Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
“…I think we should keep going.”
“This again?! She really didn’t pick you for your brains, did she?”
“Don’t talk to him like that.”
“I just think we should put a little more distance between us and Lex. If he comes looking for us now-”
“You think we’d be better off if he found us stumbling around in the dark, exhausted and barely able to move in a straight line?”
“Both of you, please, stop it,” sighed Cozy, feeling her stomach cramp up at Aisle and Aria’s bickering. Though that might have been the hunger pains kicking up again. After having had a good meal for the first time in weeks, the renewed lack of food wasn’t sitting well with her body. “We’ve gone over all of this already, and this is the best option we have right now.”
“That’s her way of saying ‘shut it, loverboy,’” added Aria, somehow managing to imbue her whisper with an audible sneer.
“I understand,” replied Aisle nervously. “I do. I just think that if-”
This time Aria’s reply was an angry hiss. “If you repeat yourself one more time then, so help me, I won’t be the only one here who needs to have their voice box regenerated!”
Giving a long-suffering sigh, Cozy closed her eyes. Although her spirit had been high when she’d left the camp, even in the face of the constant setbacks they’d had to deal with, Aria and Aisle were very clearly not as relieved as she was to be away from that place. By itself that wouldn’t have been a big deal, but each of them was constantly venting their anxieties as they journeyed. While Cozy could have dealt with that, the two of them were completely unable to agree on anything, and those disagreements almost always became arguments. Listening to the two of them go back and forth again and again had been enough to erode Cozy’s good mood.
It would have been easy to lay all the blame on Aria, she knew. The Siren was constantly complaining – about being hungry, about how slow they were going, about having to crawl along the ground (her flying spell had ended just after she’d rejoined them, and she’d insisted on conserving her remaining magic in case there was an emergency) – and her attitude had been enough to make Cozy regret asking her to join them. But there was no backing out of that now, she knew. She’d seen a little of what Aria could do during the battle against the sea monsters, and it was enough to make it very clear that if she wanted, the Siren wouldn’t have much trouble dragging them back to Lex against their wills. In fact, Cozy suspected that was the real reason why Aria was insisting on holding some of her magic in reserve…
On the other hoof, Aisle hadn’t been much better. Although he wasn’t as openly unpleasant as Aria was, he couldn’t seem to keep himself from offering his opinion on every little thing they did. Even that wouldn’t have been unbearable if he’d limited himself to voicing some new or otherwise-pertinent observation and being done with it. But for whatever reason, he seemed compelled to raise the same points over and over again. The number of times that he’d insisted that they put as much distance between themselves and the camp as quickly as they could was impossible to count. It was like he thought they hadn’t heard him or fully comprehended what he was saying, no matter how thoroughly they assured him that they understood him.
Cozy had been content to endure Aisle’s repeating himself – even if it made her grit her teeth, she knew that it was his way of coping with his fears; besides, getting to know her boyfriend’s bad habits was also a part of their relationship – but Aria was far less forgiving. It hadn’t taken long for her to start snarking at Aisle every time he said something he’d mentioned before. Aisle’s replies had never dropped down to her level, of course, but maybe it would have been better if he had rather than trying to explain his reasoning even more in response to her criticism, since that inevitably upset Aria even worse. It had quickly gotten to the point where Cozy needed to jump in as soon as they started talking to each other in order to avoid a fight breaking out.
All of that, plus the fact that the journey itself hadn’t gotten any easier. If anything, it had become harder as they’d continued on. The issues with the makeshift sled that they’d loaded Pillow’s body onto had continued to plague them, and whether due to the effort they were expending or Aria’s complaining, there had been constant reminders as to how hungry they all were. Worse, Aisle’s stamina had rapidly been depleted by the effort of pulling Pillow’s body, and while the pace had picked up slightly when Cozy had taken on that burden for herself (over Aisle’s protests), it hadn’t been long before the effort had slowed her to a crawl as well. Aria, of course, had refused to take a turn pulling at all.
