Faerie and the Long Earth

There are nigh-infinite iterations of the world, spread out across the multiverse like pearls sewn into lace. Not all of them are real, though.

Reality and Unreality
'Realness' is a property of the universe, like time or matter. Some things are real (like dragons), some are unreal (like illusions or gremlins), and most things fall somewhere in the middle (humans are about 80% real).

Unreal things can have all the other properties, such as mass, inertia, shape, although frequently they are lacking one or more of those things (Real things must have ALL the properties of Realness, while Unreal things are less fettered). But they are unstable, they flicker, warp, and dissolve. Few unreal things last more than a day, more often they pop as soon as they would undergo a change, since there is nothing to anchor their existence through such an experience.

Every time you flip a coin, turn left instead of right, you create another iteration of the universe where the other outcome occurred. But none of those are real. There is only finite energy, finite information to 'render' and maintain all of the unused versions of a path. All around the central causality, the world we all experience, there are soap-bubble like fragments of probability; jam-packed and nearly solid near the centre, and then spreading out into misty shards as you get into less plausible 'what-ifs'. The Material Worlds hurtle through non-existence, pulling the possible into being, dragging the improbable in their wake like smoke, before discarding the impossible back into the void.

But all those little scraps of unreality have to go somewhere.

Overmorrow & Ereyester
You can walk out into the shoals and sandbars of realness, wander through the might-bes and might-have-beens. Soothsaying techniques use this to a limited extent, looking out across this archipelago by flattening out a map sketched in guts or bones or runes or cards. But with the right twist of magic, you can step out of This Place, and into one of the side corridors. You can even go there physically, unlike the purely psychological landscape of the Dreaming. You might not even notice when you step over the border.

The near places are very similar to your own. You can see what might have happened if you'd made a different choice. You can peek into the room ahead of you, to see what lurks there. You can bring a little bit of that timeline back with you, with the right magic, for a little. As you get further away, specific iterations get harder to find. The bubble-realities further out start to warp and get weird, merge into each other and dissolve.

If you go far enough, by the right roads, you might step off the islands and into another kingdom. The land of Overmorrow lies in the future, east of the sun. Ereyester lies in the past, west of the moon. These are lands apart, gathered up from the fragments of cast off timelines, like the shell of a caddisfly nymph

Over the eons, peoples have settled these timelost realms, fleeing into unreality when their own worlds fell into shadow. These are the Elves, Gnomes, and other Fey folk- as well as the Raksha, the true fae, who are children of Unreality itself, and the destroyed world they fled the nonexistent one.

Not all realms have peoples wise enough to know the Ways, hidden behind mirrors and across streams, and not all who can find the Ways survive their wanderings. But of those who do, many make the journey across the Long Earth, and find their way to the realms of Annwn.

The Abyss
Throughout the eons, the legions of demons, voracious monsters who gnaw on the fabric of reality, have boiled out of their dimensions and destroyed world after world. Scholars believe there were once thousands, perhaps millions, but now there are only five- and of those, two are unreality-scoured wastelands. Perhaps there are more, but they are lost in the mists.

The Abyss, once crafted as a prison, constantly grows by the hunger of these monsters, pushing ever outward, chipping at the roof of hell.



The Long Earth
Between the five known Material worlds lies a path. A twisting and changing chain, but one that can
be walked by those with the right skill. Called the Green by some, for all of these mayfly worlds have never seen the axe or the sickle. While the worlds come and go, the trees seem to have a wisdom and a Reality all of their own, persisting between iterations, growing strong alongside the path the runs through the Great Forest between worlds. It is along these ways that the elves first walked, when they made their way to Annwn.

the Dreaming
There is only one Dreaming. All the little realities connect to it. There might be a million, a billion iterations of you, but you only ever have one dream. Why do you think it sometimes seems like, when you dream, your memories of your waking life seem to belong to somebody else?

Alignment Languages Redux

I like alignment languages.

There, I said it. At least, I like the idea of them. The concept of a fundamental, cosmic language, writ on the souls of mortals and into the very fabric of the universe? Sign me up!

