The Importance of Names

Hold my head

We'll trampoline

Finally through the roof

Onto somewhere near

And far in time

Sword and sorcery and related modes of weird fiction—lost worlds, dying earth, weird fantasy, sword and planet, cosmic horror—are defined in part by their distance: at the extreme ends of the earth, in the deep in the recesses of prehistory, on another world millions of miles away, or so far into the future that our present era has been forgotten. One way to convey this sense of distance to readers (or to players of an RPG) is through names. I don’t mean assigning bizarre combinations of incongruent phonemes to mundane items (in my world, swords are called vlxizjpartl). I simply meaning evoking a sense of alienness, of being in a place totally disconnected from this world and its history.

Clark Ashton Smith is the master of this type of onomastic estrangement. He briefly outlined his technique in his notebook, collected in The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith:

Phonetics to suggest strangeness grotesquery;
play up less frequent letters;
ch, j, h, qu, sph, y, wh, sm, x, z, ((etc.)) oi, oo (phorf) [sic], ä, etc.

By “[playing] up less frequent letters,” diphthongs, and consonant blends, Smith created names that bear no etymological resemblance to any current language, creating not only an atmosphere of strangeness and grotesquery but remoteness and alienness.

When it comes to names that sound vaguely British, but with a weird twist, you can’t beat Mervyn Peake: Abiatha Swelter, Titus Groan, Fuchsia, Lord Sepulchrave, Steerpike, Prunesquallor. A reader need only read Prunesquallor's name to glean something of his character, though this approach, if applied poorly, can be overbearing and lacking in nuance. I must admit that JK Rowling has a penchant for these types of names, as well. They have an air of twisted familiarity. They are uncanny names: they are at home in the English language but are not English names. They are uncanny names for an uncanny story.

Gene Wolfe’s approach to naming in The Book of the New Sun—using Greek and Latin words to describe aliens, space ships, androids, beam weapons, and genetically-engineered creatures and naming characters after Classical and Medieval saints—is one of the most innovative and effective examples of this type of cognitive estrangement that I can think of. It wasn’t until my second reading of The Shadow of the Torturer that I realize that I was reading a science fiction novel and not a fantasy novel. Likewise, it was not until a later rereading that I understood that all of the names in the book were the names of mostly lesser-known saints from early Christian history. The story is science fiction that seems like fantasy; the names are historical but they seem invented. The story seems like it has no connection to our own world, but it is (probably some form of) our world; the names seem to have no connection to Wolfe’s own culture and history, but they do.

In my own writing, I tend to take a little from Smith, a little from Peake, and a little from Wolfe. I strive for etymological distance while sometimes trying to hint at some aspect of the character's personality. At the same time, I reach for Greek concepts when communicating a sense of ancient continuity, hinting that this fantasy world might have some long-forgotten connection to our own. Sometimes making the unfamiliar familiar is as effective an estrangement technique as the reverse. 

Blogs and blogs

I've got some good news! I recently joined the blog writing team at Quest Chests, a new fifth edition third-party publisher and content producer. I'll be regularly producing content on a range of 5e topics for players and DMs alike. Check out my first article, hot off the presses, or whatever it is blog posts come hot off of.

Law and Chaos, Revisited

In this post, I quoted, without context, a few passages from Michael Moorcock’s The Weird of the White Wolf, in which Elric muses on law, chaos, and the balance between the two. Moorcock’s Elric stories are the basis for the original D&D alignment system (lawful/neutral/chaotic), and though the D&D alignment system has taken on a life of its own over the course of the past 40 years, understanding its origins in Moorcock’s writing is vital to understanding what it actually means to be “lawful” or “chaotic.”

In the first passage, Elric describes his desire for stability, for order, in the universe. The world is a chaotic place, and Elric searches for meaning in the meaningless swirl of events. Ultimately, however, he decides that there is no lasting order, that chaos reigns: “our brief existence is both meaningless and damned.” Given this truth, he trusts “only in my sword and myself.”

Between the poles of law and chaos, there is another cosmic outlook: neutrality. To be “neutral” in the struggle between law and chaos is to believe that a balance of these two extreme forces is necessary.

