Welcome to The Fractured Realms
A world divided. A community united.
In This Week’s Issue…
Letter from the Editor
Tools of the Trade: Discover a brand-new monster for your desert adventure
Lore Dump: Learn about Titanfall and the Three Desecrations
Schedule: Upcoming podcasts in The Fractured Realms
Letter from the Editor:
Hello and welcome to The Twenty Sided Newsletter, the official newsletter of The Twenty Sided Podcast and all the supplementary shows within The Fractured Realms. My name is Brian Flaherty. I am the DM for The Twenty Sided Podcast and the host of Canon Fodder and My First Dungeon and I want to share the fun of gaming with anyone who has ever, for a moment, considered picking up a twenty-sided die.
The goal of this newsletter is two-fold: to expand the setting of The Fractured Realms and to provide you with resources and tools to help you improve your own games. I want to help new DMs get started quickly and confidently while also providing value to the veteran DM looking to step up their games. And for those readers who just want to learn more about the world of Riven, this will be a source for new and exciting lore.
As with all the podcasts of The Fractured Realms, this newsletter is a living entity. It is mutable and will grow and change to reflect what this community wants to see. So let me know what you like, what you don’t, and what you want to see in the future and you can help me shape this newsletter into exactly the kind of publication you’re excited to receive.
And remember: If you’re having fun, you’re already doing it right.
Enjoy,
Brian Flaherty
Tools of the Trade
New Monster - The Fauxasis Angler
If you ever find yourself dying of thirst in the desolate sands of the Relinquished Territory you should know that an oasis could be something worse than a mirage; it could be the clever bait of a Fauxasis Angler.
As its name implies, this gargantuan sand-dwelling fish is, itself, a fisherman. The Fauxasis Angler’s body is covered in a symbiotic flora which feeds off the moisture exuded from the Angler’s waxy scales and gives its body the appearance of being covered in a verdant moss. The moss propagates rapidly in the moisture rich regions of the mouth and grows into long, firm stacks growing up to twenty feet in length around the lips before branching off into a series of smaller off-shoots. When “swimming” through the sand, these growths would resemble a beard, but if the Faux-asis Angler inverts its body and allows just its mouth to emerge from the sand, the growths stand straight and are nearly indistinguishable from tropical palm trees. The Angler then fills its mouth with a clear, paralytic liquid and its exposed face becomes indistinguishable from an oasis. It will then wait for a thirsty scavenger or lost soul to drink from its “pool” and lose all motor functions before opening its maw and swallowing them whole.
Fauxasis Anglers are rarely spotted moving through the sand, instead existing in a semi-permanent state of hibernation in their inverted positions until they are alerted to new prey by their tremorsense. This is likely to conserve energy and to avoid confrontations with nearby purple worms, who also hunt through vibrations and are the Angler’s only known predator. Though they are normally passive hunters, there have been reports of aggressive members of their species chasing those who managed to avoid the oasis bait through the desert while hocking giant paralytic loogies a distance of up to 60 feet!
Little is known about the life or reproductive cycles of the Fauxasis Angler, but their age can be approximated by the height of the “trees” in their oasis, which grow at a predictable rate. The oldest observed specimen was believed to be roughly 103 years old and had growths over fifty feet in height which resembled a dense forest–though it is worth noting that it is not known if these growths are ever pruned or shed throughout the Angler’s lifecycle, meaning these estimates represent the lower limits of the creature’s age.
Lore Dump
Titanfall
Titanfall was a catastrophic event in which powerful Titans punched a hole into the material plane of Riven. In the process, they punctured the Weave–the fundamental layer of magic hidden just beneath the physical realm–causing raw magic to leak into the world, eventually allowing mortals their first taste of the arcane. Little is known about the origin of the Titans, the reason for their conflict, or how they were able to pass through to the material plane, but their presence in Riven was catastrophic to the mortals of the world.
When the Titans ripped a hole in The Weave, a massive surge of energy erupted from the hole where they emerged and caused the moon above to fracture. An island-sized fragment fell from the sky and struck the Pangea-like supercontinent, causing massive destruction and splitting the landmass into three distinct continents. Though there was massive carnage, some unknown force prevented the impact from being an extinction-level event.
In the immediate aftermath of this sundering, each of the Titans claimed a continent and used their powers to quicken the drift of the land masses away from one another, eventually settling the continents into their present day positions. The moon fragment remained where it struck Riven, creating an island which would eventually become the home of the Twilight Assembly.
The hole in the Weave remain. It lies in its original position southwest of the Twilight Assembly in the middle of the Liminal Sea surrounded by a thick fog known as The Static.
The Three Desecrations
After the Titans each claimed a continent as their home, they used their magic to shape it to their will to make it more habitable for them and less hospitable for the other Titans. These destructive terraforming acts came to be known as the Three Desecrations.
The Flooding of Ceruya
Ceruya is the southernmost continent in Riven and was formerly a temperate and fairly dry region. When the Titan Fathom claimed it for his own, he used his power to raise the sea level and flood the continent, turning it into a series of marshlands and archipelagos dominated by rivers and canal systems.
The Wandering Miasma
Phoebe claimed the eastern mountainous continent of Azore. Being a Titan of Air, Phoebe was comfortable high in the mountains, but wanted to prevent her enemies from invading her continent. To prevent an assault on her land, she coated the lowlands and valleys in a noxious gas which migrated around the continent. This cloud became known as the Wandering Miasma.
The Desiccation of Veradune or: The Creation of the Relinquished Territory
Veradune was a verdant continent to the west entirely covered in lush forests when Kilana arrived and claimed the land as her own. A Titan of the Earth, she was bolstered by her connection to the land, but wanted to prevent incursion by Fathom or Phoebe. To this end, she desiccated the coastline of the entire continent, creating a massive desert known as the Relinquished Territory.
The Age of Titans
The Age of Titans lasted approximately 170 years–though records from this time are fragmented and difficult to verify–and was an era of immense turmoil. The denizens of Riven focused on avoiding the frequent skirmishes of the three Titans and their champions–gargantuan beasts they used for their bidding. This era ended when the Titans were sealed away by the nine heroes, now the nine Prime Deities, ushering in the Age of Divinity.
Though the Titans have been gone from Riven for nearly a millennia, the effects of their actions still define the world even as recorded history begins to fade into legend…
Goings On In The Fractured Realms
1/12 - My First Dungeon: Part 4 w/ Abby Hepworth & The Deplorable Four
1/13 - Canon Fodder w/ Pat Wise (Political Therapy Podcast, Audio Snacks)
1/17 - Twenty Sided Podcast: Prisoners of the Static - Episode 8
1/19 - My First Dungeon: Part 5 w/ Abby Hepworth
1/20 - Canon Fodder w/ Alise Morales (Betches Sup, Tooning Out the News)
1/24 - Twenty Sided Podcast: Prisoners of the Static - Episode 9
Learn more at twentysidedpodcast.com