The final straw had been after the sun had gone down. When the last vestiges of twilight had turned into full darkness, the logistical problems had become too much to ignore. While Cozy could have conjured a light, Aisle had practically become hysterical at the idea, insisting that doing so would instantly bring Lex down on them; the fact that Aria had begrudgingly concurred had driven home that it was a bad idea, and Cozy had let it go. But with no light, keeping on anything that remotely resembled a straight line was too difficult to attempt. None of them knew how to navigate via the stars, and while the lights from the camp were still visible behind them – closer than was comfortable – it was too easy to drift off-course if they didn’t stop and glance backward every minute or so. As Aisle had repeatedly brought up, if they drifted even a little bit without constantly checking their course, they could end up heading northwest instead of northeast, which would add to their overall travel time rather than reducing it.
Despite this, he’d wanted to push on, his fear of Lex stronger than his fear of getting lost. That, and he’d pointed out that the more distance they covered, the sooner they could reach a farming village and acquire some food. But Cozy had eventually decided to stop for the night, knowing that they were all at the end of their rope. As badly as she wanted to get back to the Crystal Empire, she knew that Aria was right about them exhausting themselves if they went any further.
At the moment, the Siren had moved on to yet another thing that was bothering her. “You had better be right about there being a place with some food nearby,” she spat, the whispered words quite clearly directed at Aisle. “Even when I had to live with the sahuagin, there was enough to eat every day.”
“I don’t know why we haven’t seen anything,” murmured Aisle. They’d all lain down a short distance from each other when Cozy had called for them to stop, and he was only a few feet from her now. Despite that, he was still nearly invisible in the dim glow of the gibbous moon and the stars. “None of them are big places, but usually there’d be at least a few lights in windows. We should have caught a glimpse of some by now.”
“Maybe they’re hiding from something,” ventured Cozy. She was only half-paying attention, exhaustion and the need to keep the conversation away from the two of them fighting driving her words more than logic. “We didn’t use any lights when we were in Vanhoover.”
“Yeah, but that was because of the ghouls,” answered Aisle, his voice slightly nervous. “It’s not like there are any of those out here. So what would they be hiding from?”
“They’ll need to hide from me if they don’t turn over whatever food they have,” whispered Aria harshly. Her stomach growled angrily then, as if to punctuate her words. “I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I’m hurt, so they better not give us any trouble!”
Cozy frowned at that, blinking for a moment as she fought off sleep, sitting up. “You’re hurt?” That didn’t make any sense; Aria hadn’t been injured when she’d joined up with them, and she hadn’t so much as helped pull Pillow’s sled. How could she be hurt? “How?”
“What do you care?” snorted Aria sullenly.
“Because I might be able to help.” With a grunt, she climbed to her hooves. “I can’t fix things like fatigue or sore muscles, but if you’re wounded I can heal you.”
“Well I am wounded,” came the petulant reply. Cozy climbed to her hooves at that, expecting that Aria would demand that she come heal her…but to her surprise, no such command came. Instead, Aria was silent for several long seconds before whispering again. “I wasn’t just talking about how rough the ground was for fun, you know.” Although it was hard to tell with how the words were whispered, it sounded to Cozy like Aria’s usual acerbity was lacking. “My tail isn’t exactly built for crawling around like this.”
That wasn’t news to Cozy, at least not completely. The ground being uncomfortable had been among Aria's laundry list of complaints, but Cozy had thought she’d been speaking more generally, like in terms of soreness or muscle cramping. But what she was saying now made it sound more like she had cuts and scrapes. For a moment Cozy felt a flicker of guilt, realizing she’d misjudged at least part of Aria’s bad attitude. I was so worried about staying far enough away from them that Lex’s curse wouldn’t make me feel their discomfort that I didn’t think about what it was like for her. “I’ll heal you now,” she declared, starting to pick her way toward the source of the whispered words.
Aria snorted. “Why? What's it to you if I’m hurt or not?”
“Because I care about you, Aria. I wouldn't want to help you if I didn't.”
“And here I thought you were just worried that I’d turn you back in to Lex if you didn’t stay on my good side.”
