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leidensygdom · 2 years

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can you tell us more about the campaign you’re running? 👀

So, Gharmyra! It's been on hiatus for... months now, due to some real-life happenings (family drama that ended up with me moving, which- Made campaign prepping hard), but I'm planning to get back to it once spoons are collected

The campaign is set mainly in Gharmyra, a nation formed by two smaller nations that ended up becoming a single one following a war between the two. Here's a map of it:

It's set in a high fantasy, industrial-revolution sort of setting. Factories are starting to become a common sight and steampunk vibes are definitely there. The two main nations are Gharda, a theocratic nation with an imperialist past, and Remyra, a democratic, heavily magic-dependant nation.

Ghamyra as a nation is technically democratic too, but there's definitely issues with how is that ran. The capital for both nations is Vemros: A huge city built in a Tower-of-Babel like building, which separates the territories for both of them. An organization known as the Dharka Savada serves as the government force. Here's a knight of the Dharka, Dalshen:

Gharda follows a religion known as the Davnrros, which followed (originally five), now four deities that are known as the Guardians. The deities are physical beings which have quite directly get seen amongst the people, although they've been more absent of late. The society is divided in fourth castes (originally five), each of them linked to one of the deities. The power each caste holds is terribly unbalanced though: The first caste rules over the others, using divine right as an excuse. It's also the only caste who can actually vote for their own representatives. The religious force of the first caste is known for wearing masks, and there's just a whole lot of intrigue. Here's Iratha, one of the baddies the party had to deal with, and first caste member:

Remyra, on the other end, holds democracy with great esteem. They don't follow deities- They're actually a nation born from the people who ran away from a heavily theocractic/imperalistic regime (Mith-Sharorr), and hold a lot of hate for deities. The war between them and Gharda had to do with murdering the fifth deity, in fact. I'd describe Remyra as "political parties where PvP is always on" (with few limitations). These limitations have grown over the years and the clans do not wage war with each other very often, except for a couple that have a very long-running feud. At this point, violent conflcit between parties is seen as barbaric. Violent conflict is strictly regulated, having designed zones for it, and being kept very far away from the regular population.

Here's Zyrphae, head of one of the clans! Have I mentioned Remyra is a mostly underground nation composed of mostly drow, dwarves and elves?

It's also in the underground where one of the main aspects of the setting comes to play: Crystal corruption. Crystals grow almost everywhere, and are the result of an excess of magic getting condensed up. They serve as power sources, can be used to create artefacts and power machinery, but are also dangerous if miss-used. Dalshen above has got a crystal arm, as he's been victim to crystal corruption: When exposed too much to this magic without proper equipment, it can stick to your body. And as far as Gharmyrans are concerned, it's a death sentence. Sometimes it takes months, most times it can go on for years, but crystal corruption never ends well.

Crystal corruption lures another thing: Watchers, like the one up above. These are undead, lich-like creatures. Their origins are directly tied to crystal corruption. They have a "seed", which is where their soul is stored after they go through the process in a controlled manner, which is installed in their "chorus", a nest made out of crystals and living batteries they extract energy from, like this:

They can live on forever as long as they feed on living creatures. Most keep a few half-digested corpses in their chorus, and also pester those with crystal corruption, which become susceptible to watchers messing with them. Watchers themselves are incorporeal most of the time, travelling through crystals. However, they usually have the remains of their physical body in the chorus (like the example up above), and can form other bodies with any source of crystal. Breaking these bodies apart can weaken them, but never kill them: Only the destroying of a seed will end a watcher for good.

The party has now advanced enough to know that watchers are directly tied to Ark'Voss (currently known as Aar'Voss), one of the Remyran clans. Said clan, together with the Ark'Sava (The old version of the Dharka Savada, the current running force in Gharmyra), worked for the betterment of Remyra. Ark'Voss was tasked with finding a cure for crystal corruption, which ran rampant when violent conflict was common in Remyra. However, when they found the solution (becoming undead), the Ark'Sava was horrified by this, and tried to destroy said research. Violently. A conflict started between both clans. The Ark'Sava came out triumphant, with Ark'Voss (seemingly) mostly extinguished. Instead, most of the members had gone into hiding, or ended up becoming watchers themselves. Under this, another watcher!

