V is for-

Vambraces, which are forearm armor. I quit wearing them years ago, but I heartily recommend them for new fighters.

V is for Vampires, who I was mostly talking about yesterday when I covered the undead for the letter U. Remember Vampires as menacing bad-ass or even scheming arch-nemesis = good, pouty leatherboy goth = bad, sparkly teen-girl bait = abomination of concept.

V is for Village, this is where heroes are from and goblins raid into. Sometimes villages are used as home-bases too.

V is for Vikings who are barbarian bad-asses renowned for their goblin-like raiding of villages, their distinctive "Celtic" artistic style, their penchant for alliterative poetry, adventurous spirit, binge feasting and drinking, exploratory nature, awesome pantheon of gods- complete with totally bitchin' afterlife. All that cool runic stuff? Totally theirs. They were so awesome they have an age named after them. When Christianity started to lose it's stranglehold on western culture*, people resurrected their religion. I love them, I studied them in college and I have played one in the SCA.

V is for Vision. Having covered both infravision and ultravision in previous posts I figured I should probably mention normal human vision during the letter V just for the sake of completeness. We don't need any special scientific reasons or magical ones either to explain how it works, we all get it, unless we were born blind I guess.

V is for Visions which I sometimes like to use as plot hooks or, less often, as hints to move the plot along. Usually the party Cleric gets them, which is about as close to divine intervention as my games generally get. I do remember back in the day though, when the shit really hit the fan, people would be all like " I roll for Divine intervention", just because there were rules for it in AD&D. I don't think I ever saw it work though.

V is for Vendetta, honestly I couldn't let this one just slip by.

*Mostly after WW2, but also dating back into the 19th century there were romantic pagan revivals, this isn't intended to be a history of modern paganism and the decline of Christianity in the west though, I just mention it in passing.