Filling Out the World

It's been a while!

I've had a few minor elements I've been working on lately. Firstly the creation of the Balinds, a group of ascended Dire Pangolins who were elevated by uplifted my the transformation and empowerment of a dryad spirit to the level of Lesser Power. The intent behind the Balinds was to have a race as "young" as possible, all of their kind are either first or second generation, a people without a place in the world or a heritage to cling to they find themselves adrift. This lack of community leads to Balind having little interest in congregating, instead choosing to travel the world and find work and joy wherever they can.

As for the dryad, Cassiq, the Thorn Queen was a popular nature spirit and guardian in the forest of the southwest of the Confederation of Duchies. Eventually earning a place in the lower courts of the divine through non-violent means. On the continent comprising the Duchies and the Southern Reaches there stands a set of divine laws, the Concord of the New Pantheon, enforced by the uppermost deities. These rules are generally unknown to mortals however two of greatest mandates are that all Powers active in the area require some kind of chosen people or worshippers, and that the three primary paths to ascension are by defeating an existing Power and wresting control from them, by forging a new domain and claiming it as your own, or successfully petitioning the upper deities for a position.

Alongside these new bits I've also done some thinking about a class of vehicles called "manaskimmers" after thinking about and looking at things related to Spelljammer. The manaskimmers similarly are heavily based on regular ships of the sea, instead of sails they fly thick nets that capture the mana of the moonlight to translate into movement, while finned oars catch the "tides" of the leylines for daytime travel along quasi-highways. Many of these ships are very old, having been passed down through bloodlines for many generations, occasionally changing hands via marriage, trade or gifting of the helm to a trusted First Mate, or more rarely, desperation from mass fatalities. The skycaptains consider themselves set apart from the nations of the world, having no compunction taking work from opposing forces or even engaging in combat at the behest of their highest bidders. However, the skycaptains refuse to take action against their fellow ships except in especially dire circumstances.

Apart from these it's mostly been a few pieces of cleanup work or tweaking, such as working a little more on the Mantles system, some minor work on the SR Vocations and a few WIP subclasses early in dev. I've also had some fun little rhetorical questions for myself about the effects of some SR elements to the worlds of Luke and James, such as: do our games take place on a super-Earth? Will Mortaria succumb to a plague of monstrosities for importing unsanctioned Old Blood creations? I guess we'll see.