Mad Brew Labs

It begins and ends with the Deep Black, the Great Nothing and Everything. The Abyss. It is the Paradox, both the source of matter as well as the end of matter. The Abyss is infinite, yet is nothing, and the Gods do not dare to tread there.

Still, the Abyss contains all life. Within its dark embrace are multitudes, perhaps countless numbers, of universes; each universe having its own unique composition. Within one of these universes, there resides an inconsequential speck of dust. This fleck of dust is the world of the Dead Wastes, a decayed and broken world. In the dominant language of this world, the planet has been named Valtuus.

In the universe of Valtuus, there are several alternate realities that lay atop each other like the layers of a rotting onion. These realities are all permutations of a common reality, known as Prime. From the innermost layer, or dimension, to the outermost layer you have the Infernal Dominions, the Wyld, Prime, the Gloom, and the Celestial Domains.

The various dimensions are mutations of the Prime, and in the case of the two innermost dimensions, the Infernal Dominions and the Wyld are actually perverse reflections of the Prime. If a right-handed swordsman were to enter the Wyld, he would find himself left-handed. Each dimension twists and distorts the features and properties of the Prime in a fashion unique to that dimension.

The Infernal Dominions are home to devils, demons, and daemons. Luftdamadon, Prince of Tyranny, commands the Legions of the Damned through his Devil Lords from the Impenetrable Fortress of the Ninth Portal. He leads his armies against the demonic hordes that often rampage through his Dominion and against the Shining Host of Sidar. The demons continuously fight each other as well as the devils and any other daemons caught in their path.

The Wyld is presided over by the Seelie and Unseelie courts of the Fey. It is a kingdom illusion and lies and the casual traveler should be wary of taking anything for granted, including the seemingly unbreakable laws of physics. The Queen of Mirrors is the current ruler of the Unseelie Court and her fey hold dominance over the Seelie Court whose throne is currently vacant.

Prime is the dimension on which all others are based upon. It is often considered a commodity, and the denizens and territories of Prime on Valtuus are skirmished over by the powerful entities of the other dimensions. Luftdamadon seeks to swell his armies with the ranks of souls, Sidar claims to protect these souls, the Queen of Mirrors believes these souls will eventually destroy her kingdom, and Tenebrous seeks to fuse all the dimensions under his control and reshape them in his own image.

The Gloom came under the influence of Tenebrous long ago, after being driven from the Celestial Domains by Sidar. Within the Gloom is the Realm of the Dead, which has become corrupted by Tenebrous. Tenebrous is the Dark Lord and commands a great undead host. He sent Karthisis, the Blood Tyrant to Prime through the Gloom Vortex created during the Long Night.

The Celestial Domains are ruled by Sidar, the Sun God. The Celestial Domains are often referenced as a heavenly paradise, but this is a misnomer. While many paradises exist in the Domains, not all realms of the Domains are welcoming, and many less than pleasant gods and entities dwell here. However, Sidar and his Shining Host do a fine enough job of maintaining order that most gods with evil intentions are relegated to secret schemes.

There exists a substance that forms barriers between the dimensions. In the beginning, this substance prevented all but the tiniest or most clever entities from slipping through. This substance is Æther, and it has become weakened overtime by powerful magic, harrowing events, entropy, and by time itself. In certain areas, the Æther is worn exceptionally thin and can be easily crossed by those with the knowledge. Temporary Gates can be created to traverse the Æther, but there are few permanent ones.

Beyond these dimensions are the Elemental Planes. The Elemental Planes include the Key Elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. Where these planes intersect each other are the Composite Planes of Dust (Air & Earth), Ice (Air & Water), Lightning (Air & Fire), Magma (Earth & Fire), Salt (Earth & Water), and Steam (Water, & Fire). Access to these planes is most easily obtained in the Wyld, but a significant portion of various Elemental and Composite Planes also seep through the other planes. Such as the Flaming Pits of the Infernal Realms and the Dust Fields of the Gloom.