One of my favourite elements I noticed in a recent watch-through of Fellowship of the Ring is how they dont translate the black speech. They just kinda intone sinister sounding things and leave it at that. Now, being the huge nerd that I am, I sometimes have an idea of the gist of what they are saying, but it's still mysterious as fuck.






I wrote in this post about using the idea of a 'Common' language as a kind of magic tongue. But let's expand on this.

Abati is 'Neutral' with a capital 'N'- that is, it's a 'natural' language, in the sense of natural philosophy. It springs up everywhere, like norse runes, just lying around in the patterns of sticks on the ground, in the flight of birds, in the way the river carves the landscape. It's inscribed on every atom of the universe, like the ten commandments on a slab of stone. There are many different varieties, based on the biology and culture of the interpreter (because that's what speakers essentially are- they're speaking a language that already existed). The 'elemental languages' Terran, Ignan, Aquan, and Auran are non-human forms of this language.
                          How to describe it spoken: to non-speakers, it sounds familiar, like maybe you've heard it every day of your life and just can't quite remember. It feels like if you just concentrated hard enough, you could figure it out- and in fact, sufficiently 'mystically attuned' characters might be able to make a concentration or meditation-type check to grasp a few key words or the gist of a sentence. However, it takes a lifetime to unravel the full language, and there's always more to learn.
                        Because of this, and because of the language's universal nature, many speakers develop inflections, vocabularies, and whole dialects of the language, which reflect their own nature and being. Most of the time, this is just an accent, but in it's extreme form this gives rise to Alignment Languages.

   
Cosmic good and evil: imagine if the question of whether you were a good person wasn't simply a measure of ethics. If the nature of a person was stamped indelibly on a person's soul, for anyone with wise enough eyes to read. Where, in extreme cases, not only the persons past actions, but their future ones, figure into this universal evaluation.

This is kind of like the anti lovecraft ...but only kinda. At a certain point, whatever is making this decision is so far removed from human experience, you have to wonder if it's version of evil really meaningfully relates to any human priority or understanding at all. It's not optimizing for 'good' or 'justice' it's optimizing for something humans aren't capable of understanding. Unlike lovecraft, where the universe fundamentally doesn't care about humans, where we're just too small, in this formulation the universe cares hugely - but not necessarily in a way humans would find 'meaningful' because 'meaning' is a human hobby

SMBC 

But, humans being humans, I'm sure such a force would still massively influence culture, religion, and understanding of morality. After all, it might not be meaningful, but it's testable.

The Way of Nine Swords: the Church absolutely believes in alignment, but there's is a more old-school view. There are but three alignments: Law, Neutrality, and Chaos. The 'heresy of the Nine Swords' is a grave slip into sin in the eyes of the church. The nine swords philosophers contend that there are nine alignments, each as perilous to mortals as a sword. Like a sword, a person's alignment can be studied and mastered, but such a path is a burden, like the burden of a warrior, and not to be taken up or turned aside from lightly. The Church condemns this as obfuscating acts of iniquity: what the Nine Swords monks call 'Chaotic Good' is simply someone slipping away from the true path of morality, their soul tainted by chaos (but perhaps not permanently- the Church is very adept at conversions)

What do the Elves think? Non-humans don't have much truck for all of this. Elves see themselves as above all this rigmarole, although they ALSO see themselves as intrinsically Good (in whatever manner is most fashionable these days in the courts of the Fey). Dwarves insist there are five alignments, although they refuse to elaborate more on what that means. Elves care more about Beauty vs Ugliness (and elf characters should have an alignment based on such), and Dwarves care about things like Work, Honour, and Tradition. Other beings have likewise varying preoccupations. Most human-like beings do mostly understand what humans are going on about when it comes to morals, ethics, good and evil, etc, they just think we're a little obsessed with it, in the same way Elves are kind of overly preoccupied with Beauty. And just as there are humans who don't 'get' art (a failing no elf has ever suffered from), there are elves who don't 'get' morality.


