L. Marcus' Fantasy Campaign Material

[L. Marcus]

Land And People, Part I

 

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In the far northwest lies a land that some call the last bastion of civilization, and others call the first barbarian realm beyond the frontier. It is called Dagrike -- Dag's Realm -- after its first king. It is a vast, sparsely-populated land of contrasts -- between the river valleys' fertile soil and the pine-covered, mist-shrouded hills with their bare cliffs. To the west lies the Frothing Bay of the Grey Sea; to the south lies the Wolf Teeth mountains, and beyond them the Beastwoods; to the east lies the Broken Bones mountains, and beyond them the Ocean Of Grass; to the north lies the Skollha river valley where the Lokrings live, the Bleak Hills, and the Wonderwoods, and beyond them lies the Frostlands.

 

Dagrike is mainly inhabited by Humans that can be quite touchy in matters of honor and who take hospitality very seriously. There are no peasants; yeomen and tenant farmers till the soil, and have frequently -- successfully -- gone to war to protect their privileges from kings and nobles both.  The realm is mainly divided into five jarldoms, or duchies as southerners prefer to call them. One is held by the king, the other four by jarls who have sworn allegiance in perpetuity to the king.

 

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The coast of the Frothing Bay turns gently from west-southwest to north-northwest. To the west along the coast lie the cities of the Garsings, and to the north lie the Wonderwoods of the Elves. Into this bend of the sea empties the two great rivers of Dagrike, Petha to the north and Omha to the south. At the mouths of these rivers lie Hanland, the king's own domain where he has his seat at the city of Hanborg. Hanborg Town lies where Umha meets the sea, on the river's northern bank, and is a busy trading port. The goods produced at Stonespire, the Dwarven stronghold, pass through on their way to the markets of Garsingland, and so does the wares traded by caravan across the Sea Of Grass.

 

Hanborg is properly the name of the king's great fortress that lies on a hill above the town. The castle stands where Han himself once built his hall, and a great spreading oak that stands a ways to the side of the castle gates was once a seedling he planted as his home's guarding tree. This is now where the kings of Dagrike holds public court, offers sacrifice, and pass judgment, seated in a throne wrought from the living tree. It is said that though it is the tallest tree known in Hanland, it has never been struck by lighning.

 

The people of Hanland are a bit more worldly than their more rustic kin inland. Open and friendly as they are, they can none-the-less offer violence on short notice if they feel their honor is at stake. Yeomen farmers living in palisade-protected villages are the most numerous of the commoners, thereafter comes the tenants of the king's barons. Merchants and artisans are more common here than in the other jarldoms, and the towns are bigger and more prosperous than elsewhere in the realm. For the last few man-ages Hanland has mostly known peace, but bandits, reavers, and Goblins still give the people reason to keep their axes sharp and their spears keen.

 

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Upriver along the Umha, the river widens into a long lake -- the Langlach. The jarldom around it takes its name from the lake. The shores are very fertile, but the Dark Hills to the north are anything but. The soil there is meager, and the land is either marshes, craggy hills, or a thick pine forest that is home to Goblins and brigands.

 

The people live in small, fortified villages along the Omha and around the lake. Half are yeomen, and half are tenants under the jarl. There is one city in the jarldom, Skioldkauping on the northern shore of the Langlach. The jarl's hall and castle is in the middle of the town. The first Langlach jarl under Dag was his sister-in-law Brida, and her line -- the Bridings -- still holds the jarldom to this day. The family is considered to be even more aware of their rights and privileges than most  -- "As touchy as the Langlach jarl" is a well-known saying. Though Langlach is reasonably prosperous, the Bridings have always wanted more. They have rebelled against the kings more than once, and have tried to seize the Five Valleys to the south at least half a dozen times. Twice they have succeeded, only to be booted out by a later generation of mountain folk. It is rumoured that the current jarl, Armstark, feels that seven times is the charm.

[L. Marcus]

For those who has managed to last this long -- how is the writing? Understandable?

[DShomshak]

Quite. I think I have a pretty good vision of Dagrike.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Old Man]

Though we are looking forward to the map, of course.