Fast forward to nowadays, several millenia late: Most people have no idea about what happened. You've got two nations who have been together for a thousand years, but they're starting to resent each other again. The murder of the fifth Ghardan god is up to the table. Mith-Sharorr, the theocratic nation up north, is also becoming a threat again. A lot of the conflicts betwene Gharda and Remyra are lead by small extremist groups, who have been using crystal grenades liberally, and sowing everything with crystal corruption. And the watchers have been pulling strings for long, awaiting a violent conflict to have a long-due vengeance.

Amongst all this drama, enter the party: Laestis, my partner's kalashtar (pictured above) is a pretty good example of what is going on. An overly anxious Ghardan first caste, who had inherited a cursed sword from times before the war. The sword had given their family an uncanny connection to a psionic entity, which (unknown to them) had been one of these watchers. The watcher was far more friendly than most of their kind, even if no one before Laestis actually tried to understand their nature.

It's been 90 sessions almost. Together, they've found companionship in each other, and an objective to avoid an inevitable war arranged by undead creatures, which would possibly end very violently. A warlock pact later, they've become inseparable in many ways, and are doing their best to get a good ending to what would be otherwise a terrible catastrophe.

Anyways, that's a mouthful! I really want to resume the campaign at some point. It went for REALLY long. Two of the players have moved on from DnD due to life happenings, and two new players were guests before the hiatus started (and will become permanent afterwards), so there's a lot of change. I have a lot of love for this, but I have certainly ended up putting it aside after the campaign I'm a player in ended up occupying most of my brain-- Hopefully, that'll change soon!

#gharmyra #dnd #dungeons and dragons #ttrpg #dnd art #dnd homebrew #dnd 5e #kalashtar #dnd campaign #dungeon master #fantasy #monster #eldritch #worldbuilding #sygdomthings #watcher #syg2022

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boociforme · 9 months

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What be the status of Centi? Is she safe?

depends on who you ask! LOL

in Ennu, her main campaign, she's running from murder meat robots in a huge mecha and in charge of a rocket launcher, so I'd say she's thriving

in Gharmyra, however, since she was only supposed to guest there for a couple sessions, she's dead! the party got very close to a TPK and well, she didn't make it! I'm playing someone else now :) their name is Odei and they're baby

#ask #rip centi u will get ur happy ending in ennu i hope

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leidensygdom · 2 years

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For your Gharmyra campaign, I've got a bunch of questions!

You've run fucking 90 SESSIONS, which is a crazy long game (so congrats to that lmao), so what would be some of your favorite moments to come out of the game? This is both from your players and something they did that was amazing, and from you surprising yourself through a great DM moment!

For your worldbuilding, what's your favorite bit of info? Could be a large thing, could be a small little detail that your players will probably never interact with but you love it anyway!

Finally (there may be more later lmao), I ADORE the crystal and watcher lore you have! Where did the idea come from, and how did it change as you developed it?? I love hearing inspirations and the creative process!! And what's the most tragic/cool/fucked up thing you did with the watchers to your players??

In conclusion, your world's cool as hell, your art's sick as FUCK, and I adore all of your characters!!!

AAA THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU'RE SO NICE!!!

Higlights: From a player

There's been a lot of highlights in these 90 sessions. I'll focus a bit on Laestis here, since the other players are no longer in game (because they just don't have the time or drive for dnd anymore). One of the highlights was a bit of a climax that happened after Act 1's end and Act 2's beginning, which was about dealing with her patron's crystallized corpse and retrieving the staff that once belonged to Vest. I even got a commission by the ever-fantastic EllirhShaan from that scene:

A watcher's original, crystallized corpse isn't really more than a bunch of crystal for the most part. Which means that if, unoccupied, someone else can take that over and use it. Vest's "mother" (Solaralith) decided to use it to avoid Laestis from retrieving Vest's crystal staff (seen in the background of the last panel). So, threatening golden watcher is the Solaralith-possesed-Vest-corpse, while friendly looking watcher is Vest's appareance (Which was more ghostly). Getting to settle that down, getting Solaralith vanished for a bit, retrieving a significative weapon that was a next step towards their pact (and in a way, helped giving Vest more physical presence) and leaving behind her current sword (the one that had hosted Vest's seed for all this time (which Laestis took from the sword) was all very climatic!

