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A little interested in the new 5e SRD/OGL thing going on. DM’s Guild is far less attractive, but it does have me thinking how I would run Forgotten Realms. This is how I’d do the Shadowfell.

Kingdom of the Midnight Hour
whence all darkness springs and whence all shadows return. Without light, it is simply an endless void; with light, the shadow of everything that every that ever was or ever happened lives there. The thinking shadows maintain desperate radiant cities. The poorest shadows huddle half-real around hexed coals, while the shadows of kings live in white-hot palaces of imported steel.

The more powerful the shadow, the brighter the light it needs to exist.  The shadows of gods, down in the Deepest Dark, would need a stolen star to truly exist; instead, they lie nascent and semireal in the dim radiance they have managed to hoard, manipulating events in the Prime Material so that they can breach into reality.

Subluna
a city in the Kingdom located on the shadow the moon casts upon the face of the earth during a solar eclipse; its periodic emergence into the Prime Material plane has made it a center of commerce. It is best known for its aircraft: undead giant moths, their carapaces hollowed out for passengers, their wings filigreed with occult silver wire. These are chiefly designed, built, and piloted by a society of exiled Moon Elves, come to live on the shadow of their former home.

Denizens
Shadows do not and cannot die, barring extreme and magical circumstances, but in darkness, they must wait in helpless semiconscious potentiality until illuminated once again. Since the Kingdom of the Midnight Hour is infinitely large, falling into darkness might mean years of centuries or millennia or an eternity of imprisonment. Shadows of sentient creatures will, naturally, make any effort to avoid this. Some sell  themselves to wizards in the Prime Material plane as familiars, while others labor as indentured servants to extraplanar masters in return for a magical source of light. Some, however, find a physical medium for their bodies, and it is these that can become adventurers.

Shadows speak a dialect of the Lingua Obscura, a shadow of a long-lost language. In its classical form, it is used to speak the unspeakable and describe the indescribable, but even creatures as esoteric and sentient shadows struggle with such powerful idioms.

Powers
The nominal ruler of the Kingdom of Midnight is King Evening Falls Not Gently, more commonly known as King Gently. It is a dragon eaten by its own shadow, and administers its erratic and violent rule from the White Hot Palace.

King Gently’s rivals include

• the Holy Terrors, a triumvirate consisting of the shadows of angels
• Baron Bar Vashar, an ancient vampire of noble bearing, charitable disposition, and bottomless appetite
• the Inverse Princess, the less of whom is spoken the better

Elsewhere

• The Resplendent Kingdom of Noon (i.e. the Feywild) is home to fairies and reflections. 
• Kara Karakai, the City At the Bottom of the World (i.e. Sigil)
• The Gardens of Flame (Plane of Fire), home to everything ever burnt to ash, a paradise and inferno in one.
• The Abyss: a hell divided into an infinite number of layers, each one dedicated to an infinitely specific kind of sin. An inquiry into the nature of evil.

I’ve had some technical and personal issues, and I’m waaaay behind on mailing the last few orders of _A Most Thoroughly Pernicious Pamphlet_, so I’m refunding them. I’ll be send out print versions for free once I have my life and printer in order. I can’t find a way to tell people through Gumroad, so I’m just putting up announcements on social media. Sorry about this, guys.

1. I made a spellcaster based off of Pearce’s ROT classes.  
2. You can get a pdf of it here
3. It has a NSFW picture by neev.
4. The layout needs some finetuning probably but it’s just about done.

I’ve been talking about San Serafín a lot so here are some of J Rient’s 20 Questions

What is the deal with my cleric’s religion?

• The Saints of Honey and Salt are emissaries for Love and Spite, and bow to no one but the First Saint of their order
• Witches consort with the diabolic and demidivine denizens of San Serafín all the time
• There are some knights who pledge themselves to the mad demigoddess Madama Yaguar

Where can we go to buy standard equipment?

• The city of El Segundo, located on the base of the mountain upon which San Serafín sits, has merchants and with any piece of hear you could imagine.
• There are some Devils and some Corpses in San Serafín who will sell you gear at a premium, in case you need some equipment but are afraid the city will rearrange while you’re gone.

Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?

• Rosario the Godsmith can make just about any piece of gear you can imagine, but he’s somewhere in San Serafín. 
• As long as it isn’t outright magical, you can probably find a gearhead somewhere in El Segundo who can weld something together for you.

Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?

• There’s a couple hundred magi in El Segundo ready to claim that title, but most in the know would put their money on the Sage in Red or the First Saint. 

