Okay, I fortunately finally finished Phostus. Fantastically fascinating fiction, freely flowing fun.

Anyway:



So yeah, I like Phostus, more or less. I think between this and Helkavin, we have sort of made up for Serra's Realm being a thing, which is a win in my book!

For few fripperies fall forth from fearsome Phostus's foreboding foundries.

Fwahahahaha!

Honestly, it's something of a byproduct to offset the inclusion of the androgyne demons. I had to find some way to normalize it so that it didn't seem solely a demonic trait. Ultimately, I really wanted Luxenyx to be that, but if there was no baseline I was worried about what implications may be drawn from it.

I was worried it might stick out like this, but... well, needs must when the devil drives.
Yeah, between the ouroboros symbolism and the hydras, I wanted that to be kind of a subtheme to green on Phostus.
I think they were sufficiently cowed by what happened before. Speaking of cows....
The minotaur were ultimately the hardest tribe to design a history for, partly because of the cultural cues I wanted to pull and the lack of resonant mythology I could build around, but I'm emboldened that you think I did a spiffy job. Though likely I didn't leave enough clear evidence for their cultural origin...
Yeah... to some degree it was intentional, because I had to find some way to tie what I wanted to do across a spectrum of different subclassifications. It sort of tied my hands in there, since I didn't feel each of these subspecies warranted their own entry. (it was hellish to try to resist a Doge joke too....)
Spikes were really sort of a place to just fill in some missing color pieces, and were honestly thrown in on a whim. The Manticore is something I had been struggling with for a while. Originally I was going to include Lamassu as well to act as a foil to them, but it felt contrived and I could never get a good angle on them.
Well, I designed Phostus as a Mirror Darkly of Ellysium in terms of themes and even history. There's a sort of inverted parallelism that appeals to me in a really sort of twisted way.

Plus, having finished this is pushing me to recompile and polish Ellysium too, which is an advantage. I've gotten to the point that what I need are locations to fill Ellysium out, but I might just turn people loose on that, make a new thread and see what falls out.

Then I'll finally move onto doing the new plane that's been rattling my brain.

... how the hell is it that I managed to miss the possibility of putting in Phytohydra?
>sigh< well, another thing to add in the next pass along with the demonic legions.

Ooooh, so could little patches of plantlife in a small cave turn out to be a phytohydra? That'd be awesome.

I finally got around to reading this and I really like it. I'm rubbish at giving specific feedback unless it's criticism but I can say that the myths of the amphin and cinder falls are very evocative. As for criticisms, I mostly only have two (besides typos):

I love Gargoyles but I feel that Phostus would be better if you made your gargoyles somewhat more original, that is distinct from the source of inspiration. For example, why did you use such a similar reproductive cycle?

Second, I find it difficult to believe that life in cities ruled by demons could be all that normal. Not that humans have a track record of being benevolent, just rulers with well-run cities or high quality of living, but I'd really expect the demons to be brutal tyrants and the populous to seem more oppressed. There's brief mention of the demons owning their souls, but not what that means (do they all become oboli upon death?) In other words, I expected a massive downside to submitting to demon rule, yet it isn't clear (to me) what that is.

*shrug* partly, I suppose, because it made sense. Which is sort of a problem with looking to a really well made inspiration, because you find a lot of the core decisions they made first to be really logical.


Demons don't have much to prove when they're already in charge. Casual cruelty is really only fitting for those whose ambition put them in reach. THEN it becomes amusing to see that kind of torture. Plus, really, you have to keep in mind they have thousands and thousands of subjects. It's a little bit of a case of the bureaucratic grind. The numbers just sap a lot of the meaning out of being despotic.

The obol are taken from people while they are still alive, not upon death. It basically means they don't own their own fate. They are slaves but... well, the numbers game come back up. It's better to have slaves that feed themselves than have to worry about that sort of thing.

I wasn't thinking of casual cruelty so much as systemic oppression -- poverty, oppressive laws, military police, lack of free speech and/or medical care. The combination of hoarding resources (of whatever kind the demons prize), harsh measures to prevent rebellion (though probably less so than human despots), and disregard for quality of life. A lack of civil rights, like in Ravnica. The demons only need to make it noticeably less crappy than living in the wastes (which look like pretty crappy places themselves) to attract settlers and discourge emigration. They don't really need to make it comfortable or fair or just.

