What is it like to be smart?

From Vox Day, with some editing cuts by me:

What it’s like is like swimming in a sea of retardery. Everything is very slow and unclear. Everyone is always simultaneously confused and yet easily upset by any attempt to help them resolve that confusion. Every conversation is like walking through a minefield, where simply answering a question accurately is liable to send the other individual into one form of emotional tailspin or another.

This is why most highly intelligent people are introverts. It’s not instinctual, it is a learned aversion to the unpleasant experience of swimming through the endless retardery and never getting anywhere.

It’s fine. It is not only what it is, it is the only reality I have ever known. It doesn’t make me like or dislike people, although I tend to avoid the more pedantic, contradictory, and stubborn individuals in order to preserve my patience; do you love your dogs more or less on the basis of which of them are more or less intelligent? I’ve actually found that genuinely dumb people often make for better company than midwits or very intelligent people who are insecure about their intellectual capabilities.

I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be discussing potentially critical amphibolies in Gödel or Kant with any of them.

So why am I telling you this? It is not, as the Gammas and some of the women would have it, because I am insecure and I want to stroke my own ego or seek reassurance from anyone. It is, rather, because many of you, being in the midwit class and above, are now beginning to be regularly confronted by what has been my reality.

[The image above] is as adequate an explanation for why nothing works anymore as you could ever require. 

So if you ever wanted to know what it is like for 3SD+ people to be surrounded by people with normal IQs, you’re going to get the chance to find out. Because I calculated that the average American IQ had fallen below 95 back in 2015, and I’m fairly confident that the addition of large numbers of people with sub-80 IQs, along with the continued dumbing-down of every educational level, is unlikely to improve the average level of intelligence across the country.

Now, I'm obviously not as smart as Vox is. If nothing else, he's clearly more intellectually accomplished than I am, and I have no reason to disbelieve his reported measured IQ of ~150-160 or whatever it exactly is is (and I'm not going to bother looking it up) which considerably better than my measured 135-140 or so, depending on which test you're looking at the results of. But I'm smart enough to recognize what he's talking about, as the same thing has happened to me almost as long as I can remember too, and as he says, it's probably only going to get worse over time. Most people I interact with are promoted above their intellectual capacity, in my opinion.

And sure, sure, simple intelligence is only one vector of being a successful leader, professional or decision maker. It's an important one, but it's arguably not even the most important. So I'm hardly advocating for a technocracy where the so-called most intelligent are put in charge just based on their IQ or anything like that. But IQ certainly helps.

Speaking of which, before I saw this tweet by JD Vance, I had already said as much in a few comment sections on stupid Boomer places like Breitbart, and had the exact same kind of nonsensical, solipsistic NPC parroting crap was the response. I do think that repeated exposure to stupidity has eroded my patience for it over the years, which isn't good. 

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.

So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." 

Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. 

There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. 

But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. 

Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:

1) End the war 

2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 

3) Put America First 

4) Change our relationship to Israel 

Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) 

In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. 

The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. 

I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

— JD Vance (@JDVance) November 4, 2026

Amnesty, lol. Yeah, anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. No kidding. That's the last thing anyone voted for, except for the Fake American foreigners who want to remake America to be more like where they came from, but paid for by us. 

We're having our country stolen out from under us, and guilt-tripped about complaining about it or even noticing it. That said, while I'm sure Vance is correct, the real culprit, it's starting to look more and more like, is, as usual, Democrat election fraud.

Heresiarchs

As I said in my last post, I've been making images of the Heresiarchs lately in ChatGPT. I originally had 12 of them, but I've added one or two over the years, and I've also picked up characters who weren't originally meant to be Heresiarchs, but who effectively are.

What exactly is a Heresiarch? In theory it is some kind of undead supervillain, but maybe undead is too limiting a concept. I originally conceived of them as having most of the benefits of both a lich and a vampire, but few if any of the drawbacks of either. The real model is Glen Cook's Black Company book; the Heresarchs are essentially the Ten Who Were Taken and their peers, few though they may be. Many of them are warped, rotted, or obviously undead, but some of them are still vain enough to maintain a pleasant exterior, and their magic means that they can do so. Heck, even Voldemort can qualify, sorta. Any sorcerer or other magic user powerful enough to cheat death which is a step above either a vampire or a lich is a Heresiarch. They have means to return if they are somehow killed (phylactery, horcrux, or canopic talisman in my case). They are powerful in both magic and physical combat capabilities. They lack the weaknesses of vampires, for instance, i.e., they can walk out in the sun as they please and otherwise act like a normal person to the extent that they want to. Many of them are rotted because they don't care about their appearance, and they have returned from the dead. Others of them have never died, and have never rotted; they've used their magic to not only preserve to enervate and perfect their physical forms. But ultimately, like the Ten Who Were Taken, they are notoriously difficult to kill, and even if you think that you have done so, you usually find to your tragic end that you have not; you've only made one of the most powerful enemies that you can make. The Limper, for example, was already an extremely powerful undead-looking creature that seemed to not be able to be killed. Even when he was decapitated, he didn't die, and his head was attached to golem-bodies and he continued to terrorize the northern continent until the fake body was destroyed (multiple times) and his head and other parts were buried in the cosmic abyss of the spike along with the Dominator. Soulcatcher also survived beheading, and for years carried her head around in a box, her power reduced, until she could get someone manipulated into surgically re-attaching it. This restored most of her power. 

Seriously, these guys are insane. Their magic makes them almost impossible to kill, and capable of taking on entire armies of normal people with the confidence that they can defeat them. The Heresiarchs, obviously a title derived from being purveyors of Heresy, and the word is a real word in Catholic circles for the founder of a specific heresy or heretical sect. My heresiarchs are worse, at least in terms of being supervillains, if you will.

