Zytera is in a position of power, can do uncanny and terrible things, and Zygofer has proven capable of breathtaking tactical abilities in the past. They had no reason to care about Stanengist in the past, though, and their plans with female rulers of Ravenland are unavoidably flawed. The good news is that lets you interact with Zytera more often than the campaign expects (you can probably ignore the soap opera bit, though).

Gracenotes: when you’re the King you have to fear other Kings, e.g. from Alderland, why have all of Zytera’s experiments failed?, does Zygofer have a mental hold over all Blood Sorcerers?, best guess at when Zygofer got Merigall back, Zygofer can plausibly threaten that killing him would be bad, the best counter-Stanengist plan is to collect elf rubies, Zytera is already limited by the size of their army in how much they can rule, Zygofer’s plan to be legitimised by ruling with a Queen of Ravenland is really good, Zytera also has some good diplomacy ploys, unless they’re shopping for unusual Kin body parts, the Maligarn sword can’t be with Marga and Martea because they’ve have told Zertorme or Merigall, have another hopeless plan from Kalman Rodenfell.

If he’s a normal Elvenspring, Zertorme should be dead by now. He’s only still alive because he’s part-demon, which is politically awkward. Whether he fakes his death, ages rapidly and is reborn, or burns up and then has to regrow himself, he regularly regenerates into a new Zertorme.

Rather than seeking out new allies – which either can’t do because he’s just a figurehead or a racist patrician, or won’t because he’s lazy – he’s palling around with a fire demon. Why is she here? Maybe Merigall did it, maybe his regular regenerations made demons curious, maybe she’s him somehow. This is the main threat to his leadership, and she knows it, which is why she stole his face.

Zertorme is interesting because he’s a political leader, and he’s not locked into one strategy. As such, he’s not doomed to betray everyone as the campaign suggests. That makes him more interesting than most key players.

Gracenotes: being around demonic experiments is like second-hand cigarette smoke, your players should meet Zertorme many times, before and after regeneration, Zertorme’s illusions are really impressive, the situational benefits of an imprecise memory, demonic regeneration is weird and gruesome, that means there could be a trade in relics, that there are undead or ghosts means you can gloat at your dead mentor, if Brinhelda was born from Zertorme is Zertorme still demonic?, one of Merigall’s children is a permanent courtier at Amber’s Peak, ruling with Stanengist is arguably so he can show his father, he’s most likely to find out about it because the PCs won’t keep their mouth shut.

In Raven’s Purge, only male key players have agency, but everyone basically agrees with Krasylla. She doesn’t need Zytera’s help, and turning into sarmog might get her out of her contract with Zytera. She’s been adapting to a number 2 position for a while, and wondering what it would be to be a local demon.

Krasylla’s main weakness, which she’s thought about, is being shot by an arrow of the Fire Wyrm (which won’t happen instantaneously), and it makes sense that Krasylla would have spies looking out for the arrow. When the PCs get involved, hilarity can ensue.

Consider who can thwart Krasylla.

Gracenotes: Krasylla is now Ursula out of the Little Mermaid, maybe Zytera’s giant spider is Krasylla’s spy, what if Krasylla eats one of Merigall’s children, Krasylla talking in a hideous mockery of a local dialect, even if Maha is the universal language of magic the Galdanes want no part of it, if Erinya attacks you through lava where do you need to stand to be safe?, Raven’s Purge is wrong about which arrow Merigall has, Erinya is summoned through a ritual rather than having agency, as it should be, what does it take to bribe a spy, flaws that shape-shifters have, Zertorme likes this chompy horse spy, humans are too short-lived to be good plotters, Zytera should always posture given the chance, oh hey, Katorda exists.

Viridia doesn’t look appealing at first glance, but there’s reason to doubt the official story. It’s not clear that Scrame actually killed and ate her, or why he’d randomly stick an elf ruby into his eye unless that was planned with Viridia.

What is clear that Gemelda and friends refused to seriously listen to Viridia, and didn’t give her time to come to terms with what had happened, or seriously entertain the reasonable theory that a mature system needs destruction as well as creation.

Viridia-in-the-sword provokes bloodlust and mayhem, sure, but if you don’t like that, don’t pick up the sword of bloodlust and mayhem. Her expressed personality may be extreme, but it may just be what she thinks people looking for swords want to hear. Give her time and a more subtle Viridia may emerge.

