Alter Bar

Just across The Lift from the College on level 10, a light and airy coffeehouse with windows shares a wall with what looks like a dark and cozy bookstore. A single long wooden sign spans both entry doors, reading "Alter Bar" in a faux runic font that glows pale green after dark. A cramped bar dominates the entry room on the bookstore side leaving room for a few coffee tables, couches, and chairs, and a barely-adequate grey wool curtain hangs over an unfinished hole leading to the coffeehouse side. A smaller counter serves coffee at all hours overlooking a scattering of bistro tables in the single open space.

The name means "old money" in Steinrede, so there's a story behind that which many never learn. The sharp-eyed see a sign above the bar that reads "Dein Blut Gehört Dir" in Steinrede, which translates to "Your blood belongs to you." Wild Magic Sorcerer and Alchemist Kornelia Sonnenstein bought these properties and opened Alter Bar two years ago now. It still has the not-quite-finished feel of a new establishment, and the clientele remains eclectic. Bored nobles from Topside come down to slum it with College students looking to blow off some steam, and adventurers revere the novelty of a drink that can alter the drinker's face or body.

Kornelia Sonnenstein

Kornelia was born in Erdgeist on a twice-removed branch of the Sonnenstein family tree. While technically a relative of the King, Kornelia is roughly 63rd in line for succession to the Molten Throne, and that number increases year by year as scholars bicker about primacy and inheritance law. Family members regarded her heterochromia as grounds for removal from the line of succession, which suited her just fine. Her mother Adelheid feared that some ambitious cousin would come knocking and take Kornelia away to destroy her pale witch eye and "purify" the family, so Adelheid pushed hard for Kornelia's acceptance into the Forgefather's service as quickly as possible to keep her safe.

After decades of holy service bringing her barely to adulthood, Kornelia's latent wild magic surfaced, causing all of her hair (and fledgling beard) to fall out and grow back the next morning. Even senior clerics started referring to her as the Cursed Child, which did not bode well for her future advancement in the clergy. Kornelia grew tired of being treated as an object by everyone, so she started learning magic that would change her appearance and help her disappear. Before anyone could formally kick her out, she stockpiled money from her mother and staged her escape.

Apothic Carrie

Carella Fidelis, the eldest child of Demarco and Luna Fidelis, came into this world twenty-six years ago in Vinovia, an Ionian town on the marshy border of Castrerus (commonly known as the Shattered Empire). Her father served as regent of the town for the Republic, keeping the peace and making sure taxes flowed into the treasury without incident. She enjoyed the trappings of wealth, but had a hard time with authority. A tomboy in her youth unconcerned with traditional gender roles, she drifted toward tougher crowds as the years passed. She has a wicked tongue in her head, equally proficient with puns and insults, but she had the strength and tenacity to hold her own against the local bullies, eventually earning peace if not respect from them.

She still passed as a boy in her late teens, so she convinced her father to pull some strings and allow her to serve a son's civic duty to train and spend two years in the legions before returning home to help with running Vinovia for the Republic. She served in Legio VI Victrix, a training legion filled with new soldiers, building forts and border fortifications on the finger of Ionian land between Alfinwald and the Okulari Empire. She worked with the support teams mainly, fascinated by the concoctions flung by the siege equipment, especially fire bombs. She told jokes and puns to the siege teams to soften them up and learned all she could about siege chemistry from them, until her life changed on the day the Republic killed her family.

Two Years of Fellport

(This turns into a State Of The Wombat post under the fold, so buckle up.)

We're a week into 2025 now, and I haven't blogged at all until now. After 2 year-long blogging projects focused on the city of Fellport in my current D&D 5e game, I hope you'll forgive me for being a little tired and walking away for a bit. Take a look at the Fellport Almanac if you want to see what I've written so far. There's more to do in Fellport, but I don't have a self-imposed weekly deadline looming, so I'll have a much more relaxed time releasing future articles.

That said, let's summarize the past couple of years.

The #City23 project has 122 posts tagged, but 1 of those was the Fellport Almanac, and 3 others were intro posts of some sort, for a total of 118 content posts. The #Lore24 project has 123 posts tagged, but 1 of those was the Almanac, and 2 others were intro posts, for a total of 120 content posts. The Rumor Mill mini-series took up 52 of those posts, providing 416 total rumors and worldbuilding fragments in lists of 8 rumors per post.

A total of 238 posts? That's quite a number when viewed all at once, and it only took me 2 years.

Coin of Fortune Reversal

Wondrous item, rare

This ancient platinum coin has runic letters spelling out "Fate" on one side, and XIII representing the number 13 in Roman numerals under a rounded image of a full bag on the other. It has a nice weight for flipping, and it rings out a clear tone whenever flipped, easily audible within 60 feet.

As a reaction, you may flip the coin, requiring at least one free hand or a mage hand cast by someone who wields wild magic. The result of any d20 roll within 30 feet of the coin can be reversed, by flipping the die over and reading the bottom face. For normal d20s, this should result in a new value of 21 minus the original roll. So a roll of 1 would become a 20 and vice versa.