fragments of a blue ruin
They are the inheritors of one of mankind’s oldest and fondest wishes: that we might join the birds we envy and fly with them in the unbounded vastness of the depths above. In leaving the ground they have lost none of their ancestors’ pride or taste for blood and the creatures are famed for their… Continue reading OF THE WALL’S HARPIES
It's no secret that I'm interested in machine learning, and the Vaarn setting not only features sentient AI, but is partly authored by procedural algorithms. I use Markov text generators to create most of the names I've used in the setting, and the surreal, dreamlike artwork I frequently feature on this blog (including the featured… Continue reading MONSTERS IN THE MACHINE
You are watched, by kindly eyes in the dark. Your imperfections are invitations, each blemish an opportunity for the observer to prove their love. Although they do not know you, they love you as they would a newborn child, and each cut or bruise you receive hurts the watcher as though the injury was to… Continue reading COSSETING CHRYSALID
I hope you'll forgive the title; I know it's only marginally amusing but once I thought of it I had to do something with it. Anyway, this post was sparked by a discussion I had on Reddit about re-skinning dungeons and monsters from classic fantasy RPGs to the Vaults of Vaarn setting. This is an… Continue reading B/X TO THE FUTURE
I find that it’s easy to overlook the lower end of the monster power curve. I completely understand why: you want your monsters to be memorable and cool and dangerous, so anything that gets its own blog post feels like it needs to be at least 4HD or above, have a load of weird powers,… Continue reading LOW-LEVEL MONSTERS
An incursion from another fevered sphere of reality, a bizarre hypergeometric monster which feeds upon paradox and whose mere regard unwinds the weave and weft of space-time. The Fractalisk resembles a lizard from some angles, a blossoming flower from others, and at times can seem no more substantial than a fan of light reflected upon… Continue reading FRACTALISK
As a follow-up to my last post on Toxin Dice, I thought it would be fun to showcase a few Vaarnish creatures that attack with or use toxins. Toxic attacks are indicated with the abbreviation TOX. If the affected character fails a CON save, they gain a Toxin Dice of the size indicated. So a… Continue reading TOXIC CREATURES
Long ago, when the Autarchs still reigned over Vaarn, there was a certain valley where no plant grew and no bird sang and no man had made a house for the land underfoot was poisoned and all who camped there would sicken and die. In time the Autarch's wise men were told tales of this… Continue reading BLIGHTSTONE KNIGHT
Let it never be said that fate has no sense of humour, for the only region of Vaarn blessed with vast bodies of standing water is the polluted swamp-sink of Ikor Quag. The foolhardy travellers who drink from the toxic canals of the Quag die in convulsive agony, and even touching the water of the… Continue reading LAMIGATOR
The Crimson Soul, Ba, is contained in the heart and liver, and thus it nourishes and irrigates every corner of a living being.
VAULTS OF VAARN 