DMing Chemistry

  In almost every civilized place the name Nitir-Tan is a curse, only to be spat out with disgust or whisper fearfully inside, where it's more difficult for the god to hear. His home city of Amar-Itish (whose name had to be changed, and its temples re-sanctified after the full extent of his sin was discovered) holds a festival, where they ritually burn effigies of him. Any books written by him are burned, any tablets ground to dust. Any spells he helped to create are to be forgotten, and any mention of his name in the royal chronicles is erased. His followers, when found are tortured and killed. Yet people still follow his teachings, cast his spells, and read his writings. He had a certain way with words, and many still find his arguments persuasive. Those who follow him, refer to themselves as Tannites. During his life, Nitir-Tan copied and wrote many books, but the one that made him so reviled was called Man, and Divine. For this reason his followers are often called Mandies, tho...

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...

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...

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

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 ...

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...

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....

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...

Copperbugs, also known as bronzebane bugs, are curious little critters. Growing to about the size of an adult’s fist, the carapace of these beetles is made from the purest copper. While the smaller, younger ones may be able to fly, the adults are too heavy for their wings to actually lift them off the ground. In order to gain the copper necessary for building their carapaces, copperbugs eat raw copper, and copper alloys, neatly depositing any other metals and any impurities in small little piles. This obviously makes them very dangerous for anything made out of bronze, as a dozen or so copperbugs can and will eat render an entire suit of armor unusable in less than an hour. On the other hand, feeding them low quality copper, then harvesting their carapaces is a very cheap, reliable and easy, if quite time-consuming way of getting high quality copper. They can even be used to separate low quality bronze to its component parts, so that a better alloy may be made. Of course military ap...

Hoktar are strange magical beings with limited shapeshifting abilities. Normally they look like horses, but they are usually bigger than any normal horse, large enough that even a human could easily ride them. They usually come in striking colors, such as blood-red, sunset orange, or jet black. Unlike horses, however, hoktar are strictly carnivorous, and seem to prefer the meat of intelligent beings. Their usual hunting strategy is to pretend to be normal horses, then when the prospective rider gets too close, they transform into their true form, which is still quit horse-like, but features long, sharp fangs, powerful claws, and a jaw that can open to an almost 180 degree angle. Some hoktar like to hunt near bodies of water, where they can drown their victims, others are content to just tear them to shreds. While it is extremely difficult, it is possible to tame hoktar, and use them as mounts, though this is mostly relegated to myths about demigods, and the most heroic of mortals. ...

According to legend, long ago mortals were ruled by monster-headed giants. They are said to have been about six to seven meters tall, and have heads like that of an elephant or a tapir. In the old stories they are portrayed as cruel masters, who cared little for mortals, and viewed them as livestock, if that. It is said that each day they would take one of their slaves, and eat them. Thankfully they are no more. After much crying and praying and sacrificing what meager offerings mortals could get, the gods helped mortals overthrow them, and kill them to the last. At least that’s what the temples and the nobles say, and any half-crazed adventurers who comes back to civilization after months of being lost in the frontiers claiming to have seen a monster-headed giant hiding in the unexplored parts of the world, far from the reach of mortals, are quickly and quietly gotten rid of.   Image by Enrique Alcatena

While the word ‘dragon’ gets applied to many wildly different creatures, the ones most consider to be ‘true’ dragons, are an interesting bunch. They look neither wholly mammal nor reptile, scales and fur both covering their towering frames. While no two are exactly alike, and they can vary in their size, color, number of limbs, or abilities, they do have some things in common, which mark them as belonging to the same group. The first one is their aforementioned mixture of traits, the second is their batlike wings, which allow them to fly, unless they have grown too fat on their many victims. The third is their affinity to some kind of ruin. They spread this ruin around their lairs merely by existing, and they can focus it into a kind of breath weapon. For example a fire dragon’s domain would be permanently burnt out and it would be able to breath fire, while a poison dragon’s demesne would produce choking fumes, and the dragon itself would be able to breath poison strong enough to ki...

This small, ornate bracelet is made entirely out of blood-gold . It is made to resemble vines, and it has small leaf and thorn motifs on it. The bracelet is enchanted with a devastating spell. The wearer can call forth a mass of thorny vines that can reach to dozens of meters, and move as directed by the wearer. The vines can also drain the blood of their victims through the thorns (they are hollow, like injection needles). The most common way to use this ability is to entangle someone with the vines, then use the thorns to suck them dry. When allowed to drain blood, the vines will slowly turn more and more red the more blood they have drained. If the vines are cut, the blood will slowly drip out, like sap. The bracelet is currently in the possession of a demon named Ikhadi, who has been cursed to only be able to sustain himself by drinking blood. He values it very highly for obvious reasons, and will do anything to get it back, if he ever loses it.

