Rating Shadowlands' Launch Event

 Since Burning Crusade, every expansion has come with an event to mark the launch of the expansion. The scope and breadth of these events has varied considerably. I'll come right out and remind people that Mists of Pandaria had the most bare-bones event - it was purely the ability to queue for a level 85 version of the Fall of Theramore scenario, with nothing else really happening elsewhere in the world.

As I recall, the biggest was probably the one for Cataclysm, which saw four capital cities attacked by raging elementals, a plot involving doomsday cultists that were actually part of Twilight's Hammer, and other elemental invasion spots across the world.

The pre-Wrath event was the first incarnation of the Zombie plague - though it also included the Scourge Invasions, which were a repeat of the event that had preceded the launch of Naxxramas (in Vanilla they seemed to want to do worldwide events of this sort even for just patches, which is why we had the whole Ahn Qiraj War Effort prior to that.)

So, what do I think of this pre-Shadowlands event?

I think it's roughly middle-tier. Most of the action is limited to Icecrown, and while the zombie plague is fully back, I haven't actually seen many people participating in it - if you weren't playing at the end of BC during the Wrath pre-patch, you might not realize just how crazy the zombie plague was. You couldn't get anything done - I remember literally hiding in the basement of the Darkshire Inn on my level 20 Warlock so the zombies wouldn't find me.

The resurrected bosses from Wrath are fun, though mostly it's just been frustrating to not get that damned bag to drop on any of my Horde characters (in retrospect, I was extremely lucky to get it the first time on my Paladin and Demon Hunter and on the second try for my Death Knight.)

I'd also have liked there to be some mount or other major cosmetic thing to earn. While there is a battle pet, I find myself wondering: was there not already a geist pet?

Still, the thing to remember about these events is that they're only there briefly. Blizzard can only spare so much to work on them, as they're just a temporary part of the game.

I'm far more excited to get into the expansion proper, which is only a few days away!

Is Mighty Servant of Leuk-O is Your Anti-Tarrasque Jaeger Mech?

 One of the most enjoyable parts of reading through the new Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is the discovery of its incredibly powerful artifacts - these are magic items you can easily built a campaign around.

Among them, the one that I keep coming back to is the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O.

This is an ancient machine of mysterious origin that, when activated, becomes a pilotable, huge-sized mech.

Let's get the downsides out of the way first: two creatures can attune to it at once, and while attuning, any creature or object within 50 feet of it has a 25% chance to be targeted by one of its attacks (which hit hard.) Next, every 24 hours while it's uncrewed, the ghostly spirit animating it will attack something at random (DM's discretion - both what to attack and whether to actually do this) especially if it'll cause a bunch of mayhem and destruction.

Also, if the construct loses half its hit points, the crew has to make a DC 20 Wisdom save or be charmed by it, and then go on a destructive rampage.

The device can also be set to self-destruct, which takes both pilots three rounds using their actions to pull all the levers and press all the right buttons in the proper order. While doing this, the device tries to charm them into attacking one another instead (using the same DC) and at the end of the third round, the thing explodes in a 100 ft. radius sphere, dealing (wait for it) 25d6 force damage, 25d6 lightning damage, and 25d6 thunder damage (got 75 d6s on you?) which a DC 25 Dexterity saving throw can reduce to half (a lucky Monk or Rogue will feel like a god if they succeed on that throw.) Oh, and anything inside, including its crew, is instantly slain and leaves no remains (though I guess if you leave the hatch open and jump out using your movement after your action you'll merely take 262 damage from the blast?)

The self-destruct is something you'll probably have a hard time pulling off anyway, but frankly, a lot of the downsides here (other than the once-a-day attack) are unlikely to happen, given that this thing is nigh-indestructible.

The construct is immune to acid, bludgeoning, cold, fire, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, and radiant damage. Oh, and it's resistant to slashing and piercing. And that's not specifying "from nonmagical attacks." No, this thing is straight up immune to bludgeoning even if it was Thor smacking it with Mjolnir. In fact, I also think that means that it can't take falling damage (even if the ground's not magical, falling's not an attack, and so usually the damage gets around these immunities.)

So if I remember my damage types correctly, that means that only Force and Thunder damage will do their full amount to it, while you can chip away at it with piercing and slashing damage.

Oh, and it also has an AC of 22, 310 Hit Points, and regenerates 10 hit points at the start of its turn, unless it's at 0 - but don't worry, because 24 hours of repairs will get it back in shape or just hitting it with any lightning damage. Yep, my Dragonborn could just yell at it to fix it.

The crew also gets total cover from all effects outside of the construct as long as the hatch is closed.

Oh, and even if you self-destruct it, it's not permanently destroyed - instead, its various pieces land 2d6 days later within 1000 miles, and if you bring them all within 5 feet of each other, they reconnect and the thing is restored.

