Image is copyright MCDM Productions
The question is whether it’s a human skull surrounded by tiny fey, or a giant skull surrounded by large fey? It does remind me of the location of Giant’s Rest, which Matt Colville used in his Dusk campaign, and featured a giant skull. Regardless, the cover by Ian Ameling is very cool. Reminds me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The editor’s note by James Introcaso focuses on the common theme of nature in this issue’s articles.
The first is The Pickling Guild, by Sharang Biswas. In my previous glances at this issue I’ve skipped over this article due to the title, but this time I took a closer look—and I’m glad I did! I was missing out! While the guild masquerades as a group of food aficionados focused on pickling and fermentation, it really is a front for an inner circle that seeks to heal the sick and prevent terrible diseases and poisons from being unleashed on the world. The article offers plenty of adventure seeds to introduce the guild and a number of interesting NPCs with their own quest hooks to add to a campaign. Additionally, membership in the guild provides some fun benefits including privileged access to information, weapons, and facilities. I may introduce them in my Ptolus campaign. Finally, I was in error in my last observation on the Grim Accord—this article also provides an NPC domain for the Pickling Guild—meaning there is a little more support for domain play from Kingdoms & Warfare.
The next article is Wonders From the Wild, by Hannah Rose, which focuses on new nature themed magic items and spells. It’s noted that these are primarily intended for druids and rangers. This is a very mechanically dense article, with lots of interesting things to potentially add to your game. This includes no less than fifteen magic items, all of which are unique and very well suited to nature themed characters. One of my personal favorites is the Cloak of the Grove Guardian, a legendary item allowing a druid to animate two trees, giving them non-intelligent treant stats. This feels exactly like the type of thing a druid should be capable of at high levels. The various magic staffs are also great and very thematic, even including story hooks providing options of ways to inject them into your story, like the Staff of Granite Peaks being in its bridge form across a chasm (super cool, right?) and the command word appearing in the player who will gain its mind when they touch the handrail (the illustration of this is also a beautiful piece by Kent Davis Jr.). Other, less interesting items essentially remove the spell slot and preparation tax of taking speak with animals and other similar spells. These aren’t game breaking, and give druids and rangers more story opportunities to highlight their connections to nature and living creatures.
The spells also seem well designed, and perhaps modeled on other spells with more appropriate flavoring for nature-based descriptions. They are primarily battlefield control spells from my read through, but I’m sure creative players could find interesting applications.
Aethelfaer, by Sara Thompson, is the final article of this issue. This is a unique article, detailing one specific NPC rather than a group, and providing an encounter (really a mini-adventure scenario) to introduce him. The titular character is Aethelfaer, which when broken into the component parts, aethel and faer, seems to mean "noble" or "princely" "traveler" according to the often incorrect internet. This meaning does seem to hit the character's traits on the nose though. Aethelfaer is characterized as a wood elf, who is a defender and respecter of nature. The intro paragraph of character fiction depicts him hunting a deer, which he kills quickly and cleanly with an arrow, then does a ritual to thank the creature for it's sacrifice to nourish him and confirm that he will not waste any part of it. Aethelfaer was also born with meromelia, a condition that causes the absence of limbs. He makes use of some very cool prosthetics (said to be made of "red elm and owlbear teeth" in place of a right arm and foot. I appreciate both a discussion of how Aethelfaer uses and views his prosthetics, which I think helps both accurately and sensitively portray these in gameplay. I also like the discussion of how players might also use prosthetics, from the standpoint of inclusion and providing an awesome opportunity to roleplay a different life experience.
The artwork of Aethelfaer is by Grace Cheung, MCDM's on-staff artist, and is an outstanding piece. In the article is also include a d12 table of plot hooks to include Aethelfaer, some of which are very fleshed out and detailed. The stat block isn't anything crazy, with Aethelfaer having ranger traits and abilities. The interesting details are tied to a vial of poison he hides in his prosthetic arm, along with a once per day Deflect feature, allowing him to reduce a ranged weapon's attack damage with his arm, or to catch the object and hurl it back if the damage is reduced to zero. The other cool inclusion is "Common Signs" as a language, which is presented in a sidebar as a universal language amongst disabled communities. A cool bit of inclusive worldbuilding that could be pulled into other scenarios and games (for instance, a cleric in my Empire of the Ghouls game spent a downtime attempting to learn sign language to be able to communicate silently with his teammates).
On to Arcadia 8!
