The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Blood Magic – Dragon Empire Prep Session 10
Fri, 31 Jan 2025
Mike prepares the next session of his Tales of the Valiant Dragon Empire campaign. Visit the Sly Flourish Blog Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Podcast Support Sly Flourish on Patreon Buy Sly Flourish Books Midgard Worldbook Tales of the Valiant Obsidian for TTRPGs
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish, here with another episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep. In this weekly show, I go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday roleplaying game.
In this case, I am running a Tales of the Valiant game from Kobold Press set in the world of Midgard, also by Kobold Press, called Scourge of the Dragon Empire, set in the Marathi region of Midgard on the eastern sides. This show, like all of the work of Sly Flourish, is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
Patrons get access to all kinds of awesome tips, tricks, tools, adventures, supplements, adds access to our dedicated Discord server. But most of all, they help me put on shows like this. To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your outstanding support. If you get nothing else from today's show, I want to offer up a few tips. These tips actually came from me doing the prep.
I recorded them at the end of the show, but I'm putting them at the beginning of the show so that right up front, you can get some valuable tips to help you run your games. This came from the prep that I just did. One, write down where your game ended. If you're going to take any notes at all, for prepping your game. The notes that you want to write down are where your game ended.
Probably that's that to me, at least for me personally, is the most important note that I can jot down after a game has occurred. Where did it end? There are other little notes that are important like NPC names, but I think number one is where did your game end? And it saved me in this prep. Tip two, your notes are only for you.
You don't have to have clean, super nice notes where everything is spelled out as though you're going to print those in Dragon Magazine or Dungeon Magazine or whatever, or that you're going to hand them to somebody else to run. These notes are for you. You're running your own game. You only need to write down the stuff that helps you. If you already remember it, you don't need to write it down.
If you want an abbreviated sentence, write it down. Abbreviations, write it down. Acronyms, write it down. You don't have to write down anything that isn't useful for you. So don't worry about your notes being pretty. Make them serve you. Write your page numbers down.
If you're using physical books, and I recommend using physical books, I love using physical books, in your notes, write down page numbers of monsters, spells, other sorts of things that you want to look up during the game. Write down the page number, and it makes it far more easy for you to reference that material when you're running your game. Carry along NPCs.
So a lot of times I'll have an NPC that's actually like a spirit inside of an item that is carried by one of the characters. I love doing this because A, that creature doesn't really affect combat. It's not another thing that you have to deal with. It's just a voice in the head of one of the characters, but you get to use it to reveal secrets and clues.
You can use it to kind of, you know, manipulate the character in interesting ways. If it's a sinister NPC, there's lots of great ways. The possessed item is a fantastic NPC and I'm doing it in this campaign like I do it in all my campaigns. you can choose which random encounter tables you want to roll on or even roll on multiple random encounter tables.
So a lot of random encounter tables are by environment, but a lot of times those environments are sort of fuzzy. So if you're in a ruined city, you could roll on the city one or you could roll on the badlands one or maybe even the desert one. And you might find encounters that make sense even though the context isn't exactly right.
So don't be afraid to look across multiple random tables for like random encounters, even if it doesn't necessarily fit the environment that you're going for. And the last tip is look for the markdown versions of the Dread Thing Anomicon by Raging Swan. In this prep, I actually found some creepy tomes in the Necromancer's Vault section of the Dread Thing Anomicon.
And I did this by looking at the markdown version of Dread Thing Anomicon, which is available on DriveThruRPG. If you already own it on DriveThruRPG, you can go back there and download it. And you can get the markdown versions and drop that right into Obsidian. And then you have in your Obsidian notes these cool tables and things that you can look up in order to help you with your prep.
Now, on with the show. It has been two weeks since our last game, I think. Yeah, we ran our last game online, and then I was off a week because I was at PAGE, the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo, this past weekend. So I'm out of, not out of sorts, but like, I've got to remember what happened in our game.
Luckily, I did a little bit, tiny little bit of homework where I just looked at like, hey, what are my notes? So one of my tips is to, at the right when your campaign is over, get into your notes wherever you keep your notes. This is the wrong campaign. That's the Black Cathedral. We went Dragon Empire.
