We got to keep the Devil... Way down in the hole...

*Tourist lighting not included*

Our fearless young lads have finally reached their first “job site”… and have foolishly decided to continue on their current career path. Torches have been lit, horses have been staked, arrows are nocked (whatever that means), and the group begins to make its way down the mysterious, bramble-covered stairway, straight into the bowels of the earth…

One by one, the heroes-in-waiting descend; Furok in front, followed by Napoleon the burglar, then Napoleon’s sea-voyage companion Jake carrying a torch (almost forgot about him entirely –Ed.), then Archibald of Pluto, Nyatar of Horus, and Hoko the Lawyer bringing up the rear.

The light from the entrance illuminates a huge stone block, almost entirely filling the 10’ wide tunnel. Napoleon can scoot through, but it’s going to be hard for the outrider and both priests. Nyatar steps forward, his lips moving as a faint chant can be heard. The chant gradually grows louder, then louder still, and Nyatar’s eyes grow wider and wider. He lunges forward, filled with the holy strength of Horus, as his words echo down the corridor. Slowly, the huge block begins to shift. Inch by inch, Nyatar presses the giant block against one side of the passage, until a two-foot space has been opened for the party. Nyatar steps back, sweating and breathing hard, nodding grimly at the party’s congratulations

Looking down, the party is startled to see the (extremely) flattened shape of a humanoid. The fingertips that were at one time exposed have been gnawed down to the bone; the rest of the body is crushed, but untouched. A quick examination finds some destroyed personal items, and a pouch with mangled sheets of parchment inside. Napoleon has a look; there is encrypted writing on them, but he thinks that, given enough time, he might be able to break the code. The wrinkled sheets are quickly pocketed.

On the far side of the huge block is a door, which has apparently been opened. It’s a tight squeeze, but the party manages to make it through the gap, into the next section of corridor. There is a straight stretch, with a bend to the right after forty feet. Someone once told Napoleon that he should always check for traps before entering a cavern, so he does… even though he has no idea what he’s looking for. His appearance of intent is enough to fool the rest of the group, however, who follow him slowly down the hall.

As the group approaches the bend, Napoleon brings them up short. A faint scrabbling noise can be heard in the background, amongst the sound of dripping water. Turning the corner, the passage slopes down for another thirty feet before opening into a larger space. Neither the faint light source nor the augmented senses of the party can see the full extent of the new space, but all of them can now plainly hear the scraping, flapping sounds coming from in front of them. Full of vim and vigor (and urged by their bankrolling priest of Pluto) the group approaches the opening.

It is now plain that the new space is actually a huge open pit. The roof looms forty feet above them, while the bottom and far side are lost in darkness; the passageway becomes an 8-foot wide ledge that descends to the right, gently spiraling down into the hole.

Furok’s eyes grow huge, and he has just enough time to partially duck the shadowy form flying at him from the far side of the pit. A frog the size of a large German shepherd clangs off the top edge of his shield, and smacks into the stone wall close by Jake’s head. The party dissolves into chaos as more shapes come bounding and climbing out of the abyssal darkness…

Language is a virus from outer space...

So. Languages. How do you handle ‘em?

The 1E handbook outlines the original take on languages: there are species-specific languages, culture-specific tongues… even alignment-specific tongues that characters can be fluent in. That’s entirely plausible, within the setting of the game system – as my friends used to say, “Don’t question the movie!...”

But my own take on languages has changed, over the years. I’ve never had much luck with learning languages other than my own; I’ve tried German, French and Russian, and none of them have “stuck”. I imagine there are a lot of people in the boat with me, for whom second languages are a challenge. So my fundamental attitude toward a character being able to speak six or seven distinct languages to start the game could perhaps best be described as… “skeptical”…

I think I hit a turning point when I started getting into “Ars Magica”; for those who aren’t familiar with it, AM is set in “Mythic Europe”, circa 1100 A.D. Players and game-master are encouraged to find mythical or mystical causation for real historical events. It’s a lot of fun, particularly if you’re a history nerd.

Anyway, magic is interesting in AM because it’s extremely powerful, but not omnipotent. I read a number of campaign blogs that were set in the Crusaders states of the Levant; almost all of them held forth that hermetic magic (with its basis in Roman and Druidic – i.e. “western” – theory and thinking) could not be used to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. The reasoning went along the lines of the paradigms and frames of reference were so diametrically different from each other, that there wasn’t enough of a “link” to magically “enhance”. You could make a similar case for Chinese characters, Arabic characters, and perhaps even Celtic oghams – you can use magic to allow a French PC to read Greek, but they’re unable to bridge the vast gulf between contemporary French and ancient Egyptian or Babylonian.

