How magic interacts with the world is often a defining space in Dungeons & Dragons. In the Forgotten Realms magic, whether arcane or divine, exists as 5th edition defines it. In Eberron magic is instead something that is common, fueling the themes of steampunk and noir with orcs and elves. Dark Sun goes the opposite direction. Magic there is not just limited. Magic continues the ecological disaster that mars the world.
In the World of the Everflow magic burst forth onto the world in two awakenings. The first, explored mostly through short fiction and table narration gave the Kin (People of Love) a single cantrip, all of them. The second awakening brought the ability to cast spells to certain Kin and saw the return of the Ken (People of Knowledge) and Kon (People of Technology) to the shores of the Six Kingdoms.
As my worldspace, and the associated tales continuing to develop, the thought popped into my head “What happened to the animals during the Awakening?” Throughout known time the Kin were always bonded with companions (initial rules). With the bond between beast and person so strong, did some beasts get small magics?
The answer is yes.
And so the Thunder Monkey became a reality in the World of the Everflow.
The mechanics are fairly simple. The Thunder Monkey can cast Thunderclap once per short rest. They can also use the first bullet point from Thaumaturgy at will. All other stats are like the basic version of a baboon with minor tweaks that you feel are appropriate. This spectacular beast is rare within the Six Kingdoms, mostly found in Douad, a Mediterranean feeling space.
A character, player or non-player, with a Thunder Monkey becomes more notable and memorable.
Combining mundane beasts with other cantrips can lead to other fun combinations.
Lightning Lure Bugs are giant wasps without a stinger, but instead the ability to cast Lightning Lure and Dancing Lights making them useful in a conflict or able to help light the darkness.
Flapping Foxes are fennec foxes that cast Gust with the breeze originating from their big ears.
Pointers are tracking dogs able to cast True Strike as they direct their companion where the target is.
Slinging Spiners are porcupines that cast Sword Burst flinging more spines than their body carries.
Fixin’ Friends are spiders that cast Mending, using their silk to fix what is broken.
Tidings Birds are pigeons with the ability to cast Encode Thoughts, carrying messages throughout the town.
Savage Mousers are housecats with the ability to cast Primal Savagery, their normal painful non-damaging bites now capable of felling a threat.
These remarkable companions are practically limitless. The damage dealing cantrips (probably Guidance and True Strike as well) at just 1 per short rest will not create any sort of imbalance on any world. Others can be more frequent, likely at 2 or 3 ties a short rest, so that they are used but do not overshadow the players.
Every cantrip and every beast is an opportunity to expand the stories you are telling through the use of magic. This expands the 1,000 times a thousands tales available at the table.
What will be the first remarkable beast your character meets?
What I like about this is the density of the shops and how they share spaces, as well as the alley. Dyson Logos did an interesting mix of spaces with this.
Here we have a collection of five mercantile businesses along the south side of Moonset Street. These are fairly traditional business designs – in most cases there is no access to the interior of the business for shoppers and they instead interact through the long shop windows.
Moonset Street Shops
From left to right we have:
First Building – Front – Cloth Shop
This shop mostly deals in lengths and bolts of cloth, imported and domestic. They also provide some dressmaking and tailoring services (the workshops being in the rooms behind the shop, one sharing space with the owner’s bedroom).
First Building – Back – Trinkets & Jewelry
This shop actually has a “shopping space” within the building (so that people can examine the wares without taking them outside) including a small showroom and counters where work is done as well as sales. The back rooms include a workshop and…
All of these backgrounds vary from the system as outlined in the Player’s Handbook (2 skills and 2 languages/kits/games/instruments/tools). They are slightly more powerful, but also have limitations in regards to origin kingdom and maybe negative features. The bonuses include an extra non-damaging cantrip, a bit more equipment, a single weapon or companion points. A DM running a game outside of the World of Everflow should take caution in adding these to their campaign, but they may be needed flavors within their world.
The backgrounds are: Street Mage, Glight’s Monitor, Keeper of Everflow, Tinker, Farmer/Rancher, Messenger Service, Villien
This post was updated on 5/24/2020
Street Mage
Performing on the streets earned you a few coin, and the feeling that you are constantly hunted by those that wish to limit magic. You’ve found a way to take the new magic and use it to entertain the common man. You can be a hustler, an entertain, and some even call you a charlatan, but you know that magic is real and there is potential for so much more to Kin than a few animals and stodgy rituals.
