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Originally posted by sleyvas

WELL SAID MARKUSTAY! +10 Likes. Elaine is SO awesome with her building of character and story. I'll also add that I really like Erin Evans in somewhat a similar fashion, though I think her storytelling would appeal more towards young girls (which hey... I'm not the only market).

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Originally posted by The Masked Mage

Circle of Skulls is set in Waterdeep, not Skullport. The skulls in that book are NOT the skullport skulls, they are a different group of skulls.

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Originally posted by sleyvas

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Originally posted by The Masked Mage

Circle of Skulls is set in Waterdeep, not Skullport. The skulls in that book are NOT the skullport skulls, they are a different group of skulls.

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Lol, at least I had the disclaimer that I had not read it. So, there's ANOTHER group of skulls floating around Waterdeep getting into mischief? Damn Copycat Skulls.

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Originally posted by sleyvas

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Originally posted by The Masked Mage

Circle of Skulls is set in Waterdeep, not Skullport. The skulls in that book are NOT the skullport skulls, they are a different group of skulls.

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Lol, at least I had the disclaimer that I had not read it. So, there's ANOTHER group of skulls floating around Waterdeep getting into mischief? Damn Copycat Skulls.

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Originally posted by Markustay

'Ebil skulls' is not really a new thing, especially not in D&D. Ed just took demiliches and made them fly.

Just for once, I'd like to see an evil ribcage.

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Originally posted by Markustay

'Ebil skulls' is not really a new thing, especially not in D&D. Ed just took demiliches and made them fly.

Just for once, I'd like to see an evil ribcage.

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Originally posted by sleyvas

You know one thing that kills me.... demiliches used to be this RARE thing. It was the idea that a lich gets SOOOOO old that they actually give up their body and become nothing but a skull that sits there while they ponder the mysteries of the universe with their mind.

Now, everywhere I'm looking in products for 4e and 5e.... there's a f'ing demilich. All these demiliches, with no history to them at all. They were just cranked out of the factory... and they're servants of Szass Tam. Dude's only been a lich for a few hundred years. I kind of feel bad for reusing Ythazz Buvarr just because of all these other demiliches, except that I took the time to GIVE him a history that makes sense and would stretch back like 2500+ years.

I'm also still very pissed that they chose to use Acererak with Tomb of Annihilation. It feels sooo tacky. That plotline looks interesting, until you zoom out to the full story, and then its like "seriously, you couldn't have done this with ANY other lich".

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Originally posted by The Masked Mage

Yeah - the morons read the word demi-lich and think "almost-lich." I'm sure they have no idea.
[...]
I can't tell you how much I hope some day to stop seeing D&D run by people who think like this.

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Originally posted by The Masked Mage

Circle of Skulls is set in Waterdeep, not Skullport. The skulls in that book are NOT the skullport skulls, they are a different group of skulls.

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Originally posted by Markustay

Once certain beings reach a certain level of power, they become 'multispheric'. And not just 'gods', even uber-powerful mortals (although Chosen ARE, technically 'gods', just Exarchs, but there are plenty of others of that caliber who are not deific servants). If we say that the worlds of MtG exist within the D&Dverse (and they should - they have Loxo!), than all those 'planeswalkers' are near-deities as well.

So, its not so much (IMO) that the rest of D&D is 'polluting' our FR, its more like we are starting to 'pan back' and see the bigger piture. I mean, it was always there, but now its just more 'in your face'. I mean, we have an archfiend (Graz'zt) snatch a goddess from us - an archfiend who is the father of one of the mst powerful beings on Oerth (GH). Thats a pretty huge connection right there. Elminster was in DDO, so he was IN Eberrron. Khelben's been to Greyhawk numerous times, as have Vanderghast and a host of others. The Chosen of Mystra have all been to Earth (two of them even took a young Filfaeril to Woodstock!) We have a Niven ghoul, and Kender (and there is an active gate to krynnin Anauroch). We've had a cross-over adventure with Ravenloft, several charatcers have gone to Ravenloft, and we've had a Splljammer novel cross into all these worlds. We've always had the Great Wheel - it just became Planescape in 2e. Even when we had our own, 'local cosmologies', the Great Wheel was still out there somewhere, sitting 'over' all the rest.

And considering that The Forgotten Realms might be the only known world with just as many (if not more) planer connections than the Outlands - including Sigil - I would say thinking of FR as the 'hub world' of the prime Material Plane isn't such a bad thing. At least not for us - think of how much worse it is for GH fans when they see us 'take their stuff'. You can even look at it from more than just a meta-gaming perspective; you can look at it as something that has occurred 'in setting'. The Spellplague changed a LOT, and not just in Realmspace. It was the epicenter of a multiversal shockwave. Now that its over, and things have 'gone back to normal', many folk - mortal and 'Godly' alike - have become aware of Troil (and especially Faerūn's) significance in the cosmic scheme of things.