I’m not sure that there’s enough here for a hard-and-fast coherent rule, but I’d like to hear other thoughts on the matter.

Oh, and alignment tongues are straight-up bullsh*t. Just sayin’.

The Road Goes Ever, Ever On...

When last we left our yet-to-be-monickered band of hearty stalwarts – Napoleon the elven burglar, Hoko the cosmopolitan magician/law intern, Nyatar the half-orc adept of the Order of Horus (the Cosmic Eye), and Furok the outrider - they were accompanying Archibald, the somewhat spherical priest of Pluto into the untamed north… well, the outer suburbs, anyway. But it’s still kinda rough…

The group takes the main northern road out of Lyonesse, filing past market towns and outlying villages filled with wood smoke and late-spring mud, following the river Ebonflow towards the city-state of Imai. They journey for two days along the road before reaching the point where the Ebonflow meets the Mournwater as it gurgles southwards out of its origins in the Black Hills, now visible as a dark patch on the horizon.

Rather than following the Ebonflow towards the looming walls of Imai, the travelers now take a northeasterly tack along the Mournwater, leaving behind the bulk of the mercantile traffic. The passersby are now fewer, a more rough-and-tumble lot determined to reach the mining fields of the Faces, beyond the Black Hills.

After a leisurely day’s ride the road takes an eastward turn as it skirts the southern fringes of the Hills, and the young trio gets their first glimpse of the imposing mounds (minus Furok, who’s well-acquainted with the sight). The Hills rise abruptly from the surrounding plain, forming strangely regular hummocks (think the Palouse region of eastern Washington) ranging from 600 to around 1500 feet in height. The infertile soil is very dark brown in color, almost black, and the most common vegetation is thick stiff grasses and small, gnarled trees (manzanitas, etc). The overall effect is very bleak, leaving little doubt as to the origin of the area’s appellation.

After another day and a half of monotonous travel, the men reach a fork in the road; rather, they meet a much smaller and less-maintained road trailing to the left through a gap in the Hills. There is a crude sign at the intersection, with the letter “W” and a rough arrow branded into the weathered wood. “Yon lies the village of Willows, another two days’ journey,” says Archibald in his highborn dialect (I use Charles Laughton from Mutiny on the Bounty). “Our path separates from the road much earlier, though,” as he spurs his sturdy pony up the beaten track.

Indeed, before the day is out, Archibald consults with Furok and then takes the party off-road to the northwest, through the dark dales of the Hills. They camp that night in the wilderness, rising early and continuing on their way. Finally, in mid-afternoon, Archibald raises his hand and calls a halt. Glancing at his map, he leads them toward the base of a mid-sized hummock, finally pointing toward a bramble patch. “There…” he declares.

The undergrowth is cleared away, to reveal a crude set of stairs leading into a hold in the ground. The party glance at one another, tie off their horses, strap on their necessities, and light torches. As a misting rain begins, they start their descent into Pluto’s bosom…

(Just a quick DM note: I was very excited about this complex, as it was my first attempt at dungeon creation using the old “Central Casting” supplement by Paul Jaquays. As such, it’s a little disjointed, but actually turned out very satisfactorily. As you will hopefully agree…

And again, thanks to Matt Stater's Land of Nod, for the Lyonesse reference...)

By Jove...

At this point, I’d like to thank my loyal readers, both of you. Now that I see that people are actually looking at this thing, I’m going to have to do some more writing, and figure out how to get some illustrations up.

Bless you both.

Innauguration Day II

We now have half of our initial quartet, so let’s do the other half and get this thing underway…

A young lad named Hoko Goldma grows up in Lyonesse, the cultural and economic capitol of the territories collectively known as Wilusa. The son of a wealthy barrister, he tries and tries to apply himself to the study of the law but has simply not fallen in love with his father’s profession; he’s always yearned to see what lies beyond the next hill, and accompanying his father on infrequent trips to nearby city-states has not quenched his thirst for travel.

As an adolescent, Hoko felt that something else was calling to him, if only he could find out what. His questions found answers under the tutelage of one Jannick Idolf, an acquaintance and client of Hoko’s father and a practitioner of the arcane arts. Jannick saw in Hoko the raw abilities of a worker of magics, and took him under his wing as an apprentice. Hoko’s father rather than being horrified like so many other parents, was relieved to see his son applying himself to a body of work instead of languishing or sitting idle.

