Official ICE Forums
Systems & Settings => Shadow World => Topic started by: Hurin on July 27, 2021, 09:03:33 PM
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One of the unique features of Kulthea are the flowstorms, and my current RMU party is about to encounter their first. Can anyone suggest any good visual descriptions of what they look like (esp. from any printed material)?
I'm also thinking of having them undergo a skill challenge to survive the storm. Any advice on that would be welcome too.
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My party is on the cusp of experiencing their first storm as well. I described the clouds looking like the start of a thunderhead; higher, dense, reflecting sunlight on the front face, and rather dark on the leeward side. However, the reflected light looks to be bluish in color, not like reflected sunlight, almost a florescent blue and seemingly coming from within the clouds. Certainly not a natural blue one would see on a cloudless day. Once the storm hits, the blue will gradually shift to a light purple hue, neon purplish in color. The lightning will also take on the neon purple color.
There are other effects the spell casters will encounter and the party has already witnessed mass creatures of all types moving away from the storm path.
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Nice touch about the creatures fleeing. That is definitely some good mood-setting!
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Not quite the same thing, but here's a take on something very similar.
Discussion of storm wells, to take shelter from storms: https://www.daughterofthelilies.com/dotl/906
Characters realize storm is about to hit: https://www.daughterofthelilies.com/dotl/928
There's some end of chapter silliness after the first two pages of the storm, but then it resumes. The psychological aspect might make more sense if you've read the whole thing, but the short version is that the character is hiding her nature and her face is concealed, but she's hallucinating being exposed (or maybe a better way to say it is that she is seeing what is true despite her efforts to hide it).
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This was a renderof how I visualised a Flow Storm building over the Watching Isle. Rendered using Bryce and a volumetric texture was used for the clouds and several lightsources were embedded in the cloud volume.
All the Best,
Kevin.
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Interesting topic... not really concerning an essence storm but a Bladestorm which is a related phenomenon I had outlined such a manifestation earlier (in the campaign Fremde Popheten/Alien Prophets). Enclosed you will find an english draft of that part describing its appearance on a round-wise basis with some skill checks.
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Thanks guys!
The approval process for files is slow on the forums, so I probably won't be able to view those files for our game tomorrow, but I appreciate it for future reference.
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I don't use Shadow World, or Essence Storms, but my party is in a part of the world where the storms turn to firestorms. One thing that I have tried to do with these and other "natural events" is to incorporate smell, sound, or taste into the descriptions. We rely a lot on visual, but just a mention of some particular smell or taste, especially, can make a big difference in how completely players imagine these things. You can do it with creatures too, the most obvious being zombies smelling of rotting meat.
Maybe essence storms are preceded by a faint smell of citrus on the wind. Or fresh-cut grass. But not ozone, that would be a regular storm.
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I like the Change Storms from The Black Company series.
https://blackcompany.fandom.com/wiki/Change_storm