u/Zac_Kariah

They better start calling him Einarr 10 eyes.

A nine eyed axe for Einar one-eye. Match made in heaven Valhalla.

Forgive me if this has been discussed before, but I have what I am going to coin as ‘World Bird Theory’ for the sake of sounding ominous and mysterious.

A few things I’ve picked up on while playing both Tangle Tower and Mermaid’s Mask is a recurring evidence of what I theorise to be… a celestial bird that may have created the world (or large parts of it)

Hear me out. I’ll be somewhat going off of recollection as I first found it when TT first released and have yet to replay since MM.

This began in Tangle Tower, there are described to be “smooth, white mountain slopes” in the distance from the tower. However, on closer inspection, those mountains seem too thin to be ordinary.

Forgive my memory if I’m wrong on the details, but I believe there was further evidence in TT of a snowglobe/diorama that showed the mountains encircling the area with these white, sloped cliff points. So, with all the bird-focused plot in the game, I theorised at the time that the mountains were actually the remains of a giant egg, cracked open at the top and leaving the jagged eggshell surrounding the tower.

I was only reminded of this when it came to the end of Mermaid’s mask, inside of the curiosity cabinet of Zephyr the pair notice an ‘astrolabe which is all rotating around a bird’s foot”, followed by a very notable “…” from the characters. Usually saved for “this is hinting at something” throughout the game, yet no further regard, similar to the cliffs. It’s simply background stuff.

So, we have an implied giant bird large enough to have things orbiting around it and a tremendous bird’s egg that now houses an entire small island + ocean.

My assumptions could be off, the bird could’ve hatched from the egg and it’s all the one creature, or the celestial bird could have laid the egg that eventually turned into the mountains and there’s perhaps more out there.

Lastly, the most meta evidence, and I hope it’s not bad to go into. After the release of TT, I private messaged one of the devs, Adam Vian. Sadly I don’t have all the messages, I could be wrong, bit it sort of looks like some of them were either deleted or old Twitter ended up losing them to time (all I have is him pointing me to the discord to discuss my theories), but going off of my memory, I brought up some of the unanswered mysteries, including the egg, to which he replied that “not many people had picked up on some of these”. Before suggesting I could discuss it in the discord.

So, am I crazy? Is this all super obvious and I’m making it out like a revelation? Does anyone else have any evidence to back up some huge, planet sized cryptid bird? Let me know!

Perhaps I should have replayed TT before making this post to get my facts straight, but I wanted to do so while it was on my mind.

I’m looking for something like a compendium of items/services etc and their prices for SD that is balanced around the economy in Shadowdark specifically. Something that covers a lot of ground like mundane objects, vehicles, animals, services, maybe magic items and spells etc. the more the better.

I have one of these for DnD which is useful, but the economy is obviously super different.
Thanks!

I’m mostly looking from a hypothetical angle, but I’ve seen my players be a little bit annoyed sometimes while trying to act together during crawling. (Such as the last player in turn order having the one torch the rest need to explore)

Do you know if there are any good ways to work around this problem, assuming they aren’t passing the torch around (like two people have hands taken up and last in order doesn’t).

This applies to any situation where you’d prefer to defer to the last person in order. Is there a good ‘delay’ rule, or is it best to just embrace that the faster players will sometimes have little to do on their turn?

Basically a plot item the players are about to acquire is an artefact weapon from my world. It’s a sword that’s too powerful for its own good (gets stronger every day, centuries later it would basically level a mountain if ever used)

The threat to the party is that its scabbard, the only thing that can contain it, is about to break, so they need a way to prepare to unleash the blade’s power without causing mayhem.

The issue is I want to ensure there aren’t any easy or silly ways to solve the problem. One that comes to mind is putting it in a bag of holding to blow it up in a demi-plane/extra-dimensional space with no risk. Current thought is so say it would destroy the bag on the way in, but the scabbard would suppress it long enough to do that by my logic.

So since it’s an important plot hook, I wanted to get ahead of any similar schemes that would take away from the magnitude of the weapon, so if you have more potentially ‘easy’ solutions (preferably with suggestions to fill those holes), please let me know.

Potential solutions I have so far:
- The bag of holding would just explode and the blast keeps going into the material plane.
- The blast will open up a tear to the astral plane if unleashed wrong, chaos ensues.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Sorry if this seems an obvious/common question. I have a new small business selling shirts and wanted to know if I can put them under large letters as opposed to small packages. They fit in the weight and dimensions but they are also soft, so I wanted to be sure that won’t cause a problem. (I’m using postal bags)

Thanks in advance for your help!

For my long-term hex crawl campaign, the pitch I’m generally going with is “You have one year to stop the ritual”, so I thought what better way to track that than with a literal calendar featuring every quest, holiday, event and deadline tracked.

Days of travel will matter, a week spent carousing is a week of time lost, downtime is important but sometimes you won’t have time for it if a quest is about to expire.

I’ve been building a calendar in Excel and started prepping special mechanics, so wanted to list a few here as I go in case it helps inspire others:

- Side quests the players proc will roll dice to see how long before they expire (so if it’s in the town over, maybe 2D4+2 days before the missing person becomes missing *forever*)
- On Sundays, shops will be closed (Or charge more if you’re desperate), but because people don’t work, it’ll be a good time for carousing, with a +1 benefit.
- Seasons will offer certain effects, camping outside in winter is a recipe for a cold death, but in summer things will be temperate and you might even have more sunlight before dark.
- holidays like Fantasy-Christmas and Fantasy-Halloween will have special events like increased treasure or increased odds of… supernatural encounters. And also a week of festivity that means a bonus to carousing!
- If the adventure is not completed before the new year, the ritual is finished. But… it’s not the end of the world… *right?*

I’ll be adding more over time, if you have suggestions as well, let me know!

While building their characters for my campaign, players have sort of agreed that they feel the human is both the most powerful and the most fun species to play and I kinda agree.

Getting more of your specific gimmick is just the most exciting option as a player and even when you specifically want something like +1 to spellcasting or attacks from an elf or half-orc, the common abilities from a talent is +2 to a stat or +1 to casting/attacks etc.

Do other people feel the same? Is there a way to justify the other species or optionally homebrews people know of that seem good?