Runehack: Avurai University

If you've been reading this blog since its beginning, or if you happen to have read its earliest posts despite the fact they're super outdated, you might remember my list of settings I wanted to work on. It's funny looking back at that list and at my current priorities. Sivobog I see to this day as a mistake, while Grimwick is a world that has lingered in the back of my mind for years, but I never really felt like starting actual work on it. Then there's E2020, and Charodey. The former, full name Earth-2020, was an urban fantasy setting: basically our world, but with magic and fantastical creatures. While it was a fun thought experiment, I realized quickly that this can't be done easily because of magic, which is why it eventually evolved into the Ethernet of Keys. That setting toned down its magic to an absolute minimum by the 5e standards, permitting literally only cantrips. The more thought I gave it, the more I realized that the further back you go with the introduction of magic, the more differences our timeline should contain. Today, I know that the easiest solution to that would be to just.... introduce the magic right as the game starts, or as close to that point as possible. Back when I thought otherwise, I started to work from the ground up on a world with minimal magic. That's how Runehack was made.

Charodey was another setting that has lingered in my mind for a long time. School time is associated in my head with some nice memories, a collective that can but doesn't have to always work well together, and learning. While the original premise was much more fantasy, I remembered it when this article was half-finished. Sure this university is very, very different from Charodey, but somehow it found its way into the Runehack too it seems. Back then, I literally named the school "Charodey Academy", the word Charodey coming from the Slovak word for a wizard. The Avurai University is different though. It's a place full of elitism, betrayal, competition, but above all else education. Hopefully, it will be a homage to an idea I had a long time ago, despite the fact that this school has basically no magic in it.

I wish you at least as good of a time reading this, as I had writing it up.

Avurai University

Avurai University is a surprisingly influential city, considering it can't expand, has practically no goods for export, and that it has a capacity of 5000 people, 50 visitors, and 3000 fairies beyond that. While the island can support more people than this, it's much safer to keep the numbers below the actual limit. This university campus travels around the world and educates only the best of the rich, as well as the richest of the best worldwide. Earning your place in this university is truly a prestige, whether as a student or as the staff.

Geography

Avurai University is the biggest city entirely located on a floating island. The island usually travels around the world in an orbit, though the rulers of the city can direct its flight through a complex mechanism built into the island. Due to its original location being above a warm temperate climate, most of its natural fauna would resemble that of a typical deciduous forest. However, ever since it started to traverse the world, it only retained on its surface plants that would survive in any climate. The only expansion it ever went through was hollowing out the inside of the island to create buildings on its surface, and to establish an underground farm for the food.

The closest thing to the exported goods of the Avurai University would be its educated people. While the island can hold thousands of people, it has barely enough space to produce its own food and wood. Anything else, such as metals or amber, has to be imported up into the city. Due to this, anyone who wishes to study at the university must pay a lot to stay there.

History

The history of this city goes back to 2900 years before the era of monsters when the greatest cryptoexplosion of the recorded history happened. This produced the biggest flying island in the world that flies to this day, Freeland. Over the centuries, the island gathered dust on its surface, which turned out to be fertile enough for life to start there. It's theorized that birds or other historic flying animals have brought the first plants to the island, which without other competition thrived there since the island flies low enough to receive rain.

Once humanity has developed the first flying vehicles, a handful of hopeful settlers set the course to Freeland. However, the more of them gathered there, the more they realized the many disadvantages of this land: lack of goods they could produce combined with the very limited space for living was discouraging enough to make them leave.

Twenty years later, a handful of wealthy Lifestock employees had a vision of what the Freeland could be, bought it, and claimed it as their own. Once they started to build a university there, Lifestock has started to show interest in the project. When the offers started to come, first from their employers and later from their competitors, the owners of the island and the university decided to quit their jobs and establish independence. Building the university took a total of 3 years, and the university has operated for nearly 160 years ever since until the present day. While the university has remained completely independent ever since its founding, its independence relies only on the constant influx of wealthy students and keeping up its reputation.

Structure

The city has 5 major districts, some of which are divided based on the five faculties. While the Dormitories and the Scholars' Way are not connected, other districts are all interconnected at least in one way. Each of the districts houses some non-teacher staff, though outside of the Main and Farming districts it's only for the most needed matters.

Dormitories. This is the residential district where all of the students live. It also contains some places where the students can hang out to enjoy themselves.

Farming district. This district is off-limits to anyone but the farming staff and those who govern the Avurai University, and it takes up the entirety of Freeland's underground spaces. Vegetables, fruits, crops, and even some meats produced there are then transported to the other districts based on their needs. While the students above are told that the illusory sunlight is good enough for the plants, only the farmers know the truth of how these plants can be grown underground.

Main district. Most of the non-educational establishments of the Avurai University are found in this district. Shops, catering, repairs, and many other services are available in the largest outer district of the city.

Scholars' Way. The university teachers live in their own district on a single street that could be mistaken for a part of the Main district. This district also hides beneath it the control panel that determines which way the Freeland island travels.

Studies. Buildings intended for the education of students are all located in the Studies district. It is the most defining part of the whole university both due to its unique architecture in comparison to the rest of the city, but also because of its function.

The people are divided into these groups based on their relations to the university:

• Teachers, those who are employed by the university to educate its students.
• Personnel, those who are employed by the university to take care of the cleaning, cooking, services, and any other necessities.
• Students, who are equally subdivided into the following five Faculties based on the fields of science:
• Cravenlore. These students learn about the nature of non-humanoid beings such as plants, animals, and apex predators. Their representing color is green.
• Mindlore. These students focus on politics, economy, psychology, art, history, and other matters related to the study of humanoids. Their representing color is red.
• Runecraft. These students learn everything there is to know about the runes, runetech, and their applications in practice. Usually, the knowledge of runes would fall under the Worldken, but it has been separated into its own faculty due to the breadth of things that the runes are used for in practice. Their representing color is orange.
• Witlore. These students focus on the study of all matters nonphysical, that include mathematics, logic, and philosophy. Their representing color is pink.
• Worldken. These students learn about the chemistry of inorganic materials, the fundamental laws of the universe, and their utilization in practice. Their representing color is blue.

Culture

Standard uniforms of the Avurai University are beige in color, with dark brown details, and colored signifiers of which Faculty they belong to in the form of shoulder pads and the neck gemstone.
Art kindly provided by Arell, a friend of mine.

Art curiosities: The fairy secretaries are a luxury permitted on the university for all personnel, as well as students of 3rd or 4th year of study.

If someone asked anyone from the Avurai University how they'd characterize life there in four words, they would say it has to be educational, snobbish, competitive, and back-stabbing. Since it's the university's policy, the choice of who gets to stay is governed by strict rules.

The students can study at this university for up to 4 years, or more if they can afford it. At the start of every school year, the school admits the 400 of the best students done across all of the cities of the world into each Faculty, as long as their test results were above 60% correct. This usually totals to the 2000 students in the first grade. Every year, only half of that number passes to the next year, with the same condition of at least getting 60% of the answers right. The final fourth year thus holds only 50 students in each faculty, to a total of 250 fourth graders across the whole university. Out of these, anyone who gets at least 60% of the answers on the final tests correct gets to pass, receiving a title and usually leaving the university. Since they have more free time due to requiring less sleep, the majority of students attending the Avurai University consists of elves, with higher concentrations in the latter years of study.

Since Freeland has a carrying capacity, each student is limited in how many things they can bring with them. While stationary is largely unaffected, they can't bring with them things such as their own vehicles (including hovering ones, which is a matter that puzzles students yearly), hovering rooms, or pets. University's population is also kept in check, with any of the personnel or students who perform the forbidden intercourse running a risk of getting expelled permanently.

In order to ensure the highest quality of the teachers and personnel, at the end of every semester, the worst 20% of them are replaced with the new hires from cities all over the world. This also includes the runebots who serve double duty as janitors and security of the city. These runebots are replaced only when it is necessary, for example, due to a malfunction.

Beyond the standard limit of 5000 people and 50 visitors, there's a limit of up to 3000 staff fairies on top of that. Any student who is a fairy doesn't count into this limit and gets counted as a regular student to the limit of 5000 people. Some common jobs for the fairies employed by the Avurai University include education, surveillance, repairs, accounting, library guides, and working as waitresses in the bars using special hovering food trays. But the most common job for the fairies here is a personal assistant. Any employee, as well as students of 3rd or 4th grade, can bring along a personal assistant fairy, as long as they employ and pay her properly. A fairy employed this way serves as a secretary to whoever they're employed by, keeping track of their schedule, duties, and anything else that the individual wishes to delegate upon her. Since a personal assistant bypasses the merit-based requirements for coming to the university in another way, it is the greatest hope for many of the fairies who would want to see the Avurai society in person.

