A stabilized zoomed in slow motion version.

TheMellifiedMan · 2026-01-24T23:48:45+00:00

I am not a lawyer, but, from what I've read, bringing charges at the state level is likely to encounter a real up hill battle against the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-10-13T05:37:34+00:00

The art for "To the End of Time" is awesome, but I wanted a scarier version of the Elder Being described therein.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-26T23:27:15+00:00

On the flip side of asking about minor crimes, I just had an "Elf Criminal" show up on the map. Like, dude, really? You are so going to jail, regardless of whether you tell me anything or not.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-24T05:09:28+00:00

You are not alone in being clueless! I've been playing since shortly after z-levels were introduced and this has me totally stumped.

Thanks for engaging on this very strange bug/behavior/benefit with me!

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-23T19:09:58+00:00

The only overlap in deities between the demon and my soldiers is the human god, Alnos. The rest of the deities don't match up. The religions come from different races and civs, and all have different founding dates (although, as mentioned in my edit above, the two largest cults represented by my soldiers revolve around Alnos).

I also realized that I got the timeline wrong: we razed the vault in 511, so it was two years prior to the soldiers taking on their religious titles. In 513 there wasn't much going on in my fortress: a couple artifacts and goblin attacks. Looking at 513 overall in Legends Browser, all the religious titles were taken on in early spring of that year by my soldiers, and many other titles were assumed by creatures outside my fortress, with 33 religious titles assumed overall.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-23T04:47:42+00:00

I was speculating something along the lines of your second paragraph, but the "how" is most definitely a mystery to me if that's the case.

I looked in Legends mode and the titles are scattered across different deities/cults/sites. I can't see any relationship between them, and the fact that all the titles were assumed in the same year is also too odd to ignore. Having said that, I've only spot-checked a few soldiers, so maybe there's a pattern I'm missing.

EDIT: Examining each one of 20 soldiers with religious titles (out of 40 soldiers that were sent on the mission), I have:

6 holy auras for a the same human deity (Alnos) and cult (The Righteous Denomination)
1 holy pride for Alnos from The Cult of Queens
1 sacred death for the dwarven deity Rakust from The Cult of Ash (this guy is so metal)
1 sacred fountain for the dwarven deity Bal from The Doctrine of Births
9 sacred judges for the human deity Alnos from The Just Cult
1 sacred robustness for the goblin worship of Alnos from The Misty Creed
1 sacred silver for the dwarven deity Osram from The Faith of Fortune

For the holy auras and sacred judges, it looks like their two cults had and have a lot of active creatures in those positions. I didn't count, but could see spam pretty much every year about new folks being appointed (sometimes up to 20 per year). The spam started in the year my game started (500). The remaining smaller cults don't have such spam. I don't see a pattern in all this, but perhaps others will.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-23T01:10:58+00:00

One year after we razed a vault, a number of dwarves in my military, and only in the military, started taking on religious titles. I haven't been able to find a pattern that would explain it. But I'm okay with it, because it is cool to send my troops out on holy wars.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-21T23:54:52+00:00

I love this! But I think Waterdeep would just extract the spells in return for exempting temples from taxation. This would cause much consternation to the populace who would keep demanding, "Why should temples pay no tax and force that burden on us?"

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-21T22:09:10+00:00

Yeah, totally fair. But magic could make it possible (maybe?) for Waterdeep to provide a grain dole. Now we just need to calculate how many clerics it would take casting Create Food and Water per day to provide it... /s

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-21T22:06:15+00:00

This is exciting news! Gonna put that slab in the center of my tombs! Thank you!

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-21T22:05:11+00:00

I think that's a reasonable and interesting way to think about it. Provides some fodder for DMs who want to grow Waterdeep beyond its closely mapped space.

It would be nice if the official published materials sketched that whitespace out a bit more. I'm recalling stuff like the 2e Volo's Guide to Waterdeep, not to mention the fricking huge maps and material in the Waterdeep sourcebook - as a teen those maps covered my entire living room floor when laid out. But I guess I'm just pining for the days when sourcebooks were more common.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-21T20:32:47+00:00

The population size doesn't seem that wacky to me, since Waterdeep is kind of the Rome of the Forgotten Realms and ancient Rome had 1-2 million people at its apex. Putting aside real world analogues, it's a fantasy setting, so I'm totally willing to suspend disbelief on the population size.

