It's absolutely evocative prose, and were I to read it in a fiction work, it'd fit magnificently. It's just a bit much for the exigencies of a tabletop gaming campaign, where the amount of storytelling and flavor text with which you can batter the players is limited. There's a lot a GM has to invent here: what are the powers of the Tree? Is it a deity in of itself, a servitor/avatar of one, or simply an uber-Undead? Is there a nation near to hand or claiming this territory? What are these minions the Emperor has? Who are the cultists that serve/oppose him? I'd be happy to see more of these particulars fleshed out.
The flavor text doesn't say, and I'd wager the average player would raise eyebrows at several pages worth of it that boiled down to "Evil last emperor of destroyed empire / nasty undead tree / and here's the location."
"ewww", yes.
I am in awe of the quality of the prose. A whole lot more showing than telling, for sure.
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Wow in depth, with enough info to base an entire campaign around. It's nice to see an unusual enemy that has a fresh approach to achieving their goals, and really make players struggle to get a grasp on their capability and motivations.
A couple quick ideas to improve the appearance/presentation:
Putting the headers such as appearance, confrontation etc.. in bold would help a bit to highlight the different sections of the article and make it easier to find a particular area when skimming during a game session.
Also, putting a line break in between each plot hook and bolding their titles would make the last text area a bit easier to read/navigate. (as it is it's a bit of a wall of text towards the end)
There are so many aspects of this sub that I like. Being a big fan of mythology, I love the description on how the Reverie came to be. I like the idea of the Reverie being a shared reality and it gets my mind thinking of all the ways that it would influence Elven society. The progression of Vlari-Shion's story is riveting. The language is wonderfully evocative. Truly a different take on monsters and it would have worked well for the quest.
I have racked my brain to come up with something that could use improvement, but I got nothin'.
Excellent sub! It was a little confusing in places - I didn't realize at first that the sub was written from an opposing viewpoint, for instance - but it is full of ideas that could be taken and used even if the whole sub was not used in the campaign. I like it!
Very cool. I liked a lot of the descriptions of the victims and original demon. However, the form of floating body parts was fitting, just not satisfying. I feel like this could benefit from more detail. I want more of this. It's very good, but leaves me begging for more.
A unique and surprisingly subtle demon that is likely to catch most groups by surprise, and ill prepared. One of these nasties in disguise as a rich merchant with a few indentured servants, (that loathe the merchant) being escorted by the party can lead to all sorts of misadventures. (When discovered it can also lead to some false accusations and a fun role playing scene.)
4.5 over all and +.5 for their unusual origins and the methods these demons sow the seeds of chaos.
A small suggestion to improve the visual appeal would be to perhaps put the individual plot hook titles in bold so they each stand out a bit more?
Lifeforms (Unique) (Mountains)
An excellent addition to the quest - nicely done EM!
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