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“Stealing is BAD!” © @nightmaresyrup. Accessed at their tumblr here

[The first monsters I posted on tumblr, before I had a dedicated blog just for the monsters, were yokai. So I’m going back to a well that has served me well in the past. The akashita is a bit odd because it is usually referred to as being evil and dangerous, but it specifically punishes people who steal water. Which got me thinking about how scary isn’t always evil, and was solidified for me by the art above, resulting in the good-aligned akashita below. ]

Kami, Akashita CR 11 LG Outsider (native) A roiling black cloud moves on its own accord, a leering, monstrous face embedded within. It clutches its mighty clawed hands and roars, revealing an immense red tongue.

An akashita is a greatly feared guardian of canals, aqueducts and dams, although they are impartial judges to those who deal with water rights fairly. They despise those that would steal water or cheat others out of their fair share and those that seek to profit from an imbalance of water rights. It is these mortals who receive an akashita’s wrath, although the creature prefers to make its public appearances as dramatic as possible to increase the shame of the criminal and the impact of its punishment. These public punishments typically take place during heavy rainstorms. If one is not naturally available, the akashita will make one magically. Most malefactors are punished with debilitating curses, and an akashita prefers not to use lethal violence unless it is attacked first.

Akashitas are comfortable moving through both air and water with their fluid, cloud-like bodies. If grounded by heavy winds or pursuing a fugitive through tight spaces, they can drag themselves along on their clawed hands, but this is cumbersome and uncomfortable. Akashitas do not covet treasure, but they will accept sacrifices to keep water flowing freely or to break droughts with blessed rain.

They can hold their breath for a long time, run long distances, have higher or lower pain tolerance, are often fast sprinters, etc.

It’s absolutely possible to make humans interesting without getting racist about it. Make it due to culture or geography if you’re so worried about it. That’s essentially the difference between high elves and wood elves in most media anyways. Just environment.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

if i’m allowed to be picky, i also wish people could be more thoughtful/realistic when deciding on scars. like do some research and think ‘how did this injury happen’. if someone got attacked by wolves, how does that give them a straight cut scar across their face? 

and where are the other effects of these injuries? nerve damage, contractures, amputations, brain damage, PTSD, chronic pain, speech issues, sun sensitivity, blindness, etc? and please do research on these too, its good, its not that difficult.

i want to see characters have scars, and still be able to be normal, and cute/pretty/beautiful/sexy, and loved, and happy. this includes people with extensive burn scars, with skin grafts, with tons of reconstructive surgeries, who are missing eyes or noses or ears or limbs. this includes people with keloid scars, who don’t look normal, who have “gross” symptoms from their injuries. this includes people who have scars from elective or cosmetic surgeries, and surgeries that were botched. this includes people who have scars from self harm or suicide attempts. 

   please give more characters scars, and be normal about it. i am (politely) begging you. 

definitly! i should of mentioned those more.

if people want to give their characters scars (which i highly encourage), just having had surgery is a great idea. surgery can definitely be traumatic and life changing, and it does need research, but it can also be a pretty mundane and casual thing too. i had a major surgery and i have a large scar from it, and it’s one of my favorite features and fun-facts about myself.

"Nothing, she thinks they're a divine gift and should be displayed to show that she is blessed as a prophet.

GM: So, you know people are going to try and kill her.

"Definitely, she also fervently believe she us divinely protected and anyone trying to harm her is an enemy of that divinity."

GM: So what does she normally do?

"Flies around in full view looking for anyone she thinks needs help because her divine mandate is to help those in need."

OP isn't wrong, exactly (saying this for everyone else reading, not at you, OP) and the pasted tags are excellent & about a real issue, but actually further from the thesis of the video.

That thesis boils down to fiction that creates religions, like fantasy novels or RPGs, is very prone to only really depicting the religion's myths and sacred texts. The creation stories, the pantheon melodramas, that kind of thing. Adjacent to this is a big focus on belief. Both of these, ReligionForBreakfast (RFB) suggests, are due at least in part to (unexamined or deliberate) Christocentrism.

The thing that's missing, that RFB proposes as what he thinks would make a big difference and be good to see in fictional worlds, is action. ("Ritual", for certain definitions of the word.) What do followers of a religion, or people within that religion's culture, actually do? How does it appear in daily life, in art and architecture, customs and food, etc.? And not just the Official Approved actions or activities, either.

Like yeah we can sit and jerk off all day about how killing cultists is justified through in-game logic because they're literally trying to make Hell real, but when viewed with even a modicum of media criticism you can maybe start to wonder why cultists are such a common villain in medieval fantasy gaming.

Similarly, yeah, sure, in-universe orcs may have been created by an evil god and that's why they're predisposed to evil, but given the already racialized portrayal of orcs in the source material they come from plus the game further adding the reading that they're actually tribal savages, it suddenly puts into context some of the Fucked Up stuff that the author of the game said later in his life.

Anyway, D&D 5e is an interesting case where the art doesn't lean too heavily into some of the orientalist imagery sometimes associated with the figure of the Bad Cultist, but like. They default to using scimitars. Which, you know, makes sense when you think about the iconic fantasy cultist, it's all curved swords. But why?

And yeah, it's definitely not a case where whoever wrote that stat block was consciously thinking "dang I think the association between evil cults and Middle Eastern iconography rules" but more like. That iconography exists and the person who wrote the stat block was like "of course cultists have scimitars."

And like yeah I don't think it's fair to expect a game like D&D to portray cults with nuance. In the world of D&D people don't join the cult of the Elder Elemental Eye because they were ensnared by the cult leader and eventually isolated from the rest of their support network and now joining the cult was the only sensible option, they join the cult because they're Chaotic Evil and think the Elder Elemental Eye kicks ass.

they're still expected to fight unambiguously evil foes who they don't need to question showing mercy to, the scenario writers just have to get more creative in how they justify it. everyone knows that slavering hordes of tribal orcs are racist, so how about slavering hordes of gnolls? they're literal demon spawn with an ever-gnawing hunger! nevermind the fact that their stat block says "humanoid" and not "fiend". the cannibalism and animalistic appearance further help insulate them from critical analysis to the casual player by way of the Small Penis Defense. "they're cannibalistic animals, they're not supposed to be a depiction of any real-world people." nevermind the fact that calling certain groups of real-world people "cannibalistic animals" was literally something that some of the people who inspired D&D actually did.

as you say with cults, they're having to strip away the overt imagery of the orientalist influences of the pulp fiction "cult" that is the basis to this day of D&D's use and depiction of the concept, but it's trivial to point out that only the imagery has changed, and that they still reinforce the idea of irrational fanatics of a belief that isn't familiar to you. that anyone who follows certain belief systems is, by default, a dangerous zealot, and that there are people who would even follow such a belief system.

the mainstream 5e player of today and the mainstream AD&D player of 40 years ago may fundamentally be working with pretty similar motivations. one just has to work a little harder to continue thinking they're playing a good person.