C is for Cannibal Island

For to the east and north lies a large body of land called Cannibal Island.  It isn't far from the mainland, although it is far from any "civilized" location recognized by citizens of the land of the Three Empires.  Qizmiri sailors exploring the northland have occasionally stumbled across it, as well as curious and foolhardy explorers from Baal Hamazi.  Because it is buffered from the land of the Three Empires by other locations that are collectively known as the "Forbidden Lands", however, little traffic goes to the island.  It is known as a rumor and a byword amongst travelers and those who like strange tales, as well as in esoteric circles where forbidden, heretical and illegal knowledge is sought.  And, perhaps surprisingly, there are more inhabitants of the Cannibal Island who come to the land of the Three Empires than vice-versa.

Cyclopean architecture on Cannibal Island

At about a quarter milion square miles, Cannibal Island is a significant landform, almost the size of Madagascar.  Much of it is covered in tropical jungles, but it also has significant areas of high elevation that are cool and foggy.  Cities, ziggurats, temples and villages dot the area, and it boasts a significant population of decentralized yet architecturally and technologically fairly advanced people of unknown original extraction.  Yet these people are cursed, in ways both overt and subtle.

People from the Cannibal Island are visually very easy to spot.  Of course, few in the land of the Three Empires know what they look like, so they are instead considered to be merely albinos, or non-hamazi hellkin, or simply pale-skinned people of some other race when they are seen.  Many of them are careful to avoid showing their faces, and thus their features are not obvious even when one has been met.  Their skin-tone is a chalky pale gray or almost white, a most unnatural color for most humans.  There is no trace of pink or flesh-coloring, as one would expect in a true albino.  Hair can be either silvery white or jet black; only turning something else artificially, or perhaps going iron gray with age.  Their eyes are also extremely pale--beyond the lightest gray eyes normally seen amongst the balshatoi or other northerner races, verging on completely colorless.  The pigmented cells of the iris look like finely etched silver lines on a white background against the whites of the eyes--again, not a feature associated at all with true albinos.  Many Islanders also feature dark tattoos on their face, giving them stylized skull-like visages.  Those who leave the Cannibal Island are often assassins for hire, or cultists making pilgrimages to the strange and fell spirits whom they worship.

As the name of the island suggests, the inhabitants of Cannibal Island are, in fact, cannibals.  Normally they raid each other for "long pork" since they have few visitors and few outsiders live within easy striking distance of their island, but some of them do indeed travel farther afield in search of their ghoulish repast.  There are even rumors of an entire pirate ship crewed by Cannibal Island natives, who's search for treasure to loot is less important to them in search of captives to add to their larder.

Feral cannibal

As a matter of fact, the corrupted and fell environment of the Forbidden Lands has caused the inhabitants of the Cannibal Island to become cursed, and their cannibalism is a direct result of that curse.  If an Islanders does not indulge in an anthropophagic repast, over time his body will become corrupt, his mind will wither, and he will devolve into a savage beast.  Twisting painfully, his body will become emaciated, yet hard and strong as iron, his teeth will grow and develop points, his eyes will become sunken and sharp.  His mind and behavior will become feral and uncontrollable.

In d20 game terms, this curse can be treated as a magically induced disease (similar to Mummy rot) with a save DC of 15.  Every month that human flesh is not consumed (incubation period 1 month), the targeted character's Intelligence drops by 1 if they cannot make the saving throw.  If the targeted creature's intelligence drops to 0, the character becomes a ghoul.  It is impossible to treat this malady except magically--restoration or lesser restoration can restore lost ability points.  To eliminate the curse completely, the curse must first be broken with break enchantment or remove curse (requiring a DC 20 caster level check for either spell), after which a caster level check is no longer necessary to cast healing spells on the victim, and the disease can be magically cured as any normal disease.

Keep in mind that in the DARK•HERITAGE campaign setting, however, which does not have "regular" spellcasting classes, access to these spells is much more limited than in D&D, and may not be available at all.  For this reason, inhabitants of the Cannibal Island who come to other lands or regions almost always turn to the hunting and eating of other people.  It is not necessary that a new victim be hunted each month--a person can provide enough meat for several months assuming that the meat can be properly preserved somehow.  They either prefer rural areas where missing victims are unlikely to be missed for some time, or seedy urban areas where missing victims are, again, unlikely to be missed due to the activities of criminal gangs, or other reasons that would cause the poor, destitute or disenfranchized to be unmissed and unwanted.  There is a thriving albeit small population of cannibals living in the slums of Porto Liure, for example, and they even operate semi-openly in Sarabasca.

DARK•HERITAGE Soundtrack

I've mentioned this before, but I like to revisit it again from time to time.  I like music.  Lots of different kinds of music, actually.  Because I play(ed) two different instruments (piano and trombone) I came to appreciate music as music, that is, I came to appreciate music that I otherwise might not of because it's doing things artistically and musically that I can understand and appreciate.  I like a lot of 80s music (because I was a kid and teenager during the 80s.  That's not surprising.)  I like a lot of electronic music, especially synthpop and futurepop.  Also, that reminds me of a lot of my favorite 80s music, and I like it no doubt for many of the same reasons.  I like some modern pop music.  I like some few "New Age" artists, although again--it was my appreciation for Enya and her heyday in the late 80s and early 90s with hits like "Orinoco Flow" or "Book of Days" for instance, which made me aware of the genre.

And I've always been a fan of classical music.  By classical, I really mean the "Romantic" era stuff--Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Wagner, Liszt, Dvorzak, later Beethoven, Mahler, etc.  That kind of stuff.  And, I've been a fan of good musical movie music scores.  Of course, given my age, I barely remember a time before John Williams and the Star Wars score, which really changed movie music forever.  In fact, I still consider the Star Wars music amongst my favorite music of all time.  I bought the two-disc (each) Special Edition soundtracks when they were released years ago.  Great investment.

In fact, I got a bit carried away picking up movie soundtracks a few years ago, and while I'm arguably still carried away, I don't buy as much as I used to.  Movie soundtracks are, I've also found, great to play in the background while gaming, or while working on gaming, or while writing, or while developing, or whatever.  Most movie soundtracks are scored specifically so that they can emulate a tone and theme.  Sure, moods may change within the course of a movie, but picking a movie that has the same kind of "feel" as you want your gaming to represent, and then playing the music for that movie in the background, is a great way to make sure that your game has the right feel too.

DARK•HERITAGE, being a setting that has pluralistic influences, naturally needs a pluralistic soundtrack, and no single movie or series of movies even, can hope to give me everything I want in terms of tone, feel and theme.  But I have taken several stabs at creating the "ideal" soundtrack for DARK•HERITAGE.  For various reasons, I've decided that I will only accept as much music as I can burn on a single CD-R (as mp3s), so depending on file size and quality, I can get between 7-12 or so soundtracks on it.  Ten is usually the target I'm aiming for, but if there's still room, I'll add some more.  CD-Rs are very convenient for me because they are easily portable, really cheap (so I can redo them if I feel like it later), I can play them in a variety of devices, and because of their constant size (700 Mbs) it keeps me from getting carried away and adding more than I need.  Plus, I can play it in my car, in my DVD player, in my stereo, and on my PC.  While I can mostly do that with my mp3 player too, it's not as convenient as just throwing a CD-R in.  It's the perfect solution for me.

Because I'm always picking up new soundtracks, I find from time to time that I need to adjust my DARK•HERITAGE soundtrack--or if I don't need to, I want to because some new soundtrack fits so perfectly with what I want my game to "feel" like.  So although I haven't yet burned a CD-R with this new listing, here's what I'm thinking of doing for the "new" DARK•HERITAGE soundtrack, when I make my new CD for it.  For now, it's eleven soundtracks long, but with some judicious editing of tracks, I can probably fit some more stuff in too. 

1. Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End
2. Pirates of the Carribean 4: On Stranger Tides
3. The Wolfman
4. Sherlock Holmes
5. Sherlock Holmes 2: Game of Shadows
6. Red Dead Redemption
7. The Mummy
8. Prince of Persia
9. Batman Begins
10. The Dark Knight
11. The Woman in Black

Stuff to add?  I also have some tracks from Pirates 2 that I'd like to fit in.  I have the new Dark Knight Rises soundtrack, but I don't know if well enough to know if I feel like I need to add any tracks from it, or if the earlier two already cover that territory.  Signs has some nice creepy songs that I'd like to add, as well as Bram Stoker's Dracula.  And there's a few tracks from Stargate, Cowboys & Aliens, and maybe Predators that I think would make a great addition.  A main track or two from The Godfather would be brilliant.  But any and all of those additions are subject to space limitations--like I said, I could get really carried away and easily double or even triple the amount of music that I accept, but if I do that, then I lose my focus and defeat the purpose of trying to limit it in the first place.  No, I want to make sure I can keep it to a single CD-R in length.

If you look at the list, you'll notice a few themes that are represented more than once.  Westerns, although darker revisionist Westerns, not heroic stuff (I could have added The Magnificent Seven, for example (great themesong, by the way) but deliberately did not), I've got pirate-sounding music, I've got a bit of Victorian Gothic type stuff, I've got "Arabian Nights" sounds, and there's a strong vibe of horror.  Frankly, the new Batman soundtracks sound like horror soundtracks rather than superhero soundtracks, which makes them perfect for my purposes too.  James Newton Howard is brilliant.

Now, any given game within DARK•HERITAGE might not hit on all of those themes.  It would probably be rare for a game to focus on both pirates and cowboys, at least at the same time, for instance.  But I don't want to get into themed variations, I want a "one size fits all" DARK•HERITAGE soundtrack that I can always use and which always works.  I think this soundtrack fits that bill nicely.

Distant Worlds

On Friday I finished the third (of four so far arrived) Paizo books I bought with my Amazon gift card.  This book was Distant Worlds, a book that I was simultaneously excited about conceptually, and very worried about.

See, it became fairly obvious early on that Paizo envisioned the solar system of their setting as one that has a very planetary romance vibe to it; the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, C. L. Moore and Leigh Bracket are hugely influential in the discussion of the solar system of Golarion.  At the same time, Golarion is, of course, basically a D&D fantasy world.  Although one of D&D's strengths is that it manages to gobble up influences from all kinds of genres and reflect them in its idiom, this was a big bite to eat and regurgitate, and I could imagine all kinds of ways in which it could go wrong.  And as a huge fan of much of that source material, I am also somewhat particular in my presentation of pastiche of it.  All that, of course, harks back to my former tagline on this blog; "most opinionated guy on the Internet."  Needless to say, I had my doubts about the concept and if Paizo could pull it off to my satisfaction.

Luckily, in my opinion, the book works marvelously.  In fact, Distant Worlds was a great book, and one that got me really excited again to attempt to run a kind of exotic game.  While it was in many ways heavily and transparently influenced by the space opera and planetary romance (that not coincidentally Paizo published until recently in their Planet Stories line of fiction reprints) the book itself had much of the same feel that reading 3e's The Manual of the Planes did.  Keep in mind that while I was naturally familiar with the concept of the Great Wheel and planar adventures in D&D, I left D&D during the 1e era, and never saw the original Manual of the Planes book.  When I picked up the 3e Manual of the Planes, the concepts weren't unfamiliar to me, but the context was, and realizing that there were really all these exotic adventuring possibilities in the planes was a bit of an eye-opener to me.  Needless to say, I missed Planescape altogether.  In fact, the modular nature of that book is part of what made it so intriguing to me rather than the standard conception--creating a new cosmology that used portions of the planes as presented in a new context.  If Star Trek was famously first presented to management and the networks as "Wagon Train" to the Stars" (even if that wasn't exacty what Gene Roddenberry wanted to do) then my putative game might be called "Wagon Train to the Planes"--and I find that material from Manual of the Planes, Beyond Countless Doorways, and now Distant Worlds are all gold mines for that kind of exotic type of game.  Reading this got me excited about it again; I may actually attempt to run such a beast via Google+ or something, if I can round up an online group.  It won't have any connection whatsoever to my DARK•HERITAGE setting, and the timing is impossible for my home group, but I hate getting excited about game concepts and not being able to run them, so I'm seriously considering something here.

What exactly are some of the concepts that Distant Worlds offers us?  We have Akiton and Castrovel, very much influenced by Barsoom and Amtor respectively.  Castrovel even has a sea of mist ("Lorelei of the Red Mists" anyone?  Paizo knows their pulp fiction, that's for sure.)  There's Diaspora, an interesting concept of an asteroid belt that is the remnant of a past apocalyptic "Death Star" esque attack--but survivors linger in the foreign and hostile environment of the ruins.  Eox is the undead world--a much better concept for "extraplanar home of the undead" than the Negative Energy Plane, in my opinion.  There is also a world that is not unlike Brackett's Mercury, tidally locked with a permanent hot zone, cold zone, and a weird terminator zone that's temperate.  There are two gas giants, which are an even more exotic place to visit.  There is magical equipment that replicates pressure suits.  There are spells that allow temporary survival--although since they already existed as planar spells (they changed the word planar to planetary and called it a different spell--a silly move, IMO).

As you get further out into the solar system, Paizo borrowed more and more from Lovecraft.  While there's not an analog to Yuggoth exactly, there is Aucturn, "the Stranger" which is a somewhat Lovecraftian planet.  The South Pole of "Mars"--Akiton--is hinted at to be similar to the south pole of At the Mountains of Madness, complete with Elder Things and Shoggoths.  The Dark Tapestry is a dangerous cult dedicated to worshipping the darkness between the stars, and the names of Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep and others are actually printed in Distant Worlds explicitly linking them to that cult, and explicitly making Golarion a part of the Yog-Sothothery pastiche (not that that hadn't already happened in many ways throughout various setting elements here and there over the last few years.)

The main way that I judge a setting book to be good or not is how much it fires my imagination, how much I read something and immediately begin looking ways to integrate that detail or that element into my own personal gaming somehow.  In that respect, Distant Worlds is by far the best setting book I've read in quite some time (not that I've read a lot of RPG books in recent months, but still.)  The book is fairly light on details--it's more big picture and ideas, without maps and without a heavily detailed element, but in that respect, again, it reminded me very strongly of the 3e Manual of the Planes.  Since that is still one of my favorite RPG books of all time, that is high praise indeed for Paizo's Distant Worlds.

And I really am serious about wanting to put together an online game of some kind kitbashing this book with MotP and Malhavoc's Beyond Countless Doorways in a kind of "Wagon Train to the Planes" game.  I've even started up an Obsidian Portal campaign around the idea.

B is for Baal Ngirsu

Baal Ngirsu is a major city-state with cultural and historic ties to the ancient Baal Hamazi empire.  In that regard, it was always an isolated outpost of sorts, a marchland city build in the furthest southwest corner of the empire nestled among the peaks of the large and free-standing massif known as Shatur Rock, at the headwaters of the Nikash River, which flows eastwards through often very deep and steep chasms towards the Kindattu Mountains, where it dives underground to disappear beneath the roots of the mountains altogether.  The Nikash is not navigable, so Baal Ngirsu is cut off from its more easterly "brethren"; fellow successor states to Baal Hamazi such as Ishkur and Simashki on the eastern side of the range.