In your notes, for example, back on the 12th, which is two weeks ago, I put in a little game note section and I only put one bullet in. I just put in one bullet. But the bullet was enough to remind me, ah, that's where the game ended. And I think that is probably the most critical for me. I don't know if this is true for everybody.
I haven't yet done like a big poll and survey on like what's the most I should. What's the most critical thing that you want to write in your notes after a game has ended? But for me, the most critical node, particularly because I run about three different games a week, is where did the game end? What happened last? Because that tells me where to go next.
And the answer is they were attacked by shadows in the hallway of the third floor of the Pit of Unending Thirst. So right in my game notes, I have my little game notes, and I have one line that just says, attacked by the shadows in the hallway of the third floor of the Pit of Unending Thirst. We ran with Owlbear Rodeo last week. Let me pull up my Albert Rodeo here and my Dragon Empire game.
I forgot how to use Albert Rodeo. It'd been so long since I've really used it. And here is the Pit of Unending Thirst in Albert Rodeo. And they had, look, I've even got like the little section of where they were and what happened. So they were making their way down the hall. They learned that there was forbidden libraries down here.
And I wanted to, one of the things we're going to prep today is what kind of books could they find in this forbidden library? Like what kind of things? And obviously spell scrolls and stuff like that are probably really useful. So I want to prep some of those things. So it gives me some idea about the kinds of things that I want to prep when we're running our game. This is important to remember.
It's something I think the new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide does a good job of showing when they show their adventure, when they show those like really abbreviated adventure styles in there. I think they're too abbreviated. for me anyway, I think they are like that. That's probably not enough for me to run a game or not, not enough for me to feel comfortable running a game.
But one thing it shows you is that you get to write it for you. You don't have to write pages and pages of stuff as though you're going to hand all your notes off to someone else. You only need the notes you need. If you don't need it, you don't need it. It doesn't matter if other people like it or not, right? If you decide, you know, I have no problem remembering NPC names, great.
You don't need to write them down, right? I forget NPC names a lot. So NPC names are probably the second most important thing that I could write in my notes. But your notes are only for you. Your prep notes are only for you. The notes you capture after a game are only for you. And you only need to do the ones that you need. You don't have to do it for anyone else.
You're not giving your notes to anyone else. This isn't a contest of who writes the best
clear as publisher worthy notes at the end of their game session just jot your own notes down that's the lazy tip so so i know where the game is going to begin i have my new session planning template right here i have and my strong start is they came down the hallway and shadows started peeling away from the wall and attacked i'm going to do it present tense Shadows.
Let's take a look at our monster vault here. And we'll just try to search. Shadow. That's going to take forever. Let's go to monsters A to Z. Shadow. There we go. Shadow. Look at that guy. Cool. Shadows are CR one half. Our characters, if we're going to go to Monsters... So the characters, I think, are still third level.
But by the time they leave the Pit of Unending Thirst, I think I'm going to have them reach fourth level. Once they get back out into daylight, they're going to reach fourth level. But currently, they're third level. And I think we have five third-level characters. So five times three is 15. You divide that by four, because they are below fifth level, and you have four.
So the Lazy Encounter benchmark is four. What that means is... I can probably, and it's really dependent on the monsters and stuff like that, but four, if I have more than four CRs worth of monsters, that's when things really get to be dangerous. At this low level, it could be even worse than that. Shadows, we're going to put in here, and shadows are on page 292. That's another tip.
I'll put that right page numbers in your game notes.
in your prep notes i give that one a lot but i'm gonna give it again anytime like i hit a thing where i like that's a valuable piece of information i'm gonna reiterate it and that way i can do it at the beginning of the video if you're watching this video on youtube you already heard it but that's because i put at the beginning of the video so we have shadows so how many shadows probably one per character right that's probably i don't even need to write that down because i know it i know that it'd be that many i don't have to do it so shadows attack who are the shadows though
Right. And you know what? So so who operates out of here? I think the shadows could be priests. So this was a the original. Let's take a look at our session from last time. The original temple, the original the Lord. Let's see. There's there's a lot of different gods that are operating down in here. Mott. Yeah. So, oh yeah. And we'll get into some other things that happened.