So yes, this thing is absolutely insanely powerful. And as such, I would highly recommend that if you're a DM, you only ever give it to a party that is either A: in the endgame of their campaign or B: with the understanding that you're going to take it away from them.

But, let's take a look at the Tarrasque and see how the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O would do against it:

First off, Leuk-O does an average of 36 damage per hit, with a +17 to hit (either at range or in melee.) Each attack takes an action from one of the pilots, so that's just two attacks per round.

The Tarrasque has an AC of 25, so the pilots need to roll an 8 or higher to hit, meaning that they're hitting 13/20 of the time, which is 65%.

The Tarrasque also has 676 hit points. Leuk-O hits for 36 damage on average, or crits for 62. So when it hits, that makes its average damage actually 38. We multiply that by .65 for average damage, hit or miss, and get roughly 25 damage per attack. Two attacks per round means 50 damage per round, so it'll take Leuk-O 14 rounds to take a Tarrasque all the way down on its own, on average. (The damage is Force, so it should get past the Tarrasque's resistances easily.) That's a tall order. How well can Leuk-O survive the Tarrasque's onslaught?

The Tarrasque does 5 attacks every round, and also has legendary actions, which adds in an additional claw and bite attack. (If we're assuming that it's purely the two pilots in the Servant vs. the Tarrasque, and the Tarrasque is smart enough not to try to use its tail for legendary actions.)

Now, because of all the different attacks, we'll have to calculate some things separately. First off, I'm ignoring the tail attack because the bludgeoning damage does no damage to Leuk-O. It could knock it prone, which introduces the complexities of advantage, but given that the tail comes at the end of the Tarrasque's turn, I think the pilots can always get Leuk-O up before that becomes an issue.

Also, the Tarrasque can't swallow the Huge Leuk-O (and it wouldn't be wise for it to do so, given that Leuk-O's immune to acid) so we'll ignore that.

So: the Tarrasque has a +19 to hit, and Leuk-O has 22 AC, which means that the Tarrasque only needs to roll a 3 to hit our big construct. 90% of the time, it hits. So let's go attack by attack:

The bite does an average of 36 damage (and Leuk-O can't be grappled or restrained, which makes my life easier.) A crit (this is easier thanks to the fact that it's the same damage as Leuk-O's attacks) is 62. But, thanks to resistances, this actually comes out to 18 and 31. Taking into account the chance to hit or crit, we then get roughly 19 average damage per bite attack. It can do this twice (once on its turn, and once as a legendary action, so our final "bite damage per round" is 38.

Claws do an average of 28 damage, critting for 46. Again, we half the slashing, making this 14 and 46. (EDIT: Whoops, forgot to halve the crits. If a crit is 23, that changes things). With the chance to miss, we plug these into the formula for roughly 16 damage per claw attack. Actually,  With two claw attacks and a legendary action, this then becomes about 48 claw damage per round. (EDIT: Getting the crit right, this is reduced to 14.5 average damage, which brings the damage per round down to only 43.5 - though that's not really enough to change to overall conclusion).

Next, we get the Horns, which do an average of 32 damage. They do 54 on a crit. We'll halve both thanks to resistances, so that becomes 16 and 27. Plugging it in, we get an average of 17 horn damage per attack, which is also how many horn attacks happen per round.

So then, with the tail rendered (mostly) irrelevant, the total damage output against Leuk-O by the Tarrasque is 103. However, because Leuk-O recovers 10 hit points per round, we'll reduce that to 93. (EDIT: Make that 89.5).

Given that Leuk-O has 310 hit points, this means that the Tarrasque ultimately takes about 4 rounds to take down the mech in a melee brawl.

That is... well, holy crap. I think I understand a bit better why the Tarrasque is CR 30.

Now, I think that the thing to remember here is that Leuk-O has some advantages. For one thing, most adventuring parties have more than two members. You could buff the construct in a few ways - casting Fly on it, for example, works because as a construct, it technically counts as a creature. The range on Leuk-O's attacks is up to 120 feet, which means it can be well out of reach for the Tarrasque.

Also, Leuk-O getting taken down doesn't actually destroy it - if you have a constant source of lightning damage to keep zapping it, it regains its hit points at the start of its turn - meaning that you still get the rest of the turn to do stuff.

But it's also notable that for all the power of the Mighty Servant, 50 damage per round is actually fairly low for the kind of high-level adventurers that would expect to fight the Tarrasque. Clearly that damage goes way up against lower-armored foes.

Anyway, still super-awesome.

Thoughts on 9.0 Class Changes

 We've now had 9.0 for a few weeks, and we've got less than a week before we head off into the Shadowlands expansion proper. While I was lucky enough to get bags on my three primary Alliance characters I've now killed Bronjahm on my Shaman like 5 times (on separate days) and have had no luck, so, poo.