Every school year is split up into three trimesters and a holiday, all of which line up with the seasons perfectly. The trimesters cover spring, fall, and autumn, and the holiday lasts during the winter. There are several official events organized by the teachers and university personnel, and a handful of unofficial events organized by the students for the students.

The Academic Show is organized at the beginning of the summer trimester every even year. Students who choose to attend this show must present some kind of scientific experiment and/or invention in order to impress and educate others. The most impressive presentation from each of the faculties wins a monetary prize, as well as a university-paid trip to one vista within the winners' choice of a city that the University will pass over before the school year ends. Any participants who present an experiment that was showcased there during the last Academic Show are automatically disqualified from winning the prize, although they are allowed to present. Since the monetary prize for each team is equal no matter the number of members, participants usually limit themselves to working with up to 2 others, or preferably alone.

The Scholars' Soiree is a formal dance organized on the evening before the final week of the autumn trimester of every school year. It's preceded by the month of tailoring, during which the attendees of the Soiree have a chance to design and sew their own outfits. The Scholars' Soiree begins with a ceremonial feast, often considered to be the first of many winter feasts. After the feast, people are free to do as they wish: socialize with others, drink or feast some more, dance, or attend other activities. The secret judges mingle with people, examining custom-made outfits close-up until 1 hour before midnight. At that moment, the judges are unveiled and hand out the titles of the Lord of the Night and Lady of the Night to those who they deem to have the greatest self-made outfits. Understandably, even a friendly meaningless contest like this can and is cheated by those who can afford to cheat it. Since all of the students of 3rd and 4th year get to have a fairy as a personal assistant, those who wish to gain this title will employ fairies with past experiences in fashion design and tailoring.

The Winter Feasts are organized during the winter holidays. It's a simple event in comparison to the other two, all about having wonderful weekly feasts for all three months of the winter. Students who haven't finished their 2nd year of study are not allowed to stay at the university during the winter months, which means they cannot enjoy these feasts. Teachers use these feasts as a way to entice the students to stay in the University even during their holidays and possibly help out in it as a cheap labor force for some small credits.

Over the years, students of this university have formulated several humorous phrases revolving around the nature of their university that has ever since become commonplace, sometimes even beneath this island:

• "Drop-off" and "drop out" both stand for a student, who is not studying anymore due to a reason that's not graduation. They can also stand for things that have fallen from the island down to the world below.
• "Flying grades" are grades that will allow a student to attend the flying university for another year. In other words, they're a nickname for passing grades.
• "Hang in there" began as a phrase of encouragement told to those who struggle with passing. However, it has evolved to contain a strong sarcastic undertone.
• "Climbing the Tower" stands for the effort that someone puts into graduating the Avurai University with the intention to stay there as a teacher. It's due to the fact that only the teachers are permitted at the Tower of Knowledge.
• To "feast on meat" means to enjoy the rewards one has earned. The origin of this phrase is uncertain since it could stand either for general consumption of meat, which is much rarer than fruits and vegetables, or because of the Winter Feasts.
• "Traincatcher" is a student who is expected to fail their current year of study.
• "Streetcleaner" is a nickname for the janitorial runebot staff, mainly due to their capabilities of keeping the streets tidy, and enforcing curfews as well as laws.

"Hang in there, traincatcher!"

Subculture Showcase: Scientific Communities

Note: This section is not meant to imply that the presented subculture is in any way unique to or most represented within this city. It is just a subculture I chose to present because it felt most thematically fitting and it wasn't introduced yet.

Examples of the scientist outfits. The white lab coats are the most important part of the outfit, with the innerwear being optional, up to the individual scientist's wishes.
Art kindly provided by Arell, a friend of mine.

Art curiosities: The guy is wearing a VR headband. The scientists showcase two different types of clasps for the "semi-open" lab coat at the top—the male having two triangular flaps, while the woman has a gray band. They bear no cultural significance and are interchangeable. Pink is prominent within the scientific community due to its association with knowledge. The first versions of the illusory screens were made pink in order to stand out in most environments, and ever since then, the color gained a cultural meaning of intellect. Of course, it's not the only meaning there is for the color pink.

Once the monsters came to be, some people have tried their best to understand how they operate. Eventually, these people have created teams, which evolved into groups. Some of these groups have diverted their attention to other matters of study, such as inorganic matters of the world, physical laws, or abstract sciences. Once the mistweb was developed, the international scientific community was born.

The highest ideal they hold is the search for the objective truth. They wish to learn as much about the world as possible, which is why they try to measure everything and run many experiments. The only boundary that they tend to clash into is the vague line of morality. Since many of the scientists who enter this community are Avurai University graduates, it's rather competitive. If one can make themselves more famous and rich through their experiments, it is most likely that these graduates will be the first ones to step on, and sometimes even over, the line of morality out of the public eyes. After all, what is one to do if the secrets of the World lie beyond that hazy line? A way to improve the lives of thousands, if not millions, could be there.

• One of the places that scientists worldwide viewed as sacred is The Tower of Knowledge, atop of which is The Amber Telescope. Years ago it was said that every scientist worth their salt has looked through the Amber Telescope. Nowadays this belief is seen more as a superstition than a sign of prestige since many scientists have been successful despite dropping out of Avurai University (not literally), or in some cases even despite not studying up there at all.
• Once every four years, the Cognito Prize is given out to the most influential scientists in their respective fields of study.
• "A wrong train can still bring you to the right place" is a phrase that came to be due to an anecdote about Hernard Silverstem. When he traveled home from the Avurai University on a train during his third year of study, he fell asleep and dreamt of a wand that could control other people's minds. Only after waking up did he realize he was on the wrong train. Exiting it in the nearest city, the first thing he noticed was a great bronze statue which made him think of his most famous idea. Since then, the phrase came to mean that even an accident, a mistake, or a wrong way of thinking could get you interesting, and occasionally even correct results.

Relations

While most of the cities respect the Avurai University, considering it one of the few places with an objective outlook on the worldly situation overall, there is one city-state that tries to take it off the pedestal. Moorwell, the city that helped in the establishment of Avurai University, possesses sour feelings towards it ever since it has become independent. For years, it has been running a campaign to slowly erode people's trust in this institution, in hopes of discouraging new students from arriving. Without new students, the school would inevitably run out of money and have to find a patron who would gladly buy it in order to improve it. While within Moorwell this campaign is somewhat successful, other cities still hold enough people interested in studying there to keep the school afloat. One of the cities Avurai University cooperates with the most is the Everling, which thanks for its existence in part to the university, and thus regularly buys advertisements on the Freeland island.

Curiosities

Considering its size, the number of points of interest on the Freeland island is surprising. Here are just some of them:

• Brilliance Train Station is the train station located on the border between the Dormitories and the Main District. While the trains don't come by often, they do when the University is flying above another city to gather the travelers and bring any ordered goods to the island.
• The Grand Vestibule is the entrance to the main university building. It's great in size, with plenty of room to serve as a student lounge. It's directly connected to Jolye's Square.
• Jolye's Square is the only town square of the Avurai University, connecting all of the districts. It bears the shape of a pentagon and used to be mockingly named "Five-Sided Square" due to Jolye's famous claim that one could draw a five-sided square on the surface of a sphere. Once she has proven her claim, the square has been renamed to honor her.
• The Library of Wynbel is a library found at the border of Jolye's Square and the Main district. This building has three floors, and several elevators that can bring the students up, down, and to the other end of the building.
• The Platform, also nicknamed "The Long Way Down", is the main elevator that's used to travel down into the lands beneath the city. It's located on the edge of the Main District.
• The Rose Garden is a greenhouse for studying various kinds of plants found throughout the world. People of Cravenlore Faculty are assumed to hang out there the most, even though the actual difference is minuscule.
• The Tower of Knowledge is found in the Scholar's Way district and holds atop of it The Amber Telescope. Only the teachers are allowed to ascend this tower. All of the districts can be seen from the top of the Tower of Knowledge, and the tower can be seen from all districts. The only exception to both of these cases is the Farming district due to the fact that it's underground. While the telescope does have a name that draws attention, it's in fact not made out of amber.
• The VR Grotto is a laboratory found in the depths of the Runecrafts' Faculty studies. According to the University's records, it is the perfection of Kaily Runetooth's Academic Show project, which is a room that can emulate any sort of environment.