They did release and now have. So Thoth Hermes. So I think this was originally a shrine to Thoth Hermes and the followers of Thoth Hermes then began to worship the Vardazain. you know, who they referred to as the Lord of Unending Thirst. And that's, you know, they then were using this dark energy to try to save the city of Kukatarma from the dragons. And they reached out to lots of other areas.
So, you know, what we're going to do is we're going to grab all these secrets and we're going to move those secrets into my current notes. And then we'll get rid of ones that we know we don't need. Lord of Unending Thirst is worshipped by Kandaharians who sought the Lord's connection to blood and hunger as a source for magical power to fight the Dragon Empire.
Purple Worm with tentacle, tongues, and skulls as the symbol. Kandaharians bound a devil named Mott named Katel. They did retrieve Katel, who is now bound to one of the characters. Katel is very much a chained devil, remnant, reminiscence of Hellraiser. And Katel actually is a follower of Mott, the god of eternal death. So that happened. I think we're going to keep this secret in there.
We'll keep the thing about Mott because we're all going to have to remember this stuff. Ibelin is heavily engaged in the current holdings of Krypton, Krypton Rumela, taken from the Seven Cities. What is that? Okay, this was some politics about the Dragon Empire itself. That they, that Ibelin, the Ibelin, the illustrious, heavily engaged. Parsis the Morses. This is good.
This shows, this gives us some background of the dragons. We're going to keep that because that didn't happen. The Puzzle Box of Cattel. Notice how I spelled Cattel differently. Can open a red portal to the ruins of Nurian or Syaz. Of Nuria, right? So this is valuable. These are good secrets.
Because it also talks about the ruins of Nerderen, human city that resisted the arrival of the dragons at the first. So this is, yeah. Thoth Hermes is the god of knowledge, learning, the wise creator. Yeah. And I think, is it Thoth Hermes? The ziggurat of Thoth Hermes is the next place they're going to go to after that because the gateway, so this one is a secret, right?
And they will have learned it from their new goblin friend. The red portal, the gateway, opening... up into a red portal exists in the depths, hidden in the depths of the ziggurat of Thoth Hermes. So there is a ziggurat of Thoth Hermes in Kukatarma, the city that they're in, and that's the next place they're going to go. We have a map for that and everything like that.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
We got 10 secrets. So we don't need any more secrets. And all of these are relevant. NPCs, we have a few. I'm jumping around. And it's okay to jump around, I think. So a couple of NPCs. Sister Athelia is an important. So these are both NPCs worth reinforcing once again. One of which is not anywhere nearby, but is like, I made a villain. We made up a new villain.
But then we have another NPC, which is now my favorite thing. Here's another tip for you. One of my favorite tips, the carry along possessed NPC, NPC possessed item is the GM's friend. So I love, and almost every campaign that I run includes some kind of item like a sword or a weapon, something that the characters like and want that is possessed by some kind of entity. It could be a good entity.
A lot of times it's a shady entity. And I like the shady ones, and the players know it's a shady one, because then it can bounce back and forth. It never just takes over a character. On occasion, I will have characters roll charisma checks to see if it influences them even more so than just by talk. But it's far more fun to have the... the item convince the player to use it in certain ways.
One problem I have is I have a player who absolutely loves these items and always does what they say because he is very much, the player is very much a move the story forward in a fun way sort of player, you know, and we're always careful that he doesn't like ruin the game by going off in some crazy direction, but he's always, he was the first one to open a door, first one to grab an item that's dangerous, all that kind of stuff.
He does it all the time. So we have Katel, who is a follower, chain devil follower of Mott, held in the puzzle cube. That is our other NPC. I'm going to make sure that all these NPCs are in my NPC list. I'm pretty sure they are. Yeah, I already have Fame Werewatcher in here. I already have, do I have Sister Ethelia in here? I don't see Sister Ethelia in here. So that's good.