Shatur Rock

Although separated by distance, the terrain between Baal Ngirsu and the more northerly lands of the Baal Hamazi heartland are not terribly difficult to cross--assuming one makes accomodations for finding water while crossing the dry and fairly flat Hallashu basin.  And south of Baal Ngirsu are the lands of the Haltash tribes--more wooded, and covered in their timber hill-forts.  It is no great distance from Baal Ngirsu to the Vajol Downs, and from there to the "lost province" of Calça, yet contact between the far-flung hamazins and equally far-flung Terrasans has been intermittent and light.  In many ways, except for their relationship with the Haltash, the Ngirsans have been more on their own than not.

As such, their resemblance to classic hamazin culture is somewhat distant.  They've always had a much more symbiotic relationship between the hellkin and humans who inhabit the area, especially given the relative strength of the Haltash "barbarians" who have been interbreeding both culturally and genetically for many generations now.  As such, the Ngirsans have always seen themselves as more "enlightened" than their brethren, who didn't throw of the shackles of oppressive tyranny under their hamazin overlords without violent revolution; at Baal Ngirsu, the tyranny was never all that oppressive and the way forward was established collaboratively.

Besides the lure of isolation in a beautiful wilderness setting, the risk of the Haltash, who are often territorial and aggressive, and relatively easy access from the north to the lands of Calça beyond, there are a few other draws to Baal Ngirsu.

• While Shatur Rock is itself not known for harboring any mineral wealth in the form of mines, there are fortunes to be made panning in the streams and creeks that feed the Nikash river for gold.  Baal Ngirsu went through a period of growth not unlike a boomtown economy in the past.  This has since slowed, but enough people still make a good enough living panning that the draw isn't gone completely.  This of course means that outside of the city itself (and even inside, in its rougher parts of town) there is a very real danger to be faced by bandits, robbers, and other toughs who would rather shoot first, search for body for gold dust second.
• The area around Baal Ngirsu is one of the best sources for adamantine, or starmetal as it's commonly known, in the entire Land of the Three Empires.  This is also not mined, however--the source is a gigantic ball of rotting and rusting metal, as large as a palace, that floats above the ground, at least a thousand feet in the sky.  It makes a curious and often unpredictable "orbit" of sorts through the area.  While its height makes it inaccessible to most, it appears honeycombed with holes, either as an artifact of its construction, or because of decay.  This honecombed structure means that from time to time chunks break off and fall to the earth, to be found by enterprising folks who wish to harvest the ore.  This gigantic ball of skymetal is called the Skysphere.  It is obvious from the pieces that fall that it is artificial--strange glyphs or letters or markings of some kind are carved on many of the pieces, though no one has deciphered them.  It has been in the sky as long as anyone knows--the Haltash have no legends of its arrival, merely that its always been there, and the hamazin discovered it as it is.  Nobody has any idea who could have constructed it, who could have caused it to float and wander over the area, or why.  It's known only that the skymetal ore is the same as that occasionally found at meteor impact sites. 
• Refugees fleeing the hamazin cities to the north have entered Baal Ngirsu in great numbers recently, creating a great deal of tension and strain on resources and space.  Rumors of Hutran Khutir's rebirth might be garbled and incoherent, and exactly who is leading it is still anyone's guess until reliable reports come down from the north, but it is clear that some kind of great militaristic crusade is going on, and the only options are to join with it or flee to the lands southward.

Reform School Ninja Girls

A plug for my friend's "kickstarter" on Indie-Go-Go.

http://www.indiegogo.com/rsng-1

This is also an RPG setting, by the way, and has been the source of many, many hours of some of the wildest and craziest RPG action I've ever seen or heard about.

Lost Kingdoms

I finished the second (of four, initially--two more coming later this month after the release date hits) of the Paizo books that I got from Amazon, Lost Kingdoms.  Unlike the first one I just reviewed, Blood of Fiends, this is the longer Pathfinder Campaign Setting series, which are 64-page softbacks with a squared spine that replaced the older Pathfinder Chronicles series of the same format.  I also picked up, many months ago, the Lost Cities of Golarion, which is an interesting companion piece to this.  I believe there's a third called Lost Dungeons or something like that, but since I avoid dungeoncrawls, I didn't pick it up.

Lost Kingdoms is a bit more "big picture"; although it refers to adventure locations, it usually does so somewhat obliquely, and without a lot of detail.  In this regard, it's much like one of the region books--except that the lost kingdoms, of course, overlap existing regions.

For each of the six lost kingdoms mentioned, there is a map of what it used to look like, complete with some interesting points of reference or interest.  There's a history of the kingdom, including what caused it to become lost or fallen.  There's some detail on some treasure or antiquities that antiquarians may find in the ruins of the lost kingdom, as well as hazards left over as a legacy from them.  Although it certainly felt geared towards the whole D&D dungeoncrawling experience (not surprising), because of its nature, its still certainly usable and interesting to those who eschew that paradigm as well.

However... there's also a feeling of deja vu for much of the book.  The first section is ancient Osirion, for example.  Waitaminute... don't I already have a book specifically on Osirion?  And isn't one of the capitals of ancient Osirion part of the Lost Cities book?  Well, they manage to talk about different details about ancient Osirion, but it does still, like I said, have a feel of deja vu.  This is also true of the last entry, Thasillon, which has had so much coverage in several adventure paths, lots of stand-alone modules, and tons of material from Paizo generally.  In fact, Thassillon, which is supposed to have been gone for 10,000 years (a ridiculously long time, which is a problem endemic in fantasy; it's not "impressive" enough unless the years are hugely inflated, for some reason) is significantly better known than many current regions in Golarion.

The other regions, however--Sarkoris, the Jistka Imperium, Ghol-Gan, and the Lirgen and Yamasa duology, are not really well known at all.  In fact, the Jistka Imperium was one that I don't even remember reading about before anywhere (although I'm sure I have.)  In general, the sections were very interesting to read, useful as adventure seeds (although lacking in a lot of details), and they come with a few "goodies"--each section has a few magic items and unique, new monsters.  Plus, the entire concept goes a long way towards establishing a sense of "depth" to the campaign setting, which is a good thing in its own right.

A is for Alcàsser

Alcàsser is a major urban development of the Terrasan culture on the far western edge of the Mezzovian Sea, northwest of Terrasa proper.  Technically, it is not a seaport, and is in fact many miles from the shore, but since the Durenga river estuary is wide and safely navigable (to knowledgeable pilots, at least) most seafaring vessels can make port at Alcàsser.  The water east of the city gets increasingly brackish, but by the time you reach the city itself, the Durenga is slow, fresh, and somewhat brownish and heavily sediment-laden.

From Alcàsser, the shoreline continues nearly due south for some time before turning east and then northeast to form the Tolosa Bay.  Directly east of Alcàsser (although certainly much too far to be visible) one would come up against the southwest coast of Gandesa, the island infamous for harboring the pirates of Porto Liure near its northeastern tip.  This puts Alcàsser roughly equidistant--as the ship sails, at least--between Terrasa itself and it's northerly neighbor Segrià.

Alcàsser has a reputation amongst Terrasans as being a boring place.  Politically loyal and untroubled by tendencies of seccession (as plague many of the more northerly city-states), the primary raison d'etre of Alcàsser is farming.  The Durenga River basin is famous for its gently rolling hills, fertile and well-watered soil, and lack of bandits, monsters, hauntings, or really any type of drama of any kind.  Called the breadbasket of the Empire, Alcàsser is seen as a sleepy little port full of farmers.  This isn't exactly untrue... but naturally, it's way too simplistic.  For one, Alcàsser isn't sleepy or small, it's a major port that has dozens of ships coming and going almost every day all over the Mezzovian, and as the main shipping hub of the grain industry, it's got its share of political manuevering and intrigue as various "grain barons" attempt to shoulder their competition aside.