Important People

A few examples of the important people from the Avurai University:

• Jolye Hammerfist, dwarf, female; one of the founders of the Avurai University, and its very first Headmaster.
• Nedmund Palevine, elf, male; the current Headmaster of the Avurai University.
• Hernard Silverstem, elf, male; the inventor of runebots who has studied in the Runecraft Faculty.
• Kaily Runetooth, goblin, female; the scientist who studied in the Worldken Faculty, and invented a way of synthetically creating amber. It's a thing she keeps secret, but with the money she has earned from this, she studied Runecraft Faculty for extra 4 years, and afterward bought herself a city-state of her own, naming herself its queen.
• Pristina Ashenhart, human, female; the exemplar student of the Witlore Faculty, considered the most important philosopher of her time back when she was known to be alive. She's assumed to be dead in the present times.
• Maxton Amberblood, orc, male; the most famous student of the Cravenlore Faculty that has afterward remained on the university and revolutionized its farms.
• Catalia Volerich, fairy, female; a mistwebber who's a member of the Lucky Petals mistwebber group located in the Timberhaven.
• Winbel Moonshire, elf, female; an explorer who has written and sold many books about the wilderness, each with a questionable degree of fictionality. Her publishing is so popular, that she established a library on the Freeland.

Northcall

I've wanted to add a new sense to the folks of Runehack, for some time now. I've narrowed my options down to a single one and felt like writing about it.

"Ever felt that sensation of following the Still Star into the unknown? To see what's in there?"
"Haven't we all?"
A custom artwork drawn by Arell for this article.

Northcall

Due to traveling a lot in the older times, the humanoid species of Runehack have developed and retained a sense of magnetoreception. At all times, they can sense the direction of the true north. Think of it as an expansion of proprioception (the sense of where our body parts are relative to each other, to put it simply), except it's a position relative to the north, letting you know the direction to the north, and while close enough also a rough distance.

In the old times, people considered this sensation to be the call of the unmoving star in the north. Eventually, they came to call this sensation the northcall without realizing what exactly it is or how it works. Grammar-wise, think of it being used in the same way we use words like "sight" or "smell". While it was very useful for orientation and long-term travels, some have wondered what this sensation actually leads to. Early communities were, understandably, under-prepared for such journeys, which is why they always ended lethally. Thus, "reaching for the north" has become a phrase for hopeless journeys that would be deemed impossible, and/or perilous. One of the symbols associated with this sense is the Still Star, a star that's perfectly motionless in the night sky, right above the true north.

At a certain point in history, humanity has discovered a strange mineral that called for them too, though its call was much weaker. Many names have sprung for the lodestone depending on the cultures: from starstone or starmetal to northrock. The northcall of this rock was much shorter than the call of the true north, but they noticed a strange phenomenon through experimentation: The lodestone attracted itself, and its power grew stronger when more were brought together. This has been an origin to many legends of theirs, one being a legend of Mount Boreal. This mountain was supposedly entirely made out of lodestone, and in some versions of the myths even held a way to reach the Still Star itself. Even nowadays, lodestone is a cultural symbol for love and attraction and used in various gifts for the closest ones.

Another myth says that the Still Star is a heated loadstone, and that little stars are within all of us. Some people claim that their soulmate has a distinct northcall due to the attraction of starlets, but such claims were afterward disproven. While northcall can detect the presence of other people, its strength is so weak that it works only within a room and doesn't let you know where or how many people are in the room with you. You just feel a hunch that there probably are people with you there. According to some, the Still Star beckons all people to join it. When it comes to the afterlife, believers of these myths say that after the death, the little star within a person, too small to be seen by a naked eye, escapes, and flies to the North to finally join the greatest soulmate this world ever had. Understandably, a religion has sprung up around the Still Star, worshipping it as both a deity and an afterlife that one should strive to reach.

Debates have gone on for years whether the source of the true north is the Mount Boreal or the Still Star, so many expeditions have been made to see it in person. The Mount Boreal believers have presented themselves as rational, claiming that the mountain of lodestone is the most sensible explanation, while those who thought it's the Still Star used more spiritual reasoning, with less empirical evidence. After some time, society has grown competent enough to reach the true north of the world. Once they arrived close enough, the explorers made a bizarre discovery: there are two norths calling for them. One that points downwards, and one that points upwards, directly at the Still Star. As the news propagated all over the world, the religion that has grown around the Still Star has splintered. One major branch of this religion is a dualistic faith in two deities who represent different ideals of what the good is: one that claims that intentions are what makes a thing good and another that claims that the outcomes are what makes a thing good. It mirrors the duality of the origin of the earth, and the Still Star high above, and yet people feeling the call of both. Since this religion is one of the two biggest religions currently present in this world though, I think that it should get an article of its own, or at least a segment focused on it some other time.

Those who can't feel the northcall used to be called wayless, but over time this word came to be seen as offensive, so it has been replaced by the term "uncalled". Before the time of monsters, religious fanatics used to pursue the uncalled people, seeing them as people without a moral compass that would help them tell good from evil. It's not a thing that religious people in the present times are proud of, but it's undoubtedly a part of their history.

Lesser Norths

One of my rules for the Runehack's magic system is that the runes can detect and replicate (almost) anything the human senses can sense. This is why I wanted to make an extra sense, to begin with, so let's get to that.

Detection of northcall simply allows people to direct their machines much more easily in movement. It gives them an objective point that can serve as an anchoring point for them. After the runetech revolution, a scientific breakthrough has proven that the Moon does actually have a northcall of its own, although one that's so weak it can only be detected by machinery and not people. With a triplet of points (the north pole, the Still Star, and the Moon), it was only a matter of time before the Global Positioning System has been reinvented, working entirely on the base of runes.

When it comes to the northcall-based illusions, people have started to draw attention to their businesses by their use. These illusions came to be commonly called "lesser norths". But with the abundance of lesser norths and no way to tell them apart, the illusion became so overused it was obsolete. Soon enough, laws have been passed to ban the public use of northcall illusions, reserving them only for the places that can provide emergency assistance. When someone needs help due to a crime that has happened or a wound, they can simply follow one of the lesser norths they sense to get to safety and/or to get the help they need.

Understandably, as with any other illusion, northcall too can be made private, which is not covered by the law. The most common use for private northcalls is finding things when one needs them - stuff like one's phone, keys, car, the hidden box that nobody should ever find out about that's just buried someplace in the forest... you know, the usual.

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That's it for today's article of mine. It feels refreshing to do this sort of worldbuilding again where I start off with an idea and try to grow it as much as I can. I've tried to finish the next article on a Runehack city, but while most of it is done, I'm stuck with the Elvish language at the moment. I'm still tinkering with it, trying to find a good sound for it, altering vocabulary here and there, and tired of rewriting the important words I need for that article. Soon I'll hopefully have the dictionary finished enough to actually finish the article, maybe edit some of the Elvish words in the New Prista article, and continue the series as I hoped I would.

Thank you for reading, hope you've enjoyed this article, and I wish you an awesome day!

Doubled Creature Types

Alternative title: Are we the monsters?

I had a neat idea about D&D 5e, so I've decided to make a short article about it.

Intro

What creature types can you find naturally on the Material Plane? For the sake of clarity, I would say that a creature type naturally on a plane is a creature type that's integrated within the plane's ecosystem on a long-term scale. This is not a trick question, let's just go through them:

• Beast
• Dragon
• Giant
• Humanoid
• Monstrosity
• Ooze
• Plant

Mini-rant: Giant is just a Large or larger humanoid, it shouldn't be a creature type because it's more of a size category.

I could in theory add more creature types, but these will suffice for now. Now try to tell me, what creature types can you find naturally on the Upper Planes? As far as I am aware, just celestial. What creature types can you find naturally on the Lower Planes? Fiend, maybe one or two extras.

What if there was a way to introduce a bit more variety to the various planes of existence? Let's think through this thought experiment together, and make up a system of Doubled Creature Types.

Finding an art to represent the idea of a double creature type was hard enough, so I'm gonna just go with this art, call it a "fiend construct", and call it a day. ... Addae. That's not a bad name actually.
Arcane Construct III, by CaconymDesign

Doubled Creature Types

Let us begin this journey by splitting the creature types into two halves: General, and planar.

• General creature types include beast, construct, dragon, humanoid, ooze, plant, and null (more on that later).
• The planar creature types include aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, monstrosity, undead.

(I left out giant because of my mini-rant above, feel free to put it into either category.)

Now, each creature gets assigned two creature types. In most cases, one should come from the general, and one from the planar half. Understandably, which types go where is up to everyone, but that doesn't matter.

The planar creature type determines the plane of the creature's origin. The general creature type determines its function within the ecosystem of the plane. Plants are there for the herbivores to consume, oozes consume the corpses, humanoids make civilizations, etc.

So what does this give us? More variety to all of our planes of existence where we apply these, of course! Why restrict yourself to just fey, when you could have fey beasts like talking wolves or sacred deer, fey plants who can talk to you and bind you in its roots, fey oozes that glitter or something, and other stuff. How about a corrupted bear turning into an aberration beast? A constructed celestial? A fiendish dragon? All these and so much more are suddenly open to us!

