Iconic Dark•Heritage characters: Keisa Alawasmu

Keisa was born as a slave to the influential Dekewan family in Hu, a major city in Kurushat. Her family was enslaved when her mother was a small child for treason, even though they were an upstanding Kurushi family, and normally not subject to slavery. Her grandfather and grandmother were executed as part of the affair. Her own mother was a beautiful woman, and was eventually employed by Emir Dekewan as a pleasure-slave or harlot. Although it's not entirely clear, the emir is probably Keisa's father.

Keisa herself inherited her mother's good looks, but because her mother was able to use her beauty to negotiate in behalf of her daughter, she was taught to read at an early age, and by the time she was 12, she was more useful as a scribe and accountant than she ever was going to be as yet another pretty face and body for the noblemen and his guests to abuse. Keisa was possessed of an extremely keen intellect.

The emir's occult advisor, Thohilu Kowikpe, took a liking to the shy pretty young slave with her precocious intellect, and started teaching her his own trade on the side, as a "hobbyist" endeavor. Keisa excelled as well at this. Soon, her value as a new occultist, especially as enslaved occultist (a very rare thing in Kurushat) moved her from her accounting duties and into even more pampered lifestyle and more interesting tasks.

Despite her lifetime of slavery, her mother always instilled in Keisa a remembrance that their family was once free, and it was the political maneuvering of the Dekewan family that brought them low. Even as she became a privileged and even pampered member of the household, she nursed secretly a hatred of them and a longing for freedom. Her opportunity came one evening when she was still just a teenager, traveling with Kowikpe and a bodyguard of half a dozen soldiers beyond the border regions of Sutaka in the mountain passes. The occultists had been sent to investigate the falling off of production in the emir's silver mines in the region, which were rumored to be haunted. While Kowikpe was investigating the mines, Keisa stole into her master's study and removed several of his most dangerous restricted scrolls. Keisa summoned the daemon Tamaz Gaagra-Sukhumi, and promptly lost control of him. Due to sheer dumb luck, she somehow survived the encounter which killed Kowikpe, his bodyguard, and the entire camp of miners.

While not freed, there was no effective way for the Dekewan family to bring her back if she left Kurushat, so she made her way as an itinerent begger across the Cavusto steppes and into Terrasan lands, traveling with a caravan, and using her wits and magical ability to protect herself as discretely as possible. Again, in a stroke of luck, she caught the attention of an elderly caravan master, who thought she was "cute" and came to regard her with an almost patriarchal protectiveness, making her travel much more pleasant and danger-free than it otherwise would have been. She also came to nurse a relationship with some of the hunting bands of the cavusti, some of which see her to this day as an important shaman of some kind amongst the foreigners.

Her curiosity continued to lead to trouble for Keisha, however--her near disaster with the daemon Tamaz Gaagra-Sukhumi didn't discourage her from meddling more and more with the occult; rather it encouraged her to learn how to "do it right" the next time. Luck continued to be on her side as she blundered almost accidentally across more rites and incantations, and more and more occult power. Soon she had to worry about the Terrasan Inquisition and other witch-hunters, but her reputation also made her a valuable asset to the right people, and she had just enough business sense to turn her talent into a bankable skill. Always one step ahead of the witch hunters, and often leaving a disastrous mess behind her, she's made her way around much of the Mezzovian Main, always earning enough gold to stay in business (usually from shady if not outright illegal clients) and always managing to find more occult lore as she goes.

Keisa is an extremely attractive, young woman, with dark hair, pale skin, and extremely pale gray eyes; nearly white they are so light. She's cultivated an air of distraction; a scholarly girl so engrossed in her studies that her social skills have atrophied, but in reality this is partly an act on her part; a persona that she cultivates to increase her mystique amongst potential clients. She's also found that it seems to bring out the protective side of those around her, who see her as a "cute" younger sister who needs looking after. She's not blind to her charms; she just is very careful about how she doles them out in her own self-interest.

Mechanics: In d20 Past, Keisa Alawasmu is clearly a Smart Hero who multiclasses into Occultist, and her background was developed around this paradigm. However, the magic options are considerably different with each of the ruleset options; in D&D E6, she'd be a Noble or possibly a Courtier who's spent as much effort as possible learning incantations, while in Pathfinder, she'd be an Alchemist who's done the same.

Iconic Dark•Heritage characters: Najat Chuluun

Najat Chuluun sometimes calls himself "One Who Straddles Two Worlds." That's an accurate enough picture of his mentality and experience. Born in the southern Bisbal Forest on the slopes of the Caurs Mountains, he spent most of his childhood without seeing another soul who wasn't a wildman like himself. When he was 16, he was introduced by way of his father and brothers with Terrasan traders, who valued the vucari's ability to produce fur for the fur trade. His eyes aglow with stories of wonder from the Terrasan cities, he left home after a year of trading with the Terrasans, and traveled with them as a guide and scout back along the Erau River to Segría. And although Segría was indeed wonderful and beautiful, that also marked the day that his illusions about the world started unraveling.

There were other vucari living in Segría already, but many of them were associated with the Cherskii mafia. Najat was recruited by these gangsters, but was not interested. Things got ugly, and Najat had to leave town inconspicuously after an over-eager recruiter was nearly killed in a scuffle. A local friendly Terrasan helped smuggle Najat out of town, and Najat, impulsively swore to oppose the gangsters and uphold the common Terrasans from then on. Landing briefly in Iclezza, he became a vigilante, but it was only by luck that he didn't get himself killed. Najat quickly determined that he was in over his head, and fled town again, this time to the wilds in the north.

In the Shifting Forest, he encountered other vucari, but they were unlike those whom he had grown up with. Xenophobic to a fault, they killed any Terrasan or other human who trespassed on their land; sacrificing captives to their idols of Selvans, the Horned God. These vucari accepted him, grudgingly at first, but they later came to admire his woodcraft and his knowledge of outside civilizations, which they could use in their own ongoing guerilla war to protect the entire forest from any encroachments at all.

Always naïve, Najat didn't see his knowledge being turned to uses that he didn't anticipate; he thought merely that he was telling interesting stories of his travels. A young chieftain's daughter even paid him a great deal of attention, and briefly Najat fancied himself in love. However, Najat was naïve, not stupid, and he quickly saw what was happening. He confronted his lover, and was heartbroken as he came to believe that she was only sleeping with him to wring all the information the clan could from him. Again, Najat ended up fleeing the forest at breakneck speed. This time, his talents were matched by those who pursued him, and he barely escaped with his life to the stockade of Fort Arval.

Najat finally understood that he needed to develop some discretion and possibly a bit of well-deserved paranoia. After fleeing for his life three times from three different locations in less than two years, he saw the need to reinvent himself. While still impulsive, idealistic, and eager to jump in with both feet in support of some cause, he's also tinged with a hefty dose of bitterness and anger towards those who he feels have wronged him over the years, especially organized crime. He feels torn between sympathy and revulsion at the vucari of the Shifting Forest, but he certainly learned a great deal of callousness as well as the effectiveness of a reputation for fast and overwhelming brutality at their hands. Dealing with Najat is a study in contrasts; while normally chatty and even almost charming (especially for a wildman, who are normally notable for their taciturn miens) his anger, when stirred, is notable for it's violence. His colder brutality, when he's not even angry, is scarier still.

Mechanics: Najat Chuluun is best represented in either Pathfinder or D&D as a ranger/barbarian. In d20 Past, I'd see him as a Strong or Tough hero who took on the Wildlord advanced class.

Iconic Dark•Heritage Characters: Vanno Cholokosh

Vanno is the heir to a grand tradition, to which he's largely indifferent. Born and raised in Porto Liure, his father was a "made man" and his mother was a gun moll. His grandfather was born to a kidnapped hamazin woman in the Cherskii Mafia's attempt to bulk up its numbers over the course of a single generation. Vanno Cholokosh was always meant to join his ancestors as a pre-eminent figure in the hamazin organized crime syndicates of Porto Liure and the Mezzovian Main in general.

Unlike his grandfather and even to a lesser extent his father, Vanno did not grow up in a Spartan, almost barracks like environment. Old Anzori Cholokosh was well-to-do, and liked to show off his success; notably by spoiling his wives, mistresses and children, both legitimate and illegitimate. Vanno, as one of the "heirs apparent" (the third son of Anzori's first wife) was raised almost as if he were the member of the nobility. This was a source of friction between Anzori and his father, Zviad Cholokosh, who was a conservative, traditionalist member of the Cherskiians, and was greatly put out at his son's indulgence and lack of urgency towards furthering the cause of a hamazin revolution in the homeland. As tensions mounted between father and grandfather, Vanno found himself a pawn, sent to a hamazin "boot camp" in the deserts up north to learn the arts of death and assassination.