Secondly, Alcàsser may be the front on a war that Terrasa isn't even aware that it's fighting until it's too late.  Because of its relative proximity to the Black Mountains and the pass of Sutaka, it's through Alcàsser that the Terrasans became aware of Kurushat.  Mostly this is in the form of runaway slaves or other outcasts who have gradually made their way as refugees to become migrant workers or rural immigrants to the area.  But official delegations have reached out.  While an embassy of sorts is under contruction in Terrasa "as we speak," for the time being, official communication between Kurushat and Terrasa goes through Alcàsser.  Some have wondered why the Kurushi seem OK with lingering in what is percieved as a backwater rather than setting up shop in the wide boulevards and canals of Terrasa.  Some have a rather disturbing theory.

If the Cavusto natives succumb to the military advances of the Kurushi, then the de facto Pax Kurushata extends easily beyond the Durenga Cascades, and then there is nothing to prevent legionnaires from marching on the city.  And with Alcàsser held, the rest of the empire would quickly starve.  If some of the citizens of Alcàsser and Terrasa can see this, then no doubt the spies that infiltrate the Kurushi labor camps and neighborhoods no doubt see it as well.  Because of this, astute Alcassan observers are very interested in news of the succession crisis that seems to be brewing in Kurushat, as chaos back home will hold the militant and expansionist state in place for some time to come.  Meanwhile, lobbyists for increased protection of Alcàsser and greater monitoring of the Kurushi community are seen as paranoid and deluded, and consistently ignored in terms of domestic policy.

Other than that, in recent months, strange wreckage of barges and boats, sometimes empty, sometimes showing the remains of long-dead skeletons or corpses, have been spotted floating down the river and reaching all the way to Alcàsser.  The style of the boats, and the style of the clothing of any bodies found thereon are both mysterious and unknown to the area, making their ultimate origin a mystery.  Since the lands all the way to the cascades (which are completely unnavigable) and beyond are well-known, all the way to the source of the Durenga on the eastern slopes of the Black Mountains, its unclear where these ships are coming from or what this disturbing omen could mean.  The ruler of Alcàsser, Duke Berat S'Asinara, has sent patrols up the river to attempt to uncover the truth behind this mystery, but so far, no reports have returned.  Meanwhile, the frequency with which these ships are coming down the river seems to be increasing.  Seen as a bad omen, few Alcassans have any interest in salvaging these seemingly worthless barges, and most are left to float downstream to the sea, accompanied only by a disquieting vigil from the docks as all stop to watch them pass.

Blood of Fiends

I recently got a gift card for Amazon, and lacking anything specific that I wanted to buy, I decided on a whim to go see what I'd been missing by not having picked up any Paizo setting material in several months.  I got quite a few books (some of which are pre-orders that I won't have for a little while still) but the main box with the majority of the titles I ordered arrived today while I was at work.  Naturally, as soon as I had a free moment, I broke open the box, cracked open the books and started looking at them.

Blood of Fiends is of the shorter Player Companion series, and is part of an ongoing run of race specific books.  This one, as the title infers, is all about tieflings.  I had actually thought that tiefling was a word of Wizards of the Coast intellectual property, and that Paizo therefore couldn't use it.  In their earlier products, they seemed to be a bit wary of using it.  Then again, it is in the SRD, so I guess I should have known better.  Anyone who knows anything about my own DARK•HERITAGE setting would know that I'm a big fan of the concept of the tiefling, although I've taken it my own direction (and avoided using that specific word myself, too.)  My own splintered Baal Hamazi empire is conceptually based around the notion of Bael Turath, the implicit setting for 4e's past tiefling empire.  And while visually my "tieflings" are much less fleshy and weird than 4e's (being more a hybrid of Star Wars' Darth Maul and the X-Men's Nightcrawler) I also admit the possibility of more randomized and unusual hellspawn throughout the setting.  These guys, then, would be more like the 2e and 3e version of tieflings than the 4e version... and hence, this book that I just got would be in many ways applicable to them too.

One thing I've always loved about Pathfinder stuff is that it's highly compatible and useful to people who play other d20 family games, whether or not you've embraced the full-on Pathfinder revision of the system or not. Granted, this is more true of the setting stuff than the player companion stuff, but it's still largely true.  Much of the text in this book is really about the roleplaying concept of being a tiefling than anything else, as well as some advice on how to fit them into the Golarion setting specifically.  Although I don't use anyone else's settings besides my own (at least not without significant modification) I still find this kind of stuff very interesting and useful.  Much of it is setting neutral, of course, and what isn't is still nice and exemplary of how it could be applied.

There's also some nice houserules about variant tieflings.  Quite a lot of variants, actually, and much of it would be handy with a 3e or 3.5 tiefling, or even with my own hellspawn houserules.  Some of it is not, though.  I guess because I haven't really kept up with all the layered in add-ons of books like Ultimate Magic and whatnot, I found I was a little lost reading some of the other mechanical stuff.  Traits are something that I'm familiar with, but haven't really paid much attention to, and there's quite a few of them.  Similarly, I was scratching my  head a little bit at mechanical bits like Masterpieces, Bloodlines, Inquisitions, Curses, and more.  I mean, I mostly knew what they were, or at least could figure out immediately from context.  But I do have to admit that I was a little disappointed to see how much this supports specifically the Pathfinder game specifically... and how much that is starting to veer a bit further and further away from the 3.5 game that was its predecessor.  The notion of Pathfinder is that it was supposed to fix a few issues with 3.5, but otherwise provide a faithful continuation of that system for those who didn't want to move to 4e.  Ironically, Pathfinder is becoming more and more divergent from 3.5 itself the more I look at it.  And to its fans, that seems to mostly be a good thing.

But that's not really a comment on this book, its a comment on the ongoing design direction of Pathfinder overall.  The good news is that for someone like me, who still actually clings to 3.5 with a few minor houserules rather than needing an all new game, is that much of what is presented here is still very useful to me.  To an actual player of the Pathfinder system, everything will of course be potentially usable.  And, well, if you like the concept of tieflings, I've never seen a better treatment.  It hits pretty much all the right notes.  It gives lots of options to customize your tiefling.  It gives you big randomized charts of abilities and appearance variations.  It gives you options for devil vs. demon (vs daemon vs. oni vs. div vs. rakshasa, etc.) blooded tieflings.  And it gives a sensible and well-written approach to how they fit into a fairly typical (specifically Golarion, but in this regard, it can stand in for pretty much any "standard" D&D campaign) setting.  Paizo continues to provide excellent setting and flavor.

Since I don't play and am fairly indifferent to the specific changes that they made to 3.5 to evolve it into Pathfinder, I can't really comment too much on the mechanics, although my read-through was that they seemed pretty solid, and some of the mechanics were delightful in their flavor implications (the notion of "teleporting" through a battlefield to erupt from the fatal wounds of nearby corpses was a bit of a eye-brow raiser, for instance).  I still feel that 3.5 is a bit too fiddly and I have to ignore large chunks of the rules.  And since Pathfinder is even more prescriptive and fiddly than 3.5, I find that the system more and more evolves in the opposite direction of my personal tastes.  But you can't help but want to find ways to adapt stuff like that.

Posting A to Z challenge

So apparently there's a blogging equivalent of NaNoWriMo--during the month of April, by posting at least six days a week, you are supposed to blog on 26 topics, one for each letter of the alphabet in order.

