#and I did not realise that one of the Aberrant Mind sorcerer origins is: | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

honourablejester · 2 years

Text

Spelljammer Concepts

Because I’m eyeing the books about to come out in August, and because I love me some space fantasy so much. So. Some character concepts:

An aasimar aberrant mind sorcerer who was conceived/altered when their parent’s vessel passed too close to the dreaming corpse of a dead god in the Astral Sea and whose crew only realised what they must have drifted near when they were born

A ‘space walk’ marine/salvage/pirate crew consisting of people who don’t need to breathe (warforged, autognomes, dhampir, reborn) or can hold their breath for a really long time (air genasi, tortles, plasmoids, possibly lizardfolk but that’s cutting it very tight), so they specialise in airless boarding and salvage manoeuvres

A dubiously sane outlander/hermit character who’s been stuck on a barely-habitable asteroid/shipwreck for decades and is alarmingly eager to see civilisation again (fun options: barbarian, artificer, warlock)

A space druid from a serenely drifting biodome/series of biodomes that are all that remains of the ecosphere of a destroyed world (any subclass, but spores might be very interesting for the whole ‘recycling’ aspect, and wildfire might be frowned on in an oxygenated biodome floating in an airless void – could be a good reason why you’re no longer on the dome, though)(hands up who also watched Silent Running)

A warforged/autognome who escaped the hellish cathedral ship of a master who sought to make a mindless/soulless automaton vessel with which to sail into the Far Realms and back (hands up who’s seen The Black Hole and/or Event Horizon)

A sage/scholar of the Astral Archive, a legendary celestial library floating in the Astral Sea, hollowed from a vast asteroid and barred by great golden doors, in which the lost works of a thousand worlds are salvaged and stored (possibly they were lost on their respective worlds because you stole them for said library, but you know how these things go)

A changeling, a space flim-flammer and confidence artist, who is running from their clan who just happen to be the origin of at least some of those stories of creatures stowing away on vessels in order to slowly kill and replace the crew one by one (there is at least one vessel flying out there where the clan literally did this, one or two more coming aboard at each stop and port until the whole ship had been taken over and the previous crew, except for one or two rumoured survivors, all dead and in the hold). Naturally you don’t tell anyone any of this. It’s a good way to get yourself stranded on an asteroid out of paranoia

And, following on from some of those, some location and adventure concepts for things you might find floating in wildspace/the Astral Sea:

The Astral Archive, a mythical celestial library floating in the Astral Sea

The Forged Grove, a druid grove and biodome containing the salvaged remnants of a lost ecosystem

The Telleril Conclave, a once-a-century gathering where all the biodomes and druid circles of the lost world of Telleril come together

The Swansong, a vast and eerily silent spelljamming vessel that, upon boarding, appears to be inhabited solely by grim and disinterested constructs … until one reaches the helm and the captain’s quarters, and the maddened master that inhabit them

Livyatan, the gargantuan, city-sized corpse of a dead whale god, floating frozen and calcified in the Astral Sea, rimed in ice and the dust of dreams, in whose flooded and hollowed innards strange waters flow and even stranger creatures dream

One Tree Island, an absolutely miniscule asteroid platform on which a single tree maintains just enough of an air envelope to support a tiny shack and one extremely lonely and mildly insane hermit

The Stargasst Eddy, a vast conglomeration of wrecked spelljammers and astral vessels that, according to various rumours, is either the remnants of some massive long ago battle, or a cursed eddy in the Astral Sea where a nearby portal to the Far Realm causes strange psychic storms to periodically wreck vessels in the vicinity. Widely considered haunted and extremely cursed, but also so very ripe for salvage …

And one last one just for me:

Panopticon, a partially destroyed beholder cityship, a hollowed metallic asteroid ruled over by the maddened Council of Five, the sole survivors (and possible instigators) of whatever event saw the death of every other beholder in the city, who pilot their maddened vessel onwards in search of something, picking up unwilling passengers and stowaways as they go

Space fantasy is such a fun genre …

#d&d #spelljammer #space fantasy #character concepts #i'm just enjoying the potential here so much #space fantasy/horror is very much my jam #science fiction #science fantasy

337 notes · View notes

honourablejester · 3 years

Text

Ideas for Sorcerers (D&D)

I do love a bit of innate, chaotic magic, the forces of the world writing themselves onto people. Whether said people wanted them to or not. Heh. I will admit I’m a bit more attached to the ‘touched by cosmic forces’ angle for the sorcerer, it’s really great for backstories, but the bloodlines are also fascinating for the ‘family lore’ and ‘really adventurous ancestors’ ideas. So!