Cozy flinched at the accusation. Although that wasn’t her reason for making the offer, that thought had crossed her mind. “That’s not true. I’ve done this for you before, remember? After the battle at the docks?”
“What I remember is that you told everyone who was hurt to gather around you, and then you did your healing-aura thing. You weren’t worried about me personally, were you?” When no answer came from the crystal mare, Aria snorted again. “Thought so. Maybe next time try that whole ‘I care about you’ bit when it’s not your best bet for getting something from me. It might sound a little more sincere then.”
Cozy was silent for a long moment, then marched toward where Aria’s voice came from. As she approached her, she gasped as she felt phantom pains suddenly appear along her lower body, as though she was covered with cuts and scrapes. Biting her lip as she almost stumbled across Aria, she gestured and chanted a prayer to Lashtada, before reaching out and laying a hoof on the Siren’s body. Immediately, the phantom pains vanished, and she heard Aria give a grunt of relief. Stepping back, Cozy turned toward where Aisle was already snoring softly. “I know you don’t believe me, but I do care about you, Aria. Right now, we’re all in this together, and that means that no matter what you might think, the three of us are a team. We won’t ignore your problems or abandon you.” She couldn’t help but give a wry smile then, knowing that Aria wouldn’t see it in the dark. “No matter how much you drive us crazy.” With that said, she trotted toward Aisle, intent on going to sleep.
Behind her, Aria was also counting on the darkness to hide her face, her features twisted in a pensive look.
Cozy, Aisle, and Aria struggle to make progress on their journey to the Crystal Empire!
Are they growing closer to each other, or is this a prelude to things falling apart again?
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Looks like Cozy underestimated how far the farming communities are from Vanhoover though it is possible that Cozy's guess about the farming communities hiding themselves in the dark is correct. Putting on lights at night would make it easier for thieves and raiders to spot the farm so the farmers likely did this to avoid further raids from the camp ponies.
Of course, this would imply the farmers aren't going to be welcoming of them should they spot the three approaching their homes. The farmers could view them as more raiders seeking to steal whatever's left of their crops and given how agitated Aria is, the potential for conflict is rather high. Hopefully a good night's rest will improve their moods in the day since it would make negotiations smoother...well, provided they get that far.
While I'm anxious to see Lex and Sonata engage the ghouls in battle(as well as see the full extent of Severance's power), seeing the runaways group interacting with each other was interesting. Still, I'm on the fence whether the trio will stick together or not since their journey is still in its beginnings. Also, I find Aria picking apart Cozy's good intent rather entertaining and not because of any dislike for Cozy but because of the clash of ideologies and personalities. I'm truly interested in who will win the metaphorical debate, or if they'll establish some sort of middle ground along the way.
Im trying to work out where on teh scale of The Fellowship to The Three Stooges, these guys lay, and if its going to take nearly being trained over before they realise theyre following the tracks back into town?
8944125 Unfortunately, virtually everything that could go wrong with the trio's plan to slip away from camp has. They left late in the day, for instance. They're underfed. Dragging the poorly-built sled with Pillowcase's body is a slow and exhausting effort. The only way they can navigate in the dark is by looking back at the camp's fires and positioning themselves accordingly, which isn't very accurate (hence why they didn't do that for long). The end result of all this is that they've made very little progress, in terms of distance covered. This, of course, is basically what Aisle was worried about, hence why he all but begged Cozy not to do this. But she wouldn't be stopped and he couldn't resist her pleading, so here they are now.
As for the farming village they're headed toward...yeah, that's probably not going to be the warm welcome they're expecting. Between the fact that there hasn't been any rain for a little while (remember the cloud shortage?) and the raiding that's been going on, I have to wonder how much food they'll even have to spare, let alone how open they'll be to letting some suspicious strangers have any. Given that Aria is already hostile, things could go south in a hurry.
Of course, that might happen before they even get there. As this chapter showed, the newest member of their little band isn't exactly playing well with others. Aria doesn't seem to believe that Cozy's goodwill is genuine, whereas Cozy is trying to maintain that them all being there is evidence of them forming a bond between them. It's difficult to say how this will turn out, but I have to wonder what Aria's look at the end of this chapter means...