The “True Neutral” alignment makes sense within this context. True neutrality is not a belief in the balance between good or evil, in which someone feels the need to balance a benevolent act with a malevolent one—to tip the scales toward goodness by saving an innocent life and then redress this imbalance by murdering an innocent—but a belief in the balance between law and chaos. 

In the neutral disposition, too much law leads to stagnation, but too much chaos leads to dissolution. Rigid bureaucracies need to be shaken up once in a while lest they ossify into reflexive traditionalism, and even in an anarchist society hierarchies must form now and then to accomplish certain goals.

Looking at it this way, neutrality seems like a fairly sensible, even common-sense, position to take. The vast majority of NPCs would likely be neutral, avoiding the extreme positions of law and chaos and instead favoring a pragmatic balance between the two.

A follower of Law, on the other hand, would reject anarchism outright, believing that “without law nothing material is possible,” and that meaning and purpose are inherent within the lawful structure of the universe, while a follower of Chaos would see seemingly “lawful” natural events such as the movements of the planets as ultimately transitory in the grand scheme of things. Everything that seems permanent eventually crumbles into dust, and from that dust, new patterns emerge, but not because of any cosmic order, but by sheer accident. 

Even within the nine-alignment system, understanding law and chaos in this manner makes alignment make sense. The lawful/neutral/chaotic axis is a cosmic philosophical outlook, and the good/neutral/evil axis represents a character’s actions in the context of their philosophical beliefs.

For example, Elric sees only chaos in the universe, and so chooses to trust only in himself. That seems like a chaotic neutral disposition to me, not chaotic evil, as the original Deities & Demigods surmises.

A chaotic evil response to the universal rule of Chaos would be, “nothing matters, nothing means anything, so I am free to lie and steal and kill and do whatever I want because all laws are fake.”

A chaotic good character would see the chaos inherent in the universe and say that because Chaos reigns, Law does not have a monopoly on righteousness. In fact, Law only leads to stagnation, a slavish devotion to tradition, and a constraining of freedom and progress.

So in light of Elric’s ruminations on Law and Chaos, I would explain alignment this way: lawful, neutral, and chaotic describes how you believe the universe functions; good, neutral, and evil describes how you act out those beliefs.  

De Origine Draconum III: Wyrmling

“With a terrible singleness of concentration he achieved the union of his new skin with his body, preventing rejection. No corner of his body was left to dwell upon the terrifying consequences of what he did here. Only the necessities of his trance vision mattered…

“They were all over his body now.…He could feel the pulse of his blood against the living membrane. A curious excitement suffused his body.…My skin is not my own.”

Philippe Druillet

Covering the body in axolotls creates a wyrmling, an axolotl/humanoid hybrid. The symbiosis alters the quiddity of both creatures resulting in a being that is neither human and nor axolotl, but a wyrmling, a species utterly different from either. 

The wyrmling experiences alienation from its former species, which may manifest in a variety of ways. It may develop a hostility toward its species, either lamenting what it has lost or looking down on that species as an inferior species. Alternatively, the wyrmling may view themselves as a blessed paragon of their species, elevated above the common human or demihuman, developing a sense of responsibility for their less-evolved brothers and sisters. 

Wyrmlings often become leaders of dragonborn cults, revered as the single-sexed fathers and mothers of their kind. Dragons, on the other hand, often view wyrmlings as threats to their superiority and often seek to destroy wyrmlings. Good-aligned dragons, understanding the dangers of the process of transformation, will try to dissuade wyrmlings from continuing their evolution.

The wyrmling loses all of the benefits of their former species (excluding bonus feats or skills, but including ability score increases) and gains the following:

Ability Scores: Your Strength score increases by 2, and an ability score of your choosing increases by 1.

Living Armor: The axolotls that cover every inch of your body fuse into a scaly skin, granting a natural AC bonus of +4. This bonus does not stack with other types of armor, but does stack with magical rings, amulets, bracers, etc.  

Living Weapon: Your fingertips harden into claws. You deal 2d6 + your Strength modifier in slashing damage.

Regeneration: Once per short rest, regain 1 + your Constitution modifier hp at the beginning of each turn for 1d6+1 turns.

