Showing posts with label Dark Fantasy X. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dark Fantasy X. Show all posts

Monday, September 16, 2024

Updates a'coming

I'm considering a fairly major update to the DFX game, or at least major in terms of it adding a few new things. First off, some context. I mentioned earlier that I played 5e for the first time this weekend, and the first time for D&D specifically, i.e., the brand D&D, in many years. Probably a good 9-10 years, maybe more. What I've played since then is only D&D in the same sense that my Wal-Mart brand facial tissue is a kleenex. I call all RPGs D&D when I'm being casual, but I haven't played actual D&D in quite a long time.

My impressions of it were, and I think I mentioned some of these things in my last post, A) if you need an online electronic tool to make and manage your character, that's a major red flag. B) if you need grids, battle-maps, and tokens or miniatures to keep combat straight, on a routine basis, not just for extraordinarily complicated and complex combats, that's another red flag. C) if a single extended combat sequence takes an entire 3½-4 hour session to play out, that's yet another red flag. D) short rests are ridiculous. E) if you need a VTT to manage your combats and characters, and you're being funneled into a proprietary tool that's—as has been said on multiple occasions by executives of the company to investors—going to be based on a subscription and microtransaction revenue model, that's not a red flag. That's the whole freakin' communist parade.

I said earlier that I bought an old used copy of the PHB for less than $20. That will be, I believe, the only 5e product that I buy, and I did so kind of reluctantly even so. I also, very belatedly, ordered older used copies of the 3.5 DMG and PHB. I'd been salty about the update from 3e to 3.5, and just used the SRD for years and years. I did, however, buy the MM, because I like monsters better than players, I guess, or something. (I suppose I could buy PODs from DriveThru at relatively decent prices, if I really wanted more. Most of the ones that I don't have, I don't see the need to do this, though. Except maybe Monster Manual IV. That's one of the few that I really regret having not bought when it was new. It sells for crazy expensive on the used market.) This doesn't exactly "complete" my 3e collection, but almost everything that I missed when it was current, I've now picked up as a pdf or something for less money than actually trying to collect the real books would cost. This is interesting, because actual physical copies of the books are still very expensive; the used market for most 3e era stuff, other than the core books is still pretty inflated. I think people still quite like this game, and if maybe they're not still playing it, they're still holding on to the books for some reason. As I mentioned before, I don't actually think 5e is a significant enough update to 3.5 to have been needed, honestly. It's clearly very much the same game in most respects, and it much more similar to 3e than it is to any other D&D game or edition. Sadly, it seems to have many of the same flaws, and few of the same strengths. Hardly surprising, honestly. If it had come out instead of 3.5, or even instead of Pathfinder, that would have been pretty cool. As it is, well... eh.

But a thought also occurs to me as I'm reading all of these 3e era books again, including some that I bought and never even actually got around to reading, sadly, years and years ago now. (I actually do way too much of that.) One of the major conceits of m20 when it was first designed was that while it streamlined the actual play of the game to almost ridiculous levels, sped up the game tremendously, and made everything much faster and easier on GMs, you could still use anything from d20 or 3e as is without needing to do much more than collapse any relevant skills, and stuff like that. You wanted a monster or spell or magic item from 3e? You could use it, and the conversion to m20 was such a snap that it almost doesn't even count as having to be done; you could literally do it on the fly in your head in a second or two. If you even bothered to. It also occurs to me that although Dark Fantasy X is no longer really an m20 game because it's changed quite a bit since I first conceived it as one, that for the most part this compatibility totally remains. I hadn't really given any thought to 3e in a long time, but since moving and uprooting all of my stuff, I kind of "re-found" my collection which had kind of been put away. Not sure what I'd want to potentially use; maybe some spells, maybe some monsters, maybe some scenarios or ideas here and there... but its been kind of fun to find all of this stuff again and find a way to actually use it again, even though I've long ago abandoned the idea that I'd have any interest in running something as rule-heavy and complicated as 3e ended up being. I just don't enjoy all of that complexity anymore. 

-------( )------

I'm thinking of adding a new area or two to the setting. I know, I know. The Three Realms and all of that. But these areas won't really be new, just that I haven't done much with them yet. The Boneyard, for instance, kind of serves as a big empty desert that also happens to be the hub around which the Three Realms cluster. I created it more because I'm a huge fan of the American deserts and semi-deserts of the Southwest, from west Texas to southern California, to Arizona and New Mexico and southern Utah and even as far north as much of Wyoming that isn't specifically mountainous. However, that doesn't actually manage to rise to the level of it being a compelling inclusion in the setting. 