But I thought I'd talk about class changes and how I feel about them. This isn't going to get into the super-nitty-gritty, but mostly just talk about the changes I've noticed and my feelings about them.

Paladins:

Retribution is nearly unchanged, so there's not a ton to report here except that having Consecration as a filler and a target-less AoE ability is actually pretty nice. Now, Protection, which is my main spec (though I did so little group content in BFA that I probably played more as Ret) did get some massive changes, particularly with the reintroduction of Holy Power as a resource. I remember feeling that the move away from HoPo in Legion was an odd choice, albeit one that I got used to. The main thing is that timing of your Shield of the Righteous is now going to automatically be staggered a bit. I do feel like our damage output has gotten better, such that I could actually see soloing as Prot. But most of the same tools are there. One thing that is rather odd about Paladins is that they moved the level at which Avenging Wrath grants the ability to use Hammer of Wrath regardless of enemy health to the 50-60 range, which means that we briefly lose that functionality in this pre-patch, despite this having been a thing for many expansions. Oh well.

Death Knights:

Two-handed frost. It's back, thank... well, not the Light. Thank Death? Anyway, I'm really hoping that 2H Frost becomes viable, and preferably in a way that lets me never have to use Breath of Sindragosa again! Most of the abilities are still around and work the same way, but Frost now has Death and Decay again, as well as Raise Dead, which gives us another cooldown and some more AoE options. We also have some new runeforge options, though I don't know if they'll ever wind up as good as the old Fallen Crusader.

Demon Hunters:

Nearly unchanged. Havoc now has Immolation Aura, which again gives them a filler AoE option (notice a pattern here?) But this looks like another "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation.

Shamans:

Hoo boy, here we have a real change. While Elemental looks like it was reverted to be pretty similar to its Legion/BFA model, Enhancement has sort of reverted to its Warlords incarnation but retained some of the simplicity of its Legion incarnation - you're definitely going to have some empty GCDs (which is actually not terrible for such a utility class) but after working on getting comfortable keybinds and figuring out the most important abilities, it's actually not too bad, and also pretty fun. But the big thing is: no more Maelstrom as a resource (though Maelstrom Weapon is back as a proc, thankfully stacking to 10 now but only consuming up to 5 at a time, so you have some wiggle-room if you don't get the cast off before you get more procs,) and most things have cooldowns. But you also have a totem you'll want to put down all the time, which brings back a hint of that old-school Shaman gameplay.

Rogues:

Subtlety is my primary Rogue experience, so I'll mostly comment from there: Rotationally, the big change is that Slice and Dice is back. This is actually my main gripe, as I always kind of hated Slice and Dice, finding things like Nightblade (which is now just Rupture again, but more or less the same) more active. So there's a bit more of a maintenance aspect to the spec now, though the underlying rotation is otherwise mostly the same, and I seem to be doing more damage with it (compared to other specs) than I was, so I'll chalk that up as a win.

Mage:

The Frost Mage is, I believe, almost entirely unchanged, which is right and correct as Frost Mages are already magnificent.

Warlock:

Demonology - we have Corruption back, but according to Icy-Veins, we don't actually use it, so great! I think the most noticeable thing is the return of Curses, a bunch of situationally useful debuffs that you can apply to foes. Takes up a lot of action bar spots, but also potentially useful, so cool!

Warrior:

Arms has been feeling pretty solid for the past couple expansions (I remember it feeling like a train wreck in Warlords, when I just gave up and went Fury) and while there are a couple subtle changes, it's still built around using Overpower to buff Mortal Strike. You can also have both Sweeping Strikes and Cleave, the latter of which (a talent) no longer costs Rage, so you can use it opening up on a group if you don't have Bladestorm off cooldown.

Priest:

Shadow is very different now. Void Form is more of a traditional cooldown now, and you'll be spending your Insanity on Devouring Plague. Most of the other abilities remain, but the change to Void Form is going to vastly change the way that the spec feels, rotationally.

Hunter:

Beast Mastery is, I believe, also fairly unchanged, except for the return of Kill Shot as an execute ability. Hunter's Mark is also back, but no longer buffs damage, and so is more for flavor or if you're fighting enemies that can stealth (so, mostly for PvP.)

I don't know that I can comment all that much of Druids or Monks.

Overall, with a couple of exceptions, they really don't seem to be reinventing the wheel like they did with class changes in Mists of Pandaria or Legion. But I think most classes and specs are in pretty decent places, so I admire the restraint.