Surface Awareness: The entire surface of the body is an organ of sensation. Wyrmlings cannot be surprised and have advantage on Dexterity saving throws and Perception checks. 

Breathing: The wyrmling breathes through the axolotl’s organs rather than through their original apparatus (lungs, mouth, nose). As a result, a wyrmling cannot be drowned or suffocated the way a normal human can. 

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Axolotls | Part 3: Wyrmlings | Part 4: Dragonborn | Part 5: Dragons

In Dungeons & Dragons, every location is a dungeon

Also posted in r/DnD because nobody actually reads this blog

Hugo Darnaut (1850-1937), Dürnstein on the Danube, 1876

In Dungeons & Dragons, “dungeon” refers to any underground or interior system of corridors and chambers: rooms connected by hallways. Their layouts run the gamut from totally linear—just one path through—to bewilderingly labyrinthine. Dungeons have their own ecologies and are often dynamic. That is, those orcs don’t just lock themselves in a 20x20 room waiting for adventurers to wander in; they live there, they move around in it, they engage with other factions occupying the space.

Every DM knows how to run a dungeon. Something about it just makes sense: you go from room to room, you encounter obstacles and traps along the way, you interact with objects and NPCs, you fight monsters, you find treasure. You might even learn something about the history of the setting while you’re at it. It's a self-contained area where adventures happen.

It might be helpful to think about outdoor adventures the same way. When your players strike out into the wilderness, there’s no need to reinvent the game (a lesson I learned from constantly trying to reinvent the game). Just exchange your graph paper for hex paper.

Instead of drawing rooms and hallways, you’re drawing plains, hills, and forests separated by mountains, rivers, and canyons.

Instead of stocking rooms with furniture, artwork, chains on the walls, the vials and alembics of an alchemist, or barrels and chests, you're stocking outdoor areas with trees, plants, logs on the ground, stones, ruins, mile markers, road signs, abandoned wagons, and old campsites.

You still have monster and NPC encounters, just at longer distances. You can still find “secret doors” in the form of treasure hidden inside a tree or behind a stone in a wall or as previously unknown mountain passes and river fords. You may still be confronted by traps in the form of rickety rope bridges held up by worn-out ropes, rockslides, traps and snares set by hunters, or scree that can cause you to lose your footing and go tumbling down a hillside.

I’ve built entire campaigns by drawing a hex map, stocking each hex by rolling on random tables, and then building the backstory by drawing connections between whatever ends up in each hex. That’s a lot of planning up front, both in making the tables and in stocking each hex, but once you do it, you won’t have to prep again for a long time (unless the party makes a beeline for the uncharted corners of the map!). You could even save yourself the up-front prep and just roll on the random tables as the party enters each hex if you are confident in your improvisation skills. But many dungeon adventures involve exploring a specific, self-contained underground area; by the same token, your players could be tasked with exploring a specific 6 hex by 6 hex region of the map, whether to map the area, catalog plant species, prospect for precious metals, or drive off monsters.

When designing wilderness areas, whether it’s just to get the party from point A to point B or to create a wilderness adventure, set it up the same way you’d set up a dungeon. The game is Dungeons & Dragons, but you don’t have to take that phrase literally. Everything is a dungeon if you believe in your heart it is.

This might be met with "well, yeah, no kidding" by experienced DMs, but it's something that took me a long time to figure out on my own, so I hope it is helpful to people struggling with the same questions.

Law and Chaos

“The Weird of the White Wolf,” The Elric Saga, Vol. I, Michael Moorcock

“Despairingly, sometimes, I seek the comfort of a benign God, Shaarilla. My mind goes out, lying awake at night, searching through black barrenness for something—anything—which will take me to it, warm me, protect me, tell me that there is order in the chaotic tumble of the universe; that it is consistent, this precision of the planets, not simply a brief, bright spark of sanity in an eternity of malevolent anarchy.” (315)