What does that make our player characters though? What is their planar creature type? Well... monstrosity is the best fit. Monstrosity covers anything that's on the Material Plane (as far as I can remember) that isn't a beast or a humanoid or anything else like that. So every human, elf, or other humanoid race has a creature type of monstrosity humanoid. Every beast of the Material Plane has a type of monstrosity beast.

What does that make the previous monstrosities, like owlbears or medusae? Monstrosity null, or simply monstrosity. Null is a simple creature type add-on that you can add on top of the planar type to make something that's just... too generic to use two creature types (unless you want to experiment a little, making medusa a humanoid or owlbear a beast).

Could there be a creature with two general creature types? Yes, for example, a wolf overgrown by plants could be one. Could there be a creature with two planar creature types? Yes, for example, the elemental titans could be both elementals and giants.

What about stuff like charm person or Wildshape? Do they now work on all these new creature types? Up to you. If you want them to work, go right ahead and experiment! If you don't want them to work with them, make up a houserule along with these that reads "whenever the rules say something affects a humanoid, it affects a monstrosity humanoid unless I say otherwise", and analogous for other creature types you're worried about.

So there it is. A short demo of an idea, without a proof of concept. I'll probably include them in some of my future brews, along with a write-up as to how they should be handled and which of the creature types is the "dominant" one. I feel like I could make a booklet on planes now, except I don't have much time, energy, attention, and ideas for that kind of stuff. I got some ideas for it, don't get me wrong. It would be a cosmology of my own, possibly similar to the one I've presented on this blog previously, or maybe a new one. It definitely wouldn't be a carbon copy of the Great Wheel, at best I'd merge some of the planes together to get the essence of all the interesting things in there. But any of that is a promise I can't make, I already have so many other ideas I could work on, and yet I feel like these days I have less and less time to work on them.

Commoner Magic: Levels, Magic Items, and Training

Continuing my sort of series on the worldbuilding with the magic of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, I've decided to try tackling the magical items, levels, and the time it takes to train today.

I'd imagine someone with an inborn talent as described later in the article to be someone who people generally know about. They could achieve greatness with all of their potential, possibly even going slightly beyond.
Silverquill Apprentice, by Mike Bierek

Levels

In order to gauge how many people of certain levels there could be, I came up with a simple guideline to assume when worldbuilding.

The maximum level that a commoner can reach in a class is equal to the lowest ability score modifier that the class requires (as per Multiclassing Prerequisites) multiplied by 2.

Just for the sake of clarity, let's make an example. Let's say someone wishes to become a rogue. What level can they be at best, if their Dexterity modifier is +4? The answer is 8.

Now, the most obvious question would be "How come players can reach higher levels?" This is a general rule of thumb. Exceptions can exist. Alternatively, there could be an actual reason for this. Maybe the players are blessed by the god of adventure. Or maybe they actually need help from the magical items in order to progress further. That all I leave up to the DM, to each their own, I'm here to give advice on worldbuilding, not on managing the party.

One curious consequence of this is, that in order to reach a level of 10 in a class, the character will need to have a starting modifier of +3 or higher in that stats associated with their class. Upon reaching level 4, they can increase this modifier by 1, and they can do that again upon reaching level 8. There's a handful of exceptions, a good exception being Fighter who can afford to have a stat of +2 or higher in order to get to the 10th level (extra bonus: Fighter is the only class in the game that gets to choose which of the stats it tracks). On the other hand, someone with a +4 or higher modifier in their class' stat has one ability score improvement to spare, perhaps for a feat or into a different ability score.

A rather curious bad case of an exception is the trio of monk, paladin, and ranger. Each of these classes has two stat prerequisites, which means that by my own rules, the lower of their stat modifiers determines the maximum level. In order to become a level 10 monk, level 10 ranger, or level 10 paladin, a commoner would have to have a beginning modifier of +4 in Strength and Charisma for the paladin, or +4 in Dexterity and Wisdom for the other two.

There's another interesting consequence to take notice of. Some magic items exist that can help one increase their natural predispositions. These include but are not limited to:

• Gauntlets of Ogre Power and Belt of Hill Giant Strength, which replace the Strength modifier with +4 and +5 respectively.
• Headband of Intellect, which replaces the Intelligence modifier with +4.

I'm leaving out the items that increase the Constitution since that isn't on the Multiclassing Prerequisites table, as well as any consumable items and very rare or rarer items (the reason for the last will become apparent with the next rule). Understandably, there could be further items added to this list through homebrew, such as a cloak made out of a nymph's hair that replaces the wearer's Charisma modifier with +5, but that's up to the DM.

So, what worldbuilding consequences does that create within our world? Here's a handful in a neat bullet point list format:

• If you're not born with strong natural predispositions (+3 modifier) for anything, but you're somewhat strong or dexterous (+2 modifier), you may as well try your hand at being a Fighter.
• Unless you're predisposed to be excellent in whatever you wanted to be good at (+4 or higher), you should focus on improving what you're good at already instead of getting distracted along the way (feats). If you get distracted, you may never be able to reach your fullest potential.
• If the settlement has a magical item that could increase one's capabilities, they could be lent for training.
• Since only such items at the moment in the game increase Strength and Intelligence, such practices could lead to wizards who are capable of casting spells much more powerful than they could understand on their own, as well as barbarians and fighters who can seem rather weak.

Hey, I think I've mentioned magic items, so it's time to talk about those now.

Magic Items

This rule might be kind of controversial, but it's something at least I find somewhat reasonable, considering all of the previously established rules.

Commoners can at best create magic items of rare rarity.

Before you raise your pitchforks, let me show what happens when the commoners raise theirs. Xanathar's Guide to Everything states, that in order to craft a magic item, you'll need time, gold, formula, and most importantly an ingredient from a monster of some CR. I did some maths assuming the 5th edition's combat balancing is right. I don't know if it is, let's just go with it for now. I've considered two kinds of scenarios: One in which the commoners face a monster along with some "minions" of its own, and another in which the commoners lure such minions away, thus facing the monster on its own. I chose only the highest CRs in each of the ranges listed for the magic item crafting, and I made some CRs up for the minions that felt legit to me. I also assumed all of the commoners to be of the same level, and that they wouldn't go into a Deadly encounter (making these the hardest possible Hard encounters). Here's a nice table, displaying how many commoners would be needed for each of these encounters.

Level	Common (CR 3)	+2x CR 1/2	Uncommon (CR 8)	+4x CR 1	Rare (CR 12)	+8x CR 2
1	6	-	-	-	-	-
2	4	7	10	-	-	-
3	3	5	6	-	11	-
4	3	4	6	-	9	-
5	1	3	4	7	6	-
6	1	2	3	6	6	-
7	1	2	3	6	5	-
8	1	2	3	5	5	12
9	1	1	3	4	4	11
10	1	1	3	4	4	9

As you can see, Common items are something that even villagers could their hands on if enough of them got together. Uncommon items, on the other hand, could only be achieved by folks who live in communities that help them grow in their magic or martial capabilities, or by a large group of villagers who know how to distract the monster's assumed companions. Rare items would be restricted to city folks who know how to distract the minions or lure the monster away, or in case the monster's minions are not so easily swayed, ... only the most experienced of the commoners.

Very rare magic items, as well as magic items of higher rarities, are not in the table because even with just 8 minions, a CR 18 foe would be insurmountable even for twelve level 10's. If they were to distract them, it would still be somewhat feasible, but hardly so.

Since these two approaches were suggested to me by the community, I'd much rather just try combining the two in a way that makes sense to me, and translate it into the levels to keep it in theme with some of the previous rules.

• Common items could be crafted by commoners with a spellcaster level of 5 or higher.
• Uncommon items could be crafted by commoners with a spellcaster level of 7 or higher.
• Rare items could be crafted by commoners with a spellcaster level of 9 or higher.
• Unless we're talking about making a common item by a skillful 5th level commoner who knows how to split the target away from its minions or a 9th level commoner, making magic items is a group effort.

I know it's not exactly what the table above says, but this way it feels at least somewhat nice and authentic to me. You could change these levels as want. This is just a guideline for a minimum provided by me.

Sorcerer has wares if you have coin. Of course he knows what all of these things do, and he isn't just selling his experiments to find out when others try them, that's why his stock is full!
Ye Old Magic Shop, by jjpeabody

Training

I think I've finally sorted out a good way to determine how long it takes for a commoner to get levels. All you need to do is just to say it takes them a number of months equal to twice the level they wish to reach a worth of training. Reaching level 1 takes two months, reaching level 2 takes 4 months after level 1. Thus, the full journey from level 1 to 10 would take 110 months, which is 9 years and 2 months. These years assume 8 hours of daily training, weekends and some holidays off, etc. One could complicate this further by increasing the number by 5 minus the Intelligence modifier, but I feel like this is good enough for me.

