Update on demand

OK, I think I have a fever; I had a bad day with my totally pissed off brother, so I opened my email to whine to someone, when I discovered the messages about new (and first) comments on my blog.

And new votes about the romances? I wanted to delete the poll because potential players don't know the characters yet, but this is interesting. Syn got few votes, as expected at this point. He's a good guy after all. Too mainstream. I'm glad for the demonspawn, though. You people are in for some. Umm... I mean, some sex animations with goat-legs. Nothing else, I promise. He's not evil at all. ^.^

I was on a break from my module and just started playing Fallout New Vegas again. (I'm still confused. The woman-hating Legion sucks, but so does the NCR. And I'm too much of a goon to be the boss.)

This is the latest thing I've worked on (still unfinished), connecting the quests in Chapter 2, which are pretty much all works in progress. This is where you're supposed to begin the Cult of Ravage questline.

Your demonspawn sweetheart/stalker giving you uncalled for advice.

Looking at my last post, I just realized that I never mentioned something I did in between. Well, I mentioned that I was about to do it. I beautified the forest in Chapter 2 and made the amulet talk and an NPC's appearance work. It was one of my "unpleasant tasks". Not the forest, though - the huge talk.

Now answering readers' questions... At least some of them.

Since I am a one-woman-team, I can't develop a world history to match that of Faerun, so I'm not trying to. You will discover bits of information about everything within the module. If your character has enough Lore, she will "spoil" some little things for you by getting a knowledgeable dialog response. It's difficult to give all the needed information without dumping it on the player's head, especially the info on the demons and demonspawn, but the protagonist's ignorance is, in a way, a plot point. I hope this becomes clear later in the module (by that  I mean part 2 or 3).

Put in simple words, you have these types of creatures of importance:

Higher Demons - they live only in Inferno, except when somehow lured to the human world through a portal. Witches sometimes lure them out for mating, but this is rare, as any woman carrying a demon child is doomed to death upon its birth. When humans, dogs or some other animals eat a significant amount of (higher) demon meat, a handful or more, they become demonhearts. Higher Demons can't survive long in the Outside World, except in deep caves and ruins. They have super regenerative powers (that work best in Inferno) and are usually incredibly tough.

Lower Demons - mostly useless pests. They look like plants, mushrooms, insects... Not humanoid.

The Demonspawn - half humans, half higher demons. They are somewhat of a mystery - especially to the player character - but they are pretty much indestructible and eternal. They can be enslaved, tortured and physically and emotionally brainwashed for centuries, though. Some of them are imprisoned by humans, most of them by other demonspawn (because they are emotionally messed up by default). They also have a sort of a mother fixation. Eating a demonspawn is completely useless to a human. :)

Demonhearts - humans or animals who have eaten enough higher demon meat or another demonheart's heart. The more meat or hearts, the more powerful the demonheart person (stronger regeneration + strength, dexterity or constitution bonus). Demonhearts can die of old age (and become undead in some cases, but they can be destroyed) or when enough of their body is destroyed (primarily, the heart and head). Wounds that don't regenerate are rare, but they can happen. Fire and acid usually leave permanent effects, but that's of no consequence in the gameplay for now. To defeat a demonheart in game, you will just need to kill him or her and any other enemies to get to the heart (same goes for you, it's game over if your team is defeated when fighting an enemy who knows how to kill you).

As for religion, there is an official church, at least in the kingdom of Shermyr. It was probably inspired by GRRM's gods, but he definitely wasn't the first to invent that kind... They are named Mother, Time and Hunter, and there's the Fallen Goddess, Virgo. And a demon orgy. More about it in the module's Bible.

Then there are different cults. Some of them believe in the same Holy Book, but interpret it slightly differently (the details of the demon orgy seems to be where they all disagree, though I'm not sure if this information will be available in part 1 or later).

The playable classes are still being revised (by me). I'm afraid that I messed up the game balance, or that something won't work as intended, but the idea for now is:

• Fighter pretty much stays the same.
• Bard loses spellcasting, but gains more Rogue abilities to be more useful.*
• Rogue gains some Assassin abilities.
• Not sure what I'm going to do about Ranger or Barbarian or whether they will be allowed (I already did something, but perhaps Ranger isn't as awesome as Rogue now).
• All classes get Persuade, Bluff and Intimidate as class skills.

* I may yet allow spellcasting. The player character is friends with a witch, and that is a plot point. But the player is not supposed to know everything that an average witch's apprentice would know about the world, which is also a plot point. With that made clear, there's no reason to forbid spellcasting, but it might not be very useful to sacrifice fighting skills for it, as the intended max level for the entire story is very low. (Maybe, but unlikely, up to 5 in part 1 and maybe, hardly, if you kill everyone, 15 in the end.)