Small pocket planes and dimensions exist, and many of them are unknown to even the most powerful entities of Valtuus. Indeed, even more powerful beings could be biding their time within some unknown dimension, waiting to unleash devastation or even peace upon the known dimensions. There are even whispers among the devils that beings older than the universe slumber within the Abyss, and when they awake, they will consume everything.

——

This is just a sampling of the Cosmology of the Dead Wastes.  I actually developed most of this before the release of 4th Edition D&D; originally being inspired by Wraith: the Oblivion and its Shadowlands, the Shroud, and Oblivion.  I was mildly surprised when I read the new 4e Cosmology, and how similar the developments were to what I had laid down.  The Elemental Planes were obviously inspired by [ripped from] Planescape and previous edition D&D Manuals of the Planes.

In the future I plan on detailing the inner and outer dimensions and perhaps some pocket planes.

Listening To:   Corrosion of Conformity – Deliverance – Clean My Wounds

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Sometimes I forget how much real life can be an adventure until it happens to me.  I had plenty of adventure while I was in the service, but I still find adventure as an ordinary citizen, and it usually comes in two types: parenting or disaster.

For those of you who are not parents, I think it is the grandest adventure of all time.  Guiding my child and watching her learn, react, and grow is simply amazing.  These adventures I live for.  The other I can live without.

Disaster.  Now I use this term loosely, because it could either be in the form of a true distaster, much like the flooding my area recieved earlier this summer.  Or it could be on a much smaller scale, like I encountered this past week with my car.

I had to take a week hiatus from blogging due to the fact that I have been wrenching on my car.  Whilst driving, a balance shaft belt (connected to the crank) broke and left me dead in the water.  I am fairly mechanically inclined, and I love to work on cars, but only when it is at my leisure and not through necessity.

In fact, my other hobby is cars.  I am currently working on a 1948 Chevrolet Coupe when I can find the time.  My daily driver is a ’99 Mistubishi Eclipse Spyder GST (which is a mouthful).  It is what people would call a tuner car, and it has a turbo charged 4 cylinder engine.  I pretty much dislike all the ricer stuff (loud coffe-can exhausts, non functioning wings/spoilers, vinyl graphics, etc.), but I love the curves on this car.  I like the “go-fast” without the flair.

Anyways, if any readers are familiar with maintaining/fixing modern cars, you almost have to yank the drivetrain to accomplish anything.  If you have a garage work on it, you are looking at 10X or more the price to fix shit.  So I tend to do all the work myself, with the additional support of my father as he has a nice facility to work on cars.

The adventure began with towing it to my dad’s shop.  We normally have a trailer we can wench vehicles onto, but not this time, because my less than responsible brother has taken off with the truck that can pull the trailer.  Needless to say, it was an adventure getting through a couple of towns without the assistance of power steering and brakes.

Then the real fun begins.  I think I have snapped the timing belt, so we open up the valve cover to see all the destroyed valvetrain, but it is in perfect working order.  Next, we remove all the belts, pullies, brackets, and a motor mount so I can get to the balance shaft and timing belts so they can be replaced.  I then find that when the balance shaft belt went, it took some expensive sensors with it.

I go to get the parts, the local store doesn’t have it.  I instead have to drive on the other side of Indy to get them, twice.  Because one of the parts they gave me didn’t fit and it was marked for the wrong year in their all knowing computers.

So I finally swap in the new shit and low and behold, the car won’t idle.  Somewhere, my idle speed control went too.  So I just unplug the damn thing and manually dial the idle in.  Finally, I am back on the road.

That was my adventure for the past week. What a pain in the arse.

I am sure you are wondering if I have a point.  I do.  I am thinking that almost all the characters we portray in RPGs that we force through dire adversity would quickly call it quits on adventuring if they were real.  Adventurers must be a masochistic bunch of greedy assholes to put themselves through dungeons, haunted towers, and crazy shit all the time.