In most of the West street mages are welcomed in the ghettos while watched by the Guard when they visit good neighborhoods. In Qin they are often found dead in alleys, unless they are part of the Ashen Scarves.
Skill Proficiencies: Performance, Sleight of Hand Tool Proficiencies: None Languages: Two languages Equipment: Gaming set, Fine clothes, 3 shells or similar, belt pouch containing 15 gold
Feature: Prestidigitation and Wanted
Word of your powerful magic (it’s not necessarily powerful) has spread. You heard you were being hunted and now know you cannot stay in one town too long as word will get out that you have learned to control magic. There are many who distrust magic, as the Awakening and magic lead to the fall of Sheljar and other cities around Kin.
These itinerant teachers visit small villages on the Day of Glight. They encourage reading, study and a knowledge. In all villages they are a welcome distraction from day-to-day life. The Day of Glight ensures that everyone has a bit of an education in how the Kingdoms came to be and what the various faiths are. But none can explain the Awakening and these magics that are now real, rather than legend.
Glight has the second most followers in the West. These teachers are common throughout Kin, even in Azsel.
Skill Proficiencies: History, Religion, Arcana Tool Proficiencies: None Languages: One of your choice Equipment: Folding chalkboard, chalk, common clothes, history book, belt pouch with 10 gold
Feature: Pupil in power
A former student of yours is now in a place of influence. During your traveling and teaching you taught hundreds. One of those is now in a position that can help guide you towards finding the answer to a question or the merchant that sells the rare, but needed equipment.
Characteristics: Sage
Keeper of the Everflow
Prerequisite: Must be a follower of Quar.
The Church of Quar and Bishop Ollium lead the largest faith in the West, Kirtin and Daoud. Due to the Everflow’s powers Quarites are popular in the other Kingdoms as well. The Keeper of the Everflow is part merchant, part cleric. They heal and serve the people, for a price. You serve this powerful Church spreading the word and maintaining its influence in all the Kingdoms.
Shrines and churches to Quar dot the landscape throughout Kin. The Church’s historical control of the Font of the Everflow and Lake of Two Paths empowers them to limit all other faiths’ potency.
Skill Proficiencies: Religion, Persuasion Tool Proficiencies: Calligrapher’s Supplies Languages: One of your choice Equipment: One vial of the Everflow, 5 sticks of incense, vestments, common clothes, belt pouch with 5 gold
Feature: Gift of Quar and First Aid (Spare the Dying if played outside of the World of the Everflow)
When you visit a temple of Quar you can ask the ruling deacon to give the gift of the Everflow. If they have the resources and find your needs worthy you will get one vial.
At non-Quarian temples you can still make this request but the chances of success are minimal. Most faiths will make an exchange for a lower price than typically asked.
Characteristics: Acolyte
Tinker
Tinker’s travel between farmsteads, hamlets and villages that lack most smiths. They use both natural and magical means to repair metal goods. In the evening they share news or stories from history and legend. You don’t have a home, and have long left your family. Now, wandering the world you discover new tales and new ways to fix the problems that keep people from doing the things they love.
They are particularly common in the less organized West as well as areas under sway of the Crinthian Confederation.
Skill Proficiencies: Performance Tool Proficiencies: Tinker’s Tools Languages: Two of your choice Equipment: donkey/mule/pony, Tinker’s Kit, 1 pound each tin, copper, iron, pack saddle, traveler’s clothes, pouch with 5 gold
Feature: Job Seeker and Mending
Whether fixing small metal objects or telling tales in the local inn, you find a way to survive at a modest level. This can be through a mix of both activities or just one. If fixing objects all of a morning or afternoon of most days is occupied. If at an inn every evening and some afternoons are occupied.
Characteristics: Folk Hero
Farmer/Rancher
You raise crops or animals for food. At some point your property, or that of your neighbors needed defense. Some of your friends and family were unable to survive the raid from the bandits, but you did. That’s when you discovered there’s more to life that a cock-a-doodle-do at dawn, milking goals, shearing sheep, weeding, swinging a scythe. Your people need protection. You are their hope of a simple, safe life.
Many farmsteads and ranches in Telse lose family members to quests, adventures and those that are searching for better lives. In Kirtin every man or woman must serve, some do not come back from service. Daoud, Azsel, Mehmd and Crinth all have portions of the populace that start as mere serfs and become greater.
