Hail, traveller, and well met!
Earlier this year I teased some upcoming Corwyn-adjacent player options, and I’m pleased to announce that today, to mark the five year anniversary of the adventure being released…they’re out! Enchiridion: The Corwyn Catacombs is our newest player supplement for 5E, featuring:
- Rules for playing a chiran character – four arms, five eyes, and the ability to see the fabric of a creature’s soul, oh my!
- The full set of Arcus Stones! The Arcus Stone of Preservation featured in the adventure is but one of fifteen Arcus Stones, and grows more powerful the more of them you collect – which is cool and all but up until now you had to roll your own set of Arcus Stones. Now you can get access to the full set!
- A new martial archetype – The Souldrinker! Wield a sentient, necromantic weapon and fuel your combat prowess with the souls of your vanquished enemies!
- A background for PCs hailing from the time of the chirans.
If you’re already sold on that, you can head over to our store or DriveThruRPG to pick up your copy. Otherwise, read on!
Chiran PCs
We teased this earlier in the year, but the Enchiridion provides rules for playing a chiran PC, including a lineage feat. These guys are cool! You tower over other PCs, have a magic fifth eye to see the fabric of souls, and four arms with which to cast spells, wield weapons, or heave stuff around. Haven’t you always wanted to dual-wield a greatsword and a longbow?
With the history of the chirans presented here, a chiran PC presents a number of really interesting questions to explore over the course of a campaign. How did they survive this long? Why did they survive this long? Where do they stand on the history of their people? Can the rest of us PCs really trust a pallid giant calling themselves “Black Maledict”? Who can literally sense our souls and knows ways too much about necromancy?
But of course, you can also feel free to throw that out – maybe chirans are just regular fellas in your world!
The Arcus Stones
Corwyn is pretty well-received – not to toot our own horn here – but one of the regular pieces of feedback we’ve had over the years is a desire to have all the Arcus Stones available. We’ve always encouraged people inspired by the idea of the stones to invent their own Arcus Stones, but they were an omission from the adventure I was never thrilled about. For the Enchiridion, publishing the official set was a no-brainer.
The fifteen stones represent aspects of the eight schools of magic and seven elements within our setting, and…get pretty crazy! The Stone of Ashes gives you the rebirth powers of the phoenix, the Stone of Tides gives you controls over gravitational forces, the Stone of Realms allows you to traverse and blend planes, and the Stone of Dreams lets you…control dreams. Or decree that in fact, you’re all dreaming right now! What? Dragon? There’s no dragon here, just a bad dream. In fact, this whole campaign we’ve been playing? Dream.
(Dreams is one of my favourites.)
As you can see, the Stones are pretty bonkers if a PC were to actually collect all 15. We don’t really recommend that ever happen, but it provides a cool motivator, and I know I’d love to play a game that culminated in one of our PCs collecting all the stones and becoming a godlike being for the finale. We’re really excited to see which Stones get deployed in people’s games, and the cool antics that will no doubt ensue, so do tell us what you get up to with them!
And yes, the Enchiridion contains all fifteen Arcus Stones, we’re not making you buy the adventure to get the Preservation stone. That would be a dick move.
The Souldrinker
Last but not least, the Enchiridion also features a brand new fighter subclass, the SOULDRINKER!
This is a weird subclass, but one I’m super jazzed to have out there. Souldrinkers are designed to fulfill the fantasy of fighters with sentient, soul-eating weapons (not unlike a certain albino prince upon a ruby throne). Every time a souldrinker slays a sufficiently powerful creature, they consume its immortal soul, which they can use to manifest effects like bolstering defences, setting their weapon aflame, divining information, or healing themselves.
The catch is, each day the weapon consumes half their stored souls.
This gives Souldrinkers a shark-like, always-be-souldrinkin’ quality, and gives a constant tension between weapon and wielder. It runs very antithetical to traditional 5E design, but we’re pretty stoked to see how folks use this and would love to hear your own experience using it at the table. It’s an archetype I have a lot of affection for, and never felt the official options could simulate well, so I’m hoping you folks feel similarly.
You can pick up the Enchiridion on our store, and on DriveThruRPG, and it’s also available bundled with Corwyn for a discount – also on our store and DriveThruRPG. We’re really looking forward to seeing what you folks think of the content, and how you use it in your own games going forward, so do let us know how you’re using it in your games.
Nothing much else to report, but we’re still working away on more content and are hoping this won’t be the only release of the year. Further details to come in due time. Until then…
Go forth and raise the dead! Souls for the Pale King! Skulls for the Eternal City!
— Jake