Listening to: Nonpoint – Statement - What a Day

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This post was spawned by my comments to Yax’s 4e D&D Learning Curve post at Dungeon Mastering.  He makes some good general points, except that I disagree with his analysis that 4e characters are complex.  I don’t think they are any more complex than any other game with any amount of crunch.  However, they do retain close to the same comlexity throughout play, instead of increasing.  Of course, complexity is a pretty subjective category.

I digress, complexity isn’t the core topic of this article.  Speeding up combat is.  I’ve been told that one of the major “selling” points for 4e was how combat is more streamlined, yet after 40 hours in 9 games with the RPGA at GenCon, I know that combat can become just as mired and slow as in the previous edition.  My observation is that the combat sequence can become a crawl because of all the effects, marks, and saves.

I have created the following three tips to help speed up combat encounters.  While these tips have been tailored specifically for 4e, they could be easily adapted to other systems with similar mechanics.

1. Information cards.  Having to flip through the very poorly indexed 4e Player’s Handbook is a pain in the ass.  These things keep DMs and players from having to ask, “What is your Reflex?” or “Your bloodied, but how many hit points do you have?”
♦ Initiative Cards – Put every character and monster (or group of monsters) on a card, put the cards in initiative order, shuffle through order.
♦ Power cards – Put each power a character has on a card.  If it is an encounter or daily, turn it over.  This works with action points too.  Ander00 from EnWorld put these wonderful cards up.
♦ Character Nameplate – A folded nameplate for each character with Name, AC, Defenses, Passive Insight & Perception scores, Hit Points, and Initiative modifiers.  Place these on the table so they can be seen by everyone.
♦ Action cards – Create a table resource of actions cards that describe the actions available from the Combat Chapter of the PH.
♦ Effects cards – Put the mechanics of effects on cards as a table resource, so you don’t have to dig to find out what “stunned” or “dazed” means.

2. Effects tokens.  Makes tracking effects, marks, quarries and other statuses easier.  This alleviates a lot of the “Is this guy bloodied?”, “Wait, I forgot to roll my save!”, and “Well I didn’t realize the other fighter had this dude marked.” show stopping comments.
♦ Magnetic Markers by Alea Tools – These things are very visible, but can sometimes attract or push other marked minis.  Also, minis will look like they are “flying” if you accrue a lot of them.
♦ Pipe cleaners – Preformed colored pipe cleaners can be looped around minis
♦ Poker chips – Performs the same function as the magnetic markers, but it is tricky find a correct size

3. Initiative.  In addition to the init cards mentioned above, you can have the players pre-roll 6-10 initiatives and write them on the init cards.  Then roll a d6 or d10 to see which one they start with.  Also, make sure the players know where they are in the initiative order and put a 30 second to 1 minute time limit on their turn.  If they use up their time, have their character default to a melee or ranged attack on the nearest enemy.  This forces the players to think about what they are going to do while everyone else is taking their turn.  It also clears up the problem of waiting on players who have small bladders and nicotine addictions.

Listening to: Deadstar Assembly – Unsaved – Serial

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I usually steer clear of mixing politics with gaming, the same way I avoid beer with liquor and bitching about in-laws to my wife.  They are all recipes for a headache.  However, I figured the gaming community, especially American gamers who are eligible to vote (because you are going to vote, right?) should see what our candidates are saying about us.

I am of the mind that the current bi-partisan crap is broken and needs fixin’ and most politicians could use a good ass kickin’, and that no matter who you pick, he/she will end up being a corrupt asshole.  But I would rather pick the less corrupt asshole…

So anyways, the candidates have tried to embrace technology by utilizing the web and McCain has a blog.  Now, understand, the following comments were not made by McCain but by his blogger: Michael Goldfarb.  But, McCain chose this asshat to blog for him… so you can come to your own opinion about either of them.  Here is what Goldfarb the Asshat has to say about D&D players:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others. John McCain has often said he witnessed a thousand acts of bravery while he was imprisoned, and though not every one has been submitted into the public record, they are remembered by the men who were there (one such only recently reported by Karl Rove though it escaped mention in any of Senator McCain’s books). But as Swindle said, this is a “desperate group of people trying to make something out of nothing.”