Remember that everyone's getting some new abilities or changes to abilities as we level up to 60 (for instance, Subtlety Rogues get a new AoE finisher) so there are certainly ways that rotations might feel different once we actually get up to level 60. It also means that some specs that are underperforming now might become a lot stronger - for instance, Frost Death Knights' Killing Machine-empowered Obliterates will start doing all their damage as frost damage, which ought to be a major buff (not only ignoring armor, but also getting buffed by mastery.)

Tasha's In-Hand!

 Well, that's probably the last time I'll be leaving my home other than to get groceries for a while, given the plague.

But I now have my special limited edition copy of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything! (Thankfully, my FLGS is very strict about masks and they have a giant sheet of plastic between the cashiers and the customers, so I think it was a relatively safe sojourn - less so the convenience store I hit up later where people couldn't seem to remember that the mask is also supposed to go over your nose!)

But depressingly 2020-relevant rants aside, we have our new major rules expansion for 5th Edition!

Much like Xanathar's Guide to Everything, I think the flagship feature here will be the new subclasses. Every class gets at least one brand-new one - even the Artificer - in addition to a few setting-agnostic reprints of subclasses found in SCAG, Ravnica, and Theros. Yes, we see a Gnome Spore Druid and a Dragonborn Order Cleric, as well as a Tiefling Glory Paladin and a Drow Eloquence Bard - I think they deliberately chose races that don't show up in those setting to show how things have changed (though the Tiefling's lion-skin "armor" is a clever nod to the Greek myths that inspired Theros.)

Of course, we also need to note that the Artificer has become a setting-agnostic class officially, which really welcomes them fully into the 5th Edition fold.

The next feature of the book that really drew my attention was the new magic items they've introduced. For one thing, there are a ton of class-specific spell foci - I always felt that casters generally had fewer exciting options until you got into the really insane stuff at high levels, but here we have things like planar shards for Sorcerers that each have a kind of theme to them, magic spellbooks for Wizards that are themed around the various schools of magic, as well as a couple of Rod-of-the-Pact-Keeper scaling items that can be used by particular classes - like +1, +2, and +3 variants on the All-Purpose Tool for Artificers, which can turn into any type of tool as an action, buffs your spell attack and spell save DC, and can also grant you access to any cantrip for up to 8 hours.

Essentially, there are way more things that DMs can feel pretty safe tossing to players without unbalancing the game that nevertheless feel tailor-made for the player character.

In addition, (and this is the really mind-blowing part) are the artifact-level magic items. This includes Mother Luba's Tarokka Deck, the Demonomicon of Iggwilv, and the Servant of Leuk-o - the last of which is a gods-damned mech that your party can pilot. Each of these has a mind-blowing feature that has a hell of a downside.

For example, the Servant of Leuk-o can be set to self-destruct, but it requires two creatures that are attuned to it to spend three turns putting the sequence into action, during which the mech tries to charm them into fighting each other instead, and then when their third action is completed, at the end of that turn, the mech explodes, dealing an average of 262 damage (a mix of force, lightning, and thunder) in a 100-ft radius and utterly destroying anyone inside - so naturally, I've been trying to figure out how one could game it so that the pilots could survive - my best option is a Sorcerer uses metamagic for a quickened Dimension Door right after the last action is made, grabbing their co-pilot and getting to a safe distance right as the thing blows. The best part is that the self-destruct doesn't actually permanently destroy it - the parts of the mech rain down 2d6 days later.

So I could totally see an early part of a campaign having the party witness a giant mech arm (the whole mech is huge in size) land on some village where they're questing, and they have to find the pieces to build it and then maybe deal with whatever threat caused the previous users to self-destruct it.

What makes these artifacts so cool is that they seem to come with a story attached to them, and there's incredible power mixed with serious downsides.

I need to do a more thorough read of the Group Patron chapter, though I've found my campaigns often kind of develop something akin to that anyway. Likewise, I'm curious about Sidekicks, though my current campaign has six or seven regular players, so I don't think they really need any helpful NPCs (a small-party campaign could totally use them, though.)

You're not going to find nearly as many spells in this one as in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but the array of Conjuration (well, one is Necromancy) spells found within it are really solid, strong, and thankfully consistent - if your Druid keeps conjuring some bizarre mix of woodland creatures, maybe see if you can get them interested in Summon Fey, Summon Beast, or Summon Elemental, which conjures just a single creature, but one that is quite powerful. There's stuff from just about every planar setting here - from Aberrations to Celestials to Fiends to Constructs - that are spread out over, I believe, every spellcasting class (unsurprisingly, Wizards get access to the most - but even half-casters get some.)

