This is pretty cool. My campaign is already race-heavy, but this would be a sweet addition to many a milieu. Well done.
Heh, it wouldn't take a fiendish mind to conceive of this: the lethal potential of being at the summit of a belltower when the bell's sounding forth is a trope I've seen more than once in fiction. An interesting visual nonetheless, and a fairly gruesome public execution method.
A good start, I think. I've some questions.
* "Mitrall was a Guardian Deity of the Dead ..." Is there a sense that the deity doesn't exist any more, or is this from a campaign that doesn't have interventionist deities?
* Obviously the Cult is very strong, if it has the resources claimed. Is this organization particularly prestigious in its society, or does it have particularly strong backers? Is its scope local or international?
* If the worship of Mitrall is no longer an aspect of the Cult, does the organization still call itself a "Cult," as opposed to a society/sodality/order?
* Plainly it's well-organized ... but how? Is there a hierarchy? A cell structure? Is it a secret society, or are some of its workings public?
I like this a lot. Obviously, I'm with the vox populi (however much six years ago). People have been coming up with material for RPGs for 35 years now, and I'm sick to death of the premise that everything has to be Unique! Snazzy! Unusual! Well, no, not everything is, and not everything has to have Dark Cultists, Peasants With A Secret, Puttering Old Men Who Are Really Archmages and the like. For my money, I'll take something calm and low-key that will fit into my world ... and if I feel like tossing in something offbeat, well, what in the merry hell prevents me from doing that?
Not bad, if a lot for what boils down to a "safe place of refuge." A tick off for formatting and the occasional typo.
Very munchkinesque. This would have fit in perfectly well - typos and bad writing included - in D&D dungeoneering products circa 1978. How sloppy is this? Let me count the ways.
* No clear break between the past history and the original history.
* Why would using the sword in the original battle (which that manipulative bastard of an archmage set up in the first place) be considered "cheating?" Exactly how were those students fighting - presumably to the death - otherwise?
* For a sword that purportedly seeks to strike a balance, it sure seems dedicated to punking out "evil."
* If no one's owned this after the "good" student, it's what, been sitting in that cave ever since? Then who's been calling it the "Green Sword?" Something that isn't in the public eye doesn't attract nicknames.
* The powers are completely munchkinesque. Who would know to call the spirits in the sword? Why would anyone imagine you could do that, without the metagaming info?
(Never mind that I hate alignment with a hot, heavy hate.)
Heck, the "Old Fears Come Again" plot hook's enough for a high vote, all in of itself. Too damn often, the moral absolutism of D&D and its ilk manifests itself in the notion that if the other guys are "Evil," just about any bestial thing you do to them is okay, because, well, they're Evil, doncha know?
Nice start, good flavor text, but too much we don't know. What's its duration? How fast can it go? (Heck, how do you steer the thing?) How many times a day can it be used? Exactly how sturdy is that wagon?
Eh, good for local color, but if they don't actually do anything ... ? If you can't chip or work them, by the bye, how are they "made?" Is there any speculation as to what could have formed or fashioned them, beneath the earth? Something had to separate them from the roots in such teensy slivers, after all. The creator's been long vanished from the site, but even so ...
Happily, I DO GM a game with heavy nautical elements, which is how I've stumbled across this one. One of the outstanding subs on this site and a terrific idea.
It's definitely a good start - and yay! to MoonHunter for putting some more meat on the bones - but aside from the Senior Masters, I'd have liked a little more substance to balance the flavor text.
Hrm. So, let's see: (1) If you put a lot of power into gems it makes gems powerful, (2) Someone did, therefore (3) This gem is uber, (4) The end.
Extremely pedestrian, and combined with the choppy, ungrammatical, misspelled writing style, this was a Not Ready For Prime Time sub.
Mm, definitely some questions here, as others have mentioned.
Beyond those ones, I've a simple one - how in the heck did Jerod find out in the first place that this ring allows him to control wolves? Why would he put it on? What would lead him to suspect that it's enchanted? Is he a wizard in his own right, or as MoonHunter speculated, is it some powerful artifact or bound demon which has possessed Jerod?
NPCs (Minor) (Mystical)