Who is the greatest warrior in the land?

• The Prince of Knives, the Jaguar Child, the Blue Swordsman, the Bloody Knight, Lazaro the Ugly…

Where can we go to get some magical healing?

• The House of Honey and Salt can cure most of what ails you, but if you need some major miracle working, you have to track down the First Saint. If you want to raise the dead, you have to appeal to the Holy Corpse and Queen of San Serafín, Heche Ke Eche, herself.

Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?

• Most adventurers will swap spells with their peers, but if you want real sorcery you should start going through the ruins of the University in San Serafín. The Sage in Red might teach you some, too, but his prices are steep.

Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?

• The Dead know everything. El Segundo has any number of experts if you’re feeling cautious.

Where can I hire mercenaries?

• El Segundo is filled with them. You can sometimes acquire the services of a Corpse or Devil in San Serafín, but they are unreliable and dangerous allies.

Which way to the nearest tavern?

• El Segundo is filled with them. There are also many tea houses and restaurants in San Serafín, but they are attended mostly by Devils and Corpses.

What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?

• Heche Ke Eche, Madama Yaguar, any of the Greater Dead, any Devil

Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?

• El Segundo’s neighbors are a fractious lot, eager to have access to the treasure in
  San Serafín, but wary of having such a dangerous place in their territory.

How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?

• El Segundo, of course. There are rumors of strange games played between the Dead and the Devils, using living humans as intermediaries.

What is there to eat around here?

• The food sold within San Serafín has near-miraculous properties. Raiders treasure it.

Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?

• The Corpse of San Serafín, of course. 
• The Zehir
• The Aleph
• The Book of Sand

Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?

• San Serafín contains wealth beyond measure. It’s a terrifying time hole ghost city. What else besides money could get people to go there?

I haven’t played Boktai in years, but I still think about. A bizarre little game, but totally charming and actually pretty excellent.

The setting is vampire-ridden science fantasy post-apocalypse Mexico, though it goes in different directions than what you’re probably thinking right now. A lot of wacky pastiche in the style of Japanese video games–the other aesthetic influences are Norse mythology and spaghetti Westerns.

El Sur

Two hundred years after the last agent of the Empire fled east back over the sea, they returned on black barges that slid over the ocean without sails. They were different this time, bloodless rather than pale, armed with an ugly magic that blotted out the sun and raised their predecessors from forgotten graves. They were vampires, the very same princelings and governors that had been defeated in life two centuries ago, transformed during their exile, coming back to claim what they lost when they yet lived.

They did not find El Sur so easy to conquer a second time. They made it to San Miguel, the ancient City of the Sun, where they rule to this day, but they have not been able to occupy any more territory. The Queen and her armies contain them, but there is much to be done. There is a constant need for itinerant exorcists and monster hunters in the hinterlands, as the vampires send their agents there to sabotage rightful rule. The great tracts of sunless, vampire-blighted lands to the east are fertile ground for saboteurs and adventurers looking for foreign gold and alien magic.

The vampires use silent black-metal machinery to blot out the sun and fly overhead on funureal barges. They tax the blood of their subjects for their own purposes and deface the holy city of San Miguel with immense necromantic diagrams. Their servants are known as the Sanguinaires.

The Queen and her forces keep the vampire in check, using devices stolen and adapted from the Old World to call forth the sun. Their allies are the Children of the Sun, heliomancers who worship gods from before the First Invasion, and the Knights del Sol, gunslinging exorcists who destroy vampires with strange machines.

And here’s a paladin oath, I guess.

Oath del Sol
Brave gunslingers from the city of San Miguel, formed to defend humanity against an ancient court of vampires. They use strange machines to circumvent the defenses of their otherwise immortal enemies.

The Knights del Sol value cunning, bravery, and determination, but what they treasure most of all is results.

Oath Spells
1st level: earth tremor, create or destroy water
2nd level: gentle repose, dust devil
3rd level: plant growth, speak with dead
4th level: control water, conjure minor elementals
5th level:  control winds, commune with nature

Gun del Sol
Starting at 3rd level, you gain proficiency with firearms. You also can designate any non-thrown ranged weapon as your Gun del Sol (even if it isn’t actually a gun. It’s tradition) Your Gun del Sol can fire sunlight projectiles. Doing so doesn’t require ammunition, but the sunlight behaves as the projectile would (so sunlight fired from bows have the same range and trajectory as arrows, and so on) and deals no damage unless natural sunlight would. However, you can use your Divine Smite ability to empower attacks made this way.

