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Lore24 May 9: The White Gates of Enki

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Legends tell of an old city, long claimed by the deserts . In ages long past, this city was the crown jewel of the world, its walls tall, and its sorcerers mighty. According to these legends, when the favorite wife of its Sorcerer-King, Enki, died in childbirth, he became obsessed with getting her back. Now, for the meager men of today, such a feat is impossible, but people have grown feeble since the times of their ancestors, and indeed, Enki’s magic was so powerful, that he reclaimed his wife from the Underworld . The gods, however were not happy with this violation of the order they set up at the dawn of time. They sent ferocious beasts, one after the other, up from the depths of the Underworld to reclaim their prize, and to drag Enki down as well. But the city held. Monster after monster fell before they could breach the walls, killed by the magic of Enki. Enki, on the other hand was worried. He knew he couldn’t hold out forever, so he made a daring plan. He traveled to the mout
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Lore24 May 6: The Pale Things

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The Pale things are wretched creatures. Once humanoid, now their bodies are warped to animalistic, new forms. Some start to look like insects, some transform into something closer to a reptile, or even something unlike any other being. They stalk the forgotten places of the world, preying on the lost and foolish who happen upon them. They drain their victims of their blood, their white flesh flushing gem-like with red. Then they return to their long vigil, for they cannot die to starvation, old age, or illness, only to blade or magic. Many think they are a form of undead, brought back from the Underworld to feast upon the blood of the living. That is incorrect. The truth is, in fact the opposite: the Pale Things are beings of life stretching cancerously forever. For this reason they are difficult to kill, according to some they can live for minutes or even hours without a head. Where the Pale Things come from is a mystery. Most think it is a curse, bestowed by the gods for wanting e
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Lore24 May 5: Glass Deserts

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Glass deserts are, as the name suggests, deserts where the ever-shifting sands have frozen into crystalline glass. They are created by gods, sorcerers or other powerful beings fighting so fiercely the very sands of the desert melt. Several cities are also said to have been turned into glass deserts by divine punishment. People generally avoid these places, as nothing grows there, and the lingering aftereffects of such powerful magics can be dangerous. However some glass deserts still contain the ruins of the long-dead cities that were punished so long ago, their treasures presumably still there for the taking. Of course only the most foolhardy of adventurers would try to steal something from a place like that, but these days more and more people are forced to make foolhardy decisions if they want to avoid starvation.  Image by Cain Denney
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Lore24 May 4: Spellthieves

Spellthieves are small spirits that can take a variety of physical forms, thought they can also choose to be immaterial. Their most famous ability, the one they are named after, is to steal spells from any mortal who uses magic. The spells stolen this way simply vanish from the victim’s mind, leaving them unable to be cast. The amount of spells a given spellthief can hold varies from individual to individual, but is usually between three and twelve. The stolen spells return to their original owner at the next sunrise. Some mortals are able to make pacts with spellthieves, gaining the ability to cast the spells the spellthief has stolen. Each such spell can be cast once before it returns to its original owner, and the spellthief has to go and retrieve it once more if its master wants to cast the spell again. These mortals are commonly called spellthieves as well. Needless to say, these pacts are extremely illegal, and if one is found out to have made them, their punishment is usually
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Lore24 May 03: Giant Aardvarks

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Growing to the size of small cattle, giant aardvarks have a complicated relationship with people. Thankfully they are not very aggressive, but they will use their strong claws to defend themselves when threatened. On the other hand, due to their increased size, they must eat near constantly to avoid starvation, meaning they occasionally just straight up start destroying homes, farms and other buildings to get to the termites inside. This behavior has lead to them being declared a pest in most places, and in some places there is even a bounty on them. Giant aardvarks are actually quite intelligent, and some people have even managed to tame them, and teach them to perform tricks in exchange for food. Some rulers have experimented with domesticating giant aardvarks as either mounts or as a part of sapper units (a motivated giant aardvark can make a man-sized hole in a city wall in just a few hours), but these never really went anywhere, mostly because of the logistical nightmare that is
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Lore24 May 02: Memory Trap

The memory trap is an ingenious piece of magecraft. It looks like a small bronze box built around an approximately fist-sized lump of steel that is said to have fallen from the sky in a great fireball. If a dying person’s soul is bound to the box, it will retain the person’s memories, and if asked a question, it can answer in the dead person’s voice, saying what they would have said when alive. Countless sorcerers and mystics tried to understand exactly how the memory trap works, but to no avail. While it is common knowledge that souls slowly lose their memories after death , no-one has any idea where the memories go, or how one might affect them. The memory trap seems to have achieved just that, capturing the memories as they slip away from the soul using some unknown form of magic. This obviously both interests and frustrates the temples of the Underworld deities , with large bounties being offered for both the retrieval and the destruction of the memory trap by different temples.
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Lore24 Apr 30: Draconic Society

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Dragons being a mostly solitary species rarely came into contact with each other, save to mate or to fight. This of course meant that over time mortals with their increasingly complex and efficient societies were eventually able to overcome even the strongest dragons. Dragons, being an intelligent species saw what was happening, and were desperately searching for a way to avoid extinction. The solution ironically came from mortals as well. Originally developed for the convenience of Sorcerer-Kings, long-range communication magic in the form of crystal balls, sacred pools and the like were perfect for enabling meetings between dragons without triggering their instincts to tear each other apart. Thus the draconic society was born. Being so new, their society is barely more than a forum for them to share information, but still it has enabled dragons to somewhat anticipate and be better prepared for mortal incursions into their territories, and with more and more of those who refused to j
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