And I don't have Katel in here yet. So that works. So I think that those NPCs are pretty good right now. Any other NPCs that we want to drop in here? We had, I'd like to find them. It's a nice thing about keeping like old notes. So we have Vincent Blackspell, who might be interesting to drop in. This is a dwarven cult fanatic of the Sanguine Path. I think we might drop that in here.
Who else do we have? Wow, I had some of these guys planned for a while. A Tekros Glorybrite, a Priest of Hewn, I want to introduce. And Brother Cleo Cloudsoother. So I have two Priests of Hewn. I think that works. I think we're good there. I'm getting, like, complicated in my NPCs. Like, I'm already going to forget the... I should write them in my notes.
So, like, who was the... Back when they killed one of the... Yeah, Eris Dawngaze, right, is now dead. So I need to put Eris into my NPC notes because the fact that he's killed is going to matter in future. Whoops. It's going to come up because the agents of the Dragon Empire are going to want to know what happened to Eris. And that's going to come around, right?
Like there's repercussions for the things that they've done. So that's worth doing. So I've got those NPCs. I think we're probably good there. I want to, one thing that I commonly forget to do is that focus on the characters. The characters are known as the Drake park regulators. That is the name they have chosen. That's because they sell Drake park water at the four 40 fingers.
So to gout, gout, Denzia is not there. And I have to see if I can find his name. Then our new, our new character. And who is that? Rowan is not there. The other four are there, and my friend, the on-call player, is there. And I'm hoping I put him in the characters. It does not look like I did. So I really need to, in my notes, write down my friend's character, who I think he's a ranger.
So I know a little bit, but I forget his name and I'm going to have to put in my notes and I'm going to, I got to remember to type it into my notes. Joe's Ranger, whose name I forget, but he is a Ranger and he certainly hates the Dragon Empire. I think he had a family that was wiped out by the Dragon Empire.
So we have Emovin and is the rogue who knows about the slyness of one of the three Morza, which one? Parsis. Cal lost her vineyard too. And the person that she lost her vineyard to was this new villain, Bera's Silverhound, the dragon born to Marley. Oh no, Fame's Wormwatcher was, who's an Romanli governor who overtook it. All right.
Mateo is a mechanist who knows of the strange ways of red portals, that they're construct. Tolstoy wants to wreck the empire, and now is bound to Catel. So the interesting thing is that the Catel is a follower of Mott, and And Mott, one of Mott's thing is called the high potentiate of dragon slayers. What does potentate mean? A ruler who is unconstrained by law.
I think it would be fun to give a name. And I know he'll do it immediately. But like, basically they can, they can follow this order of Mott, I guess, dragon slayer of Mott bound to Cattell who wants to into a dragon slayer of Mott. That could be kind of fun, right? Let's see. Cattell recruits Tolstoy. The only, like, this is such an easy one. He will absolutely do it.
So, you know, I think the idea is like you can become a dragon slayer of mods. I will serve. I will serve you with my resources and you will have you will have mod at your back. But in return, we need your undying, unending loyalty. If you ever this will be the fun part because my friend loves to switch sides. If you ever convert, then you will become our enemy, right? You know, will you do so?
And doing so, and I think the chain, so he has this puzzle box and the puzzle box has these like chains that sort of like go from the puzzle box through his arm and enable him to cast. And I think the idea, I think the idea is like the chains are growing inside of his body, right? And like binding, binding to his physical form and he'll just be shredded, right?
If he violates it, they will just shred him. I think that could be fun. That's right out of Hellraiser. I think that's good. so yeah so let's see we have the shadows attack somewhere in there could be cattell recruits tolstoy we'll see what else what other scenes oh so investigating returning to the surface level four plus rest i'm probably campfire tales
So one of the questions like that, so the Huon, the priests of Huon, I wonder if they're kind of sinister, right? I don't think they're like villains, you know, but I think they can't be trusted, right? So I think like a secret is like the priests of Huon cannot be trusted, right?
