Hey all,
I wanted to send out a friendly reminder, just in case you were not already aware, there will be the Ennie Awards voting coming up this month!
The dates are July 10th, 2026 to July 19th, 2026. Be sure to get your votes in for your favorite Publisher. Obviously it’s Necrotic Gnome, right? I mean what are we even doin’ here lol.
Dolmenwood FTW!!!
Trailer for Robert Eggars new “Werewulf” film just dropped and I’m sitting there like… “I’ve seen these people before.”
Hey fellow DM’s, what sort of resources do you recommend for understanding castles? I’m always finding myself having to look up terminology for them because I don’t actually know what the hell makes them up! Is there an encyclopedic master work on castles which describes al there is to know and discern for the fortress-impaired among us peasants?
Teach me your wisdom, oh ye accommodated beings behind ye walls of stone!
Tonight I decided to read a bit about the ley-lines again. For a while now I’ve been wanting to give an interpretation into how I see the functions and greater implications, narratively speaking, of what they mean and why they are there. Some extrapolations I’ve made from my read of the campaign book seem pretty cool, so I thought I’d share for your enjoyment. This is going to spoil a ton, so please be warned. Been working out some epic concepts with their symbolic meaning. Keep in mind these are my interpretations, and not meant to standardize or control any narrative options for how anyone else would like to interpret. It’s just for fun and for the love of the cosmology of this great game.
Essentially the 3 natural ley-lines are having to do with what I take to be the 3 great “powers” or “mysterious wonders” behind existence itself:
Hoad—Birth (life/generation/origin)
Lamm—Woah (suffering/grief/“problem of evil”)
Ywyr—Raven (death/finality/eschaton)
And then there’s a 4th synthetic Ley (Chell), which the Drune crafted to harness the power from the Raven line to banish the Cold Prince. The 3 dominant mortal forces in Dolmenwood utilized the power of death to bar his entry into the mortal world, thereby making him stuck behind a door of “finality.”
Then the ever more mysterious 5th (non)ley is projected by geomancers to be connecting the 4 “Vorpal” monoliths lined from East to West across the map. Vorpal is sort of a made up word which comes from Lewis Carol in his 1871 poem “Jabberwocky” in the book “Through the looking glass” where it talks about a vorpal blade. So it seems to be taken to mean “sharp/keen/or deadly” according to the Internet. Really strange and interesting to use that name for the 4 standing stones. All of them have a particular function within each of the 4 seasons per stone:
Winter, offering the power to use a spell of shadow or darkness perpetually.
Spring, offering the ability to make healing spells have double potency.
Summer, illusions made reality.
Autumn, making a perpetual charm upon targets and they are telepathically linked with each other.
It doesn’t explain what will happen with these when they all get activated, but my guess is that in order for them to be done at the same time, there has to be time travel involved (maybe with the help of Fairy?) and an obvious cohesion between the 4 individuals to have the goal in mind to activate these monoliths. One problem is that the charmed persons turn against the one whom charmed them, thus reducing any chance of a goal being set very easily. This seems intentional so as to reduce the chance of this 5th line getting activated. Because if it did, it would technically pass (or slice) through all other Ley-lines, potentially cutting through them and destroying their power, or fracturing them. Which could be either something entirely outside of any concept we know of yet, or actually bring about some kind of world-ending event.
Finally, my thought here is to have the players be the ones whom are telepathically connected in a party, but to not actually know how or why. I think that would be a really fun way to play it… even if a little bit “tropey” and similar to how Boulder’s Gate 3 does it with the brain worms lol. Hey, a good plot is a good plot!
Would love to know if you enjoyed this and if you have any further extrapolations/interpretations in mind and/or any thoughts or comments you wish to add.
Cheers!