“Without some confirmation of the order of things, my only comfort is to accept the anarchy. This way, I can revel in chaos and know, without fear, that we are all doomed from the start—that our brief existence is both meaningless and damned. I can accept, then, that we are more than forsaken, because there was never anything there to forsake us. I have weighed the proof, Shaarilla, and must believe that anarchy prevails, in spite of all the laws which seemingly govern our actions, or sorcery, our logic. I see only the chaos in the world. If the Book we seek tells me otherwise, then I shall gladly believe it. Until then, I will put my trust only in my sword and myself.” (316)

“Know you not that two forces govern the world—fighting an eternal battle?” Elric replied. “Law and Chaos. The upholders of Chaos state that in such a world as they rule, all things are possible. Opponents of Chaos—those who ally themselves with the forces of Law—say that without law nothing material is possible.

“Some stand apart, believing that a balance between the two is the proper state of things, but we cannot.” (329)

Keep Githzerai Chaotic

In the Fiend Folio and the Planescape Campaign Setting, the Githzerai are both monastic and chaotic. The FF Githzerai are chaotic neutral, while Planescape Githzerai PCs can be of any nonlawful alignment. I like the idea of a chaotic monk, or, at least, someone of an ascetic disposition who is at home in the fluidity of chaos. I get the idea of a lawful neutral species refining their disciplined minds by giving structure and order to the chaos of Limbo, but that’s not what I want from Githzerai.  The Githzerai in my 5e Planescape campaign are nonlawful in nature. The following is an attempt to flesh out their philosophy a little more, written from the perspective of a sage from Sigil. I should probably refine this further before posting it, but I can always come back to it later.

Max Ernst, "Europe After the Rain," 1941

The Githzerai: Brothers and Sisters in Limbo

“To be in Limbo”: in the Common tongue, the phrase usually connotes a state of inertia instigated by uncertainty or mental paralysis: we cannot decide; the process is in limbo. The process has momentarily halted its deliberate movement.

But for the Githzerai who dwell on the Plane of Limbo, the phrase has a much different meaning. While still connoting a state of uncertainty, that uncertainty results not in stasis but in boundless possibility.

The name “Limbo” derives from the common language of a Prime world long forgotten, but scholars of the planes hold that its literal definition was “boundary.” In that sense, the Plane of Limbo is the boundary between Ysgard—a realm of individualistic creativity in the name of selfless benevolence and live-giving renewal—and the deranged, vile, and destructive chaos of Pandemonium. The Plane of Limbo, then, is a realm of amoral chaos: no meaning, only information; no objects, only matter; no telos, only process.

The challenge of taming such a realm has drawn many Lawful sentient species to Limbo. Those of a Lawful predisposition come to order the chaos, to divide its swirling intensities into islands of stability, outposts of sensibility in a nonsense world. The geometric monuments to cosmic Law rarely last more than a few generations, however, as Limbo’s accelerated entropy tears mortar from stone and batters stone to dust. It seems Limbo actively opposes any attempt to structure it.

The Githzerai of Limbo have learned to live with the chaos rather than struggle against it. Their communities are unlike any other in the multiverse, different even from those of the Slaad. Those with the will to survive the vortices of plasma and other strange states of matter eddying through the void find themselves transformed, deconstructed, reshaped.

For the Githzerai, one result of living in such a place is the realization of the multiplicity of the self. Limbo isn’t merely a static buffer between “good” chaos and “evil” chaos but a catalyst for transformation, an edge of perception beyond which anything is possible. Even the body itself is a “Limbo,” a boundary or limit, that exists to be overcome. The monastic Githzerai warriors and assassins have learned to overcome that boundary through the science of psionics. They also possess a curious incompatibility with magic. The nature of this aversion still requires additional study.

It is disorienting enough to parley with a Githzerai from Sigil or one of the Gate Towns, but to meet a Githzerai in Limbo is even stranger. Their humanoid bodies are stretched and flattened into formless blobs by the winds of chaos. They can physically and mentally combine with one another into a single entity, and when they reform as individuals, their personalities may be completely altered by the agglomeration and disaggregation of  many minds. They reproduce through a similar process of sedimentation: a dozen Githzerai assemble and then disassemble into thirteen individuals, each of them transformed in the process. It is said that the human mind contains multitudes; this is literally the case for the Githzerai.