Jairan Neferirkare

But what do I do with them? Given that I'm a relatively low level low power game and setting relative to D&D, you certainly are never really expected to take on a Heresiarch in toe-to-toe combat. If you ever get to that point, you have failed dramatically and are cruisin' for a bruisin'. They can be outmaneuvered strategically or politically, of course. Mostly, they should be shadowy figures deep in the background who pull strings, but because of their rivalries with each other and other comparably powered beings like certain daemons or Fey Lords like the Erlking, etc. they almost never stick their necks out to such a degree that they are at risk of getting in to combat themselves. In other words, a combination of how the Ten Who Were Taken are treated in the Black Company books and how the monstrous daemons etc. of Lovecraft, who mostly slumber menacingly deep in the background, etc. The Heresiarchs therefore are much more like plot devices than they are like actual characters, honestly. But I tend to like them more than I really should or need to. I don't really have a lot of plans for them, although one of them at least lingers as a significant background element in Darkness in the Hill Country (Jairan Neferirkare). I'm also thinking of making Amrruk the Ancient be the entity in the Eltdown Fens that Otto von Szell is attempting to either summon, or siphon power from, more likely. This would be a change, but it would also make Cult of Undeath more accurate; I'm not quite sure in retrospect how I ended up with the final thing of the Cult summoning a Lovecraftian daemon rather than, y'know, something undead. It makes it the only way that it works, honestly, but sometimes that isn't apparent while I'm working on it until I'm done, and look at it big picture and then wonder what in the world I was thinking when I added that element after all, because it doesn't really fit. 

I also like that at some point, I want a Heresiarch, and usually a different one to be involved in some way with every campaign. Jairan is Darkness in the Hill Country. Amrruk will be Cult of Undeath. Mind-Wizards of the Daemon Wastes will either be Hutran Kutir or ... unsurprisingly, Gothan the Mind-Wizard. And so on and so forth.

So, of my own Heresiarchs, I have this group. Original Heresiarchs in bold; others added were long-time NPCs or whatever, but I added them to the list just because functionally they were indistinguishable:

1. Arzana the Feral
2. Bartolomeo the Many Angled
3. Amrruk the Ancient
4. Bernat Haspar de Ruze
5. Chernavog, the First Kemling
6. Dommik Sébastien, the Primeval Vampire
7. Djemma Mennefer, the Gnomic
8. Gothan the Mind-Wizard
9. Esmeraude, the Apocalyptic Fire
10. Hutran Kutir, the Hex-King
11. Jairan Neferirkare, the Shadow Queen
12. Kefte Taran, the Mistress of Forgotten Secrets
13. Kadashman, Who Peers Into the Void
14. Seggeir, the Hoarfell King
15. Shimut the Flesh-eater
16. Master of Vermin

Twelve somehow expanded to sixteen from my original list when I made Gothan, the Ghost Pirate, the First Kemling and Hutran Kutir all into Heresiarchs, who were added to the original list of twelve.

But I actually have more characters who would effectively be Heresiarchs, but I haven't used them for anything at all. I didn't create them, and some of them I can use, like the King in Yellow, but some of them I'd have to file the serial numbers off to use, like Tar-Baphon, which is a Heresiarch-level threat from Pathfinder. But, I have images for them, and because they are effectively equivalent to Heresiarchs, I have them ready to go sorta if I ever need to.

1. The King in Yellow (a Lovecraftian entity)
2. Tar-Baphon, the arch-lich of the Pathfinder setting
3. Kyuss, a name associated with the Worm That Walks, which is actually a Lovecraftian entity
4. Hakotep I, a mummy lord and ancient Pharoah returned to life.

If I wanted to, I could add Karzoug the Runelord here too, but he's really a bit too unique to be someone I'd like to use. Tar-Baphon and Hakotep I may well be Pathfinder characters, but they're just specific iterations of famous monster types; a super-lich and a super-mummy, essentially. A rename and reskin, and I can use the images just fine if I want to. And Kyuss is a specific name associated with a concept that Lovecraft invented, and which has floated around under slightly different names in both Call of Cthulhu and Dungeons & Dragons. Again, a rename and he's good to go.

I don't need any of these "expansion" Heresiarchs; honestly, sixteen is probably more than I can reasonably use already, but since I have images that I like, y'know... I can.

I'm attaching two images of Amrruk the Ancient. The first one I generated is arguably a better image, but I wanted him to be even more oozy and slimy, so I had it do another iteration. I'll add more of these images over along with my posts for the next little bit. I don't want to do a giant image dump, but I want to get these out there a bit.

I have, in the past, given a brief paragraph or so description of each of them and their methods and history, but I should probably review and update that, especially now that I have more of them that didn't get that treatment officially before.

Campaigns update

After my publication of the revised Shadow of Old Night rules with all new all prettier layout and art (AI), etc. I decided that I want to do a similar document for my campaigns. Unfortunately, due to a lot of stuff going on, including some last minute work travel to El Paso and Ciudad Juarez last week, I've done very little of it, or even of reading. Instead, I "discovered" the Malfoid meme, and when I wasn't working, I spent more time exploring the better video versions of that, and ... I guess I yearned for a great love story, like everyone says with regards to the meme. @schmede_AI and @Fo_yege1664 are great ones for story, and @DracoFemaleAdventures (all three on YouTube) is the best one for charm, although it's less story and more skits and just little character moments, if not actual jokes, like Dating Reality Shows and stuff like that. But it's amazing the pretty realistic "acting" that they get in their best moments, and the characters have genuine charm, chemistry and charisma. If you're interested in that.

Now, of course, I'm back home, but my schedule has been very busy. Work continues to be an exercise in setting my hair and fire every day and running around like a crazy person. I really am not enjoying this "new new" at the office this year. Luckily, some of our home craziness has slowed down. The house is sold. That's out of our hair. We need to figure out how to get into a new house, but since we're only a few months into our yearly lease, it's not super urgent. Still very busy, but I should be able to finish reading Horror Adventures and go through the project of converting my Darkness In the Hill Country (and after that, Cult of Undeath) into pdf products—not for sale, but just for distribution on Google Drive, like my main rulebook. The first major task I need to do is generate somehow an updated campaign map. In the past, I've drawn these by hand, mostly, and I might still do that and then add labels via text add-ons after scanning the drawn map. Or maybe I'll just draw and scan. Or maybe I'll find a way to get a "prettier" digitally rendered map. I don't know yet. As long as I can get something that is reasonably accurate and reasonably pretty and reasonably easy to do, I don't really care what tools are required to do it.

