Last week I asked an important question to you all, which has sparked a wonderful response and helped me to build up the world at large!
Behold, the note!
Thankyou all for your questions about my world! And if you have more questions about my world which can help me with worldbuilding, ask them here!
Let’s get through some questions and answers, and together, we can build my world of Arenstar up to new heights!
Unique Types of Magic
This one’s from Evie, maker of Acrostic poems and writer of Intergalactic Reverie. Well worth a read!
As said in my original reply, that is some lovely lore for a world you have there - in D&D worldbuilding, it’s easy for us to get caught up in the “things to fight” and “places to go” parts of the world, and forget to back them up with the rest of the world going on around them.
In Arenstar, there are a few existing aspects of magic (or magical ingredients) which are unique to the world. Here’s 5:
Red Salt
The Red Salt, found exclusively in a mine at the bottom of the cliffs of a town called Clarion’s Vigil1. This salt has a unique ability to store and contain magical energy. The larger the crystal, the larger amount of energy it can store2. The University of Magic, which resides on the 10th floor of The Tower3, has secured an exclusive contract for this salt. This was intended to prevent anyone from having access to such a potent magical tool, and the University sells the salt in crushed form as an alchemical ingredient, keeping the larger crystals for their own ends. Instead, it means that large crystals are an expensive item, which is invariably stolen or smuggled out of the mine. No laws prevent owning these crystals, but the University feels it in the best interests of everyone to confiscate them if they find them.
Flyorite
This rock responds to the proximity and strength of magic by generating magical lift. It is the core of any skyship in Arenstar, though it has a distinct disadvantage - the more buoyant the rock becomes, the more it resists lateral motion. This means that the largest ships are slow and ponderous, and the smallest ships are sluggish compared with their water-bound counterparts. They are used for heavy overland haulage, and as ferries up and down the Tower. This all changes durign the campaign, and a great swathe of it is dedicated to the development of a new Flyorite drive. This leads to the party delving into the only Flyorite mine in Arenstar - in a place called Stretnup4.
The Cherry Blossom
The Cherry Blossom is a tavern which sells magical food. The chef was a woman (alas, her name has disappeared into the depths of my notes!) whose father ran a tavern on the opposite side of the bridge to her. Their story was one of misunderstanding - he didn’t understand the idea of puttign magic into food, and was very traditional. He also saw his wife - her mother - die to a wild magic surge, so wanted to protect her from the dangers of magic.
The chef was enchanting food to dance, enchanting the punch to form an endlessly shifting ice scultpure above itself, and using magical ingredients to add specific effects to the food. She asked an adventurer5 to hunt a special type of deer for her - a 3-eyed deer with the unique ability to force the deer’s needs into the minds of those it looks at. In this case, it meant that every time Molly tried to capture it, it would make her feel that the most important thing is that the deer gets away. She eventually caught it, and trained it, but pursuaded the Chef and her dad to talk, instead of using magic to make him understand how she felt.
Meysura
The Meysura is a huge, lumbering animal, slightly smaller than an elephant and much squatter, with long claws on its front limbs and huge, powerful toad-like jaws full of thick, slab-like teeth. Meysure are a difficult creature to classify into Herbivorous or Carniverous - their claws are made for digging, and their teeth are built for grinding up stone, which is what they eat.
What makes them difficult to classify is their fur. Their backs are covered in a thick, luxusious carpet of feathery fur, which resembles nothing more than a particularly lush patch of grass. The Meysura bury themselves in clearings, leaving their backs exposed. Over the next few days, animals will come to graze the clearing, and they will eat the fur from the Meysura’s back, and the magic in the fur will petrify the creatures to stone. Around once per week, the Meysura will pull itself out of its hole and plod around the clearing, scooping statues of deer, elk, and other grazing beasts into its huge maw, and crunching it to rubble. The fur from a Meysura’s back remains potent only for a few hours after being cut, though it will retain potency for much longer if processed correctly, making it a sought-after ingredient.
Turnback Tequila
Oh, this one’s so much fun.
Essentially, it’s a bottle of blue tequila which, when you drink a shot of it, you forget 1 hour. If you drink another, you forget the hour before, and so forth. Don’t eat the worm - that can take away months!
This was used to great effect when the party went for drinks and asked for the strongest drink they had. They advised it’s 1 gold for a shot, do you want one. They said “Yes!”. The barkeep advised it’s one gold, and they said they want one. It’s one gold for a shot. Yes, we know, we want a shot.
All the while, I was rolling con saves for people. The monk and the warlock were the first to pass out. The Paladin and barbarian, quite confused, were again asked if they wanted a shot from the half full bottle (wasn’t it full when she got it down?"). They again said yes. After 7 of these repetitions, they both passed out, and I told each of them to deduct 7 gold, the other 2 to deduct 3 gold, and informed them that they have forgotten the last 7 and 3 hours, respectively. Realisation dawned on the players’ faces all at once. It was a magificent moment!
Apparently, that’s enough writing
Substack is telling me I’m at my limit, so I will make another post for the next question!
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Thankyou for reading and have an excellent December!
Clarion Bransworth was the main quest-giver in my first ever campaign. The party were going to be asked to bring his pregnant wife, Una, back from bandits. The quest wove through the world as the party would pursue the wife, and ultimately they would recover her. Clarion, meanwhile, said he would stay at the camp they had made, in case she escaped and came back to find him.
But the campaign fell through. The party never even met Clarion. I could have tucked the story away for another time, but I like the idea of my world as a living and adapting thing. So the bandits came, and Clarion sent some other adventurers to find his wife, and they died. Clarion waited, and he waited. He built a tavern and continued to wait. The town grew around him, and became known as Clarion’s Vigil. He learnt peoples stories and wrote books of folklore. And Una never came back. I opened his book, which I wrote and gave to my players in my current campaign, with this:
For relevance of that reference, stay tuned to Folklore Friday for the Splinters of Immortality!
No, nothing like soul gems in Skyrim, at all. Hmph.
The Tower is a colossal structure, 10 miles in diameter, which is seemingly infinite in height. Entire cities are on each floor, and in this case, the University of Magic.
Yes, this is because I wanted to make the pun that all Flyorite is Stretnupan Flyorite. Thus far, only one of my players has gotten this, and she sings “Straighten up and Fly Right” every time Flyorite is mentioned. I suspect the rest either got it and refuse to acknowledge it on principle of it being a bad pun, or have never heard this phrase!
Called Molly, who was my Wife’s solo adventurer in a campaign I insist I am still running, despite it having been way too long since last I ran a session!