There should be a lot of Alignment Languages
More than there are alignments, by a long shot. Make room for culturally specific variations. It always bugged me that vanilla D&D has Sylvan and Druidic and Elven all as separate languages. Not anymore!

Druidic is a language that is attempting to get rid of language. Based on Shalk, a language that sings in the blood of those born with it, it uses Abati loan words to convey as much meaning in as few words as possible, especially avoiding nouns, and avoiding names almost completely. Part of the language is one of signs, both gestural, in the lynx-like shrug of the shoulders, and physical, in the acorn tucked in the crook of a pine tree, left as a sign to another speaker of the nonlanguage. Much of the language is comprised of periods of silence.

Sylvan is the alignment language of the Fey. When the elves were exiled and fled into the Long Earth, they found many similar exiles there: gnomes, sprites, and nature spirits such as dryads, who call the Green Lands their home. Tuathan is the non-alignment language spoken by Eladrin today, Elvish is for Elves, Bolgish is for Firbolg (the cousins of the Eladrin), etc.

And then there should be other languages: one for Paladins, Thieves Cant for those CN types. Sounds like there's some material here for another post

Training Rules for Downtime

Credits go to goblin punch, ten foot polemic, necropraxis, and many others, for providing the basis for these rules

Players kept asking about training so I had to bang something out really quick so we'd ask have something to reference

Ok so here goes, training rules - draft 1

These all require a ‘Haven Turn.’

Training Score: Sometimes, the training rules will tell you to ‘roll training.’ When you do this, gain one training point, then roll a d20. If you roll equal or under your training score, you succeed! Take the thing. If you roll over, too bad, but you keep the training points.
If you have a trainer, you can add their stat (usually Wisdom or Intelligence) to your training score, before you roll. The trainer bonus isn’t cumulative, and it doesn’t stick around if the trainer isn’t available next time you roll.
Training points are flexible. If you start training at punching goats, but then realize before you’re done that punching ninjas is better, that’s fine. If you switch from training at punching to training at magicking, tho, you’ll have to start over from scratch. Also, you can only have one pool of training points going at a time.

Ability testing: Sometimes, the training rules will tell you to ‘roll dex’ or ‘roll intelligence’ or some other ability score. When you do this, roll a d20, and if the result is equal to or lower than that ability score, you succeed! Take the thing. If not, too bad, you get nothing.


Here are some basic applications of the training action:

Get a Rando ability: For if you just want a cool thing, but you’re not fussed which thing. All the random advancement tables can be found here, there’s a lot of them and you don’t get to read through them first. Roll the primary ability for the class you’re trying to gain an ability for. You can only have one of these per HD that you have. Please keep track of this.

Get a feat: 5e feats are too powerful, but luckily they’re broken up into little pieces, so you can get them one at a time. Roll training. You can still get feats at the regular level increments.

Increase an ability score: Roll training and roll OVER the ability you’re trying to level (the better you get, the harder it is to progress further). I might change this if it seems too strong, or make them temporary boosts, but I’m also planning on including more stat-drain type effects, so it might balance out <3

Gain a skill/tool: Roll training.

Saving throws: For each of these, you have to roll training, plus a specific ability score assigned to each save.

• Death – roll wisdom
• Doom – roll charisma
• Destruction – roll strength
• Poison – roll constitution
• Law – roll wisdom
• Chaos – roll charisma

Weapon Mastery: To do this you need to have a certain number of kills with the weapon. At 10, 30, and 100 kills, you can train to get another special ability. Roll the stat for that weapon. Example special abilities can be found here.

Spellcraft: Creating a new spell requires that you first write out the spell, then roll (your spellcasting ability). Longer, more involved spell creation may actually be a Project.

Starting Gear - first four

In the 5e game I run, replacement characters etc start at 5th level. The median party level is probably around 8 or 10, so that's a significant bump down, but it's also at the point where the Backgrounds in the Player's Handbook don't always cut it. Plus, and this is the real headache, character creation takes way too long. Stuff like this 'retroactive backstory' table speed things along, but not enough.