The structure of these spells is consistent - there's a stat block that shows how the creature's health, armor, and how many attacks they get all scale with the spell's level, and their attack bonus is just your spell attack bonus, so there's not too much to remember. Each also lets you choose a variation on the summoned spirit - for instance, your Undead Spirit can be Ghostly, Skeletal, or Putrid, with different traits and attacks based on its form (with stuff based on ghosts, skeletons, and ghouls), while its ability scores, armor, saving throws, and other such things remain the same.

There's also an extensive section on magical environments, which I think holds a lot of promise. These are largely sort of loose guidelines, but there are tables to roll on for things to happen in these environments, which can be a place touched by the Far Realm, a Haunted area, or a place overcome with swarms of bugs, etc.

Again, like Xanathar's, the main takeaway from this book is a big expansion of rules. Probably the most directly relevant to most players will be the new subclasses, the artificer, and the new rules options for older classes.

For most classes, this simply includes ways for you to swap out choices you might have made while leveling - maybe you regret picking up a particular cantrip, or now that you've got a super-cool two-handed weapon, you wish you hadn't gone with the duelist fighting style.

Notably, Rangers can take new options that replace Natural Explorer and Favored Enemy, both of which give them more generalized abilities. The Beast Master also gets new ways to have their battle pet, using a standardized stat block and mechanics to more easily get them back if they die (I just think about all the times Vex was hesitant to use Trinket given how important the pet was to her character - though he got a super-epic moment in the Search for Grog one-shot that practically made up for it.)

Barbarians get a couple pure bonuses - gaining an additional skill at 3rd level and the ability to move up to half their speed as part of the bonus action when they rage - which is pretty cool.

Those classes with Fighting Styles get more of them, Warlocks get new Invocations and even a new Pact Boon (The Talisman.) Most of these are just "more stuff to choose from," which is always fun.

There's more to the book, but I think it'll be most interesting to just see how its content is integrated into the overall game. Lots of quality-of-life fixes here, and some really cool concepts. Hey, you want to grow to the size of a giant while you're fighting? Go with the Rune Knight Fighter. Want to be a creepy plague-doctor who can also heal in the midst of handing out pain? Go with the Way of Mercy Monk. Want to be Iron Man? Go with the Armorer Artificer.

It's so great to see all this stuff become official, and I can't wait for my players to unleash this stuff upon my monsters! (Also, I'm totally going to have evil spellcasters use those new spells.)

Final Fantasy XVI Trailer and My General Sense of What's Going On

 Guess I'm on a FF kick lately?

In September, we got the announcement trailer for Final Fantasy XVI.

So, a few things of note:

The first, most striking thing about this is that the game seems to be set in a truly medieval fantasy world, which is something that the Final Fantasy series hasn't really done since... Final Fantasy V?

On one hand, I've always enjoyed how Final Fantasy has expanded what a fantasy setting can be, and fully intend to bring in more VII-like elements into my homebrew D&D world (it was heading that way already, to be fair.) On the other hand, I can see how, for this series, this is a change of pace for a series that surely needs to change things up every now and then, given how prolific it is. I guess for me, having played tons of Dark Souls and the Witcher, and having just spent 9 years watching Game of Thrones, I'm not exactly starved for medieval fantasy media, but I'll give this one the benefit of the doubt.

XVI seems to be leaning toward a much darker tone than your typical Final Fantasy game. Based on what I've read on the official website, it's set in a world with several independent, rival kingdoms. Each of these kingdoms is built around a Crystal (always a big thing in FF games!) that seems to allow for an individual known as a Dominant to summon the kingdom's Eikon - which is this game's version of the summonable creatures like Espers from FFVI or Aeons from FFX. Not every kingdom treats its Dominant the same - in some, the Dominant automatically becomes their monarch, while in others, they're treated as a pariah and kind of forced to serve the kingdom.

The central character appears to be Clive Rosfield, who is the elder son of the Archduke of Rosaria (one of the kingdoms.) Though he was expected to become their Dominant, controlling the Phoenix Eikon, instead, his younger brother Joshua inherited that power. Without that destiny coming to him, he trained to become a knight and won, at a young age, the title of First Shield of Rosaria. However "something" happens involving the Eikon Ifrit (one of the staple summons from the series) that sends him on a quest for revenge.

Now, I'm hesitant to get into any of the other character bios on the website, given that I suspect we're in for some narrative twists as to who is really central to the plot.

We do know that the two faces we see at the end of the trailer are both Clive, suggesting that the story might involve a big time jump from Clive's teenage to adult years.

The rest here is really just speculation, based on the trailer:

We hear some dialogue about how the appearance of a second Eikon of fire is, well, unexpected. The art for the game's title, which tends to be pretty important, depicts the Phoneix and Ifrit in some sort of combat.

According to the website, Eikons reside within their Dominants - which makes me wonder if they aren't so much summoned as much as the Dominant transforms into the Eikon when they call upon their power.