The Flute Mountains lay to the west of the former Ippur Empire , and are sparsely inhabited by nomadic tribes. The mountains are home to a unique geological formation: mile-long tunnels crisscross the peaks, from small ones, whose diameter is barely a span, to ones so gigantic that ten men standing on each others’ shoulders wouldn’t be able to reach the ceiling. Some of these tunnels also end in strange chimney-like formations, not unlike the tubular corals that live in the seas. The mountains get their name from the otherworldly noises the wind makes when moving through the tubes. It is said that anyone who stays up for a whole night listening to it, inevitably goes mad. How the nomads manage to stay sane is anyone’s guess, but the most popular theory is that they stuff cotton in their ears before the night falls. The place is also popular with musicians, after the legendary piper Amal-Nur allegedly gained magical powers by deciphering the music of the mountains. It is held that th...

This small copper coin is so worn, that it can’t be determined who issued it or when. It has a strange magical property: when put into an empty purse or pocket, its owner can pull an unlimited amount coins from there. The coins are always of the smallest local legal tender, and they must be pulled out one by one. While it is possible to eventually gain a large sum of money using this item, it has a nasty habit of getting lost if its owner tries to live an extravagant lifestyle, almost as if the coin had a mind of its own, and didn’t approve of being misused. The coin is, of course a popular topic of myths and folktales, its creation variously attributed to the gods, spirits, a race of small subterranean humanoids, or an ancient sorcerer wishing to teach someone a lesson. It is currently held at the royal treasury of the Paired Kingdoms of the south. Apparently the coin doesn’t mind being owned by a rich individual, if it’s not actually being used.

The Scholars of the Wandering Forest are a loose group of mystics, priests, and sorcerers whose goal is to achieve a more systematic understanding of magic. They have already made huge contributions to the field of enchanting, compiling a list of “common” enchantments that any magic user can learn, regardless of how they obtained their power. While there are still enchantments that are so specialized that only those with specific divine connections can use them, giant leaps have been made in making the production of self-sailing ships and enchanted war-chariots much easier. Their current aim is to find a way for sorcerers to find a way to transcribe the most common spells, so that magic users can learn them without relying on the innate power of their bloodline, or divine help. This is obviously very destabilizing to the status quo, and consequently the Scholars are treated as outlaws almost everywhere. Some lesser nobles might shelter a few of them for a little while, hoping to ga...

Just taking a quick glace at the Illustrious Decatron shows them to be one of the metal men , but they emphatically denies this. The fact that they can use the languages of mortals (and several languages not spoken by mortals) is quite curious, as is their strange form. Unlike most metal men, whose heads look like crude replicas of humanoid faces, the illustrious Decatron has a strange, tubular head which can project images on the side the face should be. Their frame stands almost two meters tall, but is quite wiry, and it looks like a normal adult could easily knock them over. They dress in strange garments, as if from another time and place entirely. Unlike the “lesser automata” as they call them, the Illustrious Decatron doesn’t spend their existence holed up in one place, but they travel the world looking for something they can’t describe (or at least not in any terms normal mortals would understand). Many claimed to have destroyed them, but the illustrious Decatron seemingly k...

When people blessed with great magical powers die, their family takes great care to prevent their body being stolen. They are however, not always entirely successful. Bits and pieces of powerful sorcerers fetch quite a good price on the black market, and those learned in the magical arts can coax from but a single bone, a shadow of the powers its owner once commanded. Fingers are the easiest to cut off steal from a corpse, so any body-parts of dead sorcerers are referred to as the fingers of the blessed in colloquial speech. Most sorcerers own at least a few of these “fingers”, as they are the easiest way for them to access powers they were not born with themselves. Of course careful study of the fingers is required, as the methods of calling forth those powers are unique to each individual the finger belonged to. These methods can be figured out, but that required knowing the time of the past owner’s birth and death, as well as an intimate knowledge of astrology. Attempting the wro...

Occasionally one can happen upon gigantic humanoid remains when wandering the world. These corpses, dead for untold thousands of years, lean against mountains, lay in riverbeds with only a hand poking out, or curled up, become mountains themselves. For most the cause of death is impossible to determine, but at least some seem to have met a violent end. These corpses are colloquially known as the corpses of titans. They are usually left alone by people living in the area, as something that gigantic must hold some power even in death and whatever power remains is sure to not look kindly upon those who would disturb its rest. The real value such a corpse has, actually lays under it. Whatever minerals lay under the corpse often become tainted with its blood, becoming blood red in the process. Metals made from such ores retain a bit of this red coloring, and accept and retain enchantment much better than the common variant of the metal does. In order to commemorate their victory against s...

Originally constructed to fight against monsters with petrifying gazes, this round shield is coated with silver, forming a reflective surface when polished properly. Unlike most shields, it is mostly undecorated, although there is a small relief depicting the gods defeating and disassembling Gar . This shield features in multiple myths around the world, though how it got from one hero to another is usually missing from the narrative. It is currently believed to be housed in the royal armory of Morgonda .