Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Hill Country and the Villain's Codex

Now, let's combine the last two posts.  I've just (finally) sketched out a hasty approximation of the Hill Country (although to be fair, it's admittedly at least somewhat incomplete), and the post before that I did a semi-review semi-deconstruction of Paizo's Villain Codex.  Now, I can actually use some of the material from the Villain Codex as thought-starters for stuff happening in the Hill Country.  Here's the stuff that I particular liked:
  • Arcane Society
  • Corrupt Guard
  • Cruel Musketeers
  • Merry Outlaws
  • Nature's Scourge
  • Regal Court
  • Savage Marauders
  • Secret Society
  • Sinister Cult
  • Slayer's Guild
Stuff like the Thieves' Guild, the Scandalous Pirates, the Brutal Slavers or the Ruthless Brigands are so generic that I'll probably have some equivalent to them, but it won't necessarily borrow anything from the Villains Codex.  

How will I fit these in?

First off, Waychester will be the half of the Hill Country that has the Regal Court.  The Grand Duke (who really wants to consider himself a King; but feels he needs to subdue the southern city-state and its possessions in order to do so) has had a rift with his Queen, who is locked up in a tower.  Of course, she's a witch, so she's not as helpless or confined as everything things she is.  The Cruel Musketeers are an important subcomponent to the Regal Court, so we'll add them too.  We'll have the Merry Outlaws being primarily a northern group as well, as well as the Corrupt Guard and the Arcane Society (although that will need some work to be usable; I don't have magic perceived the same way in DH5 as it is in D&D.)  Nature's Scourge will be a threat mostly in the Wolfwood.

The Secret Society will be present in both sides, and the Sinister Cult will be mostly a southern threat.  The Savage Maurauders, here made up of Drylanders, while the Slayers' Guild will be a kemling cult that has brought a number of Hillmen on board over the years, and will operate across the entire area.  The Brutal Slavers will mostly just be integrated into the Savage Marauders, the Ruthless Brigands may come and go across the border, such as it is, Scandalous Pirates will be on the Darkling Sea only (of course, although I suppose maybe there could be some river pirates too.)  Thieves Guilds will be present in both large cities and maybe a few of the other more modest-sized towns, although they won't be linked.  I'll probably pull on some DH4 concepts, like the Cherskii Mafia, and figure out how to incorporate it, perhaps.

That gives me a number of other posts to make besides just the location based ones; as I said earlier, I'll end up having to actually do a fair bit of work to make these bare bones skeletons of organizations actually usable.  They do not have enough setting material to be truly plug and play (which is a bit odd, given that Golarion is a setting as much as anything else.)

In very broad terms, it means that the two halves of the Hill Country have a slightly different focus.  The northern half, under the umbrella of Waychester, is threatened internally, corruption, rebellion, and civil war is the theme there, for the most part.  The southern half, under the loose umbrella of Upwater, is faced with more external threats; hostile tribes of barbarians and bandits, Lovecraftian cults in the deep wilderness, and other such threats.  This is too broad to be precisely true, but at a very high level, broad perspective, it mostly works.

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