Once I have an updated version, I'll need to do an updated annotated gazetteer of the map, as well as a bit more setting material, which is available, but needs to be gathered, written and added to the document. I'll probably lean heavily into my racial deep dives for this, although I haven't actually written all of those yet, so... you know.

I might also give Darkness In the Hill Country the subtitle of Appendix III, and even create a version of the rules that includes it integrated into a single document. Cult of Undeath would be Appendix IV, and Terror in Timishburg or Curse of the Corsair Coast, etc. would be appendices V and VI, and so on and so forth.

Cult of Undeath needs just a tad more fleshing out, and I need to generate a lot more images for that as well. Honestly, they probably both need a bit more fleshing out and an additional level of polish and detail, but it's not meant to be as "thick" of a product as something like a Paizo Adventure Path or WotC campaign.

I also want to stat out my iconics as sample characters, and include their character sheets. I have no intention that in actual practice anyone would run the campaigns using these characters, but I want to provide them anyway. I also need to generate stats, and probably a stat block format for a lot of NPCs.

Lots of work, but it'll be fun. I only wish that some ridiculously wealthy and eccentric patron would fund this as my full-time work, pay me a lot of money to do this, and I could focus on it as if it were my full-time job... because it would be. Wouldn't that be something?

In any case, in AI images, I've pivoted to creating samples of many of my Heresiarchs, because I'm not thrilled with the earlier more primitive images that I already had. I'll add these images as visual interest if I don't have something else to attach to a post. For today, here is Hutran Kutir, technically the first Heresiarch I created, long before I created the idea of a Heresiarchy in the first place. But he fits the bill; a counterpart or echo of Glen Cook's Ten Who Were Taken, as it were.

Aurelian Veyne and Ilyra Solenne

I didn't really have any ideas for the iconics that I needed to add to fill out the roster of a male and female (eventually) of every race, so I turned to ChatGPT, who gave me the image, and after multiple rounds of editing iterations, I got a decent backstory for Aurelian Veyne and Ilyra Solenne out of it. I'll probably keep tinkering with this off of AI, but AI can be a decent tool to give me something to start with.

Suck it, AI haters. I'm not interested.

Aurelian Veyne

Aurelian Veyne was born to a minor noblewoman in the northern marches. His metallic silver hair, luminous golden eyes, and unusual beauty marked him as a seraph, a rare mortal lineage believed to carry the blood of celestial beings. His family regarded this ancestry as a divine blessing, and he was raised with the expectation that he would serve the Church. He has recently been appointed a junior inquisitor, possessing a good education, a talent for investigation, and considerable skill with the sword.

His first assignment took him to the remote village of Wulfham, where reports of disappearances and strange religious gatherings had attracted the Church's attention. His investigation uncovered a small cult worshipping an entity known as the Sleeper Beneath the World. More disturbing were the ancient scriptures and ritual documents discovered beneath an abandoned chapel, suggesting that certain elements within the Church had long maintained secret dealings with the very powers they claimed to oppose. When his supervising inquisitor, Father Malrec, ordered the evidence destroyed and the surviving villagers executed, Aurelian refused and fled with several of the documents. Malrec denounced him as a heretic and has since been working to discredit him, recover the stolen writings, and ensure that his former pupil does not expose what happened at Wulfham.

Now separated from the Church, Aurelian travels in search of answers, uncertain how far the corruption extends or whom he can trust. He is courteous, well-spoken, and capable of genuine compassion, but also spoiled, vain, and accustomed to being treated as someone exceptional. He has a rather inflated sense of his own importance and can be condescending toward those he considers beneath him. Although he sincerely believes in justice and the protection of the innocent, he has little understanding of the hardships faced by ordinary people and sometimes mistakes his own good intentions for wisdom. His noble upbringing has left him with a great deal to learn about the world beyond the drawing rooms and ecclesiastical libraries in which he was raised.

Lately, he has suffered strange dreams of a black ocean beneath a starless sky, where immense shapes move beneath the water. Sometimes he awakens with unfamiliar words on his lips, or with the peculiar sensation that something has been watching him from just beyond the boundaries of his dreams. Certain occult symbols also seem strangely familiar, particularly those associated with the oldest and most forbidden religious texts. He has not yet connected these experiences to his ancestry, but some passages in the documents from Wulfham suggest that the origins of the seraphic bloodlines may be considerably less glorious than the Church teaches. Perhaps Father Malrec knows more about this than he has let on; Aurelian has begun to suspect that his former mentor's interest in him was never entirely religious.

Ilyra Solenne

Ilyra Solenne was born to an unremarkable family in a provincial town, but she was hardly an unremarkable child. Her birth as a seraph was an extraordinary occurrence, and her parents regarded her with a mixture of wonder, pride, and apprehension. Her unusual beauty and golden eyes made her the subject of considerable local fascination, while her father, an itinerant scholar of folklore and the supernatural, became convinced that she was destined for something extraordinary.

His suspicions seemed justified when Ilyra began hearing the voices of the dead. As a child, she spoke to invisible companions, described people buried decades before her birth, and occasionally recounted the final moments of strangers whose deaths had gone unexplained. Her father introduced her to spiritualism, teaching her to conduct séances and communicate with departed souls. Ilyra proved exceptionally gifted, but where her father sought to understand the dead, she wanted to know them. She eventually discovered that personal objects could serve as anchors for spirits, allowing them to remain in the world of the living. She began collecting such objects, each associated with a ghost she had persuaded to stay.

At nineteen, she followed her father to an abandoned monastery where he had been investigating a series of mysterious disappearances. Beneath its ruined chapel, he had encountered something that communicated through the dead, borrowing their faces and voices to lure the living. When Ilyra arrived, he begged her to flee. Instead, she attempted a great séance, calling the spirits in the monastery and binding them to herself to sever the entity's connection to the living. The ritual succeeded, but her father died and the monastery collapsed around them. Ilyra escaped with his books, her collection, and two spectral guardians who have remained at her side ever since. She never learned whether the thing beneath the monastery was destroyed or merely driven away.