Vanno found that he was exceedingly talented at this career, and rose quickly to the top of his class. When he returned to Porto Liure, he disappointed both his father and his grandfather; he did not become indoctrinated in the hamazin revolution movement, and he in fact stepped away from being inducted into the Mafia. Vanno became a free agent, hiring his services out on an independent basis. It didn't take too long before his reputation in the underworld of Porto Liure was secure, and contracts both there and abroad came in steadily. Vanno spent a few years traveling frequently and amassing a significant amount of cash, which he cleverly invested and hid, keeping as always a low profile.

While away on an assignment in Terrasa, old Anzori and Zviad both were killed in a hit by a rival gang. Vanno's elder brother, Anzori Jr., became the new head of the syndicate in Porto Liure. After a brutal purge of both the incompetent and untrustworthy in his own organization, he turned his attention on his rivals. When Vanno returned, he joined his brothers at their request, but he would only work with them under contract. Junior's anger at his refusal to help in the revenge that he felt his father and grandfather deserved, as well as his inability to bring Vanno under his thumb as a part of his organization, was a thorn in his side that eventually led to a major split between them. After demanding that Vanno make himself available for syndicate business when called on, the two brothers fought. Vanno stormed out of the manor, killing a guard or two on his way out, and has not spoken to his brother since.

Although he has been back to Porto Liure many times, usually on assignment, he keeps a low profile whenever he travels there. He has since set up his headquarters in Terrasa itself, the largest city in the region, and the one with the briskest business. Although he still travels frequently, he finds that he can find more than enough work in Terrasa itself that he doesn't need to.

Mechanics: The D&D option has a tailor made class for assassins; the assassin class, published in the d20 Freeport Companion. Pathfinder also has an obvious choice; Vanno would be a rogue with the poisoner archetype. In the d20 Past variant, he's actually a Fast hero and a Gunslinger... although for many assignments, his trusty bow and arrow is a preferable weapon to a gun, as it fires silently and the arrows can be poisoned for maximum efficiency.

Iconic Dark•Heritage characters: Biella Marçalez

I've always liked the idea of iconic characters. Somehow the idea of seeing their familiar faces and names in little vignettes and whatnot as setting elements are described is kinda fun. In fact, I'd like to specifically incorporate that as an element of my ongoing setting description: before starting to describe an element, I'll have a small (just a paragraph or two) vignette with the iconic characters and the new setting element to be described.

It is not meant to be assumed that these iconic characters have a coherent history together. They could show up in groups, with each other, alone, working against each other, etc. They could die repeatedly. They'll still show up. They're icons, not actual PCs.

Anyway, here's the first of the iconics, including some quick and dirty visual representations I was able to snag off the internet. In the ideal world, I'd be a great artist myself (instead of a mediocre one), or I'd be able to commission art from a great artist to represent these guys. But, this is the real world, not the ideal one, so I've had to take whatever images a google image search could give me, crop them, maybe manipulate the color a little bit, and that's about it.

Biella Marçalez

Biella comes from the Marçalez family, a minor noble family from Sènt-Haspar. Even as a very young girl, she was quite the handful for her parents and siblings, and was forbidden from attending the private school where the wealthy children were educated after one fight too many, caused by her unwillingness to share with her classmates what she had stolen from the school's headmaster's office. She was seven.

She only became even more unruly and unlady-like as the years went on. When her third private tutor quit, this one because she had tied him up to leave her lessons and go fight in a duel against some other young nobleman, her despairing family put her into a convent and she became a nun. She was fourteen.

Three years later, she was defrocked from the sisterhood; allegedly for "corrupting the priests" at the neighboring convent, although stories of her hearing, where she punched the Mother Superior in the face and ran out into the streets, are still told in Sènt-Haspar to this day. She fell in with a mercenary company, and while initially the tough-bitten old soldiers laughed at her requests to join their ranks, and were inclined to turn her into an "involuntary camp follower" to use their own term, she quickly silenced that notion, by proving that she could outfight most of them. Her dazzling swordsmanship, lightning reflexes, and fearlessness in battle showed her to be a puzzling yet intriguing potential asset for the company.

For four years she served with the Black Razors, and her unruliness and lack of respect for authority were completely squelched out of her before that time was over. Not, however, her desire for independence, so with what wasn't gambled and squandered away of her earnings from a mercenary career, she outfitted herself independently and took up the career of a bounty hunter. For the last three years, she's been all around the Mezzovian, bringing criminals and others in for gold. Much of her time has been spent north of the Sea, and she's developed a number of key relationships and friendships with several Tazitta tribes as she's hunted outlaws across their lands. Still just in her mid-twenties, Biella is surprisingly small and pretty for someone who's reputation is quite fearsome. Her dark curly hair and shining brown eyes sparkle with a ready laugh and smile--but her smiles are often cruel and her eyes flash mostly when she thinks of the gold she hopes to be earning on her next hunt. Biella is usually armed to the teeth; she routinely carries two swords, two pistols, several knives, a long hunting musket, a bow and arrows, and more. She's also rarely seen far from the company of her horse Flor, a feisty stallion who won't tolerate any other hand but hers.

Mechanics: Rather than reproduce the characters mechanically in detail, I'll just briefly discuss how I'd envision that they be built using each of the three rulesets I've allowed. For each, I envision Biella Marçalez as about 5th level. Using the D&D rules, I'd see Biella as a multiclass ranger/swashbuckler or perhaps ranger/rogue. Similarly, with the Pathfinder rules, she'd be a skirmish option ranger combined with either a mobile fighter or the swashbuckler archetype rogue. Using the d20 Past archetype, Biella's natural athleticism and ability would be represented by her taking the Athlete occupation (with Balance and Tumble picked as class skills) and then taking ranks of the Strong Hero class until she is able to quality for the Swashbuckler advanced class (should be good to start at 4th level.) For any of the rulesets, she'd also take Track, and make sure that she has enough ranks in Survival, Treat Injury (or Heal), Spot and Hide (or Perception and Sneak) to enjoy being successful in her given profession.

Baal Hamazi

The Empire of Baal Hamazi started when the Awan tribe of hunter-gatherers claim to have been contacted in an intimate fashion by the god Czernovog. Hutran Kutir was the first of the hellspawn of the tribes of the northern drylands, and was the first Prophet-King. According to myth, he was a chief's son of the Awan tribe, up in the Hamazi canyonlands, and disappeared into the maze of the canyons for five years. When he returned, he was a full-blown hellspawn, with obsidian-black skin and hair, glowing yellow eyes, and six horns on his head like a crown, not unlike the descriptions of Czernovog himself. He came back bearing the knowledge of "advanced civilization"; building massive stone buildings, writing, and social organization that was the foundation for the Baal Hamazi empire. He supposedly had 100 wives, over 500 children, and all of them were full-blooded hellspawn. Today, all of the hamazin hellspawn claim Hutran Kutir as their semi-mythical ancestor.

Other accounts told throughout what is the former territory of Baal Hamazi have different stories, although that is the classic legendary history. The scholars of Simashki believe that the legend is inherently unlikely, and that Hutran Kutir, if he actually existed at all, was probably born a hellspawn, the same as other hellspawn, but was born in a position of some power and influence. He probably learned complex architecture, social structure and writing from some of the early neighbors of the region, and most scholars actually favor time spent in Tarush Noptii. Possibly Kutir returning to the canyonlands with a vampiric advisor, even. Kutir was able to quickly conquer and marshal the resources of the Awan tribe, as well as many neighbors, forging them into the force that would found the Baal Hamazi empire, and using imported or captured slave labor to build the first city in the region, Baal Hamazi, deep in the canyonlands.

In either case, from its heartland in the canyonlands, the empire which had the same name as its capital spread throughout the so-called dryland tribes, founding other outposts which grew into major urban centers: Nashur, Baal Hishutash, Tahrah, Simashki, Ishkur, Baal Ngirsu, Shushun and Isin. Between these urban centers, much of the wilderness that separated them was also pacified, and the legendary Pax Hamazi of the past is seen as a golden age by many of the modern inhabitants of the region. As the empire grew, so too did the population of the hamazin, a now true-breeding race of hellspawn with a single physical profile: jet black skin, golden eyes, and a cluster of small horns on the tops of the head and forehead. It became fashionable to remove all hair from the head to show off these horns at one point, and that style remains in some of the successor states. The hamazin became a privileged caste (separate from the hamazi, which is a more rarely used generic adjective describing anyone from the region, including the fully human tribesmen and urban city-dwellers--now the preferred term is more often drylander) and their numbers grew.

