GLoGtober day 10: Mechanic

d6 people who can fix things and build for you:

1 A gruff dwarf named Soldur. She keeps tools in her beard, and her heart is kept going from a flaming crucible she perpetually has to pour molten metal into. She has a habit of using the old heart-metal in works of jewelry, and she likes to think if the heart-metal jewelry is given to a partner, their love will be undying. She claims the wight that always follows her in the shadows is just a coincidence.

2 A lisping elf named Symrathic Dudemis-Tanach. His wheelchair is outfitted with all sorts of interesting tools of varying uses, but his favorite to use is the tea dispensary. His obsession with formality and cordiality often makes his actual work come to the side while he gets to know customers and walks through his byzantine rituals, such as signing all the bills in animal blood.

3 A thri-kreen named Yppo who specializes in the construction of chaotic and unusual guns (time to bust out the first batch of GLoGtober entries!). They cannot speak common, and rely on a translator- a small, bald gnome named Davin Atler Burrowbicker, who talks in a calming and detached voice, very different then Yppo's frantic, enthusiastic and disjointed speech.

4 An adept psion named Olio Guurden who uses telepathic and telekinetic powers to conduct business. One of the greatest psions on the face of the planet, though compared to most other psions, displaying a relatively low margin of ability. This is because she is an autodidactic musk ox. She has a side gig as an espionage agent for the government- no one suspects the ox.

5 A lanky firbolg with vibrant yellow hair and flowers growing out of their collarbones called the Green. An ardent missionary of the nature deity who argues a unity between the natural order and civilization, a stance that gets them in very much trouble from the rest of their faith. If you can track them down on the outskirts of town, hiding from their fellow clergy, they will do tasks for barter or favors, but never coin.

6 A small kiwi bird in possession of a large toolbox. Many people swear by its service, but it seems to behave exactly like a normal kiwi, even when being spoken to. However, looking away or leaving it to a commission will result in the task being performed perfectly, unnaturally fast, and with an exact bill (relatively cheap, but not unfair) written in fresh ink.

    Thanks for reading, and happy gaming. Full adventure, with a dice-drop dungeon generation, coming down the pipe tomorrow that I've really loved writing, I hope you'll enjoy it half as much. GLoGtober is just under the third of the way done... man, time flies!

Elves and their varieties

Some types of Elf for your games. Are these species, ethnicities, cultures, dispositions? Whatever feels right for you!

Crest Elves. High Elves, Silvanesti. The Crest Elves are primarily responsible for the impression that elves are elitist and bigoted narcassists. Each Crest Elf believes themself the center of the universe, the peak of intelligence and culture, and the perfect product of centuries of evolution. It is their leadership that spearheads elvish crusades and empires, and they are capable both of great works of intellectual advancement and terrible acts of hatred. The most hated of the Orcs, by far.

Wild Elves. Wood Elves, Grugach. All the Elves are spirits of the wild, but the Wood Elves exemplify this. The Wild Elves are plentiful in forests, and most common folk who are told to imagine an elf bring images of these wardens of the natural order into their minds. Often, Wild Elf settlements are led by a single Crest or Dusk Elf acting in a leadership role, as the WIld Elves naturally settle into cooperative and holistic structures instead of hierarchies.

Sun Elves. Ink Elves, Oathborn. Long ago, the Sun Elves allowed living tattoos onto their skin. Each clan swore an oath, or a Shaal-al’Quiir, and the tattoos were a mark of their promise. As their clans propagate, each generation receives the tattoos from their elders, along with an unbreakable promise to follow their Shaal-al’Quiir, else the tattoos would ravage their forms. The Sun Elves are widespread, dedicated, and philosophical, sharing their knowledge with any traveler who wishes to hear from the Ink Elf clans.

Dust Elves. Sand Elves, Embers. Dwellers in the hot desert sands, the Dust Elves have the hardest lives and shortest lifespans of the Elves. Elves on the whole have difficulty finding beauty in such barren and messy locales as deserts, and as such, the Sand Elves are driven, at least partially, by a resentment for their lot in life. Their societies are simple and utilitarian, but they know much, and a Dust Elf is a nearly peerless navigator among the dunes they call home.

Harvest Elves. Fey Elves, Eladrin. Their emotions rule them, in a visceral and tangible sense. When a Harvest Elf is joyful, their form reflects the spring. When a Harvest Elf is filled with wrath, their form reflects the summer. When a Harvest Elf is lamenting, their form reflects the fall. When a Harvest Elf is filled with despair, their form reflects the winter. Like their Fey ancestors, an Eladrin feels no emotion in moderation: strong elation immediately turns into terrible rage, volatile disgust or terrible depression at the drop of a hat. The most hated by the Dwarves (“where’s th’ stability?!”).

Raven Elves. Death Elves, Shadar-Kai. Progeny is not the right word, cultist is not the right word, extension is not the right word, servitor is not the right word, but it’s undeniable that the Shadar-Kai have a deep inherent relationship with the Raven Queen. She guides them, like pawns, and they execute her ineffable will. They are creatures partially composed of Sorrow, and as such, shadows are in their blood.

