About the Nagpas
By Bruce Heard
The Nagpas are the survivors of an ancient human civilization, the Varellyans, who were cursed by an Immortal (a god in AD&D) as the result of a civil war. One faction summoned the Immortal, a powerful demon, to destroy its rival. After completing the deed, the creature turned on those who had summoned it, and cursed them to remain forever on Mystara as vulture-like people. To this day, the malediction causes those who die to be reincarnated at the original site of the curse. Nagpas from all reaches of the world return there to recover family members, so they may hatch unharmed. Reincarnated nagpas retain all memories of their past existence, in particular the time of the curse. The core lands of the Varellyan civilization, the Vulture Peninsula, suffered from the curse and have become a rocky desert. (. . .)
Click HERE to read more about the infamous Nagpas.
Cool beans, Bruce! A nice deep look at the culture and creatures.
ReplyDeleteThanks, RJ. Let me know if you find anything clunky in there.
DeleteFar from clunky! I might have to borrow some of these ideas for use in my Thorn's Mystara project. The idea of having to stockpile..er.. 'raw materials' for demonic bodies is marvelously atmospheric. The Nagpa's "Create Egg" spell has some uses I could extrapolate out for use by my own "immortal" race, the Soulbound Constructs.
DeleteI'm curious about how the Nagpa's reincarnation and continual memory works -- do they have to "grow" into the preexisting lifetimes' memories? Is it an uninterrupted stream-of-consciousness?
Ya, I had fun with the demonic stuff. The memory mechanics I left vague so DMs can adjust them to better fit their adventure plots. I'd say the reincarnating Nagpa ought to make a saving throw vs. paralysis (or a CON check followed with several INT checks) to recover chunks of memory in chronological order. Naturally, you'd have to "roll up" its stats, but why not. It could lead to an interesting plot.
DeleteI think I just found the big bads for my current campaign. This is great!
ReplyDeleteGood! Give 'em hell! :-)
DeleteVery interesting! They make me think of the Skeksis a bit, though, mainly through appearance.
ReplyDeleteHave you read the sidebar though?
DeleteI loved the sidebar. The little bits of fiction have always helped me really get the feel of things better than raw descriptions or stats.
DeleteI agree with you, Alan. It's a lot more work, but the end result is well worth it.
DeleteAwesome work! Not sure I can use them against my players just yet but it will give me something to aim for as they slowly level up :)
ReplyDeleteMy number one hope for the new 5th edition is they do something like this and produce a decent monster manual, last 2 editions ones were utterly bland and flavorless!
Thanks! You can always use a Nagpa as the mysterious, shadowy mastermind puling the bad guys' strings. The players' character really don't get to identify him, let along face him, until much later.
DeleteReally good Fills in most of the holes I found.
ReplyDeleteQuestion; How do you fit the level/HD/Hit points gaining together with the Information supplied by the Creature Crucible Top Ballista.
Since here they reach level by experience and not by time.
As so far it seems to contradict each other on some spots.
I'm curious how you would mix them.
I truly like what you did by giving them true spell powers (as according pc2 and . It makes them much more realistic.
For the Humanoid chapter (unfinished, unchecked so far) of my monster manual I did use the material you wrote for Dragon Magazine mixed it together with PC2 Top Ballista and the Movie Dark Crystal and came to the following.
(Google docs Link--https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5L0rnHMuzezMU1rQ01WR285Wk0/edit?usp=sharing )
Hope you can help in mixing all together.
I'm sorry, I've not been able to locate my Creature Crucibles--any of them. There's clearly no link between my article and PC2.
DeleteThanks for all the work you are doing. I wasn't able to access your file. I requested access (at the above link), but it was instantly denied.
(???)
Oh? Ok! I Just looked it up in saw a request to share in my mailbox. As I did this you must now be able to read it.
ReplyDeleteIt is more what I did, then doing recently. This is only a small part of my massive 3500 pages Monster Manual (What I have done while I was homeless in the Library, to keep my sanity/safety), but this is all compiled information I found, but you get the general Idea.
About the Nagpa chapter I send you, all was official D&D stuff. I did only mix The Dark Crystal movie in it, after compiling the D&D stuff. Since your stuff was besides the PC the most interesting, I'd like to also add your "About Nagpa's" piece to it, somehow.
If you don't have PC2 anymore, here is a digital freedownload link (I think you can find the others here too.)
http://www.4shared.com/office/A-7dXPJy/PC2_Top_Ballista.htm
Unfortunately, this site tried to install some exe file on my computer in order to proceed with the download. That's just not acceptable. I'll have a look at the files you shared with me directly. Thanks.
DeleteOk.
DeleteNever noticed this before.(how do you see this?)
I used it without problem to get digital copies (PDF's) of the books i have, and can still do it.
For so far as i encountered they only want to membership ya.
but maybe its different for each country.
After downloading i always clean my pc thouroughly.
Whatever, hope you can use my compilation material then.
was that accessible to you now?
I checked to be certain, and saw Googledocs somehow corrupted the Word version (it deleted much spreading the rest too far apart).
ReplyDeleteSo I made it into a small PDF, and shared it now.
You must NOW be able to read it.
OK. Thanks.
Delete