Ultimately, some believe that the growth of the hamazin was what foundered the empire. After nearly five hundred years of relative peace and growth, there grew to be too many hamazin living in indolence, and the resources of the empire started to become strained. The humans of the region were forced to live in poverty supporting their hamazin overlords. Rebellions were becoming commonplace, and the bloody reactions to them only led to further seething tension and hatred. Haltash, Untash and Tazitta braves became a major thorn in the side of the administration, waging guerilla warfare from the bush that consumed the coffers of the empire at an accelerated rate. Rocky foreign relations with a rising Terrasa (in those days Terrasa was a new, rising power) were a source of concern. Even Tarush Noptii, once a long-time ally of the ruling class of Baal Hamazi, turned a chilly cold shoulder to the empire as it failed to pacify the warring Untash tribes, which caused the vampire's kingdom no small amount of grief as well.

An unprecedented natural disaster then befell the capital, and it wasn't hard for most in the empire to see it as a omen of the Black Prince withdrawing his favor. A major sandstorm that lasted for weeks clogged the canyonlands, burying the capital in drifts, fouling water supplies and crops, and blocking roads. By the time the much-reduced population was able to re-establish contact with the rest of the nation a month and a half later, they found that it was embroiled in full-scale revolt. Nearly every major city was under seige, much of the army had deserted, and even the heir to the king was unable to muster enough support to unite more than a small area under his banner. Baal Hamazi itself was abandoned, and the heir moved his court to nearby Nashur, where his descendents still claim sovereignty over the entire region, and they still claim to rule in "the Old Ways" as Baal Hamazi did in the golden age. This is just posturing, though, and the kings and queens of Nashur have seen a gradual erosion of their power to mere figure-head status. Today, a militaristic warlord rules openly, and is the fourth such warlord to openly run the government.

Most of the rest of the major urban centers eventually emerged intact, although independent. Political boundaries and influence shifted and moved throughout the three hundred and twenty five years since the fall of the capital to the present day. Far eastern Isin, with vampiric allies (exiles from Tarush Noptii) even made a solid run as a major successor state, laying claim to much of the former empire to the borders of the Salt Sea and able to enforce it for nearly a hundred years, before gradually waning somewhat as well. In this balkanized country, few kings or rulers of any stripe have managed to hold onto any power that wasn't local for long. Today, most urban centers are effectively city-states; ruling within their walls, and the surrounding fields and lands, but no further. Only Isin manages to claim a significant portion of the old empire.

Throughout most of the area, the hamazin have been forced to integrate more with the human castes as well; no longer can they be supported by humans kept in slavery. That was the one nearly universal outcome of the many rebellions. Only Nashur in the far north has managed to keep its humans firmly under the thumb of the hamazin. That is not to say that equality of caste is common; in most places, hamazin are still in most positions of authority and prestige, and there certainly are limits to what humans can accomplish within their governments; but less so than during the golden age of empire.

There are also much more solid and usually friendly relationships between these smaller kingdoms and the chiefs of the various tribes that live around them, eschewing the urban life of the hamazi. In fact, given the disaster that befell Baal Hamazi itself, many hamazi have also consciously reverted to the "uncivilized" state, living as their ancestors in hunter-gatherer tribes. Large groups of them have relocated to the Hamazi canyonlands, where they guard the ruins of Baal Hamazi as cursed and forbid anyone to enter. Large groups of them also live in the North Canyonlands, trying to reconnect with the way of life of their ancestors in the hope that they can win back the favor of their divine patron.

The larger tribes have few if any hamazin living amongst them, though, and are of the casually-named drylands ethnic group, as are most of the humans in the area. In the south, there has been some infusion with Balshatoi settlers or explorers, but contact with the south remains limited except by merchants and mercenaries who trade via caravan or wagon train with Iclezza and other northern cities of Terrasa, or by the descendents of those hamazin who fled in the great diaspora following the destruction of the capital city, or those who have fled south more recently to escape the cycle of violence that still plagues the area. These tribes continue to grow, because they are (usually) accepting of their cousins, the urban drylanders, who often flee life in the cities and second-class citizens to join the tribes, which are more friendly to their ethnic group, and more meritocratous in general. Many such former urban tribesmen have in fact risen to positions of great wealth and prominance amongst the tribes, and while many more have died ignobly and in poverty, many dissatisfied drylanders are always willing to take the chance and see if they can make it amongst the tribesmen.

Porto Liure

The Tolosa Islands are clearly a continuation of the mountain range that runs north-south through the continent, and the inner sea does little to disguise the unity of those ranges. North of the Mezzovian Sea, they are called the Garriga Mountains, south they are called the Romeu Mountains, and smack dab in the middle of the Mezzovian, their feet are submerged and only their craggy tops protrude as warm-water islands.

The Tolosas are rocky, and cliffs and fjords dot their shores, but a number of small fishing towns, villages and trading or stopping points ring the shoreline where geography permits. The interiors of the islands are a mixture of farmland--olives, grapes and more grow abundantly here--and subtropical mountain rainforest.

While the Tolosas are not heavily populated, and much of the population is rural or small fishing, or transitory mercantile in nature, the Tolosa Islands are still considered an integral part of the Terrasan heartland, and prior to their spread northwards and the foundation of the Terrasan Empire, the ancient Terrasans plied their fishing craft in and around the Tolosa Islands and the shores of the Mezzovian Sea immediately to the south.

A growing recent threat is that of piracy. The isolated, sheltered and hidden fjords and coves on many of the tiny, mostly uncharted islands that make up the Tolosa chain are the perfect hiding places for pirate ships, and as the once formidable power of the Terrasan navy gradually fades, pirates have become emboldened and more commonplace. On the long island Gandesa, an independent city that caters to the pirates, Porto Liure, has grown up and managed to get grudging recognition and acceptance from the Empire as an independent city-state.

Gandesa is a long, thin island with a generally north-south orientation that serves as the "breakwater" for the Tolosa Isles; the easternmost major island, and the first one that one comes to if one were to sail directly west from the eastern edges of the Mezzovian Sea. Gandesa is sparsely populated, and is in fact made up of low, mountainous wilderness. There are few large-bodied creatures on Gandesa, with the exception of deer, peccaries, and a strain of feral dogs, but strange rumors and ghost stories about cryptic inhabitants of the island are numerous.

As part of the Tolosa Isles, Gandesa was long considered an integral part of the Terrasan Empire, and in fact part of the original Terrasan homeland. However, as its population gradually declined, its small fishing villages and rural farming communities were abandoned and over-run by the subtropical forest, the Terrasan presence faded as well. More recently, it became a haven for pirates, smugglers and other ne'er-do-wells, and a city of sorts grew in a sheltered bay to the north that accomodated this illegal traffic. As the city grew, it became powerful enough to actually challenge the navy of Terrasa with its Barbary pirate hit and run tactics, guerilla warfare and other "dirty tricks" to the point where the Empire was losing money in attempting to control it.

When Jacobo Bernat, a pirate captain and all 'round Rennaissance man stepped into power in Porto Liure with an offer for semi-legitimacy and a cessation of hostilities if the Empire recognized the city as an independent city-state and Bernat himself as the Lord of the City, they were only too happy to acquiece and put an end to the costly conflict.

Today, the Lord (or Lady, as the case happens to be) of Porto Liure is Damiata Aldonça Bernat, a descendent via twisted family tree, of Jacobo Bernat himself. The Bernat family has managed to maintain leadership over Porto Liure for a hundred and fifty years, in the face of incredible pressure from the humiliated and wary Terrasan navy, but as Terrasan sea power fades, her role there has become easier. Today, her plan is to stoke the fires of resentment and independence between the various cities that make up what remains of the Terrasan Empire, and encourage portegnos (as the locals are called) into privateership with Letters of Marque. As such, she's also extremely careful of which suitors she entertains, as giving up Porto Liure's independence as part of a dynastic union is the last thing that she wants.

Despite this rough around the edges background, Porto Liure remains a destination for nobles from Terrasa and elsewhere seeking titillation, illicit pleasures, or simply duty and tax free shipping of profitable goods around the Mezzovian Sea. While it has a seedy underbelly that threatens at all times to spill out, there is still a veneer of civilization and civility that encourages immigrants. As the Terrasan cities fade, Porto Liure's fortunes continue to grow.

The population of Porto Liure is mostly made up of ethnic Terrasans--the dregs of Terrasan society to be sure, but Terrasans nonetheless. Despite this, it is certainly not a Terrasan colony by any means, and is perhaps the most cosmopolitan population in the entire region. Great numbers of balshatoi, qizmiri (jann and human both), hamazi (hellspawn and human both), kurushi, cavusti, vucari and more exotic ethnic groups yet roam the narrow streets of Porto Liure. While, naturally, many of these people are those who were in some way unfit to continue living in the society of their birth, more and more they are legitimate and even honored citizens of Porto Liure, and after more than 150 years, many of them consider themselves native portegnos, having been part of Porto Liure for generations now.

