238 - Yawning Chasm
It was worse than he’d thought it would be.
“When you told me I guessed right about your plan, I thought that included the part where you didn’t hurt yourself anymore,” complained Sonata, but there was no real irritation in her voice. Though that might have been because she was too busy keeping him from collapsing to the ground, bracing herself as he leaned against her bonelessly.
For a long moment Lex didn’t bother to reply, just trying to process the level of damage that he’d taken to cast that spell. If it had simply been a matter of pain then it wouldn’t have been an issue; he’d simply have borne it and moved it. But while channeling energy through himself to empower the depleted scroll had hurt, it had also debilitated him. That hadn’t been outside of his predictions, but the extent of the damage had been worse than he’d expected. Even now, he could still feel his muscles spasming and twitching uncontrollably, his body refusing to move as he commanded it. “I just…need a moment…” he panted, hoping that he was right. As it was, even standing was beyond him right now.
But it was worth it, he thought defiantly, looking at the space where the crowd of ponies had been up until a moment ago. Strictly speaking, of course, they were still there; it was just that the illusion he’d cast had hidden them from view. Instead, their collective appearance had been replaced by the image that he’d specified during the casting, one which he was sure would not only be utterly uninteresting to the ghouls, but would be avoided by them as well.
Seeing where Lex’s eyes were directed, Sonata glanced at the illusion Lex had conjured. “So…your super-awesome idea was to replace everypony with a really big hole in the ground?” She didn’t try to keep the wry note out of her voice, looking at the massive, empty pit that now appeared to occupy the space where the camp ponies had been less than a minute ago. While she had to admit that the effect was pretty cool – it looked like some invisible giant had reached down and scooped out a chunk of the land – she wasn’t sure exactly how this was supposed to be such a great anti-ghoul measure.
“The merit is….self-evident…” rasped Lex, taking slow, deep breaths. The pain in his limbs was already starting to ebb, which he took to be a good sign; hopefully physical coordination would return shortly. “The ghouls won’t…want to fall in…so they’ll…stay back…” He’d made sure that the illusory hole appeared to be over twenty feet deep, enough that it looked like it would be seriously difficult to climb out of for anyone who fell in. Given that the ghouls were motivated by cannibalistic hunger, the mere prospect of becoming trapped should be enough to make them avoid the gaping pit.
Of course, if they didn’t then the ruse would immediately be revealed. Since no actual earth had been displaced, anything that stumbled into the area where the pit was would not only fail to fall in – creating an incredibly conspicuous spectacle – but would also undoubtedly feel the tightly-packed crowd of ponies that were the actual occupants of that space. Ideally, there would have been some sort of secondary measure in place to prevent such a thing from happening, but that simply wasn’t possible under the current circumstances.
“So listen,” began Sonata. “I’m just gonna pitch a thought here: maybe you should go in there,” she waved a hoof at the illusory hole, “and check on Nosey. I mean, you heard her screaming before, right? It sounded like she had a really bad nightmare. You could go in there and give her a pep talk, or maybe just sit down and let her tell you what she was dreaming about, take a power-nap, something like that.” She held up a hoof then, giving him a solemn look. “I’ll even allow a tiny bit of snuggling, just this once.” More importantly, Lex’s being in there would get him out of harm’s way right now. If letting some other girl nuzzle him was what it took to keep him from going out to fight when he couldn’t even stand up on his own, Sonata was more than willing to pay that price. Besides, I bet me and Severance can handle it on our own.
Of course, the odds of Lex agreeing to any such thing were slim, and he proved her right a moment later as he shook his head. “The parameters of the illusion are immutable after they’ve been set, Sonata.” Just speaking normally was a chore, but at least it was one he felt capable of performing now. Barely. “If you or I went in there, we’d just look like we were floating above the hole. As for Nosey…” He’d intended to say that she’d just have to deal with her problems on her own, but a sudden rush of guilt made him stop before he could get the words out. It was his fault that she was traumatized, and besides, his research suggested that friends were supposed to be invested in each other’s emotional well-being. “…we’ll tend to her after we’ve defeated the ghouls.”
Sonata frowned just a little. Although his agreeing to go relax and not fight had never really been in the cards, she couldn’t help but feel a little miffed at him for it. “Great. Well, maybe next time, make it so that we’re hidden behind the big crazy illusion-thingy too? That way we can attack from inside it without anyone seeing that we’re there.”