If you're concerned that it might be too easy to become a master of your craft, just remember that it takes 10 years of not working in order to get this good. You would need money to cover your own expenses, as well as money to pay your trainer. Thus, for someone who has to work hard every single day, the process could take way, way, way longer.

Example

All of this sounds like it deserves some examples, so let's roll up stats for three siblings and see where their lives could take them. For this, I'll use an odd method of stat rolling I came up with just for this article (6 + 2d10 drop highest, they're commoners after all), and convert them to modifiers instead of bothering with ability scores.

• Aleya: Strength +2, Dexterity -1, Constitution +0, Intelligence -2, Wisdom -2, Charisma +2
• Barnsby: Strength -2, Dexterity +1, Constitution +0, Intelligence -1, Wisdom -1, Charisma +1
• Clayre: Strength -1, Dexterity +0, Constitution -1, Intelligence -1, Wisdom +3, Charisma +1

Aleya was strong and charming from a young age, though she was easy to fool and clumsy too. She has some potential for becoming a paladin, though the best she could achieve would be 4th level in almost 2 years of training. If she became a bard, shown some magical powers characteristic for a sorcerer, or made a deal with an otherworldly being, she could reach 6th level in that class, which would take her 3.5 years. The same goes if she tried to be a barbarian. However, she could reach 10th level if she trained to be a Fighter for more than 9 years.

Barnsby was never truly exceptional in anything, besides being rather weak. Even if he tried to be a charismatic mage or rogue, he'd at best reach his personal limit of level 2 in 6 months, unless someone would assist him with magic items.

Clayre however was always seen as an exceptionally wise individual. While she was not dexterous enough to become a monk or a ranger, she could still become a cleric or a druid. If she dedicated all of her focus to growing wiser, one day she could reach the 10th level in her class of choice too.

Not everyone has it in them to achieve greatness, and thus sadly Barnsby would be left behind by his sisters. While the game is trying to be fair to us, life is not fair to the commoners. If I were to assume the rolling method I made up on the spot for all of the villagers, only 1% could ever go beyond 8th level in a class that's not a Fighter, and even out of those some could stagnate due to diversion of focus on something else. And you know what? That sounds like a pretty good guesstimate to me. Ideally, I'd be able to count the number of 10th (or possibly even 9th) level characters in the whole world, minus players and story-important NPCs. People like Clayre, who reach their full potential and become 10th level, would be known about across the kingdom without a doubt, if not further.

When my burnout started, the magic system of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition felt like a big intimidating body of water. An ocean that I would rather avoid if I could. The first article was testing the waters. The second was putting my whole leg in it. Right now, it feels like I'm standing in it up to my waist. When I get around to making the next article, it might finally be my full dip into the water. I'll try to rewrite the rules to be clearer and to work better together, I'll probably try to also reword them in order to allow the DMs to adjust them as they wish. Who knows, one day I might get back to actually DMing D&D instead of just talking about it. But it is not this day, these days I feel too overwhelmed with work to do that.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Accepting the 5e's Magic

Previously, you could have read an article of mine where I described my issues with D&D's worldbuilding, especially regarding its magic system. I've made some progress that I wanted to share with you. While to some these tips might seem obvious, I really hope that I'll help out anyone reading this who is still stuck where I was back when I wrote the October article. For those who like practical lists, here are all of my rules in an extremely brief format that you can take and run away with.

Rules for 5th Edition Magic-related Worldbuilding

1. Spell levels correlate how public of a knowledge they are, and spells above the 5th level are only known by players and NPCs who need such knowledge.
2. Warlocks should be common and socially accepted unless your setting is built around saying otherwise.
3. You should have two witnesses with you for anything important. At least one should be able to cast counterspell/dispel magic if you can afford it.
4. Spells with permanent effects should be used as often as their spell level suggests.
5. Some magic, such as majority of enchantment spells or all harmful illusions, should be illegal.

There we go! Hopefully, this quick reference of rules should be good for anyone else who struggled like I did. Now then, the rest of the article is just elaborating on what do they mean and why.

Giving wonder back to magic one step at a time.
Art by Karen Holmes

Rule #1: Spell Levels

It takes dedication to get good at something. If we think of the magical expertise as a bell curve, we can expect its mean to represent either people with no knowledge of magic, or people who know a very basic level of magic depending on how high of a magical setting you want to go with. The further away from this mean you go to the right, the more magically competent people we'll see. But at the same time, their numbers will go lower drastically. We can represent this sort of thing using the spell levels:

• 0th and 1st Level: Commoner* magic. It doesn't take too much effort to get started. These should be fairly common knowledge in 5e's settings unless it's something very low magic (like Adventures in Middle-Earth). People would likely find ways to use this magic for things they do in their common lives. Why sweep your porch, when you could cast an arcane ritual and get it swept for you by an invisible specter? Your neighbors do that, so with little book-keeping, you can too.
• 2nd Level: This is still commoner-level magic, although in this case, it takes a bit more effort to actually learn it and get good at it. You don't need to be an expert or study in some school for this (although the school can help you out). This level of magic is common knowledge within cities, and to those who visit cities.
• 3rd Level: At this point, the untrained mind starts to struggle and usually requires guidance. This level of magic would be common knowledge within magic schools, druidic groves, temples, and any other place where plenty of spellcasters would gather to share their knowledge.
• 4th Level: Spells of this level are above common folk, and oftentimes even above those who study the magic. These spells are reserved only to the experts within the field, as well as important people like the rulers of lands. Understandably, for those who can't cast them themselves, these spells would be either unknown, fairy tales, or very costly.
• 5th Level: The most sacred level of magic known only by the greatest of the mages. Such mages would keep this magic hidden even from important people or other mages because it is too dangerous to be shared without any limits. There could be a handful of exceptions here, like spells that resurrect people from being dead or teleportation circle, but I would say that knowledge of these could change depending on the setting.

*When I refer to "commoner" in this article, I do not mean a CR 0 creature listed in the Monster Manual. I mean an average NPC who isn't of great importance.

Anything below one's location within this hierarchy is usually common knowledge, and anything above is either unknown by them or a fairy tale. Of course fantasy worlds would have legends and tales of people who could stop time, or resurrect those who have been dead for years, create magical portals, or zap their enemies into dust. But it would be extremely difficult for them to prove such magics to be real. Sure one could in theory find a spell scroll, but there are many magic items out there that can do things no spell can, so they may as well believe it's an ability unique to them.

I should also add, that while I made this article all about magic and spells, this may as well apply to player levels overall, except the barrier is at the 10th level. A reasonable enough barrier to place if I say so myself. While I'm doing side notes, I should mention that this doesn't apply to the racial magic. If the Player's Handbook tells me that a high elf knows one wizard cantrip, that means to me that they know one cantrip.

And don't worry about the players or your villains. The DM is always allowed to make an exception for this rule, and players who manage to go above 10th level are assumed to be one such exception. As for the villains, if you know me you know that I like villains who are powerful and interesting. So they should absolutely be an exception if you want them to be one.

Rule #2: Warlocks

Warlocks get a bad reputation, and for an obvious reason. In our world, it's extremely shady to say that you've sold your soul for anything. Most people bring the opinions and views from our world into the fantasy one and thus come to a conclusion that warlocks are rather sketchy.

Thing is, it's the easiest and most reliable way to access magic for an average person. You can imagine a reason or more for each of the classes, be it studying that costs plenty of money, approval of deities, or bonding with nature. The warlock only needs to make a deal with an otherworldly being, and they get their magical power. I already wrote an article on that in the past, so there isn't much else I can say on the topic.

Rule #3: Two Witnesses

There are some nasty spells within the world of D&D. Luckily, most of the nasty spells affect only one person at a time. Unfortunately, there are sorcerers within the world of D&D who can twin these spells, targeting two people at once. This is why I would suggest that for anything important, a person should have at least two witnesses near them at a time. This way, even if an evil sorcerer casts suggestion and twins it to target both you and one of your witnesses, there's still one more who can see what's going on and attempt to prevent it, or report it.

Ideally, you should have at least one person capable of casting counterspell, or possibly even dispel magic with you. It could be one of these 2+ witnesses. The more of these you have, the better off you'll be, but someone willing to accompany you for the sole purpose of witnessing and removing magic would likely be expensive. Also, these spells are of 3rd level, so refer to Rule #1 to see who could access them.

So whether it's a small shop, a prison cell, audience with the king, or a trial, there should be witnesses. Optimally ones that can stop magic from happening.

Rule #4: Permanent Spells

There's a handful of spells that can have permanent effects, and thus they could be very useful to people. Specifically, it's the following spells:

• arcane lock,
• continual flame,
• find familiar,
• magic mouth,
• Mordenkainen's private sanctum,
• and Nystul's magic aura.