[L. Marcus]

I don't have the skill to do a map justice. It's all back-of-the-envelope sketches, and my scanner is busted.

[Old Man]

Excuses.

[L. Marcus]

Explanations!

[Manic Typist]

My favorite way of making a map:

 

Go to a bar where there are well-worn, painted tables. Take a picture of the patches of worn away paint on a table. Print the picture, and trace the outlines from that worn away patch onto a clean piece of paper. Boom, you have random and fairly realistic continents/islands/countries.

[Narf the Mouse]

My favorite way of making a map:

 

Go to a bar where there are well-worn, painted tables. Take a picture of the patches of worn away paint on a table. Print the picture, and trace the outlines from that worn away patch onto a clean piece of paper. Boom, you have random and fairly realistic continents/islands/countries.

...Probably easier than the plan involving Perlin noise, a black/white 0.6 filter, and GIMP's edge detection.

[L. Marcus]

I'm idly thinking about Druidic Magic. One of my potential players has stated interest in this line of magic, and he'd like some blood magic flavor to it. I couldn't agree more.

 

Wizards would get an option to buy extra END with an Only To Power Spells (-1/4) Limitation -- Druids would instead use Absorption to END. I'd like to limit the amount Absorbed to only apply to what actually comes through the Druid's defenses -- what would such a Limitation be worth? My guts says -1/2, but my guts says lots of things. Note that, unlike D&D Druids, these guys and gals can use metal armor.

 

Also, the Return Rate will be bought way up -- 5 points per month. So the final build would look something like this:

 

Blood Magic: Absorb 5 BODY to END, 20 points Maximum Effect (+1/2); Delayed return Rate (5 points per month; +2 3/4); 21 APs; Only Versus BODY Damage After Defenses (-1/2); 14 RPs.

 

How does that look?

[L. Marcus]

Land And People, part II

 

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Still further inland along the Umha lies the land of the Karling jarls. They have their seat at Karlsbol at the point where barges can no longer travel the river. The soil in the valleys are fertile, but here in the foothills there is no other land fit for tilling. Beside trading, mining, reaping and sowing, the Karlinglanders are great husbandmen -- their swine and cows are renowned far beyond the borders for their quality, and the cheeses of this land are served before kings and emperors. The hills are of course infested with Goblins and beasts, so it takes a hardy folk indeed to herd animals in the Karlingland highs.

 

The Karling jarls were rulers in their own right until the Dagling kings conquered them many generations ago. Some of the jarls since have resented the "yoke" of the Oak Throne, and have rebelled with the Langlachs. The last few jarls have been quieter, but a reputation has grown about them that the house of Karl has a streak of madness. The current jarl's grandfather murdered one of his thanes in a fit of rage at a feast, and rumor has it that he then proceeded to dress the corpse like a newly-felled deer, right there in his own hall; and his mother before him was put to death as a demonolater.

[L. Marcus]

I need some inspiration. What should I write about? What would a player want to know? Does anyone have any pointers?

[Lawnmower Boy]

My favorite way of making a map:

 

Go to a bar where there are well-worn, painted tables. Take a picture of the patches of worn away paint on a table. Print the picture, and trace the outlines from that worn away patch onto a clean piece of paper. Boom, you have random and fairly realistic continents/islands/countries.

 

A different perspective: my preference for  map making is a nice projection of the Pacific Slope: California to Alaska. File the names off, put in your commercial city states, your impregnable castles, your key, strategic cities, your high lands of the free clans, fjords of the northern raiders, your land of shadows and your Dark Empire where you like 'em. 

 

We've not had the chance to have all that stuff in our history, so it feels like I'm righting a historic wrong.  

[L. Marcus]

One could put the Evil Overlord in Portland, just like S.M. Stirling.

[Lawnmower Boy]

One could put the Evil Overlord in Portland, just like S.M. Stirling.

 

What? Los Angeles is broken, now?

 

...Though it is a shorter trip to throw the One Ring into . . . Is there a volcanoe in Spokane? Because there should be.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Not to mention our own little slice of Norway. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagensborg

[Lawnmower Boy]

And now for something completely different.

