Chebucto Regional Softball Club

WINTER RAINS DOWN ON THE ASHES MOTHER MAKES FUEL FOR THE BONES MURDER RIPS GODS FROM THE MASSES MURDER BRINGS MURDER BRINGS

At tables I've played and run in the past, 'Outsiders' (fiends, fey, celestials, etc.) embody the epitome of an ideal or motive taken to its logical extreme, for better or worse. Take Zariel for example.

Yes. Simply put, yes, this was 1000% the right choice for WotC to make, and fuck them for not making it 30 years earlier. Zero questions here, the only tables I stayed at long term were the ones where orcs and elves and humans had a precisely equal chance of being good or evil. The ones I left? The DMs and players who wanted an instant, easy 'kill this' marker were invariably super bigoted in the real world too.

I dunno, Klyden REALLY hated Bortus' mustache for the brief time he had it.

Maybe. I'm not sure, I haven't read those yet.

Quick rec for an amazingly good book I read recently. 'Moonstorm' by Yoon Ha Lee. It's a futuristic sci-fantasy where young 'Lancer pilots' fight on behalf of a paternistic empire, in a setting where the gravity of colonized worlds and the very laws of physics are governed by the laws of society and the people that comprise them. This phenomenon is so prevalent that rebel factions live out in a segment of space called 'the Moonstorm', where anarchistic and communal values lead to an erratic and unpredictable (but undeniably beautiful and free) cosmos. In the Empire, authoritative dogma and rigid social hierarchy leads to 'normal' (to us) gravity and 'predictable' (to us) celestial body movements. Gravity is a very heavy-handed metaphor for unity and national identity in the story, and it's brilliant in exploring the divide between an oppressive imperial autocracy and an anarchistic society with just the raw backdrop. Also, techno-psychic sapient mechs and massive freaking gravity-powered railguns.