Gracenotes: Gemelda et al were already in Stanengist in the second meeting in the stillmist, so other elves had to rip Viridia’s emerald out of her chest somehow; if Viridia helped put her ruby inside Scrame her tiny body must have looked weird; Gemelda sounds like a tradwife and Viridia sounds pretty trans; you might think parasites are disgusting but they can be pretty great; maybe Gemelda was fine with feudal rule back in the day; you can’t quote Quentin Tarantino without swearing; the main threat to a sentient sword is the boredom of not being used; you should startle your players by having her talk to them.

The problem with saying the blood mist was karma for humanity is that precisely because humans are bastards, they didn’t feel any guilt. What’s more likely is that bloodlings are natural demon-part scavengers, and when huge demon wars happened, the bloodlings were overwhelmed and decided to triage everyone, including elves and other non-humans.

The blood mist is a network that learns, and at times individual bloodlings can fail to merge back. The more kind-natured ones would be horrified at what they’d accidentally done.

While Merigall probably had an early part in working out what was happening, and elves and dwarves probably helped, the Rust Brothers had every interest in maintaining the blood mist. What probably tipped the balance was Krasylla.

Gracenotes: let’s be nice to Erik Granström, bloodlings are here to clean up demon dandruff, Pyronax was merely the first survivor of the blood mist, I like how it’s ambiguous whether the narrator or aunt Ethel spilled beer on the baby and whether that was bad or hilarious, the blood mist doesn’t affect dwarves because the blood mist is a plant, a bloodling confused by a prepper cult gone bad, bloodling vampires, bloodling villages, elf and dwarf nerds unite, an elf-bloodling hybrid, a party of anti-Rust Brother guerillas.

Demons probably like the colour red, and it looks like mog is all about gluing demons and other things together, but we really don’t know. The best clue to demon nature is ether: it might be something like oxygen that demons need to manufacture, but it’s more likely to be food, that enterprising demons can work around, but you need to be able to make on-site if you’re going to invade. Also, demons are probably inherently conglomerations.

Gracenotes: kinky Merigall, Zytera knows more about mog than anybody else, unless they really don’t, sorcerers high on their demonic supply.

A rogue can’t make a living out of stealing from people in their small village, nor can a pedlar sell stuff to their neighbours. You can still get some milage out of those professions, but it’s a stretch.

It might be that a profession is just who you are; and long-lived kin may decide to keep on teaching the old skills just in case. Or that most people just didn’t min-max and that’s fine; besides, there’s plenty of useful General Talents that don’t imply adventuring.

In truth, PCs are weird, and that’s worth celebrating. It also means they can stumble into a common parlour game of “what kind of adventurer would you be?”, which is an excellent opportunity for roleplaying.

Gracenotes: the crazy village where everyone is a thief or pedlar; the village with just one potential PC who is frustrated but also a really useful recruit; adventures are as fun as giving birth or being ill, i.e. they’re not but you soon forget the bad bits.

PCs get worse at fighting as they take damage, which is great; but monsters have too much Strength to use in rolls, so we end up with separate rules for them. OK, but that means that monsters don’t show signs of weakness until they die, which is unfortunate.

On the assumption that if one spell specifically says it involves a thing, then all other spells don’t, we can assume that casting spells doesn’t involve somatic or verbal actions. How about material components; how near do you need to be?

Casting a spell from a grimoire is an aide-memoire rather than reading it, its pages have thickened with magic, so it makes sense that you could have ingredients in your grimoire.

Three demon heads joined together, each of them with a potentially-crippling weakness to ordinary Ravenland materials, but they and their friend who can turn into a protective zorb work together. They joined up when realising how treacherous Ravenland was.

Gracenotes: ether, they live with an ent who’s interested in demon natural history, weaknesses aren’t all-or-nothing.

Gifts of the Sea should be in a sea cave, normally flooded except for rare tides.

Neyd’s staff, and the dwarf legend “the world was perfectly spherical” vs probable fact Neyd was annoyed with dwarves building mountains like engineers. A portal to the sea and all that can go wrong with something like that. Devices that will help you talk to underwater elves. Sacred tablets of Wyrm that don’t rust (heresy!).

Gracenotes: how many moons does your world have?, whiner stone, permanent delegation from Farhaven, don’t salt your neighbours land by accident, rubbish artifacts could have been snuck in.