8944275 In point of fact, they don't seem to have reached the tracks yet. That's kind of a bad sign, but not really surprising, considering that they were dragging a body and had very little light left before the sun went down, leaving them all but unable to move forward.
8944782
Ok, western hexes for most of them. I mean, why would the Oeridians even want to push them out of this one tiny part of almost infinite lush farmland? Even if they did, why didn't the natives say "fine, we're going 30 miles over to the next hex, we'll be beyond that hill but before you get to the area controlled by Ogres." I would think the continent should look a lot like South America, with dense populations along the coastlines and major trade routes along rivers, but vast swathes of the area almost unseen by human eyes.
Thanks for sharing that, and the link. I've noticed how often D&D is getting itself promoted in materials in recent years. I assumed Hasbro was paying for that though, you're saying they're actually getting paid to appear in Stranger Things?
Yup. That's a nickname of course, I meant the idea that in the local village of a few hundred people the friendly alchemist can sell you a few potions, and maybe the priest has crafted a few wondrous items. And if you have that in the local village, than in Absalom you're going to have almost anything available.
Wow, I'd want to smack Aisle as much as Aria does. I hope Cozy memorizes a bunch of Dream Feasts tomorrow morning so she can cast them on herself and her party.
8945398
I'm not aware of too much material where the history of the migration of the races of the Flanaess are concerned, but it's worth noting that South America isn't a very good point of comparison. Tropical and sub-tropical areas tend to have dense forestry and intermittent wetlands that make them poor choices for large-scale human habitation, especially where agriculture is concerned. By contrast, the Flanaess is a temperate area that has a lot of prairies, plains, and other areas that aren't forests or swaps that allow for broad habitation.
So that leaves us with two remaining questions: why would humans deliberately move so far from other humans, and what about the native monster populations? In fact, these two questions are more interrelated than you might think. For the first question ("why would the Oeridians displace the Flan?"/"Why would displaced Flan move so far away?"), it's because conflict tends to be an unavoidable product of mass migration. The Oeridians and the Flan (and the Baklunish, and the Suloise, and the other humans groups, to say nothing of the elves, dwarves, etc.) have different physical features, different languages, different gods, and likely different practices, customs, and beliefs. Even a casual glance at real-world contemporary headlines, where immigration is concerned, will highlight that it's not a non-issue for a lot of people.
So why wouldn't the Oeridians just settle somewhere else, instead of muscling in on the Flan's territory? Well, I have no doubt that some of them did just that. Even if we overlook that in the contemporary Flanaess (right around the end of the sixth century CY) all of the ethnicities are virtually everywhere (albeit with various areas being more likely to have certain groups than others, and small enclaves of the Scarlet Brotherhood setting up Suloise racial-purity enclaves in Hepmonaland in a clear analogy to Nazis in South America), mass migrations don't tend to have any sort of overarching coordination or guidance among the people involved; other than the underlying circumstance that's resulted in them moving, they're not acting in concert, and so there likely wasn't any deliberate attempt on their part to displace the preexisting Flan population.
Rather, it was simply a consequence; immigrant people tend to have less stuff than settled people, since it's hard to carry lots of material goods with you, let alone acquire more due to issues of transportation and money. Throw in that it's harder to acquire money or a stable supply of food while you're on the move, and you're going to have a population that's looking for someplace to put down roots and make a new home. And the simple fact of the matter is that it's much easier to do that in an existing settlement than it is to found a new one from scratch. A place with an existing infrastructure is going to be far more welcoming, even if the local population is hostile, than a wilderness that has nothing. After all, if you were to move to a new location, would you settle into an existing city or go try and build a cabin in the woods? It's the same thing, writ large.