Since then, Ilyra has wandered as a medium and ghost collector, offering her services to those troubled by hauntings and restless dead. She has also discovered that wealthy clients are considerably more profitable than poor villagers. An accomplished confidence woman, she embellishes her genuine abilities with theatrical séances, fabricated credentials, and carefully cultivated airs of refinement. Her natural beauty helps, as does her talent for making people believe they are in the presence of someone quite important. Her magnificent wardrobe and apparent wealth are largely financed by the credulous and the superstitious.

Her most treasured possession is an elaborate golden lantern whose subdued violet light reveals nearby spirits and facilitates communication with the departed. Her two silent guardians, pale and terrible apparitions, hover protectively behind her.

Outwardly, Ilyra is gracious, charming, and compassionate. Yet she has an unhealthy inability to accept death or relinquish those she loves. She considers the spirits in her keeping friends and companions, never possessions, and is genuinely distressed by the suggestion that they might wish to leave. She cannot always distinguish between protecting a soul and imprisoning it.

She does not consider herself cruel. She simply believes she knows what is best for them.

Aurelian and Ilyra know each other

Ilyra first encountered Aurelian Veyne in Mittermarkt where she had been engaged by a wealthy merchant family to investigate a series of hauntings. The family's recently deceased patriarch had apparently returned to disturb the household, appearing in locked rooms and leaving strange messages for the living. Ilyra, never one to turn down a lucrative commission, had begun investigating when Aurelian arrived pursuing an entirely separate inquiry involving the acquisition of old church records, baptismal registers, and genealogical documents.

Their first impressions of one another were less than flattering. Aurelian regarded Ilyra as an excessively theatrical charlatan, while she found him humorless, suspicious, and altogether too serious. Nevertheless, their investigations soon brought them together. During a séance, the spirit of the deceased merchant addressed them both as the returned children. A moment later, something appeared in the doorway: a tall, impossibly thin figure with a face obscured by a veil of golden light. Ilyra's two spectral guardians reacted with extraordinary violence, and the apparition vanished.

The encounter led them to discover that someone had been quietly searching for individuals of unusual ancestry. Their investigations uncovered scattered evidence of a clandestine organization known as the Household, whose members were gathering genealogical records and seeking out people born with peculiar characteristics. Neither understood the organization's ultimate purpose, but they suspected that its interest in them was more than coincidental.

Despite their initially awkward acquaintance, Aurelian and Ilyra discovered an unexpected kinship. Both were seraphs, an uncommon enough circumstance that meeting another of their kind was remarkable in itself. They developed a genuine affection, eventually coming to regard one another as something like brother and sister. Though their respective pursuits keep them traveling separately, they make an effort to maintain correspondence.

Neither yet knows the full truth: they share a distant fallen celestial ancestor, and the Household is attempting to gather that ancestor's scattered descendants and bring them back to a place its members call Home. Whatever awaits them there, it is not quite the reunion its followers imagine. Something ancient is calling its children back, and it has no intention of allowing them to remain what they are.

What it all means

This is all pretty good stuff, and certainly with a little bit of additional massaging, I can use it. However, I definitely don't want to keep all of my racial iconics together in little cliques. I like the fact that seraphs are unusual enough that there is actually a connection between these two, but that wouldn't be true for any other characters. And I definitely don't want them being part of the same "PC party" if you will, as I eventually construct additional backstories for additional iconics. The idea of different groups of iconics being connected to each other was always part of the fun, though; back when Dominic and Ragnar Clevenger were the effective "leaders" of two completely different 4-character groups, I still had them meant to always be brothers. I kind of like the idea of 2-3 character groups now, though, so Ragnar is with Cailin, his wife, and Dominic is with Kimnor, and they sometimes do stuff together, but are apt to split up frequently into their respective two person groups. I don't yet know who I'd pair these two with, but I can work that kind of stuff out after I've got a few more characters ready to roll.

I probably need to "unretire" some of my contacts who were formerly iconics, like Oisin Dughall and Shule at a minimum, and mix them up with some of these characters too. Not necessarily with either of these, but y'know. If I'm going to have ChatGPT work up some of the characters that I haven't thought of any ideas for yet, I probably also need to create a chat where I spell out the details of a lot of these other characters that I already have so that the AI can use that information without me having to correct it all the time.

The difference between iconics and contacts is a little bit fungible, and any of the contacts can be seen as an iconic of sorts, even if I don't intend to really use them as "PCs" as such. Then again, none of the iconics are really going to be used as a PC, they're just stand-ins as if they were sample PCs. I mean, is Drancent Hewe an iconic grisling scholar? If not, what's really the difference anyway? For example. I could do the same with most other contact NPCs, although some of them are more... stationary, I should say. While they're important and can be considered iconic NPCs, they don't really "adventure" like a PC would, for instance. Someone like Sir Liamond Wreldane or Brythe Armeld, for instance.

Races of Old Night

OK, OK, I know that I'm not trying to just post AI generated images from my setting all of the time. But I need to work out my races and what they look like. Some of these images are of established NPCs, or even former iconics, in some cases, but others I didn't have that, so I had to just create "generic" versions of them. Let's go through them, shall we? Click on each image for a larger version. I want to keep this relatively small.

Humans: I'll do a separate post for the different ethnicities of humans. For now, let's skip them.

Grislings: the second most iconic race, because they're from Lomar mostly, which is smack dab in the northern Humberland Hill Country area. They're also probably the most integrated and commonly seen non-human race in the Hill Country. The male is an established NPC sage or expert, Drancent Hewe, the female is just a generic Grisling adventuring scholar or whatever.

Kemlings: Kemlings are the second unique race I developed, and so are important, but I don't necessarily think of them as super common until you get further west. The female version is Merra Kuzulash, an NPC "anti-PC" so definitely a villain. But that's the stereotype of kemlings, given that they are supposedly saddled with a daemonic taint or admixture in their genetics.