Feminism in Dark•Heritage

Now, I said in my last post that I wanted specifically to include slavery, because it drove home the dark, gritty, "life is cheap" aspect of Dark•Heritage, and as a tool to do so, is much more useful than the fact that "dark" is in the setting's title. I also said that given the incredibly widespread ubiquitousness of the practice of slavery in most cultures that we know of throughout earth's history, that I felt that a strong aversion to slavery on principle felt like a historical anachronism; it was the projection of modern day culture, society and values onto a fantasy setting. So, given that, you'd think I'd have a similar approach to gender roles in the setting. But... I don't. Not at all. And here's why.

First, the historical anachronism part. That's a misnomer. This isn't historical fiction. My setting is a fantasy setting, and only very loosely resembles any particular time, culture or society in our world. In fact, probably more loosely than most fantasies, honestly, since I've deliberately made Dark•Heritage as a goulash of all kinds of disparate things that have in common only the fact that they're "things that I like." Is it the Golden Age of the Spanish Main piracy? The Old West? The heyday of the Crown of Aragon? The Silk Road? Lovecraft's Dreamlands? The waning period of the Roman Empire? Arabian Nights? The Hyborian Age? Lankhmar? The X-files? Scarface? Robert Ludlum? Yes, it's all of those things, but it's also none of those things. Those all have elements that I like, and either consciously or subconsciously I've borrowed something from each of them and thrown it in the pot.

Secondly, the way I've integrated slavery into the setting is similar to how it was done in some historical periods, but notably it is not similar enough to any real world issues or current events that I'm likely to cross with my players that it will hit any nerves. Having women restricted to certain gender roles, on the other hand, is a bit of a hot button for a lot of people even today, and you can't really do anything with that without calling to mind echoes of social and political discussions ongoing in our society today. In many ways, I think fantasy is a great venue for highlighting social issues in a "safe", i.e. allegorical or disguised format, but quite frankly, I'm not interested in doing that. I'm interested in having fun with my friends, not bogging the game down in social issues. Is it a bit handwavey to assume that my supposedly dark, gritty setting has equal rights for women as a basic assumption? Yeah, maybe. Then again, in a setting where nobody's rights are guaranteed, then you have, to some extent, whatever rights you can make for yourself, and that seems to be a concept that's not exactly a respecter of persons--in other words, a woman could be just as capable as a man of sitting up and saying, "you'll give me respect, or I'll carve respect out of your hide."

And thirdly--I'm not really a Joss Whedon fan. I never understood exactly why Firefly was so popular; I couldn't get into it. I liked Buffy well enough, but I didn't really watch much of it either. I haven't seen anything of his other shows. The dude wrote the script for Alien: Ressurection fer cryin' out loud (he claims that his script was bowdlerized and bastardized beyond recognition, but I'm not buying it. His fingerprints are all over it.) However, one thing that I do get about Joss Whedon--one point in common between us, at least--I like the idea of cute girls who are supremely capable at kicking butt and taking names. Many of my most memorable villains have been both scary beyond belief, but also hawt beyond belief. Given this affectation, an environment that allows these kinds of gals to flourish is essential.

And just for that, I've attached an image of Psylocke (from the X-men) since she's a great example of one such hot ninja babe. Random, I know.

Slavery in Dark•Heritage

I'm often amused when I read fantasy works, particulary in the RPG market, which paint slavery as the worst thing imaginable; worse than assassination guilds and what not even. Why does this amuse me? Because slavery was the de facto status of millions upon millions of people in almost every culture of humanity for almost the entire recorded history of humanity. The very earliest documents we have of the very earliest cultures--Sumerian, Akkadian, Chinese, Meso-American, Greek, etc. all refer to slavery (and the punishments that came upon those who ran away, or those who harbored fugitive slaves.) Entire economies (including that of the Roman Empire) were build on the slave trade, and it's only been the last couple hundred years or so that slavery has been "out of fashion." Even so, it's only been the last few decades that it's been illegal everywhere in the world (Mauritius is the last country to criminalize the owning and trafficking of slaves, in 1981) and illegal or not, it's estimated that up to nearly 30 million people in the world still live in slavery even today. So, when a strong aversion to the very concept of slavery shows up in fantasy, it's almost like a historical anachronism to me; it clearly signals what kind of fantasy I'm reading.

And, of course, even barring slavery, there are a number of conditions that fail to quality as "slavery" only by the thinnest of technicalities. Indentured servitude, debt bondage, serfdom, etc. are all "slavelike" conditions that persisted even in areas where slavery itself was uncommon or illegal.

In historical times, it's sometimes staggering to realize how many people lived in slavery. 25-35% of the Roman population were slaves, according to some estimates. In the early middle ages, shortly after the Norman conquest, 10% of Englishmen were slaves. At roughly the same time, as much as half of the population of lower Iraq may have been black slaves from Zanj (and when the Zanj slave revolts happened, the Islamic caliphates turned to the Christian southest for its slave; taking millions of slaves from the Balkans.) Over a million Europeans were captured in the heyday of the Barbary pirates and enslaved. In the west African polities of the last few hundred years, including Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai as many as a third of the population are estimated to have been slaves. Slavery was still legal and widely practiced in the Ottoman Empire and China as late as about 1910 or so, and illegal or not, persisted beyond that. The list goes on and on.

The philosophical idea, originally popularized in America and Western Europe of the native dignity of the individual, inalienable rights, and the notion that all men were created equal (or at least should be empowered by equal opportunity) is one that we take for granted today, and I'm certainly glad of that (not least because I'm a direct beneficiary of such philosophies) but it shouldn't be forgotten that it's also an idea that would be very foreign to most people who have lived on the earth throughout it's history. Not only foreign, but unpalatable and even dangerous, even to slaves themselves, in many instances. Not that slaves were always enamored of their condition; the very frequent reports of miserable conditions, slave revolts, and more certainly would prove any such notion as absurd--but that doesn't mean that slaves saw the institution of slavery itself as the problem; rather their own circumstances therein was what they were unhappy about.

Anyway, why is it that I'm saying this? Slavery exists in the Dark•Heritage setting, that's why. Not only does it exist, it's widespread and not a single society or culture doesn't practice some form of it. The most liberal and enlightened approach would be that it's illegal to enslave it's own citizens (or the citizens of allied states) except in the case of debt slaves, sentenced criminals, prisoners of war, etc. Many societies don't even practice that, of course--they happily pursue slave-taking raids and expeditions, and the slave trade and slave labor is a huge portion of what makes their economy prosperous.

I've often described Dark•Heritage as dark fantasy. That's a little bit of a nebulous term, though. What exactly does it mean? Many definitions that I've seen (including Wikipedia's) say that it's a juxtoposition of the horror and fantasy genres. However, I think there's a lot more to it than that--in other ways it can also deviate from the buccolic, romanticized Medievalism that was so prevalent early in the genre and which persists stubbornly today. In Dark•Heritage, there's no such thing as a philosophy that lauds the dignity of the individual. Human life is cheap and relatively valueless. Indeed, many people are considered less useful or worthy of preservation than that of an individual bison or horse. Slavery drives home the theme that Dark•Heritage is not a happy-go-lucky high fantasy; it is a gritty, dangerous, sword & sorcery and dark fantasy setting where life is fast and cheap, and there are few (if any) to mourn those who fail for whatever reason to make the most out of their lives that they can.

The Loathsome Ratmen

As I anticipated, I finished The Loathsome Ratmen: And All Their Vile Kin recently. This is an A4 sized book (roughly the same as the US standard of 8½ x 11"--a little bit taller and a tiny bit narrower) from the Black Library that is essentially nothing but setting info on a narrow topic within the Warhammer world; specifically in this case, the skaven, naturally. Written as if it were an actual in-game book, written by an in-setting author, the tone of these Black Library books (I also have the Liber Chaotica--or at least the Khorne section of it, back when they were published as four separate books was when I bought it) occasionally wanders into subtle tongue-in-cheek humor, but mostly strikes a tone that can best be described as Lovecraftian.

While neither Lovecraft, nor anyone in his circle that I'm aware of, ever wrote about anything quite like ratmen, I couldn't help but be struck by the gross similarities between the skaven and the serpentmen of Yig that Lovecraft did write about in stories such as The Mound. There was also a pervasive sense of oppression about the book; the writer referenced frequently a seeming conspiracy to occlude and hide knowledge of the ratmen from mankind, most of whom even refused to accept that such creatures could exist. Many writers and/or artists who contributed to our knowledge of ratmen died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances; one was mentioned has having put out his own eyes after painting ratmen, supposedly from life models, although everyone believed him to be insane at that point, then joining a roving band of flagellants and never having been heard from again.