So why did this result in the Flan being displaced? Well, given that it's not surprising that peaceful integration didn't occur (that tends to take a very long time; again, just look at our world today), someone was going to lose out. That it was the Flan was likely due to how migration works in "waves." Civilization doesn't end in a straight line unless there's some sort of stark geographic border (which, as I mentioned before, isn't the case since the migrations for the Flanaess aren't along the coastline; other than the interior forests, most of the place is open), which means that there are going to be towns and settlements further "away" from where the migrating people are coming from, or in other words, there were probably Flan settlements to the east of where the westernmost settlements were suddenly experiencing waves of Oeridian immigrants. So it makes sense that some (quite possibly a lot) of Flan simply decided that they wanted to get away from "those people" and left their now-Oeridian-filled towns to head east where there were still all-Flan towns.
As those towns suddenly swelled, some enterprising Flans would push the literal boundaries of civilization and head eastward to found new towns rather than live in places that were suddenly experiencing a population boom. This process would continue as Oeridian settlers continued to spill in from the west, and suddenly you have the "displaced" scenario occurring. Now repeat for other immigrant populations, until you finally start to see the more cosmopolitan Flanaess that you have today.
But wait, what about the monster populations that were living out beyond the borders of civilization? Well...for the most part, they're more of an individual threat than a serious impediment to an expanding civilization. Even if we overlook creatures which are flat-out unnatural (such as undead, demons, or golems) and so aren't going to be present in any large numbers, and creatures that simply aren't correct for that environment (such as aquatic monsters or creatures that prefer an extreme climate), a significant number of monsters are of animal or near-animal intelligence, and so live more like beasts than people. Unless they're significantly powerful, that means that they're a local hazard (at worst) rather than a threat to an entire city or region. So those aren't going to keep the humans out. The more intelligent monsters are typically portrayed as having some combination of low birth rates, lack of ability/desire to use tools or otherwise alter their environment (at least to the same degree as humans), or quirk of racial psychology that prevents them from engaging in protracted large-scale coordination the way humans regularly do. There's a reason why you don't think of manticores and sphinxes as having cities, let alone civilizations, of their own.
Really, all that leaves is the "humans in funny hats" monsters, which are the demihumans and humanoids. So why did humans push them out, with elves retreating to their forests, dwarves going back to their mountains, and humanoids like orcs and goblins just generally being pressed back to wherever's left to try and eke out a generally-miserable existence? Why weren't the humans the ones who were pushed back? Well, that's a bit harder to answer, because not only are those groups essentially humans for all intents and purposes, but they quite often have advantages that humans don't, such as seeing in the dark or living a really long time. While we could try to play up issues of low degrees of fertility (for elves) or racial psychology making cooperation hard (for orcs), those ideas tend to come across as unsatisfying. Problems of biology have issues that we've already identified and responded to in the real world, often long before the Industrial Revolution, so it's hard to see why a human-like race wouldn't too; elves should know medical, magical, or other ways of boosting their fertility. Likewise, the "human-like" moniker makes issues of "racial psychology" seem dubious, since we know that most of this is actually due to culture and socialization rather than being innate (and attempts to say that this isn't the case for beings like orcs and goblins tends to come across as implausible, and often offensive).
So why are humans the dominant race, having pushed the ogres, goblins, orcs, and others off to the side? Well, this gets back into what we were talking about before with issues of demihuman level limits and monsters being unable to progress (very far) in class levels. Simply put, humans were better than everyone else, on a collective level. Your individual human might not be an exemplar at their chosen profession, but you look around and eventually you'll find one who is. Why? Because humans as a group have an innate potential for excellence that literally no other race, species, or creature does; the exact nature of why that is isn't clear - being presumably due to some combination of evolution, magic, divine blessing, or something else - but the end result is that humans can reach heights and improve themselves often enough that, on a macro-scale, they'll win in the end. Hence why they have the arch-mages and sword-saints and other powerful heroes who can achieve stunning victories time and again.