There's clearly some court intrigue going on, with betrayals and such (that set Clive on his path of vengeance) and we see what is presumably one of Joshua's guardians (EDIT: actually, I suspect it's his and Clive's father, the Archduke, which would certainly heighten the trauma) slain, splattering the young Joshua in blood (a seriously M-rated moment for a Final Fantasy game.) This, it seems, sets Joshua off, and you hear some of his other guards begging him to calm down, as his eyes begin to glow with flame.

So here's my theory: Joshua is supposed to carry the Phoenix Eikon within him, but actually, he has Ifrit, which in this game looks like a Godzilla-sized fire-demon. While we do see Phoenix arrive to combat Ifrit (maybe?) I suspect that Joshua is actually the more monstrous of the Eikons.

Furthermore, if that's the case, and if Square wants to go super-dark with the story, I wonder if Clive's promise "I'll kill you, if it's the last thing I do," is not actually about taking revenge, but might instead be a promise to put his brother out of his misery, having become this terrible monster.

I've got to say, they've got me on the hook. Probably going to need to get a PS5 some time next year...

Earth and D&D

 Hey, you know what's nuts?

Earth is canonically one of D&D's settings.

In D&D, the general cosmology has, at its center (well, one of its centers - the residents of Sigil would certainly beg to differ) the Prime Material Plane. The "PMP" as it were, an abbreviation I will never use again (I'll just say Material Plane,) is the most straightforward of the planar realities - it's where worlds that are more or less like our own exist. Worlds where there are humanoids, beasts, and sure, there's some magic and stuff, but the ground is made of real dirt, the sky is real air, and things obey the laws of physics when magic isn't altering them.

Spelljammer expanded some of the lore of the Material Plane, adopting and adapting real-world medieval theories on the way the universe works, rather than our current model of solar system, stellar clusters, galaxy, galactic clusters, and the observable universe governed by things like Einstein's relativity and universal expansion. Back when there was a geocentric model of the universe, the belief was that the planets (which, in that model, included the sun and the moon) were all part of spheres rotating around the earth, and that beyond them was an outermost sphere in which the stars were embedded, and beyond that was literally God only knows what. (Note for medieval scientific history buffs - that's just what I can recall off the top of my head, which I think is more or less the gist, even if I got some details wrong.)

So Spelljammer takes this idea of Crystal Spheres and suggests that each D&D world, from the Forgotten Realms' Toril to Dragonlance's Krynn to Greyhawk's Oerth, rests within its own crystal sphere. The interior of these spheres is somewhat analogous to space as we know it, and I believe is on the scale of magnitude of a solar system, or perhaps a bit smaller. Toril is within a sphere called "Realmspace," while Krynn is within "Krynnspace," etc. To travel to another world, you need to have a special magic spaceship called a Spelljammer (named after the legendary ship of the same name) that can open a portal in the wall of the crystal sphere and then journey across the Phlogiston - a kind of aether-like soup - along currents that can take you to another sphere.

Officially, D&D includes Earth as one of the worlds within one of these spheres. Granted, given our understanding of the size of the universe, it's got to be by far the biggest one (either that or it explains our current theories as being misinterpretations of the evidence we have,) but what this means is that traveling to, well, here, is actually very doable with D&D mechanics.

Planar travel in D&D is generally restricted to either finding portals in the world (very much at the DM's discretion) or only after you get high-level spells. Plane Shift is a 7th level spell, and also requires you find a special tuning fork that is attuned to the resonance of another plane (so the DM can control whether you get it or not) and then Astral Projection is a 9th level spell that involves a jaunt into the Astral Plane, one of the weirdest places in the D&D multiverse.

But the thing is, because all the settings (well, most) are on the Material Plane, that means that you don't actually need such advanced magic to get there. Essentially, while the distance might be tremendously enormous, if you're standing in Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms, there's actually a simple, 3-dimensional direction you can point to Zadash in Exandria, and as such, ordinary teleportation would allow you to go there. Granted, you'd probably need to know that it existed, but if, say, you had a sigil sequence for a teleportation circle on another world, you could actually just cast Teleportation Circle as soon as level 9 (on a pure caster that can cast that spell) and take your party there.

And that also means you can get to Earth.

In the PHB, some real-world pantheons are listed among the options to consider for your deities. While this might just be simple inspiration for coming up with equivalent gods, the truth is that you might actually worship figures like Thor or Aphrodite. Indeed, in early content, such as Planescape, they actually came up with a place for these figures. The Norse gods are found in Ysgard, while the Greek are found in Arborea (which was also sometimes just called Olympus.) Yes, it might be odd to see a super-lawful deity like Athena in the Chaotic Good plane, but we also have Tiamat, a chaotic evil goddess, in the Lawful Evil Nine Hells, so there's precedent.

