Gaming in the Death Bat Zone These Days

Things have been busy with life and work, which has meant neglect for the blog. Luckily, it's always possible to just chat a bit about what's been going on, talk about the ongoing campaigns....

On Wednesday I continue to rotate two campaigns (each one gets a week in the spotlight). Every other Wednesday sees a continuing tale of a gang of adventurers with too many paladins (and paladin-likes) roaming the desert lands of Galvonar in Lingusia. On the other week we have the ongoing tales of a gang of sailors and adventurers for hire who have now been marauding their way through the Western Nakamura Isles, with each session slowly bringing them closer to visiting mainland Mataclan.

The Galvonar game is level 5, creeping very slowly to level 6. The Western Isles game started at level 1 and everyone just hit level 3. Both games are aimed at more visceral "low key" adventuring, with no obvious "epic plots" looming....this is pure sandbox-style adventure, survival and exploration. The Galvonar game has also been working to defy expectations and norms....the first major "lost temple" they had to explore was actually a forgotten bastion of a good deity, for example. When the players are so used to temples being for ancient evil gods that they rationalize how the "good deity" must have gone evil or rogue then you know I, as GM, both made the right choice and need to break out of my traditional mold a little bit.

Saturdays have been a serious contrast. Saturday mights have been my "historical, or something like that" evening for gaming, with two rotating games using Call of Cthulhu and Mythras, respectively. The Call of Cthulhu game is about ten sessions in and focuses on the weird happenings of coastal Oregon near the towns of Coos Bay and Astoria. It's got a bit of a Twin Peaks vibe (a subject on which I have not yet written but really should, given Twin Peaks: The Return was the best damned television I've seen in decades) but this is Twin Peaks with the characteristic mythos twist. The campaign is really about seven different mythos tales all interlaced and sometimes connected together. The adventurers have been exploring these many weird tales at their own pace and often jumping back and forth between one situation and the next according to where their investigations take them....the net result has been a fascinating proof that you can indeed run Call of Cthulhu quasi-sandbox style. The game takes place in the modern era, and I'm borrowing more than a little bit from Delta Green as well.

The off-night game for Saturday has been Ancient Mesopotamia, powered by Mythras. I plan to put more up on the blog about this setting soon, but the idea is it is a "historically precise" time period set at the dawn of the Sumerian kingdoms, some time during the formative years of the Ubaid dynasty (the first kings of Sumeria), around 2,900-3,300 BC. It's sufficiently early in the era that much of what is known from later periods does not yet apply, or is simplified (or has been mythologized)...smaller number of deities, for example, and the fact that the first direct evidence of mass siege warfare dates to around 3,500 BC. Small donkey-like asses (onagers) are the only real "horse" in the region (mostly Elam), and they are considered prestige animals for nobles to use to haul their chariots.....you don't see the Eurasian horsemen until you get out past Elam, and even then it's still a style in infancy. The professional soldier isn't a thing, yet....every able-bodied male may need to take up arms for the city but needs a viable trade to sustain his or herself outside of the protection of the city....except in Spring when everyone goes to war against the neighbors you hate.

It's been a great deal of fun running a literal swords & sandals epic at the dawn of civilization and the early bronze age. There's magic, and a hint the supernatural is real....but it's tricky, too! Players have noticed that I've been describing magical effects as potentially "influential" but not necessarily real....and the only "magic" people see is in the eyes of the one looking for it. The result is the hint that magic is real and subtle....but potentially also just a matter of belief and not necessarily really there, either.

Anyway.....eventually I'll have content to post related to these campaigns, but not until my players exhaust one or more of the settings. In all four cases it looks like that could be a long ways off, possibly months before any one of these campaigns reaches a conclusion, especially considering all four campaigns are modeled on a sandbox-style approach. This is both cool and rough at the same time, as I have a great interest in running a Cold And Dark Campaign, or trying out Hyperlanes 5E, never mind the fact the new Conan RPG is now out and my copy awaits my chance to grab it at the game store this week! As always....too much gaming goodness, not enough time.

Ages of Lingusia: The Western Nakamura Isles and Mataclan

Amidst all the other stuff going on I am working on a "West Indies" themed campaign focusing on piracy, exploration and the troubles of cultural conflict and exploitation, but all fantasy D&D style. I ran a campaign in this setting in the early nineties, but after all these years am now revisiting the concept with a bit of a reboot....here's the initial premise:

Mataclan and the Western Nakamura Isles Guide

In 1,958 AW the explorer Gortham Dann Malik, great grandfather to the knight Margda Dann Malik, traveled with the Octzellan Royal Vessel  “Enki’s Grace” across the Endless Ocean and returned three years later, laden with loot, prisoners of a foreign land, word of endless islands filled with plenty and tales of daring adventure.