Of course, I just discovered this notion and idea, and had never heard of it before.  Rather than wait until next April (and rather than attempt to squeeze it into a single month anyway, for that matter) I'm going to take on a more informal version of the challenge and do an A to Z series of posts about DARK•HERITAGE.

For those of you who are familiar with my habit of starting post series and often peetering off without necessarily accomplishing them fully... well, yeah, sure.  Blogging about gaming is for me a recreational activity.  I do it for fun.  If I'm exercising too much discipline, my interest in it will wane, given that one of the reasons I enjoy it is because it's a relatively relaxing and fun creative endeavor.  There are times for setting hard personal goals and exercising discipline around accomplishing them.  Blogging is not one of those activities.

Nonetheless, I intend to meet this challenge.  And for that matter, many of the posts I intend to create will serendipitously (or on purpose!) fill the requirements of other series, including some that haven't had any activity in them for some time.  So, it's a win-win all around!

I make no promises on when I plan to be done, how many posts in this series I will post within a week (or any other time frame), or anything else like that.  I do, however, already have all of my topics pre-selected, so my chance of actually finishing this series completely is very high.  The majority of them are the type of setting capsules that I mostly post, but some of them are discussions of other items; occasionally game mechanics, or metagame or design considerations too.  All posts will come with the A TO Z post tag, the DARK•HERITAGE post tag, and any other applicable post tag (such as YOG-SOTHOTHERY, FRPG, or whatever.)

The list of topics is as follows:

• A: Alcàsser, a Terrasan city-state
• B: Baal Ngirsu, a hamazin city-state
• C: Cannibal Isle, a location in the Forbidden Lands
• D: House Dracul, a royal house of vampires in Tarush Noptii
• E: Eltdown, a location within Tarush Noptii, the source of the "shards"
• F: Forbidden Lands, a large area north of North Qizmir and east of Baal Hamazi--a major source of Yog-Sothothery within the DARK•HERITAGE setting.
• G: Garriga Mountains--a major mountain range centrally located in the northern part of the Terrasan territory, similar physiographically to the Blue Ridge mountains.
• H: Hellkin--a discussion on the rare hellkin who are not part of the hamazin race
• I: the Inquisition, a paramilitary group local to Terrasa, but who frequently travel further abroad
• J: Jekara, the capital of Kurushat
• K: Kadath, a location in the Forbidden Lands
• L: Lakama Jungle-a borderland between the hamazi-lands and the Forbidden lands, infamous for its carnivorous society of intelligent (yet barbaric) apes.
• M: Magic and how it works in the DARK•HERITAGE setting, including specifically the rules recommended to represent it.
• N: Neighborhoods in Porto Liure
• O: Outsiders in the DARK•HERITAGE campaign setting, including many of "D&D vintage" who have been somewhat reskinned
• P: Primogenitors-ancient, insane, original vampires of Tarush Noptii
• Q: Qazerum, a trading city in the borderlands between Qizmir's westward expansion and Baix Pallars
• R: Rumours that abound in various parts of the DARK•HERITAGE setting
• S: Sinjagat, the spiritual capital of Kurushat, and first city/culture to be aggregated to the Kurushi Empire during its growth trajectory
• T: The Tether, a bizarre chain that extends straight upwards into the sky
• U: Unmoving Watchers, three stars in the sky that do not move like the rest of the night sky.  They can even be seen during the day, floating exactly in the same spot in the sky. 
• V: Vucari, further development of the vucari, or changeling race, a race inspired by the wildman iconograhy of Medieval folklore, Eberron's shifters and Iron Kingdom's Tharn, among other influences
• W: Wiksekka Mountains, the southern border of Kurushat, and therefore the southwesternmost feature on my map, including a description of why nobody has (yet) explored beyond it
• X: Rua di Xavier, an infamous location in Porto Liure and one which is, like so many other infamous Liuran locations, believed by the locals to be haunted
• Y: Yog-Sothoth, He Who Needs No Introduction!
• Z: Zombies and their role in the DARK•HERITAGE setting

Star Wars continues

I continue to find the Star Wars franchise, which so informed my youth (the original Star Wars movie came out when I was five years old, and it's the first movie that I remember seeing in theaters) a fun franchise.  Sure, the execrable prequel trilogies dampened my enthusiasm a bit, but a few things have since ramped it up.  Including, but not necessarily limited to:

1) Some great Star Wars video games, including Knights of the Old Republic (One and Two), and Force Unleashed.  There's also the Old Republic MMO, which now has announced that it will have a free-to-play option coming in the fall.

2) A few great RPG options, and a few great RPG games in my home gaming experience, including, as it happens, one that I'm in now.

3) The Clone Wars TV series, which is so much better than the prequel trilogy.  Not only that, the Clone Wars has been improving season over season.  Season 5 is set to start in September.  Check out this trailer for it.  If you don't think that looks awesome, then WHO ARE YOU?

Older DARK•HERITAGE Map

My son about to hit the overhang part of the rappel.

I'm back from my vacation in the Hocking Hills region of southern Ohio--a land of majestic Blackhand sandstone cliffs, ravines and "caves" (really rock shelters and overhangs mostly) covered with lush, green forest.  We stayed in a group camping area, and I got to do a fair bit of hiking--we hiked to Old Man's Cave, Ash Cave, Conkle's Hollow (rim loop), the Rock House, and the rock climbing and rappelling area of the Hocking Hills State Forest.  In addition, we floated in tubes down the Hocking River for a while until we got to a great old-fashioned swimming hole, with deep enough water to permit a serious rope swing off of a deck and cliff-jumping of about 30 feet or so.  We got quite a bit of rain on the last night there, and while we might have gone and done Cantwell Cliffs on Friday, honestly after a night of non-stop rain and being wet, everyone was kinda ready to just come home.

Stone bridge in the ravine at Old Man's Cave.

Also, my daughter has continued to improve dramatically, and is in great shape given this point in her recovery from her spinal fusion surgery.  I don't think she really accepts fully the notion that she's going to be in a lengthy recovery period and won't just be able to live life "as normal" for a few weeks exactly--but we're coming along.

So, with everything going relatively well in my private life now, all I have to do is get caught back up at work after being gone, and then I can settle back into a groove of sorts, which hopefully includes more blog posts.  I don't, however, have a lot to say right now... yet.  I'm not up to date on my Avengers episodes, I haven't finished a new book in weeks, and I don't really have any setting information ready to post right now either.  So, other than posting those few pictures of my trip, I only have a handful of minor updates.

Sunlight rays downstream from Old Mans' Cave.

First, I recently got a $100 Amazon gift card, and with that, I ordered a new Arkham Horror novel and several Paizo setting books--my first in many months.  These include Isles of the Shackles, Blood of Fiends, Blood of Angels, Magnimar, Lost Kingdoms and Distant Worlds.  This will mean a spate of new RPG related reviews in the near future.  I also, of course, have tons of fantasy, science fiction and even mainstream thriller fiction to review still, and that list has been shrinking depressingly slowly, and continues to be interrupted by stuff I get from the library.