That's why the humans came to dominate the Flanaess, which is part of a campaign that came about concurrently with the idea of prioritizing human excellent via the game rules. Doing so gave a built-in explanation for why the subcontinent was covered in human settlements, whereas everyone else was pushed to the figurative (and sometimes literal) edge of the map. Perhaps unfortunately, this idea grew less popular over time, as it too fell victim to the idea of "if demihumans and humanoids are just like us, why can't they achieve everything we can achieve?" The explanation of "inherent human excellence" became as unsatisfying as that of "inherent orc aggression." That, and gamers were generally not happy with the idea of not being able to advance their demihuman characters past a certain limit when another player's human character could keep right on going.
So eventually the entire idea of demihuman level limits (and monsters in general not being able to advance) went right out the window. For places like the Flanaess, the question of why there are so many farms that haven't been devastated by monsters is something of a legacy question; for places like Golarion and Eberron, which didn't evolve through editions of the game that ever had such limits in the first place, the answer is either to posit something specific in their game world's history (and ignore the potential implications of the fact that, quite often, that circumstance isn't the case anymore) or simply shrug and hope that no one probes too deeply.
That's the brief explanation, anyway.
This isn't really my field, but my understanding is that "who pays" for certain things to appear in popular media is largely a question of who wants it to appear there. If you have a hit TV show and Apple wants to work in some product placement in the hope that it will help sell more of their stuff, then they'll be the ones offering to write a large check to make sure that the characters prominently use Apple-brand computers and other products on camera. Conversely, if you have a TV show where the kids play a conspicuous game of Dungeons & Dragons - both as a cultural signifier that it's the early 1980's, as well as foreshadowing plot developments - and you make it plot-significant by having the kids reference D&D to talk about the monster, how to fight it, etc., then in all likelihood the people writing the show would go to Hasbro and say "we want to use your product in our show, and we'll pay you to do it."
I don't know if that's what happened with Stranger Things, but that would be my guess. Certainly, it fits with what Hasbro is trying to do now, as I mentioned on that EN World thread.
To be fair, we both overlooked that this is in the Core Rulebooks (at least for 3.X; Pathfinder moved it to the Game Mastery Guide), in that the settlement stat stat block will have explicit monetary limits on what magic items are available, with anything below that being assumed to be for sale. (There was slightly more to it than that, as I recall, but that pretty much put the "magic mart" idea in black and white.)
8945406 *Groan* Another spell that is easily accessible and manages to ruin a particular plot point. This is why I didn't have Lex know long-range teleportation spells!
As I recall, this particular spell is presented in the context of Desna's religion in Inner Sea Gods, which really brings up yet another whole host of issues where the game mechanics don't tell us enough about how things work. Namely, the degree to which preparatory divine spellcasters can simply be aware of all of the spells on their spell list versus having to actually ask their deity for them. Even if we thoroughly repudiate (as the d20 System has) the idea that gods should only grant spells thematically related to their area of divine concern, the idea that they'll have an expansive "menu" of spells that clerics, druids, and their ilk can peruse when preparing them seems dubious to me, let alone that they "suddenly" expand when new spells are available as new sourcebooks are released (with such expansions typically - that I've seen - being presented as soft-retcons, i.e. they were "always" there but never selected, to avoid the in-character explanation of why these spells weren't available before now). Don't even get me started on the implications this has for divine spellcasters and spell research.
8946510 That's a great, detailed look at internal human migration patterns, and it makes a lot of sense to me.
For the powerful monsters, rare but deadly, it's probably not that different than people who settle in Florida despite the hurricanes. It's a bit like a natural disaster that way.
It's always been that way to me. I think "orc psychology means they can't coordinate well" is at least as plausible as "orc psychology means they can't level beyond X." I mean, the legacy of most of these great high level heroes is usually not "and then the Sword Saint and his companions marched on the orc villages, slaughtered the warriors, drove out the women and children, and let human farmers come in behind them and take the valuable land." I prefer to think average, non-heroic, non-good aligned human armies are coordinating to send orcs along their trail of tears, rather than high-level Paladins.
That makes sense.
I still remember that old picture from 2nd Edition where the wizard is putting stuff into a shopping cart.
