ToME WikiNerdanelVampire: The Thomas Covenant books are currently 70% published; the first two trilogies have been out for decades and the first book of the final quadrilogy is out now. However, here are some quick notes.
Spoiler warning for those who have not read the books!
Setting
The setting is, of course, the Land. At the moment the Last Chronicles sound like the most promising time period. The level of canonical accuracy can be set as wished and depending on the events in the last books.
An alternative to a Last Chronicles setting would be a grand plot featuring multiple quests that encompasses all of the Chronicles. This could be more interesting, but also more constraining and less suited to repeated play.
Races
Humans
The basic race. It has several subraces
Classical The usual.
Stonedownors Strong humans who are naturally good at Stone-lore.
Woodhelvennin Dextrous humans who excel at Wood-lore.
Ramen Stealthy humans who are able to move through thick vegetation without disrupting it.
Haruchai The masters of unarmed combat, strong, quick, and telepathic. Their weakness is that they disdain tools and weapons, magic included.
Brathair Humans from a distant desert country. Their history of strife has made them better in warfare than the people of the Land. The Brathair tend to fear magic rather than to seek it out, but the few magic-users among their number have a history of being powerful in Thaumaturgy.
Giants
Strong, healthy, and immune to damage from fire. They are also very charismatic and are not dumb.
Demondim-spawn
Immortal non-human creatures that were long ago created by the Demondim. The Demondim-spawn perceive without eyes (indeed have no eyes) and cannot be blinded. They are harmed by the power of the Law because it contradicts their inner natures. All Demondim-spawn are neuter in gender.
There are two varieties of Demondim-spawn, neither of which likes the other very much.
Waynhim Lore-wise but individually not particularly strong. They have turned their backs on the darkness of their ancestors and serve the Law. Demondim-lore is their heritage but they are not entirely comfortable with it. Some particularly adventurous souls may even try out other magic.
Ur-viles These are the evil relatives of the Waynhim, from whom they differ mainly in the interpretation of their ideology. They specialize in Demondim-lore. They are larger in size than the Waynhim.
Cavewights
Strong and dumb with an innate bonus for tunneling.
Elohim
The ultimate munchkins. Their only real negative is their insufferable attitude.
Magic
The skill "Magic" is from now on called Loremastery. The old Mage is now a Loremaster.
Kevin's lore
The lore of the Lords.
Elements: Light, mana
Wielding: Lord's staff
Spells include: Light, Lord's fire, Remove curses, Forbidding.
Stone-lore (rhadhamaerl)
Elements: Fire, better fire, wall creation, wall destruction
Wielding: Stone weapon, orcrest
Spells include: Listen to the Stone, Healing, Earthquake
Wood-lore (lillianrill)
Elements: Cold, shards, force
Wielding: Wooden weapon, lomillialor
Spells include: Strike, Accurate shot, Healing, Summon Animal
Sunbane-lore
Elements include: Acid, electricity fire, cold, poison, better acid
Wielding: Stone or wood, rukh
Spells include: Charm, Grow trees, Grim
Demondim-lore
Elements: Acid, dark, sound, nexus
Wielding: Iron weapon
Spells include: Acid brand, Create Vitrim, Detection, Storm, Summon caesure
Illearth-lore
Elements: Poison, chaos, toxic waste
Wielding: Illearth needle, Illearth fragment, Illearth shard, the Illearth Stone
Thaumaturgy
This would be what Kasreyn of the Gyre practised. In addition to making new spells, it is also possible to store one's spells in golden implements to gain things like an ability to cast them at a lesser mana cost. Needless to say, gold is very rare in this game.
Ritual of Desecration
The Ritual of Desecration is a very special and powerful spell. It also has some seriously bad side effects. Essentially, you are betraying the power that you serve and hoping to accomplish good by evil means, or maybe you just are so desperate that consequences don't matter to you anymore.
The Ritual of Desecration will use up all of your mana in a blast the exact form of which will be determined by your lore-schools. You will get big hitpoint damage as well, to which you die very easily on lower levels and which still hurt a lot on higher levels. You will also suffer big, unavoidable permanent stat drain. If your Desecration is powerful enough, it will cover the entire Land in its deadly radius. This means all the towns will be destroyed.
You will also have cursed yourself. It is possible to get the Morgothian Curse this way, so don't make a habit of Desecrations.
A lore-student will gain the insight needed for a Ritual of Desecration on gaining a random level, level 50 at the latest. It may be that only the three "good" lore-schools are capable of true Desecration.
Classes
Loremaster
Loremaster is the basic mage class. It has several subclasses.
