[Crown of Tears] Strange Giant Chickens

Continuing the annual tradition of a lighter, Thanksgiving-themed adventure. After last year's Chimeric Turducken, this year featured another fowl-themed adventure. This time, several farms have been raided by "strange giant chickens" and a bear.

After a short investigation, the knights of St Edras followed the monsters' tracks only to fall in a gnoll ambush, but then...

The squwaking reached a feverous pitch as a terrible flock of fowlbears burst from a cave to attack the knights.

After their defeats, they found several seasonal items and brought back enough food for the entire village as fowlbear meat... well... it tastes like chicken.

[Crown of Tears] The Devil's Boar

Problems in Darveshnagar are mounting as gnolls and bandits threaten the roads. Food is growing scarce in town and the merchants are looking for more.

The one military unit in town, volunteer spearmen keeps the road open, but the Knights of St Edras will have much to do. Too much to do for their own goods. The knights opted to track down a massive devil boar that attacked hunters and gnolls alike.

Tracking the large boar to its lair uncovered that it had taken over a bandit lair and killed several of the bandits, partially devouring them.

The "boar" turned out to be an ogre infected with lycanthropy, leading to a hard battle in the cave.

Let's just say the scene ended on a war crime as the prisoners (future meal) of the ogre met a sudden fiery end...

When the knights returned to the Tower, they found the skulls of six of the spearmen on pikes forming a welcoming committee of sorts...

Another development is that Fatima found a charming girl for Vulcanus. Marya is a pious orphan she believes would make a great match. She even sent him a portrait of the girl.

FOE releases... The Fiend FOELio!

Since FOE was formed in 2013, I have ran several multi-year campaigns, one-shots, and the Legacies campaign that still runs yearly at Gencon and at other smaller events through the year.

These many events resulted in the creation of several different, new, and unique opponents. These stat blocks languished in various documents, and adventures, forgotten or ignored. Some were on roll20 where I created them. A few were on pictures of a scan of a partial stat block.

Over the past two years or so, I have been collecting these stat blocks in one location. Several of them needed new coats of paints: tightening the wording, creating new art, and bringing things in line with hour we create our stat blocks now.

I added some new art, from the usual artists I work with, and a several pieces using AI. This is capped by The British Shark's awesome cover inspired by X-Men 135 by John Byrne (one of my favorite comic of all time).

The book contains:
- Over 250 fully-statted creatures and NPCs to use as allies or opponents and seven major characters from the Legacies campaign over the years.
- Unique characters from Akhamet, Olympia, Ozaka, Rhym, Tarsyn, the Truskan Empire, and even fully-statted First Ones.
- New creatures from FOE settings, presented with notes on how to adapt them to other worlds.
- Updated creatures from older FOE products. Giving a little love to these creatures after years of playtesting. Cleaning and bringing them in line with more modern standards.
- Dozens of Book of Lairs-style encounters provide immediate adventure ideas for your table.
- Though written for the worlds of FOE, most of the material contained within can be used for any campaign setting.

This is a book that took over a decade to create!

It is available on:
- Amazon for physical books.
- DriveThruRPG for PDFs.

The Face that terrifies my players...

[Crown of Tears] A Queen, boobie-honk, and a Dragon

The Knights of St Edras met with Queen Livia of Tarsyn. She offered them money in return for an item they were researching previously. She offered them 100 freshly minted platinum pieces as an advance.

What followed was a series of typical adventurer shenanigans that ended with Terrificus getting whipped. Vulcanus to played boobie-honk with the queen. And others expecting to get whipped or killed.

After this encounter, they headed to Darveshnagar arriving after the Queen.

So they decided to leave the village while the crowd welcome the Queen.

They headed to Zapel Lake to look for a bandit. There, they learned about not only the site of a bandit camp, but also of a strange star that fell from the sky and that made the sand glow with strange colors.

They headed to the glowing sands where they found a beachball-sized chunk of crystal from which an odd light came. No doubt what the fisherman talked about.

Terrificus shattered the crystal with a spell and a crystal dragon came out.

A half-fight later, the dragon flew off in the hills...

[Crown of Tears] Bandits, crying girl, and fireball

The Knights of St Edras followed up leads that led them to the site of an attack by bandits.

