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Bryn Celli Ddu, a barrow mound |
Time for a post, to remind you I am alive.
I started off working on the Gygax75 Challenge, though I didn't stick strictly to its schedule. Mainly, I decided that the opening location would be a version of Portown, of Ruined Tower of Zenopus fame, with an additional megadungeon of my own devising located a short journey away. Further, though I don't mention it in the following notes, I've also placed Quasqueton, from B1 In Search of the Unknown, nearby. I figure that the Tower, smugglers' caves, and ghoul tunnels, a megadungeon/mythic underworld, Quasqueton, and the usual port city-based activities should give the players any number of hooks on which to hang their adventures.
My megadungeon, as noted, is found beneath goblin-haunted barrow mounds, which hold entrances to a mostly classic mythic underworld, a place where adventurers, through bravery, skill, and luck, might make their big score.
In addition to a house rules document (that remains somewhat in flux as I keep running into rules interpretations to consider; at least it's short, only four pages plus a couple of pages on changes to experience point awards), I've written up the opening situation as the initial player-characters arrive by ship in Portown, and a précis of the religions of the setting, noting how most of the additional character classes I plan to make available fit into the world's religious landscape. Here are those:
Introduction
The players have sailed from a town on the Gold Coast, where they grew up. Choosing a life of adventure rather than waste their bodies in the rapidly diminishing mines or live the quiet lives of peasant farmers, they’ve come to a town they’ve heard might reward a brave, and lucky, adventurer.
Portown is a small but busy trading port on the coast, with a population of perhaps a couple thousand or so, including people from all over the known world and perhaps beyond. Rumored to be built up from foundations standing on the ruins of an ancient city that may predate the coming of humanity, it lies a short distance, perhaps three or four leagues, North of a field of goblin-haunted barrow-mounds.
Stories tell of an underworld kingdom beneath the mounds full of riches and magical terrors. Many have gone into the mounds, never to return, but some few have come back to the surface with loads of jewels, gold, and magical swords, enough that there are always some brave, foolish, or desperate enough to try their luck.
The players step off the ship they’ve arrived with onto the wooden dock. Seagulls call in the overcast, leaden skies, and a strong smell of decaying fish and seaweed in brackish seawater permeates the air. North of the docks, the harbor is protected by a narrow spit of land reaching from East of the town, making the harbor into a cold lagoon. The dock leads up to shore, where large warehouse buildings line the boardwalk promenade, beyond which hints of other buildings can be seen through the alleys between the warehouses, and a few taller buildings peek over the roofs of the storage buildings. To the West, across a part of the harbor that projects south of the main lagoon, the fisher’s quarter hosts dozens of fishing vessels along a shore that leads back to hundreds of decaying houses. North of that quarter a peninsula stretches into the sea, with a lighthouse tower overlooking a cliff side at the North end. Access to the sea lies between the end of the protective jetty and the lighthouse. Beyond the fisher’s quarter, further to the West, a ruined tower overlooks the town from the top of a hill. Between the tower hill and the fishing quarter, a cemetery can just be seen. Not far from the tower ruins, a few hundred feet at most, on a smaller hill to the southwest of the tower hill, is a smaller tower in much better repair.
There is much bustling of working sailors along the docks and boardwalk, much shouting and strong language in a dozen different tongues, ropes being tied or untied, boxes of cargo being moved and carried, and some passengers lugging their own baggage to or from the shore themselves.
Religions of Dunia
Tetradic Church – The Four Elemental Gods: Earth “Bantəng/Banteng” (Solidity/Strength/Emotion, masculine), Air “Kuching/Kucing” (Wind/Weather/Intellect, androgynous), Fire “Naga Emas” (Sun/Craftsmanship/Manifestation/the World, genderless), Water “Bidadari” (Moon/Magic/Illusion/dreams, feminine) – clerics, cloistered clerics, exorcists, warrior monks, witch hunters.
Church of the King of Life – Padishah, God of Life – clerics, cloistered clerics, exorcists, paladins, warrior monks.
Church of the Alien God – exorcists, magic-users, warrior monks. Aśundǒr says he has come to rescue the souls of humanity, demihumans, and humanoids from the world, which is a prison built by the Demons to trap human/demihuman/humanoid souls, which are the fragmented light of the Alien God. Also, the Aion of Wisdom was lured into the trap and degraded by the Demons, finally incarnating as Śukar, a slave-prostitute he found and bought away from the brothel which owned her. Aśundǒr and Śukar are living humans who are teaching the philosophy of the Alien God with a retinue of twelve Disciples.
polytheist sects – see note on gods in "Demonology Made Easy" – exorcists, magic-users, steppe shamans, warlocks, summoners, witches. Local gods may be manifestations of "deity-types", sometimes with related or even the same names as others of the type, usually given a location epithet (like "Zeus of Stonedale", "Parisian Athena", or whatever).
Druidism – Erodia, Dunia, Briga, Artor, Medraut, Karnon – bards, druids, monks, rangers, witches. A sort of mix of Wicca and Taoism with other random influences, with three goddesses, Erodia the Huntress, Dunia the Earth Mother, and Briga the Wise, and three gods, Artor the Oak King, Medraut the Holly King, and Karnon the Antlered God. There's a philosophy of manifest Summer and potential Winter as the fundamental energies of the universe that combine and recombine as the Four Elements, the Eight Trigrams, the 64 Hexagrams, and other symbolic indications. I'm taking ideas from the Barddas of Iolo Morgannwg, European alchemy, Chinese Yì jīng and wǔxíng, Japanese kusei kigaku and onmyōdō, and mixing them all up with whatever takes my fancy. Dunia embodies the Summery Feminine, Artor the Summery Masculine, Briga is Wintry Feminine, Medraut the Wintry Masculine, while Erodia and Karnon are varieties of androgyny and “non-binariness”.
Denialism – "world is illusion", spoken by Kuhare Nadi the Enlightened One – exorcists, illusionists, monks, psionicists. Kuhare Nadi saw through the illusion that is the world and learned how to impart that knowledge to others. Some Denialists learn how to manipulate the illusion and create Phantasms or even create substance as Shadow.
Fatalism – Inan, the Weaving Goddess of Fate – clerics, cloistered clerics, dervishes, exorcists, paladins, warrior monks.
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