I’m mostly focused on the classic sorcerers and then the horror-adjacent sorcerers, because I’m me, and we know what I like. Apologies to fans of the Divine, Storm or new Clockwork sorcerers!

Draconic

Because dragons (and dragon ancestors) are the best. There’s a lot of fun and aesthetic with choosing your dragon ancestor too. The little scales you get with draconic resilience just make for some really cool-looking characters.

I love the idea of mixing ancestries with a draconic sorcerer. Compare and contrast. For example, a tiefling draconic sorcerer with gold dragon ancestry! Combining a ‘tainted’ bloodline with a respected one. Maybe the clan lean heavily into the lawful reputation of gold dragons, as well as a sort of internalised racism against their own darker ancestry as well. They view the fact that they were once favoured by a divine dragon as proof that their bloodline can redeem themselves of their demonic pact/ancestry, and they lean towards lawful occupations, city watch, soldiers, clergy, etc. So your sorcerer has a bit of internal conflict going on. (Also, a red tiefling with gold scales is an awesome look – tiefling skin colours with dragon scale colours is a really fun combination)

Other cool-sounding ancestry combinations: high elf & white/silver ancestry, for that ethereal immortal feeling (also fun to add stereotypical dragon traits with the white dragons, in that you’re an ethereal immortal who really holds a grudge and does not do ‘forgive and forget’), half-elf & green ancestry, for a strongly outcast, political bent, halfling/gnome & copper ancestry, because if you’re going to go for a tiny trickster you might as well go all out …

Or we have my old favourite, a tortle sorcerer with (somehow) a dragon turtle ancestor, because great-grandpa Uhok never met an older and (significantly) larger lady he didn’t want to pursue, and great-grandma Korthalok was honestly rather flattered. (Yes, I am aware that dragon turtles are not high dragons, but they are intelligent, and they’re probably innately magical/elemental enough to put a bit of magic in the bloodline)

Shadow Magic

The sorcerer’s gothic option! I do love it. Your magic comes from a strange, grim shadow realm, either because you were touched by said realm, or one of your ancestors was an entity from said realm. You get a demonic shadow hound, teleportation from shadow to shadow, and later an actual shadow form. Lots to work with there.

I feel like there’s a lot of Lovecraftian, Dreamlands, William Hope Hodgson sort of feeling here. The dark touch of a strange realm. Emphasis on isolation, desolation, alienation. Loneliness. This is also the subclass where I really, really like a later-life coming into your powers, a traumatic event causing a normal person to suddenly develop horrifying magic.

So. Any of your gothic/cosmic horror backstories. You were kidnapped and subjected to a horrific ritual. You were created in a horrific ritual (hi Warforged!). You suffered a severe, inexplicable illness as a child, and remained pale, half-dead, and possessed of strange powers for the rest of your life (I love the shadow sorcerer quirks list). An insane ancestor entered the Negative Plane and your line was almost annihilated by the resulting Nightwalker, but you somehow survived. Your parent was an extremely powerful magic user studying the Shadowfell, and you only realised much later on in your life that your childhood ‘imaginary friends’ were actually Sorrowsworn (Lost and Lonely?) that haunted your ancestral home and that your parent was somehow keeping from killing you. You tried to steal from a powerful, vindictive wizard, who flung you into the Shadowfell for your temerity, and you don’t fully remember how you survived. You slept in a barrow as a dare when you were younger, and an allip whispered secrets to you that lead you to dream of a dark realm, dreams that seemed to gradually change you as you ‘recovered’ …

This entire subclass is just very much ‘go nuts on the horror tropes and have fun’. I love it dearly.

