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February 8, 2012

Category: Electrum Pieces

September 30, 2011

The Sandmen of Padasar

by John Payne — Categories: Andras, Electrum Pieces and OSR Project — Tags: , , , — 1 Comment

There’s more that I want to add to this primordial, but I wanted to post it anyway. What I like so far is that the Sandmen serve as something close to the original elementals summoned by the summon elemental spell. The sandman will do its masters’ bidding. It is strong and powerful. Being immune to fire and heat also comes in handy.

More than that, the plane is an attempt to be different. In a future post, I’ll expand upon the plane and its other inhabitants. Enjoy!

The plane of Padasar is unique amongst all the known planes for three distinct features. The most disturbing is the presence of earthquakes. Due to the nature of planes in the Astral Sea, it was believed that earthquakes would not occur. Another distinctive feature is the Hashimi Column. The column is an extraordinarily tall mountain that purportedly marks the exact center of the plane. The last distinctive feature is the non-linear flow of time. Visitors to this plane may encounter the Column at only ten thousand feet high on the first visit and find it later at the height of ten to twenty miles.

The sandmen are semi-intelligent creatures that favor areas near hot springs and volcanoes. They lead solitary lives traveling over Padasar in search of food or taking shelter from the weather.

The life of a sandman is driven by two sensations, hunger and satiation. Their main diet is cinnabar ore. It some places it lies on the ground, but it can usually be found about three to four feet below the surface. The sandmen use a shovel-like tool to dig up the ore, using their tremendous strength to break larger ore deposits into pieces small enough for them to eat.

The sandmen have soft flesh and blood of mercury. Their skin produces a small amount of lime, thus serving as the origin of their name. This lime helps them to process their food to retain as much mercury as possible. Digesting cinnabar ore causes them to produce sulphur dioxide  as a by-product. Due to the intense heat generated by digestion, they suffer no ill effects from heat or fire. They stand almost eight feet tall with very broad shoulders and blank features. Two white eyes glow from their eye sockets. Their wide mouths provide the illusion that they are smiling all the time.

Once in their lifetime, a sandman will reproduce. In preparation, the sandman will eat as much food as it can. After falling into a deep sleep, the sandman will split into two. When both sandmen awake, they will travel in two different directions.

When they die, they return to the place of their birth, usually near the Column. Their bodies quickly decompose into mercury.

September 28, 2011

The Manus and Pria

by John Payne — Categories: Andras, Electrum Pieces and OSR Project — Tags: , , , , , , — 3 Comments

In the vast Astral Sea are countless planes. Each one has distinctive qualities that make it different from any other plane. On each plane is a being that is composed of the plane’s very essence – it is made up of those qualities that make the plane distinctive. These primordial beings or primordials take form in various ways. Many primordials take on the physical essence of a plane. Others, like the Pria, take on the spiritual essence of their home world.

Cerah is a place of vivid colors. Like the Prime Material Plane, there are brightly-colored flowers, but on Cerah the colors are richer, deeper and almost palpable. Regardless of the climate found on all three continents, there is abundant life and life forms. It is not necessarily idyllic as death is also a part of life, but the sensations to all five senses are richer and more intense.

Amongst the gods worshiped here, the most popular are  Kehindupan and his wife Kemashian. Throughout the three continents, any race with sentience has constructed temple-library complexes to honor them. The Temple-Library is also an institution of higher learning and students stream in to study the collected knowledge of Cerah.

Despite the universal love for Kehinupan and Kemashian, only the Manus and the Pria become priests for them. These two races have a special relationship to these gods. The Manus were the first-created on Cerah. They believe that they are created in form and spirit like gods of life and death. As a mark of their favor, the Manus were given a secret knowledge to create a soul. The use of this knowledge is not perceived as an abomination, but as a tribute to the powerful gods of life and death. Manusian priests spend years in study to learn the secret to making the Exilir of Souls and using it to create the Pria.

The first Pria created is the same gender as the priest. When created, the Pria is an adult, but the creating priest spends at least five years training their creation how to interact with society. Priests of Kehindupan are renown for authoring masterworks about etiquette and social graces. Using these books and other materials, a Pria learns about the world around them and how to interact in society like the Manus.

One to three years after creating the first Pria, the priest will create a second one of the opposite gender. A priest will never create more than two. The created Pria consider themselves siblings.

Most created Pria remain near the temple-libraries where they were created. Regardless of where they decide to live, the Pria are devout worshipers of Kehindupan and Kemashian. Usually they choose to be priests, paladins or mystic theurges with a tremendous talent for alchemy.

Prian marriages are arranged by the Manusian priests.  Siblings cannot marry each other. A few marriages are arranged to gain favor or position within church hierarchy, most, however, are arranged by a byzantine set of rules known as the Diyerni Zor. The purpose of the Diyerni Zor is to prevent health issues with the children of Pria. Pria couples are not limited to the number of children they may have. Large families are common.