But when you say the obol is taken before death... what does that mean? Is it literally their soul? Does it hurt them to take it? Does it leave them depressed and despirited, or unhealthy, or turned towards black mana, or what?

I also really want to know about the underground where the Amphin and Ouroboros live. How do plants grow without light? What else lurks down there? Do all Amphin and Ouroboros live there, or are there some on the surface?

A lot of that breaks down to the fact that they aren't systemic because they are black rather than white. They aren't overly interested in law aside from where it disrupts their demands. (Things like taxes and economics, which does mean they have a vested interest in providing security for the city, besides as a force to exert this will. So yes, there is a military police, but that doesn't necessarily translate to oppression.)

It's very much a society based on laissez faire. They don't make it especially comfortable, but by the same merit, they don't have any real impulse to stop people from carving something comfortable out for themselves.* They just don't care. It's like making sure ants are oppressed, just too far beneath them.

The demons that did act needlessly cruelly just didn't last. It's an observable phenomenon that the oppressive demons tended to squander their followers until they had nothing, and then they got picked off by the competition. Their followers and citizens represent an investment. A wise being lets their investment flourish because it creates better dividends and a fool and his obol are soon parted.

On Phostus, as oxymoronic as it sounds, a demon's power is derived from the amount of power they have, and that is directly represented by things like their treasury and citizens.

*This is where poverty might come in, but there's something about that which makes me feel like that the largest class is probably the middle class since the ruling class are the demons. Those ambitious and vicious enough to make it into the demon court are going to end up at each other's throats or possibly attracting the demon's attentions, so while it is no doubt ostentatious and satisfying, it very likely has a much higher mortality rate... meaning that chances are, they're going to not pay attention to being despotic themselves because they'll spend most of their time staying alive. To the other end, poverty is definitely a thing, with beggars, but it's such a harsh world that they have an equal mortality rate. Being poor means you'll probably be dead soon, but the majority of people sit between those two extremes.

It is literally their soul forged into a coin.
It makes them unable to fully exert their free will, and completely unable to resist any decision the demon might have an interest in. It's like a geas.
The lack of a soul, though, probably does shorten their life, and naturally, a being's awareness, in some form or another is trapped within the coin for all time, outlasting the body it was taken from.

The plants only grow at the caves where the underground meets the surface. The Ouroboros all live in those caves and surrounding flora while the Amphin live much deeper past those places. They subside mostly on things like... algae and cave organisms, like insects and fish.

There are a lot of Amphin who live in demonic cities in a sort of... ambassadorial role. There's a large section about how the amphin adapt to life away from the rest of their kind, including a physical mutation.

Now that you've explained it more, yeah that does make sense. That obol stuff is shudderworthy, though. Eek.

It's something that I think the text sort of gives a vague impression of, but isn't crystal about, but I suppose part of that really was a desire to let people come to their own conclusions with just enough reference for their imagination to fill blanks.

I've done my job well then.

So, in some abstract ways, I'm interested in developing a design module for this. Not so much a set, but more a set model for it.
So far, there are 2 things I'm sure would go into the book:
Hellbent and Wither

But aside from that, I'm less sure what the themes and subthemes would be.

I know it's sort of parasitic, but what about a mechanic that will change abilities/behaviors when demons are on the battlefield? I'm thinking along the lines of Kamigawa's Ogre-Demon relationship, but with less of a downside. More like a toggle that switches based on demonic presence.

The oboli aren't nearly as horrific as the oboli in Wraith: the Oblivion.

But what happens to somebody whose obol is eaten by a cinder?

Pretty much the same thing that would happen to someone whose soul was eaten by a cinder in the wild.
(And it isn't Oboli. The plural here would be Obols.)

I could see converting punisher mechanics or monger mechanics to represent demonic deals, or something along those lines.

And you could actually use imprint for an Obol-like effect. Imprinting a creature card could have the right sort of flavor.