Highlights: As a DM

On my end, as a DM, I really enjoyed Mythannae's Nightmare arc. Before he became my PC in another campaign, he was a background NPC. He had been a dissident watcher, that lead a group that tried to do exactly the same than the party is trying to do: End the long feud between watchers and avoid the war. And yet, his group failed terribly, which ended with the death of most (or worse-than-death fates) and very few of them surviving the ordeal. I'll explain what is a Nightmare a bit late, but let's say it's somewhere where memories persist so strongly, you can view stuff from the past. And to get information, they visited one related to Mythannae- And got to talk with their memory!

And also fight him (in a friendly manner) to understand the sheet power that the big watchers have. For scale, a token is about the size of these lil gems in the center of the five platforms. I got to do an animated battlemap, which I was very excited about! The fight was tense and fun, the party found out methods to end watchers, they retrieved the weapon that was used to kill Mythannae in the past. Also found out a bit more about a NPC that they had quite a lot of doubts about, who happened to be very close with Mythannae

A bit of lore I enjoy

So, other than the watchers (and a lot of worldbuilding focused on nations, which can be a bit harder to develop in a post like this), the mechanic of the Nightmares was fun and a great way to introduce lore in the shape of a dungeon.

Basically, in this setting, extremely strong memories, if mixed with a magically charged environment, can create Nightmares. They're areas where reality is over-written by the source of these memories: Things change to adapt the past, often creating whole new areas and spaces that can be traversed as if they were physical. Nightmares can be caused by individuals or collectives. They're often chaotic and not completely logical: Events that might have been many years apart (or very far away physically) can happen in 2 rooms one next to the other. It allows the players to have a much more direct view on these events, and even partake in them. Which is always fun to have, since the alternative tends to be a lore dump or giving them lenghty text descriptions.

Usually, they need to face the source of the memories to end a nightmare: It tends to be the person who caused the nightmare in the first place. The first time, they fought a knight of the Ark'Sava from the times they were most tyrannical. The second time, they faced Mythannae. The physical objects that were tied to these were a statue to said knight, and Mythannae's whole corpse.

Here's the Ark'Savan guy : ) his name is Sygdom, he's where I get my nickname from. The nightmares had some mechanics tied to it, related to how long they were in the space, and how involved they got in them: The line of reality and dream got more progressively erased, and the memories started to overwhelm the characters. Mechanically, they could accumulate up to 30 "nightmare points", which had 3 tiers. Each tier meant the dream-stuff around them affected them further, to the point they started to get their views influenced by it. For example, one character started to side more with the Ark'Savans, while another character was more akin to the Ark'Vossians. It affected against enemies and even between them: In the second tier (from 10 to 20), they couldn't end their turn next to each other due to some natural distrust. It was overall a fun bunch of things!

On the watchers

So! Watchers were made originally as part of a lore for a forum. I was given the task to give some lore to a barren land in the map, and I ended up going for "drows" and "crystals". I had no idea what drows were like in DnD canon and just ignored it altogether. Don't regret it. The idea was that, within that setting, drow had thrived and made great advancements, but suddenly disaster struck their main city and most of them perished in the catastrophe, with few survivors running away and scattering across distant caves. They had relied in crystals for technology, but now, they feared it: The crystals were related to the mess, but the survivors weren't sure what went wrong.

Millenia passed, and people kept fearing the magic crystals, never going back to where the catastrophe stuck because it was an extremely dangerous land. But there were almost no records on what did exactly go wrong. And some people were tired of being kept in the dark, of not using a resource that was so invaluable. Something that could give them the chance to fight back much bigger nations, which were all readying for war. These people started to investigate and use the crystals, and their leader travelled to where the catastrophe stuck. He returned with a crystallized arm and much knowledge, including the fact that people in said place had both, feared and yet also adored crystalline creatures. Unknowingly to him, being magically corrupted made him the perfect vessel for watchers, which had caused the accident, and were looking forward to expanding their reach.

THAT was the original lore. It was done when i was 14 years old or so. Then, the forum died down due to drama, and I never got to explore much the lore. I decided to port it (With adaptations) to another forum, but this time, I decided to instead focus on the city that had fallen down due to crystal corruption and watchers: Try to understand what happened before disaster struck. The idea was that, if the lore advanced enough in that forum, the disaster could happen. OR it could be prevented! That's how Gharmyra was born, and how the watchers were further developed. Again, that other forum died (RP forums die like crazy), and I was again left with a lot of lore and nowhere to use it.