There's an interesting conspiracy theory, peddled by such "respectable" places as The History Channel, that there were Egyptians in the Grand Canyon, and that the federal government has covered it up by making the area where the find was off-limits and restricting access. I don't have any comment on whether or not that's a credible idea or not, but it's a cool idea. I'm thinking of creating some civilization in the Boneyard, or at least the Mad Max-like wreckage of one, just so I have more going on in the area than western scenery and old bones from wars between Baal Hamazi and Kurushat. And I've been toying with actually making Nizrekh and Hyperborea real areas in the setting rather than off-hand references "off-screen." But the Boneyard is probably a bit more pressing, since it's geographically contiguous to all three of my Three Realms as it is.

Not that I want actual Egyptian-like influences. But I do want something. I'm not sure exactly what, yet. 

Finally, for whatever reason, I've had some equivalent to fire genasi in my setting from very early on. I did this independently from Freeport, when I got it way back in 2007 or so, but no doubt the fact that they had the azhar race, which was also the fire genasi, but "corrected" down to LA +0, which is really where all PC races needed to be to be useable, encouraged me to keep at it. But for whatever reason, I never had the other three genasi. But as I've been working on the early stages of Elemental Fantasy X, I've been really enjoying having them, and I kind of want to add to the surturs three more races; the tritons, the sylphs and the ... I admit, I always have a hard time coming up with names for earth genasi that I like. I'm kind of considering dvergs, from the Norse word for dwarves. Oread, which D&D does already use, but which is from Greek mythology, also does the job credibly well. But I'm leaning more towards a northern European rather than southern inspiration for the setting. Besides Greek oreads were like nymphs or dryads; all gals. But we'll see what name sticks or if I keep noodling on it. I think what I'll actually do is convert the surturs to the elementalist race, which comes in four flavors; one for each elemental. Culturally they're all the same, and they all come from Kurushat. But rather than being just surturs, they'll be all four. 

I actually think that the elementalists are born like normal humans, and only manifest their elemental heritage as young teenagers. It's a thing of significant cultural importance to the Kurushi elementalists when their kids first manifest which element they'll have power over, kind of like some kind of coming of age bar mitzvah or quincianera or... something that normal Americans do instead of foreigners, although the best I've got is being shuffled off to middle school or high school. We don't really do any coming of age rituals in America anymore. Then, once it first manifests, it takes six months to a year for the young kurushi kid to gradually transform physically into one of the four elementalist races; his skin color, eye color and hair color will change, his body dimensions will probably change; it's kind of like puberty plus because of the elemental change that comes over them as well as... well, as well as everything else that happens during puberty to kids. 

I don't know that I really need more races. I've got five normal ones and five in the appendix. I'm thinking about what to do with them all if I add three more. Surturs are already a mainline race, so maybe it makes sense to put the three new ones there, and move woodwose to the appendix. Then I'll be seven and six. I'm also thinking of moving surturs along with the rest of the elementalists to the appendix instead, and adding orcs and goblins back into the mainline. But that's because the Shadow Over Garenport 5x5 features orcs and goblins quite a bit, and surturs won't make a significant appearance until at least Cult of Undeath is over. I'm also considering taking wendaks out entirely, because the more I think about it, the more I doubt that they have much of a role in the game that a player could make much use of. They're not designed to be very playable, and work more as "The Other" to use libtard academia vocabulary. 

Maybe I don't need to have so few races in the mainline section of the book. Maybe I move all but the ones that would rarely appear (dhampir, seraphs, and grendling/wendaks if I even keep them. Maybe even woodwoses belong here, rather than in the mainline part of the book.) The mainline races will be expanded to be human, grisling (Hyperborean), kemling, orcs and goblins, woodwoses, and all four of the elementalists; surturs, sylphs, tritons and ... dvergs, probably. That makes for ten regular races, a pretty nice selection (comparable to seven in the 3e SRD, and nine in the 5e SRD; although the 5e SRD also has some sub-races that technically expand that to thirteen.) Three more remain in the appendix. 

Assuming that I do this, and I'm leaning heavily towards yes, I probably will, I may want to come up with more iconics or at least some patrons that showcase more of the new races. But, that's OK. Coming up with iconics is kind of fun.