“The entire point of this is to keep the ghouls’ attention away from where everypony is, Sonata. Besides, most attack spells possess a clear visual or audial manifestation which typically emanates from the caster to the target, which means that their point of origin is easily traced. The sight of attack spells originating from a point of what looked like empty space would very quickly alert everyone who saw it that something was wrong.”
Sonata sighed. Her good mood from a few minutes ago had been wrecked just now when Lex had pushed himself too far – again – and it had driven home the point that he wasn’t in any shape to fight. Yeah, ghouls weren’t any big deal, and she still didn’t think that even a whole bunch of them would be that hard to deal with, but the plan Lex had described to her before he’d cast that spell had him being right in the thick of it with Severance while she hung back to attack at range. But looking at her boyfriend right now, that didn’t seem like a good idea anymore. So now how do I get him to realize that without pushing his buttons?
Before she could think of an answer, she felt Lex moving away from her. With a strangled groan of effort, he managed to stand under his own power, though the effort left him sweating and breathing heavy. “Let’s move back,” he grunted, already turning back toward where the medical tent had been. “Standing right at the edge of the illusion is just asking for a stray ghoul to stumble into it.”
“Fun fact,” she started as she moved alongside him. “When Cloudbank and the others went into Vanhoover, I used a spell on each of them to give them a boost.” Lex sent a glance her way then, and she kept going. “It, like, makes you feel seriously amped up, you know? Like you’re totes super-charged. I’m gonna cast it on myself in a minute. You want that I should use it on you too?”
Just like she’d expected, he grimaced at the suggestion, shaking his head. “I’ve worked very hard to keep mind-altering magic like what you’re describing from affecting me, Sonata. Besides, you should be conserving your available magic for direct attack spells.”
“Right, sorry,” she gave him an apologetic grin, the very picture of innocence. “I just thought you might want a little pick-me-up for when you’re out there swinging Severance around, but I should’ve known better. Besides, I bet you’ve already got a bunch of spells for that, huh?”
Lex frowned then, but it was in confusion rather than annoyance. “Are you…being coy?”
Not knowing what that meant, Sonata kept going. “I mean, you totes have to have a whole bunch of spells to buff yourself up, right? Otherwise, you’d be hanging back with me while Severance flies out and does its thing on its own. So I’m sure that’s why you’re planning on going out there with it even though you’re, like, super hurt.” She nodded sagely, making sure she had her majorly-serious face on as she did. In her mind, though, she was congratulating herself on steering the conversation so perfectly. Now he’d realize the point she was making, without ever realizing that she’d made it. How’s this for brilliant? she smirked internally.
“For your information,” retorted Lex sourly, “I have several defensive spells that I can still cast, since I never had a chance to utilize them when I was confronting Xiriel.” That, and they would have been futile anyway, since the belier devil would simply have dispelled them. “As for Severance, it’s optimal that I fight in conjunction with it, rather than the two of us operating independently.”
Sonata blinked at that; this wasn’t how the conversation was supposed to go! “Huh? But why?”
Lex’s horn glowed as he wrapped the weapon in his telekinesis, lifting it from his back. “Severance will be our primary mode of attack during this conflict. As such, it’s imperative that it not be allowed to be disabled. If it flies into the mass of ghouls on its own, and they manage to overbear it and keep it pinned down through sheer numbers, we won’t be able to retrieve it, at which point our odds of survival will plummet.”
“Wait, for realsies?” She couldn’t help but glance at the scythe, skeptical. “You really think that they could do that?”
“If their numbers are great enough,” replied Lex levelly. Although he knew that the blade could heat itself as a defense mechanism against being grasped, that would only be of limited help if the ghouls tackled the scythe by the dozens. If anything, any nearby undead ponies would be attracted to the smell of burning flesh as Severance cooked those among their brethren that were in direct contact with it, and would likely throw themselves on such a pile-up en masse.
“Okay, but what does that have to do with you using it to fight?”
“Coordinated attacks are more effective than those that are performed without mutual organization,” explained Lex, “and the nature of that coordination is my controlling Severance via telekinesis. That way, I’ll be able to instantaneously direct its strikes for maximum effect rather than having to issue verbal instructions – and be able to hear what it’s saying in turn – while still having the option of releasing it to fight on its own when I need to focus on spellcasting and grasping it again when I don’t. Since I won’t be able to telekinetically grab it if I lose sight of it during the fighting, that requires us to remain in close proximity.”
“I dunn-”
“Shh!” Lex suddenly stopped as they reached the edge of where the remains of the medical tent covered the uneven ground. “Do you hear that?”