I play D&D and I am a bonified veteran of the Gulf War, even have been declared disabled by the VA BEFORE I received my Honorable Discharge, and I can guarandamntee this Goldfarb character that I would never presume to disparage a vet’s, let alone a former POW’s, memory of war.  I think I can say the same of the majority of gamers I have met.  Sure, there will be your occasional dickhead gamer, but these people are not exclusive to the D&D crowd.  I had not made my decision on candidates either, but this will definitely garner McCain negative favor in my eyes, unless he fires this douchebag that made these comments.  If you click through the links, you’ll eventually find an apology, but Goldfarb can stuff it.

Thanks to my friend Gerf for the heads up on this.

– END RANT –

Listening to: The Sex Pistols – The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle – Anarchy in the UK

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GenCon

I’m sure I am just contributing to the GenCon echo chamber, but there are some observations I was wanting to share.  The first thing I noticed is that since I began attending in 2003, it seems the exhibit hall has less things I’m interested in.

I didn’t take measurements or anything, but it seemed as if almost 1/4 of the exhibit hall was dedicated to video games and most of that section was empty.  I like video games, but they are not the reason I attend GenCon, for that matter, the exhibit isn’t why I attend.  There were also a lot more general junk vendors than I recall.  I can’t say if they loss potential vendors because of GenCon LLC’s legal and financial difficulty earlier this year, or because of the “d20″ bubble bursting.

There were some companies that I was impressed with, but I may be biased:

• Privateer Press – Besides having the finest miniature display (and possibly the best mini sculpts and paint), their new Kaiju influenced minis game, Monsterpocalypse, seemed to be a big hit.  They had the longest line I saw at GenCon.  Long live the Iron Kingdoms!
• Paizo – The big blue golem was highly successful this year.  Besides having all their kick-ass Pathfinder Chronicles, they completely sold out of their softcover version of the Pathfinder RPG Beta.  Yeah the BETA version that you can download for FREE!  Amazing.  They also kicked off the Pathfinder Society organized play.  I think once the word gets out, it could be very successful.
• WizKids – I think they may have generated the largest crowd with their life-sized Hero Clicks and super-sized Star Wars pocketmodel demos.  Or it may have their totally f’ing hot Ms. Marvel model.

Maybe it was my limited exposure, considering I didn’t have much time during Thursday, Friday, & Saturday, but there wasn’t as much free swag, except for looting that occurred near the end of the con.  Before the exhibit hall finally closed, they began giving away the bags you can pick up with your badge (that they hole punch so you can’t get another).  Even these didn’t have much cool stuff, but did come with pre-constructed Magic decks, the Crystal Caste GenCon edition d6 they have released every year since ’05 (thank you CC!), and a Q Workshop random die (which were $3.00@).  It some other cards too: Maple Story and Blue Dragon.

But between my friends and I, we made off with almost $150 worth of the Q-Workshop dice, enough GenCon ’08 d6s to give to outfit the rest of our gaming crew after each keeping a set of 12 for ourselves, and more than 10 pre-constructed decks a piece.  It was like looting a corpse.

The real reason I attend GenCon is for the events, and this time in particular, the kick off of Living Realms.  I was going to use GenCon to review 4e and the new organized play model, a trial by fire.  I ended up completing 40 hours of 4e roleplaying in three days.  But more on my review of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons and the Living Realms later (in a dedicated post).