Male and female sylphs.



Male and female triton.


Male dverg. I guess I need to generate some decent dverg girl images, don't I?

Sunday, August 18, 2024

Playing with banners and fonts

I like playing with banners. Not sure why. Also, here's a list of the fonts I use for DFX and EFX projects. Most of them I got from some place like dafonts or some other online archive that's readily available. I try to use royalty free fonts as much as possible, or standard fonts that come with Windows otherwise. There are probably a few exceptions. To be fair, I don't keep track of where I get my fonts. Many of them I've had for literally decades already anyway.

JSL Blackletter has become exceptionally popular in the RPG space in the last few years. Both Labyrinth Lord and ShadowDark use it for their main title, for instance, which has really raised its profile. I've seen it used a lot recently because of that. However, I think 1492 Quadrata lim is extremely similar and just different enough to be a bit unique. 

The X in Dark Fantasy X (and Elemental Fantasy X and Space Opera X) comes from the Anglodavek font. The traditional subheading on the banner; y'know, the fantasy • horror • madness thing has been done with a lot of fonts, but I think YouMurderer BB is probably my favorite. I'll mix it up with ASTRODRAMATIC, and yes, it only has capital letters, or Bleeding Cowboys sometimes, or even Bolide. Although I haven't used Shanked there yet, for something like that is exactly the reason I keep it saved on my font list. And for at least one variant banner I used Odinson before.

That said, banner and title fonts are different from text and subtitle fonts, where you want to be a bit less decorative and a bit more readable. For labels on my character sheet, I've used Primitive, for example, and for heading titles in the rulebook, I've used Benjamin Franklin. Rapscallion, Elric or Crusades would do well there too.

For Elemental Fantasy X, I made the banner out of Advertising Gothic Demo, but I'm not 100% sure that's where I want to go with it, and I've played around with some variations, including 1742Frenchcivlite and Angel. The Angel font, at least as shown, doesn't really highlight very well what it has, because the name is too short and it doesn't have enough letters. But when I type out Elemental Fantasy all the way, it looks wonderful.

Anyway, here's the promised banner variations. Some of them are older, and use fonts that didn't make the cut of my font list, and I no longer consider them on the pre-approved list. And the Space Opera X banners play by a different rules with somewhat different fonts approved.

I've also included, at the very bottom, the Space Opera X list, as an appendix. The final font, however, Adventure, it should be noted, is a copycat font of the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster banner, and works for any kind of pulp adventure.

And both Flash Rogers and Thunderstrike have non-half tone variations, but I tend to use the half tone the most, for whatever reason.

















Tuesday, August 13, 2024

Final updates before... I start making REAL updates

Not that anyone cares, but here’s a quick personal update. On Saturday, we finally cleared out the big pieces of furniture in our garage that we stored there temporarily because we didn’t have space for them and we weren’t sure what to do about them. After moving them to the driveway, we realized that they were in worse shape than we maybe thought, so my wife just went on Facebook Marketplace and gave them away. (Facebook Marketplace is kind of flaky; we actually have one set still on the driveway; supposed to have been picked up last night, supposed to be picked up again today. Sigh.) The good news is that this cleared enough space in the garage that we could access the boxes that the movers stacked behind them, which I’ve started moving around and looking through. I’ve found the two boxes that have my personal stuff from the basement office in the old house, which includes my art suppliers, whatever RPG suppliers I hadn’t already taken with me, etc. Because I found this stuff, I’m ready to start drawing my revised maps, my draft maps of Hyperborea and Nizrekh, and my draft map of the Elemental Fantasy X (EFX) setting. I also found my computer finally, in what was literally just about the last box left to look in. Sigh. I was very tired after moving boxes and doing yard work all evening, and it was pushing 9:30 PM by this point and was pretty dark, so I didn’t get into it or set it up, but that’ll be my task for tonight. Assuming that I’m not missing any components or cables or anything, I’ll finally have that up and running this evening. If I am, I hope to still find them in another box, or I might have to order a part or two (I have had my monitor, but without its power cord since I moved in. I really hope the missing power cord is in the box with the rest of the computer stuff. I presume it is, but if it’s not…)

