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Next week, the Kickstarter campaign for the Shadow of the Demon Lord Freeport Companion goes live, so to help you get a sense of the awesome stuff that will appear in this book, have a look at the new Celebrant expert path!

Celebrant Expert Path

The god of pirates, known throughout Freeport as One-Eyed Pete, is an unconventional deity by any standard and most theologians consider the god to be nothing more than a symbol for all the debauchery and cruelty one can find among those who live by plunder and robbery. The embodiment of greed, violence, and excess, pirates and sailors alike invoke the god’s name before a night of drinking, spit curses at him before going into battle—believing him too drunk to know which mortal roused his anger, and pour generous amounts of liquor into the sea to keep the mad god from swimming up from the depths to take his share of the spoils.

The god of pirates chief devotees are the Celebrants. They come from the ranks of retired ship captains, usually those who were retired against their will and looking for a way to keep their purses full of coin and beds full of lovers. Charged with keeping One-Eyed Pete at the bottom of the sea where he belongs, they wander the cities drunkenly, barking dire warnings of trouble to come, while sticking out hands to passers-by to collect coins that will pay for the mad god’s distraction. Celebrants are an unruly, sordid lot, every bit as much trouble as the god they  serve.

Although the celebrant expert path speaks to the unusual cult of the pirate god, you can also use celebrants to model worshipers of other faiths. In particular, the path works well for followers or Revel, who is an unruly and, sometimes, dangerous god. If you serve a different god, replace the traditions mentioned under magic with those associated with your deity.

Celebrant Path: Freeport Companion Preview

Celebrant Story Development

d3 Story 

  1. You lost your ship to a mutiny. Becoming a servant of the pirate god seemed a good way to get your boat back.
  2. After a particularly spectacular bender, you blacked out and had a vision of yourself spreading the message of your god.
  3. Spirits have always been part of your sect’s religious ceremonies, and you have developed a taste for the stuff.

LEVEL 3 CELEBRANT

Attributes Increase two by 1

Characteristics Health +3, Power +1

Languages and Professions Add drunkard to your list of professions

Magic You discover the Air, Storm, or Water tradition or you learn a spell from one of these traditions.

Holy Spirits If you spend at least one hour drinking rum or some other kind of spirit, you can become intoxicated for as long as you continue drinking spirits and for 1d3 hours thereafter. While intoxicated, you are impaired and take half damage from all sources. If you become impaired again, you fall unconscious and remain that way until you sober up.

LEVEL 6 CELEBRANT

Characteristics Health +3

Magic You learn one spell

Drunken Luck Whenever you roll a bane gained from being impaired and the number rolled is a 6, you treat the bane as if it was a boon.

Power of Spirits Banes imposed by the impaired affliction do not apply on your attack rolls made from casting Air, Storm, or Water attack spells.

LEVEL 9 MASTER CELEBRANT

Characteristics Health +3

Failing Liver You need only spend one minute drinking rum or some other kind of spirit in order to become intoxicated.

Drunken Fury Whenever you are intoxicated, your attacks with weapons deal 1d6 extra damage.

Into the Desolation!

In a few weeks, I’m releasing Shadow of the Demon Lord’s first setting expansion: Tombs of the Desolation. To give you the vapors and make you pine for mint juleps, you’ll find tasty, tantalizing morsels here over the the weeks leading up to its release.

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The last chapter of the Demon Lord Companion scoops up some additional tools for Game Masters to use when creating adventures in their games, offering new mechanics for magical places, trinkets, new relics, and a small selection of creatures. For this last preview, here a couple of goodies from the book.

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As I was fitting content into what would be Shadow of the Demon Lord in its final form, I had to make some hard cuts, but nowhere were the cuts more painful than in the equipment chapter.  I had lots of strange stuff in the original draft and I opted to hold them back so I could include more spells, more master paths, and more creatures. The Demon Lord Companion captures a lot of the great content that got left behind and adds rules for crafting and for using vehicles. So let’s take a look at some of the things you’ll find in this book.

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