really bugging them that much? To be honest it sounds like the afterlife they bought themselves is not that great and they ruined their regular lives to get it.
Well, getting an afterlife at all is a pretty big deal. People sign up for some pretty shitty forms of immortality in D&D-land, and I can't really blame them. Note that even this "getting something" out of the deal is a retcon by me. The original text on the Kalashtar is equal parts bland and confusing. They merged with the evil Qori souls "for no reason," and have extra psionic power points "for no reason." Also, they are usually Lawful Good, possibly because the author forgot that the Qori souls are a bunch of villains in the setting? I have no fucking idea. They have no flavor, they make no sense, and what few pieces of information exist about them appear on first, second, and third reading to directly contradict themselves.
zeruslord wrote:The Giff are pretty easy, IMO, and I think I'm going to give them a shot if Frank doesn't mind.
Go for it. It's a race with thick skin and tiny ears who love explosions. Presumably their alchemists managed to discover nitrocellulose without killing themselves. All you have to do is downplay the corny British Empire jokes from Spelljammer and it practically writes itself.
Prak wrote:Are you just adding in the environmental cold immunity and rocky skin and insensitivity to trog scent?
Those are implied in their old writeups. Grimlocks have been kicking around in D&D since 1981, so there's actually a lot of material on them. Some of it's contradictory, but you can hack something together out of it. The 3e writeup leaves out all the interesting stuff, and the 4e writeup tries to get us to accept them as paragon level opponents, which is just frickin bizarre.
RobbyPants wrote:Bladelings (MMII p31); the spiky EL 1 outsiders from Acheron.
Sure. They were introduced in 2nd edition as a "big mystery," but as far as I know the other shoe of that mystery was never dropped. You were supposed to go searching for the lost home of the Bladelings or maybe discover the terrifying truth of what they had escaped from, but since there was never any hint as to what it might be, the whole race just got a "who cares?" They chillaxed in their city covered with blood wood to keep out the constant storm of razor ice, and they didn't want to talk to you and you didn't want to go to Ocanthus, and that was that.
Bladelings
The Bladelings have bodies that are composed of thin layers of ice, bone, and iron pressed together like the layers of an onion. If a limb is amputated, the stump has rings of hard and brittle materials not unlike the rings of a tree. Deep in the core, they have a yellow and viscous fluid not unlike mineral oil that appears to be their hemolymph. The exterior layers of a Bladeling are dry and cracked and very sharp. A Bladeling must shed their outer layers every few days, and once a day they can choose to shed them explosively, sending razor sharp shards in all directions. They are clearly the result of a biology unknown to any world in known space.
What Bladelings are known mostly live in the Acheron watershed, but they came as religious pilgrims and refugees from some farther star. The communities they established were led by priestesses, who as the communities settled into permanent cities became elevated to queens without losing their religious authority. Their religion is centered on placating and avoiding a group of powerful fiend lords from a world they call the Crucible.
Bladelings were originally opposed quite strongly in their quest to move into the wilderness of Ocanthus by Rust Dragons. For several hundred years, the Rust Dragons fought with a tenacity and ferocity that is unusual even for them. Rust Dragons who said anything about their war described stopping the spread of Bladelings to be
more important than survival. However, after a few centuries, they abruptly ceased all anti-Bladeling activities, though no peace treaty appears to have been signed.
Bladelings brought no pets or livestock with them from their homeland. They are literally omnivorous, able to gain sustenance from meat and wood and even iron filings. Since their arrival in Acheron, they have made pacts with Achaierai and Steel Predators and these beasts live among them. Bladeling lumberjacks farm the Bloodwood itself, bringing chunks of wood and flesh from the trees to market. Bladeling cuisine is considered inedible or at least disgusting by most races in the galaxy.
The Bladelings do not proselytize, their city states are theocratic, but non-Bladelings are neither required nor encouraged to give prayers to the “Shadow Over The Sun.” Almost all of the clergy of Bladeling society are female, but there appears to be no special rule to enforce this. Male Bladelings definitely can take priestly orders, but most of them don't.
While not particularly common, Bladelings have now been accepted as a normal minority of Acheronian worlds. Their customs, food, religion, and method of speech are openly mocked by more numerous peoples, but there haven't been rules forbidding them in any major kingdom for a hundred years.
-452 words
-Username17