And I think that sister Athelia knows this and she's like, they'll, they'll be friends and they're not going to like, you know, they're not like the sanguine brotherhood who will, you know, try to suck all the blood out of your body, but their goal is not to use, to save the world. They're good.
They believe that they're like these elite people who they're above all of the stuff that's going on and they just study things, but really they're manipulating it for their own advantages too. I think that that could be kind of a fun, kind of a fun thing. And then to the ziggurat and the red portal. So that's kind of the next set of scenes. That's probably enough for this session.
I could probably drop an encounter. And I think, I don't remember his last time. So sometimes in here I have like my random tables of things.
that I that I created yeah so here's like other creatures that they might run into in the creatures that they might run into in the pit of unending thirst so skeletal guardians could be there great thirsters could be there lemurs we already did great oozes we did specters of former priests we did wounded explorers of black venom that could be kind of interesting and
Guardian animated armors with bird heads. We're going to move those over to the other. I think that those will work better in the other ziggurat. Blood shadows of the sanguine path. So we really only have like a few potential creatures that they might face here. Maybe we might add a fourth just to make it a nice D4 roll. But those, when we look at the map and we think about like what's left.
Oh, and there's definitely like a black pudding that could be in here. I bet black puddings are really nasty, but there's only one of them. CR4. Ooh, that's going to be hard. That's on page 62. What other things might they run into in the pit of unending thirst? I mean, ghouls, right? Like, you know, ghoul priests of unending thirst. Now a, so Gray Thirsters, I have a separate stat block for.
Wounded Explorers, I don't need. Skeletal Guardians, we will go to the skeletal, the skeleton section. Skeletons. And the skeletons are 295. Gray Thirsters, I have a different thing. Priests. So we'll go to ghouls. Where's my ghoul? There is Ghoul. Ghouls are on 181. So that looks pretty good. So I got some encounters there. I would like to roll up an encounter along the way.
Something that they will find as they travel from... And actually, I'm going to skip the Fantastic Locations section just to make my notes trimmer. And instead, I'm going to throw it up in the scenes. But on the way, we're going to have an encounter. And I'm going to use my Game Master's Guide here. And we're going to look for random encounters. So let's see. Random encounter tables.
Something I will note the Dungeon Master's Guide does not have. And we're going to use my dice roller. Dice Roller. My Dice Roller is a CC0 product. You can use it at will. It's available on slyflourish.com. slyflourish.com slash dice. And I don't have my dice handy, so we're going to use this. So let's see. It's not Arctic Encounters. So one trick. Here's a trick.
You can use different random encounter tables than just one. That doesn't make any sense. So for example, like the Badlands area might be fitting for this area. I don't know if it's really a Badlands place. These are broken by tier. They are still tier one. So we'll drop a D12. I got 10.
Unusually cunning giant poisonous snake bites its victim on their necks, prompting panicked rumors of vampiric depredations. Successful DC 11 in check reveals the predator targets lone victims. perhaps leading one of the PCs. So we could have like a vampiric giant poisonous snake. How big is a giant poisonous snake? Let's go to our monster vault here. And I think that would be under animals.
Snake giant poisonous is a CR2. Oh, no, that's a CR1 fourth. So we could have... Instead of vampiric, do I want a blood-sucking... Let's see. And these are on page... Giant Poisonous Snake is on page 355. At A. And now we're going to go to my random generator. And we are going to roll a monument. We are going to do Southlands for our campaign setting. And we are going to hit it.
And we get a Flooded Crystalline Columns of Mott. I already have Mott. Holy Haunted Gravestone of Nincash, Mother of Beer, Goddess of Merriment. Eh, this one's not bad. Even though we've already done a Mott thing. We can kind of reinforce. Flooded Crystalline, I think we're gonna change. So I think we're gonna have at chained bloody columns of Mott. And I think this is like a ritual.
circle right and this is where katel can tell tolstoy i can help you fight the dragon empire but you have to give something to us and here's where you have to get it but meanwhile they'll still have to you know the blood-sucking giant poisonous snakes that are there will get in the way so that's kind of a fun little encounter along the way and then they the ziggurat of the thoth hermes will be the next place so i feel like that's that's a good bunch of scenes this is a good deal of stuff ready to go
I got my secrets. I got my NPCs. I've got monsters. Wow, I'm feeling pretty good. So treasure, we're going to drop some treasure. Ah, this is where I need to spend a little bit of time coming up with interesting books. But we're going to roll some treasure up. I really wish... I'm going to have to do it sometime.