Malik’s exploration revealed that there was a continuation of the Nakamura Isles, which ran along the western coast of the Middle Kingdoms before stretching out to sea, and that by following the isles he discovered a safe passage across the notoriously violent Endless Ocean which, after nearly a month of travel, opened up to a vast western land of islands and an unknown mainland which he only glimpsed. The people of these Western Nakamura Isles as he dubbed them were distantly related to the eastern Nakamurans known to the Middle Kingdoms of Lingusia on the Isle of Porondor and the westernmost island of the Isle of the Watching Gods. Indeed, the easternmost island of the new lands included its own Isle of Watching Gods as well looking eastward to where distant lands lay.

The first decade after Malik’s return to home was a brief but intense period of exploration and discovery as the major powers of the Middle Kingdoms sought to establish colonies. Within fifty years all major presences in the east had staked their claims in the Western Nakamura Isles, and investigation and invasion of the mainland had begun. The colonials almost immediately came to clash with the indigenous kingdoms, including Natukan, Talay, Haxitol, Hixatec and Hochimec. Eastward, in the region dubbed Paneurika, the barren deserts and rough landscape proved less inviting but also easier to lay claim to. The local populations, especially the Hohotone, Shaote and Kuhuyak were more welcoming of the foreigners, at least initially.

Despite their lack of metallurgy beyond basic decorative jewelry, the locals were nonetheless prone to extremely sophisticated sorcery, and seemed to worship gods, especially in Mataclan, which were demonic or even chaotic in the eyes of the colonials. The War of the Dark Pharaoh was fresh in the minds of many, and a large number of colonial settlers were soldiers who fought in that war, so the western beliefs seemed especially heretical. This did not bode well for future relations, but at least initially most religious conflict was initiated by efforts to proselytize and convert the local heathens to the cults of the Middle-Kingdoms.

By 2,011 AW the colonies had a full two generations of citizens growing up and were feeling their own sense of independence. In 2,015 the privateer Emandre Dolvanisk of Octzel liberated the colony of Vorga on Isle Seuse, at least partially using indentured natives as a military force, promising freedom for all in exchange for their loyalty to the man. Emandre was a spry 25 when the year of bloodshed commenced, leading the the swathe of isles known as the Free Colonies. Ironically, their precarious strategic position along the Mataclan coast made them less desirable to the eastern powers, and both Octzel and Hyrkania gave up attempts to rein the isles in after a few years. Today Emandre still rules at age 104, but he looks barely a day over fifty. It is claimed that he discovered a Fountain of Youth somewhere in the mountains of Seuse Island and has benefitted from it ever since. His piratical colony is known for welcoming all, abstaining from slavery, and having no real rule of law otherwise.

The destablilization caused by the emergence of the Free Colonies led the other colonies to scramble to protect and hold their own interests between 2,020 AW and 2,050 AW a dozen skirmishes and wars were fought locally, as each side funneled more ships and resources to protect the productivity of the colonies while insuring no holdings were lost. As the presence of the eastern powers grew, so to did attention to the mainland. Many coastal colonies had fallen in Mataclan, but Hyrkania pushed to add enormous resources and manpower to hold on to Usyllyses and Hyvarik. By 2,085 a colony was founded at Port Patraeus in the northern Hochimec lands, and apparently this was too much for the indigenous kingdoms. Hixatec announced that the foreigners had been identified by their principle civic deity and lord of change, Tezcatlipoca the Smoking Mirror, had spoken to the priesthood and revealed that the foreigners were destined to destroy the Mataclani if they were not sacrificed to the gods and  driven out of the lands of the Sixth World. Within weeks, a war had begun as the other kingdoms rallied around this message driven by the Hixatec king, Seven Blades.

Seven Blades, uniting the Mataclani chiefdoms, initially burned several of the outposts founded by the Hyrkanians and Octzellans, and as of  2,087 had great success, including occupying Hyvarik. Most of the coastal colonists retreated to the isle of Usyllyses where they held strong, and Port Patraeus stood only through luck, as several Hochimec tribes who despised the Hixatec for their cruelty stood with the foreigners in their defense, and the armies fought to a standstill.

Through all this back home the empire underwent a civil war, the War of Strife, as the southern Betrayer King Makhorven was at last defeated and his heretical forces cast down. This kept the empire busy for five years, a long period in which no help was forthcoming to the remote colonies. Now in 2,092 AW Emperor Patraeus has called upon freedmen, those who wish to earn their keep, mercenaries, privateers and explorers to head west once more to protect the colonies and forge a new destiny in the name of the emperor. His motivations are driven by the heresy of the southern Divinate, which deployed demons on the battlefields against the empire to great effect. The known worship of the perceived demon gods in the region of Mataclan is now identified as heresy of the worst kind, and the emperor has effectively declared a new crusade against the Mataclani, to wipe out heresy everywhere, in every form.

Even as the emperor sends forth crusaders, mercnearies, privateers and explorers in the name of Hyrkania to conquer Mataclan, Seven Blades rallies the Hixatec empire, subjugating the Talay and the Haxitol to his will as he prepares to sacrifice all of the eastern invaders to Tezcatlipoca, sending their doomed souls to the underworld of Mictlantecuhtli.