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Spring Elves

Spring Elves

Spring elves are between 25 and 110 years old—physically adult, but still in what staid and traditional elven society considers their “Spring Years,” too emotional and impulsive to be allowed to leave the safety and education of the home. They are essentially eternal teenagers, sure of their own intellect and ability, but largely incapable of considering the long-term consequences of their actions—a particularly troubling trait for the long-lived race. Spring elves are always, always supervised and watched over by older, most experienced elves, and kept from adventure, and as much as possible kept from any decision-making. While spring elves are physically and mentally capable of the same kind of training and education as young humans, these decades are a time when they are so wild, so free of consideration, that over the course of eight decades they only manage as much preparation for life as a typical human manages by age 16.

However, in rare circumstances, a spring elf lacks any of the careful parenting and sheltering from life the races has learned from long experience is necessary to prevent the just-post-adolescent elves from setting the world on fire. For example, the Elves of Solstice are an entire race rules by spring elves, given power and authority with no sense of responsibility. And the gods help everyone else.

Spring Elf

Standard Racial Traits

Ability Score Racial Traits: Spring elves are nimble and amazingly likable, and still have their youthful resilience, which is the only reason they aren’t all killed for weeklong benders and experimental magic, but they lack the intellectual focus of properly raised, adult elves. They gain +2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma, and –2 Wisdom.

Size: Most spring elves are Medium creatures and thus have a 30 foot base speed and receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size. Some are still size small, and have all the normal bonuses and penalties for that size and a base move of 20 feet.

Type: Elves are Humanoids with the elf subtype.

Languages: Spring elves begin play speaking Common and Elven. Those with high Intelligence scores are drawn to “fun” languages and can choose from the following: Abyssal, Aklo, Cyclops, Dark Folk, Draconic, Gnome, Necril, Protean, and Sylvan. See the Linguistics skill page for more information about these languages.

Keen Senses: Spring elves receive a +2 racial bonus on Perception checks.

Impulsive: Spring elves gain a +2 bonus to Initiative checks, but they cannot delay an action (though they can ready), and take twice as long to take 20 on skill checks (as they are constantly distracted).

Elven Proclivities: Spring elves are immune to magic sleep effects, but take a -2 saving throw penalty against enchantment spells and effects. They gain a +2 bonus to charisma checks, and to the save DCs of their own enchantment spells and effects.

Low-Light Vision: Spring elves can see twice as far as humans in conditions of dim light.

Reckless Abandon: A spring elf can reroll a single attack roll, ability check, skill check, or caster level check (but not concentration check) per encounter, immediately after determining the result of a failed roll. However, if the spring elf does this, the GM earns an impulsive token. The GM can later spend a token to force the spring elf to move to anyplace within the spring elf’s base move that is not obviously hazardous, as the spring elf is overcome by an impulse. This can begin a fight, set off a hidden trap and so on, though the spring elf gains +4 to AC and a +4 to saves against the initial effect of anything set off by this impulsive move.

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The Forty Kings of Solstice











Drekar never sleep.

