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[COURT OF SWORDS // E56 Q&A] The Seclusium and Her Custodian

RollPlay®: Court of Swords
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#21

Oh damn, that’s right… Utrix does have one of the farang ‘imprisoned’ or whatever within the Seclusium. I imagine that would be a very interesting conversation if they managed to find it, especially if Berg’s passenger is still there.

Wild Speculation Time!

[spoiler]From the various visions we’ve had, there was a major split or division among the farang that led to a rebellion or some kind of civil war, the result being one side lost badly (possibly even wiped out?). We get the impression they are trying to ‘colonize’ the world of the Court of Swords… why? Something happened to their home and it’s somehow uninhabitable? They are refugees of whichever side lost the fight? Perhaps they want to continue the fight but need some new source of power… could they be after the energy of the Fountain itself? How many sci-fi tropes can I tick off before this becomes a truly pointless exercise in conjecture?[/spoiler]

In any case, it’s clear the farang came to the Court for a reason and that reason is probably bad for the native inhabitants.

Also, my life for Aiur.

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#22

My wild speculation for tonight did berg get purified by the mock fountain and is now safe to reincarnate

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#23

Carmine and Cobalt favorite encounter yet! Those two need their own sitcom

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#24

If your random conjecture comes in the form of sci-fi tropes, you probably know me better than you think you do.

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#25

it’s the carmine and cobalt variety hour! it’s TOADALLY AMAZING! don’t miss it or you’ll want to CROAK!

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#26

Question about Berg’s mace-- the Apology of Emperor Fei-- what does it actually look like in a historical context? Most Chinese maces I’m familiar with are known as “garlic bulb” maces where the head looks literally like a bulb of garlic. Especially one handed maces. Even the ceremonial versions look similar (“golden gourd hammer”). But most of those examples I’ve seen of chinese maces are from the Ming dynasty or later; as far as I can tell, earlier maces were mostly similar or simply just variations on clubs or staffs without a prominently shaped head. Just curious as to the general shape and size of the weapon since a lot of people have misconceptions about the size of real maces and war hammers that were used in combat.

I was thinking that the head is maybe similar to a European ceremonial mace (almost cubic shaped head with engravings on each face and a small spike on top) but with chinese imagery and the shaft more similar to a chinese ceremonial mace.

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#27

I think that’s a really good way of looking at it. It’s definitely not mjolnir. Long handle, probably a like, octagonal head or something - maybe more like an oversized tetsubo?

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#28

@AdamKoebel when is berg going to see the soul of the Drake/Wyvern in one of the ep you said that berg got it soul but then after that nothing not a single thing about it and the arm bracer on the villagers is it to keep them in that realm or no?

#29

@AdamKoebel When the unicorn-creature were talking about the fountain in Utrix’s plane it said that Utrix tried to create something that existed where he grew up. Are you implying that the Fountain (from heaven) doesn’t exist in Utrix’s plane and that people’s souls end up somewhere else when they die or is this the reason why nobody dies of old age here?

#30

Utrix was originally an inhabitant of the realms of the Court of Swords, but his weird pocket dimension is outside it. Since magic still works here, it’s connected to the Fountain in some way or another…

#31

Some creatures don’t have souls strong enough to matter to the necro thing, I suspect.

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#32

@AdamKoebel thanks for the reply. my second q is about the arm bracer on the villagers that manipulate chaos does it keep them in there shape/form or does it keep them from fading back into the chaos? thank you and have a nice day.:imp:

#33

Hate to be the call-out person but I gotta defend my guy Poopfeast420’s legacy. Poopfeast was birthed in the beginnings of GSL when John the Translator picked questions from silly names for Artosis. Believe the SotG Poopfeast420s were imitating the original (or maybe it was the same person, who knows), but it started as a GSL thing.

Silliness aside, what another lovely episode! @AdamKoebel you’re doing a great job portraying weirdness. I always super admired Steven because stuffing in that weird shit was his total jam on West Marches, glad to see more of that with the Wizards (typing that out with a capital “W” makes me wonder if one of the Wizards is perhaps of the Coast?)! When GM’ing I sometimes find it hard to fully express characters when they are deeply weird (weird like the Kirin or the Gith, in that they have this total alien vibe to them and are very different from the PC’s understanding of things. Can also be characters that are, like, very philosophical or religious. “Weird” is pretty broad here) . Particularly hard to do it off-the-cuff. I find myself spending a very long time thinking about those characters’ perspectives between sessions to prepare myself.

Do you have suggestions on how to get better at exploring “weird” characters? I imagine reading a lot is a good starting place, so open to suggestions there.

Also, the game I have found that the house-rule of giving a level of exhaustion whenever a character drops to 0 works well in these types of games where encounters are less often (but also probably more meaningful). Know you’re not big on bringing in lots of house rules, but I noticed you kind-of implementing it already with Berg this session so thought I’d toss it out there! Also feels nice fictionally as it is a bit of a silly sight when a character can be knocked out and awakened several times in a few rounds, gives that more meaning :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
#34

In a place of peace, and calm, and inviting as the seclusium. I would likely not even think twice about quaffing some water from the fountain.

#35

@AdamKoebel Just a quick question: how much were Innana and Utrix inspired by Ningauble and Sheelba from the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series. i only ask because of the discussion about their relationship the party had with the kirin.

#36

Really enjoyed the game, can’t wait for next week!

I’m just interested to see what, if anything, the waters did to Berg’s passenger.

#37

And Berg got pregnant

#38

But the nasty fake fountain water aborted it… 's all good!

#39

I’m a little late to the party but Apology is actually a large Warhammer not a mace. He also got a mace from the dwarf that he killed before he got to the Wizards realm. Point probably still stands just wanted to make the distinction.

#40

I was going based on historical chinese military weaponry. As far as I am aware of, they don’t have warhammers. You could go to kingdoms in indo-persia for war hammers, but that’s more ‘court of wands’. The distinction between a mace and a war hammer can get blurry since a lot of naming schemes and classifications for weapons are modern like the distinctions between various types of sword–most of what’s used in D&D naming conventions is modern invention even though it has no historical basis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_swords .

http://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/2015/10/maces-of-ming-dynasty.html – the chinese name for mace in the modern usage literally means hammer. If you google the chinese characters for the modern names, pictures of hammers (as in, what you’d use to hit a nail with) show up. The problems of using a eurocentric RPG naming system on asian weapons are endless…

For an example of a real war hammer let’s take the maul-- it was used historically in the late medieval period in europe but some were similar to a modern day sledge hammer; the french name literally translates to mallet and the modern use of the word refers to it as such. Here https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b442aa23f60293299d7b5dbf810a1b81-c is an example of that type of war hammer . That is what I think people would typically associate with a war hammer anyway rather than the historically accurate weapon that looked more like a modern ice axe. I was basing my description on the maul since there’s no chinese historical analog, especially since I was assuming that Emperor Fei was chinese based on his name. If we go further west and say he was similar to a Mughal Emperor or something, then yeah, a typical war hammer could be appropriate.