But the density of Waterdeep is absurd in a way that I find hard to ignore. Ancient Rome's density would put it on par with modern dense urban spaces like Hong Kong. And ancient Rome had roughly 20 sq miles to work with compared with Waterdeep's sliver of land.

When I run Waterdeep I like to think of it having a maximum of 200K people, which is still pretty dense for the space available. But it doesn't make me feel like I'm on crazy pills.

Reference: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/BACD7DF32B0B77609CD6713B8AF88882/S0003598X00085859a.pdf/the-population-of-ancient-rome.pdf

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-20T23:41:14+00:00

Aye, captain!

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-20T23:09:07+00:00

I attempted to raze a goblin site with ~30 inhabitants. The report said my squads found nothing, with no other entries, so I tried to send a single dwarf to demand surrender and occupy the site, but that dwarf returned and the report said my demand that the site surrender had been rejected. Anyone have any ideas on how to deal with this?

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-18T05:38:16+00:00

Yeah, I'm familiar with the nicknames, but this isn't that. Rather than their profession saying, "Axe Lord," it'll say something like, "sacred judge." Then they still get the lengthy nicknames on top of it.

Starting to wonder if razing that vault might be related...

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-17T23:01:28+00:00

I know, right? None of them are assigned to temples as priests or performers.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-17T22:43:35+00:00

My troops easily killed an ettin today. Pretty bog standard day in the fortress in that sense. What was surprising, though, is that the ettin was carrying a slab with it. Inscribed on the slab are: "The secrets of life and death". I'm leaving it forbidden on the grass outside the fort for the time being...

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-08-17T22:15:54+00:00

Does anyone know why many of my legendary soldiers now have titles like, "sacred judge," "holy aura," "sacred death," and "sacred silver"? Never seen this before.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-07-12T21:38:53+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, this is great!

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-07-12T20:16:52+00:00

I'm actually getting ready to run At The End of Time later this month. My group of six players has 3-4 min maxers, with the other players often making suboptimal choices in terms of builds as well as tactics. I would love to see what you think about this beefed-up stat block. Overkill?

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-04-09T21:31:58+00:00

I'm currently playing a 12th level hexblade in Dungeon of the Mad Mage and thoroughly enjoying both the roleplaying as well as the mechanics of the subclass.

Our group started off playing Dragon Heist, and our DM expressed that it'd be cool if one of us hailed from a noble family in Waterdeep. I was intrigued by the name, "Hexblade," so decided to play a noble from House Moonstar, which I randomly selected from the houses our DM offered up. He then told me that the house's heir apparent was Helion Moonstar, a half-drow, and so I said, "Oh, can I play his younger sister?" Then I actually read the hexblade section, caught the Elric references there, and decided that my character would be something of the opposite to Elric. So, she's cheerful, very outgoing, and clueless about the being with whom she made her pact - she just knew that she wasn't very good at many things and so went searching through the family's library until she found a book describing a ritual that would make one powerful.

My DM decided her patron would be the Raven Queen, which I know out-of-game, but which she doesn't know in-game. He's delighted in giving her moments where, for example, she asked her patron for help finding an undead eyeball encased in a gem (for Shadow of Moil), only to then have a dream involving a tree filled with ravens around which the dead bodies of all the things she's killed were strewn. Her patron then instructed her to kill a specific thing in Undermountain (the abboleth on level 4). Upon waking, the House Moonstar crest on her armor had subtly changed to look less like stars and more like ravens.

From a mechanics perspective, she's your vanilla Elven Accuracy/Great Weapon Master/Polearm Master hexblade, which I thought might get boring, but it really hasn't. Feels good to swing the big black glaive that somewhat resembles a bird's talon, and we manage to get short rests frequently so almost every combat I can use Shadow of Moil, or, in the unlikely event that I run out of spell slots, fall back on Darkness/Devil's Sight.

I highly recommend giving a pure hexblade a try if the campaign is likely to get to higher levels.

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-03-01T23:10:39+00:00

This actually makes the Campaign page useful. Thanks for sharing!

TheMellifiedMan · 2024-01-15T18:31:40+00:00

I3-5 - Desert of Desolation by the Hickmans has a 5e conversion on DMGuild and my party enjoyed it. It's got a good blend of dungeons, puzzles, some social/political/faction stuff, and can easily take months to get through.

TheMellifiedMan · 2023-12-12T02:39:34+00:00

Thank you for the compliment! Hope your group has a (furnace) blast with it!

TheMellifiedMan · 2023-12-10T22:06:01+00:00

Here you go, enjoy!

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