Listening to: Green Jelly – Cereal Killer – Electric Harley House of Love

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GenCon

GenCon begins tomorrow.  My comrades will arrive this evening, and we will set forth into four days of gaming.  We have booked every single Living Realms adventure as well as the D&D Championship (which I doubt we get far… something about grouping with unknown players…).  This will be the true test of 4th Edition D&D for me.

We finally did things right this year by registering for events as soon as they were available, as opposed to trying to worm our way into seats with generic tickets.  But I wonder if we went too far?  From 0800 to 2300 hours Thursday & Friday and until 0300 hours on Sunday morning for Saturday.  We only have two legitimate breaks, a lunch break for one hour and a dinner break for two hours.  Of course we will end up finishing adventures early, but you can’t count on that variable.

So I am trying to make sure I have everything I need to minimize any insane, frantic bumbling arounds retrieving things like food, game equipment, money, etc.  So I have a list I am checking off, that kind of looks like the inventory section on my character sheets:

• Wallet
  – $### Cash, (I’m not telling you how much!) for Parking Garage, vending, and exibhit hall
  – ID x3, for recreational purposes ;)
  – Plastic, for Exhibit Hall
• Backpack
  – Blackberry, so my better half can reach me, find lost comrades, & keep schedule
  – Pencils x5, several someones will need one, and not return it…
  – Paper x10, for notes
  – Dice, multiple sets
  – Character Sheet(s), primary + alts & blanks in case someone calls dibs on a class
  – Laptop, with digital character sheets & PDFs
  – Flash Drive, back up of said character sheets & PDFs
  – Nintendo DS + Games, for boring downtimes
  – Current novel (Warhammer: Vampire Wars), for when I get stuck in a game
  – GenCon Badge, so I can get in
  – Event Tickets, so I can play
  – Camera, for photo ops with the booth babes!
• Roller Cooler
  – 3 packs of various lunch meat, because its easy
  – 1 loaf of bread
  – 6 Power bars, to keep us going
  – 6 bottles of water
  – 1 Vodkade, for when I have to deal with people I don’t like
  – Ice, to keep it all chilled
• Vehicle
  – Fuel topped off
  – Cleaned out
  – Alternate directions, just in case some decides to cause a traffic jam
  – More water & drinks

I’ve always hated rolling luggage, but I have decided to turn to the darkside in this instance.  I think we are going to be able to park very close, so we can stash if its not needed; just use it to keep things cool in the car.

This is really just to help me prepare, so if you see something I’m missing let me know!  I also figure it may help others remember something they need if they see my list.

Edit- Oh, yeah, this is just for 1 day.  I live near Indianapolis (practically in a suburb of it), so I will of course have plenty of clothes & bathroom amenities and more food on hand.

Listening to: Metallica – … And Justice For All - One

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The Dead Wastes is an original setting I have been constructing, off and on, for the better part of a decade.  I have yet to use it as the backdrop of a campaign; mostly for the fear of having players welcome it with a less than thrilled reception.  That and I personally felt that it was never quite ready for release.

World building and character development is probably the most fun of any part of game design.  If I could get paid for simply putting word to paper, that is what I would do; too bad I don’t have enough time to start another career.  In my opinion, as a serious gamer, you could have the best mechanics, art, or other features, but if the story and world are boring and weak then the whole game crumbles.

The Dead Wastes

I built the world of the Dead Wastes upon layers of history.  There were definitive elements that I needed in the world, so I created reasons why they would exist which led to a detailed history.  Some of the elements were: a vampire nation, mysterious steam technology, and a barren wasteland brimming with the undead.  The following is a brief history of the world of the Dead Wastes:

Beginning with the ruins of technologically advanced Nadori Empire, which disappeared over millennia ago, the world of the Dead Wastes began to take shape. This expansive empire had covered much of the known world and some of its steamtech still survives to present day. Many cities and some villages have grown around still functioning mechanica, but are unable to comprehend the design well enough to create their own. After the demise of the Nadori, a nation led by priests of Sidar (the god of the sun), gained dominance over the northern core, Aurincia. Its capital city of Sidarius was founded upon the site of an ancient underground temple dedicated to a dark god, Tenebrous. Sinister dreams of the forgotten god crept into the minds of the overly ambitious. Soon a cult of sorcerers, and not a few priests, had rededicated the shrine to their new dark lord. As members of this cult rose in prominence in the senate, an unwholesome movement began to suppress the church of Sidar, or any other god for that matter. There was a mass of exodus of clergy, and eventually Sidar stopped answering the prayers of those who remained. This is primarily because the cultist aristocrats who now ruled Sidarius had made a bargain for power with the dark god during a cosmic even called the Long Night, the and in return offered the souls of the city as payment. The sorcerers got more than they bargained for when a massive vortex opened up above the city and bathed it in tides of acidic blood. A host of vampires with legions of undead soldiers marshaled through the vortex to take control of the city. The sorcerers were transformed into undead liches, bound in service to the city that now belonged to Tenebrous’ minions. They became known as the Undying Magisters, powerful sorcerers in eternal service the vampire host. The vampire host baptized the city in blood and renamed it Stragus, the Darkstar. Using the magical might of the Undying, the vampires consecrated the Obsidian Obelisk, a monolith charged with negative energy. This monument to their dark god powers the Barrier Dome, which kills any living thing to pass through it as well as blanketing Stragus in darkness, fending off the lethal energies of the sun. There was one horrific side effect, however. During the Dome’s creation, a shockwave of negative energy blasted the landscape for leagues around the city, destroying all signs of life and resurrecting people, animals, and even some plants as the living dead. This area teeming with the Shambling Horde (as these mindless undead are collectively known as) has become known as the Dead Wastes. These events happened over one hundred and fifty years ago.

The vampires rule over the remaining human citizens of Stragus, which has become a stylish metropolis lit by gas lamps (a technology unearthed by their grimlynn servants) and patrolled by magically animated horseless carriages.  While the humans are oppressed and yearly tributes of young men and women are enforced, strict but tolerable living conditions have been established.

About fifty years ago, the ruling vampire caste discovered an asset living deep below the surface of the city streets.  A colony of grimlynns had burrowed into the caverns where the temple of the dark god resided.  These diminutive goblin-like creatures had a knack for making the broken remnants of Nadori mechanica work.  The vampires soon asserted their dominion over the grimlynn and put their aptitude for technology to use.

Within the Dead Wastes, a few dozen ghost towns and a couple of small city ruins are populated with the living dead.  Most of the undead are the mindless rotting flesh and bone types, zombies and skeletons, but the dead have been evolving.  New sentient versions of the Shambling Horde have been reportedly organizing their mindless kin.  What is behind this horrible development is still unknown.

There are societies outside the reaches of the Dead Wastes that avoided the cataclysm that destroyed all life inside the perimeter of the Wastes.  The coastal kingdom of Stahlhelm is on the verge of an industrial revolution.  The Sidaran Theocracy maintains the lands they claimed after their exodus from Sidarius, spreading the word of their god from New Sidarius.  The secluded shores of the island city-state of Arcanicum are renowned for their abilities in the magical arts.  The tribal gundar of the eastern savannahs roam the endless fields of grass.  The frozen peaks of the southern mountains are home to bear riding brutes that mercilessly defend their borders.  The mysterious and isolationist nations of the fey and goblinoids also survive, but few who cross their borders ever return.

This is just an introduction the world, and I realize some of the races, nations, and locations have little meaning without some context.  The following post will dig deeper into the Dead Wastes and explore some of these locations and expose details about the cultures and nations.