Loremaster The vanilla Loremaster.
Lord Primarily wields Kevin's lore in the service of the Land but also knows about physical combat.
Unfettered One A Lord who has chosen hermitage in the pursuit of some inner vision. They have decent modifiers to all kinds of magical lore but are very weak in combat.
Clave member Wields the Sunbane.
Dark loremaster A student of Demondim-lore, not good with weapons. (The ur-vile loremasters we have seen were plain loremasters since they were also handy with combat.)
Thaumaturgist Uses Thaumaturgy.
Possessor
Possession works differently than in standard ToME. Possession, or the ability to enter another's mind, is the basis behind most mental magic. Possession can be very powerful, but it is very hard to possess more than one being at once and it is only possible when beings have a similar mental structure. Stupid low-level monsters are the easiest to possess and the smart high-level monsters the hardest. Mindless monsters and monsters with the new STRONG_WILL flag are impossible to possess as far as you the player are concerned.
Possession spells work somewhat like bard spells in that they drain mana as long as they are in effect.
Stop possessing Stops the spell and the manadrain. This is a free action. (You also stop possessing automatically when the target monster dies, you run out of mana, or you cast another possession spell.)
Mind touch Tries to scare and confuse one monster.
Mind fangs Damages a monster's mind.
Mind hold Keeps a monster stunned.
Mental compulsion Makes a monster attack the target you specify and overall act like a pet. A monster under the mental compulsion will fight more fiercely than a normal monster and do greater damage.
Mass possession Allows the user specify a monster letter, then a lower level possession spell. The effect is applied to the monsters of that letter in a radius.
A possessor gains eventually the Abandon Body ability. It allows him or her switch into a monster they have already an "open line" to. They cannot possess corpses. This means a possessor will never be able to possess the most powerful monsters in the game, which can be quite a change from hunting for Watcher corpses. However a possessor is able to make the monster they are in unnaturally strong and do bigger damage than normally. This effect is proportional to the possession skill. They are also able to cast spells effectively while possessing a monster.
Upon ending the possession of a monster, the formerly possessed monster will revert to its normal behavior.
(This class could replace the old Possessor, Mindcrafter, and Summoner. Some other spells like teleportation could be added but may not be necessary.)
Gods
There are three ways to handle gods.
- No gods.
- Lord Foul is the only god. You can believe in the distant Creator if you wish, but the game treats that as atheism since the Creator won't actually be able to help you any.
- There are multiple "gods". These include Stone, Wood, Sea, amd Lord Foul. This option has a fuzzy border with magic and is the trickiest to implement.
I think I'm leaning towards option two.
Monsters
General monsters
In addition to the playable races above and generic Angband monsters, there are several new monsters to fight in the source material, from kresh to Sandgorgons. You always wanted to fight a Sandgorgon, did you? 
The list (probably incomplete)
arghuleh (ice-based monsters)
caesures (vortices)
- Coursers (huge feline monsters)
- Fire-lions
griffin
kresh (yellow wolves)
merewives
- Nicor (sea serpents)
- Sandgorgons (make the Hrus seem wimpy)
skest (like icky things but worse)
skurj (fire-based monsters)
- Viles (incorporeal)
- Wraiths of Andelain (elusive balls of light)
Uniques
arghuleh leader
- ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol
- Caerroil Wildwood, the forestal
- Chant, the Elohim
- Doar, the Bloodguard
- Drool Rockworm
- Esmer
- High Lord Elena, the specter
- High Lord Kevin Landwaster, the specter
- Infelice, the Elohim
- Kasreyn of the Gyre
- Kastenessen
- Kastenessen's lover
- Korik, the Bloodguard
- Lord Foul
- Marid
- Pietten
- Sill, the Bloodguard
- Three-winged bird
Ravers
Ravers, the three most powerful servants of Lord Foul, should be handled specially. The three can possess living creatures that lack sufficient willpower to resist them. Some races like Giants, Haruchai, and Sandgorgons as well as uniques are off-limits in normal circumstances. There are special Raver uniques. All Ravers can be only in one place at once and if their body is killed they are forced out of the action for a number of turns before they can be generated on a level.
The (incomplete) list of Raver uniques
samadhi Sheol
- King of Doriendor Corishev
- Satansfist
- Gibbon na-Mhoram
moksha Jehannum
- Scornful stranger
- Fleshharrower
turiya Herem
- Kinslaughterer
- Joan Covenant
For example, only one of Satansfist, Gibbon na-Mhoram, and Sheol in a random non-unique can be generated on the same level since they are all Sheol. If, say, Satansfist gets generated and you kill him, you will be free of Sheol for a while, after which he can come as Gibbon or a non-unique since Satansfist's body is dead.
