"Can you separate the art from the artist?" - When did people start saying this? 2013? 2014?
The answer is of course: yes. Art can be separated from its artist sure as flesh can be separated from its bones - Time will manage both.
Can you separate a ripple from its river? More interesting question. The spirit passes through the artist and becomes immanent as art. The artist disappears, the art dissolves - the spirit is etched on the foundation of the world to come. Good system, no notes.
I of course am no artist - I am a vulture. The breath of the spirit is my updraft. I strip the flesh from carrion and crap above people's heads.
I eat, and I crap! Can anything grow from these leavings?:
Starting off strong, very sultry gnome - I prefer a more whimsical gnome, but if there are gno gnome defenders then I am dead.
"Crocmen may advance to level 8. At level 8 they may build and stock their own Dungeon, attracting up to 8HD worth of creatures, who may be replaced if they are killed. For every 100K XP after reaching level 8 they may attract an additional 8HD worth of creatures." - good, very good...
The Gentleman - orthogo-Thiefish - Fascinates, Performs, Pretends, Blends, rather than skulking in shadows...
"At level 10, [Shyguys] may assemble an Engine, a land-going vessel which can house a deceptively large number of Shyguys (up to 100), has AC -3/21, can absorb 10+1 HD of damage, and does damage equal to the Shyguy General's hit points. For every million points of XP a Shyguy acquires beyond level 10" - good like the Crocman's capstone ability - like these alternatives to getting a castle or what have you as the transition to domain play
Seen quite a few familiar classes... there should be a familiar class where the familiar is the one granting the magic, like a devil thing... random table for bumbling magician who has sold their soul to you... you can't really use your magic on your own so you need to cajole your magician into doing it for you...
The Evolutionist - silly class - turns small animals into warriors or weapons - feels like a Power Rangers villain
Neat take on level drain, making it more like sanity, particularly sanity in Fallout: Frost - worse at being a person, better at being a violent psychopath, until at "name level" of level drain you become a full-blown monster
There is a post on "Amber" which no longer exists and makes understanding other posts which link to it harder to understand
"When a Time Lord is reduced to 0HP make a save vs. Death Ray. On a successful save you Regenerate. Roll d100; if you roll above your Constitution, you survive and take on a new form. You keep your XP and levels but re-roll all ability scores and re-roll your HP. You may do this 12 times. Everyone at the table except you gets to describe some new affectation of dress or personality quirk by which you must now abide."
The household spirit, the domovoi, is the reason that vampires can't just barge into homes - their unclean spirits are barred
A voice not like anyone else's in the blogosphere, often confabulatory, mournful & horrific.
Gnomes as racist caricatures that elves and dwarves have for each other brought to life, and then of caricatures of gnomes brought to life again
The Dreamself - the character your character becomes while asleep
Name levels are fun, gotta do more name levels
A "race" or "race-as-class" or somesuch, but the "race" is that you are played by a celebrity - Jason Statham for example
Factions formed based on who blames who for some recent & unnatural event
Too many angels answering everyone's prayers, thing go very poorly
"Diseases of the Tiger Men
1- Butcher Blue- Your skin begins to fester and discolor, and you become something of a pussy magnet for botflies, which are the Worst Thing. 2- Spit- You forget what water is. You try to drink everything on the off chance it's water. Your body thinks you are waterlogged, and you will drool and pee yourself to death. 3- Ropeburn- Long, delicate, knotty tumors filllllled with nerve endings start growing quickly from all over your body, wearing any armor hurts you a lot and you take an extra HP of damage per day, cumulative, when you're hurt, because these things are real bleeders. 4- Tunnelvision- You gain darkvision but lose all other vision, and can no longer see well enough to read without drastic assistance and tools. 5- Pearling- Your bones increase to twice their size, many fusing in the process. Your teeth become one calcified plate, a beak. Your skin develops a hard crust, and moving enough to break that crust makes you bleed. Your blood hardens. Within days you are in a tomb of yourself, waiting to die. 6- Alabaster Fever- Magical tourettes, save vs magic or randomly cast one of your spells."