Expecting gnolls, they discovered several boots leading away from the site. Following the tracks, led them to a site where people some humans got eaten by unidentified creatures.

The tracks of the large number of people led to an unfinished tomb near the Pistaccio Woods.

Inside the tomb, they got assaulted by several bandits, coming out of every room. Then their wolves came out.

Finally a female voice called for help in a distant room. Tera went to investigate to find a bound and gagged young woman. He freed her, only for her to cast a fireball that blasted the party AND to reveal herself to be a green hag!

What a twist!

The fireball decimated the party, but she somehow managed to escape, leaving the PCs with more questions than answers.

All that was left was to plunder the lair and return home victorious!

[Crown of Tears] Other Letters

New letters came in this week. I spent several pips (12), advancing various plots from the NPCs this week.

[Lendore Isles Campaign] Back to 2e... after 32 years!

For the first time since... huh... 1993? I joined an ongoing campaign of D&D 2e! Now even if my last D&D 2e campaign was back in University, I did play the occasional game, but I really disliked the game. It had so many flaws to me, especially since there were games that fit what I wanted to play much more. It was the time of the World of Darkness, of Legend of the Five Rings, and of Call of Cthulhu.

I saw an ad for the game on a Quebec D&D group. What drew my eye? It was a game set in Greyhawk, in the Lendore Isles. I was in and wanted to play.

So after we went through the session zero, we made characters. I chose to make a cleric (my favorite class in all editions). I created a cleric of Lydia (imagine a gossip-cleric!).

The first game is still to come but I'm really excited to start and see what happens.

The Four Questions

An important NPC: My mother Berthe, who works at the local inn, Le Griffon Vert.

An important Event: I ratted out some of the local bullies, Lars and his 2 goons, after they did something bad. It taught me that to speak the truth led to good outcomes. Revealing hidden truths is one of Lydia's tenets.

An important Place: The library beneath the local chapel. I live there in a small room. I help out at the hospital, teach kids, and perform religious service.

One thing I'd like to accomplish: I'd like to establish a cult of Lydia in Valiandre (our home town).

[Crown of Tears] New Letters...

New Letters...

[Crown of Tears] Ancient Golems

Having opened the double doors to reveal the odd statue of a six-armed snake woman... a marilith demon! They decided to... SMASH the statues by the doors. They turned out to be stone golems! Then, they attacked the marilith statue, and the skeletons on the spears activated, creating a massive free-for-all, with the PCs, skeletons, and golems all fighting against each other.

A lot of frantic running around and damage dealt and taken led to one of the stone golems to fall into the chasm and vanish (for now).

In the scramble that followed, Sylumbra tried to escape the other golem by drawing it into the chasm (again) but this golem held on and pummeled her to death, her body disappearing into the depths.

Then the party fled, told Fatima to brick up her basement.

[My Character] Villaine the Green Knight

I created this character for a one-shot Nick-T ran at my place in September called Lost in the Forest. The details were otherwise sparse as to what we would be doing. We would be level 6, pretty much anything goes.

I decided to play a ranger, which I haven't played in years (I think my last PFS character was a ranger). After building her up to level 6, I decided to add some versatility and made her Ranger 5/ Fighter 1.

For my archetype, I chose the Green Knight from the Tarsyn Setting. I liked the idea of a ranger walking around in an armor made of dirt, leaves, and vines.

What is a Green Knight? The Green Knights of Tarsyn are dedicated to the protection and defense of holy site. The knightly fist of the Druidic Circles. The idea got me excited.

Now to complete the character...
- Sex: my previous character was a male, so I went with a female character.
- Race: I considered one of the Princesses, but did not want to be a Rose Red (an iconic combo). So after poking around, I went with a variant human.
- Background: I knew I wanted something different than the outlander... After some thought, I went with criminal. But I did not want her to be a burglar, but a highwayman... That was cool. Thus, she grew up, fell in with some bad folks, then later became a Green Knight...
- Name: I wanted something interesting that told a story... so I went with "Villaine" meaning "Bad Girl" which I thought brought the concept together...

Villaine Villaine was born outside the city of Tarsyn to a family of honest farmers. Not interested in the toils of her family, she joined a group of bandits and became a highwayman, taking the name "Villaine"to protect her family from retribution. One day, she met a Green Knights, and she became enamored with the idea of being a champion of nature.