There is a theory that Jack the Ripper left London, England and came to the United States. there was another brutal muderer who began his crime spree soon after the Ripper's crimes stopped. This, of course, is mostly an American theory - the Londoners don't want to give up their monster. Not for our (American) setting. But if we take a big step back, jack the ripper is an iconic 'bad guy'. Everyone knows about him. Sure he was a London, England baddie, but he was also an earth baddie, and YES, he could have moved elsewehre, and even got caught, under a different name, and none of us would know.

So would it have been better if they just renamed Acererak. Like, we all we know it was really Acererak, but they used a different name just because he is in a different setting? We know gods do that, but why would a mortal? Unless he's hiding from something, and Acererak doesn't seem the hiding type. Neither does Kyuss. They would try to 'grow' their cults wherever they could, and if they heard about all the power just lying around Realmspace waiting to be grabbed-up, then why not? We drew attention to ourselves with the Spellplague (well... really Cyric and Shar... and that ebil cabal of Wizards who doth dwelleth upon the coast ), and now we are paying for it.

You open the door, and its hard to close again. We KNOW the Far Realms always worked that way, even before it was named the Far Realms - beings from 'outside our universe' only notice us when we notice them. Thats just how it works. So if it works that way for beings that are that far removed from our reality, why wouldn't it for beings 'right next door'? The cat's out of the bag - we have Primordials that can be tapped like cosmic-level batteries - who isn't going to want a piece of that?

Hell, we even got the Rock of Bral. Of course everyone wants their cut.

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Originally posted by Markustay

What I would like to see is an adventure where the lich doesn't wear any clothes, and he just looks like an ordinary skeleton, and then he is hidden among a few other skeletons. Even have him holding a sword to fool adventurers. Then they burst in thinking they are just fighting skeletons, and one starts talking to them. One of those, "we ****ed up" moments.

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Hi again, fellow scribes. Ed has been busy busy busy, but he's also been reading the posts from this thread that I shuttle along to him, and has sent some Realmslore replies, to whit:


Hi, everybody. Markustay, liches wear clothes for a variety of reasons. Zandilar is correct when she says habit, GoCeraf is right when he says many lich garments are enchanted, and provide a way for liches to carry more "ready" magic around on their persons for use (particularly defensive), and Wooly is correct re. both clothing providing a means of carting useful stuff around and for reasons of vanity (partially concealing their wasted bodies). however, there's a "crowning" reason, too: clothing provides a psychological "anchor" for liches, rooted in human nature and in the writings of early lichnee-attainment procedures by long, long-ago mages, right down to Nulathoe (who believed that retaining clothing and footwear slowed the "inevitable decay" of the physical body of the lich). So a lot of them are afraid of falling apart faster, and believe that clothing, however ragged, rotten, or "abbreviated," somehow provides a binding for the body that slows its deterioration. That's alos why many liches LET clothing decay: although they may don new clothing OVER the old, rotting stuff, they seldom remove the garments they were wearing at attainment of lichdom, or donned right away after they "rose" as liches.
Remember, all: there are no trivial questions, only trivial answers. :}


So saith Ed. Who will have more to say soon, I'm thinking as I look at my inbox.
love to all,
THO

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Originally posted by Markustay

A few years back I asked Ed, "Why do liches bother to wear clothes?" And although he gave me a well thought-out answer, I still felt it wasn't a smart thing to do.

If I were a lich, not only would I walk around nakey all the time (with maybe a rusty sword in a scabbard at my side, although without hips, one has to wonder what keeps those things up), I would work on a spell that would make a normal undead's eyes glow - it could probably even be a cantrip. Then I could either learn actual ventriloquism (which might be hard without lips... but then again, so should speaking at all, eh?), or just learn the spell ventriloquism. Then I'd dress up a bunch of my plain ol' skeleton minions in rich-looking wizard's robes, maybe even give them staves (actual, non-magical quarterstaves, with maybe a faerie fire spell on them to make them glow), and then set them all about my dun... errr... lair.

How funny would that be? All the PCs would think the found a dungeon full of liches, when there was only one lich, and he just looked like a regular skeleton? I could torture a party for hours with a setup like that. In fact... that just might be the next adventure I write up. If your a guy like Larloch, you could do this with all your liches - make them look like normal skeletons, while you put magic mouth spells on the skeletons that just walk around going, "I am Larloch! Feel my wrath!"

I just picture your players running around like in one of those Scooby Doo episodes (running in one door, running out another, etc).

Just picture the real Larloch sitting back in some hidden chamber, watching the whole thing on his Crystal Ball, eating popcorn (and the popcorn falling out of his ribcage).

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