Gelatinous cubes are only cube-shaped within dungeon architecture - outside towering omnipresent invisible devouring
Here is the full text of the post "The Face of Edsu Voi", because letting it just disappear would be criminal:
In the beginning there was nothing.
Outside
the nothing were gods, the beings who made all things possible by their
existence. That is, the act of their existence, the moment of their
existence: they were, and the universe therefore was. Cause not
separated from effect. Each all powerful yet always there is a first
among equals.
Think
back to the great idea you had, never acted on, then one day it's being
advertised on late night television. Inside a year it's in every store.
Inside three every home in the country has it in their cabinets. Think
about the time you forgot the name of that one guy from your favorite
movie. It's your favorite ever, how could you forget his name? You know
you can remember it if they just give you the chance. They don't, and
now you look like a schmuck.
In
the beginning there was nothing. You were the ultimate unrealized
potential. You dwelt within the halls in yourself for time out of
meaning, meaning out of time. The riddle of your existence was the
riddle of the universe. Knowing it is knowing the shape of the perfect
world. You are so close. When you know the world will begin, the perfect
world, you are so close and...
Think back to the time you were just about to create the universe and then some other fucker jumped in and ruined it.
We
were so close to the perfect world of Edsu Voi. Edsu Voi was so close
to the perfection of being Edsu Voi perfected. Now reality was locked
into a course of inevitable entropy and destruction, and she along with
it. This did not deter Edsu Voi, who resolved even before the fires
settled to save the universe, to save all life forever, to save herself
and her brother gods, and to make everything as right as it was meant to
be.
She
would do this by aiding entropy, speeding extinction, beckoning
disaster...subtly, always; not causing bedlam or outright killing
kingdoms but stalling and thwarting the efforts of those who would hold
back the unavoidable decay of all. Everything would be terrible
eventually, which meant that, later, everything would be okay. There
would be nothing then, and by that point Edsu Voi would have worked out
the answer to her riddle. Every person would be the perfect person they
should have been, every sunset more glorious than the last, forever.
Some
people did not appreciate her hand in things and avenged their lieges
and loved ones upon Edsu Voi. Avalanches she set in motion thousands of
years ago are still toppling over but she has been dead above ground for
a century, the light not gone from her eyes, still breathing her last
rattle while her breast and throat are impaled on a mountain range.
Still thinking about that perfect world...
You
could do what she could not: use her knowledge, her power, her vision,
but with an eye of mercy and acceptance for the world that is. You could
make everyone safe. You could also hook your fingers into the strings
woven for epochs, connected to puppets not to be born for an age, and
with a great heave pull everything apart, dragging the world into ash
and cold.
First you have to get inside her head. The gods are not big on figurative language so pack some rope and a pickaxe.
The Corner of Her Eye
Edsu
Voi saw things we could not. The shape of things that should have been.
Everything that could ever be for everything that ever was. That is how
she saw her killers: not as the desperate or the lucky but as demigods
(no, gods themselves), perfect agents of order and power. They killed
her with the knowledge of what they might have been. Few who dare strike
against the gods ever survive this hubris, and the killers of Edsu Voi
are no different...
The
eye is like a mirror. The eye is like a camera. The eye is like neither
of these. The eye is an aperture through which light plays shapes,
light which may burn forever. The eyes of gods are a thing above, as is
the light of the gods, and so the shadows burned forever there are
deeper darks. Some burn there still.
Burning
light and searing god-thought: to see and know a thing for Edsu Voi was
to see all possibilities. The degenerate, the nonviable, the diseased
and mutated, the wracked and monstrous. Her murderers were able to
destroy Edsu Voi because she saw herself in them. She was avenged after
her killers saw themselves in her. A reflection out of shape, warped
backwards glint, in the corner of her eye.
The Skin of Her Teeth
The
gods were born ready to eat. They were born with their senses to
experience the world they made (and by which they were made). They were
born with a flesh form to interact with that world. They were born with
bones to support that form. The gods were also born with teeth and teeth
are only there to kill or destroy with. Teeth are a core principle of
the universe, as much as gravity or fire.
You
are a thing without a mind which has existed since before minds in the
conventional sense. You are an elemental form of the universe which has
done one thing for time immaterial. Now you aren't.
