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@roll-for-world-building
hey all, apologies for the long absence. I didn’t mean to be gone so wrong, but I had a bit of a bad mental health episode and couldn’t really write for a while. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back to posting regularly, but hopefully it will be soon. in the meantime, stay safe and have as good a last-month-of-2020 as you can.
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The spell description for Speak With Dead raises so many existential questions.
It explicitly does not return the soul to the body, just the 'animating spirit.' But the dead person knows what it knew in life and is capable of lying and recognizing the caster as an enemy. Which means it must have some amount of free will, and some of the living person's biases and desires.
Is it some otherworldly force using the knowledge in the corpse's brain to formulate answers, just as it uses its lungs and mouth to talk? Given how quickly the brain decays that seems unrealistic, but it's also the kind of stretching of reality that's pretty acceptable in fiction.
But that raises questions about what constitutes a 'self' in this world - if even after death your body holds your memories, personality, everything that makes you 'you,' but in this world there is the proven and known existence of a soul, which is *also* you, does that 'you' become split in death? Or doubled?
Is the 'animating spirit' some aspect of yourself, or is it some other magical force posessing you? If it's the latter, is it a violation to have an external force animating your actual mind and personality? Is it worse than spells that just animate the body? What would happen if the soul of the dead person was nearby as a ghost or some similar thing, could it talk to its own talking corpse? Would the corpse recognize itself?
Does the talking corpse have consciousness? If it can lie and make decisions and react, how can it not be conscious? Is there a meaningful difference between consciousness and the appearance of consciousness? What would happen if someone cast Detect Thoughts on a corpse that had Speak With Dead on it? Does a talking corpse get a saving throw? If it gets a saving throw does that mean it must have free will? WHY can't it speculate about the future???
Everything has memory.
All things remember what they once were. The imprint of history is found everywhere. A desert that was once a forest still carries within it the memory of tall trees. A house inhabited for many years may seem in time to come alive with the lingering presence of all those who once lived there. This much is commonly known to be true, and indeed is the foundation of a considerable amount of magic theory. A transmuter can coax a broken object to remember being unbroken, and become that way again. A diviner can call up the memory of battle and death still recalled by a peaceful field now long overgrown.
The notion that this might apply to some aspects of necromancy has long been theorized, but research into the subject remains limited due to the taboo nature of necromancy in many cultures, along with myriad ethical and practical concerns. By far the most extensive study into the matter is that undertaken by Zela ‘Fingerbones’ Cellai Toolin-Jasper and Quixil ‘Crowfeather’ Umish Leddly Tanner Blych, Gnomish scholars of necromancy at the college of Greenspark. Zela, Quixil, and their research assistants carried out extensive experimentation on a set of seven cadavers which had been willingly left to the college to be used in magical research. Over a study period of six months, the team cast Speak With Dead on each of the cadavers several times, asking a wide range of questions. Cadavers were asked to identify researchers, objects placed near them, or other cadavers; asked to recall recent events or to recall what questions they had been asked previously; asked questions about the afterlife; and asked a variety of subjective questions such as "How do you feel?" "Do you like [x]?" "What do you think about [x]?" Finally, Quixil himself temporarily died, had Speak With Dead cast upon him, and was then revived with Raise Dead and questioned as to whether he had any memory of the experience.
The results were outlined in a landmark paper published by Zela and Quixil. They concluded that although the cadavers appeared to retain memory and personality from their lives, this was in truth only a facsimile. The cadavers were unable to react to new information or stimuli; they could answer how they had felt about something in life, but if asked to respond to something they had only "encountered" after death, they were unable to do so. They lacked the ability to speculate or theorize not only on future events, but on past ones as well; when the cadavers were moved to a new room before questioning, and then asked to speculate on how they had gotten there, none of them could respond. Upon being returned to life, Quixil had no recollection of the Speak With Dead spell, and could not recount any of the questions he had been asked. The researchers thus speculated that the spell Speak With Dead does not return the soul to the body in any form, but rather draws upon the corpse's own 'memory' of being alive.