(Here's a watcher, to spice up the post : ) ) And that's when, years later, I decided to port it towards a DnD campaign. All these new ports meant refining the lore, cleaning up issues and holes, and detailing things further. A surprising amount of the ideas came from ages ago, but my 14yo worldbuilding was not the best in many regards So I've had a lot of time to polish things and bring them to their current state!

Anyways, this is a very long post already!! I'll get into watcher spooky things in another moment. I hope that does answer most of it though, I appreciate a lot the questions <3 It's giving me an itch to get finally back from the long hiatus!!

#dnd #dnd art #dnd homebrew #homebrew #worldbuilding #watcher #watchers #kalashtar #gharmyra #undead #crystal #drow #dark elf #elf #ttrpg #pathfinder

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leidensygdom · 1 year

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Watchers -undead creatures of crystal- are often a tad too chaotic to adapt to humanoid constraints. In an attempt to fix this, artificial bodies have been designed for them. These mannequins of sorts are possessed by watchers, and used for a plethora of means. When crammed into a full armor, not many can tell them apart from living beings, which makes them handy for the furthering of certain plots.

Hi! Today I bring some concept art and sketches for Gharmyra! The first one is one of these armored mannequins, donning a mask. The party found out some worrying truths about it- Such as the fact it was someone unwillingly made into an undead, and forced to serve its enemies. The other two are different explorations on what could these mannequins look like under the armor. Which approach do you like best?

Also, these are all drow creations, so I'm absolutely counting them for drowcember. Undead drow put into mannequins are still drow-- (as always, reblogs are much appreciated!)

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leidensygdom · 1 year

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What first made you interested in drow?

OHHH so-

It was a bit of a coincidence really! I started RPing in RP forums way before I got into TTRPGs. RP forums (in Spanish communities, at least) more often than not had original systems and worlds, which often drew inspiration from here and there. This forum was your usual sort of medium fantasy steampunk mix, with a few typical DnD races. And I ended up as a mod. They wanted to develop some areas of the continent that weren't defined, and I was assigned a chunk of land that was mostly just a frozen wasteland, and was told to fill it with something. (Here's a lil stupid graphic I made for it, the region was named Saintserre)

So I went through the races in the setting and saw these funky cave-dwelling elves that had never been used or mentioned once in the entire setting. And I was like, "okay cool, I think I will grab these! They can live underground where it isn't as freezy!". The description for them in the forum was just a paragraph long, and it didn't mention basic details. Another mod told me "did you know they're matriarchal?" and I was like "no but that sounds cool!", and grabbed that detail. And thankfully, no one in the entire forum actually decided to mention they are usually evil. They had expected me to do them evil, but... I just didn't know that was the usual flavour for drow, and I came up with something very different.

They were religious in a weird sense. They adored the sky and attributed constellations a lot of meaning. The sky, as something distant to them, was seen as sacred and made some of them pilgrimage to the surface, just to observe it and make predictions. These beliefs came from the times they had been in the surface and found solace in the night sky, given how the light was painful to their eyes. The society was experimenting some huge magic advancement related to crystals though, which were a bit taboo to use, and there was this whole "tradition vs progress" thematic to it.

Now, the reason crystals were taboo was because drow came from a much more advanced society that used crystals. They had used and abused them for everything: Even defying death. The city had a growing population of crystal-like liches (named watchers), which at some point, turned against the living population as crystal-corruption ran rampant. The few survivors fled the city, and for months, they travelled under the deadly cold with the night as their mantle (which was a reoccurring thing in their history), which reinforced their astrological beliefs. They decided to forbid and burn any knowledge they had on crystal usage, wanting to avoid the catastrophe from happening again, and left the crystallized city behind, forgotten and filled with aberrations. I hinted slightly at this lore in the forum with this fun little gif (my first gift ever!), which spells "We are watching". I wanted to use these creatures for something >:3c

I started to build a bit about this reveal with the first character that was made in this region, which was interested in the lore. And then, well, the forum died down due to admin drama and we didn't get to it. But I was happy with the worldbuilding I did, so I packed my ideas and put them in another forum, wanting to explore them further. And my next time using drow, I told myself "what if I explore what happened in the crystal city BEFORE the catastrophe?", and my setting Gharmyra was born. Which is the one for my DnD campaign!

... And then someone told me to read Salvatore's books, I gave the first three a read, and I was like "huh what the fuck. Nah" and ended up never dealing with "canon" lore for drow.