And finally, because one of the books I'm reading is The Tarim Mummies by J. P. Mallory and Victor Mair, I recently pulled out this older geographical paradigm of the DARK•HERITAGE setting and am posting it for fun.  The geography was meant to be loosly based in the actual Tarim basin as the Strachina basin.  This is very loose (the Tiran basin, which corresponds to the Junggar Basin, for example, is twice as big relative to its real-life counterpart.)  If you've never heard of the Tarim basin, well--it was the "middle portion" of the Silk Road, which split at Kashgar and went along the northern edge of the basin or the southern.  Using this as a "calque" of a real-life geography, you can loosely associate features on my map with the following features on a real map:

• Strachina Basin = Tarim Basin
• Parete Mountains = Tien Shan Mountains
• Tiran Basin = Junggar Basin
• Rapire Mountains = Kunlun Mountains
• Leng = Tibetan Plateau
• Rharia = China
• Komewan = Persia/Parthia
• Shanerisha = India/Sindh
• Razina = Kucha
• Iclezza = Kashgar
• Nevaz = Khotan
• Sutaka = Loulan
• Sutaka = Karashar (yes, I noticed that the name appears twice in two different locations)
• Caerddyn = Turfan
• Kvuustu = Hsiung-nu

As you can see, I've long been a fan of the map-making style popularized by Christopher Tolkien and included in pretty much every printing of The Lord of the Rings since I first read them thirty years or so ago.

Still living...

The content of posts I've been able to squeek out on this blog over the last month or so has probably been alarmingly anemic to any readers who are used to more.  For this I apologize, and blame an increased complexity of both work and "real life" issues that demand my attention.

These aren't all necessarily bad (I referenced a trip to the Smoky Mountains a few weeks ago, for example) but they do certainly make me much more busy, and they are not yet at a "normalized" rate.

I am happy to report that my daughter successfully underwent spinal fusion surgery yesterday.  While this will make my week very complicated--my wife is staying at the hospital with her, leaving me to handle work and three boys at home, who are luckily old enough to hold down the fort during the day without much in the way of supervisory phone calls to make sure everything's still alright at home.

And I will be traveling with my oldest son soon for a trip to the Hocking Hills state park in Ohio as well, as a chaperone for a post-Scouting summer activity kind of thing.

Meanwhile, work has been much busier than normal (although I've said that for so long now that maybe I just need to recalibrate what my expectation of "normal" means).  What all this means is that I probably won't get into a good swing of posting meaningful content--or at least not very much of it--for a few more weeks at least--probably not until mid to late August.  I do want to squeeze out some Avengers episode reviews, since I'm behind on that, I'd like to have a few book reviews posted--assuming I can finish the books in time to review them!

I'll also try to squeek out some DARK•HERITAGE setting material, or FRPG posts or something here and there too, but because those take more effort (and therefore time, which is at a premium right now) they will be a bit more infrequent than I'd like for a little bit longer.

Fantasy conventions

Fantasy today is almost overwhelmingly tinted by a few literary influences which, while not surprising, are hardly the entire gamut of available literary influences that it could have.  To a certain extent, this is becoming less true in fantasy fiction, as slightly more outre settings have made some headway in recent years in the market.  To a certain extent this is also true in the do-it-yourself RPG market, where "amateur" RPG designers release work via PDF.  Here I'm thinking of stuff like Weird Adventures, or Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque as two works that build off of something other than standard fantasy conventions.  And while nice examples, they are also not unique.  In mainstream gaming material, however, very conventional fantasy seems to be ubiquitous, and mainstream fantasy literature still puts out much more conventional fantasy than anything else.  And probably always will, until there's a major sea change in the genre.

The modern fantasy genre really starts with William Morris and George MacDonald, and as such, is heavily rooted in a late Northern and Western European Medievalist perspective, combined with some of the fairytales that would have been current during that same time to give it some supernatural spice, and the creation of a secondary world.  This high medieval coupled with fairytales approach is still one of the major influences in fantasy today.

Robert E. Howard and the rest of the sword & sorcery crowd, on the other hand, were big fans of an Orientalist approach to fantasy.  Clark Ashton Smith was a noted fan of the earlier novel Vathek, and H. P. Lovecraft went so far as to write more than one story that is sometimes considered almost a pastiche of Vathek. (The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath). In both cases, high medieval of northern and western Europe, or Orientalist approach, the elements of the past that were borrowed were, of course, highly romanticised, which also remains a common theme in fantasy today.

Tolkien, Lewis and his crowd were fans of "the Northern Thing"--unsurprising, given Tolkien's occupation.  Tolkien's romanticized Dark Age fantasy, complete with fairly transparent analogs of Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, and lots of northern saga and mythological additions--famously elves and dwarves, of course have had an indelible mark on the genre, to the point where some folks think of elves and dwarves as almost synonomous with fantasy.

In some since, the romanticization has faded--the prevalence of much darker themes, anti-heroes and whatnot being a notable movement in fantasy today.  To some extent.  But otherwise, the notion that fantasy is kind of a mélange of viking sagas, high medieval romances, picaresque Orientalism and modernized mythology via a Tolkienian perspective is not.  Naturally, this is a fairly short list of major influences.  Why so short?  The only real sizeable exception to this is the low fantasy subgenre, which is flooding bookstores today with sometimes semi-romance supernatural modern era books, embodied by series like Anita Blake, Twilight, Dresden Files and more.

What's somewhat surprising to me is that the very rich and varied mode of adventure tales hasn't been better tapped to provide fantasy with a significantly different feel that this kind of Medievalist fairytale influenced fantasy.  Why isn't there really much in the way of Western influenced fantasy with cowboys and indians?  Swashbuckling fantasies with pirates or musketeers? Noir fantasy with hardboiled fantastic urban environments (actually, this is starting to gain some traction in just the last few years)? Spy fantasy, or cops and robbers fantasy?  This rich potential market is served, if at all, by very niche, DIY type products only.

Anyway, I'm not putting out a call for action, or anything, but just curious and thoughtful a little bit at this vast untapped sea of influences that could greatly enrich the fantasy genre--but which remains only lightly tapped today, for whatever reason.

Twenty Palaces society

I had borrowed two books from a friend of mine by one Harry Connelly, part of the Twenty Palaces series.  The Twenty Palaces series was cancelled after three books, and the author put out an ebook prequel as well.  That means that I've only read half of it, but I've read all that I have immediate access to and I might not continue for a while, so I figured now is a good time to review the Child of Fire and the Game of Cages.

Both of them are about a protagonist character Ray Lily (who's name sounds unfortunately like a plant that grows in my front flower garden).  Ray is a "wooden man", or decoy from a predator hunter who's a member of the Twenty Palaces society and a sorcerous peer.  Predators are Lovecraftian-like entities who come from dimensions beyond our own.  And the setting is rural Washington state for both books.

The friend of mine who let me borrow them knows that I'm a fan of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, and when he suggested this to me and started describing them, I immediately focused on apparent points of similarity.  He kinda shook his head, and said, "no, they're really quite different."  I couldn't see it, based on his quick summary, but after reading the two books that I've read so far, I think I can definately see his point; there's a major although sometimes subtle difference between them.  Jim Butcher is urban fantasy.  The Twenty Palaces society is, rather, supernatural horror.  What does this mean?  Clearly the two are extremely similar.

See, there's a narrative structure and expected outcome of sorts in a fantasy series.  The heroes are meant to be "heroes" (or sometimes anti-heroes) and to some extent they are expected to "save the day."  There's a payoff expected at the end of the novel, a satisfying conclusion.  And, fantasy readers also expect to be at least a little indulged (usually subtly rather than in information dumps, which is almost uniformly condemned as bad writing) in terms of some setting description.  Even in the setting of the real world, urban fantasy has monsters and magic, and a series like the Dresden Files spends some time explaining the nature of that.  And, that's something that fantasy fans want and desire, and definately feel a lack if it's not done.

And that's where I think Harry Connelly does not really write urban fantasy, even though his books are marketed and sold as such (and even have the same cover artist as the Dresden books.)  These books are much darker.  Ray Lilly doesn't really "save the day" at all.  He barely limps by to maybe a Pyrrhic, depressing victory of sorts.  Maybe.  He also doesn't ever really know very much about the nature of magic or monsters, and those who do, won't tell him anything, so we as readers never really learn much either.