"All living things leave an impression of themselves upon the world as they pass through it," Zela writes in the paper. "Where else should this impression be strongest but upon the vessel in which a life was housed? Yet this does not mean that the impression is like unto a person itself. Rather, we may conclude that the impression of life we see upon casting this spell is an image of the person, captured in time. If a portrait is painted of a person, we do not say that the portrait is the person, or that it contains their soul. What spoke to us from those cadavers was in essence nothing more than a painting--simply a painting done on a canvas the dimensions of which we can not yet fully observe."
The paper rocked the world of magical academia upon publication and has since been banned outright in twelve countries and denounced as high blasphemy by the churches of thirty-seven different gods. It was hailed as groundbreaking by some academics; others allowed that the experiment was legitimate but criticized the methods, or the conclusion, or both. The chair of the necromancy department at the Academe Arcanum acknowledged that the results were interesting, but claimed that the experiment lacked a solid enough basis in accepted magical theory. The paper continues to be the subject of intense debate, much to the delight of Zela and Quixil.
gonna be quiet here for a little bit again. I’m having a bit of a hard time concentrating on writing about DND right now, you can probably imagine why. I promise I will be back, though! just need a little break for a bit. stay safe, everyone.
Despite being somewhat aloof in matters of international diplomacy, most sun elf cities are welcoming to outsiders. Many have quite varied populations, with large amounts of non-elves either living there permanently or lodging there for long periods, drawn by the opportunities for trade, study at a library or university, or an apprenticeship with one of the city’s many respected craftspeople. Others are more secluded and see only a few rare visitors, either because of a less welcoming cultural outlook or simply being less geographically accessible. A rare few are truly closed-off; Bellan’su’thailn, a city founded by refugees from a two-hundred-year siege who vowed never to fall under such attack again, resists allowing anyone else to even discover their exact location, let alone enter the gates. Tuili’galin’garl, a city in the Sunscar Desert, is friendly to outsiders, but its location in the midst of the Whirling Dunes makes it legendarily difficult to actually find, to the point that its continued existence is often in question for years on end.
Sun elf cities most typically function as singular city-states. Inglistvulin and Suleithellr are both countries consisting of several united sun elf cities and towns, but they are the exception to the rule; it is more common for the cities to have little to no interest in control over the land outside their walls, save what they keep as farmland. The long lives of these cities mean that many of them have seen ownership of the territory around them change so often that the difference becomes mostly immaterial to the sun elves; provided that they are not bothered by the neighbors, the sun elves largely don’t mind one way or the other.
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Monarchy and royalty is highly rare among sun elves; even having a single elected leader is uncommon. They instead favor complex, many-layered governments that typically culminate in a high council or parliament. It is very common for outsiders (and sometimes for the sun elves themselves) to have difficult remembering the difference between various positions, or unraveling exactly who is the highest authority in any given situation. Sun elf cities consequently have a reputation for being mired in obtuse bureaucracy that takes a very long time to get anything done. Although the reality is not quite as extreme as most of the jokes make out, this reputation is not entirely unearned either.
The cities of the sun elves are perhaps best known for being centers of learning and study. Some of the greatest libraries in the world are to be found within sun elf cities; even the smaller cities boast impressive collections and archives. Several prestigious universities are also located in sun elf cities. Most are best known for the study of magic, such as the College of the Noble Shield in Jusl’iysulithyn, which is broadly considered to be the premiere center of study for Abjuration theory. Not all are focused on magic, however: the College of the Risen Seed in Imbryss’hinvul specializes in botany and agriculture, for example, while the small College of the Captured Word in the city of Dulingulást’lin is not commonly well-known, but to those in the field it is soundly agreed to be the place to study the art of bookbinding.
