The Campaign Builder's Guild

[ooc]Good call.  I added a section for the middle class in Skein, where class is the most stratified.

Working on Crepuscle on and off.  It's exam period so updates may be slow... or possibly accelerate depending on how much I procrastinate.[/ooc]

[ooc]Not a major update (exams, plus I've been writing a longer fiction piece), but I did find this illustration I thought I'd share, that almost perfectly resembles how I imagine the lilix to look, except that she should have six arms:  link.  She's some sort of spider-elf from a predominantly french wargame called Confrontation (which looks pretty awesome... many of the minis would work really well for CE). [/ooc]

Wow, that actually looks a lot more humanoid than I imagined them. :P

I love how disturbingly, alienly sexy it is, which is very much how I imagine the lilix: the marriage of my arachnophobia and my S&M fetish.

Quote from: sparkletwistWow, that actually looks a lot more humanoid than I imagined them. :P

Yea I always imagined them to be a bit more like the depictions of arachne with a humanoid top and a spider bottom.

My mind also had them look like some weird kind of spider-human hybrid.

EDIT: hmm, and then lilix are the elves of your campaign... interesting

Wow, they look pretty much what I thought they would look like (though I thought they were bald for some reason).

Looks a lot like many of the girls (and some of the guys) we had at my days at the club.
Ah, the good old days.

[ooc]I like that most people imagined them as more monstrous... hopefully they're simultaneously creepier and more playable as more human-like creatures.  They are the closest thing to elves in CE, being based partially on drow - decadent, matriarchal, eerily graceful, alien, and aloof to the point of xenophobia...

I've been thinking more about Dolmen and I like the idea that originally the whole city was a huge necropolis that the lilix found and colonized, building their own cobweb-like structures atop - like spiders who discover a crypt and move in.  Some of the lower levels would still contain the ancient crypts/tombs/etc from the necropolis, perhaps with trapped/warded sections that still haven't been plundered.

I also want humans to still be a major demographic in the city, most prominently the freedwomen - only female slaves can be freed, gaining a pair of extra eyes tatooed on their foreheads as a sign of their liberty.  I think the whole subrace of humans for Dolmen will be albinos, with poor eyesights and very fair skins after centuries underground, with a kind of almost girmlock quality to them.

I'm also debating whether to have a competing ant-like race inhabiting the Chelicerae Mountains, who'd be religious fanatics whose theocracy approaches a hive-mind...

What do you guys think?[/ooc]

...Hive-ants seem a little too cliche. If you go down that route I hope you are able to make it unique.

But I have faith that you will be able to make the race interesting; throughout everything you have done, your work has been great!

--
[On a slightly related note, I found this listing of Mieville's "Races of Bas-Lag" to be interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_of_Bas-Lag. I suppose you may have seen it before, but still, it provides good inspiration.]

[ooc]Dolmen added (near the bottom of the first page); I'm not totally finished with it yet, and still have to write up a storiette for it.  I'm trying to go for a cross between Menzoberranzan and Byzantium, a very Machiavellian city with lots of intermingling of politics and religion.

Some visuals I had in mind for the architecture:

Gothic necropolis

Hive City

...and the fashion:

lilix

mask

courtier

assassin

priestess[blockquote=Light Dragon]On a slightly related note, I found this listing of Mieville's "Races of Bas-Lag" to be interesting: URL I suppose you may have seen it before, but still, it provides good inspiration.][/blockquote] Yeah I recently found a copy of the Bas-Lag Gazeteer, put out by Dragon a few years ago with 3.5 stats for msot of Mieville's races, plus a nice description of New Crobuzon... I really want to run a Bas-Lag game now.[/ooc]

I thought the Lillix tended toward heavyness not being slim (yet curvy) like those pics? Or was I just mistaken?

[ooc]Lilix females do tend towards roundness/heaviness, but it was hard to find suitable pictures; those outfits do reflect the general feel of fetish I want the lilix to exude, though.  The men, however, are bred for a kind of pornstar physique, since they're mostly just sexual objects and soldiers for the lilix gynocracy.  Human slaves do all of the actual labor.[/ooc]

QuoteYeah I recently found a copy of the Bas-Lag Gazeteer, put out by Dragon a few years ago with 3.5 stats for msot of Mieville's races, plus a nice description of New Crobuzon... I really want to run a Bas-Lag game now.

QuoteAs such much of Dolmen's architecture reflects its original purpose. The lower tiers of the city are grim and skeletal with buttressed mausoleums and vaulted chambers, many of them adorned with grotesque apotropes; crypts have been gutted and converted into housing, shops, and shrines. Ancient halls carved with niches for the shrouded dead or piles of skulls '" the remains of faithful servants, preserved alongside their masters '" have been refashioned as marketplaces and warehouses. Above these dreary edifices are the fanciful structures of the lilix themselves, stone like spun spidersilk, built in the style of the so-called Cobweb-Baroque. These buildings surmount and append the original necropolis, rising in tiers above it '" the palatial homes, harems, banquet halls, and temples of the city's elites. Below, in the troglodytic depths of the city, are the great cavern-pens of the lilix's albino slaves; mingling with these rough-hewn chambers are crypts of Llech-Urgol left unplundered. Below even these are the city's sewers, which deposit Dolmen's waste into the subterranean reaches of the Chelicerae Mountains, to be consumed b y the lonely cestoid tribes that still linger deep below amongst the shattered ruins of the old Imperium.

The seditious underground newspaper [/quote]
This part seemed to be omitted. I admit I am intrigued. Has Runagate-Rampant appeared here? ;)

Good Work!
~LD