Porhomok and more

A minor update has caused me to reevaluate my worldbuilding/development schedule. The campaign I was going to start on Friday (right after literally touching down from my work trip to Texas/Mexico an hour before) got cancelled last minute, as two of my three players were having car trouble and weren’t going to be able to arrive. I rescheduled tentatively for this coming week, but now it’s been pushed back one more week due to the two of three players’ availability again. I need to reread The Skinsaw Murders, since I’m hoping to adopt some of it for the session, but just for my own sake, I thought that if I’m going to reread that, I should reread Burnt Offerings, the module that precedes it before I do. I’m kinda inclined to reread the entire Rise of the Runelords campaign of six modules, honestly. Last time I read it, I read the Anniversary Edition where it was updated to the Pathfinder rules, with new art and a few expanded elements, but this time, I’m going through in the OG 3.5 version in the individual “magazine”-like format. There’s some really bad “cubist anime” art in this version that they didn’t carry forward, and I might actually miss stuff (not that I’ll remember or notice it) that was filled out in the revised version.

Anyway, that’s rambly. The point is, What am I going to do next? First, before the end of the week, I want to make two new videos; one will be an explanation of the new areas I’ve added on my newest version of the map: Porhomok, Nizrekh, Hyperborea, Gunaakt, and “Easternesse”, a neologism I created from Tolkien’s usage of Westernesse, which is also his own neologism based on Middle English from words like Lyonesse and Elvenesse. However, Easternesse isn’t meant to be a setting element that anyone actually goes and explores; that would be silly. It’s more a just-so story that explains why certain things in the setting are the way that they are. Gunaakt is also not going to be an element that I want to develop, other than to mention that it exists and it’s the source of the orcling race. Like Khand on the Middle-earth map, it’s just a label, and the Variags that come from it, while the source of a lot of intriguing and hot speculation from fans, never got any development in its own right. Gunaakt will be the same. It’s just there as a reference, and a place where the orclings come from, but I have no intention of adding more to the development of Gunaakt itself than I have already done.

I’ll also revisit what I’ve already said about Nizrekh, and possibly add to it, although I certainly don’t have any immediate plans for anything to ever be set in Nizrekh. However, I do want to talk briefly about some minor changes to the Leng and Pnath area up north of the Goldenwolds, and targets for future development include my newly added Hyperborean region (located up above Burlharrow, outside of the scope of the original map, but closer than I originally intended it to be. I may yet move it further north yet before I’m done with it…) and Porhomok. Porhomok is a brand newly defined region. Hyperborea has been around for a long time, albeit undeveloped, and Nizrekh and Gunaakt too, but Porhomok is new. The word is a combination of some stuff I looked up in a Hungarian dictionary, and I expect, which makes sense given its location, that the people of Porhomok are distantly related in some way or another to the Tarushans. The main reason for the introduction of Porhomok as a region, however, is to allow myself to have classical pirate themed stuff in a classic Golden Age of piracy tropical, or at least subtropical, environment. I may well call the coastline the Corsair Coast, and it’ll have a bunch of anarchic city-states, maybe even of more northerly based peoples. Timischer and hillmen foreigners with their Tortuga-like settlements; the natives of Porhomok being more like savages in the interior swamps, bayous and maybe even outright jungles. The people of Porhomok could be seen, at least deep in the boonies, as the classic adventure story savage; headhunters, cannibals, and the like, like you see in old 50s movies like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, for instance.

Then, I’ll make a different video also hopefully later this week, where I start talking about some of my setting’s ”supervillains.” I’m not sure if I want to start with a summary of all of them first, or do them one video at a time, but the characters I intend to cover include:

• Amrruk the Ancient, the “Oozemaster” who almost certainly belongs in the swamps either around Innsborough in Timischburg, or near the Corsair Coast.
• The Flying Dutchman (who obviously needs a new name), an undead pirate captain
• Hutran Kutir, the Hex-King and “founder” of Baal Hamazi, who still lingers as an undead lich
• Jairan Neferirkare, kind of Soul-catcher or The Lady from The Black Company is the main inspiration.
• Kadashman, He Who Peers Into the Void, based on the alienist concept from old 3e material; a strange and disturbing transhuman creature of some kind.
• Kefte Taran, the Witch-lich. Not her real name; I just like it as a catchy rhyme
• Master of Vermin, an unnamed disturbing individual, probably the creator in some way or other of the ratmen
• Seggeir Sherihum, the Mind-Wizard. Same concept as Kathulos, the villain of Robert E. Howard’s Skull-face. Maybe I should just use that name.

Speaking of that last guy, the Mind-Wizards of the Daemon Wastes will almost certainly not end up being of the Daemon Wastes after all, but related more to the south, Nizrekh or the Corsair Coast. I’ll probably do something else, or at least feature a different villain (and therefore title). But the campaign seed I have in mind for the Daemon Wastes would work quite well with a Mind-Wizard, so maybe it can travel between the Daemon Wastes and either Nizrekh or the Corsair Coast.

Undead pirate ship at Port