In farming as well as construction, maintaining infrastructure, and many other tasks, sun elves are known for making considerable use of constructs. This has led to sun elves having something of a reputation for being too fragile, too scholarly, or simply too lazy to do any labor themselves, but in truth they are no less inclined toward hard work than anyone else. Their frequent use of constructs instead stems from the early days of the oldest sun elf cities, whose founders faced great difficulties as they tried to expand beyond small villages. Like all elves, sun elf populations are slow to grow and slow to recover from the sort of setbacks that were especially common for small groups in the early days of the world. These young communities thus struggled to increase in number enough to build outward at their desired pace while still being able to support the existing population. This led to many innovations in magic that could speed the construction of buildings or increase the output of farms. Constructs proved to be especially beneficial, as they were able to be used for multiple tasks with little to no supervision once made, freeing up more of the population from having to dedicate all their time to basic jobs. This in turn drove advancement in the field of crafting and controlling constructs, and thousands of years later sun elves are renowned for their expertise in the art, rivaled only by the work of some dwarven clans and the small but enthusiastic gnomish college of Witsklank. Â
Although population growth and advances in other fields of magic have diminished the need for aid from constructs over time, they are still a common sight in sun elf cities, performing all manner of tasks. Even in these cities constructs are expensive enough that most work in the service of the city rather than being individually owned, but wealthier families and larger farms, businesses or institutions such as universities may also employ constructs of their own, carefully maintained and more often than not treated fondly as loyal employees.
A love of art and craft is also easily seen everywhere in the cities of the sun elves. Buildings may be colorfully painted, artistically shaped, or covered in elaborate reliefs; a multitude of sculptures and statues are seen displayed in streets and plazas; street tiles are often laid in colorful patterns or mosaics. Although each city has its own distinct and enduring style shown in the oldest parts of its construction, most sun elf cities do not attempt to maintain the same appearance forever, instead rejoicing in the growth of new art and designs over time. When something must be repaired, replaced or rebuilt, it is more likely to be done in a new style rather than attempting to mimic its old appearance. Shops and houses change their facades to reflect the newest fashions, and public art is often rotated out regularly to show off the work of new and upcoming artists. Of course, to humans and other shorter-lived visitors, the changing fashions in a sun elf city might seem to change very slowly indeed, but when considered on an elven timescale, the pace can be really quite quick.
Sun elves practice agriculture on a considerably larger and more orderly scale than most other elves; every sun elf city is surrounded by great stretches of farmland. For the sun elves, this is a practical requirement to support their more sizable settlements, but it also reflects a great love of cultivating the land that is seen within the city walls as well. There, houses are built with space for small private gardens, which very few of their inhabitants do not take advantage of. Public gardens and parks are common features, and most buildings and pathways are decorated with trees, bushes, flowers, tall grasses, or small beds of sweet-smelling herbs. As much as possible the cities are built around the existing natural landscape, so it is common to see streets that swerve around rock formations or buildings with roofs shaped to allow a tree to grow through them. More than a few close connections between sun elves and halflings have flourished from discovering common ground in a shared love of gardening and agriculture.
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Sun elves have dark hair, and skin of various hues of brown. They are distinguished in appearance by a metallic flush to their skin, most visible in places such as their cheeks and the palms of their hands, often gold in color but ranging through shades of bronze or copper as well. Their eyes may be brown, orange, gold, or a coppery or bronze color. Sun elves can be found all over the world in many different climes, but unlike their moon elf cousins they do not favor traveling to experience as much of the world as possible. Their preferred homes are the ones they have built themselves: the great, proud, ancient cities of the sun elves. The youngest of these cities would still seem by human standards to be old and rich in history, while the most venerable of them count among the very oldest settlements known in the world, outmatched only by a few near-forgotten fey ruins from the first ages of the world, and possibly--depending on which archaeologist you ask--by Dragonsmoot in the Dawnbreak mountains.
Despite the name, deep elves rarely live in the truly deep parts of the ocean, which poses considerable survival challenges even for their considerable aquatic adaptations; they are more likely to be found settled in the comparatively shallow waters within a few miles of the coast, or else as nomads who move through deeper waters but do not remain there long. Deep elf groups that live on their own usually have small villages, based around underwater cliffs and cave systems, with few buildings constructed entirely from scratch. The few large deep elf cities are built deep indeed, so secretively hidden in the lightless depths that they are the stuff of legend, rarely if ever glimpsed by outsiders. In these cities the pitch black of the deep ocean is broken by magical lanterns and buildings painted with luminescent compounds, and vast and carefully tended gardens bring life to the desolate seabed.