Actually, this does complicate some things - Tiamat is named after an ancient Mesopotamian deity who was the sort of original evil in contrast with Apsu. Both were sort of water-based deities (it's implied that Tiamat represented salt water while Apsu represented fresh water,) and Tiamat is slain in the creation myth and the bottom half of her body makes the ocean while the top half becomes the sky - not exactly consistent with "five-headed dragon goddess."

Naturally, the question of where the Abrahamic religious figures fits in here is also something of an open question - though one that I think TSR and Wizards have probably been wise to set aside. Though actually, a lot of Demon Lords and Archdevils do share names with subjects of Medieval demonology based in a Christian tradition, so... who knows?

The thing that got me to write about this, largely reacting to a Lore You Should Know that featured Jeremy Crawford talking about the eponymous wizard from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, is that Tasha was actually raised by Baba Yaga.

Now, Baba Yaga is a figure of Slavic folklore, more or less as the ultimate witch in the woods. She's mostly antagonistic and scary, but arguably not precisely evil (though woe betide you if you get on her bad side.) And unlike Tiamat, the implication is that Baba Yaga is not just some same-named figure, but is actually the figure from Earth's folkore.

In the interview, Greg Tito and Jeremey Crawford actually speculate that Tasha might even be from Earth.

And that just sets my mind in motion.

At one point during the Acquisitions Incorporated games, the team suddenly shows up at the WotC headquarters in Renton, WA, and they actually meet Chris Perkins (who was simultaneously DMing - this was before he passed the campaign off to Jeremy Crawford.) While this mostly felt like a sweet bit of meta (that was apparently 100% improvised,) reflecting on how long they'd been running that campaign (which began as a promotion for the then-new 4th Edition!) it was actually also canonically ok to happen.

And given that there are some tools for modern stuff like firearms and explosives (and a more abortive attempt at modern subclasses and spells that skewed a little too cyperpunk for my personal tastes) I think it would be really fun to have some campaign that actually brings the action into our world.

We've also been told that this book (coming out tomorrow!) is "not the last we'll see of Tasha" moving forward, which makes me very curious about what upcoming books we'll have for 5E in the coming year. With the release of Tasha's, I don't think any announced books will remain to be released, so it's really an open question.

Again, I hope we see the College of Spirits and Undead Patron come out with a Ravenloft book. But hopefully after Tasha's release, we'll get some news on what's next for D&D.

Contemplating the Arc of Shadowlands

 We have the first patch of Shadowlands and its first raid all available for testing on the Beta, and going live (at least the first patch) in but one week.

There's a lot of story to recap, particularly given that we've got four covenants with their own subplots that are likely (if the Revendreth 9.0 campaign is anything to go by) to continue over the course of the expansion.

But, in a nutshell, here's what's happening:

Sylvanas, as revealed, has been in league with a figure known as The Jailer since her resurrection at Icecrown following the death of Arthas. This has empowered her profoundly and seems to have pushed her to far more villainous levels of diabolical evil than before (I think you could read her pre-Cataclysm as more of an anti-hero, though still very questionable.) Though it was hinted that she might steal the Helm of Domination and become the Lich Queen, giving us a more direct Wrath 2.0, instead she tore the crown apart, ripping a hole into the Shadowlands. Her reasons for doing so remain a bit shrouded, but she definitely seems to not like the current system of life and death.

The Shadowlands have been experiencing a drought of anima - the life-essence that the souls of the recently-deceased bring there, and which powers the magic of the place. The result has been a sort of breakdown in the afterlife, with Ardenweald unable to nourish the souls of nature spirits to allow them to reincarnate (forcing them to make tragic decisions about which spirits are preserved and which are culled - hence the permanent death of Ursoc) and other realms generally breaking down in other ways.

The reason for the drought is that the Arbiter - the judge of incoming souls, who determines where a recently-deceased person is sent off to, based on their personality and deeds in life - is incapacitated. Rather than sorting the dead and giving them their proper eternal homes, every soul is instead being sent to the Maw - a realm of torment and darkness that is the home of the Jailer - a figure who seems to stand among the other masters of the various Shadowlands realms, but is also a prisoner within the Maw. The Maw is unlike the other realms of the Shadowlands - there's no grand purpose for souls here. Instead, it is meant as an inescapable prison for the truly irredeemable souls who come there.

The Jailer, perhaps having done some great evil that warranted his assignment to that realm, seems to have arranged for this to occur, possibly with Sylvanas' help.

Within each Shadowlands zone, there are antagonistic figures who seem to either be in league with the Jailer or at least not making things any easier.