The elementalists come next, in four parts, so I'll break them up. I have a few images of each.

Surturs: The fiery surturs are one of my original races too, based on the fire genasi of D&D and encouraged by the azhar of Freeport. The woman is an image that I've used for actual NPCs; Vanisse Maledict, the bad girl twin sister of my D&D PC Vanze Maledict, but I also used it as a replacement image for even worse girl Javaira Khanwar, one of the anti-PCs, because I didn't like the look of her otherwise.

The male is just a big tough bruiser, but Javaira also has a twin brother. I have images of him too, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. In general, of the elementalists, surturs are the best represented in my images.

After fire, why not water? Here's the tritons. These are both generics. I have no iconic tritons or triton NPCs yet.

I'm sure I will when I get to some of the later campaigns. I expect that they're relatively common on the Corsair Coast, for example.

Sylphs are the air elementalists. I don't have any iconics or NPCs of them yet either, so both of these characters are generic. The images have names, but that isn't meant to mean anything, and they may well change. I gave them names but nothing else yet. Sylphs have a bit more color variation than tritons or even surturs, with hair sometimes pure white like clouds and sometimes darker blue.

Dvergs are the earth elementalists, and have the most variation in their looks, so I generated a few images to get a few variations. I shouldn't post four images, but I have them, and they're sufficiently different that I feel like I need to. Their skin can be somewhat metallic (iron or copper being most common) or rocky (a grayish granite or red sandstone most common) and they tend to either have pale platinum blond hair or dark hair, and usually have dark eyes like obsidian.

Orcs are non-humans, but more human-like than they are in some other settings. This is kind of not actually true, however, as they are most definitely genetically a different "species" which the other races are not. The other races have a magical or supernatural admixture; the orcs and goblins are just different. 

Since I just mentioned them as the other morph of the orcling race, here's goblins too. Both sexes dressed in this case very similarly to each other. I do kind of like an almost pirate-like aesthetic, if you haven't noticed. I prefer swashbucklers to knights, I suppose.

Dhampyrs are the next race, but they're an expansion extra race, not a core race. That said, I have an iconic and another NPC that's pretty important to another iconic that both are one, so... yeah.

Seraphs are also an expansion extra race, and I'm not sure what to do with them. I've been on the fence, honestly, about eliminating them entirely. The one with the ghosts is because I was thinking of using the "ghost collector" medium idea and making her a seraph, but these aren't really characters yet with any background.

Finally, woodwoses are next. The female version is really me just asking for another iteration of one of Oisin's prompt, but saying make it a female and with blonder hair, so she's definitely generic.

Draconia Malfoy

I've been fascinated while traveling for work with the "Malfoid" meme, which I heard about on various YouTube channels that I occasionally watch. Real fake wizard and Shad talked about it, it was a major topic of one of the Friday Night Tights group discussion, and Jon Del Arroz made several videos of it. Even WDW Pro, Clownfish TV and That Park Place were forced to mention it—and they're pretty mainstream. Heck, even Variety made a mention of it.

What is it, you may be wondering? Basically it's a "meme" running rampant through fan fiction, fan art, and now fan AI animation of the concept of "what if Draco Malfoy had always been a girl?" The concept itself isn't super interesting just because, but what it says about the culture is fascinating. The general gist of these fan fiction rewrites is that Draco (or Draconia, as she's often called, although other alternative names have been made too) is still an arrogant, spoiled, aristocratic Slytherin princess, but because Potter, famous in his own right already, rejected her offer of friendship, she got mad at him and became his rival, just like Draco really did. The difference, of course, is that when a bratty little princess finds a guy who blows her off, she's immediately fascinated with him. Secretly underneath the barbs, rivalry, and sometimes outright bullying, she slowly starts to fall in love with him... and to a lesser or at least slower degree, he with her. This usually culminates in them going together to the Yule Ball in book four as normal.

However, the complication comes up when Voldemort returns later in that book, since the Malfoy family is heavily embedded in his inner circle, and Draconia (or whatever name they use) gets put in an impossible situation. Her true love and what she knows is right means sacrificing like she cannot believe; her family, her position, possibly even her life, as she becomes an obvious easy target if her true sympathies are known. And... of course, what are her true sympathies? What she grew up with and was indoctrinated in, or what she is slowly coming to understand is really right?

And, she eventually makes the right choice, at incredible cost to herself, proving herself to be the worthy love interest that Ginny Weasley never does.

Much of this is pretty cliché, but it's a story that people really yearn for; in fact, the hashtag #yearn or #yearning is heavily associated with this theme. This is definitely the boy's fantasy; a girl who really is worthy. But it's hardly new. In fact, Edgar Rice Burroughs perfected essentially this same story back in 1911 with A Princess of Mars (my second favorite book of all time, I might add) where John Carter goes to Mars, meets an aristocratic princess, immediately offends her, manages to kind of claw himself back into a brief friend-zoned relationship where he discovers that he's falling in love with her, only to quickly offend her even worse than before, engender all kinds of rude and dismissive behavior, even though part of this is because she has fallen for him, but is terrified of the consequences of it. After a series of incredible misadventures worthy of a true hero, he saves her from whatever dire fate is in store for her, which means that not only does she prove herself worthy of him, but he proves himself worthy of her too.

It's also worth pointing out that the plot of Pride and Prejudice is essentially exactly this too (without chases, swordfights, aliens and naked beautiful people on Mars) although Malfoy has many of the personality traits of Mr Darcy, and having the roles gender reversed has obvious changes on how it develops unless you want Harry Potter himself to come across as an unlikeable beta who acts like a woman. Which, in some versions, he does.

What is the interesting cultural discussion around this? Multiple things. Here's several in a dot point format.