If your Gun del Sol is lost or destroyed, you must spend 8 hours modifying another non-thrown ranged weapons with divine machinery to replace it. A Gun del Sol only works for its particular Knight.

If you take a short rest in a sunny place, you can use Divine Smite at the highest available spell level on your next attack with the Gun del Sol without expending any spell slots.

Messenger of the Sun
At 3rd level, you acquire the Find Familiar ritual. In addition to the normal familiars you can use it to summon a sprite. This familiar is fully sentient regardless of type and immune to radiant damage. You receive advantage on (Arcana), Intelligence (Religion), or Intelligence (History) check pertaining to fiends or undead when you talk it out with your familiar.

Solar Engineer
At 7th level, you learn how to make lenses. Fitting a lens into your Gun del Sol takes 10 minutes, and changes the damage it deals when you empower it with Divine Smite. When You can learn how to make two lenses from the following list:

• Ruby Lens: You learn the Control Flames cantrip. When you fit this lens into your Gun, you have resistance to cold damage and your Divine Smite deals fire damage when used to empower your Gun’s attacks.
• Seaglass Lens: You learn the Shape Water cantrip. When you fit this lens into your Gun, you have resistance to fire damage and your Divine Smite deals cold damage when used to empower your Gun’s attacks.
• Rare Earth Lens: You learn the Mold Earth cantrip. When you fit this lens into your Gun, you have resistance to lightning damage and your Divine Smite deals acid damage when used to empower your Gun’s attacks.
• Quartz Lens: You learn the Gust cantrip. When you fit this lens into your Gun, you have resistance to acid damage and your Divine Smite deals lightning damage when used to empower your Gun’s attacks.
• Lunar Lens: You learn the Friends cantrip. When you fit this lens into your Gun, you have resistance to radiant damage and your Divine smite deals psychic damage when used to empower your Gun’s attacks.

Piledriver
Starting at 15th level, as an action you can summon the Piledriver, a divine machine designed to destroy wicked immortals. When you do so, you raise a circle of 6 pillars from the earth. The pillars are of Medium size and have 75 HP and 14 AC. The circle’s radius cannot exceed 60 ft. Within the Piledriver, fiends and undead suffer disadvantage on all saving throws. More importantly, anyone and anything who dies in this area is dead forever, laid to rest beyond the reach of magic. Vampires, liches, death knights, and spirit nagas, and even gods are all subject to the Piledriver’s effect. The effect only lasts while all Piledriver pillars stand, and ends after an hour. Your Divine Smite ability heals Piledriver pillars. You must take a long rest before you can use this ability again.

Extra Lens
At 15th level, you gain an extra lens from the list above.

Prominence
At 20th level, you can summon a minor aspect of the Sun. Once per long rest, you can cast sunburst without a material component. For an hour afterwards, a miniature sun hangs directly overhead, shedding sunlight as bright as if it were noon in a 1 mile radius around the epicenter of the sunburst. This works indoors and underground, but the miniature Sun will be outside.

Extra Lens
At 20th level, you gain an extra lens from the list above.

THE SUSPECTS
Goldenloin
Murderous 10 year old eunuch warlock; has a contract with the mad angel Penemue

Bartholomew III
Pseudo-noble conman fighter with a taste for forbidden romance

Jessica
Androgynous vampire; howling fop; carries a parasol and a coffin

Janet Snakehole (erm)
Bartholomew III’s pseudo-noble conwoman partner-in-crime; possesses unspecified talents, possibly has a gift for assassination

Korgan/Kergan/Can’t remember his name
Gnarled mystic; wearer of loincloths; warlock bound to Old Queen Mab, the fairy of malediction

THE CRIMES
The party begins in Queen’s Crossing, where they elected to take on the job posted by the town’s Postmaster, which required them to venture to the tiny village of Scavenger’s Weir to find out why all couriers sent there have vanished. They decided to take the somewhat more dangerous route through Albion’s untamed Greywood, on the southern/eastern side of the River Dour. After about half a day’s travel, they see a watchtower peeking over the trees and decide to investigate, coming upon an old Roman fort in suspiciously good repair.

Janet and Jessica sneak forward as the rest of the party hangs back. Janet steps on a branch (i.e. Jeremy immediately fails his Stealth check), and the guards in the fort’s watchtowers call out. They receive her enthusiastically (i.e. I rolled an 11 on their Reaction check) and demand that she join forces with them.