For those who are more than passingly familiar with the Warhammer world, not much in this book is really new information on the skaven. Although I've never played Warhammer, I floated around the fringe of the hobby for many years--most of the 90s, actually--and I bought many issues of White Dwarf magazine. Most of the issues between the mid-160s and... oh, I dunno... close to issue number 300. And I used to play lot of Blood Bowl. So, I certainly knew about the skaven; heck, I've got a team of Blood Bowl skaven converted from Warhammer plastic minis (in fact, my custom rat ogre is my favorite miniature of all the minis I own. It's a really well painted conversion, even if it's just me saying so. I need to take some pictures of it and post it here, don't I?) There is a seminal article in one of those older White Dwarfs (168, I think, if a quick google search of a White Dwarf index is correct) that explains much more about the skaven then this book does. Really, the only purpose of this book is to be an atmospheric study and an excuse to publish a lot of skaven artwork (including two by Wayne Reynolds that I'd never seen before.) I don't know that I can necessarily recommend the book for that alone, because it's a bit pricey as an atmosphere study, but it is an enjoyable one nonetheless. (For that matter, so was the Khorne portion of the Liber Chaotica--which also struck me as quite Lovecraftian in tone.)

Rather, the skaven--and the Warhammer world in general--strike me as a great example of what I want in gaming. Although ironically, I don't want exactly the Games Workshop variety of it, I find the tone and atmosphere that they manage to create most of the time to be right up my alley. Dark fantasy with really overt horror influences and strange Lovecraftian weirdness. Some of the novels even encourage this vibe; the Matthias Thulman omnibus (which I've reviewed here previously) for example are pretty good about it, and even feature skaven prominantly. The Felix and Gotrek Skavenslayer on the other hand, is too silly to ever be anything at all vaguely horrifying, and should probably be avoided. Taking something that most people consider loathsome and repugnant (such as rats--or as Lovecraft did, cephalopods and snakes) and making them malignant, vaguely anthropomorphic creatures that feature prominantly in the "secret history" of humanity, is a great idea.

And although the skaven aren't exactly obscure, given the success of the Warhammer game itself and several computer game iterations, some of which have also prominently featured the skaven (although Warhammer Online did not, sadly). But I think there's still room for someone to carve out a new take on the idea of ratmen. The old Sword & Sorcery Studios setting Scarred Lands gave us a fair take on the concept with the slytherin (no relation to the Harry Potter house, as far as I know), which also happen to be d20, and therefore compatible with my game. They also had some great Ron Spencer artwork in the old Scarred Lands monster manual, Creature Collection (which was famous--or perhaps infamous--for being released before the actual Monster Manual back in 2000, beating Wizards of the Coast to the punch a bit.) The Rokugan setting even has ratmen who are allies of humanity, and seen as noble savages. Huh? Anyway, I probably won't do much with that idea.

I'd like to incorporate the ratmen as the most populous inhabitants of my Forbidden Lands area, actually--make them a bit more like actual rats in many ways (although the wild mutations and insane experiments are part of the skaven's charm certainly, and I really struggle to not include some analog of the rat ogres) and take them a bit away from the familiar trappings of the skaven into something that's got a bit more of my stamp on it. Heck, I'd think Carcosa is their main city, and the King in Yellow maybe their god. I'd take away their Underempire and instead have their spies haunting the sewers and graveyards of humanity's cities; making them ghouls, first and foremost, who eat the dead, slip into homes to steal children, and--of course--spread plague and disease.

And, naturally, I'll have to watch Wilbur and Ben before I do anything with them, just to make sure that I'm on the right track in terms of feel. Yuck.

Not Reading ANYTHING

In a sudden and dramatic move, I cleared my docket of books to read, stopped even the books that I was in the middle of, and took everything back to the library.

See, my schedule has been surprisingly and unexpectedly hectic the last few weeks, and having a ton of stuff to read with a due date on it has been--again surprisingly--stressful. I haven't even been able to enjoy reading books that I know I would really like under other circumstances. So, I quit. What's the point if I'm not enjoying them? I'll probably try them again later, in smaller bites--the history book Iron Kingdom was quite fascinating, although I hadn't picked it up in 2-3 weeks. Brent Weeks' debut novel was quite good so far too. But, they'll have to wait until another time. I've got too many books of my own to read too, although at least for the time being, I'm not actually going to pick any of them up. I'm going to take a little breather from my "constantly having at least one, possibly two or three books I'm reading at the same time" schedule. I'll add something back in later when I'm ready.

So; no book reviews for a little while.

EDIT: Well, I'm fickle. Last night and today so far, I've read about two-thirds of the Black Library book Loathsome Ratmen. Since the snOMG! storm will most likely trap me in my house tomorrow, I anticipate that I'll rather easily finish it in short order. Heck, I might finish it tonight, at the rate I'm going. No promises on a book after that, though!

Unsung glamor of d20 Modern

As much as I've played and enjoyed d20 D&D (since it's the game that brought me back into familiar RPG territory, after wandering afield a bit with Traveller and Werewolf) I think the sadly unsung workhorse of the d20 system, the one that's terribly underutilized and underappreciated, is d20 Modern. The wide variety of uses to which this extremely flexible and modular system has been put is a testament to its broad utility. Sure; like all of the d20 rulesets, it's too prescriptive and detailed, but it's still much smaller than D&D ever was (it fit in a single book that was about the size of the PHB, for instance) and by its nature, much of those overly nitpicky rules can be ignored or handwaved aside for ease of play, as with other d20 games. The modularity and robustness ends up becoming a strength because you can pick and choose how fine or granular you want the mechanics experience to be rather than bogging down the game because you feel forced to use it all. And even if you do use it all; most of it flows from common design principles, so it's familiar and results are what you'd expect them to be.

Anyway, that's more about d20 overall; d20 Modern in particular is a nice modular building kit that can emulate almost any kind of game you'd ever want to play. In fact, I remember thinking at one point that it could be the last game I ever play, since as a d20 fan, I don't need more systems and d20 Modern is so versatile. The campaign models (mini-setting cliff's notes, really) from the main book don't really highlight this diversity all that well, since they are all too similar to each other, but when you start looking at the Polyhedron Magazine d20 mini-games, most of which were built on a d20 Modern platform, and the campaign models that were built out of the d20 Future and d20 Apocalypse (and others) supplements, this versatility becomes more clear.

It was also fun to see d20 Modern adapted to other settings from other games that were reasonably well known and well loved. In some cases, this was done via copycat campaign models; i.e., the same themes and tone as a well known property but none (or little) of the intellectual property. These adaptations included Dark•Matter, Star*Drive, Star Law (which was Star Frontiers), Bughunters (which was Aliens/Starship Troopers), The Wasteland (Mad Max), Omega World (Gamma World), Hi Jinx (Scooby Doo), Shadow Stalkers (Dracula),Deathnet (Tron), Iron Lords of Jupiter (Barsoom) and even more. The ease with which d20 Modern can be adapted to almost any genre and almost any setting is only rivaled by GURPS; but it has the added advantage of also being compatible (mostly) with D&D, so D&D players can get up to speed on the rules after about five minutes of looking at the differences, and much of your D&D material can be used (if appropriate for the setting) including monsters, spells, magic items, etc. And although there are certainly pros and cons to each, I just kinda like d20 better than GURPS anyway. Although it's interesting to me that d20 Modern is positioned... kinda... as the GURPS of the d20 system.

There are, however, a few "holes" in what d20 Modern has done. I'm not aware of any significant efforts (and none by Wizards of the Coast) to use d20 Modern for a superheroes genre, for instance (although it looks like a d20 Modern sourcebook called d20 Spectaculars was on the product schedule at one point that would have addressed this.) And oddly, with the exception of the obviously starfaring science fiction settings, all d20 Modern settings assume the actual, real planet Earth as the setting; there aren't any fantasy settings. Wizards of the Coast can certainly be excused from wanting to pursue this, as it would conflict with their flagship Dungeons & Dragons games, but it always surprised me that I never saw any evidence that anyone other than me was considering taking d20 Modern + d20 Past and applying that to a home-made fantasy setting. It also surprised and somewhat disappointed me that the Modern SRD got very little attention from publishers and customers alike, too.

However, there seems to be a reasonably active fan community for d20 Modern at http://www.d20moderndb.com/ who have, among other things, come up with a Pathfinder Modern SRD, house rules, and more fan-created ad-ons. So, check 'em out. In any case, my decision to return to an earlier idea and use d20 Past as the rulebase for my "preferred" method of running Dark•Heritage (mostly because there are a lot fewer houserules and exceptions that way) reminds me again of how underappreciated this rule system always seemed to be.