8946522
You're the author, you can always think of it as a houserule that this spell doesn't work in Equestria. Another option is, depending on how active and involved Lashtdada is with her Equestrian followers, she could always suggest this spell going forward in a dream. I'm imagining a vision of a pink short-legs pony appearing to Cozy and saying "It looks like you're trying to avoid starving. Would you like some help? I recommend Dream Feast." Like some sort of divine Clippy from Microsoft Word.
The idea that gods have lots of divine options, but you have to know to ask, actually kind of fits the theme of this story. Look at Lex and Severance.
Clerics researching spells has always been weird to me for the same reason. If they create a new spell, do other clerics get access to that spell immediately? Do the gods tell their followers "hey, have you heard about this new spell" during prayer, or do they have to hear about it from fellow priests. What about different gods? Do deities actually trade the completed form of the spell between themselves?
shaking my head on at threesome.
i don't know if i want them to make it or not.
i really see no need to keep them around, but Pillow he is needed so Lex can show true power.
8946783 I think looking at powerful monsters, particularly when they're singular entities (and especially when they're not very intelligent or otherwise don't participate in any sort of active engagement with society), as being akin to natural disasters is the right way to go about it. As you mentioned, everyone knows that hurricanes and floods can kill you, but they still live in areas where those things happen.
No, but their actions are what make those conditions possible.
If we presume that there's a preexisting struggle between various groups that - for whatever reason - cannot mutually recognize each other's right to exist (in the same territory, at least), then we can take it as a given that there's going to be active conflict between said groups until one is able to destroy or drive off the other(s). In other words, that there's no peace to be had between, say, humans and orcs. As such, it comes down to military conflict (which is to say, armed conflict; "military" doesn't necessarily have to mean regular armies per se). Because the nature of gaining levels is an increase in personal, martial power, characters that gain levels and engage in advancement are necessarily going to be the movers and shakers of any such conflicts, and will work to smash the other side's leveled (or other powerful) individuals, leaving the remaining members of the populace effectively defenseless. And again, humans are - or at least, were - inherently better at gaining levels.
So when the party of high-level heroes goes in and slays the orc kin, his high shaman, the various generals, etc. then it's going to scatter the orcs' power-base, and make it fairly easy for humans to move in and start wiping them out. Particularly since a large enough group of humans is also going to have low-level members of various classes, which will put them above your bog-standard orc.
8946799
Meh, house-ruling that a singular spell not only doesn't work, but doesn't work only in a particular place (for no good reason) is the very height of artlessness. Moreover, it's only putting a band-aid on the problem, which is that the "how" of divine spells is still so hideously undefined.
It wasn't always that way, you know. Back in AD&D First Edition (and, for the most part, Second Edition) there was more information on that end. Notwithstanding that only gods of higher divine strata could grant the higher-level spells (something that I think a lot of people found strange, since there was a perceived disconnect between how those gods could personally utilize those spells, but not grant them to their worshipers), there was also a directly-stated division of where those spells came from. Specifically, 1st- and 2nd-level spells were granted via faith alone. 3rd- and 4th-level spells came from a deity's servants. 5th-level spells and above came from the god themselves (remember that back then, divine spells only went up to 7th level, notwithstanding various forms of super-powerful magic).
The implication was that higher-level spells, since they came from more powerful sources, were subject to higher degrees of divine review and discretion. The Core Rulebooks flat-out stated that when clerics prayed for their spells, they could say what they wanted, but the deity would decide what spells they got! Literally, their god might actually grant them spells other than what they'd asked for! Needless to say, the idea of the GM picking your spells was (I suspect) widely viewed as unacceptable for a lot of players and burdensome for a lot of GMs, which was a shame because it not only made a lot of sense, but also served a valuable in-game function. Literally, your god would decide what to arm you with in order to prepare you for what was to come. If you were praying for cold-based spells and suddenly ended up with anti-undead spells instead, you could probably guess what was in your immediate future.
