How a Sorceress Becomes a Planet

Today my first article for Nevermet Press went live:  the planet Nyraeve.  This is my science-fiction adaptation of Wyatt Salazar’s villain, Neirave, the Sleepless Drift, who is currently “starring” in Nevermet’s cycle.  To encapsulate the concept, Neirave is a fantasy-genre sorceress with an affinity for cold who managed to live on after her physical body’s death, and who is now slowly bringing an eternal winter to her region — and eventually, if she’s not stopped, to the world.  Many of the articles in Nevermet’s cycle develop the concept further, providing information about locations within Neirave’s forest, for instance, or encounters that can be adapted to any fantasy game.  (Nevermet Press presents systemless content.)

I’m pretty pleased with how my article came out.  Getting there was half the fun.

I had it in mind to adapt a villain for my first piece.  Nevermet’s been focused on fantasy fare, so I decided that a science-fiction entry would be a good departure.  (As an aside, there is other genre content in the queue; look for steampunk elements in September!)  Reading Wyatt’s draft, I immediately flashed to an ice planet:  cold, forbidding, inhospitable.  Perhaps something with a hidden malevolence to it.

The planet Nyraeve is a frigid ball of ice and rock located in the far reaches of known space. Though its equatorial band is Earth-like enough to sustain life, its harsh conditions and distance from the core planets make it of little interest to serve as a colony. A small team of scientists were sent to catalogue Nyraeve’s flora and fauna, nobody expected that anything more would develop on the backwater world.

However, the scientists’ initial geographical surveys of the planet revealed large amounts of unobtainium scattered about the planet in small deposits…

And so it began.

The trick to a good adaptation, my high school English teacher once told me, is to lay it out in such a way that elements of the original can be recognized, yet that they aren’t simply copied.  I happen to agree, so I tried to turn Wyatt’s concept on its head a bit.  I changed the planet’s name slightly as an indicator (and because I thought it was more aesthetic this way, for a sci-fi game).  The similarity lies in the general environment:  both the original woods and my planet are for the most part locked in winter, and the chill is, hopefully, something more than merely physical.

Kerid, an arboreal pack predator of Nyraeve. Art by Kenya Ferrand.

The difference lies in one of two places, depending on how a particular GM chooses to use the planet.  He might choose to make the whispers about a lurking alien presence, inimical to human exploration and responsible for many of the “accidents” that have plagued would-be miners, based upon truth.  This approach suits the planet to survival-horror stories, and in this case the difference is a known threat, the sorceress Neirave, versus an unknown one, the legendary Lurkers.  On the other hand, it can be “played straight” as simply a very harsh environment without alien presence, in which case the difference lies in the type of threat:  Neirave is a very personal threat, at heart, while the planet Nyraeve is quite impersonal.

(I did suggest a third approach for Nyraeve, as a “Gold Rush western in space” setting.  This came as an afterthought, more or less.  It doesn’t tie in as nicely with the villain’s core concepts, but I thought it would be better to offer the extra possibility explicitly, in the name of flexibility.  Nevermet Press aims to provide concepts that are easy to just drop into a game, after all.)

Anyway, this and the Champions Online open beta are the main reasons I’ve been so quiet for the past week.  I expect I’ll be providing some statblocks in the near future, though.  Head over to Nevermet Press to read the full article and learn more about the creatures of Nyraeve, such as that charming fellow above.

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