Aberrant Mind

A new one from Tasha’s, but the other Lovecraftian/horror themed sorcerer subclass now. Which is perfectly fine, because I can always roll with more Lovecraftian horror! If shadow magic was themed strongly towards undead, Aberrant Mind seems strongly themed towards aberrations. Body horror and psychic powers! Boo yeah!

I do like the suggested origins. Particularly the parasitic twin and the imaginary friend ones. I think there’s a lot of fun to be had with those. Aberrant mind does feel more … on the science fiction end of horror, more than the fantasy? There’s a different flavour compared to shadow magic. We’re talking alien abduction and Carrie-esque childhood trauma here. Particularly when you get to the higher level actual physical transformation elements. Bit of Akira in there, bit of Innsmouth. So.

I’m liking characters who are a bit ‘aberrant’ on their own merits, even before their powers kick in as well. The outcasts from the get-go. The albino half-orc abandoned by the tribe as a child and befriended/kept safe by their possibly-imaginary flumph friend. The fallen aasimar whose blessings allowed them to survive where their stillborn twin did not, but who still feels the touch of a ghostly hand in theirs (I’m not sure how well it fully gels, but I feel like an Atropal is a very interesting concept to lay alongside this – stillborn gods and blessed, aberrant champions – celestial guides and the whisperings of parasitic twins … not sure how well it fits, but there’s a lot of crunchy concepts there)

Also, there’s your chance to have some fun with the Underdark races. Duergar, Deep Gnomes and Drow. Or sea races, when we have fun with Aboleths. Or non-sea races who still had a bit of fun with Aboleths, if we want to fully embrace the Innsmouth vibes and have normal land-based elves/humans/halflings who come over all Deep-One in the end. You come from a quaint little village on the coast, where the coming-of-age ceremony involved something of an opening of the mind. Nothing to worry about, everyone does it where you come from. Yes indeed! Heh.

And then, to bring us back to the less-horrifying end of sorcerers, and to revisit my childhood in a big way, we have:

Wild Magic

Schmendrick the Magician! Sorry, I grew up on The Last Unicorn, you’ll have to forgive me this. (Is Schmendrick actually part of the inspiration here, I’m wondering?)

But honestly, wild magic really lends itself to down-on-their-luck characters, running ahead of their own chaos, or striving to learn to control their powers. Or, on the flipside, incredibly laissez-faire types who decided to just roll with and eventually enjoy or perpetuate a little chaos. So. Tricksters, shysters and earnest young things trying to do their best.

So. You could do a straight Schmendrick. A down-on-their-luck kid who really, really wants to be a real wizard, a great magician, but their magic just will not cooperate. It has a mind of its own, and their struggle is learning to either minimise or lean into the chaos and power of it. (I like a background as a tailor/seamstress for this, partly because of animated Schmendrick’s memorable patchwork robes, but also as a little practical detail in that, if you can’t trust your magical mending not to do a ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ on it every damn time, you probably would learn to darn your socks the old fashioned way)

For a variation, you could do a bit of a snake-oil salesperson sort of deal. A down-on-their-luck sorcerer turned shyster/criminal to make ends meet. Wild magic works very well as a sort of bloodline curse, bad luck and chaos following a family. A woman of the Witchbottle clan pissed off an archfey way back when, and so every girl born to the line since has struggled with wild magic. So the clan tends to move around a lot, both individually and as a whole, and individual members of it tend to work around their inevitable getting run out of town for magical mishaps in their own ways. The clan has a lot of travelling entertainers, salespeople, criminals, etc, and tend to be very loyal to each other, even if they don’t see each other all that often (concentrations of wild magic in a single area tend to be bad for said area, so family gatherings are discouraged near civilisation).

And then there are your straight trickster characters. Ones with a more philosophical approach to chaos, a belief that you should be able to deal with the unexpected, and that maybe other people should be helped along in experiencing and dealing with it too. I like bards for tricksters, but wild magic sorcerers work very well too. Heh.

I know Wild Magic might not be the most functional of the subclasses, but it’s got a direct line to my childhood, and I feel like it’s still a really fun idea.

In summary? I like the squishy spindly magic people. They’re fun.

#d&d #dnd #sorcerers #character concepts #long post #fantasy #dark fantasy #horror #lovecraftian #i do love d&d's more horror-leaning elements

40 notes · View notes