Turns out, she was very much needed for the adventure and really helped the party throughout our adventure in the forest. The adventure was filled with fey spirits and interesting challenges that made for an interesting afternoon of D&D fun.

I hope to revisit her in the future.

[Kinda Book Review] Essential Avengers Vol 6

The Avengers are a constantly revolving door of a group. There are some stories that are very exciting... but this is not it. It's an in-between set of stories with a LOT of exposition that happens between the events of the major characters' own albums.

For 4-5 issues (2 of them 'Giant-Sized Avengers') they go about talking about the backstories of two characters: the Vision (some interest) and Mantis (not interesting). And It's long. I mean... boringly long, with the people talking and looking as they travel through time... GUH!

I hoped that Kang's appearance would add some interest, but not really. The death of the Swordsman also added nothing (he's back in 1 issue-ish). Captain America shows up, just to tell us of the cool stuff in his title.

Frankly, it was not TERRIBLE, but it wasn't good.

I will rank this a 2/5. It's much more boring than a 3.

[Crown of Tears] Under the Weaver's Shop

After much debate, the party decided to garner goodwill by helping out Fatima the Weaver. After a lovely discussion over tea and scones, where the PCs discovered more secrets, they entered the basement.

They uncovered a secret/unknown section crypt with several unique/ ancient elements.

But the oddest discovery (so far) was when they broke a stole stela and discovered a strange being encased within, entombed in salt...

[Crown of Tears] Word from Darveshnagar Oct 7

Before the start of our weekly game, the PCs, as a legitimate forces, received a few letters from locals asking for their help.

[Crown of Tears] Offers of Patronage

After clearing the Tower of St Edras, our heroes decided to settle here. They received three offer letters to receive funds and money to help fix the tower.

Who will they chose?

[Kinda Book Report] Beowulf

I received this a few years ago from Santa. Beowulf is a poem that is VERY interesting. I got a modern interpretation and will be honest in saying that I was hesitant to read a poem. I dislike poetry, it's just... not my thing. Any interest in it was crushed in Secondary 4 (10th grade)... Long ago...

Now we all know the story of Beowulf. A prince of the Geats who goes to Hroathar's hall and defeats Grendel, then Grendel's mother.

Now, I will admit that I found myself enjoying this book much more than I thought.

What I learned about the story is that it is one of the only book in Old English rescued from ~700AD. There are nods to a richer litterary tradition that is now lost to us. References to people we don't know about anymore. Links to events we forget about. I did not know that. There is so much we just do not know about it.

The story is well-known, but reading as close to the source material as possible is awesome. Gives you a snapshot of mankind in the past. What people thought at the time... What was important to them. What they believed. And Beowulf is no exception.

Not much more to say... I liked it. I would give it a 3.5, which rounds out to 4/5.

Grendel is the topic of one of my inspirational songs... From this post from 2015

[Crown of Tears] The Tower of St. Edras Part 1

Our heroes left civilization to explore and see if they could claim the Tower of St. Edras for themselves.

Their avaricious gazes sought the bounty of 5M for each troglodyte right hand, some hoped to get rich quick.

Finally, the tower came into view. It suffered from previous damage, as half of the building had collapsed, leaving one side open to the elements.

Waiting for them were three human bodies impaled on long stakes.

The Tower of St. Edras is not undefended...

[Crown of Tears] Some Wanted Posters

Some simple wanted posters I did for the campaign.

[Crown of Tears] Kickoff of the Tarsyn Campaign

This past Tuesday, we kicked off the new campaign, set in FOE's new Tarsyn Campaign setting.

The heroes were hired by a merchant to escort wagons carrying various supplies to the village of Darveshnagar on the border of the Mists. To their great dismay, what should have been a rather simple two-day trip was made much worse by the unexpected arrival of rain - sudden weather changes are not uncommon along the borders.

While they walked along the Darvesh River, a band of troglodyte warriors ambushed them. A furious battle broke out.

As night was soon to fall, they decided to rest in the ruin of a tower by the river, where again the trogolodytes came and attacked them, this time led by one of their druids and a massive dinosaur monster that blasted them. These creatures made a serious impact.

Questions remain... what were the troglodytes trying to steal? Why?

In the morning, they finally reached their destination and received payment.