After passing a final series of tests, Jannick released Hoko into the world, along with a word or two of advice about his impulsive tendencies. Hoko’s father celebrated his son’s accomplishments, bestowed upon him a tidy sum as “startup” capital, and treated him to one last meal at the Yellow Queen, a slightly up-scale establishment in Lyonesse and a renowned nexus for entrepreneurial and outgoing personality types.

“My son,” he said, “what you need is to get yourself into the northern territory, where the mining industry is going through a boom. That’s where the real opportunities will lie – where fortunes may be made or lost. If you really want to succeed at this new calling, you’re going to have to stake your claim and take some risks… Off-hand, though, I’d say it’s too risky to make the long journey up there, alone. What you need right now is…” His eyes scanned the room, lingering for a moment on a portly man of serious demeanor with a cowl up over his shaven head, then brightened as two burly strangers walked through the door from the street outside. “Ah!... You need somebody like those fellows…”

Furok grew up the son of an impoverished potter and farmer, and only child on a barely-workable patch of land in the harsh environs of the Black Hills. The soil was thin at best, and the farmers in the area were always fighting a battle against the elements; Furok’s childhood, without a mother present, was difficult to say the least. Furok’s uncle Ulmo, however, was going to change all that…

A former soldier in the army of the city-state of Imai, Ulmo had returned to the Hills as a young man, determined to make a difference in the hard lives of his folk. He signed on with a group of outriders charged with patrolling the Black Hills area, under charter with the Duke of Imai, and spent the better part of the next fifteen years roaming through the countryside and protecting the mostly-unsuspecting villagers and farmers from darker forces.

Ulmo could see that Furok had the potential and gods-given gifts to be more than just an apprentice potter or beet farmer. He could also see the longing in the boy’s eyes whenever he looked at the horizon, or watched the sun set behind the dark Hills. Ulmo confronted his father and, in a heated exchange, goaded him into releasing Furok into his care. He and the lad walked away the next morning, and Furok has only been back once since then.

For the last three years, through rain and shine, summer and chilling winter, Ulmo has taught Furok the finer points of surviving and tracking in the wilderness, as the lad learns to ride and fish, hunt and fight. Together, they track brigands, apprehend poachers, and ambush goblins. The high-point comes when the pair finally corner and capture a notorious deserter and thief in the very north of the Hills. There is some hope that he was at the center of a string of recent disappearances from the roads in the region, but this theory quickly fades under interrogation.

What becomes clear, though, is that the thief is wanted for crimes back in Lyonesse, a week’s ride to the south. Ulmo and Furok restrain him and begin heading down out of the Hills, joining the main road on the plains, stopping in the city-state of Imai before heading downriver to Lyonesse. Once they reach the largest of the city-states, Ulmo finds out from the magistrate that their prisoner is wanted for murder in Tondota, Lyonesse’s rival city. According to the Wilusan League’s compact, extradition is automatic; Ulmo packs up for another ride of several days’ duration.

Before collecting his prisoner and remounting, he takes Furok aside, suggesting that he head back to the Black Hills; they’ve been gone a while, and Ulmo doesn’t want the outriders to be short-handed for too long. They enter the inn where they’ve been staying (the Yellow Queen, of course), and say their goodbyes. As Ulmo leaves, a large heavyset man with a cowl over his shaven head introduces himself…

“I am Archibald, of the Order of Pluto. I am in need of stout hearts and strong arms, to aid me in an errand of sacred importance. Might I tempt you into discussing potential terms of employment?”

At almost the same moment, a young elf and burly half-orc enter the inn, the shouts of the criers echoing in their ears; a barrister pushes his son towards the growing knot of individuals. They introduce themselves and inquire with Archibald about employment. Archibald explains that one of the duties of Pluto’s priesthood, as wardens of the dead and the underworld, is to explore and catalog any large subterranean complexes that are discovered. Some of these are too dangerous, some are inaccessible, but an initial attempt must be made.

Archibald explains that the complex he is bound to explore is located in the heart of the Black Hills, only a couple of days’ march from Furok’s old home. The others sign on, a price is determined, and gold coins change hands. The group of adventurers agrees to depart on the morrow…

And a legend is born!!!

(***Note***: credit for a great deal of this material must be given to other sites and bloggers, to say nothing of all the stuff that I've ripped off from common literature. I am chiefly indebted to the work of Matt Stater, over at Land of Nod; please check him out, and buy his stuff on Lulu.com...)