The fact that the books have been packaged and promoted as sorta Dresden Files esque in nature is a problem, because they're really not, and people who come looking for more fiction in that same vein are likely to be disappointed in these books.  If you look at it as more of... I dunno, a modernized Yog-Sothothery pastiche of sorts, on the other hand, may find them quite delightful.

Of course, you still have to deal with the fact that Ray Lily isn't the most engaging point of view character I've ever read, and he has very little chemistry or relationship even at all with any other character, making for a surprisingly impersonal read at times.

Sandboxes or... something else?

One of the noisiest trends in the theory of how to run and play RPGs in the last few years or so is the notion of the "sandbox."  Taking its terminology from the world of video game design, a sandbox is a game mode in which the players can approach their environment with considerable freedom, and do what they want to do, and approach problems the way that they want to approach them.  This is often held in contrast to the "railroad", an older slang term amongst RPGers that refers to the notion that the GM has already mapped out the campaign, and the players can really only proceed when they manage to stumble across the "right" way to do so.

These common usages have gotten really sloppy, so that nearly any game is often percieved (or at least described) as one or the other, with no middle ground.  And since railroads are almost consistently villified as "not a very fun way to play", sandbox has become synonomous in some people's minds with "good."  I.e., any game that is good is, in fact, a sandbox, regardless of whether or not it really has any sandboxy qualities, or emphasizes them.  People also frequently ask nonsensical questions, like "which campaign setting for D&D is a good sandbox?", or "which version of D&D is a good sandbox game?" or stuff like that, regardless of the rather obvious fact that "sandbox" as a playstyle refers to how the game is actually run and played at the table, and has little if any connection to how the game is written.   Any game can be a sandbox if it's approached as such by the guy running the game, and any game can fail to be a sandbox by the same measure.  In my experience, the casual tossing around of the term sandbox is a blight on actual discussion, as it tends to act like a trawl, pulling out all kinds of One True Wayers who can't resist chiming in with their proclamations, which often have little if any relevance to the topic that one is attempting to discuss.

Although as a GM (and as a player) I demand and insist on a great deal of freedom, I don't consider myself a sandboxer, and am actually just as disinterested in a sandbox game as I am in a railroad game.  It's all well and good to say that in theory the players should drive the game by doing things that their characters are interested in, but in reality, this is a pipe dream for most gamers, at least until well into a campaign.  When a game starts, the players can hardly be expected to have a strong handle on their characters or their motivations, nor can they be expected to have engaged enough with the setting yet to expect anything from it.  Any campaign that doesn't start by giving players (and their characters) something immediate  to latch onto and have to deal with, as well as giving a decent explanation for why the various characters in play are sticking together as a group, is one that is off to a rough start, and is likely to fail to engage the players enough to even survive.  The fact of the matter is, players need some direction, especially early on in a campaign.  After a time, they need much less--and they can be expected to start driving towards things that they have taken an interest in over the course of play.  But when the game starts, that's not a reasonable expectation.  And frankly, "wandering around aimlessly hoping to encounter a game" is not a very compelling mode of play.  And for those who say that they want go-getter players who start the game already motivated to do something, well... OK... but how do you expect players to have motivations if they haven't yet had any engagement with the setting, other than really vague ones?  Even moreso, how do you expect the various players to all be on the same page in that regard?  Frankly, players like that seem a bit like a red flag to me.  Motivated and self-starting is fine... but that can easily migrate into pushy, bossy, and "ignore everything except my preconcieved notions of what I want this game to accomplish."  Which, needless to say, is not a good group dynamic.  In my experience, that usually means one player like that, and the rest who are rather easy-going and willing to follow along after the leader.  Any other group dynamic leads to conflict and ... well, not a fun experience in most cases.

On top of that, I, at least, demand something more from my campaigns that merely passive environments to interact with.  I find the notion of a sandbox to be boring and repetitive.  I came into gaming as a fan of fantasy fiction, and what appealed to me about it was its ability to resemble a collaborative, joint-venture fiction creating exercise.  In order for games to be engaging to me, I require villains, situations, and setting elements that are much more active, dynamic, and well-formed and "verisimilitudinistic" than a sandbox campaign is likely to provide.  And I also demand that campaigns have climaxes and denouments from time to time--a narrative structure that appeals to me greatly as a gamer as well.

Real sandbox junkies, at this point, will point out that a good sandbox GM can make all that happen and still maintain its sandbox integrity.  I'll point out that a good GM can make almost any kind of game fun, so that's kind of a meaningless statement.  The fact is that the sandbox ideal makes what I want out of the game less likely to happen, and significantly so.  This doesn't mean, as I've been forced to explain many times, that I like railroads.  I despise them just as much, and if anything, am almost over-the-top on my insistance that player choice be a major factor in how any game plays out.  But a pure, ideal sandbox is not the game for me either; I find either endpoint of that ideological spectrum on how gaming should be run to be equally unappealing.

Summer blockbuster?!

I would actually watch this movie... if it were real.

Samettia

While Calça is famously the "lost province" on the northern extreme of the Terrasan world, the fact is that to the east of Calça is a broad frontier zone where terrasan, drylander and balshatoi influences all come together.  This stretches for hundreds of miles through the Bisbal forest, the northern portions of the Volo and Tec River valleys and the Garriga mountains, and even the very northern edge of the Shifting Forest.  Never claimed by Terrasan or drylander empires either one, and never settled by the tribesmen, who prefer the more open territories just to the north, culturally it's a mêlange, but politically, it's always been a number of independent farms, villages and small towns.

Life in this frontier zone is tough.  Not only is the terrain often difficult--thick forests, or green, forested and nearly impassible mountains make up much of it, but Untash raiders, xenophobic shifters, and roving bands of outlaws and marauders threaten anyone who would settle here.  Most of those who do are in fact outlaws, criminals, runaway slaves, army deserters--or otherwise outcasts who cannot return to the society from which they fled.  Some few, however, have set up would-be utopias--social experiments meant to eschew the way of life of their parent culture and develop something else.  One of the most successful of these is Samettia.

Founded by Grisende Mignard three hundred years ago, it has become a radical and militant force on the frontier that few are willing to tussle with.  Grisende was herself the product of a radical experiment generations in the making; her great-great-grandfather being a famous practitioner of animal husbandry who arranged the marriage of his children along similar theories, practicing a form of eugenics.  His heirs continued his "work" and by the time of Grisende, the women in the family were little more than brood mares, kept locked up and almost constantly pregnant from the time that they first showed signs of puberty until they were no longer usable.  Hating her cruel father, Grisende murdered him before she could be similarly raped and impregnated (she was only 11) and fled with as many of her female aunts, cousins, sisters and nieces as she could convince to leave their home behind.  Developing a theory of radical feminism, they founded their utopian city of Samettia in the northern Garriga Mountains, in a valley later called Grisende's Cove.  Adopting and adapting the idea of eugenics, and augmenting it with alchemical "steroids" and other substances, Samettia has developed into one of the most radical and frightening places for a man to be. 

Men have no real place in Samettian society at all.  Men are kidnapped or taken captive in raids (either by the Samettians themselves on their neighbors or by their neighbors on Samettia, either one) and if they meet the Matrons' strict inspection, they are repeatedly raped and then murdered by a number of women, to ensure future generations of Samettians.  Ritual medicine/magic ensures that few if any boys are ever born to Samettian women--those that do are usually raised as seers and priests, seen to be spiritual in the different way than women will be.  If there are already enough future priests in the "pipeline" then any boys unfortunate enough to be born at such a time are summarily killed.