The deep elves of the Auroral Ocean in the far north live in great floating ship-cities built into icebergs, carefully steered on their voyages through the arctic waters by water elementals summoned and directed by weather-wizards. Other wizards monitor the health of the icebergs, ensuring that the activity of the deep elves does not risk fracturing, tipping or melting their home. Along with fishing, and hunting parties that sail out to stretches of land that the icebergs pass, the cities are fed by floating gardens of seaweed attached to the icebergs, gently trailing behind them in the water. Wave elves are rare in the Auroral, more often found passing through than staying permanently, as they lack the adaptations that allow the deep elves to weather the brutal cold. The northern deep elves are not alone in their waters, however; they maintain trade and good relations with the selkies, nereids and merfolk that also inhabit the frigid northern waters.
Wave elves live all over the world, in many different circumstances. Some live on the water full-time, such as the Ist'suulin Clans, who live in small fleets of ships, each ship home to a family group, traveling ancient trade routes across the southern seas; they stop at port towns to buy or sell cargo, but keep no homes on land. Others travel back and forth between multiple small settlements along coastlines or island chains, following migrations of fish or patterns of weather. Still others live in permanent settlements on islands or coasts, sailing out often to fish or dive but sleeping, eating, and generally doing most of their living on land.
Groups of wave elves and deep elves often live near each other. Those that are particularly close may live in one settlement built to accommodate both groups as much as possible, with many pools and canals on land, and buildings that extend onto the water, or are built partially underwater and partially above. Other groups travel together, the deep elves swimming alongside the boats of the wave elves, and resting on beaches when the boats make landfall. Such groups are often accompanied by herds of domesticated hippocampi, which the wave elves use to pull boats when the wind is bad, and the deep elves use for riding and carrying baggage.
Although sea elves practice magic in as much variety as any other elves, far and away their greatest concern is with magic that can predict, sense, and influence wind, water, and weather. By necessity, all sea elves are highly knowledgeable of the weather patterns where they live and are taught at least some basic spells such as Druidcraft and Create Or Destroy Water, which are relied upon as essential tools of seafaring and life in the ocean. Any group of wave or deep elves will also have at least one weather-wizard, who devotes their life to studying the forces of wind and tide and perfecting their skill at the spells that allow them some measure of influence over these forces. Experienced weather-wizards have great, if highly specialized, power, but are careful how they use it. They know well that rash attempts to control the forces of weather entirely can backfire terribly, either immediately or in ripple effects of erratic weather patterns that could haunt their clan for a long time afterward. Rather than attempting such total control over the weather, they instead nudge and influence it, summoning only enough wind to move a becalmed ship or pushing at the edges of a storm to send it just far enough away to save a village. Along with spells that allow them to directly influence weather, weather-wizards are adept at summoning and controlling elementals, which are used to allow direct and precise control for situations ranging from calling minor water elementals to lend speed to a fishing boat on a still day, to summoning a major air elemental to guide a whole fleet out of a storm.
Legends about the origins of wave elves and deep elves vary somewhat in the details, but share a common thread: in the age of myth, when the races first began to roam the world, a group of elves led came to the shore of the ocean and were entranced by it. Some remained on land, out of fear of the deep water or love for the beaches and marshes along the coast, but others were so drawn by the waves that they swam out at once, eager to see what lay under the surface. They swam so deep that they soon became lost even to Issailue, the guardian spirit sent by the god of elves to travel with the group. He set out to find them, but discovered that they had wandered far into the domain of Nuin, the god of the sea, so far that they would never make it back to shore alive. To save them, Issailue made a bargain with Nuin, asking them to grant the lost elves the gifts of the sea so that they could live in the water. Nuin agreed, at the cost of being able to demand three favors from Issailue in the future. Two of those favors, it is said, have since been fulfilled, but the third yet remains.