Moon Elves. Star Elves, Mithrali. The Mithrali take their name from the Elvish myth that these Astral dwellers were the first to pull mithril from the motes they settled. The Moon Elves are filled with a childlike sense of wonder with all that exists outside of their Astral demesne, and since they’ve been isolated from the Elvish zeitgeist and cultural attitudes, they have few qualms with cultural (and genetic) transfer. Most half-elves carry traces of the rainbow-braided and lavender-skinned Star Elves in their blood.

Gold Elves. Mountain Elves, Shimmerglints. Their skin is wrought from precious metals and irons, their unblinking eyes glimmering like gems. A Shimerglint is a walking masterpiece, halfway between biologic artifice and construct. The secret to carving these beautiful denizens of the mountains is well lost to time, so a Shimmerglint is a rare and breathtaking sight indeed. The Mountain Elves are favorites of the Dwarves, being “tolerable companions” instead of “pitiful paper-wills like the rest o’ your lot”.

Pale Elves. Pallid Elves, Painborn. Any Elf who undergoes great tragedy or who live miserable or shadow-touched lives will over time turn into a Pale Elf. Bloodlines of Pale Elves exist in places suffused by shadow or evil, like the barony of Visloch. Their snow white skin and hair betray their pain. Pity the Pallid Elvish child of parents without the mark of the Painborn…

Dark Elves. Demon Elves, Drow. Skin painted dark by the caverns they hid in, the Drow were cursed by Aarnatho when the first of the Matron Mothers turned to the worship of Lolth. Not all Dark Elves are evil, in fact, the Drow of Aaranumbral are a notable exception, but the Matron Mother’s skill in propaganda and societal control result in generation after generation of Dark Elvish children to despise the light and worship the Mother of Spiders in brutal sacrifice. A surface-born Drow and an Underdark-born Drow are very different people…

Dusk Elves. Corpse Elves, Baelnorn. An elf who exceeds a century of living begins to break down. While their mind remains as capable as ever, their body becomes a walking corpse, becoming harder and harder to sustain until all motor function shuts down around 1500, leaving crypts full of barely-living Dusk Elves being waited on by clergy of Barathari. Almost every elvish settlement has at least one Dusk Elf, and their word is treated as sacred. That is, before the madness sets in.

Sea Elves don’t exist. Play an Oceanborn like everyone else.

It's My Turn to Talk About Elves

Elves want us to believe that they are alien creatures, with designs and arcana far beyond our own and with vast societies hidden behind veils of forest and illusion.

The elves are lying.

Elves are Kin, just like us. While they may have a history of being technologically and magically ahead of the curve, at least since Doorfall and the Age of Heroes (and possibly before, cry a few human scholars), the elves have been overshadowed by the humans, halflings, dwarves, and other Kin of the world. The elves have been pushed out of the way in the name of advancement, the greatest elvish empires reduced to tiny, squabbling kingdoms fraught with the infighting of immortal politicians with nothing better to do.

Elvish propaganda, however, is some of the best in the world. The elves continue to project the illusion of mysticism, hiding the crumbling of their ivory tower with smokescreen after smokescreen. The drow in particular have a great cunning for propaganda. Lolth’s reign in the Underdark was the result of millenia’s worth of cultural manipulation and intense displays of infernal power. (Hence, the drow are not inherently evil, just culturally inclined to be very, very misguided as to what is just.) Elves and dwarves have a strained relationship, as the dwarves know that the elves have faltered from the grace and poise they once had. At least the dwarves embraced the fact that their past were their glory days, they grumble to any elf that will listen. (This starts many barfights, which is why taverns that frequently see crowds of both elves and dwarves have a “present tense only” policy.)

Elves are also rather bigoted. They are taught to think that their bloodline, their way of thinking, their way of performing magic, their way of living, their way of being is inherently superior to that of the other Kin, and that the elves should feel a sort of pity for their brethren. This often manifests in microaggressions and elvish stereotyping. After all, after many centuries, the halflings sort of blend together, wouldn’t you agree… Some anthropolgists theorize that this is part of the reason they hate orcs so dearly: most orcs are taught that THEY are the center of the universe, that their culture and race are superior to that of all the rest, and that their violence is a crusade to spread their superiority. There isn’t enough room on Aeros for two chosen peoples…

One thing the elves DO have going for them is their immortality. An elf cannot die of old age. At around 1000, their body can start to wither away, and they become Dusk Elves, almost living mummies of emaciated flesh whose bodies have begun decaying but whose minds ferment tirelessly. However, they are still vulnerable to starvation, disease, and violence, so a Dusk Elf becomes more and more difficult to sustain over time. (In most every elvish settlement, there is a Dusk Elf crypt full of near-corpses waited on hand and foot by priests of Barathari, the elvish god of death and birth and decay.) However, most elves view this as a self-indulgent egotism, and as such, the most common (and natural, say the elves) cause of elvish death is assisted suicide.

Elves don’t wield fabled magics anymore, their cities are crumbling and decadent. Their lineage grows ever more branched as the number of half-elves multiply. Don’t believe an elf when they talk about their homeland. If somebody says that the elves are mystical and detached beings, do not take them as an authority. Elves are just as shitty as the rest of us, but too snotty to show that vulnerability.

Man, fuck elves.

(I hate elves as aliens, so I wrote this as a counterpoint. Another angle to elves, if you will.)