While one of them is a 4th level spell (and thus by Rule #1 available only to mages and very important people), the rest is all 2nd level spells or lower that should be accessible by anyone in cities.

Ever had a moment when you couldn't find your keys to the house? Wouldn't it be lovely if you never had to keep them in the first place? Sure 25 gold pieces isn't cheap, but a regular lock costs 10 gold pieces. No need to worry about thieves' tools silently opening your door, if anyone wants to go inside they'll need to be loud - either break the door down, or cast knock.

Find familiar is awesome if you can cast it. For a fairly low price, you get a magical companion that can serve as another pair of eyes for you. You can talk to them telepathically too, so that's great.

The continual flame spell is very expensive, but it pays off in the long run. Once again, 50 gold pieces is a hefty price, especially considering you could get a lantern along with 5 pints of oil that could last you for a total of 30 hours for measely 1 gold piece. In other words, if you were to buy oil worth 50 gold pieces, you could have it last 3000 hours, which is 125 days. However, in long term (that being, more than a year), it pays off to get a smoke-less heat-less continual flame that you don't need to refill, and you could toss a blanket over without fearing it would burn. It's a luxury, but it's something that those who want to save money in long term would get, despite their neighbors making fun of them. Then again, light could replace both, but it's a much shorter-term (albeit free) solution.

Mordenkainen's private sanctum (upper planes bless Mordenkainen) is a spell perfect for kings and similar important folk who wish to make a private area for themselves. Be it soundproof one, teleportation-proof, divination-proof, and more. Best part is, this spell is free. If you have a court magician who has 8 fullcaster levels, you could have them cast it once on an area that you want to be permanently affected by the spell, and still have another cast for wherever you'll need it. This spell is also useful in prisons, courts, and other places of great importance.

The Nystul's magic aura spell allows you to, among other things, hide your magical item's true nature. If you're afraid of the local paladin finding out you have a familiar, you could cover up its creature type to match its appearance too!

Finally, there's the ever-so-lovely spell that could revolutionize the world if used to its full potential, magic mouth. This silly-sounding spell is actually so useful for common folk, it's hard to believe. One cast of it costs 10 gold pieces. Seriously? That's as cheap as the lock I've mentioned earlier! With its input being anything visual or auditory, you could do plenty of things with it.

• Alarm system that warns the shopkeeper and their witnesses about any of their goods turning invisible or leaving the building without the customer paying sufficient amount for them.
• Notify the warden of a prisoner leaving their prison cell (or becoming invisible and inaudible inside of it).
• Informing a homeowner of someone standing at the door. Or windows. Or the entrance to the cellar, depending on how paranoid they are.
• Informing everyone when a spell is cast, and depending on how much money the person is willing to pay what kind of spell has been cast too (narrowing it down to a single school of magic, or even to a specific spell).

For 10 gold pieces of material components, this thing is a steal, and this is just the beginning. Imagine all of the possibilities, the conditions can be as complicated as you want them to be because the spell says so! In order to use this spell, you'll need enough jade dust, but judging by the price there likely isn't a shortage of it.

"Hey, you know how you told me there are these things called invocations that I could learn?"
"Of course I do! What about them?"
"I figured since I've gained a familiar from my pact, I may as well try to... enhance it."
"Oh no, what did you do this time?"
"Well,… let's just say I learned why cats don't have wings."

Arcane Flight, by Steve Prescott

Rule #5: Illegal Magic

Like with all the tools, some of them could be used to harm others. I've decided to compile two lists of spells and spell categories that you should consider making illegal within your world. Bear in mind, I've omitted spells of 6th level and higher for the sake of my own brevity.

• Enchantment spells that manipulate one's actions. While this seems like pointing out the obvious, there are spells that don't force a mind to do anything that it doesn't want to do, such as zone of truth. Sure you can't speak a lie, but you can choose to not speak up too.
• Illusion spells that cause harm. This includes things like phantasmal killer.
• Knock allows you to unlock a locked door without needing a key or a password. Self-explanatory.
• Modify memory** could fit under the first bullet point in this list in theory, but I'll write it out as a separate spell to make sure it's clear. Even if it doesn't directly make you do something, this spell should be seen as immoral.
• Necromancy that raises undead. When used on a corpse, it prevents such corpse from even a possibility of being resurrected. (Sidenote: If it's known either by the person before they die or by those who have to deal with its body that there is no chance for this person to be raised, its body should be probably cremated or disposed of in another way to prevent them from turning them undead anyway.)
• Summoning spells with a chance for the summoned creature to get out of summoner's control.

Here's another list, this time of spells that should be legal only under the supervision of the local government representatives:

• Arcane lock, continual flame, and magic mouth. With great power comes great responsibility. You better not lock someone out of their own house, or traumatize a person with everpresent whispers.
• Control water could be used to cause great harm to the ships.
• Dimension door allows you to teleport anywhere within 400 feet as long as you can describe it. As you can imagine, it could be used for plenty of illegal things, such as accessing places where only special personnel is allowed.
• Divination and spells of similar character can be a pretty big deal.
• Enlarge/reduce could be used to reduce/enlarge supporting pillars of a building, destabilizing it.
• Heat metal is just an immoral spell to use generally on people. It could be fine for smiths, but not seen as good when used in battle.
• Leomund's tiny hut could be used to block critical pathways, entrances to buildings, and other places with a barrier that one can't pass through.
• Mordenkainen's private sanctum could be used harmfully to mask areas from being observed, prevent teleportation to/from critical places, and do other kinds of harm.
• Reincarnate** is a spell that could give a completely new face and identity to someone who's a searched-for criminal.
• Teleportation circle** could be used by spies for illegal passage of large quantities of people, especially if the teleportation circle is made permanent.
• Wall of stone** can be used for creation of new buildings, as well as barring critical pathways.

** This spell is of 5th level, so unless it's public knowledge that it exists, it technically wouldn't be illegal.

---

Does this mean I'm done with 5th edition's issues completely, and ready to start a new campaign? Not really. I still see many problems in it. More importantly, these days I feel too occupied with my job and all sorts of other things to be able to reliably plan and play D&D games. But this is a step in the right direction for me, because now I know how to deal with at least some of its magic.

Thank you for reading, hope this helped you like it helped me, and have a nice day!

Villainous Cookbook: The Eternal Host

Howdy! I've been looking forward to writing this article a lot. My ideas started to take form back in September of 2019, and since then I've been teasing it outside of the blog every now and then. While I don't plan to make a write-up of each tier, this time I'm making an exception—instead of one villain, I'm going to give you multiple. Well, there's technically plenty of each of these, so they're less of a villain, and more of a nation. I'll also include some of the lore derived from the game mechanics used, so that should be fun.

Before I begin the article itself, I should make a warning. This might be broken. Like, very broken. But then again, I like to see where the limits of a villain are, so that's why I'm doing this. There will be people who will dislike this, and say that there's no chance that a group of players could defeat these. I'll say that such person underestimates the players' ingenuity and that this isn't a villain they're meant to take down over the course of one game session, or five. I won't sugarcoat this for you by giving you suggestions on how the players could defeat them. If you want to make up an applied phlebotinum that makes this nation go extinct, go right ahead. Anyway, my point is: Use this villainous group at your own risk.

Another warning—keep in mind that these are supposed to be villains. I don't condone of their practices, they're literally supposed to be the baddies for players and others to fight against.

The Eternal Host

Of Cain awoke all that woful breed, 
Etins and elves and evil-spirits
— Beowulf (modern English translation), translated by Frances B. Grummere

"We are not here to end the world. We are here to end your world, and to begin a new era."
Elven Army, by JasonTN

The Eternal Host is an elven nation that's aggressively taking over the world with great numbers, expertise in fighting, and ability to never truly perish. Let's start it all with some theory regarding elven biology, and metabiology.

According to the Player's Handbook, the elves are considered mature when they reach the age of 100 years. Though, let's see what it actually says:

Although elves reach physical maturity at about the same age as humans, the elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience.

In other words, the elves don't need to be 100 to be considered mature. They are very capable of reproducing at the age of 20.

So here's another question: How many babies could a pair of elves make during their lifetime? This will be hard to judge because there are at least two unknown variables. How long does an elven pregnancy last, and what's the age when an elf is unable to bear children. Since the answers for the first question that I find online are rather unsurprisingly inconsistent, I'll choose a rounded, generous duration of five years to be a default gap between two children being born. As for the age, at which the elves are unable to bear children, I will say that there is no such age for them. Assuming that their physiology is similar to the human one depending on their age, we can use the page 39 quote from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes for the reference:

Even the oldest elves look similar in age to a human of perhaps 30 years.