Jessica leaps from her hiding spot and suggests that they work for the party instead. In response, a woman in resplendent centurion armor bursts out of the gate (followed by several disheveled “Praetorians” mumbling in execrable Latin) and tells Jessica to stop talking and sit down. She introduces herself as the Empress Henrietta and demands that the party join her or die. That such an earthy personage in such martial gear call herself Empress  “offends Jessica’s imperialist sensibilities”, and the vampire says that she is no head of state. Henrietta’s lackeys gasp, and she tries to stab Jessica in the face. There’s a fight, with highlights as follows:

• Goldenloin swears fealty to Henrietta in the middle of the fight and tries and fails to stab her in the back after she retreats upon being shot in the neck.
• Jessica gets laid out by a well-placed bullet, while Bartholomew III is reduced to 0 HP. He tries to revive her by wringing the blood from his wound into Jessica’s mouth, which doesn’t work until after the fight.
• Korgan catches up with the party, calls upon Old Queen Mab to impale his enemies with lances, and she sucks out his vitality instead.
• Henrietta gets increasingly wild-eyed and shouty

The battle ends when Janet staves in Empress Henrietta’s head with a pistol grip. The Empress’ soldiers immediately give up, and start drinking and playing dice in the corner of the fort as soon as they can. Bartholomew III rings squeezes some of Henrietta’s blood into Jessica’s mouth, who manages to revive. The ex-legionaries tell Jessica that the Empress was once Professor Henrietta Lately at the Royal Society, according to the monogram she brought with her, before she decided to set out into the wilderness in pursuit of Empire. They were once bandits, but she tore out their bosses jugular with her teeth and scared them into submission. The party finds an aged, mangy horse, painted white and burdened with poorly gilted riding tack, which they use to carry the potentially valuable antique armor they lifted from the Empress dethroned.

They follow the river onward and encounter a crumbling, partially submerged keep slumping into the water. After a brief investigation, Goldenloin calls upon the knowledge of Penemue to determine how safe spending the night in the keep would be. Upon doing so, he discovers a scrimshawed skull behind a piece of rubble, which reads as follows:

My dearest Goldenloin,

I have considered your proposal and would like to accept, but I’m afraid you must lend me some of your sanity in return.

–your friend, P.

Goldenloin accepts the terms (takes d4 Wisdom damage) and sees that the keep is dangerous, but not insurmountably so. Bartholomew III bravely asserts that his fate is not to die in some keep, and plunges onward with the party in tow. They go down a set of steps into a large, empty antechamber, with another flight of stairs leading deeper, which they take. About 10 feet down, a howling, pallid man charges Bartholomew, and they grapple on the ground as the party looks on. Jessica tries to stab the man, but sees multiple pinprick scars on his neck, and realizes he is “the help” of some vampire. As he says this, a soaking wet, muck-covered woman in antique finery emerges from the gloom and welcomes Jessica as an equal (rolled really high reaction rolls this session). She also thanks Jessica for bringing so many snacks. Jessica apologizes and says that the party isn’t ripe yet–like cheese, humans are best eaten aged. The vampire accepts this explanation, crushes the head of her thrall with a spiked heel for his rudeness, and drags him into the dark by a leg. More importantly, she promises to leave the party alone and will let them stay in her empty antechamber.

They leave the following evening, which allows Jessica to travel about without suffering in the sunlight. While they rest, goes on a jaunt for a meal, and by a great deal of luck comes upon a Dr. Adelphus and his hirsute bodyguard MR CRUSHMORE, surveying land for possible purchase. Jessica Charms Mr. Crushmore, and Dr. Adelphus leaves his enamored bodyguard in disgust.

The party bypasses any more potentially complicating encounters and arrives at Scavenger’s Weirat sunrise (I said sunset, but that was wrong). It is a small town, consisting of a series of houses perched atop islands, with bridges and weirs crisscrossing in between. A newly constructed palisade surrounds the party of the town on the banks. Ezekiel, the guardsman, reluctantly lets the party in at the feeble sight of Goldenloin crying for food, despite the protests of Mrs. Chamberlain, a hunched and powerfully built woman adorned with a great number of guns.

• 1 or more HP means you’re hale ‘n’ hearty
• If you HP is between 0 and half your negative Constitution score, rounded up, you are dying. You can roll to recover on each of your turns. Roll a d20. On a 10+, you enjoy 1 success. On a 9-, you suffer 1 failure. After 3 successes, you are back to 1 HP. After 3 failures, you die
• Vampires don’t bleed out, so when their HP is between 0 and half their negative Constitution score, they are simply unconscious. However, they can’t recover on their own either. If they are fed HP in blood worth half their Con score, they wake up with 1 HP
• If you have less HP than half your negative Constitution score, you die
• Enemies have no problem hitting you while you’re down

There is now a Medic skill. Everyone has a 1 in 6 chance of succeeding, and Specialists can improve it like any other skill. Succeeding a Medic check gives a patient an additional recovery success, while failing one gives them an additional recovery failure.

