On Ice

Finished the worst stretch of my work week. For some reason I'm still wound up. I could be downtown, but it's cold as hell, I just broke the bank buying a ticket to Vietnam, and the taxi drivers are assholes on Sunday nights.

A teacher who left last week took this picture of me on a bench made of frozen industrial waste/maybe some water.

Wonder why she wanted to leave.

I might be making too much of this, but whatever. Back home, rivers never froze this much. This ice is thick. On foot, you're probably better off walking across the river itself than trying a bridge because the drivers never give a shit about almost killing everyone else on the road. To give you an idea of how safe I felt in this picture, Changchun's river ice is dotted with honest-to-God remnants of fire pits. None of them even seem to dent the stuff.

I like to imagine the fires were made by teenagers sneaking out to smoke their dads' cigarettes, drink stolen beer and brag about how they totally licked a girl's belly button. But from what I understand, Chinese boys can buy cigarettes and beer anywhere, and they're possibly asexual until they leave high school.

In a good Dungeons & Dragons setting, ice this thick might be the result of a frost hag's curse, inflicted over an insult forgotten by all but the most venerable mortals. There plenty of reasons why a frozen river would suck. It might be a community's only source of water, link to the world beyond, etc. And ice is a perfect bridge for invaders.

In the setting I'm half-baking, the Isles of Ecshal lie in a subtropical climate. Most of the isles' inhabitants pay tribute to the local elemental bad ass Olhydra, princess of drowning waters. Cold and ice are reviled because solid water is an abomination in the many eyes of their goddess. So the fact that an entire estuary on the remote corner of an island has been freezing solid for thirty winters is horrifying. Ever winter, the freeze drives the swamp's dreaded nixies, merrow, ghouls and walkodiles into civilized lands.

Most place blame on a mysterious cult known as the Disciples of the Dark Thirteen. They are believed to congregate in the ruins of an abbey near the estuary. The abbey was dedicated to a god who had a large flock before Olhydra and the other elemental princes appeared on the material plane and drove mankind's distant, mysterious deities into irrelevance. Orkandu, High Inquisitor of the Sunken Temples, currently offers 10,000 gp to whomever breaks the curse.

The twist is that (highlight to reveal spoiler) while the Disciples of the Dark Thirteen freeze the estuary every winter using ancient relics, they do so to prevent an abomination called Ineffable from emerging from a portal. Should Ineffable rise, it will turn the island's unborn into hideous monsters. The Disciples are a splinter group of the cult that tried to bring the abomination into the world, and are open to alternative solutions to stop Ineffable should any arise. Members of the original cult still linger, perhaps in high places...

Stuck in Weirdness

This is going to be an OSR/open edition gaming blog, but I'll also include details about living and working in China as a laowei (which means round-eyes, I think).

I've been living in Changchun, China for more than two months now. Changchun is the capitol of the Jilin province, which is kind of close to more interesting places like Beijing, Harbin and Dalian. I've been teaching the language that I love and enriching young lives. More importantly, I'm far, far away from the Midwest.

Pictures? Well, my camera broke during the 8,000 mile journey to this cold, ass-backward corner of China. But here's a rundown: Identical six-story, tile-covered apartment buildings from the 80's spread for miles. Vehicles of every type and quality, all driven by psychopaths, barrel down the avenues. Nobody speaks English. From October to March, it might get above freezing once or twice a month. Everything is built on a scale that makes you feel insignificant. They give their shopping centers names like "World Mall" and "Eurasian Mall" because they're the only things comparable to the size of these fucking buildings. Shopping is the national pastime. They put Americans to shame. A single mall might have acres of necklaces, tennis equipment and jackets and still have room for some "5-D" cinema that shows last year's American blockbusters for $20 a seat and a bullshit amusement park that nobody uses. People spit everywhere all the time. No bathrooms have toilet paper.

DM Exercise: Create a dungeon room based off this picture.

Content? OK, I've been inspired to create a setting dominated by the Princes of Elemental Evil and their followers. I read Jeff's folian mythos and Zak's Fiend Folio re-skin project and realized they could be a bad ass turnaround from the more humanistic gods I've been using for twelve years.

Elemental Princes live in the physical world and form the center of major religions. They are terrible and arbitrary, but can be powerful benefactors to those who cater to their whims and appetites. "Good guy" deities still exit, but they dwell on higher planes, and each has 99 problems of their own. They won't exactly stick their necks out for every peasant's prayer, but they might be bothered to grant boons to a few devoted clerics.

First up: Olhydra, Princess of the Drowning Waters.

Drawing by Zak S. You already know that.

Olhydra drifts and feeds endlessly in the oceans' darkest corners. Her home is the Drowning Basin. Its depth is so great that the sheer force of its gravity has been known to drag vessels beneath the surf. The Ecshal Isles, her cult's stronghold, form a ring around this basin. The islands are famous for their cenotes. Her faithful dutifully drown any infidel who challenges their goddess, but they harbor special loathing for the followers of Cyronax, the prince of freezing blood and shattering ice because of a prophecy that he will freeze the Drowning Basin solid.

Cenotes are always connected to vast underwater caverns that lead to the sea, which rules. 

Olhydra's clerics are the sea's best navigators. Before an ocean voyage, her clerics can spend a day summoning an angler fish, her hideous spawn, and ritually dining on it. For 50 gp + 5 gp for every expected day at sea in seasonings, side dishes and table settings, the clerics are granted unnatural knowledge of the currents, weather and creatures of the deep. This grants a substantial navigation bonus. Side effects include mind-fucking sea-related nightmares and awful seafood farts, which combined incur a penalty to Charisma checks for the duration of the effects.

This thing exists in every ocean and it's called "the wonderfish".