• A big part of this is being associated with dissatisfaction of the new "Black Snape" streaming show. Also, the fact that a very traditional romance, but a "guy's romance" plot is at the heart of this complaint, especially after years of gay romance, race mixing, and girlbosses being pushed on us in spite of their unpopularity. This is being associated by Hollywood as a frightening thing; due to the timing, it's seen like a fan uprising of sorts against their new interpretation of the IP.
• In fact, that's become such a thing, that this is anti-Blake Snape, anti gay romance, very traditional, etc. means that Malfoid has become, at least in the twisted and ridiculously broken minds of the BlueSky Left, that Malfoid is a MAGA character that appeals to chuds or something stupid like that. Although it's making the rounds among the West just recently (relatively) and is, probably, mostly associated with boys and men who wish that this had been the original plot all along, that's not where the root of this actually is. It really started mostly in Asia, and most of the purveyors of the art, fan fiction and AI short movies are from Asia still.
• Sadly, this has a downside to what otherwise sounds like a good thing, and which mostly is. The most common interpretation of the characters is very anime/manga, or that the plot is a typical "k-drama". Although the story beats and character tropes have a long English language tradition, including Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jane Austen, and William Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew was basically a riff on a stock story and stock characters in his time, so it's not like he invented them either) a lot of people call this a Japanese tradition, and casually drop some anime Japanese stock plot label (borrowed from Western literature) in conversation about it. This is... sadly cringe. Actually anyone with any form of Yellow Fever is kind of cringe unless you're Asian yourself and it's your culture and your people, I think, but people who are unaware of how cringe it is and drop anime terms in discussions about other fandoms with the expectation that people will get the reference are the cringiest betas I know.
• As mentioned briefly above, the fact that many betas find this fantasy very appealing means that a lot of iterations of it are kind of beta. Harry is often a passive victim, an object with no real personality or agency, and the plot is just what happens to girl Draco and her emotions. Why exactly is Harry supposed to be the object of this burning love in girl Draco if he's not masculine, decisive, or in any way likeable or attractive really? Just because? That's part of the beta fantasy, and its one that mimics the girl fantasy, of being some mid nobody who for no reason whatsoever is suddenly the object of intense pursuit by a bunch of hyper-high status rich powerful guys, or even rich powerful but sexy brooding monsters like vampires or whatever. It's kind of an entitled fantasy; the idea that all you have to do is show up and not be anything really likeable or special, but somehow you're treated is if you are in fact both of those things for no reason whatsoever. 
• Of course, the better ones have Harry being Harry, much as he's written in the books. He's famous, he's mostly a nice guy, and he's likeable, but he also gets angry and doesn't take that much crap from Malfoy before he decides he can give it back just as hard. Harry starts falling for Malfoy too, because he sees that there's more there than initially meets the eye, but he sees that there's more there than meets the eye, he doesn't see something that isn't actually there, like in the fantasy version that is unrealistic. And, of course, Malfoy's character development has her turn into the kind of woman that any man would be happy to have at his side; she earns the right for Harry to love her; she isn't just entitled to it.
• In fact, this last development, which would typically happen in the "typical" Malfoid arc to a small degree before the Yule Ball and kinda sorta reconciliation and early attraction/dating vibe, but most especially after Voldemort returns and Malfoy has to make the hard decisions on what she's going to stand for kind of makes it somewhat different than the Edgar Rice Burroughs prototype of the story arc... although similar themes are certainly explored in Pride and Prejudice. In an Edgar Rice Burroughs story there is less character development and more characters actually just understanding that their counterpart actually was worthy all along. They don't become worthy, they already were and just need to prove it. Girl Draco has to become it in order to prove it. Part of that, of course, is that the characters are young. Teenagers, of course.
• It's also interesting to me that so much of it is AI generated, which is deflating a lot of the "moral panic" around AI. Lots of people who a month or two ago thought AI was the worst thing ever are now literally saying, bring on the data centers if they're going to give us Malfoid content!

Anyway, I don't know. I like the idea. If a really good novel, animated movie or whatever is out there, I'd be happy to consume it. When the first Harry Potter movie was imminent, I decided I ought to read the book first, and I ended up reading all four of them that were in print at the time several times over.  When the movie wasn't really all that good, and then that was followed by the fifth book, which also wasn't that good, it lost me a lot. It never recovered the book 3 and 4 glory that it briefly had. And while I can't deny the cultural touchstone that it's largely become, I'm also ambivalent to what it's largely become. Plus, it's YA anyway, even to an extent that stuff like The Hobbit or the pulp stories never were; its a little cringe for adults to be too into Harry Potter, although adults who are my kids age and who grew up with it the same way my generation grew up with the original trilogy Star Wars movies get a bit of a pass there. Like I said, while I like some of what it's doing, and I don't mind seeing more of it if it can avoid the beta poseurs, what I think is ultimately much more fascinating about it is what it's saying and doing to the culture wars and the cultural landscape. It's indicative of a massive shift back to normalcy. Many long-time younger Millennial or Gen-Z fans are saying that this story arc is significantly better than the original with much more potential. Because of its roots in traditional romance and characters who earn and deserve an iteration of the greatest love story ever told, it is a fundamental rejection of years and years of indoctrination, which ultimately proves that Leftist dogma is incapable—in spite of many structural advantages in our culture that have lasted for many, many decades—of overcoming the core of human nature and what people yearn for.

And it's not really right wing. That's kind of silly. The reality is that Leftism is so alien and strange that anything that is normal and usual about human nature is called "right wing" because it's opposed to Leftism. I guess, if that's what you mean right wing is, and lots of people do, then sure, I guess we can call normal human behavior and human nature right wing. All that that really does is indict Leftism with demonstrating how anti-human and dysfunctional it really is, though.

My favorites are the cheeky ones probably made in the West, however. Sure, sure; they're almost more like skits than stories, but they're pretty hilarious and show that, even with AI generation, these characters have humanity, chemistry and charisma than anything that the Left can manage to create, and that is super engaging. Hence the Left's rage at the meme, I presume.

And speaking of not being too beta and passive...

Shule

When I make a character be different than it is in "common" fantasy (i.e., D&D) the AI often struggles to understand what I want. I had a really hard time with Shule and getting him to look like a more realistic version of what I'd made in Hero Forge. But, with the weird sudden unlimited ChatGPT images I managed to get what I wanted. First, my unsatisfactory early versions. These are almost a couple of years old now, so the AI is quite a bit better now.