This won't do at all. Still, one must change with the times.
From
your flesh is born a new life, the only life Edsu Voi truly has left in
her. All they are is Eat. They are indiscriminate. They have turned on
the body of Edsu Voi herself but they are glad of any new meat, such as
the things which show up to naturally degrade and decay the body of Edsu
Voi...or those who come to plunder her.
These
Eat grow in strange directions, little monsters budding off of them.
They, like all in Edsu Voi, are slowly fading from this world. Rotting.
They fight this as they have done everything since time started up: Eat.
Your flesh is appreciated but it's not why they're chasing you. It's
not what they need, what fills them with blood and skin...after a
fashion.
They
smell your bones. They want to drink them. They vampires of calcium,
they stalagmite lopers, the hunger of all space, the skin of her teeth.
The Back of Her Mind
The
gods hold grudges better than most because the gods remember
everything. This was doubly true for Edsu Voi, she who hates all
creation for its own good from beyond her open grave. Every world have
the watched scoured of life and thought. One another have they all
glimpsed being born, in the fullness of their glory and worship and
power, and at the precipice of nothingness. It should not need
explaining, in the arteries of Edsu Voi, that the gods themselves can
die. There are kinds of death, though. Some gods die while they are
still alive. Some gods die when they are utterly forgotten by the rest
of the universe.
Gods remember everything.
The
fatty gray within Edsu Voi's skull writhes angrily and urgently. It
pulses with a sense of No. No, Do Not Forget Us. The mind of a god is
final temple and consecrated crypt of a hundred smaller gods, weaker
gods, those cast out by their believers or lost to cataclysm. The
forcibly forgotten have refuge in the temple of the eternals only, but
the inkling of their memory will not last without the considered
nostalgia of infinity. No, No Do Not Forget Us.
Each
great deed they died before working, every miracle or smiting that
never happened, the fear and love they never had, the memories of the
gods long for all these things. Here in the mental temple they will be
just ravenous for anyone who can know them, understand them, listen to
them. The thought of them will lodge itself in your mind, riding you out
into the world. For those willing to be their arm and pledge their
service? For them, these one mighty will pledge themselves with equal
fervor. They long for life and scream for worships, silently, trapped in
thunder and thought at the back of her mind.
The Bridge of Her Nose
You
are not the first to see the opportunity afforded by the corpse of Edsu
Voi. A great expedition was mounted for the cost of a castle, quartered
here on the face of Edsu Voi. The walls of this camp were made thick
against the dangers inherent in life on a god. When forces from within
and without, horrible creatures and others seeking power or fortune,
laid siege to this modest keep a surprising thing happened: those within
the fortress survived. The dangers atop the mountains, on the face of
Edsu Voi, conspired so to frustrate one another. Slowly the weapons and
camps meant to crumble this camp have instead been bolted on at crude
angles as inexpert expansions.
Many
have come to her seeking sanctuary since. They have been turned away.
Some have come hoping to sack her, reap the rewards of other people's
labor. They have been denied. A very few mad persons for reasons lost to
the distant kingdoms whence they hail have scaled the mountains and
dared the climb up Edsu Voi to offer their body and soul in defense of
this strange bastion. They have been welcomed in with open arms.
Within
this keep they are drilling down. They will harvest the wisdom and
might of Edsu Voi from within their unassailable shell, the execution of
their mad grand scheme made possible by the protection of the men who
hold the bridge of her nose.
The Ringing in Her Ears
The
creating of all for all time was a cacophonous affair, most people
agree. They don't know the half of it. The divine sound of the gods
scream singing themselves into being, the worlds wrapped around them
like a pearl, shakes inside the walls of every tree, rock, fire, wind.
This is figurative, but the gods are not. In every supplication, each
sacrifice, all calamity or music, they hear echoes of the chime of
creation.
Some
surmise that it is the sound of themselves being created which sustains
the gods, confers their divinity. This is not quite true but it is true
enough to go looking.