Assuming that each elven woman would live up to the ripe old age of 750 years, and start having children every 5 years starting at the age of 20, this means that they'd be able to have about 147 children. And that... is per single elven couple. While the number does ignore twins, triplets, and so on, it also ignores miscarriages, so I'll call that even and move on. What's more, this number can be boosted further by introducing a biological anomaly. If we toy with the ratio of men to women in this elven nation, we could multiply this number enormously. Let's say that for every man in this nation, there are 20 women. Needless to say, they're too numerous.

There's a canonical reply I've received a couple of times to this. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes says supposedly that there is a limited number of elven souls. First of all, I am not doing this for DMs who will try to argue with me that this shouldn't be possible. A nice saying I've heard for this is, that "If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse." But still, I'll fancy the idea, because I figured there could be players who bring this up. Time for the metabiology! Let's begin by addressing the parts this claim is made up of:

1. The elf requires an elven soul. (This fact is not explicit, it's implied.)
2. There's a limited amount of elven souls.
3. The elven soul is distinct from a regular mortal soul.

The biggest flaw within this line of thoughts lies in the spell reincarnate. Suppose that a non-elf is reincarnated into an elven body. Question is: Do they now have an elven soul? There's a couple of possibilities:

• Their soul is unchanged. Which means that the part number 1 is contradicted, their elven body doesn't require a non-elven soul.
• Their soul is transformed into an elven one. This means that elven souls can be created (and possibly destroyed if an elf reincarnating into a non-elven body would have their soul transformed too). And thus, there could be theoretically unlimited number of elven souls created, contradicting the 2nd part.
• Or maybe... there is no such thing as an "elven soul". A contradiction to the third part states that everyone's soul is just the same, and that's what I would personally choose to believe.

Finally, before we get to the subraces, maybe we could figure out what subraces to use. Honestly, it doesn't matter too much, all of them are pretty cool. I would personally go with the wood elves, but anything can work, maybe with exception of the drow because Sunlight Sensitivity would likely suck for a nation that tries to take over the world. Understandably, you could also mix-and-match them as you see fit.

Alright! Now that that's sorted out, let's check out some social roles! Once more, this time I'll just give them to you at level 20 each described briefly, because otherwise this article would take me years to write. And I would prefer to publish this before the 6th edition could be announced. I should also add that these are not a complete list, you can come up with roles of your own as you see fitting.

Resolute Gunner

• Barbarian 14: Path of the Cannoneer (Caim's homebrew)
• Fighter 3: Champion (Player's Handbook)
• Warlock 1: Gray Portrait (Genuine Fantasy Press)

Starting with Fighter, we get Action Surge, letting the Gunner take two actions in one turn once per short rest. We also get Second Wind, an ability that lets us heal a little, and Improved Critical chance of 10% instead of 5%.

Path of the Cannoneer grants us a weapon that can shoot projectiles which deal 4d8 damage, 4d12 if we modify the cannon (which we will, and for free), though you don't add your ability score modifier to either of these. While we can only shoot this cannon once regardless of how many attacks we can make as part of any action, bonus action, or reaction, we also get the unique ability to use it as a weapon for clobbering enemies. In melee range, it's a heavy two-handed weapon that deals 1d12 damage. I would recommend picking up the Sharpshooter feat for a range of 600 feet with no disadvantage on attacks, ignoring half and three quarters covers, and then some stuff.

Finally, the Gray Portrait warlock gives us a painting that can be used to resurrect our fallen soldier for free. Think of this as a way to back them up. Awesome!

But what weapon will they wield? Well...

Eldritch Minigun

• Warlock 2: Banished Gunsmith (Genuine Fantasy Press)
• Sorcerer 18: Seer Bloodline (Caim's homebrew)

Through the Banished Gunsmith, our warlock is transformed into a weapon that can be wielded by others. While they lose plenty of stuff, they also gain some benefits from it. I should note that as part of the sorcerer levels, you should probably pick the Eldritch Adept invocation, and we'll bend a rule here by picking up the Bloody Bayonet invocation, without fulfilling its prerequisites. While we could do well without it, I wanted to merge the Eldritch Minigun build with the Resolute Gunner. If you wish to though, you could in theory also have the Eldritch Minigun serve someone else. The other invocations we should choose are Agonizing Blast, and Eldritch Spear for extra damage and massive range.

The Bloody Bayonet invocation lets us transform the weapon that this warlock is into any other melee weapon. Well... time to bend another rule. How about a ranged weapon that could be used as a melee weapon? Like say, … a cannon? Now it sounds fun.

Sidenote: The Banished Gunsmith is capable of controlling the body of its wielder even after it's reduced to 0 hit points. Which is just awesome. But it only lasts as long as the wielder keeps failing Wisdom saves against the warlock's spell save DC. The wielder's Wisdom score could probably be dumped to allow this, but it doesn't have to be this way.

We invest 18 levels into sorcerer for three big reasons. One: With the metamagics, we can double the range, so we could burn many sorcery points in order to achieve that. Two: Feats. Besides Eldritch Adept, we should get Spell Sniper, which lets us double the range passively to whopping 1200 feet (assuming we're using the Distant Spell metamagic too). Three: The capstone of the Seer Bloodline. While I could describe it with words, I'll just paste it here for you all to see, it's something lovely.

Change the Future
Starting at 18th level, you can grasp the future you wish for, even if you suffer for it. Whenever you finish a long rest, note the location. If you die, your corpse and any memory of you since that long rest vanish as if you were never there. Any illogical outcomes of your actions since that long rest are rationalized. For example, if you damaged a creature before you died, the creature rationalizes that another creature damaged it instead. You then appear at the location where you finished your last long rest, alive and in the state you were when you finished the rest.
Once you use this feature, you can't use it again for 7 days.

This is a psychological warfare on a whole another level. Sure the miniguns will be useless for several days afterwards, but hey it's a sacrifice I am willing to make.

Bonus points if you give each of these Illusionist's Bracers, letting them cast the same cantrip they did with action as a bonus action, doubling the number of blasts they can make.

Alright, you might be thinking that we got the shooters in the back sorted out. What about the front-liners though? I'm glad you've asked!

The Bjornsworn

• Barbarian 18: Totem Warrior (Player's Handbook)
• Warlock 2: Gray Portrait (Genuine Fantasy Press)

I couldn't resist calling it this, and judging by the name you probably already know what's coming. Bear totem at level 3 of the barbarian gives the Bjornsworn resistance to all damage types, with the exception of psychic. It also makes for a pretty good front-liner generally. The only improvement I could come up with for it is giving it some levels of Gray Portrait warlock for yet another soldier unit that's backed up after death as a painting, and also some invocations that you can go hog-wild with. I feel like you could go even deeper into the warlock, but this felt like a good balance to me.

While a lot more boring description-wise, similar role could be accomplished by a 20th level Atavist who chooses the Bloodied Aspect. Their preservation could be achieved by cutting off their pinky finger, keeping it in a jar somewhere, and casting gentle repose on it once every 10 days. Even if the rest of their body would be destroyed, they could regenerate from this pinky finger since it's their body part. The reason I'm making this a side-note instead of its own build is because it doesn't really need any changes. One thing I should point out besides the pinky finger trick is the fact, that this one gets to automatically kill humanoids who have 25 hit points or less, provided you've rended to its damage. Which is just hardcore if you ask me.

Primal Cleanser

• Druid 20: Circle of the Land (Player's Handbook)

While this unit is less of a battlefield soldier, it's a simple enough build to include here if you wish to make the elven army more threatening. A level 20 druid can cast spells even while wildshaped, requiring no components save for the costly ones. In order to make it work though, we'll need to do another little cheat. Here's a custom table of Circle of the Land spells for a new environment, the "eternia". Basically, it's a biome heavily influenced by magic to last forever. Think Hallownest from Hollow Knight. I should maybe write an article on that in the future, sounds like a fun topic.

Druid Level	Circle Spells
2nd	continual flame, Nystul's magic aura
3rd	glyph of warding, major image
4th	fabricate, Mordenkainen's private sanctum
5th	hallow, teleportation circle

Key component for us here being Mordenkainen's private sanctum. This spell can be cast over the course of 10 minutes with no costly components over and over, becoming permanent after being cast in the same place for a year., though it must be cast with the same effects. What effects are possible? Well...

• Sound can't pass through the barrier at the edge of the warded area.
• The barrier of the warded area appears dark and foggy, preventing vision (including darkvision) through it.
• Sensors created by divination spells can't appear inside the protected area or pass through the barrier at its perimeter.
• Creatures in the area can't be targeted by divination spells.
• Nothing can teleport into or out of the warded area.
• Planar travel is blocked within the warded area.

So what does this mean? It means that you could have a plague of wild shaped druids, looking like normal animals just chilling in a place or flying around a spot for 10 minutes at a time, turning the world slowly but surely into a massive private sanctum of sorts. Disabling teleportation, disabling planar travel, possibly divination spells too. Others could be used at your own discretion.