I still have some personal things to take care of that will take some time here and there, including another visit of more family starting next week, but we really are getting to the point, especially once I have my computer set up, where I can consider myself more or less as moved in as we’re going to be. There’s still some more garage organization to be done, and because we’ll have to move again and don’t really have a place right now, the majority of my books will remain in boxes in the garage for the time being, but at least I’ll know how to access them, even if I don’t have a better place to put them. That will remain my only one niggling frustration, and maybe once everything else is done, I’ll look around to see if there isn’t actually a place that I can find where a bookcase or two makes some sense. Maybe even a bookcase in the garage is better than a box in the garage if there isn’t a better place for it. And there may not be. We really did move into a smaller house with less room for storage. One less bedroom, no shed and no basement. It’s been a struggle to figure out what to do with all of our stuff, even with the stuff we’re getting rid of.

Anyway, the point of all of this rambling about my personal situation is that I’m now at a point where I can make some reasonably concrete plans on what I want to do for setting and campaign development over the course of the next couple of months. After better part of a quarter being reduced to making stuff with just my phone, I was pretty limited, but when my computer is once again available, I can proceed with some better plans. Let’s do this as a dotted list; easier to read:

  • Update Dark Fantasy X document. For this week, getting my computer set up and then making the updates to the Dark Fantasy X document to bring it up to the level I want it to be with a few changes are on my radar. I also am thinking about adjusting the layout to be more “ShadowDark”-like, by which I mostly mean that I want to take more space, have a larger font and more white-space, and have stuff organized so that common information is available without too much flipping around. I started with a very traditional layout, focused more on trying to minimize page-count, because that used to be something that we’d do when I was younger; use the space up rather than creatively use space to make a visually easier format. Big walls of text with small subheading titles, and all of that. I also have a lot of AI art; I might integrate more of that into the book, because why not? One of the few things I could easily do with just my phone was generate hundreds of images of AI art using Bing’s DALL-E 3 access. This will probably at least double the page count of the book, but it won’t, of course, actually add anything to the word count, which matters more. Chances are I’m not going to print the book again anytime too soon anyway, after getting burned with printing and then almost immediately spotting things that needed to be fixed or updated.
  • Draw Another Setting Map. Next week, I’ll have less time with family in town from Wed-Wed but before they show up, if I can make the time, I’d like to draw the second second (yes, that’s correct) draft of the setting map in the Christopher Tolkien style with black and red ink. Then, once family is gone again, I’ll have a bit more time before we head out of town for an extended Labor Day weekend trip back to Michigan to walk the Mackinac Bridge with probably the worst governor in the nation (although she’s had some decent competition, especially from Gavin Newsom) with some old friends of ours. Then I’ll come back home, but my wife will be out of town a further week watching the grandkids, so I’ll have all of the time I could want for the evenings and one weekend to pursue hobby endeavors. Not that I want my nose to the grindstone too hard; I’m sure I’ll watch some movies and do a few other things like that too. But…
  • Finish Cult of Undeath fronts: I have one front more or less done, at least to the standard that I normally do them as a draft. I want to spend the time when I’ve got the house to myself drafting the next four and finishing the fronts. Then I’ll let that 5x5 rest, and come back and clean it up into a “supercut”. But in between the drafts and the supercut, I want to…
  • Modify Dark Fantasy X and Save As to be an Elemental Fantasy X. We’re still talking early to mid-September for this task, but it should be pretty easy. I want to use the rules pretty much as they are, but I’ll make a few minor changes to the magic, mostly by removing the sanity mechanic altogether and possibly lessening the cost of doing magic on a failed roll. I might also make spellcasting be a class feature, and add more spells than Dark Fantasy X currently has. I’ll also need to redo the races: I’m not going to use most of the races of Dark Fantasy X (although there’s no reason why I couldn’t) in part because I might well repurpose the existing race features into a different race. EFX, vs DFX, will be more superficially D&D-like, including elves and dwarves, for instance, and a whole gaggle of elemental near human races: genies, ifrits, tritons and chthons for air, fire, water and earth elements respectively. It’ll also have orcs and goblins (which are in DFX) and vampires and liches. Those might be represented, however, by the dhampir race from DFX; the truly monstrous ones will be NPC monsters. I don’t know for sure how to do the undead races yet. But I quite like the idea of them being a playable race, not unlike how Heroes of Might & Magic had undead of various sorts (mostly liches and vampires and necromancers—the latter not being true undead, of course) as hero types you could play as.
  • Start the Solo Play Shadows Over Garenport series on YouTube. By the time September is ending, I’m wanting to be done with the docs and moving on to the podcast/actual “play” stuff. 