(This got lengthier than expected but I just really wanted to share what was my first experience with drow! I remember this setting fondly)

#drow #dark elf #elf #elves #homebrew #dnd homebrew #homebrew setting #dnd campaign #underdark

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leidensygdom · 24 days

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Have you ever considered reviving old projects like When Reality Bleeds, or bring back old characters like Kandris or Aosh?

WRB is probably never gonna be happening just because webcomics are HARD to do, and it's not something I could get going with my incoming freelancing. Kandris and Aosh sometimes pop up here and there- Kandris will soon be relevant again as Gharmyra's plot advances, since he's got a role to play there, and Aosh is probably gonna be a local menace in the incoming campaign after Ennu. Maybe he'll go bother Argy

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leidensygdom · 1 year

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🖋️ Yden!!

Ahh Yden! Apart from being the official winner of the sexyblorbo contest- Yden is actually the entity in my current pfp! In Gharmyra (my campaign, which has been on hiatus for a while), they have a watcher form (one of my crystal undead beings), which they mask with a True Polymorph. While the true appareance is fancier, they like to appear more monstruous and gremlin-like, hence all the extra eyes and sharp teeth

deep down they just wanna go feral-

#THANK u so much AAA

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leidensygdom · 1 year

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You asked for questions about your characters! I've recently returned to tumblr after a couple of years retirement from the ChaosTM and i remember back in the day you had a drow boy who had some kind of magical disease that was causing his body to decay? How's he doing? Always liked that guy.

Ohhh that's my guy Areel! I love him dearly, but he hasn't seen as much use in the current DnD campaign (he's there tho, on baby bro sitting duty). In my campaign (Gharmyra, the crystal-themed one), he kinda got unwillingly adopted by Yden. He came from Mith-Sharorr, the city up north (which has a lot of beef with the place he is currently living in), was supposed to find his brother and bring him back there, but it all backfired and he's now gotten adopted instead

His home city is a Lawful Evil sort of mess with a very nasty goddess obsessed with hierarchy and order, so he's kind of been getting therapy for what was a cult-like experience. At least, she stopped talking to him few years ago, which has been certainly convenient!

(Thank you for the ask! It makes me so happy when people remember characters that haven't been around for a while)

#drow #paladin #knight #sygdomthings #syg2022 #areel #ttrpg #pathfinder #elf #elves

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leidensygdom · 2 years

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This may sound like a silly question but since a bunch of your characters as of late have been in a cyberpunk like setting, you ever wondered what they would look aesthetics wise for a different genre, like high fantasy or wild western?

So uuuuuuh a lot of my characters are both, in the cyberpunk fantasy setting and in my own campaign! Which is a high fantasy with some steampunk vibes here and there. A good example of that is both, Mythannae and Jorven:

Gharmyra (where he's a watcher, a crystalline undead) vs Ennu (with his more modern take). It's a huge outfit difference in here

And here's Jorven:

As you can see, Jorven... Uh, got a very different take on clothes between the Gharmyran version and the Ennu one!

This is true for almost all of my current characters except for the newer ones: Yxala, Relent and Urion were made for Ennu, and I haven't drawn their more fantasy takes. Yet!

#tiefling #dnd #dnd art #dungeons and dragons #urban fantasy #ttrpg #fantasy art #artificer #wizard

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leidensygdom · 2 years

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Vest 9!

(I'm gonna start including pics for people who may recognize my characters by looks but not by name)

9. What’s their biggest fear?

I'd say, in Ennu, he's definitely TERRIFIED of his mother over anything else! Solaralith is a powerful woman with much influence, and it's pretty much a miracle that Vest, Osten and their parent, Yden, managed to escape from her abusive ass. Vest feels like all these years have been a bit of borrowed time, calm before the storm, as it's just a matter of time until she strikes back-

And of course, he fears having to run away from his current life, which he's very attached to, or... Well. Being unable to run before the worst happens. He's grown to love a lot the people surrounding him, and he wouldn't want to leave them back. And Mythannae's thing with taking over his sisters' pact and being in jail to avoid it has kinda been a terrifying reality check. He's not doing well now that Myth ain't there, it's the proof that their life can get worse. He could use a hug, thank you very much

(tbh this is almost true for Gharmyra too. In both places, he's just terrified of the powerful people that are actively trying to hunt him down and how it could hurt his friends and family)

#Vest #ask

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leidensygdom · 1 year

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