Listening to: Megadeth – Countdown to Extiction - Symphony of Destruction

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Wizards of the Coast

The lackluster reception of Wizards of the Coast’s Game System License for 4e D&D has spoken volumes and WotC has listened.  They released a news announcement today about how the new GSL and SRD will be released in the very near future (and from the wording, sounds like it has already been changed).
“We recognize the important role third party publishing support plays in the success of the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. We have listened to the community and our valued colleagues and have taken their concerns and recommendations to heart. Our commitment to the health of the industry and hobby gaming lifestyle is reflected in the revisions to the Game System License.”
–Linae Foster D&D Licensing Manager

So it still remains to be seen if the revision is enough to be accepted, but at least they are trying.

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I would be remiss if didn’t take some time to thank the minds behind and the members of RPG Bloggers.  As of yesterday, I have been doing this blog for two weeks, with a total of 17 posts, 25 comments, and almost 800 views.  Of course those statistics have more value when you put them into context.

Before I was accepted as a member of RPG Bloggers, I had 14 posts, 1 comment (non-constructive), and about 180 views.  Since being accepted last Thursday to the RPG Bloggers community, I’ve only posted 3 more articles but recieved over 600 views in four days.  I also would like say that I have no idea how many hits constitutes “successful,” (which is a very subjective word)  but I am happy.

So, I want to thank everyone for sharing your readers with me and giving me some exposure.  Now I just need to retain those new viewers as repeat readers, which is wholly dependent on the quality of my writing.  Good news is that it looks like my posts have scored very well with people (by looking at the number and average score of the votes about my posts on RPG Bloggers); I just need to maintain, or exceed, that level.

I invite everyone to come and critique my blog: design & layout, content, & writing style.  And thanks again to RPG Bloggers.  Now I need to go work on my next post!

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The Mad Menagerie is a regular column that I am starting with this entry: The Trystgeist.  The Mad Menagerie will be a bi weekly (at least) occurance that will feature totally original monsters, like the Trystgeist, or creatures adapted from folklore, mythology, legend, and movies.

Each entry will give a physical description, a small stat block, powers, combat tactics and lore.  They will be presented in a slightly modified 4e format, but I think they could be adapted to any system.  That being said, I’m not really a fan of 4e, but I think the monster stats are pretty slick and easy to use.

Trystgeist

Trystgeists are the spirits of the unfaithful that have died at the hands of their betrayed lovers.  They are ethereal in nature, and only manifest when they exact vengeance upon adulterers.  When these tormented spirits do manifest they become corporeal and appear as one of the adulterers’ spouse.  The adulterers’ surprise soon turns to terror as the trystgeist’s eyes turn black and begin weeping dark, acidic tears that melts the flesh of it’s stolen appearance, as well as its victims.

Medium Shadow Humanoid [Undead, Touched by Evil]
Level: 10
Initiative: +10
Perception: +10, darkvision
Hit Points: 100
AC: 20, Fort: 25, Ref: 18, Will: 25
Speed: 5
Skills: Intimidate +15
Str 16, Dex 10, Con -, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 20

Burning Betrayal (ranged, standard, recharge 4,5,6) [acid, necrotic]
Close burst 5; +15 vs. Reflex; 2d8 +5 damage.

Eyes Only For Me (melee, standard, at-will)
+13 vs. AC; 1d4+3 damage; target is blinded for 2 rounds.

Claw (melee, standard, at-will)
+13 vs. AC; 1d8+3 damage.

Tactics

Trystgeists will begin by moving in close to its victims and shaking its head inhumanly fast, spraying its acidic tears all around it.  It will then attempt to blind an opponent and take advantage of its victim’s weakened defenses and unleash its claws.  It will spray its victims with acid at every opportunity.  Trystgeists will often intimidate victims so they cower in fear.

Lore

DC 15: Trystgeists often take on the appearance of its victim’s spouse.
DC 20: Trystgeists were once adulterers that were slain by their betrayed lovers.
DC 25: Trystgeists cannot be permanently destroyed unless you find its wedding band and destroy it with it’s own acid.

Listening to: Type O Negative – Bloody Kisses – Blood & Fire

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