Even with more modern AI generators, it was a struggle. I guess I needed to work on my prompts.

This final batch is what i pretty much always envisioned; however. 

The last one might be too thin. It makes him look taller, which makes him look proportioned less like a goblin.

Darkness in the Hill Country as a pdf product

I enjoyed spending the evening last night putting together that string of blog posts, but on re-reading them, they feel like... stream of consciousness blog posts. They need a lot of editing; there are typo and errors, and there is just poorly written stuff. I'd actually really like to make Darkness in the Hill Country an actual campaign; a product. That means a rewrite and reorganization of sorts, but it's less work than it sounds like, because I have all of the raw materials that mostly just need editing rather than complete writing from scratch. What do I need to do to make this work? Let me make a list! I still need to figure out the order and organization of how I want to do this, but that can come later after I make a solid list of everything that I want to actually include.

• 

  Lysander Draven

  I need to update the map. I found that it had some outdated names and a few other problems. I really like the hand-drawn Tolkien style map in black and white (and red), so I'm going to go with that format. It will not be a map of the entire setting, but just of the area associated with the campaign, just like the map that I'm replacing. I've been wanting to do this anyway, although not with much urgency. Seeing the state of my current map makes it clear that this needs to be one of the first things to do. I'll include the map in basically the facing page material, or at least at the very beginning of the pdf. You know, just like all of the fantasy novels do.
• I then want to take the annotated map text that I wrote a few years ago, update and flesh it out, mostly with other text from other posts that I've already done, so that I've got more details on the various races and places. This means that anyone could run the campaign in a pretty good facsimile of the setting as I myself imagine it, even though the sheer volume of text about the setting is still pretty low. What this will have, though, will be heavily concentrated on the stuff that's relevant to this specific campaign, and won't go in to stuff that is beyond it. This material will also help with character creation, since players will have a better handle on what all of the races actually are.
• Although I envision, of course, that people will make their own characters, I do want to include pre-gens at 1st level that would be not only example iconic characters, but could be used if you wanted to instead of home-made characters. I want to expand my current list of iconics beyond what I currently have so that I have at least one example of every race, including the Appendix extra races. This means that I can use the four basic iconics already; Ragnar and Dominic Clevenger (humans), Kimnor Rugova (grisling), Cailin Clevenger (dhampyr) and I'll need more. I can dust off a few of my other characters, like Shule (goblin) or Marshall Kazar Thorn (orc), Oisin Dughall (woodwose), and I can even convert my D&D 5e character Vanze Maledict (surtur) to the system, and his twin sister (Vanisse), which I'll probably make a different type of elementalist, because that's how that race works. That leaves me short an iconic kemling, two other types of elementalist, and a seraph. Each character would have a one page character sheet, and a facing page description, and for thirteen characters, that adds twenty six pages. It's a luxury; I don't really need to do that, but it's a pdf. Who cares how many pages it is? There's a good chance that I'll put them in the back as Appendix material anyway.
• I'll need to describe the 5x5 Fronts method of running a game, so that the material I have makes some sense. Although I'll flesh out the matrix with more detail than it currently has (including adding stat blocks for monsters and NPCs as needed), the basic format will remain more or less the same, so I'll need to explain how to actually use it and how it's meant to be interpreted.
• Then, like I said, I need to further flesh out and add a bit to some of the weaker or more vague parts of the my current supercut write-up. I do not intend to add anything like maps of buildings or anything like that; I will remain clear that even with the more fleshed out format, this will remain a framework that can't be used without some finishing polish to make it fit your actual situation with your actual group. But honestly, given how 5e campaigns are written, I'm not that far off from their format in terms of providing useable stuff right off the page. I know a lot of gamers really want their campaigns and modules and adventures to be ready to run right away, but that's just not how I roll. Customization, both to each individual group, and to developments within the campaign as it is being played.
• Also, if I'm adding some specific "blasphemous tomes" and other items, I should add specific stats or rules for them as well.

I don't want to think too far ahead, but there isn't any reason not to do Cult of Undeath after I'm done with this one. After that, Terror in Timischburg and the other campaigns aren't ready enough to even start this project; I need to do the 5x5 workup here on the blog first.

Darkness in the Hill Country Epilogue: Character fronts!

I created the 5x5 matrix plan for the campaign, but in reality, of course, I also really like to have details related to the characters, and challenges, nemeses, etc. from their past feature. Of course, because this is a plan in search of an actual game, I don't have any characters yet, but what I do have is iconics that are stand-ins! I'll create this epilogue post to talk about what I'd do with the iconics, and use that as an example, I guess, of what I'd do with the actual PCs when I have them. I added the iconics images to the Part 0 post, so I won't repost them here.

First, my lead iconic is Dominic Clevenger, a Humbrian ranger. He's in his mid to upper 20s; still young, but has been around enough to be skilled and experienced. He spent time not only as a Hillman Ranger, but as part of the infamous Shadow Division, which the Ranger Corps does not officially admit exists, and some people don't believe in. As such, his task was specifically to hunt down supernatural threats, as well as support the general Ranger Corps mission of blunting other threats to the people of the Hill Country. The Ranger Corps is an interesting organization, in that it ignores any of the political nonsense that goes on between the two largest rival city-states, Barrowmere and Garenport, as well as between the East Marches section and the West Marches (where Cayminster and Bucknerfeld are the most important city-states respectively, and which have tried to extricate themselves from the politics of Garenport, at least, as much as is reasonably possible.) The commission of the Ranger Corps is to the people of the Hill Country as a whole, and while various politicians and would-be tyrants have sometimes tried to lean on the Rangers for their own purposes, the Rangers have staunchly resisted being coopted as such, and the current crop of leaders of the various locations are loath to try again.