I’m also really liking reaction rolls. The party was really lucky this session, and I think I could represent ambivalent or friendly reactions in more interesting ways, but I think having randomly determined hostility makes things better, overall.

Not particularly interesting, but I can’t get Logan’s generators to work from my bookmark bar.

Village

Who Runs The Show?

1. Clown Lord Risible, greatest fool of this generation and liege of all mimes
2. Prodigy John, luminary legerdemainist, master prestidigitator, and “author of 1,000 new forms of lovemaking”
3. Dame Carmilla, who’s six foot seven and punches her weight
4. Timothy Tenpenny, the six-armed, legless King of Freaks
5. Lady Caruthers, entrepreneurial runaway and heir of the Ancient House of Caruthers
6. Dr. Malleus, renegade medical professional and connoisseur of the taboo

What’s It Called?

1. The Grand Circus
2. The Carnivalé Mysteriosum
3. The Fabulous Sensorium
4. The High Spectacle
5. Cirque du Dieu
6.  The Most Fantabulous Five Ringed Circus

What’s Their Secret?

1. Clowns are deep-cover demihuman spies
2. All performers are clandestine agents of the Crown
3. They smuggle rebels, renegades, and undesirables out of the country by disguising them as performers.
4. All performers are planning a coup to dislodge the reigning monarch
5. Anyone who starts working here can’t leave until they find someone to take their place
6. Nothing, but all the performers are really nervous

What’s the Hook?

1. All of the circus freaks look completely average, but everyone else is acting otherwise
2. Locals start disappearing whenever this circus is in town
3. A circus cart tips over and bodies spill out
4. The mayor of the nearest town wants these carnie hooligans gone, and he wants them gone now.
5. Each traveling circus follows its own special route through the country, and once a century converge on a particular small town.
6. When the circus started setting up, all wildlife fled and all livestock tried to escape. The grass is growing away from their tent.

Who Are the Performers?

1. Eliza and Beliza Teliza, twin stage magicians with a talent for sword-swallowing and fire-breathing
2. Tiborius, who is either a chimera with its goat and snake heads cut off, or a really big lion
3. Lady Timora, a fortune-teller who can’t tell your future but can cast Fireball
4. Terror Clown
5. Father Farfello, faith healer and novice exorcist
6. Hermel, who plays a sometimes-explosive calliope

• small weapons for 50 sp
• martial weapons for 100 sp
• great weapons for 150 sp
• small ammunition (12 pc) for 10 sp
• martial ammunition (12 pc) for 20 sp
• great ammunition for (12 pc) for 30 sp

Geoffrey will sell golden lotus powder for 20 sp a dose. Addicts need to take at least a dose a day or roll Physique to resist withdrawal. They also need to roll Physique to resist side effects once the dose wears off. 

I just heard about a game called Nephilim. I only know its most basic premise, but this is what I am filling in the gaps with.

1. All text in a small Kansan town is replaced with the Tetragrammaton, written in tiny letters over and over again.
2. A small meteorite crashes into the center of Time Square. It is a figurine of Baphomet.
3. Graffiti versions of the Eye of Providence start popping up all over Miami, just as a large number of people start to disappear
4. Everyone in Seattle dreams the same dream every night. They can’t remember the details, but it involves a great deal of fire.
5. All of the goats in the tri-state area have vanished.
6. A genetics researcher is in a bit of trouble. They thought they were developing extra-wooly sheep, but now the lambs speak, and do so with the voice of mulitudes
7. A meteorologically improbable hurricane hits Florida, and there are reports that it is raining snakes in the worst of it.
8. Milk and honey are oozing out of the ground in northern California.
9. All the children in a small North Dakotan town are speaking a strange language no one understands. A school teacher thinks it might be Greek.
10. A band called the Whores of Babylon just reached the Top 40 list. No one knows who they are or where they came from, but everyone sure likes their music.
11. An oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico detonates. Rescue teams find an unidentifiable piece of red metal with the word Malebolge engraved into it.
12. There’s a fire-and-brimstone cultist gaining a following in Ohio. His message is the same old story, but his son’s name is Adrammelech.