If generated after you have entered the level, a Raver has a chance of possessing an existing creature instead of bringing his own body with him. The Raver will choose the strongest creature. Even your pets can be possessed.
When possessing a non-unique a Raver acts like an ego-type that makes the host considerably stronger and adds the evil flag.
Very deep in the dungeon it could be possible for a Raver to possess off-limits living creatures.
Undeads
The undead egotypes zombie, skeleton, and spectre work as in ToME. A new, truly nasty addition is the Demondim egotype. The Demondim are mighty spell-casters, upping dozens of levels the base critter's level, and notoriously hard to kill.
Monster Wedges
Waynhim and ur-viles should be able to form wedges like in the book. These wedges, commonly headed by a loremaster, concentrate the power of the group, making the creature at the tip very powerful. This may not be straight-forward to program, but could give a valuable and unique contribution to the game. The player could be forced to invent new strategies to counter wedges, like attacking from the back (but the wedge can reform with another tip...) or using corridors.
Items
Materials
Most of the Land is in a technological stone age. Wood and stone weapons are common but with magic they can still be surprisingly worthy. Iron weapons are mostly used by your enemies and are therefore found fairly deep.
The precious metals have powerful magic in them and are correspondingly rare. Copper is the least of these, and silver is a lot more powerful, while gold is capable of some truly great things. White gold is the keystone of the universe and you will not meet it outside of one or two very special artifacts.
Artifacts
The White Gold Ring - Actually Covenant's and Joan's rings could both exist in the game. They would both be very rare and somewhat cursed (Joan's more), Ancient Foul Curse would be a good fit, I think, and have powerful effects that are hard to activate unless the Device skill is very high. Covenant's ring activates for a blast of mega-destruction + heal-self and Joan's ring activates for void jumpgate creation + something I need to think of.
The Staff of Law - It gives regeneration to Lawful carriers (as determined by the race) and else a hitpoint drain. It is a magestaff of your dreams, grants See Invisible, and counts as a Lord's staff for Kevin's lore.
The Illearth Stone - It is the evil opposite of the Staff of Law.
Loric's krill
Quest Plot (optional)
Here is my innovative quest plot. I'm not sure if this should actually be implemented, but here it is anyway. The quests with negative consequences to you are those that you must solve in order to get on with the plot. You can get some goodies from the optional quests. The quests are supposed to be fairly normal roguelike gameplay.
A VERY SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING
Message to Revelstone You need to get from Mithil Stonedown to Revelstone. To do that you need to solve ten levels of a forest dungeon that stand on your path. There is a staircase at the bottom. (On completion warped minor critters, ur-viles, and Cavewights can be generated.)
The Staff of Law You need to go to Mount Thunder and (On completion more powerful warped creatures can be generated. The Lords take the Staff of Law from you.)
Mission to Seareach You go to Seareach to see why nothing has been heard of the Giants for many years. To go there you need to cross a swamp dungeon representing Lifeswallower. Killing the very powerful Lurker of the Sarangrave Flat is strictly optional. Killing Kinslaughterer however is not. If you have already discovered the Seventh Ward, the final level is full of ghosts.
Fleshharrower's Army Fight through several dungeon levels of Fleshharrower's army to slay its general.
The Seventh Ward Descend through mountain levels into the heart of Melenkurion Skyweir to find the Seventh Ward. (On completion undeads can be generated.)
Siege of Revelstone In this version the enemy has breached into the lower levels of Revelstone
Lord Foul Go to Ridjeck Thome and kill Lord Foul. (On completion various hostile humans and Sunbane monsters can be generated.)
Quest for Information You need to descend through your first dungeon again, but it is now shifted considerably deeper and full of Sunbane related enemies. The (On completion monsters like hostile Brathair, Nicor and merewives can be generated.)
The One Tree Several new and different dungeons open up for you to look for the One Tree. You'll need to kill its guardian ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. (On completion Sandgorgons can be generated.)
The Arghuleh Destroy the threat presented by the arghuleh by going to the northern glacier dungeon and killing their leader.
The Clave Deal with the Clave and kill Gibbon na-Mhoram in the dungeon of Revelstone.
The Sunbane Go to Mount Thunder and get rid of the Sunbane by the unlikely method of killing it in a battle. This is highly metaphorical of course. (On completion hostile Haruchai and caesures can be generated.)
The Staff of Law Quest for the Staff of Law again. (On completion Demondim can be generated.)
...That's where it ends, since the series isn't finished yet.