I want to try the Game Master's Guide, the Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide treasure system. But I really bounced off of it. The way they designed treasure in Tales of the Valiant is with this idea of treasure parcels. And you're supposed to give all of this stuff...
This is the parcel that you're supposed to get, which is three common magic items, two common magic armors, two common magic weapons, 1d4 first circle spell scrolls, 1d6 plus one common or uncommon magic ammunition, or one second level spell scroll, one potion of healing per PC. And I think I tried to make up a parcel generator.
And the idea is you give all of this stuff out across this level range. So you can almost like drop this in and then start checking the things off as they discover them, which I guess isn't terrible. What I kind of prefer is actually what the D&D 2024 Dungeon Masters Guide does, which is a per session random table. And it's probably the one that I'm going to go with. I can't remember.
Oh, let me show it. So this is like the treasure bundle section that's inside the Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide. And it's based on parcels or based on like a bundle. And the bundle is given out across the entire range of levels. So you give all of these things out across all of levels one, two and three. And the problem that I have with that is it's stateful.
I have to remember the stuff that I gave before and I have to remember the stuff that I'm going to give later. And I sort of build like a treasure parcel checkbox and then check things off. But the trick with that is like... Then I have to remember how much gold I gave out in each one and it all has to add up to 60, right? Or the same with the other ones.
Instead of having like a mixed parcel, I'm more likely to want to just check off a box. What I would prefer and what I probably am going to do is what I refer to as a stateless treasure parcel, which is a treasure parcel that makes sense for one session of the game. I either give it or I don't, because remember, you don't always have to give everything out all the time.
But I just kind of randomly roll some items up. And then those are the items that I can give out or give some of it out, depending on what makes sense. But I sort of have this like little list. And that's what I have in my treasure parcel generator. So I have this like lazy game master level one to four treasure hoard, which is a modification of...
mostly built off of the level up advanced 5e treasure hoard system, but also actually a little bit more like the 2014 treasure hoard system as well. And it always offers up a uncommon, like when you're doing one to four, it always offers up at least one uncommon magic item and one uncommon permanent magic item and one uncommon consumable magic item. So you'll see all of them does this, right?
Or they at least has the chance to do it. And, you know, like this is a good one. And then it drops a pile of treasure. And the treasure here, I think, is a little bit higher than they might get normally in a Tales of Valiant treasure parcel. But I don't think it matters. And the nice thing is I just grab it. So I roll it in my random generator.
The random generator is available to patrons of Sly Flourish. And I roll that random generator up, and then I drop it into my notes. And I've got my parcel. And I can now ignore this during the game. They could get it or not, depending on whether or not it makes sense for them to get treasure. I can give them some of it. I can give them all of it. And the next session, I roll a different set.
And if I want to, if there was a really good item from the last one, I can move it forward. If there's something I really like. I like the hat of disguise as an option. One little trick I have is because I'm using the A5E stuff, it doesn't necessarily mean that the items are in Tales of the Valiant, but most of them are. I'm pretty sure a Hat of Disguise is. Let's find out. We can be sure.
Yeah, Hat of Disguise is here, right? So it's inside, you know. Yeah, so this is a good one. Yeah, and yeah, as Alakokane says, it is a good item for a campaign like the one I'm running. So yeah, that's definitely one that I've got.
so i think that's good gobbinoid starch touch glove that casts hideous laughter once that's kind of fun spell scroll second level blur yeah that works clockwork bolt of cloth clockwork doesn't make any sense let's find another start i already have star touched a shadowy we'll do a shadowy bolt of cloth So that to me just works easier.