“Huh? What?” She strained her ears for a moment, listening for what it was that had put Lex on the alert. For a moment she didn’t hear anything; even the sounds of the camp ponies had been muffled as part of the illusion that he had conjured. She almost gave up when she realized she did hear something, a distant sound with a pitch so low it was barely audible. For a moment she could only wonder what it was; it was almost like the sound of distant rain, but that didn't make sense...the moon and the stars were out in force, making it plain that there wasn't a cloud in the sky. She was about to ask Lex what the noise was when the obvious answer came to her, sending a shudder down her spine: it was the sound of hooves. Many, many hooves. All moving together.
The ghouls were almost here.
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More updates, yay!
PS: Dude, you going to Bronycon?
8937877 Let the updates flow freely!
That said, I can only afford to go to one convention in a given year, and for me that's Gen Con. As much as I love MLP, I'm a tabletop gamer before I'm a brony.
I'm getting the same feeling I get whenever I watch a scene in a movie or game that involves a massive hostile force marching against the protagonists' (often times) hastily erected fortifications. Of course, Lex doesn't have the benefit of any actual fortifications nor any other fighters aside from himself, Sonata and Severance. Plus, intentionally harming himself to protect everyone isn't helping his chances in the coming battle though I suppose he's counting on Severance to even the odds at the very least.
At least the ghouls don't have ranged attacks so that's something going Lex.
Still, I bet he wished that Aria hadn't left, then again, she probably would have left anyways if she learns the entire city's population of ghouls were heading for the camp. If Cosy haven't offered her Cadence's aid, she might have stayed since she wanted her voice back but I doubt she'd risk her life for a 'maybe'.
Im now wondering if Severance can heat up the same way Tungsten can, or if its moon metal, can glow, but not egt as hot as the sun, because anything at lave, molten steel class temepratures and it wouldnt be so much ghouls enacting Bonfire Of The Vanities, as Killa whale, or as Sonata wishes, Mount St. Helens?
Lex uses Sombody Elses Problem field.
Its super effective?
8937966 To put it another way, Lex and Sonata are stuck in a defensive position despite having no actual defenses to speak of. They're basically just hoping that they can bring enough offensive force to bear - something that's only really viable with Severance giving it its all - to annihilate their enemies in a direct conflict. Admittedly, hiding the innocent bystanders seems like a good way to prevent casualties among the camp ponies, but at this point Lex is effectively betting everything on Severance.
Of course, that's only because Lex realized that he's reaching the end of his rope as far as injuring himself in exchange for magical power goes. In all honesty, the fact that he's still conscious, let alone able to move under his own power, is nothing short of miraculous at this point. He knows that if he tries that again, he's likely to just collapse on the spot, at which point being able to keep fighting will be effectively out of the picture for him...and that will probably mean death.
This wouldn't be the case if the circumstances were different; if Aria was still there, he'd have some further backup to assist him, whether offensively or defensively. Likewise, if he had any dark magic left, he could simply turn into a shadow and be completely beyond the ghouls' ability to harm. If he wasn't already recovering from wounds taken in his previous use of create food and water and fighting Xiriel, he'd be able to empower a lot more magic. In other words, what's happening now is effectively a confluence of consequences catching up to him.
How severe those consequences are remains to be fully seen, but at this point it looks very bad indeed.
8938216 Severance is able to use heat metal on itself. While it needs a few rounds to get going, this means that it can heat itself up to where it causes 2d4 (average 5) points of damage per round to anything that touches it. Contrast this with catching on fire - as in, your body literally being set on fire and burning - causing 1d6 (average 3.5) damage per round.
Of course, the d20 rules aren't exactly consistent about fire damage. Falling bodily into lava deals 20d6 (average 70) fire damage, for instance (and it's all fire damage, rather than being from pressure or anything similar), whereas direct, unprotected exposure to the Elemental Plane of Fire, which has the fire-dominant planar trait, only deals 3d10 (average 16.5) points of fire damage. So take the idea of extrapolating degrees of heat by the damage inflicted with a grain of salt.
Also, nice Hitchhiker's Guide reference! We can only hope that the SEP field holds up.
As long as the screen holds, I think it makes sense. I'm not really sure what kind of effect Lex's channeling his magic through his body has (I'd guess Con damage), but it's probably still a smart move considering how many resources Lex would have expended keeping the civilians safe.
