Point of order, unless Konsi has some arcane channelling abilities that most clerics don’t, she’s casting Quest. Mystery should be correcting her from off panel.
Oh, I’m just talking about the lineage of the rules systems, there isn’t really a good concept of “changing something from 4th to 5th edition” because 5th edition comes from 3.5. 4th is an offshoot really.
It does make some sense to ditch “quest” I think - partly because the spell can be “don’t do (x)” and that’s not really much of a quest, and partly just for simplicity in rules.
Okay, but why does that cat person have a flute? They are in a library. You are supposed to be quiet in a library. A musical instrument is the opposite of being quiet.
This is the study room in their house, although that’s not super clear from the art. That’s why it has a map table in the middle and some of them are wearing more casual clothes.
The gambling angle is pretty much a Tower of Luck (the temple of Tymora in Waterdeep) orthodoxy. While gambling is somewhat in Tymora’s purview, it’s not a common focus of her followers, which tends to be more “fortune/fate/karma/adventure” focused. Most Tymora worship is done at small traveller’s shrines, hoping for fortune or safety on a journey.
The tower of Luck in Waterdeep is unusual for Tymoran worship, it’s the largest temple to Tymora in Faerun (and the only one that’s remotely close is in Suzail) - part of the money for such a large institution comes from placing it in the noble quarter of town (the Sea Ward) and… not dissuading nobles that donate huge sums of money in the hope of it “buying” them fortune and luck in the future.
The other part comes from the temple sponsoring and supervising gambling houses in the city - most official gambling establishments have a resident Tymoran priest who blesses the proceedings, and is there to assure punters that the house is running a fair game, and not stacking the deck. There are non-sanctioned gambling houses in the city, and they often offer better returns on bets, but… they don’t come with these assurances… so really if you go there you’re making a different kind of gamble.
This relationship between the church and “sanctioned gambling establishments” might explain why, our of the extensive list of guilds in the city, there isn’t a guild of gamblers or gambling houses.
As for Konsi herself, while she recognizes that gambling represents a form of worship to Tymora, she much more subscribes to the “good karma” theory of fortune and fate. Those who do good deeds will be smiled upon by Lady Luck, and their good deeds will be repaid in kind. She doesn’t tend to go in for gambling games too much, because they tend to require a bit more calculation and mathematics than she’s comfortable with, and thus her knowledge of these games is a little sub-par for the wishes of the church.
It’s a fun religion, they even have a casino floor in the church itself where you can just hang out and play some chill cards.
Side Note: If you read any of the 5e official books, they say the temple of Tymora is in the Castle Ward, not the Sea Ward… Despite the temples of Gond and Sune (which the Temple of Tymora sits between) being in the Sea Ward.
You place a magical command on a creature that you can see within range, forcing it to carry out some service or refrain from some action or course of activity as you decide. If the creature can understand you, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become charmed by you for the duration. While the creature is charmed by you, it takes 5d10 psychic damage each time it acts in a manner directly counter to your instructions, but no more than once each day. A creature that can’t understand you is unaffected by the spell.
You can issue any command you choose, short of an activity that would result in certain death. Should you issue a suicidal command, the spell ends.
You can end the spell early by using an action to dismiss it. A remove curse, greater restoration, or wish spell also ends it.
At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 7th or 8th level, the duration is 1 year. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 9th level, the spell lasts until it is ended by one of the spells mentioned above.
A geas is a magically enforced taboo against something. Following the requirements brings power but violation comes with grave punishment, often resulting in a character’s death or undoing.
in 5e, Geas is a level 5 spell that compels someone to either do something, or refrain from doing something - the compulsion is in the form of the threat of massive damage for disobedience.
I actually first ran into geas in Halo. The Librarian had the ability to implant people with a genetic destiny, a sequence of DNA which guides their species’ evolution in predictable ways. She used it to make Dr Halsey a eugenecist and John Halo a good candidate for surgical augmentation.
What’s great is that my family is heavily irish, so there’s bits and pieces of language from there. After I realized it was Irish in origin, it was obvious how it was originally said, but the gay-ass brain I have still likes gay ass better :)
So I ran into this word in two different ways without realizing they were the same word. I saw it written down in various World of Darkness books (where I pronounced it phonetically), and I heard it spoken in the Laundry Files audiobooks (where they pronounce it “gesh”). It took me ages to figure out they were the same word.
My brain first said “gee-ass”, with a soft G, as in jif. I don’t think I’d say that out loud though, because as a kid who read a bunch, I have long lasting trauma from being mocked for saying stuff wrong so I’d wait until I heard someone else say it.
Gods, I hate that. I get that kids are essentially sociopaths, but it still sucks. I was in the AP/advanced English classes, and a lot of the kids through the years were total dicks about that with other kids. It’s one thing to give someone the formal pronunciation, but don’t mock them.
I’m sorry people were jerks to you.
What’s worse is that your pronunciation is one of the more common variants among irish immigrant descendants in my area, just with an sh at the end instead of just an s. Weird mountain people lol, they know a smattering of Irish loaner words, but they’ve changed over the years.
I thought it looked a bit like an Old English word maybe resurrected for D&D, so I initially thought maybe something like /gεɑs/ (a bit like “gas” or “GEH-ahs”; ain’t no player actually gonna say /ɣ/ or /æɑ/ properly) or /jεɑs/ (“yasss”)
Then looked it up on Wiktionary. It’s from Irish “geis” with the wrong spelling apparently. Irish spelling do be silly, so all phonetic preconceptions should be checked at the door.
Wiktionary says /ɟɛʃ/ for Irish, anglicized as /ɡɛʃ/ or /ˈɡiː.əʃ/ (gesh and GEE-ush, respectively).
So I first encountered the word three days ago - I decided to make my way through the Baldur’s Gate series and started with The Black Pits, where it’s mentioned. I’m aware of the psychological phenomenon where you start seeing a word or concept you recently learnt about everywhere but man, still feels like a huge coincidence.
So anyway the pronunciation- ge- same as in “get”, -as same as “us”. My native Czech has super consistent rules of pronunciation, with each letter always representing exactly one specific sound (well, almost always) and it works out like this.
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