It's easier for me to like randomly throw that in and bang, I'm done. I don't have to like try to figure out what treasure I might've already given at these levels and what they need that's still left. I think I will throw a couple of healing potions. Can never go wrong by throwing a couple of healing potions into your loot. So that gives me the loot that I need.
The one other thing, though, that I need to add are books and books and special spells. I'm going to offer some special spells, unique spells that they picked up in the library because I know that they're heading to the library. So what I am going to do, there's a couple of sources I can use for this.
One is, and I have the Markdown version of this, is that in the, I can't remember if it's the Thinganomicon. Sort these by... Whoops. I have a bunch of Raging Swan books available in Markdown. And it lets me find some useful stuff. And I know that he had, like, a books. I can't remember which one it was under. Names, altars, wells, pits, doors, concealed doors, etc.
I don't see books anywhere in there. So it is not under dungeon dressing. It could be under... So Laranomicon are lairs. So Thingonomicon... And I think they have like a necromancer, yeah, necromancer's lair. And we have blasphemous tomes. This is what I was looking for. uh, liber mort, liber mortis, liber mor, mor, morbis, putrid trome. That's kind of, that's kind of cool.
We'll take that putrid tome. I'll drop that in my notes. Oops, wrong, wrong place. And sometimes I'm just getting like ideas for stuff, right? I don't, I don't need to use it directly. I just want some ideas. I just want some ideas from this. These are all. So the putrid tome, putrid tome reeks of human waste and rotting flesh. It's curl green pages, rot flesh and pure putrefy the eyes.
So it must be handled with great care. Creature able to withstand its fetid words, gain power over decay and disease. That's a fun one. And let's see. I had a necromancer's lair. Where was it? There it is, Necromancer Lair. So under Necromancer Lair in the Dread Thing Anomicon is where they have these blasphemous tomes, which is great.
The Sable Flame is at all times consumed by black fire that burns all but its own pages. Souls devoured by the flame scream for release. A reader gains mastery over the creation of burning skeletons and other fiery undead. Ooh.
sacrilexicon the secrets in this book are enough to shatter the piety of most of the most devout holy man each god listed in its infinite index is implicated in a single page of undeniable truths i love it creature able to withstand its secrets and see the past of the rotten falsehoods at its core of every deity gains divine power beyond that of a mere mortal that seems too powerful
sanguine resurrection text in this apparently blank book only appears with healthy dose of blood each of the 13 chapters requires an entire human's worth of blood and gore it lists the process and ingredients needed for the resurrection of vampires and their ilk that's a cool one put that in our notes these are dangerous players are going to want to do stuff with these
So yeah, how did I get these in Markdown? Raging Swan, Crichton from Raging Swan makes them available in Markdown. So if you own them on DriveThruRPG, you can go and download them again and get the Markdown text versions, which you can then drop right into Obsidian and then view the notes in Obsidian. I was so taken by this.
I have the LazyRPG resource document is also in Markdown and also in this. And I'm going to do City of Arches this way too. One of the things I'm excited about once we lock down City of Arches and get it ready for print is I'm going to make a Markdown version of the City of Arches. So if you buy the City of Arches, you will have a Markdown version. You could drop an Obsidian.
What do you think of that? Let's see if there's any other books. The skin tome. Words of this tome can only be tattooed on living humans' flesh. They disappear if written on any other surface. As a result, the book is often chained down and gagged for study. Ugh. Could it be a ghoul? This is really gory. I'm going to do it. It's dark. This is really dark. I've been reading too much Berserk.
But the idea that there's a ghoul, the ghoul tome, right? And the ghoul is ravenous, but just wants to die. Yeah. So, but I need some spells, dark spells. So for dark spells, we're going to go to deep magic here. Kobo presses deep magic, the new one. And we are going to, let's see, styles of magic. We're going to go to blood magic. Let's pop back over to here. Look at that. That's pretty cool.