The real shame is that Lex and Sonata can't position themselves in a more defensible structure that forces the ghouls to come at them a few at a time. That and hopefully Lex has a Freedom of Movement or two prepped.
8939176 The issue of Lex utilizing additional magic through the natural channels in his body to supplement his thought-form-based spellcasting is an aggregate of several different powers, all of which are based around manipulating magic. In essence, it's a thematic tie that provides a narrative explanation for the mechanical aspects of what's going on. Specifically, it's used for three different things that we've seen so far:
So far, Lex took a whopping 6 points of temporary ability damage in order to retain his create food and water spell for a third casting back in chapter 160 - though he rested for a full day in chapter 193, restoring 2 points of that - and then was bitten by Xiriel twice for 1d4 Constitution damage each time via its blood drain (which came out to another 6 points of damage!), and just now took 2 more points of ability damage for making a Use Magic Device stunt to cast screen from the depleted scroll. So he's basically down 12 ability points at the moment across his Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores. Worse, because some of this is indisputably Constitution damage, he can't use Glory to spontaneously apply the Amplify metamagic theorem to one of his spells again (he should have had one more use remaining, since he used it twice when fighting Xiriel and has a 16 Constitution).
Also, freedom of movement isn't on the sorcerer/wizard spell list (which is what he prepares his primary spells from, though he doesn't treat area-of-effect spells that deal hit point damage - such as fireball - as being on it), and the small amount of spontaneous spells that the Night Mare gave him stop at 3rd level, which means he couldn't even theoretically cast it that way either since it's a 4th-level cleric spell. Of course, since he can usually use The Umbral Form (Eclipse, p. 117) to turn into a shadow, it's not like he'd normally be inclined to prepare that spell anyway.
8941004
Ah, my mistake. I was thinking of Sauron, who was captured by humans. Of course, he outwitted them in the end, but I was still impressed with the idea that human heroes were able to basically capture Mephistopheles.
Thanks, that was indeed awesome.
I like their approach as well. Rather than have all these great empires trashed, the world has almost always been mostly wild. (The ancient empires of Oerth never seemed quite as powerful and world-spanning as say, the Netherese.) Of course, it begs the question: Why is everyone choosing to live so far apart, especially in a world with such dangerous monsters? Seems like there is so much available farmland, every farmer would just stake out the nearest open claim from existing farmland, and entire countries could fit into a hex or two. Sounds like they tried to change this by upping the population in 3.5.
Yeah, that was infuriating. There have to be several hundred sourcebooks out there, counting all the Volo's guides, that were all just destroyed overnight.
Yeah, I heard that 5E has been trying to restore the tone of the Realms to its original flavor, but I kind of feel like the damage has been done. Asmodeous as the big bad and elemental genasi running around and Thay ruined can't be easily stuffed back into the bottle.
I'm all for rationalization, but I've found that 1 is uncommon and 2 is ultra-rare.
That's quite true. I think the progression of "evil has the quanity, good has the quality" to things like baelnorns and antipaladins has to do with stories. I agree from a macro level the balance can make sense, from a narrative level though its kind of boring, because it means enemies are less unique and special. The drive both in lore, and in npcs/villains for adventure novels, to make them really stand out by giving them some weird unique feature and edge that resembles an evil version of PC abilities probably has a lot to do with this.
Of course, once you have evil with an equal "edge" to good, you have to balance it out with things like the Thunder Blessing making dwarves no longer in decline. It makes me wonder if part of the reason the Pathfinder setting seems a bit "overpowered" is just this arms race where lore guys give evil more cool toys to make them interesting, then give good equal toys to balance things out.
Now I'm curious: Has anyone ever tried to make an Eclipse-specific setting?
8941085
The comparison is more apt than I suspect you realize. When the Númenorean king Ar-Pharazôn "captured" Sauron, what actually happened was that Sauron realized that he didn't have an army that could beat the Númenorean one on his doorstep, and so he surrendered without a fight. But from the very beginning he planned to use that as a pretense to ingratiate himself with the king so as to corrupt him and destroy Númenor, which he successfully accomplished.