In
the bedlam of the world-making reverberations which still thrum in the
deep reaches of her skull pilgrims to Edsu Voi revel in a limited
godhood. They hear in the whispers of the cosmos the recipes of all
making. The miracles they can perform, the wonders they can achieve!
They are gods and they are prisoners, for when they venture outward and
the echo in her bones fades so does the magic of their divinity.
Miracles undone, starved for the power their skin knew moments ago, near
deaf to all other sensation, they scramble back desperately to reclaim
the music of the spheres.
They are a small and cramped pantheon there. Junkies for sacred transcendence. Addicts to the ringing in her ears.
The Question On Her Lips
The
easiest means of entry to Edsu Voi is through her great mouth, which is
haunted by the literal spirit of the Perfect Edsu Voi, the dying breath
of Edsu Voi hanging still in the air. The Herself she once intended to
raise can now never be unless formed in the shape of space by another;
she is almost nonexistent, but is glimpsed and known by few, will be
glimpsed and known by many more, and so in this way endures.
She
will challenge any who come, forbidding them her power. She has
knowledge of each person she meets, as well as everything which has
happened or will happen to her corpse. This is rumored. If the intruders
ignore her, she will plainly make this known. She trades a question for
a question: she will ask you something and your answer buys you an
answer from her. What drives you? What do you seek within? In what
manner shall you prevail? This is a saccharine trap. Save to ignore
temptation and walk away. Answer, forfeiting your chance at escape, and
forfeit some aspect of yourself. Your courage drives you; now you have
lost it. You seek raw power; the power of Edsu Voi engulfs you. You
shall use powerful magics of the Archdeacon's Fleshbook; there is no
more power in your mind, and the beings within may use these magics
against you.
Everything
you give of yourself is taken by the potential of Edsu Voi. As it grows
in strength so does the actuality of Edsu Voi. Feed her ghost long
enough and the flesh will know its old life
and so in this way endures through the question on her lips.
The Pain In Her Neck
Doldr
Drumn. Doldr Dreng. Doldr Ddi. Crown peaks of the Doldr mountain range,
the Angry Sisters of local folklore, boundary of living rock between
Irium and Belene. The faces of these mountains were alive with small
villages despite the dangers of lurking near the summit. It is upon
these Angry Sisters that Edsu Voi is impaled.
Parties
from both Irium and Belene have been dispatched to claim the secrets of
Edsu Voi or merely mine her god flesh. Some of these parties even
returned with value to show for their efforts. Both city-states lay
claim to ownership of a goddess. The hill people whose homes were
destroyed when Edsu Voi was destroyed have become desperate and
scavenging refugees barred from both sides. On these, Edsu Voi takes
pity, and they roam within her looking for food, shelter, or solace.
They are tired of despair and as hungry as feral dogs.
Within
the mountain the golden blood of the Doldr churns and reaches, angrily,
up through the crust of the world, out through the skin of a god.
Seeking and burning, these scorching shapes pull parts of her down into
the heart of the world for fuel, powering the battle within the mountain
against the strain of a goddess' weight.
Wolves take refuge in caverns made of meat.
Those
who do not respect the dangers inherent in desecrating a god are likely
doomed to a speedy demise. Those who think themselves the only persons
clever or desperate enough to do so find themselves in a world of pain
in her neck.
The Tip of Her Tongue
The
promise of Edsu Voi is a word of perfect creation. She has been waiting
to speak it for almost the life of the universe. With this power one
can become their perfect self, or unmake the world by remaking it from
underneath: everything that is and was still stands save for a few
certain changes designed by the speaker. Perhaps the unmaking of
something is enough of a prize to be won.
To
find the raw energy of creation within Edsu Voi and to not only locate
but understand the perfect schema she devised would be a feat
unparalleled in our time. Will the power fall to some despot if you do
not act? Will some lucky idiot waste the fortunes of the gods on avarice
or caprice? Even if one did not desire the fruits of godly power to
stand idly by while those unscrupulous and unworthy claimed it to the
ruin of nations would be an apex sin.
Someone
can rewrite the world. Who would you permit to speak the secret Edsu
Voi has kept for ages, the almost-universe on the tip of her tongue?
There is so much going on here and it is all operating on another level 0.o...
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