What none of this addresses is if or when I can get an actual regular game going. Since I just relocated to a new state, I don’t know anyone who’s interested in gaming. I’ve been by a couple of local gaming stores, but all of them are considerably less focused on RPGs than what I’m used to, so I don’t know if that’s even worthwhile to attempt to scrounge anything up there. Plus, I’m not a huge fan of finding gamers through stores, honestly. I might have better luck making gamers out of friends. But again, I just moved here, so I don’t have anyone that I see as a ready target to introduce them to the hobby. 

Meanwhile, I spent a little bit of time reviewing my EFX race line-up. It’s quite lengthy, and I might yet decide to cut some of it: humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, fiends, genies, ifrits, tritons, chthonians, vampires and liches. None of them will really be quite as exotic as they sound from some other fantasy settings; I’m going to consider all them (except humans) as near humans, with a comparable racial ability scenario to humans. None of them will be more or less powerful as starting characters, none of them will be strange ethereal super long-lived, etc. To borrow a page from my own DFX, they will all be humans who have been changed many generations ago into something near human… but no longer quite human.

There’s no reason why I couldn’t have the DFX races present in EFX too except that I already have so many racial selections as it is. But then again, if I integrate an idea from my old Realms Traveler setting seed, maybe that explains where all of these exotic near humans came from and why so many of them exist in one (relatively) constrained space. Anyway, I went ahead and generated some new images of potential iconic character art for the elemental races that look a bit less like Heroes of Might & Magic art. Here’s a small selection; a male and female each of the four elemental races.










Saturday, August 03, 2024

Dragos and Bokrug

I had used some lingering nosferatu in a swamp images for Dragos for yesterday's post, picking ones that were particularly undead looking. I generated some specifically for him, though, so this should supercede that. Ironically, getting Bing's AI to make my wights and ghouls and stuff usually involves describing "nosferatu with withered and scarred skin". It also likes to add a beard for some reason, but for wights and ghouls that's ok. Dragos is kind of an advanced wight anyway, so he should look a little unique. And given that he's amassed a small cult of Tarushan gypsies with him, he can wear some gypsy stuff sometimes too to give him a unusual costume, if nothing else.







I'm also going to stop calling Bokrug the Water-Lizard. He's just going to be some kind of primeval horror in vaguely humanoid form called Bokrug. Some people will get the reference, but if they don't, they'll get to experience the Lovecraftian stuff all for the first time. In spite of the name, I imagine this playing out more like the Inspector Legrasse section of "Call of Cthulhu" than I do like "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" .









Friday, August 02, 2024

Cult of Undeath: Front #1: The Murder of Professor Alpon von Lechfeld

OK, I’ve brainstormed, I’ve modified; let’s see if I have what it takes now to create a fully fledged Front #1: The Murder of Alpon von Lechfeld.

Just a quick aside; you may well remember that in Shadows Over Garenport, von Lechfeld is not only a potential contact, but he also plays a role in the second front, where he’ll need to be consulted most likely as a subject matter expert on the Tazitta cults. While it’s possible that the PCs can skip this entire thing and not meet him, I suspect that getting his expert opinion and knowledge will be so obvious a step that it will be done without much fanfare, which is fun to me, because it sets up some early foreshadowing for Cult of Undeath. The PCs will become friendly, or at least friendly enough with him through actual play to justify what happens in Cult of Undeath. Even if they don’t like each other, I think von Lechfeld will respect their ability to do certain things in the fight against the Shadow, where he is as active a warrior in his own way as the PCs are. It also gives the PCs a chance to meet Revecca. Only Dominic, the iconic character is likely to have her fall for him in a major crush kind of way, but you never know. Maybe one of the actual PCs will end up in the same boat. 

Alpon von Lechfeld

Revecca von Lechfeld

In any case, the PCs start Cult of Undeath in Cockrill’s Hill, which was a location in Shadows Over Garenport, at the von Lechfeld country estate. Alpon has died, and they’ve been called to the funeral to act as pallbearers and minor heirs in his will. I’ll actually give the PCs some minor cool things, but they’ll be minor. One condition, taken from the original adventure written by Paizo (one of the few things from Carrion Crown that’s still been retained) is that they need to stick around for a few weeks making sure that Revecca’s affairs are in order; she’s underage and single, but an uncle who Alpon trusted is on his way to make sure that she’s taken care of long term (Bertram Vogt de Heselholt). The PCs, however, are tasked as part of the will and part of receiving the inheritance that they’ve been promised, with keeping an eye on her until he shows up.