I'm almost tempted to make people start at level one, but I know I'd have a  mutiny on my hands (perfectly justifiable at this point in the campaign)

So instead, I want to make 'Level 5' as much like 'Level 1' as possible. This will include beefed up backgrounds, semi-randomized starting gear and magic items, and set spell lists for wizards and their ilk- so you're a 5th level wizard, well I can just hand you a spell list, I guess that was on the curriculum. And you can tweak it from there

Not all of this is binding of course, customization is encouraged, but this way you don't have to hem and haw over stuff you don't care about (you can keep your valuable hemming and hawing to stuff you really do care about!), and anyway, 5th-level characters need some place in the world, otherwise how did they get to 5th level? That's the added advantage, it gives a chance to embed context and world building into the character creation process


Here are the first four- I'm aiming for at least eight or twelve, and Backgrounds to go with them, but I'm writing kinda slow at the moment so I figure I better just get these out there for starters


Legionnaire's Pack
depending on your standing with the army, you might have kinda sorta 'stolen' these items when you were discharged. Or maybe you were gifted them in honor of your excellent service! Probably stolen, tho.

• Armour of the Legion- slightly mechanized armour, AC 16, grants advantage on Athletics checks (also disadvantage on swimming, because of the encumbrance)
• Legionaire's Helm, provides reverse-telepathy (others can send messages to you, you can block them out if you choose)
• Magetouched sword - minor enchantment, counts as magic but that's about it. Immune to most damage, especially acid and fire. Appears to be made of a strange grey ceramic material. Has a rune near the crossgaurd that you can command to glow, as a candle. 
• Jump Boots- 4 charges, return in an hour. Spend 1 charge to cast jump.

Tower Mage 
used by the official, kinda stuffy charter mages

• Beautiful robes that denote your school and rank. Warded to give you a +1 to AC and to all saving throws.
• A brass-tipped staff, which functions as a spell focus, and lets you know fireball and can cast it once per day without using a spell slot.
• A belt with several raven and owl feathers and strings of beads hung from it, used as impromptu foci for spells. 
• A pouch filled with little bundles of rocks, when thrown creates a cloud of incense smoke, most wizards use this to obscure escape. 1d4 depletion die.
• The Charter of the Arcane, a book of fussy magical rules that you're supposed to memorize.

Adept of Zulin

priests and particularly religious people

• Small blue pet snake. Likes to live in your sleeves or sit on top of your head, which you probably keep shaved for this purpose.
•  Incense of dream-binding: can bind any spirit into a dream, provided the dreamer stays asleep. A dreamer must be properly trained to a degree appropriate for the power of the spirit, and several properly trained dreamers can share responsibilities.
• Staff of Holding- Enchanted to count as magic and cold iron. Can switch between +2 attack and +2 defence as a bonus action. Weilder knows hold person and can cast it 1/day without using a spell slot. Also works like a bag of holding, but can only hold light or negligible items (items appear and disappear from weilder's hand, when they're holding the staff)
• Prayer Beads (roll three times, can have duplicates): 1-Purify Food and Drink; 2- Calm Emotions; 3- Detect Evil and Good; 4- Gentle Repose; 5- Zone of Truth; 6- Sanctuary. Spells can be cast from the beads as a bonus action, once cast they can't be used again until the adept prays over them at the next dawn.

Azure Pirate

There are many scoundrels in the world, but you are one of the most feared

• Gold earring- worth 2 gp, but you won't sell it because it's supposed to pay for your funeral or disability retirement.
• Eyepatch with an eye design embroidered into it-prevents you from being blinded by light effects, and lets you see in dim light as if it were brightly lit
• Cutlass of sky-blue metal, can be commanded mentally to float in water, slightly corrosive so kept in a ceramic sheath, has 4 charges and can expend a charge on a hit to 'tag' a target with acid, dealing 2d4 damage every turn for a minute, or until washed off by alcohol or seawater.
• Feather Token (roll 3 times, keeping duplicates): 1- Control Weather (Fog); 2- Call Wind; 3- Shark; 4- Wings; 5- Phoenix Down; 6- Rogue Wave; 7- Feather Fall; 8- Sympathy