Skill Proficiencies: Animal Handling or Athletics, Nature Tool Proficiencies: Farmer’s Tools, Vehicles (Land or Water) Languages: None Equipment: Farmer’s Tools, common clothes, a beast of burden (mule, donkey, dog, flightless bird), lantern, flask of oil, week’s rations, pouch with 1 gold and 17 silver.
Feature: Druidcraft and Foraging
In occupied lands you know how to take just enough food to live without most farmers/ranchers noticing, unless you do so for more than 2 days.
Characteristics: Folk Hero
Messenger
Prerequisite: Your bonded companion(s) must be a messenger bird/dog or a riding horse. You gain an extra companion point.
Messengers work throughout Kin and the Lands of the Everflow. Their birds, dogs and horses carry news, treaties, love letters and more between the cities and towns that remain in the post-Awakening world.
Skill Proficiencies: Animal Handling Tool Proficiencies: None Languages: Any three Languages Equipment: Common clothes, map case, ink, quill, 5 pieces of paper, pouch with 15 gold
Feature: Service Connections Past messages have been sent to two major cities as well as two small towns in the past. Your bonds know how to get to these places, to your home and to yourself.
Characteristics: Folk Hero
Villein
When a youth comes of age they or their family visit the local Villein. While some, particularly Crinthians, do not use a service, many Kin find their first companion through the services of those who know animals as well as any.
Most Villeins deal with mammals, though some in Daoud have experience with fish. Those in Mehmd deal with saurs and lizards.
Skill Proficiencies: Animal Handling (Expertise), Nature Tool Proficiencies: None Languages: None Equipment: 50 gp worth of non-bonded animals, common clothes, pouch with 5 gold
Feature: Domesticating beasts
You are able to calm the semi-wild beasts and prepare them for a bonding session. You also have two additional companion points but must have more than one companion.
Characteristics: Guild Artisan, your art is raising animals.
This campaign is set five years after the Lorebook Hunters. With the call of magic strong in the Western Wildes, the kingdoms of the Everflow are stressed by magic. The New Peoples (Ken and Kon), the Offspring of Chorl, the elementals in The Ferments, the Haunting of the High Hills, truce at the River Crinth between the Crinth Confederation and Empire of Azsel, the Sundering of the Church of Quar, and the beacon of the Free City of Sheljar are all plaguing the Kingdoms of Daoud and Kirtin.
Campaign Premise
You are common people living in and around Kirtin-on-the-Lake who are inspired to free the city from under the rule of Daoud. You may want it to once again be part of Kirtin, or you may want to copy the Free City of Sheljar. The City Guard, a unit of Daoud’s military, and even dragons, who see Kirtin-on-the-Lake as their ancestral home, stand in your way.
Background
The Lorebook Hunters secured several of the Lorebooks, returning magic to the Land of the Everflow. In doing so they drew the attention of the Ken (dragons, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and other fey creatures). At the same time the goblins returned to the Land of the Everflow, with their smog-punk teknology.
Grand Conflicts
The Proctors of Grace and their other allies want to control access to magic. Certain dragons also want to repopulate Kirtin-on-the-Lake as the Ward of Mighty Trees is the ancestral home of certain types of dragons (at least a Red as that first DragonTree has regrown).
Daoud will not allow their winnings (Kirtin-on-the-Lake and the Slope) to leave their control after centuries. The rebellion has taken control of the Dock District. What will they free next? While the mayor may be willing to have the rebels help repel the Proctors, he serves at the whim of an empire that refuses to recognize Kirtin-on-the-Lake as anything but its own territory.
A lovingly maintained coaching inn, the Marching Tankard is more than most travellers expect along the back roads servicing a few small settlements.
the Marching Tankard – Ground Floor – Tagged
While the Tankard’s history goes back a few generations, the current ownership brought it up to the standards it holds today. In his years as a roadwarden, Gunter Grohl saw the tankard as his perfect retirement spot – a nice sturdy compound & inn, far enough off the beaten track that it doesn’t get too busy or crowded, but still bringing in enough traffic to not become a money-sink. So when a windfall came his way in his late 30s, he bought the establishment and has happily settled in.
The Marching Tankard – Upstairs – Tagged
A fairly typical outpost-style coaching inn, the Tankard only has one gate for traffic (larger coaching inns usually operate with two gates so…