Bitter and resentful of the way she was treated as a child, Grisende's utopian society was designed around ensuring that the women of Samettia could never be exploited by men again.  Fiercely independent, fearsome warriors, and with a merciless attitude, the utopian lifestyle envisioned by these women is one of nearly constant discipline, toil, training and work--a radical feminist Sparta, if you will.  The Samettians eschew much in the way of artistic or "high cultural" endeavors, although their city is well-built, defensible, practical and self-sufficient.  In the evenings, the women gather in semi-subterranean longhouses in small groups for shared meals, music, stories, and talking.  During the day, all able-bodied citizens of Samettia spend at least three hours in weapons training and exercise.  While farming is done in Grisende's Cove, much of the meat that the women of Samettia eat is hunted wild game--deer, squirrel, and turkey making up the majority of it, supplemented by farm-raised beef, mutton, and pork.  The Samettians don't really have a tradition of horsemanship, and keep few horses.  Their heavily wooded and often steeply sloped hills and mountains are not ideal terrain for horsemanship in any case.

The native language of Samettia is a dialect of north Terrasan.  However, women of various ethnicities have been allowed to join the community, and the method by which the women of Samettia are impregnated by various captive men both have led to genetic diversity that is extraordinarily high in the Three Empires region.  This means that describing the "typical" Samettian physically is somewhat difficult.  Well-formed, usually with bronzed skin and dark hair and eyes, a great deal of variety in coloration of skin, hair, and eyes, as well as stature and shape of the face exist among the population.  The use of alchemical "steroids" does, however, favor a muscular and often tall or bulky build; Samettian women tend to be as large and as strong as most men elsewhere--although some are bred specifically for speed or stealth, and instead have a rangy build.  This continued "women husbandry" eugenics program, as it is called, has divided the Samettians into castes--although those who show aptitude and desire to belong to a different caste other than what they are born and bred for are permitted to change caste without too much fanfare or difficulty--the primary driver being aptitude and capability of performing in the desired caste's role in society.

Samettians usually wear very little in the warmer seasons--just harnesses and belts for the holding of weapons, pouches and other gear, as well as a lightweight cloak to cover up with in the event of rain or a cool front.  In the winter, buckskin leggings and tops, as well as thicker fur cloaks and vests keep them warm.  Higher in the Garriga Mountains, the weather gets colder, and there is frequent precipitation in the region, but in the lowlands, freezing temperatures are more infrequent and don't last very long.

Samettians also frequently wear odd jewelry that is attached via adhesives directly to the skin, and practice extensive henna-tattoing.  In most cases, this is to make themselves either more beautiful or more intimidating, although in this culture, intimidating is often seen as a mark of beauty.

Samettians have (usually) little desire to leave their utopia except on hunting or raiding expeditions.  The education process of Samettia inculcates a fear and loathing of society outside of their own, making the Samettians perhaps the most xenophobic community in the entire Three Empires region--surpassing even that of the Shifting Forest changelings.  Trespassers, if not kidnapped for rape and murder, are instead summarily hunted and killed.  In recent years, however, there have been some attempts at developing some ties with the outside world, mostly to ensure that their utopia is not threatened.  Ambassadorial delegations have appearred in Simashki, Iclezza and Segrià, as well as among the Untash and Tazitta tribal councils, and some Samettian warriors have hired themselves out as guards or soldiers on rare occasions.  And occasionally one is born with curiousity and wanderlust and just wants to see the world outside of the confined area in which they live in the northern Garriga highlands.  And of course, sometimes outlaws and outcasts make their way out of the core Samettian country and into other lands as well.  As the community becomes more involved in the outside world, there are more and more of these happening--although some of the more brutal ways of the past are also being slowly softened.  Many Samettian women are now impregnated by willing men in their own lands who are met by traveling groups of Samettian women.  Rather than being killed, they are thanked cordially and allowed to go back to their lives.  And more and more, any boys born to Samettian women--few though their numbers may be--are no longer euthanized, but instead fostered to families outside of the community.

Despite this gradual softening of the harder edges of Samettian society, it is still a harsh place, and one that is whispered about with fear and awe by those who live outside of its borders.

Back from vacation!

I have been out of town and almost completely off the grid the last week and a half, but I'm back as of last night and getting into the saddle again today.  While becoming unburied at work will no doubt consume much of my time in the next few days, I do anticipate getting back into the swing of things with some of the post series I've been trying to keep up with, including new Avengers episodes reviews and new DARK•HERITAGE setting related details.

Before that, though, a quick recap of my trip.  While I've been almost effusive of my love of the scenery and wilderness areas of the American west and Southwest, the Rockies, the Colorado Plateau, the Sierra Nevadas and the Cascades, in particular.  But for this trip, I got to explore southern Appalachia, specifically the part of eastern Tennessee (and a little bit of western North Carolina) that make up the Great Smokies Mountains.  Compared to the Rockies or the Sierras, the Appalachians are low, relatively rounded, and thickly overgrown with hardwood forests and thick, lush understory.  They're also quite a bit warmer, and quite a bit more crowded; the Great Smokies National Park has 9 million visitors a year on average--more than the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone combined.  There are times when the winding road TN 73 feels like bumper to bumper traffic through the park.  And the hikes that I did were some of the most popular, so I rarely felt like I got as much solitude as I would like.

I also wasn't there specifically to visit the park; in fact, I was there for a family reunion of my wife's family.  So I really only got to spend two days doing things in the national park itself.  That said, I'm not disappointed in what I got to do, and it whetted my appetite for more.  Surely the Appalachians are an unappreciated (by me at least; clearly the visitation numbers don't support this as a general statement) gem in the scenic lexicon of the US.  And while I do have some scenic analogs to the Appalachians in the DARK•HERITAGE setting, I've kinda underplayed their role up 'til now.  That may change, as I have come to a better appreciation for the place after seeing it in person instead of just as photos.

That said, I have photos.  May as well include them.  These are off my phone; I don't have the camera handy.  As such, they mostly focus on two hikes that I did with a limited group.  One hike was just me, my ten year old son, and my ten year old nephew.

Soaking feet in the ice-cold water of Alum Creek.

My son and my daughter from a high vantage point.  The Smokies were unusually clear during our trip; in fact, they didn't even "smoke" at all.

The Alum "Cave" Bluffs

Two of my sons and my nephew posing on the Appalachian Trail.

View from the observation deck on top of Clingman's Dome; the highest point in the park and the third highest in the entire Appalachian system, and east of the Rockies.

Then, on the way back home, while crossing Ohio north to south on I-75, we had more than our share of drama and tragedy.  This accident happened literally just a minute or two before we reached the scene.  There were already half a dozen vehicles stopped to assist when we passed it so we didn't contribute to the general chaos by rubbernecking or interfering when we had nothing to offer at that point, but there's nothing quite like seeing a dead and mangled body on the side of the road to put a disturbing twist on any road trip.  Shortly after that--literally less than 15 minutes, I think, we were sidelined by some of the worst storms I've ever seen--we pulled off the Interstate at Tipp City and waited it out for a while, noticing that trees were down, power was out, and the wind and rain were almost unbelievably strong--or would be if I haven't lived in territory that isn't far from a hurricane prone coastline.  Apparently, the impact of the storm was bigger than just local, and President Obama has even been prompted to declare a state of emergency in Ohio in the wake of it.

Not that inconveniencing my drive home is the point of any of those things, of course, but certainly they left me feeling a bit disassociated in the wake of this particular vacation.  I didn't necessarily sleep very well last night, despite being exhausted.