Freeborn Pria are like a Manus in every respect. The only hint that points to their ancestry is  a lock of silver and red hair. Not all freeborn Pria  have this distinctive mark. Otherwise, Pria are physically a slightly idealized form of the Manus. Pria do not consider themselves superior in any way, but those outside of Cerah usually consider the Pria more beautiful. Both the Manusians and the Pria appear as humans approximately six feet tall. They have an elongated head and a very flat nose with a single nostril shaped like a horizontal slit. On their foreheads is a barely noticeable vestigial third eye. Their arms and fingers are proportionally longer than a human’s. Both races prefer to dress in simple robes of white with a brightly-colored sash. The robes also conceal the fact that both races appear bowlegged. This is due to a limited hinge joint located half-way between the knee and the hip.

In game terms, I imagine the Priests of Kehindupan and Kemashian are similar to the Newhonian White Wizards featured at the Hill Cantons site. The post with the revised PDF is here. They also have the power to imbue a handful of spells to the Pria they created. (This ability is similar to the Psionic ability to imbue abilities.) The Pria doesn’t pray to their Manusian creator, but mentions their creator in prayers to Kehindupan and Kemashian.

One specialty of the Manusian Priests is alchemy. Learning to create a Pria provides experience in making various potions and understand their effect on the body. The alchemy is also essential to create the Exilir of Souls, a substance that allows the Manusian to create a soul at all.

September 26, 2011

The Men of Iron and Stone

by John Payne — Categories: Andras, Electrum Pieces and OSR Project — Tags: , , , , — 1 Comment

A new kind of primordial. This is a bit different in that I do not describe the plane as much as the distinctive physical features of the primordials themselves.

The Men of Iron and Stone (Menois) stand roughly five and half feet tall to six feet tall. They appear as hairless humanoids with webbed hands and no outer ears. They are primarily carnivores that prefer the taste of red meat. Any kind of farming is done solely for the benefit of livestock. They are very sensitive to water and will not come in contact with it for any length of time. Water doesn’t cause any damage, but produces an uncomfortable feeling akin to nausea. For this reason, all Menois carry a coin made of zinc. If an individual Menois needs to have contact with water for any length of time, the Menois will place the coin in their mouth for the duration of their contact.

Their name comes from the fact that their bodies appear to be composed of stone with areas of metal floating on top covering a small area. Despite the appearance of stone, their flesh is similar to soft leather. Each Menois is distinctive as the amount and location of the metal covering an individual’s body is unique to that individual. Most Menois have twenty to fifty percent of their body covered in half-inch think metal. The metal has flexibility, but remains as tough as steel. Commonly, the metal usually covers an entire hand or limb with a small amount forming an type of birth mark on their abdomen. The metal will also shift to cover an area of the body perceived to be in the most danger. During battle, the iron will cover the entire chest, the face and head before covering other areas.

The Menois breathe through their skin covering the “stone” part of their bodies. As a result, they wear very light clothing or none at all. The unique nature of their bodies does not permit wearing any kind of armor or using shields. Except in battle, the abdomen is always exposed to allow individual Menois to identify each other by their birthmarks. Due to their webbed hands, they also do not wear rings. Outside of light clothing, they also paint on the stone and metal parts of their bodies. These temporary tattoos are popular and fairly common.

Culturally, the Menois refer to the dual nature of their bodies as Yerkat (the iron) and Kav (soft stone or clay). The metal part of their bodies represent strength, focus, heat, aggression, fire, sky, and light. The stone part of their bodies represents the opposite qualities: softness, diffuse, cold, passivity, water, earth, femininity and darkness. In game terms, this makes them neutral in regards to law and chaos as the Menois believe that both work together.

Those Menois that study magic research spells and craft magical items for a unique kind of magic that affects the metal part of their bodies. The most common spells and items  increase the size of metal covering their bodies. They have already discovered magic that allows for covering the entire body; the difficulty in their research pertains to breathing once the entire body is covered. No more than ninety percent of the body can be covered in metal or the Menois will die. Despite records from their ancients describing Y’Mard Odayin (The Breathing Man), no magic has yet been discovered that will allow a Menois to breathe while covered completely.

Other spells and magic items manipulate the metal of their bodies into weapons and shields. The unique nature of their bodies allows them to use only magic items that are one-handed weapons, staves or potions. The Menois craft special magic items designed to fit as a thin plate inside their mouths as the inside of the mouth is one of the few parts of the body that does not change as the metal sheath moves around their body.

The Menois’ home plane is characterized by a complete lack of rain. It never rains and fog of any kind is extremely rare. Despite the presence of two large oceans and an abundance of lakes, it does not rain. Menois legends speak of the time of the ancients when large bodies of water did not exist in their home plane. The ancients devised a plan to create the two great seas by crafting gates that connect their world with plane(s) that were mostly water. In fact, first contact was made with humans when the ancients attempted to build a gate on the humans’ home world.

The presence of these gates leads to constant enmity between the Menois and the Water Primordials. Water Primordials will generally attack Menois on sight if circumstances allow: the Menois are seen by them as ancient aggressors and thieves. Outside of Water Primordials, the Menois have no major enemies.

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