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Athreeren
Learned Scribe
139 Posts |
 Posted - 30 Oct 2023 : 12:23:08
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Ed Greenwood’s Youtube channel has a new format: Storytime with Ed Greenwood. The first story is called “Madness of the Executioner”. As often with Ed’s stories, it is a convoluted tangle of plots and counterplots (reading the Knights of Myth Drannor trilogy, I cannot imagine how it must have been like to play such a story without seeing the scenes where the enemies are plotting in the shadows or without being able to check the wiki. Everything that happened to the players must have felt completely random). But even after untangling this story and trying to understand what every character thought they knew about what was happening, I am left with quite a few questions.
- When Vrandrulphyn talks of “perfect recipes for cooking and eating illithid tadpoles”, is this literal? The Youtube vignette highlights this aspect of eating illithid tadpoles, but running an inn to trick customers into becoming illithids by ingestion does not seem like the most direct method. Of course, by “recipe”, Qurphelra could mean the way she is tampering with the tadpoles so the resulting illithids would be (in appearance) loyal to her, but then, why would she go through the trouble of perfecting seven different recipes?
- Why would the illithids entrust a human with tadpoles? Why not just ask Vrandrulphyn to provide them with slaves, and transform them at their base? Especially when Xoontral is becoming suspicious of Vrandrulphyn, yet does not change their agreement in any way… The only other explanation I can come up with is that Athkatla is far from any illithid settlements, and Xoontral is actually delivering pre-infected subjects to be kept safe until ceromorphosis is complete. In that case, I am wondering where Qurphelra is finding the tadpoles to tamper with: her office is described as a kitchen rather than a surgery room. And if she is starting with a human and a tadpole already, I am not sure why she would go through the trouble of getting humans to eat the tadpoles…
- Why is Qurphelra’s kitchen just one door away from a room her enemies visit regularly? Worse, why would Vrandrulphyn go visit her when one of them is just in the jailcell next door and could come back at any minute (in fact, had Vrandrulphyn taken a few seconds more, Xoontral would have seen the door)
- How can Vrandrulphyn get away with lying to an illithid? I know that in 5E, high level rogues can be very resistant to psychic attacks, but if that is his case, why would Xoontral want to work with one of the few humans he cannot control?
- Vrandrulphyn presents himself as Qurphelra’s thrall, although it is not clear whether he is serious. Nevertheless, I am surprised that an alhoon would encourage one of her thralls (or at least servants) to be curious and free-thinking. More than that, she does not seem to see anything wrong with giving him a pendant that would protect him from her own powers (although it is clear that this is not all that the pendant would do).
- What part of the operation requires Manshoon’s funding?
- I am guessing that the “High One” at the end is Azuth. Illithid being a race that despise magic, and Qurphelra being a magic user who develops new magic and who encourages curiosity in her disciples, I do not understand why the god would ultimately attempt to be upsetting her plans.
The worldbuilding on the channel has been great so far, and I like that I often end up with more questions than answers. I just wish they were representative of further mysteries rather than utter confusion.
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Storytime With Ed Greenwood
