Here's, one more tempting, little peek at what's in the upcoming issue.
Level Up #3: Editorial
I’ll admit; I’m a pretty visceral guy. My favorite movies are the kind with plenty of dismemberments and gallons of blood. My favorite sports involve hitting things and people with clubs, sticks, swords, and my bare fists. And my favorite role-playing game is the one where you kill lots of monsters and take their stuff…come on, you know the one.
As you might suspect, when I play D&D, my favorite characters are fighters and barbarians armed with big, heavy weapons that go crunch or splat when they hit the bad guy; and I like monsters that do truckloads of damage with each hit or inflict horrific, debilitating curses, diseases, or wounds on players.
Now, with that little bit of background, you’d probably be surprised that I’d devote an entire issue of
Level Up to fey. But, hey, I enjoy a bit of subtlety now and then, and as it turns out, fey can be just as nasty and in-your-face as a rampaging dragon or a bloodthirsty demon. The difference is that when a death hag rips your head off, she does it with a panache that few other monsters can manage. You see, with fey, it’s all about style; and even gut-wrenching torture and bloody dismemberments are done with an artistic flare that makes the worst atrocities somehow more atrocious.
So in this issue of Level Up, you won’t find any articles on fairies, garden gnomes, or expansive treatises on elven magic. What you will find, however, is the dark, ugly side of the fey; and in the case of this issue’s Blackdirge’s Bestiary, the emphasis is definitely on the ugly. You’ll also find a paragon-level adventure that pits your PCs against the machination of some very naughty hags, a new race of blind, sword-wielding fey that make even the drow look commonplace in comparison, and a complete, new multiclass that allows your PC to harness a bit of fey magic to wreak some serious havoc on the battlefield.
So take a walk on the wild side – the Feywild side that is – and don’t be fooled by the pleasant, tranquil cover. The fey in this issue are like the gingerbread house that so tempted Hansel and Gretel; sweet and innocent on the outside, but harboring a rotten core of cruelty, evil, and ugliness.
Aeryn “Blackdirge” Rudel
Editor-in-Chief
aeryn@goodman-games.com