Blood lure, bloodshot, caustic blood, blood armor, blood and steel. They all have blood in the name. That's pretty easy. I bet they all start with B. But there's probably some other, let's see. Do they have, so let's see. We've got Alchemancy, Angelic, Blood, Chaos, Dragon, Fiendish. Probably Fiendish wouldn't be so bad. Frost, Hieroglyph, Illumination, Mythos, Ring Magic.
Let's take a look at chaos magic too. I guess chaos is true chaos. It's not like the chaos realm. Let's take a look at mythos magic. Ah, yeah. So this is your like Lovecraftian style. Sleep of the deep. Seed of destruction. Actually, one thing I can do, because open 5e, I believe has these spells in it. Let's see. I need, we're going to turn off that and we will do deep magic. Okay. There we go.
Impregnates a living creature with a rapidly gestating hydra that consumes the target from within before wreaking magic. Wow, look at the size of this spell. So this is like Alien. Seed of Destruction is like Alien. Casting time is one action. That's pretty good. So I think they will find, so Seed of Destruction is a scroll. They'll find a scroll of Seed of Destruction. I'm going to link to that.
And what else will they find? I'm gonna give them like three good spells. Let's take a look at Sleep of the Deep. Magic haunts the dreams of others. You choose a sleeping creature you're aware of within range. Creatures that don't sleep, such as elves, can't be targeted. The creature must succeed on a wisdom saving throw or it garners no benefit.
And when it awakens, it gains one level of exhaustion and is affected with short-term madness. That's not bad. I mean, it's not like super practical, but it could be a fun spell to dork with your enemies. But let's do a blood, one of the blood magic spells here. We'll just do a search for blood because all the spells seem to have blood in the name. Caustic Blood.
Blood becomes caustic when exposed to the air. When you take piercing or slashing damage, you can use your reaction to select up to three creatures within 30 feet. Each takes 1d10 acid damage. Unless it makes a successful dexterity saving throw. This is a second level spell. Caustic Blood is pretty cool. That's kind of fun. It's almost like a damage shield. Blood Scarab is what? First level spell.
Your blood is absorbed into the beetle's exoskeleton in the form of a beautiful ruby-like scarab that flies towards a creature your choice in the range. It is one action to cast. The target must make a successful con save or take 1d6 necrotic damage. You gain temporary hit points equal to the necrotic damage dealt. When you cast a spell a slot higher, the number of scarabs increases by one.
That's not a fantastic spell.
because it's first level uh it does give you temporary hit points but it's only 1d6 right like you know magic missile does 3d4 plus you know plus whatever but you gain temps i don't know if that's i don't know it feels feels a little light but we'll do it it's almost not a bad cantrip right because doing 1d6 you know saving throw 1d6 damage and you gain temporary hit points that's that doesn't feel overpowered as a cantrip i think i'll offer that as a
let's do like a third level one blood armor vital mark blood tide what does blood armor do when you strike a foe with a melee weapon attack you can immediately cast blood armor as a bonus action the foe you struck must contain blood if the target doesn't bleed the spell ends without effect the blood flowing from your foe magically increases in volume and forms a suit of armor around you granting an armor class of 18 plus your dex modifier for the spell's duration which is an hour
This armor has no strength requirement, doesn't hinder spellcasting, and doesn't incur disadvantage on dexterity checks. That's pretty good. That's third level. If the creature you stuck with Celestial Blood Armor also grants you advantage on charisma saving throws for the duration. When you strike a foe with a melee weapon attack, can you attack yourself? It's a bonus action, so it's not bad.
Blood Armor is pretty good. Cool. So I've got some grizzly tomes and I've got some, I've got some grizzly tomes. I've got some dark spells as rewards. It's a lot of treasure, but I know that they're going that way. I think that's everything I need. So let me export this to PDF. We will try that and see how that looks. Oh, it's just a touch too big. I got to cut something. So knows the ways.
Let's see. Nose of red portals. We'll cut that short. I can see like what, which lines wrapped and caused it to take so much stuff. That's I need to cut two lines to get it to fit. I'm going to trim down these. It's cutting some, some of the texts from this. We'll cut some of that there that cut a fair bit of texts so that it'll fit in a page. I like to have my notes all fit on one page.
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