Collected from the web: There are over 200 bodies on Mt. Everest.

Because it is so difficult (if not impossible) to retrieve those bodies, they are simply left in situ. Grisly, but fascinating monuments to those who have attempted the most famous of climbs.

(For the record, if this were to be the way I died, I would actually prefer to have my body left there and remembered. A fleeting touch of immortality.)

What’s interesting is that many of these bodies have become actual landmarks. Some have earned nicknames. They have become part of the mountain and part of the experience of climbing the mountain.

Turning this to our most prevalent topic here at the Alexandrian: When I’m DMing, because I’m forgetful, corpses will frequently end up disappearing as if they were phasing out from a CRPG. This is not a deliberate choice on my part; quite the opposite, in fact. When I remember to account for corpses, some great gaming experiences have come from it: Whether it’s the heads of formers PCs on pikes outside the Caverns of Thracia. Or the murder investigation launched when the PCs irreverently left corpses laying in an alley. Or the mystery posed by disappearing corpses in the labyrinth. Or the sinking, near-poisonous miasma which resulted from the PCs leaving a bloody charnel house of corpses to molder and rot.

At an open game table, of course, this sort of thing will crop up more frequently. (Where the heck did that corpse of a necromancer come from?) But even without an open game table, you can consciously choose to have the environment evolve when the PCs aren’t looking; or evolve as a result of the actions the PCs have taken (or not taken). The typical milieu of a D&D campaign is strewn with corpses. Don’t forget about them.

Work on the Alexandrian has been light of late because I’ve been toiling to wrap up a major project.

The big hitch-up at the moment has been layout. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that Windows 7 won’t run the version of Quark I own, which means I needed to upgrade to a new layout program. After examining the available options, I decided to switch to Adobe inDesign.

While in many ways I’m glad I’ve made the switch, the fact that I’m basically needing to relearn layout from the ground up is definitely complicating the completion of this project. (Which is already far behind schedule.) Things are just similar enough to be confusing. It’s easy to see why lots of people and organizations choose to stick with what they know because it’s what they know.

But if all goes well, I should have a major announcement coming down the pike in the next few days. And starting later today I’ll be posting some of my older professional work to fill the gap.

Dragon winds are hot, dry winds which blow suddenly, strongly, and unexpectedly against the prevailing winds. They are taken to be signs of ill-omen and bad fortune. In the Low Countries they are more explicitly called dragon’s breath, and perhaps that’s why, in the crag villages of the Killorn Peaks, they are believed to be the sulfurous breath of the Red Maiden, the most-feared of the eighty-seven fates.

Loremasters, however, trace the origin of the term back to the tribute flights of the tyrant dragon Cinderheart. It is written that he possessed wings of crawling magma and that the terrible heat swept forth by the beating of those wings could be felt for miles as a harbinger of terror.

It’s interesting watching PCs (and their players) slip through a varying appreciation of cash. The same folks who will cheer at a 100 gp payout at 1st level will gradually become far more jaded towards their bank accounts as the levels tick past.

“I’ve only got 2,000 gp!”

Ah, yes. You poor dear. You’ve only got as much money as the average person makes in two lifetimes.

Of course, this might all be funnier if it didn’t happen in real life and with real money all the time.

In the Middle Ages, the wealthy were known to sponsor holy pilgrims. Like modern millionaires funding a NASCAR team, the sponsors would share in the reflected glory of the pilgrimage. Of course, as in all matters of salvation and piety, there were also deeper spiritual entanglements to consider in such things: Acting in their name and as their agents, the pilgrims would receive blessing not only for themselves but for the lords and ladies in whose name they journeyed.

Historically speaking, the sponsoring of pilgrimages were partly a matter of holy duty (like any other form of tithing) and partly a matter of expediency (for those too busy to make the journey for themselves). In a fantasy setting, however, it would be fairly easy to imagine a third parameter: Danger.

Enter the adventurers.

Imagine, for example, an ancient holy site which is now located in the upper lairs of the Bloodreaver Dragons. Or in the Lava Caverns of the Myrmarch. Or lost in the eddies of the Astral Sea.

And in a world where the gods are active (and perhaps even malevolent) forces, the stakes for successfully performing such pilgrimages might be incredibly high. Thus those who have proven that they can make the greatest dangers into their play-things could easily find great profit in performing such journeys.

A sponsored pilgrimage could be a fun, exploratory travelogue (an appropriate sub-structure for any hexcrawl); it could be tied into a larger scenario (“we need guidance from the Forgotten God of the Purple Seas, and you must journey to his Broken Temple lost among the Steppes of the Black Wight”); or it could be the seed for even larger adventures (“we went to Thor’s shrine for you, but now we all seem to be having visions of Ragnarok”).