Things start going badly in town almost right away. Ghosts, haunts and other supernatural freaky things start happening. The graveyard is disturbed. The challenge for the PCs will be twofold; who’s running around mucking stuff up, and how to put down the supernatural hauntings. Well… threefold. The townsfolk are getting agitated and have decided that von Lechfeld is some kind of necromancer or vampire or other undead tormenting the town after his death. It turns out that his grave has been despoiled, and Pandallo’s Preternatural Periapt, which was buried with him, has been stolen. I’ve got lots of creepy vignettes to add here, but also, the actual facing down of thugs around town, ghouls prowling the graveyard, and especially the ghosts and haunts is a major part of this part of the campaign. They can also first hear the name Otto von Szell here from some ghost or other, or something like that.

Research into the periapt will start to uncover its properties, although that will most likely involve a trip to Mittermarkt and consultation with sages and scholars there, in particular Werner Otten. While in Mittermarkt, the whole Beast situation will turn up. This is a Frankenstein flesh golem/zombie that is running around killing people. The first deaths happened at little farming hamlets outside of town, like Ebenbach, and it will turn out, of course, that that’s where the beast is hiding. But it’s attacked people on the road into town, and more recently in town itself. The same research into the periapt will also indicate that the undead suppression can work on the Beast. There’s a one-off undead suppression ritual that should cause it to lose its animating energy. It’d otherwise likely be beyond the capabilities of the PCs to defeat.


Otten was killed earlier, and part of his body was used to create this golem. He’s actually been dead for weeks, maybe even months now. But items in its pockets are portions of communications with Lechfeld from previously about the periapt. The remaining portions are found in the Beast’s “lair”. They will point to communications received from a suspicious character in Eltdown, which is where the name Otto von Szell will come up.

Also, while exploring this countryside just out of town, they’ll find evidence of missing persons not related to the Otten-beast. Tarushan gypsies have been kidnapping isolated or helpless people for some time and taking them to Dragos Tihomir in a town even smaller than Ebenbach called Tiganbruck. The gypsy camp, that moves back and forth from Tiganbruck to Mittermarkt, often with new victims in tow, was feeding them to Dragos, a modified wight with some spells and special attacks here and there. Of course, there will be sneaky gypsies to fight as well; in fact, I think the first thing that will happen is that they are ambushed by gypsies, who are adept at separating the PCs from each other and attempting to bring just one or two of them to Dragos.

Dragos

Presuming that the PCs follow the clues to Eltdown, they will find spies and cultists who worked with or for Loriana Stefanescu, maybe even Bartal Roziak and Francor Torsail. Not quite sure yet exactly how I’ll dole out these clues, but they’ll discover that Stefanescu has discovered that the periapt isn’t useable properly by just anyone; it was keyed to Alpon, and his death has made the periapt unreliable. The only solution is someone in his direct bloodline, and the only person that applies to is Revecca. Agents have been dispatched to kidnap her already. It isn’t my intention that the PCs would stop or interrupt this kidnapping, but depending on what they actually manage to do, maybe it could happen, I suppose. Either way, they know that she’s not safe until the threat is blunted. They’ll hear more of von Szell, who hopefully by now they realize is seriously bad news, and they're either motivated by intense dislike or fear of this guy. Eltdown is also a nexus for at least two other fronts in the 5x5, so I don’t need this to be a particularly meaty line, because they’ll be plenty of other things to do by then in the area.

Roziak and Torsail

Eltdown

Stefanescu

Either by rescuing Revecca or preventing her kidnapping entirely, or whatever, the PCs will finally face Stefanescu, her two skilled Tarushan gypsy thugs, and some undead and bad black magic. But the periapt itself has been sent deep into the Fens near Eltdown, where Otto von Szell intends to use it to try and revivify Bokrug the Water-Lizard, some kind of early Atlantean-era (if not earlier—maybe the Atlanteans will be like the people of Sarnath in this case) creature that is best left alone. Not sure exactly what this big showdown will be like, but it’ll be the conclusion of the entire front.

Reanimated Bokrug