That still didn't solve the issue of divine spell research, of course (those questions you raised were very salient), but it was at least a step in the right direction. Moreover, AD&D 2nd Edition also divided spells into "spheres," which were essentially the divine equivalent of arcane schools of magic (though clerical spells were also categorized by those schools also, even though those classifications didn't matter for divine spellcasters). Clerical spheres weren't equal in the number of spells that they had, and almost no gods offered access to all spheres either (moreover, you might only receive "minor" access to a sphere, where you could only learn spells of up to 3rd-level in it). Although there were still generic clerics for every god, as AD&D 2E went on we saw more and more "specialty priests" who had not only wildly varying access to clerical spheres, but also individualized powers and even some spells that (most) other religions didn't have. In other words, it was the nadir of homogenized divine spellcasters, and it was great. (For a great example of how things were, check out AuldDragon's Monster Mythology Update project. It's not technically official, but it's a sterling example of how gods were presented in latter-day AD&D 2E, and is extremely inspirational.)
It's a shame that we don't have that anymore...but if I want to play around with how divine spellcasting functions in this story, it's going to be along those lines, and not just saying "this spell doesn't work here, because reasons."
8948695 What happens with the Aria-Cozy-Aisle group remains an open question. They're quite clearly dysfunctional in the extreme - and their circumstances don't help - but could they possibly make it work?
You'll just have to keep reading to find out.
8950498 That's an interesting approach. I remember when clerics had spheres of influence similar to Wizard schools, and it was good (and also the rules for calculating planar difference from a deity to calculate the max spell level a cleric could memorize, which were awful).
Restricting overall spell power probably wouldn't work because Dream Feast is only 1st level. Making cleric spells domain specific might not work either because frankly, Dream Feast seems like it would fit into Lashtada's family/community area. Letting the god pick the spells for you is an interesting angle, but then you have to think of why Lashtada would want her very-hungry cleric to have another spell more than a food spell. That's doable, but might be tricky.
Lashtada is supposed to be a newly-revived god just getting back into the game even in the Everglow, right? Perhaps she can only hand out certain types of spells. That might be your best solution.
8956651 I didn't think those rules regarding measuring planar distance so as to reduce divine spellcasters' spellcasting ability was that bad. It was fairly straightforward in how you counted, and it made sense as an artificial restriction that the gods imposed so as to give everyone a "home-field advantage" that helped to prevent cross-planar war between divinities. That was also why no such restriction was in place for divine spellcasters on the Prime Material Plane.
As for dream feast, its nature as a dream-based spell means that, if we were to restrict it to deities based on divine area of concern, it should be limited to the Moon Princess and the Night Mare. That said, I think that this is one of those areas where there's a simpler explanation: that spell is exclusive to the faithful of Desna. This is fairly easy to do, since the spell is presented in Inner Sea Gods (and, I think, one of the Adventure Path books), which is not only specific to that world, but also given within the context of her religion. Hence, it's not a spell that's available to all clerics regardless of their faith.
This would be a much harder case to make if the spell came from a world-agnostic sourcebook (and I'll admit to being slightly hypocritical here, since I've had Lex use one or two spells that weren't of generic origins, even though I used them that way), but given that it's not...well, there's always been a disconnect as to when specific spells, items, and similar things become generic in terms of being selectable by any character in any campaign. I believe you noted this yourself in your previous post on this subject, and I've seen plenty of arguments about it with regard to, say, blood money. As such, I'm going to go ahead and avail myself of that particular loophole here.
EDIT: Okay, so the book has Desna's name parenthetically noted after the spell listing. It also says the following at the start of the "Spells" section of Chapter Three:
That last sentence makes it sound as though those spells are generic in nature, to the point where any god can grant them. But note the sentence immediately before it, which says that those spells which list a specific god let that god's worshipers "always treat the spell as common, and need not research it in order to prepare or learn it," which suggests that worshipers of other gods do have to research it, and otherwise don't "treat the spell as common." Given that the game doesn't even have proper spell research rules, this is essentially a soft-ban on those spells if the GM wants, since those two sentences are otherwise contradictory. Hence, I'll be sticking with this idea.
And just when the going was getting good for Lex.
9219894 Not quite how I'd characterize it, but I get where you're coming from.