Drekar make war on every city and nation other than Solstice.
This is because drekar never sleep.
Most other races, from elves to humans to dwarves and even ctheph and tyhnt, don’t really understand how crucial that is to understanding how drekar think. The commoner masses, if they are aware of drekars constant consciousness at all, thinks of it as a quirk no different from the fact they have nictitating membrane rather than eyelids. Even scholars among these races tend to focus on their total rejection of deities as anything more than beings of vast power, no different than mages a thousand time greater than any other mages, and ignore the fact they don’t sleep.
This is a mistake. It is the linchpin of drekar psychology.
From the moment light first strikes their eyes after birth, an event known as the Spark, a drekar gains and maintains consciousness. Unless killed, a drekar never loses the ability to perceive its surroundings and remember those perceptions. Unlike races that sleep, pass out drunk, or just get knocked unconscious, a drekar has an unbroken line of consciousness from the moment of the Spark, to the moment of death. A drekar never wonders if it missing time, or wonders why nightmares it had. It knows, in general terms, what has happened through all its (often many) years.
Drekar also do not believe in souls. Since they accept no gods, and see miracles as nothing more than magic, they do not accept that they are more than their meat. While they acknowledge some energy passes on to the outer planes when they die, they see it as no different from the fact a body of soon-rotting flesh is left behind. And neither reincarnation nor resurrection is considered a restoration of the dead. Magic can create a spoon, or a talking spoon, or a construct made of talking spoons that think they are a mighty general. But it is still just magic creating a thinking thing.
To drekar, being resurrected means a perfect copy of the original person has been created with magic. But since the original existence ended, the reincarnated person is not the same person, even if it has all the memories and feelings of the original person. A wish spell can, after all, create a perfect duplicate of someone who thinks it is that person, but since there are then two people it is clearly not the original.
Even if it is the drekar that is resurrected, it knows with total certainty that is a new being, instilled magically with the memories of a dead drekar. It knows this, because there is a break in its consciousness. A time when it was not aware. That means the previous memory-holder’s unbroken stream of consciousness ended, and that means it is dead.
And this is why drekar feel no shame or guilt for warring on and slaughtering every other race. Because to the drekar, anyone they kill was no more than a day or two old, and only a day or two to live.
This view is held because to the drekar any break in the line of consciousness, even just sleep, is death. Anyone they meet is a brand-new creature, no older than when it last awoke, and not even the true owner of its thoughts and memories. It is instead an amalgam, a colony, of thousands of creatures, each of which lived roughly one day, from awakening to sleep. They view any creature that sleeps much as other races view the undead–as thinking, moving, animate beings capable of making plans and feeling emotions, but not as alive in any useful sense of the word. They are, at best, moiety.
And thus in the lands where drekar septs are strong, they wage merciless, ceaseless, brutal wars against the moieties around them. The moiety aren’t just short lived and doomed to quick deaths. They are perversions of true life, and not to be tolerated if any other choice remains, much as many races war on the undead.
And as drekar are tall, strong, resilient, and adept with war magics, they often conquer vast regions, limited only by how far they can march or fly (as drekar never teleport or engage in planar travel other than physical gates).
But they take no offensive action against the city of Solstice, or those within it. The Mage-God claimed that his vast machine recorded every second of every entity that dwelled within it. The drekar believe this was to done to prevent people from being moiety. That his true purpose was to reclaim true life for all races, as only the drekar have it.
Because it was well known, the God-Mage did not sleep…

Spellbane Armor

Aura faint abjuration; CL 3rd; Weight —; Price +18,000 gp
A suit of armor or a shield with this special ability protects against any magaic hp damage. The armor absorbs the first 5 points of magic hp damage per round (not per attack, as with energy resistance) that the wearer would normally take (similar to the resist energy spell).
Craft Magic Arms and Armor, dispel magic; Cost +9,000 gp

The improved spellbane (for 10 points of magic damage/round) costs 42,000 gp and the greater version (for 15 points of magic damage/round) costs 66,000 gp.

Races and Ethnicities of Solstice







Dungeon Loot of Solstice



Table 1: Magic Weapon Dungeon Loot
. Weapon is cursed
06-35. Weapon is normal.
35-60. Weapon has one aspect
61-80. Weapon has one origin
81-89. Weapon has two aspects
90-95. Weapon has one aspect and one origin
96-98. Weapon has two aspects and one origin.


Identifying Unusual Magic Items


Roll 1d12.


Roll 1d12.

    01-15: acid
    16-35: cold
    36-50: electricity
    51-90: fire
    91-99: sonic

Great Gnomon Spire of Solstice









Gods of Solstice

Obviously, no deity could allow this.
In short, they made the risk greater.

Elves of Solstice

Elven society simple ceased to exist.

The Grand Arena of Solstice

The Grand Arena in the city of Solstice is build around the largest Astrologos Configuration, which also happens to be the site where the God-Mage attempted his assault on Heaven. Every day at dusk the Configuration spawns powerful Ravening Beasts, which immediately attempt to break out of the arena grounds and head for the Widderlands. As with any Configuration there are also specific summoning events during various conjunctions, and two full guilds of astrologers are employed full-time to examine the Configuration and predict when other Events will occur.
Since nonstop diligence, constant study, and a sizable military force must be maintained at all time, the Arena was built to allow the needful acts of putting down the Ravenings to double as major entertainment, to bring in money to offset the cost of safety. Usually the two astrologer guilds are fairly accurate about the type and power of the Ravengings to appear, though specifics are rarely available, and thus gladiators who are sufficient to deal with each threat are always on hand (without needing to keep a group any bigger or more expensive than necessary on the field). Of course the Arena includes Skywards to ensure nothing can fly away and Earthwards to prevent anything from burrowing off. And the Solstice Guard keep a few siege machines manned at all times, to deal with Ravenings if the gladiators fail their task.
In addition to making money from the Solstones dropped by any Ravenings they kill, gladiators often receive money from sponsors and patrons, and may make some sideline betting on themselves. A fair number of gladiators are also adventurers, though the most successful gladiators consider delving into the megadungeons around and below Solstice a pointless risk, and the most successful dungeon delvers consider simple arena combat unlikely to result in the truly history-changing discoveries.