How much land can a single one of these druids cover in a day? A level 20 druid has three 4th level, three 5th level, two 6th level, two 7th level, one 8th level, and one 9th level spell slots for a day. Add to this their ability to recharge two 5th level spell slots, and we have... a lot of spell slots. When cast at 4th level, Mordenkainen's private sanctum encompasses a 100 ft. cube. This cube's side increases by 100 feet with every spell slot level above 4th, which is wild if you ask me, but also fine by me. Instead of figuring out how could one honeycomb a space indefinitely using cubes of these sizes, I'll just abstract it into a big rectangle. This rectangle would be 600 ft. high (since that's the highest of these cubes), and at a base roughly 970 by 970 feet. This is how much area could a single druid sanctum-ify in a year by going over it every day and casting the spell over and over. This process would take them 2 hours and 20 minutes, plus 1 extra hour for a short rest to recharge the 5th level spell slots. For the context, this area is roughly 1.6 times bigger than the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

And that's a single druid. Even if any elf who isn't a Cleanser themselves would have just one sibling who is, there would be 21.6 thousand of them three generations in. This many of them would cover more than half of the area of Rhode Island in a year. Let's also not forget the fact that they age 10 times slower, so assuming they'd reach level 18 at 100 years, they could still live on for 6500 more years. Which also means they'd have more children, but I really don't feel like redoing all the calculations by this point, so I'll leave the implications up to your imagination. And that's just a tip of the iceberg that shows what's possible with them.

Elven Caretaker

• Cleric 18: Arcana domain (Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide)
• Warlock 2: Currency Conspiracy (Genuine Fantasy Press)

With the Arcana domain, the clerics get the best of both worlds—supportive spells for helping out their buddies, but also some super strong wizard spells. Like clone that lets them preserve themselves. Or wish that lets them cast any spell for free once. Or the one we'll focus a bit of our attention on: Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion. Heavens bless Mordenkainen for all his wonderful gifts to the elfkind, as well as the rest of the humanity.

With a single cast of this spell, you can create an extradimensional space that contains, and I have to quote this,

[…] sufficient food to serve a nine course banquet for up to 100 people. […]

Assuming that an average human could survive on three courses a day, this means one mansion could in theory feed 300 people. Even if every average elven couple had only one Caretaker child out of their whole family of 147 (not including parents), this would be more than enough to feed them. Hey, even if one out of 50 elves would be a Caretaker, if you're a pedant thinking that the spell's intent is to feed only 100 people and never more.

With the clone spell, you could have the cleric make a backup of themselves in case of troubles. After they die, assuming the clone had enough time to develop, they come back to life without any issues.

And with the wish, you could cast literally any spell you want as long as it's of 8th level or lower for free! You want simulacrum? How about yet another Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion? Or maybe you want to help one of those few unfortunate ones who don't get to revive for free with a resurrection spell? Or you could possibly make a demiplane in which the time flies twice as fast as outside, letting the elves train there faster. Any of that and so much more is all possible.

You might be skeptical now. You only get one wish a day, and yet here I am talking about spells with costly components. How do we deal with that? Do the Caretakers go to the battlefield and murder tons of people? As you might have guessed if you know me, Currency Conspiracy comes to help us. They use gilt for their expensive spells. If you think that they'll need to breed a ton of rats to murder every day in order to make 1000 gold pieces required for an average resurrection though, you might be missing a more important point of the feature. Let me highlight it for you:

Also, whenever you reduce a Small or larger creature to 0 hit points using a cantrip or a spell cast using a warlock spell slot or when a creature swears a binding oath of loyalty to you, you can choose to capture a fraction of their soul, granting you an amount of Gilt equal to the creature’s hit point maximum.

Guess what do we have here on our hands? Millions of trained warriors, with plenty of hit points, who are free to swear loyalty to the Caretakers. They would literally have more money than they could spend in their lives. Nothing about the oath says that a creature can swear it only to one creature at a time either. If you want to juice even more money out of it, give them the Tough feat for extra hit points to their maximum, and thus extra money.

Why do we have two levels of warlock? For invocations. Invocations are fun, so once again you are free to customize the Caretakers as you see fit.

Queen of Shadows

• Sorcerer 19+: Imperial Birthright (CaelReader homebrew)
• Warlock 1: Currency Conspiracy (Genuine Fantasy Press)
• The allmage spell (MeowMagic)

Yes, this build is so frightening that I will break my own naming conventions for it.

Currency Conspiracy is for the same reason as with the Caretakers, infinite potential money. The 19 levels of sorcerer are there to provide you with metamagic, and plenty of features flavorfully fitting a ruler of the people.

There are two more details though. One of these is usage of the sequester spell to preserve these queens eternally, for the time of dire need. The other one is the spell allmage that's cast upon her. The spell is cast upon an elected Queen by three Caretakers, who could possibly be accompanied by paladins and/or artificers who will assist them in preventing permanent loss of their spell slots. Let's face it though—even if they lost the spell slots, another Caretaker could possibly help them get their spell slots back.

After the ritual, the Queen possesses the ability to cast all spells, ability to cast unlimited amount of spells of 3rd level or lower, and gains an additional spell slot of every level above 5th. Such power however comes at a cost. This ritual creates a dead magic zone within a 1 mile radius.

"Beneath the Eternal Host's own land
Myriad of shadowed queens still stand
Time passes not for them, they await their calls
Their time shall come once the Eternal Host falls."

As far as I can track, the art was made by a former DeviantArt user named Exellero. While their account seems to be removed, I found one named that on ArtStation that seems somewhat similar.

The Society of Host

There are two major castes within the society: Warriors who go out into the wilderness to take over more territories and gather resources, and Guardians who stay in the kingdom in order to take care of the young, train those who haven't reached age of 100, and to defend the homeland. All of the men and the Queen are considered to be Guardians by default, and other roles are all determined on an individual basis, with large majority of the population consisting of Warriors.

When an elf is born, they spend first year of their life being taken care of by their parents, as well as the Guardians. After the first year, they continue to be raised by the Guardians, with the parents possibly visiting them every 5 years if they're Warriors. Once a child reaches the age of 20 and the coming of age ceremony comes, they begin their training as one of the above-listed social roles, or another unmentioned role (at your own discretion). Since a human could in theory achieve the maximum level within their lifetime, it's reasonable to assume that the elves with proper training, which is passed down the generations, would be capable of achieving the same. Understandably, this training would also come with an unhealthy dose of brainwashing, in order to keep the cycle intact.

Once they reach the age of 100, they start to fulfill their social role. The Warrior leaves their homeland in order to conquer the new lands, the Guardian raises the next generations and keeps everyone fed, the Cleanser begins to alter the world, and the Queen determines what should be conquered next. A Warrior is required to come back to the Homeland once every 5 years in order to give birth to and raise another child, safe from their conquering duties for one year.

One of the major buildings within the lands of the Eternal Host is the resurrectionist gallery. Thousands of paintings are stored within these, as the Caretakers look after them, checking regularly to see which soldiers have died so that they could bring them back to life using their Gray Portrait. What means exactly do they use to tell whether an owner of a Gray Portrait is dead is unknown to all but the Caretakers and the Queen, in order to keep it a secret from those that would wish to endanger the Host.

Every 10 years, one newborn girl is chosen to be raised as a Queen of Shadows. The crowning ceremony is performed when such woman reaches the age of 100. As part of this ceremony, the previous Queen of Shadows has her solar and pit fiend hand cut off, only to be regenerated by a Caretaker. She is afterwards sequestered, awakened only when the Queen that's being crowned falls, or when the kingdom of Eternal Host is invaded by an outside force. After being sequestered, the spell allmage is cast upon the next Queen, using the former Queen's hands and weapons as spell components and continuing the cycle. It is said that the kingdom hides thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Queens of Shadow, sequestered in some safe hidden place.

While a niche thing that doesn't have to apply to everyone, if I did something akin to this, I would create a new plane of existence for them that they could conquer over time in order to avoid running out of space too quickly. A personal favorite would be a fourth layer of Arcadia. Since the third layer of Arcadia is gone by now, it would add further mystery to these elves, giving them their very own corner of the multiverse that they have conquered, and work on conquering at all times.

Be thankful that the elves are usually peaceful and keep to their forests. And if they don't… fear them.
Elves, by Veli Nyström

And there we have it! After what felt like forever, my article is finished. I would like to thank Genuine Believer for inspiring me with his works, parts of which were present in almost all installments of the Villainous Cookbook, as well as to all other homebrewers and readers who supported me while working on this project. It was an honor. I really hope you've all enjoyed it, and I wish you all a wonderful day!