Hello, folks! Hannah here, taking a break from gazing at the beauty of Horizons 2 as we finish up the layout. We’re so excited to share this new issue with all of you—it will be released at 11am PT on January 22. If you’re not yet subscribed to Horizons, you can join right here or over on Patreon to get these four awesome articles as soon as they come out.
Without further ado, here’s what’s inside the pages of Horizons 2:
The Desk of Many Thoughts
Embolden your fantasy by drawing on reality
Author: Quintin Smith
Here at Wildmage Press, we’re big fans of using the real world to inspire fantasy, including things like floating lakes and dragon blood trees. But more ordinary aspects of the real world—like the challenges of historical everyday life—bring just as much drama and wonder to RPG games.
In this op-ed, Quintin Smith of Quinns Quest dives into how earthy details and practical considerations—huddling around the campfire, navigating through a dense forest, helping a goat give birth—can further immerse players in the fantasy of adventuring.
Isolde’s Tome of Esoteric Spells
Author: Amber Litke | Artist: Nino Vecia
System: 5e (Spells, Feats, Character Options)
From a tome of dangerous secrets come three new disciplines of forbidden magic. The sanguine art of hemomancy allows you to manipulate the blood of other creatures as well as empower your spells with your own blood. Latrotheurgy is divine magic not earned through devotion, but stolen from the heavens by those who are willing to risk the wrath of a furious deity. And last but not least, the knowledge of nethermancy was never meant for mortals—wielding these forces beyond comprehension offers great power, but comes at a cost.
Crimson Strings and Stolen Prayers
Author: Sadie Lowry | Artist: Veronica O’Neill
System: 5e (Storyline, Encounters, Stat Blocks)
Designers and editors Amber Litke and Sadie Lowry are known for their co-authored works, and this time they’ve teamed up to present a pair of connected articles that interweave unique lore and mechanics.
Emrys and Irene Hawthorne are a powerful, ambitious couple who can be your party’s next epic villains … or benefactors … or even (likely unreciprocated) crushes. Or all of the above. They wield latrotheurgy and hemomancy in pursuit of influence, dominion, and ever more forbidden knowledge. This article details the Hawthornes’ history, plot hooks, and stat blocks, with encounters as the party progresses from levels 2 to 11, and enough flexibility to be run as a short arc or one-shot.
Terrific Trappendix
Author: James Introcaso | Artist: Clara Daly
System: 5e, easily adaptable for other systems (Traps and Puzzles, Encounters)
These five tremendous, terrific, and optionally terrifying new traps will challenge your players, add excitement to your dungeons, and offer extra objectives for your next encounters. From the [redacted] that summons [redacted] to the haunted [redacted] that might make the party dance ’til they drop, each trap comes with suggestions and tips for optimal use, as well as scaling for all tiers of play.
Adversarial Archetypes
Author: Carlos Cisco | Artist: Brandi York
System: Candela Obscura (Character Options)
Candela Obscura is an investigative occult horror RPG in which characters pursue strange occurrences and encounter dangerous magicks, fighting back against a mysterious source of corruption and bleed in a turn-of-the-century-inspired setting. These new character options—the Tycoon, Street Tough, and Unfettered—are specialties for the Face, Muscle, and Weird roles, respectively, offering new backgrounds and abilities for characters with atypical positions in society. Designer Carlos Cisco is one of the contributors on the Candela Obscura sourcebook, bringing his knowledge of system and setting to bear with these rich (literally, in the case of the Tycoon!) new character options.
This issue is truly something special—to be fair, we might say that about every issue, but that’s the point of quarterly releases. You stick with us, we give everything time to cook, and every installment will be a banger.
Now, back to prepping Horizons 2 and planning even more future issues!
—Hannah, Editor-in-Chief
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