While we don't know as much about, say, the Suel Empire as we do about Netheril, we do know that the latter didn't really have a "world-spanning" empire per se. In point of fact, Netheril was characterized by its floating enclaves wherein the ruling arch-mages tended to work on their own private obsessions. While the nation did rule terrestrial territory, it wasn't really that much in terms of overall size (roughly corresponding, if I recall correctly, to the present-day Anauroch desert in terms of area, thanks to the phaerimm's deliberately blighting the land). What's more notable is the sheer heights of magical power that Netheril achieved, though it's easy to overlook that the Suel Imperium was also responsible for some notable (if not virtuous) achievements, such as the Suel lich, the creation of the derro race (as per Dragon #241), and the Invoked Devastation that wiped out the Baklunish Empire (though the Baklunish's Rain of Colorless Fire did the same to them).
Insofar as pre-3.5 Greyhawk's population goes...the people weren't really living that far apart; it's just that the average breakdown of people per square mile indicated that on average there weren't very many people overall. They were still clustered relatively close together, at least in villages and small towns that were comparatively close to other villages and small towns. It was just that these made up a comparatively small amount of the overall landmass in the Flanaess. Trade routes existed and settlements were fortified, it's just that they didn't have any particularly notable populations overall. That also answers the "why didn't farmers just take empty space as new farmland" question; they were still clustered around small, protected communities that relied on their food, and could serve to police the place at least somewhat effectively from potential threats. Going out further than you had to was taking a risk that most people would want to avoid.
I think that the number is more along the line of dozens rather than hundreds, but it's still a great deal, all of which are out-of-date now, at least to some degree. Personally, I would have retconned (either soft or hard) the entire 4E era, but I can understand why they didn't do that. Even so, I'm not sure that the "middle ground" they're trying to pull now is the best way to go about it. Of course, I'm just as happy to ignore the contemporary stuff as being little more than a footnote (particularly considering the relative paucity of products) in favor of simply focusing more on past editions.
It doesn't have to mean that enemies are less unique or special in their presentation; the rule is about their presence in the world. A beholder is "just" a beholder, but that doesn't mean that it can't be a powerful and memorable enemy if it's presented as being the only one in the campaign and is played effectively. It just means that, in terms of a comparison to others like it, it's no different on paper than any other beholder. Xiriel was a belier devil no different from any other, for instance, and yet he was still a major force in this story. It's the underlying idea of "monsters are what they are, and there's no changing that" that underlies the campaign world which serves to make humans, who can change themselves and grow stronger, so different.
Of course, the d20 System threw out that limitation quite thoroughly, and while that's led to quite a bit of creativity where "individualized" monsters are concerned, that once again serves to undercut the degree to which the game rules serve to present an internally-consistent world. If monsters are the equal of humans and demihumans with regards to their potential to grow stronger, then there's no real reason why humans - with their lesser racial advantages - should be any better-positioned to conquer the world to the point of becoming the dominant race on most of it (where "dominant race" means that they're the most numerous and in political and temporal control of most geographic regions) than other races with massive natural advantages in the form of greater Hit Dice and special abilities (which gets back into what we were talking about with various humanoids, though in fact it goes further than that).
It doesn't help, though really this is just part-and-parcel of the fact that 3E is a very different game from older editions of D&D. Golarion was made with 3E in mind, and so reflects a lot of the mechanics in how things are presented. Greyhawk, by contrast, predates AD&D First Edition (though the first "sourcebook" - as we'd call it - for the campaign released after AD&D 1E came out), and so was originally designed with the original game's lower level of power in mind. As such, what we see now is essentially an update that tries to keep the original vision while nevertheless having to acknowledge that the current rules allow for a much greater amount of power. I'm amazed that they pulled it off as well as they did, to be honest, even if a lot of it is people just choosing not to look too closely at the ramifications. (To be fair, this is a general truism more than an ironclad rule: the Forgotten Realms was originally presented in terms of AD&D 1E, and it always had a much "higher" level of fantasy to it.)
Not for publication, but Thoth (the co-author) has written up several outlines (most of which I believe he used in his home games) over on his blog. The most notable being his Federation-Apocalypse campaign (aka The Manifold, a futuristic omniversal campaign where literally every world was real), along with others like the Twilight Isles, the Shadowed Galaxy, and the Aegyptian Empire. Most of these have supplementary articles for them, which are worth checking out (i.e. do a ctrl+f for "shadowed galaxy" and check out things like the various equipment skills; they're fantastic!). And of course, he tends to touch on things that he's asked about, such as his take on the homeland of MLP's zebras (it's obviously a bit darker than what's in the show, but still fascinating to read).
8942982
Yes, Sauron in was smart enough to come up with a plan that would destroy the King as vengeance for the humiliation the human king had heaped upon him, but the fact that a mortal king assembled an army that a demigod knew would defeat him in a fair fight is also a pretty important point.
