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2025 Jun 25: The Sword of Nim-Kippur

  Nim-Kippur was a Bronze Elf hero who lived a few hundred years ago. He founded the city of Nim-Artash, slew many monsters including the dragon named The Flying Pestilence, and the man-eating giant Martok. According to the priests in Nim-Artash, when he died, he was raised to dwell among the gods. The same priests claim that one of the swords in their care once belonged to this legendary hero. The sword in question is a nice, but not overly decorated one, made out of bronze with brass decorations along the crossguard and the hilt. It is made in a style that has fallen out of style in the last century, being somewhat shorter and thicker than most swords made today, but since it is maintained so well by the temple, it is hard to say its real age. Various myths of the surrounding lands ascribe magical powers to the sword, such as being able to cut anything, up to and including boulders, chariots, and even solid bars of copper. Another often mentioned ability in those legends is its...
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2025 Jun 24: The Flame of Khetesh

 In the lands of the Reptilians , in the city of Khetesh, there is a continual flame watched over by an order of clerics, which is said to have been going since the creation of the world. According to the clerics, it was lit by Hath-Ur , when she came down from the sky for a brief moment, and her heat lit a tarpit alight. After the tar was gone, the clerics kept feeding the holy flames and finally moved them to a temple built specifically to house it. While there is some debate about the authenticity of this account, it is undeniable that the Flame of Khetesh is not an ordinary flame. It burns brighter than any other fire of its size, and its color is more washed out than normal fire. There have been accounts of little pieces of the Flame being taken to dangerous quests of unparalleled importance, and reportedly no demons were able to come into the area lit by the Flame, and those that found themselves there, were immediately paralyzed with pain. There is also a report that describ...
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2025 Jun 23: Otters

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 According to the sage Ashtun of Nashat-Ippur, otters are among the Five Wise Animals and bear the gift of prophesy. While the latter is almost certainly an exaggeration, priests, sorcerers, and other wise men have used the image of otters as a shorthand for learning and wisdom for hundreds of years.  Otter bones have a strange magical affinity to magic involving the manipulation of the weather, and are often used in magic items, or as spellcasting foci when such an effect is required. Otters are also completely immune to lightning, and their hides can be made into lightning-proof tents, or cloaks that greatly reduce or straight-up nullify the effects of lightning-based magic on the wearer.   Davepape , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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2025 Jun 20: Oresians

 Oresians are strange, ethereal creatures that dance through a myriad worlds on rays of moonlight. Sometimes they misstep, and get trapped in our world. They don't tend to last long, given their physiology is ill-suited to a world with such rigid laws of physics, such caustic atmosphere, and such a sharp divide between dreams and reality. Still, they try their best to survive, and maybe on the night of the next full moon return to dancing across alien skies. But to do that, they need sustenance, and that can be a problem. They feed on dreams and aspirations, but unlike the more naturalized beings, they have no good way of extracting them from a person's skull, without opening it up and slurping down the brain. For a while they can subsist on animals, but the dreams of a goat or a rat can only go so far. Sooner or later they will try to take more sapient prey. They look like giant masses of tentacles with translucent, insect-like wings and large compound eyes. No two are exactly...
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2025 Jun 19: Em-Nitir, the Graceful Giver

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Em-Nitir is perhaps the oldest, and most graceful benefactor of mortals, as her first gift to them was wheat. She also taught them how to farm, and how to make bread. The demons upon hearing this captured and killed her, burying her underground. Thankfully one of the Underworld deities, Etim-Naqtar, fell in love with her, and agreed to restore her to life. So now she spends half of the year up in the world of the living to help grow crops, and half in the Underworld with her new husband. For this reason, she is also the messenger between the gods of the sky and the gods of the Underworld, and thus she is also the patron of messengers and travellers who walk uncertain roads. She also helps lost souls find their way to the Underworld when she makes her yearly voyage down there.  Her holy days are the various harvest festivals in autumn, when wheat is cut and collected. These vary in their precise timing from place to place, and there are a few pilgrimage routes set up, where the fai...
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2025 Jun 16: Woolly Hippos

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 Rather rare and elusive, the woolly hippos of the northern lands are just as ferocious as their southern cousins. They are slightly larger than normal hippos, and their fur can make them seem even bigger. Like otters, they have special glands on their skin that excrete an oily substance which makes their fur waterproof. This hippo-oil is sometimes used in perfumes, incenses and magical concoctions, so even though hunting these animals is rather dangerous, there is a lucrative market not just for their meat and fur, but other body-parts as well. Woolly hippos are less social than southern hippos, they usually live in groups of only up to around five members, most of the time a female and her children. This makes hunting them a bit easier, but finding them a bit harder. Old hunters will tell you that they used to be more common in their youths, and there may be something to that. Some Sorcerer-kings even tried using them as living weapons , but it seems even with magical help, getti...
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2025 Jun 15: Bands of Brothers

 Bands of Brothers is the name of a pair of magical leather wristbands. They are decorated with brass, and depict a ceremony in which two people cut their hands, mix their blood in a chalice, take and oath, then drink from the chalice. This is a representation of a common ceremony where two people declare each other blood-siblings, meaning they vow to treat each other like family. The ceremony itself is rather popular with the northern humans, and the eastern nomadic peoples, but almost every culture has a variation of it. When two people put on the Bands, their life becomes linked. If one is hurt, the other is also hurt. Additionally one may sacrifice some of their vital energies to heal the other (both need to consent to this). Once two people have put on the bands, they cannot be removed. Even if an arm is chopped off, the band will just appear on the other one. If both are missing, it moves to the legs, then to the neck. The bands may only be removed after one of the wearers di...
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