Enthiran

I just got turned on to these two clips, each almost ten minutes long, from the Kollywood movie Enthiran starring the ever-lovely Aishwarya Rai. The movie appears to be part Frankenstein, part Terminator, part Matrix, and all Bollywood. I'm not sure yet if it's the coolest thing that I've ever seen, or the stupidest, but being as I can't decide, I post it here; this compilation of clips dubbed into Russian (of course!) to make it either even cooler or even stupider.

Wealth system

Unlike in D&D, where you track your actual money, d20 Modern comes with an abstracted wealth system, where you have a wealth ranking, and you make "wealth checks" to buy stuff; or to see if you have stuff. I think I can see the motivation for doing so; in a modern game, we know very well what kind of "stuff" people tend to have. Think of your house and all the stuff that's in it, for example. Rather than having out of control equipment lists for your character, the designers decided that if you want to have something, and the GM thinks it might be reasonable for your character to own it, you make a Wealth check to find out if that's something you've managed to acquire or not. I'm not quite sure why making a check is necessary; if the GM decides that it's reasonable for your character to have, say, an iPod even though it's not written down on your character sheet, then why can't he just say, "Yeah, you've got that," when asked?

But one of the hallmarks of the d20 era was that the designers felt that if they could make a rule for something, that they should. Maybe I should say, that if they felt they could make a mechanic for something, they should. Tools, not rules, remember? You use tools when appropriate and when that's what you want and need from your game, not when you don't.

And with that said, I'm having some significant second thoughts about whether or not I want to use the wealth system as presented in d20 Modern or not.

Pros? Well, it's already written, for one thing. All of the equipment lists I'd likely refer to have cost as a wealth check DC, not in any other format. Lots of the occupations and other rules assume the wealth system and have bonuses (or penalties) associated with them. In other words, taking it out might be more trouble than it's worth, because it means that there'd be a cascading effect of houseruling that I'd ideally want to do to capture the changes. Well, maybe not too bad a cascading effect; if I could come up with a "monetary"equivalent to a +1 Wealth bonus; i.e., for each +1, grant a character 500 doubloons or something like that (I haven't actually given much thought to coinage and money in Dark•Heritage yet. I like the idea of having multiple currencies, though... not just "gold pieces." And I want evocative names too; like doubloons, guineas, guilders, pieces of eight and ducats, or something like that. Work in progress.) For prices, I can actually adopt the D&D equipment list and add a few things rather than work backwards from the d20 Modern equipment lists. Actually, it'd almost be easier; for d20 Modern I have to combine d20 Modern, Urban Arcana and d20 Past and then heavily edit the equipment list down; with a D&D baseline, I can just use as is and add a few items back in. Although I'm supposed to be in the pros section here and I'm migrating into reasons not to use the Wealth system.

Cons? It's kinda a hassle, really, in a setting where you don't want to make a lot of rolls to see, "would it be reasonable that my character would have bought this before?" Where purchases are relatively rare and focused, it's easier to just say, "here's how much money I have." I don't think my players will particularly like it. I'm not quite sure that I do, even when I consider the pros for an actual modern game (although I like it better in that setting than I do in any other.) And, it's just not very much fun compared to the alternatives. Keeping track of your pieces of eight, or your thalers or your doubloons, or whatever, is just kinda fun, as long as it doesn't devolve into too much accounting.

So I've decided; I'm going to jettison the Wealth system from my adaptation of the d20 Modern rules. Occupations and/or feats and/or class abilities that affect your wealth bonus instead give you a one-time 500 (currency TBD) bonus to your money.

One thing that I'll have to do is monitor where the characters are with money. Unless it's a feature I want to encourage, I'll make sure that the characters feel the need to actually manage their money, but not make them feel too overtly itinerant and poverty-stricken. I don't have any illusions about "wealth per level" or anything like that for my games, and lacking magical items, they probably don't have a lot of things that are really spendy that they'd want to put their money out on. And for that matter, I don't really care to track day-to-day expenses very much either; every night they stop at an inn or tavern, or every time they buy a meal, I don't have characters deduct a few pennies from their money totals. That's what I mean by devolving into accounting. To me (and my group) that doesn't contribute to the fun of the game, it distracts from it.

So, I'll just keep an eye on it. If the characters find money frustrating because they never have enough, I'll see about having them find a stash, or encourage them to take the Windfall feat, or something. Or, I'll just have them manage to acquire by hook or crook what, exactly, it is that they want the money for anyway. I actually think, however, that there's a lot to be said for not always giving your PCs what your characters want them to have. I had a great run with a character playing under me who's whole goal in life; his raison d'être, was to acquire a ship. The fact that he never really did was part of what made him fun; he was always doing all kinds of things in character to try and get one, and it became a running joke and important character defining element. For that matter, I don't think the player really wanted him to get one either; he had too much fun playing up the obsession and fanatical single-mindedness into which the character started devolving.

Heck; for that matter, I'm the kind of GM who thinks it would even be fun if the characters decided that they were either so greedy or so desperate that they turned to burglary or highway robbery in order to raise more cash. I could run with that.

King Solomon's Mines, and more

A few scattershot updates on a variety of topics, none of which merit a post on their own.

First, I've been diligently updating my version of the Modern SRD with my own rewrites and edits done on top of a document that's already a merging of the regular SRD and the Arcana extended SRD. While it's not done yet (and won't be for a little while, I'd think) I did also update the wiki that has all the houserules listed. While this isn't a comprehensive document with everything included, it is one that you can refer to with the three books (or the MSRD and d20 Past) to play "correctly", i.e., the way I would like Dark•Heritage run in an ideal world. With these updates, everything is covered while I, in the meantime, keep plugging away at the standalone document that will have all of the rules in it.

Secondly, I watched the 1985 King Solomon's Mines this weekend. The one with Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone? Herbert Lom and John Rhys-Davies as a pair of villains? Yeah, I don't blame you for not remembering it. It's a rather obscure movie; although it did get a brief DVD release back in 2004 (it has subsequently gone back out of print again. I had to get the movie on interlibrary loan.) When I watched it, probably in '85 or '86 at the latest, I was a fresh young lad of 13 or 14, still excited about anything Harrison Ford was involved with (especially Indiana Jones or Han Solo-ish) and I remember thinking that it was a credible Indiana Jones rip-off. It was obviously just that; an Indiana Jones rip-off, but I was OK with that. To a lesser extent, so was 1984's Romancing the Stone, and the 1982-3 television shows Bring 'Em Back Alive and Tales of the Gold Monkey. At that time, I was certainly in the mood for more of that vibe if I could get it.

In any case, I found that my memories of the movie were a little bit gilded. Although it was obviously a Raiders rip-off, it was a rather poor one after all. The characters were cardboard, the dialogue was hoaky and unbelievable, the acting was egregious, the premise was silly, the stunts and action were poorly choreographed and filmed, and the special effects were dated and cheap, even by mid-80s standards. I found myself rolling my eyes a lot, and thinking to myself, "I've been looking for this movie for years, and this is all that it was after all?"

Although I have to give it credit for being filmed almost entirely on location in Zimbabwe. You can't fake that kind of authenticity. It's almost worth seeing just for the locations, and for the over-the-top villains chewing the scenery. Especially watched back to back with Raiders (which would also highlight all this movie's weaknesses), where you could see John Rhys-Davies play first Sallah and then Dogati might be good for a laugh.

About halfway through the movie, my two younger kids, who are big Raiders fans, came downstairs where I was watching it and watched the end with me. Both expressed an interest in seeing the movie start to finish; it scratched their itch, anyway. It didn't exactly do so to mine. Although while looking some details up about the movie after the fact, I found that there was a made for TV miniseries take on the book (on which this movie is loosely based) starring Patrick Swayze made a few years ago. If nothing else, watching this movie made me very curious to track down a copy of that and see if it's any good. There's also an Asylum Allan Quartermain film that came out in 2008, no doubt to coincide with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (The Asylum is infamous for releasing cheap movies with a close resemblance to big blockbusters that are due at about the same time.) Although I haven't yet seen anything by Asylum Studios that I liked, including adaptations of some of my favorite source material (The Land that Time Forgot, War of the Worlds and Princess of Mars, most notably) despite everything, I'll probably eventually try to watch it. Heck, it's probably available to stream via Netflix. Most of the rest of their catalog seems to be.