The farmers are huddled close to the villages and towns. What I question is why those villages and towns move out more than a hex from the capital city. I would think 98% of the human population should be in the hex or two hexes along the coastline where humans first came to the Flaeness. Imagine how much more challenging westward expansion in the US would have been with dragons and ogres in the midwest.
I counted over 100, though some of that is lore-heavy adventures. Let's say "scores."
Yeah, it's really surprising the way frequency of content fell off after 2000 and has never really picked back up. Were they losing money on all the stuff they printed in the 90s?
That's quite true. Oerth is great if you want the peasants in the village to stare in wonder when you cast a light spell, not so much for Golarion or Forgotten Realms. My personal rule is that a setting has to have magic-marts or it's too low-fantasy for me. (So FR and Golarion have always been two of my favorite). It's why I really loved 3.0 when they decide the Red Wizards of Thay were going to start selling magic items as part of a long-term plan to take over the world or something.
Thanks, I'll have to check it out, it sounds a lot like the Library in Oliver's Aporia.
8943146
Well, remember to put this into context: Sauron was a Maiar, but so was Gandalf, and you didn't see him taking out armies on his own either. Now admittedly, Gandalf was pretty powerful...compared to normal people. He could fight a balrog and win (albeit dying in the attempt), after all. And Tolkien himself said that Sauron was of a "far higher order" of Maiar than Gandalf was, so he would have been of higher level.
That said, it's worth remembering that the men of Númenor were supposed to be a cut above normal people as well; Aragorn was their last scion, and that alone was enough to give him a life thrice as long as that of a normal man. We don't know what other features they had (and so shouldn't presume any), but we were told that - when they marched on Sauron and forced him to surrender - "So great was the might and splendour of the Númenóreans that Sauron's own servants deserted him." The implication was that the army was both vast and (I'd guess) had soldiers of considerable level (where "considerable" probably means fourth level in D&D terms).
Now, fourth-level enemies wouldn't be very threatening to a single twelfth-level character. But if you only have a single such character facing off against an entire army on their own? Well now...that's a different story (hint hint).
Unless I'm wildly misremembering, most humans didn't come to the Flanaess via the ocean. Quite the contrary, the vast majority of them came via land to the west (the Flanaess being the subcontinent on eastern Oerik). The Flan people were there pretty much as far back as anyone knows, but the Oeridians pushed them out of a lot of space when they moved in, and then the Suel and Baklunish immigrants came later (if I recall correctly), after their wars destroyed their empires. Slerotin even cut through a mountain to help lead some of his people eastward (albeit before the twin cataclysms).
Fair enough. There is a ridiculously large amount either way, though I think that Pathfinder 1E might possibly surpass it by the time it comes to an end next year.
There's a commonly-accepted story that the plethora of campaign settings that AD&D 2E was putting out materials for ended up balkanizing their fan-base, in terms of marketability. So if only 10% of AD&D 2E customers were fans of Ravenloft, then a Ravenloft supplement was inherently going to be limited to 10% of their potential customers. But the books still cost the usual amount to print, ship, and otherwise produce, which meant that it was a money-losing deal for TSR. There's some evidence to suggest that they were already trying to step back from this by the time they went bankrupt in 1997, but Wizards of the Coast - who had reviewed what happened before purchasing them - accelerated the process.
That's only part of it, of course. While "campaign consolidation" was a major aspect of 3rd Edition, the current push is to focus on the marketability of the D&D brand rather than the D&D game. I talked more about this on a post I made over on EN World:
I don't think that Greyhawk is quite as low-magic as you're making it out to be, but it's definitely no Forgotten Realms in tone or presentation. "Magic-marts" remain somewhat divisive, but for better or for worse have become a near-definitional aspect of "default" D&D Third Edition. While I don't believe they're actually in the Core Rulebooks per se, they're a very natural extension of the universal pricing of magic items and the ubiquity and ease with which they can be constructed. More than that, the inherent presumption that PCs need them to get along makes having magic shops be somewhat-necessary anyway.
So this whole time, the ghouls were the making of the devil, and it could issue commands to them? Sounds fun.
See what I did there?
9219887 Puns are always worth a pony-moji.
I was almost expecting a reference to the Halo CE level "The Maw"
The music that plays in the opening cutscene (in the Remastered version) is also title "Yawning Chasm"
10931422 I plead coincidence, there. Great minds and all.
Also, congrats on getting the eight-thousandth comment!