In any case, this post isn't meant to be about background on the Ranger Corps. Dominic is a former Shadow, but now is a freelance supernatural bounty hunter of sorts. He is often supported (and hired) by his old commander (Sir Liamond Wreldane) who appreciates having talented and trusted freelancers that he can work with "off the books." Dominic "retired" early after tussling with a corrupted ranger (Audrey Hardwicke). Hardwicke's corruption was exposed, but he fled from facing justice. He still has lots of supporters in the Ranger Corps (some of whom simply don't know the particulars) as he was a popular figure among them, and well respected before his corruption was outed to the leadership of the group. They decided, for better or for worse, not to make the cause of Hardwicke's fall public. What was Hardwicke involved in? Kidnapping women and children (mostly) for occult sacrifices. Hardwicke was no cultist; just a mercenary who was paid to not only look the other way, but even enable and assist with gathering "resources" for various cults. Now that he's been exposed, he's still doing the same thing, but he has to be more discrete, and he no longer has his wages from his Ranger Corps day job. He's gotten more involved with various crimes to pay the bills and has had to lay considerably lower than he's used to. In fact, he's mostly relocated out of the Hill Country entirely to Simashki. He's also consorted even more intimately with various shady characters, including taking as a lover the kemling witch Merra Kuzulash. (Who is actually another anti-iconic; I have one group of anti-PCs who are all bad guys, and she's in that group normally.)

Since I never came up with an origin for the voodoo dolls from the Tazitta Death Cults section, let's have Audrey and Merra be the source. Rangers, or former rangers, still loyal to Hardwicke keep him informed from time to time on the comings and goings of their organization and the Clevenger brothers specifically. He'll have a few ambushes set up for Dominic and his gang of meddling kids, although they'll just be lackeys, not Hardwicke or Merra themselves. When the campaign gets closer to its endgame, Hardwicke will himself make an appearance in an urban setting—probably Garenport itself—for a cat and mouse hunt at the worst possible time. 

It'll be nice for Merra to at least get a nod, although I don't intend to feature her much, or probably even have her make an in-person appearance at all. I intend for whole entire group of "anti-PCs" to be part of a future campaign when I get there. Some foreshadowing through this vector is cool. 

Audley Hardwicke

Merra Kuzulash

Second, Dominic's best friend and blood-brother is Kimnor "Kim" Rugova, an expatriate shadow sword from Lomar. As described in the background on Lomar and the racial description of the grislings, his people are cursed so that a small percentage of them fall victim to a cannibalism curse where they must eat the flesh of a human or demihuman or slowly turn in to a ghoul (damned if they do and damned if they don't, when the curse manifests.) A younger and more idealistic Kimnor was engaged to a pretty girl from his neighborhood, who later contracted this curse by pure blasted bad luck. Vowing to find a way to beat it, Kinnor tried to hide her in a Nyxian neighborhood. She was captured and lynched by a mob, and Kimnor fled in grief, disavowing his entire people and race and homeland in his despair. However... his fiancé (Bethan Arghavad) was actually not lynched, or at least not terminally, and was taken by a Nyxian cult and protected from the law which mandated her death. She was prevented from devolving into a ghoul by being transformed into a dhampir—but she now gleefully hunts, kills, and eats her own people as per her curse, but does so with enhanced physical abilities and lucidity. Kim is going to have to discover and face this when circumstances bring him back to Lomar over the course of the game.

In the meantime, Kim has been hiding from both the terror of facing the supernatural, and his grief over Bethan (as well as his fear that it could come to him too) by being loud, boisterous, boastful—a hard partier, basically. But he also has a small pseudodragon as a pet. Kim's arc is rife with potential for really good character development as he faces his past and shows himself to be a much more serious person than he pretends to be.

Bethan Arghavad

I actually decided to turn the next two iconics into contacts, rather than continue to use them as iconics. But, since I already wrote this, I'll just repeat it here. I actually need to write the corresponding stuff about Ragnar and Cailin Clevenger, so I'll do that as part of the next campaign supercut, maybe.

Thirdly, Shule is an itinerant goblin thief. One of the main reasons Shule is wandering around the Three Realms with Dominic and Kim is because he's looking for his brother, who disappeared mysteriously. He occasionally runs into an old orcling pal who claims to have seen him, but the clues are always vague, often second-hand, and they've pointed to little other than the fact that he's still alive somewhere. As the party gets closer and closer to Garenport, the sightings and rumors increase. Turns out, his brother (Kemish) was press-ganged by orcling pirates on the Darkling Sea, but has done well with them and embraced their lifestyle. He's now first mate to an orc pirate (Charakaz Rees) who runs a sloop associated with Captain Taurak (of earlier campaign infamy). I'm not a huge fan of contrived moral dilemmas, but even I'm curious what happens when Shule's brother doesn't want or need to be "rescued." Or, at least he doesn't think that he does.

Shule

Fourthly, we have Oisin Dughall, a woodwose outdoorsman. He spent some time in his youth running with a bad crowd, and was an enforcer for a Chersky Mafia-type in Simashki (the true wretched hive of scum and villainy in the Three Realms, if you haven't gathered that already.) Because Oisin was fundamentally too principled to be successful as a mafia tough guy, he bailed on an operation that was a bridge too far. The operation proceeded anyway, but was a total mess because Oisin wasn't there doing his part. The boss's (Vaspar Oksandros) brother was killed and others of his organization were snatched by the Watch, necessitating expensive bribes to free the most important ones. Assuming Oisin had betrayed him on behalf of one of his rivals, Vaspar put a death mark on his head. Vaspar's rivals would also like to get their hands on him to find out what he knows. Oisin fled to the Hill Country, hoping that beyond the Sabertooth Mountains he'd be free to the gangster turf wars of Simashki. For a few years, this was true, especially as Oisin stayed in the rural areas. Vaspar himself has fled east as Simashki started to get too hot for him, and now operates a "startup" in Lomar, although he's got agents and spies throughout the Humberland Hill Country looking for opportunities. Oisin's ability to hide from his past is likely to take a turn for the worst, since Vaspar still blames him for not only his brother's death, but now even his entire fall from his perch in Simashki.

Oisin Dughall

Vaspar Oksandros