I'm still feeling a bit swamped by material to read. After blasting through about 100 pages of the nearly 800 page doorstopper Iron Kingdom, a history of Prussia, I had to put it aside for a time and read some other material that was more pressing (demand for that book is probably low, so I can renew from the library a few times if necessary.) I also got the first of Brent Weeks' trilogy, The Way of Shadows and Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky (no relaton to the composer. His real name is Czajkowski and he's an Anglo-Polish writer.) In the meantime, I just got notified that the long-delayed interlibrary loan request for Brian Lumley's Necroscope just arrived too. My plan was to blast through the three novels and then turn to the historical tract, and then not check anything else out for a while so I can read some books that I own. What's happened is that my blasting has been, at best, fitful sputtering. I find that my motivation to read is not high. I've only read the first few pages of Weeks' book; not even enough to really say that I've started, and I haven't cracked open either of the other two at all.

Meanwhile, I rectified an embarrasing oversight in my book collection. Although I claim to be a big Lovecraft fan, I'd never actually owned any Lovecraft stories; I'd checked them out at the library or even read them on dagonbytes. Now, I have all of Lovecraft's work --I bought the Del Rey versions with the much better cover art than the Arkham Press versions. I also bought the older White Wolf printings of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories--I didn't get the entire run, but I've got the first omnibus, which is what was published as three separate books (which were themselves collections of earlier published short stories, of course.) This has raised my count of "Books I Own But Haven't Yet Read" to ridiculous levels; so much so that I'm almost tempted to stop counting them if I've read them before I bought them, no matter how long ago.

I'm not sure what I'm going to read next. I'll probably power through the library books and then decide. But I'll review whatever I read here; unless I decide to re-read something I've already reviewed in the past, which is another possibility. Oof.

Finally, for some reason, I've also been drawn back into listening to my Red Dead Redemption soundtrack. I bought that as a download from Amazon a little while ago; when it was new, I guess, and I think it's kinda fun. I included a sample song from the soundtrack here. I think what drew me into it was a combination of things; working on developing the part of my setting which most closely resembles the Old West, seeing True Grit, and dusting off my old Xbox copy of Gun, itself a decent example of Revisionist Westerns (also available on Steam, I'm told.) It's got quite an impressive voice actor cast, including Thomas Jane, Kris Kristofferson, Lance Henriksen, Ron Perlman, Tom Skerrit, Brad Dourif and prolific video game voice actors Dave Wittenberg and Kath Soucie. There are rumors of a Gun sequel, which given the success of Red Dead Redemption might be more valid now than they were before (although Gun was itself a reasonably successful title.) I continue to place the Old West, including some aspects of darker revisionist westerns--especially spaghetti westerns (I'm not real keen on the Hollywood use of revisionist westerns to criticise contemporary American society, for instance), as one of the main influences on my setting, along with a similar darkening of the Golden Age of Piracy. Revisionist pirate movies? Revisionist Arabian nights?

I guess the darker, "noir" take on any genre is one that I take to well... and we're currently undergoing a wave of revisionist fantasy as well. While probably mostly subconsciously, now that I'm aware of it and can perceive it more clearly, it's obvious that I'm just one cog in a greater cultural zeitgeist amongst fantasy fans, turning to a "noir" sensibility, darker anti-heroes, and a "demythologizing" of a lot of our long-standing fantasy tropes and conventions.

Anyway, I included the Red Dead Redemption soundtrack sample below, as promised. Just for the heckuvit.

Untash tribesmen

I created a new label, Dark•Heritage, which is meant to cover all my posts that specifically contain an element of setting development for my homebrew campaign. Some of the earliest posts that I've given this label to actually didn't originally belong to this setting, but one of the things that's happened over the years is that four or five settings that I was kinda working on independently from each other all merged together into a single setting, elements that were too outre to fit into this new paradigm were jettisoned, and the new hybrid setting, or Mk. IV Dark•Heritage, is this new setting. Let me ramble just for a bit about the history of the development of the setting as it stands now, then I'll actually introduce the "real" content of this post, a brief essay on the nature of the Untash tribesmen, who will be an important part of the first adventure of the new campaign that I run here in, supposedly, a couple of months.

Dark•Heritage was first concieved while I was watching Attack of the Clones with one of my kids many years ago on DVD. That movie is mostly pretty terrible, but I think what I did was either fast-forwarded, or just left the room, for most of it, then came back in to watch the arena battle, the Jedi fighting battle droids, and then the eponymous attack of the clone troops and the Battle of Geonosis. Geonosis reminded me starkly of a space opera image of Mars; dusty red soil, crazy yet fascinating rock formations, red dusty sky, alien, insectile native life, etc. It had obvious parallels back to Barsoom from Edgar Rice Burroughs, or to Leigh Brackett's, C. L. Moore's, or Otis Adelbert Kline's Mars. At the time, I was starting to feel a little tired and bored with "standard" fantasy, so the idea of a fantasy setting that bore as much (or heck, more even) resemblance to Barsoom than it did to Middle-earth was appealing to me. This was the original genesis of Dark•Heritage. One of my early attempts at running a play-by-post (Pbp) game was set there, and it struggled with all the of the typical things that Pbp games tend to struggle with and ended soon and early.

I started developing the setting in earnest using the Ray Winninger Dungeoncraft methodology, mostly just because; I wasn't actually running it at that time. My own Dungeoncraft series of posts are an update of that development phase. Perhaps a bit to my surprise, I had an opportunity to run it again come up after a few months. By this time, I had migrated to Mk. II of the setting. Rather than being a habitable Mars-like world, I had gotten extremely excited about an older concept of floating islands in a vast atmospheric sea connecting by flying airships. Although my fascination with that idea was relatively short-lived, it was frozen in place for some time because I was fascinated with it when I started running the game and I couldn't exactly change it midstream because I lost interest in it. The game ended on its own a little later for other reasons, although it is still lamented and missed in my gaming group. Occasionally.

After our group consolidated with another group that was also shrinking to the point of nonviability, we played something else: Age of Worms, in fact. That was a long-lived campaign, so in the background, I started tinkering with the Mk. III Dark•Heritage; back to something that more closely resembled Mars, but also heavily influenced by the geography and political landscape of the ancient and Medieval Tarim Basin. This version of the setting got quite a bit of development done, scattered between various notebooks that I used to carry around with me to jot stuff down as I felt like it, and a wiki that I still keep archived for historical purposes, etc. I never ran Mk. III, but it was more developed than either Mk. I or Mk. II was before I stopped working on it. I did also develop a detailed novel outline for this version of the setting, and worked out almost 20,000 words of a draft before I became dissatisfied with some of the things that seemed so exciting to me at one point, but now felt just strange and difficult and awkward.

While all this was happening, I also toyed around with a few other homebrew settings. Most of them borrowed names and/or concepts, locations, and even characters from Dark•Heritage. One of them, which I called Leng Calling, first introduced the Mezzovian Sea and the Terrasan Empire, juxtaposing it with some of the cities that I had built along my "fantasy Silk Road", like Razina, Iclezza, etc. While Leng Calling was always meant to be "more D&Dish" than Dark•Heritage, it ironically became the geographic core around which Dark•Heritage Mk. IV would eventually grow. But before his, I also toyed around with my Demons in the Mist setting (again, an outre D&D setting), my Pirates of the Mezzovian Main setting (which recycled much of the Leng Calling geography again) and my homebrew Freeport setting; utilizing Green Ronin's Freeport city, but building my own little mini-setting around it, which was very loosely based geographically on the real East Indies.

For all of these, I recycled at least names, but often entire nations and bigger building blocks, which led to the creation of the Modular DND Setting wiki, where I intended to archive modular elements that could be dropped in and used without much work to create ad hoc campaign settings on the fly with existing elements. My Demons in the Mist, Freeport and Pirates of the Mezzovian Main games were fairly successful, and with all these half-formed nascent settings sitting out there, and my original Dark•Heritage languishing unused and unappreciated, it suddenly dawned on me: what I really needed to do was take the best elements from each of these and integrate it into a single, cohesive whole. Because it was also a "best of" of ideas taken from nearly half a dozen settings worked on over the course of four or five years, it was also much more unlikely to ever start to dissatisfy me; these were all ideas that had been proven out and used day in and day out in my gaming and fantasy needs for a long time.

And this became Dark•Heritage Mk. IV, which gradually took over the Modular DND Setting wiki, as they converged into becoming literally the exact same thing, except with a cohesive framework that integrated all of the "modules" together. It has elements of the Freeport setting: my nation of Qizmir is transparently borrowed from Green Ronin's Kizmir, and Porto Liure is Catalan for Free Port. Kinda. It has elements of my original Dark•Heritage setting, especially in the slightly Leigh Brackett Mars influenced cities of Kurushat and Baal Hamazi. It has big Lovecraftian regions, with infamous names like Carcosa and the Plateau of Leng integrated directly into the Forbidden Lands. It has the Terrasan Empire and some of its far flung colonies from Leng Calling as the main geographic centerpiece. And so on and so on.