In Bastion, a breakaway group of the angelic Kyrian known as the Forsworn reject the way that they are forced to lose their personal memories to become the Shadowlands' psychopomps (which is a term for a mythological figure that takes the souls of the dead to the afterlife, like St. Peter or the Grim Reaper, Hermes and/or Charon, the Valkyries from Norse myth, etc.) It's possible that this movement was started because of, of all people, Uther the Lightbringer. As we saw in his Afterlives animated short, Uther's soul was sundered by Frostmourne, and the fragment of him that actually made it to the Shadowlands was inconsolable and filled with an unquenchable thirst for vengeance. At the moment of Arthas' death, he and his Kyrian mentor took Arthas' soul and dropped it into the Maw, without allowing it to be judged by the Arbiter first - which might actually be what broke things. (Despite being one of WoW's top villains, there are arguments to be made that Arthas' soul is not quite so irredeemable, especially when one considers that his soul wasn't even really present once he took up Frostmourne.)

In Maldraxxus, the five houses since time immemorial worked together to defend the Shadowlands from other cosmic threats. However, the realm has fallen into civil war, as the House of Constructs and the House of Rituals have sided with the jailer, destroying the House of Eyes and House of Plagues in sneak attacks. Now, only the House of the Chosen remains to fight off the traitors and restore Maldraxxus to its true purpose.

In Ardenweald, the lack of anima has left much of the beautiful nighttime forest blighted and dying. Either helping to hasten this or just taking advantage of it, the Drust - spirits of the dead from Kul Tiras, who have their own realm of Thros that may or may not be part of the Shadowlands - have invaded, and seem to have cursed many of the Night Fae to serve their purposes. Meanwhile, the death loa Mueh'zalla is revealed as a major ally of the Jailer, having convinced Vol'jin to make Sylvanas Warchief and is now fighting to wrest control of De Other Side from Bwonsamdi.

Finally, in Revendreth, the purgatorial realm where the vampire-like venthyr attempt to break down and rehabilitate the souls of the prideful sinners - ultimately determining if these souls can be redeemed and sent on to a different Shadowlands realm, stay in Revendreth to become Venthyr, or be cast into the Maw - has also fallen into a civil war, where Prince Renethal fights against Sire Denathrius, the ancient creator of this realm. Ultimately, we discover that Renethal is actually in the right, and Denathrius has cast his lot with the Jailer (there's also some deep lore suggesting some really crazy stuff about the Nathrezim and their connection to Revendreth.)

The first raid is Castle Nathria, where we fight through Denathrius' loyalists to face against him, taking out one of the Jailer's key allies.

But beyond that, what else might we expect to happen?

Once again, I find myself in a similar position to when we were speculating on the relationship between Azshara and N'zoth. Once again, we have a powerful elvish woman who has aligned herself with an otherworldly entity. In that case, there was clearly little love to be lost between them, even if they were staunch allies for 10,000 years. N'zoth seemed to ultimately have the upper hand, but thanks in large part to us, Azshara wound up being the one to survive while N'zoth was destroyed.

We don't really know the nature of the Jailer/Sylvanas relationship, and for that reason, we don't really know who is likely to be the final boss of the expansion. On one hand, the Jailer is profoundly ancient - maybe even older than the Titans - and so it seems unlikely that Sylvanas, whose power largely derives from him, could take the top spot. But on the other hand, the Jailer is a brand new piece of lore, while Sylvanas has been around since WCIII. We've spent two expansions really building her up as a major villain.

So I think if we're ever going to fight Sylvanas as a raid boss, now's the time.

One thing we know is that there are many Shadowlands realms that go beyond the 5 we see in 9.0. It would not shock me if there's some other realm for us to explore in a later patch.

That being said, it also seems like we must have some kind of raid in the Maw at some point, and possibly the final raid of the expansion. That would really seem to tilt in favor of the Jailer as the final boss, though it's not a guarantee.

We know that part of the ongoing plot of the expansion will be rescuing the four faction leaders who were kidnapped, though it seems we'll be able to get at least 3 of them out through running Torghast in 9.0.

Another wildcard here is Tyrande. While it was super awesome to see her hand Nathanos' ass to him in the world boss cinematic, it's clear that this vengeful quest isn't exactly giving her the closure she seeks. What is the Night Warrior, exactly? And what is the endgame here? Is there a point where that power gets sent back to Elune? And furthermore, we still, after what, 18 years? (When did WCIII come out?) We still don't know what Elune is. She's clearly got some connection to the Titans, but also to the Naaru... so what is she? And why is it that only the Night Elves really care about her when she seems to be this profoundly important cosmic figure?

Being the (fictional) conspiracy theory nut that I am, I'm really, really hoping we find out some shocking things about the Nathrezim. I mean, it's even implied that Lothraxion might be some kind of triple agent, which is devastating because I think he's so cool as a Dreadlord Paladin, but also super awesome.