#killoren

Brett Killoren

Another year has come and gone, and another Monster Week has arrived (April 20-24). This year, it's everything that has to do with the fey. When I did Kraken Week, I did species options, and when I did Dragon Week, I converted monsters to add to the game. I figured this year I'd go back to converting a playable to race to the newly minted 5.5 (formally 2024) rules.

Reminder that this was originally created and hosted by Point Hat and Ginny Di, for YouTubers to come together and do videos on that year's chosen monster. It’s been encouraged for others to join in as well. I’m not a YouTuber, so I post to this Tumblr blog.

The artist is for the logo is Antonio Demico, aka Pointy Hat himself.

For this entry, we're looking at the killoren from the Races of the Wild 3.5 book that came out in February 2005, over 22 years ago.

DnD character design

@feyundead mentioned a modern fantasy AU type of deal, and I had to try.

This is Avehree, my Kilorean Shaman. For more info, and design drawings, look below the cut.

Come on fill your cup up

Looking for some good luck

Good luck, good luck to you

Autumn, I'll be gone

Birds will sing their mourning song

Song

Route 666 passed around the Elwin Forest (not through, the druids had made sure of that), through the Foxconn Plains, the City of Shinning then reached Magellan. Magellan’s annual Tournament of Champions attracted thousands of spectators, merchants, healers, and contestants from all over the Starbucks Continent. Tickets to competitions, merchant’s spots in the market, and competition registration all operated on a first-come, first-serve basis. Most routes leading to Magellan became very crowded in the weeks leading up to the competition, full of people trying to get to the city as early as possible. But Route 666, even though it was the fastest route from the south of the continent to Magellan, was mostly empty. A lone green girl trudged along the route, head held low. Her eagle companion circled over 30 feet over her.

People avoided the Foxconn Plains for a reason. It was a flat and barren wasteland that didn’t seem to end. Occasional ponds of bubbling green muck occasionally broke the monotony, but they themselves were dangerous. The fumes caused hallucinations. Those who fell into the ponds usually disintegrated, or gained an extra limb or tentacles. The place used to be the biggest city in Starbucks a few million years ago. Excavations unearthed bits of bricks, tiny green sheets of riddled with knobs that wasn’t metal, and huge nets made of the same material. Historians agreed that the Foxconn Plains must have hosted a civilization that really liked bouncing in green nets. Most likely, the green things had been soft and bouncy when they were first made, but had hardened under the dirt after the civilization fell for some reason or other. The historians moved on after they found all they could. Cults occasionally held huge raves in the plains, fuelled by the green ponds’ hallucinogenic fumes.

The green girl, Hyunahpark, didn’t know any of this. This was the first time she had ever left the Elwin Forest. All she knew was that according to the maps she had managed to find, she was now a week and a half away from Magellan, and that she had at least five more days left to walk in this brown wasteland. She stalled in the middle of the road and tried not to cry. Elwin Forest got smaller and smaller behind her. Her eagle, Casper, was enjoying his flight too much to come down for a reassuring hug.

Hyunahpark knew Master Chankyukim probably hadn’t meant to actually banish her from Elwin Forest. But then, she was probably the first apprentice to fail to reach journeyman status for 6 decades, and definitely the first to burn down a section of his hut. Even if he hadn’t meant it… she didn’t want to go back until she could prove she was at least useless. Master Chankyukim had stopped acknowledging her existence quite a while, probably hoping that she would give up on being a proper druid. Winning the Tournament of Champions might be able to bring him around. It couldn’t be that hard to win. They were mere elves and humans. Still, Hyunahpark hesitated.

“Why stop?” Casper pinged from 50 feet above her head.

“Do I need to go?” Hyunahpark replied.

“You. Potato,” pinged Casper. Hyunahpark felt his impatience. Casper had hated the forest. The trees constantly blocked his view and got in his way. Here, Casper could see everything, including his miserable companion. He dived down and nipped playfully at one of Hyunahpark’s willow tree hair. He rubbed against her cheeks, and let her touch his gorgeously soft tuft of white head feathers. “Good potato,” he pinged.

“Ok, ok. I’ll be a good potato.” Hyunahpark sighed heavily and resumed walking. Casper settled onto her shoulders, nipping whenever she looked back or slowed down.

Rhaelleath swore when he saw the goblin tracks. He should have known better than to listen to Cousin Steeb. “You don’t need insurance,” he’d said, “I have a flameshooter. We’ll be called the Shoe Dragons, and robbers will run screaming at the sight of us.” Now Steeb was still recuperating from the burns he’d sustained when he decided to try mixing hydrogen into his flameshooter fuel. Why did he listen to an elf who thought carrying a bag of highly flammable gases that shot 10 foot long streams of fire in random directions was a good thing?

Rhaelleath considered heading back to Route 10, and taking a longer way around but with other travellers. Route 666 was so unpopular that people probably wouldn’t find his body for months, possibly never if robbers decided to dunk his remains in one of the green mucks. But then, this was the fastest route. Robbers who chose to camp out in the least-frequented route were probably bumbling buffoons who had been pushed out of the higher-traffic areas anyway. Rhaelleath looked back at his cart full of hand-stitched shoes made with the highest quality suede. Each pair should go for 70 gold at least if he got to Magellan early enough to set up shop in the fashion district. Rhaelleath sighed and tugged Asus, his horse.

The goblin tracks got clearer and clearer farther down Route 666. An hour later, Asus stopped completely and refused to move. Rhaelleath tried to calm him down, but got snapped at instead. Goblins terrified horses, and Asus could be infuriatingly stubborn.

Rhaelleath saw a green head bobbing near Asus’s hindquarters and immediately swung at it. The green being jumped back with a yelp.

“Please don’t kill me,” it pleaded.

“What? No, I wasn’t, well, what, why, what were you doing to my horse?” sputtered Rhaelleath. The green thing, girl really, looked like a green scarecrow. Her sylvan face dangled awkwardly off her neck. She had pointed chins and an exquisite jawline. Weeping willow branches sprouted out of the top of her head. Her eyes took up almost a third of her face and had no lids. They were black and shiny. Rhaelleath could see horrified expression reflected off her eyes. She was not a reassuring sight.

“He looked nervous,” the girl wailed.

Rhaelleath looked back at Asus, who was nonchalantly staring at the girl who had touched his flank just a minute ago. This was a surprise--the last idiot to touch Asus without the horse’s express permission was still in the hospital with a hoof-shaped dent on his skull. Rhaelleath took another look at the girl. She was wearing light leather armor with ivy vines wrapped around her torso. She carried wooden shield. Her arrow tips were made of sharpened rocks or trees. there was no metal in sight.

“Are you a druid?” he asked as kindly as he could.

“Yes,” sniffled the girl.

Druids meant healing powers, calm animals, and someone to watch his back. Rhaelleath couldn’t believe his luck. He smiled and pat the girl’s shoulders. “Don’t be scared. You can come with Asus and me.”

Killoren believes in robust moral realism which is a set of theories featuring non-naturalism (every moral fact is indipendent from every scientific fact), objectivism (every moral fact is indipendent from our personal sense of justice) and moral optimism (our deepest moral beliefs are mostly true). in this article he argues that robust moral realism, in whatever form it comes, implies some “sort of faith”, which he defines ESEC, Explanatory superfluity entails faith:

If one believes that P, although one accepts that P does not play a contributory role in the best available explanations of any natural facts or phenomena, then one believes that P on faith (p. 6)