And it gradually became less D&D like in some ways too, over time. While some of those component settings that I used originally had things like elves, dwarves, wizards, clerics, etc. Dark•Heritage makes no such assumptions. It's a more classically Sword & Sorcery feeling setting in many ways, especially with regards to fantasy races and fantasy professions. It's got significant tone influence from Glen Cook's The Black Company books. And it even allows me to indulge my inner paleontological nerd, by having a faunal assemblage borrowed from Pleistocene North America; with both familiar animals as well as familiar recent fossils from places like La Brea; dire wolves, sabertooths, Columbian mammoths, etc.

Whew. That was more long-winded than I intended it to be. But that is the State of the Setting as of January 2011... and I anticipate it will remain so indefinitely, with the exception of more detail and definition continuing to come out as the setting moves back out from the backwater of theory and into the trial by fire of an actual game for real people again.

So, I need to develop the Untash tribesmen a little bit, since they will play a role in the first session of my new campaign when I start it. The Untash tribesmen are to the north of the Terrasan territories, as well as northwest of Tarush Noptii, the vampire kingdom. I envisioned them when I was mapping out the former territories of Baal Hamazi, and I expect that a few centuries ago they would have been involved with that empire, at least in some fashion--probably as a source of mercenaries and slaves. Since the fall of the Empire, the Untash have grown from being a minor tribe to being a big confederation of loosely related tribes and bands that is regionally dominant, and a real headache to their more "civilized" neighbors, like the former Baal Hamazi regions of Pnakot and Shushun, the most northerly Terrasan settlements north of Iclezza and Razina, the northern marches of Tarush Noptii, and the rival Tazitta tribes. In very vague terms, I see the Untash as not unlike the Comanche of the mid 1800s, or pre-Imperial Mongols--dangerous, powerful, respected, feared; consumate raiders and light cavalry.

The Untash live in xeric grasslands interspersed with intermittant badlands, not unlike the Tabernas desert in Almería in southern Spain; a favorite location for the shooting of spaghetti Westerns. They are sometimes called colloquially the Bone People because of their habit of crafting clothing from the bones of bison and edging them with thin leaf iron. Bison and pronghorn make up the primary food source of the Untash, and some observers have noted that they appear to be the most carnivorous people in the region, eating very little fruits and vegetables and taking most of their sustenance from meat and pemmican. While most tribes follow and hunt wild bison and pronghorn herds, some do keep semi-domesticated herds as well. As well as hunting from horseback, the Untash keep dogs and red hunting cats to help them herd, corral or hunt their prey.

The Untash keep large herds of scotties (a native North American horse, for my purposes not unlike a tarpan or Heck horse--although occasionally possessing modest stripes on the rear legs) and their horse culture is one of the dominant features of life. Although an exaggeration, it is sometimes said that Untash children can ride before they can walk; certainly older children and adults are strongly associated with their scotties and rarely dismount when traveling. They are also renowned for their skill in archery; young Untash braves are known to lean over the sides of their horses and launch 5-6 arrows under the neck of their horse before the first one hits its target. Combined with their unengaging hit and run tactics, this makes the Untash very feared as raiders and bandits--Terrasans and others may be proud of their rifled muskets, but they can't compete with this rate of repeating fire.

As is typical of hunting and pastoral nomadic societies, the Untash have few permanent habitations, and live in easily disassembled and moved structures called kullaks which are not unlike yurts or teepees. At least one band of Untash, sometimes called the "Royal Untash" live out of large covered wagons.

The Untash make a point of disagreeing with most of their neighbors. The hated hamazin once had a fairly successful run at enslaving many of their people. The Tazitta are traditional rivals. The vampires of Tarush Noptii are hated and feared for obvious reasons. Whatever comes out of the Forbidden Lands is killed on sight. However, the Untash tend to be curious and even somewhat friendly to anyone else that they encounter crossing their lands, and their hospitality is also as legendary as their fierce raiding tradition.

Currently, the Untash are undergoing a cresting population boom. This is making their relationships with their neighbors even more strained, as Untash braves have increased their raiding frequency and distance substantially. However, some of the city-states of hamazin and Terrasa have seen this as an opportunity to hire them as foreign mercenaries, and many braves have accepted these offers. Untash warriors; mostly young ones, are now still a rare sight in the cities, but not as rare as they used to be.

Fixing d20

A few posts ago, I outlined what I thought were three problems with D&D (3.5, and family) as written. I'll reiterate them here, then I'll post my fixes. Two of them I've had in place for quite some time, but the third I just thought of, and am keen on trying out and seeing what people think of it. Granted, that one's more of a "taste" thing rather than a problem per se... it makes the game more what I want rather than necessary better. But anyway. The problems, again, were:

1. Armor Class (AC) doesn't keep up with Base Attack Bonus (BAB). This means you need to keep spending money on better and better armor, or magic items to increase your DEX, or your AC. As long as the money comes in as expected, this is already "solved" I guess, but it strikes me as more of a clumsy patch than a really solid, robust solution.
2. The CR system isn't just based on level, it's also based on the expectation of a number of magical "boosts". The higher up in level you go, the more ricketty and fragile this balance seems to be.
3. Combat is too static, and not nearly "swashbucklery" enough. D&D rewards higher level striker type characters with multiple attacks per round if they stand in place, and the opportunity cost of not doing so is too high. Therefore, playing any fighter, barbarian, ranger, etc. type character who does something different, after about 5th or 6th level, is tactically very bad and maladaptive. This is, frankly, really boring, and not in harmony with what I believe are major literary and cinematic influences and source material for the game.

With me so far? Here's my solutions. The third one is new, but depending on what you've read of my gaming, they might all three be new to you as well.

1. Most other d20 games other than D&D already have solved this: d20 Modern, d20 Star Wars, d20 World of Time, etc. If the expectation is not heavy armor or magic items, then a Defense bonus that increases as you go up in level, to simulate your character's fighting prowess increasing by getting harder to hit (not just by hitting harder) makes perfect sense. Luckily for me, the Unearthed Arcana houserule collection made this an easily applicable option for D&D as well, right here. You'll probably go over your wealth per level guidelines if you don't need to keep buying armor boosting abilities, but that seques nicely into my #2 solution...
2. I don't pay any attention to wealth/level guidelines, and PCs in my games are almost certainly impoverished compared to what the designers assume. This means that they can't afford all kinds of razzmatazz magic that's at odds with the source material that inspired the game. Of course, this also means that I need to pay closer attention to what I throw at my players than others. CR becomes much more of a handwavey guideline rather than a component of a mathematical formula who's results you can usually count on. Of course, long-time players will remember the days before we had CR, when you had to do this anyway; know your party's capabilities and pick challenges that were appropriate for them based on that knowledge, not on some number in a formula. Guess what; we're back to that again. It's a key GMing skill that never should have been lost in the first place, in my opinion.
3. Normally, per the rules, when your BAB reaches +6, you gain an extra attack (if you take a full attack option) at -5 from your first attack. This means that you don't actually move to +6, you actually move to +6/+1. For this houserule, instead of moving to +6/+1, you merely move to +6, but you gain the benefit of the Spring Attack feat for free, even if you don't have the prerequisites to do so. Similarly, when you would gain a third attack (+11/+6/+1), you instead only move to +11/Spring Attack but you also gain the benefit of Whirlwind Attack for free, even if you do not meet the prerequisites. There is no house rule for +16--no campaign I ever run will ever get that high in levels, I don't think (if I'm ever proven wrong, I'll come up with that houserule as needed.)

These changes will migrate any d20 based game into one that more closely mimics what I consider the key source material; fast, mobile, swashbuckly fight scenes between characters that rely on skill, not tons of armor and magic, to win their fights for them. I realize that there are some indirect consequences of this, though--I mentioned one in my solution #1 (which is largely offset by my solution #2 anyway), but solution #3 has several as well. First off, the average damage dealt by a hard hitting character may go down without the multiple attacks, prolonging fights and making them more dangerous. I haven't actually done the math, but I know this is at least partially offset by the lowered BAB on those subsequent attacks; you're not as likely to hit with them anyway. I could be wrong, and some playtesting should flush this out, but I don't think that'll be a significant enough problem to warrent "solving" though; it just means that combat flow and balance will be a little bit different.

Secondly, it means that the take rate for the feats Spring Attack and Whirlwind Attack (and possibly Dodge and Mobility, which aren't that useful on their own, but are kind of like tax feats that you have to pay before you get Spring Attack and Whirlwind Attack) will plummet and maybe even disappear altogether. I'm OK with that. I don't think that's a problem so much as just a... just a thing. It'll happen, but the game isn't any the worse for wear because of it.

Anyway, what do you think?