 

This is another of Fortune magazine's old perspective-shifting regional maps. The perspective centres the arid interior of the Great Basin. (An alternative version of the Pacific Slope, set in Marin County, filmed in Campbell River.) If Dragrike is on the central coast of British Columbia or points north, it's off the edge of the map on the right, in which case it's a place for the PCs to be from, rather than an adventure setting.

 

So, my bad. 

 

On the other hand, the vision I get is the Hall of the Merchant's Guild, towering four stories above Yerba Buena Cove at Market and Mongomery. A group of likely lads and girls, far from home, have come to take arms against the Empire, which is once again threatening the City State. The City Fathers, though, are dismissive. The Emperor's dark standard has been planted in an terraced mound of mud mixed with the blood of countless sacrifices at Sacramento, and the armies of the Empire are gathering to it. They will try, once again, to penetrate through the mountains, and be stopped by the rangy ranchero cavalry, or through the water maze of the inland delta, while the arrows of the City's longbows fall amongst them. No need for axe-armed barbarians from impossibly-distant northern forests.

 

So, instead, they consider offers: a caravan, by land, from Astoria in the north all the way to unimaginably distant St. Louis across the sea of grass; or, by sea, to the tropic island kingdom of Hawai'i. 

 

Little do they know that, in accorandance with a vision sent town from the shimmering sky, either cargo will contain a tiny, golden statuette, without which no Dark Emperor can be crowned, stolen from the Imperial Palace itself, which can only be disposed of by taking down through the endless depths of some cavern somewhere to the depthless bottom level, where there's a door to Hell itself to throw it into. 

 

(Note to self: Need Hawaiian skin for the random encounter monsters, in case the PCs take the ship option.)

 

 

[Old Man]

What? Los Angeles is broken, now?

 

...Though it is a shorter trip to throw the One Ring into . . . Is there a volcanoe in Spokane? Because there should be.

 

Spokane is more of an Innsmouth-type evil as opposed to a Mordor-type evil.  There's nothing to throw a Ring into; you just go mad.

[L. Marcus]

Yes ... Innsmouth ...

[DShomshak]

A different perspective: my preference for  map making is a nice projection of the Pacific Slope: California to Alaska. File the names off, put in your commercial city states, your impregnable castles, your key, strategic cities, your high lands of the free clans, fjords of the northern raiders, your land of shadows and your Dark Empire where you like 'em. 

 

We've not had the chance to have all that stuff in our history, so it feels like I'm righting a historic wrong.  

Funny you should say that. I've attempted two Fantasy Future projects using the Pacific Slope: One near future post-holocaust, one millennia in the future when the only remnant of current civilization is the eroded ends of the Grand Coulee Dam. In both cases, the Aggressive Evil Empire was centered on Eastern Washington (river flowing through semidesert, it's sort of a natural site). In the post-holocaust fantasy, the capital was at Hanford where the fanatic priests of the Third Testament commune with the Atomic Angels from the White Towers. In the distant-future setting, the Carnifex who has ruled for a thousand years has his capital at Grand Coulee; the remnant of the dam is one of the quick indicators how far in the future it is.

 

For my Magozoic D&D setting, I made the map by cutting up the Pacific Slope and rearranging the pieces. As Lawnmower Boy says, it's such a wonderfully varied geography, you can do just about everything with it.

 

Dean Shomshak

[SteelCold]

Borrow/steal the map from Tuala Morn.

[L. Marcus]

But then I'd have no map for Tuala Morn!

 

I do have a lay-out for both Dagrike and the world. I just wish I had the time and inclination to do the images in my mind justice.

[Belwen]

Have you thought of trying Campaign Cartographer? It isn't free, but with a bit of tinkering you can make some decent looking black and white maps.

[L. Marcus]

*sigh* If I only had the funds ... There is another program, though, that I think is free. The name escapes me, but it is said to have a rather steep learning curve.

 

But OTOH, that's what's said about Crusader Kings II as well, and I made two empires in my first play-through.