Issailue then returned to the elves who had waited on the shore, and told them what had happened to their brethren. The shore elves were heartbroken at the thought of being forever separated from their kin. It was beyond Issailue's power to bring the two groups back together again, so instead he taught the shore elves how to build boats and sail across the water, so that they could be reunited, if only temporarily, with their kindred. Both wave elves and deep elves worship Issailue as a guardian and guide, and both revere Nuin, but in different ways; to the wave elves they are an important but dangerous force who can never completely be known or understood, while to the deep elves Nuin is revered on par with the god of all elves, as Nuin is not only the god of the domain they live in but the god to whom they are beholden for the gifts that allow them to live and thrive in that domain.
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Water-dwelling elves are often referred to collectively simply as sea elves or aquatic elves, and those who are less familiar with them often do not realize that the term in fact refers to two distinct, though closely related, groups of elves. In Common they are usually referred to as 'wave elves' and 'deep elves' although their own words translate more closely to 'people of wind and sun' and 'people of deep waters.'
Wave elves are not greatly dissimilar in appearance to other elves, with their most distinguishing feature being that their skin, though primarily brown, has undertones of blue and green. They are adept swimmers and can hold their breath for a long time, but cannot breathe underwater. Wave elves are primarily sailors; although they live close to water and are comfortable in it, they do not live in it. Deep elves are markedly different in appearance: their skin comes in mottled patterns of blue, green and silver, their hands and feet are long and webbed, they have short fins on their arms and legs and gills on their throats, and they have hairless heads and large, sensitive eyes. They are well adapted to a life spent almost totally in water, able to breathe underwater and bear the cold of deeper waters with ease. Deep elves can breathe air as well, and can survive for a time out of water, but quickly grow uncomfortable and eventually sick in dry conditions.
Although they live different lives, wave elves and deep elves share a particular connection. Their homelands very often overlap partially or totally, and in such cases the groups usually have a close relationship. Some consider themselves to be all of one group or clan, that simply happens to have some members that live below the water and some that live below it; even those that are not quite so close are usually very friendly, freely sharing news and trading amicably. It is not unknown for wave elves and deep elves to come into conflict with each other, but it is quite rare.
Wood elves keep a watchful eye over the forests they call home. Any permanent wood elf community will have many members whose full-time occupation is concerned with maintaining the safety and health of their woodlands, and keeping their settlement in balance with its surroundings. Although the breakdown of these important roles varies between different communities, they largely break down into a few main categories:
--Forest wardens who patrol the woods, record the weather, track groups of animals, take samples of soil and water, and generally watch for any signs of disease, invasion, or other signs that the health of the forest is suffering. They will not intervene with anything judged to be a part of the natural ebb and flow of any environment, but if the problem is too severe, or unnatural in origin, they will take steps to address it, whether this means driving out a group of over-hunting bandits or removing an invasive species.
--Fire wardens work closely with the first group, but specialize in controlling and containing fires, ensuring that settlements are not at risk for spreading fires and quickly acting to put out any that do get out of control. Since the occasional wildfire is natural and important for the health of most forests, the fire wardens do not attempt to prevent them entirely, but they watch for signs that one is likely to happen soon and, when the fire does come, they protect the settlement itself. Although they use some physical measures such as firebreaks and water pumps, the bulk of this job is done with magic, involving a mix of ward spells and direct elemental manipulation. Fire wardens train their magical abilities rigorously and are highly specialized at their craft, with many knowing few if any spells outside this specific purview.
--Loathe though they may be to cut down any part of their forest if it can be avoided, wood elves still require some amount of lumber for building and fuel. The task of procuring this wood is thus undertaken only by those trained in the skill of gathering it with as little impact to the larger environment as possible. These tree-harvesters collect naturally fallen wood throughout the forest, and cut down carefully selected trees, staggering their efforts so that no one area is cut too heavily. They watch both for natural signs indicating which areas will not suffer to lose a few trees versus which ones are more fragile, and for any messages or signals from forest gods or spirits that might warn away from interfering with a particular tree or grove.
