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Post by Scott on May 18, 2016 13:26:34 GMT -5
On my map the southeast of Appalachia extended further south, and where Florida would be is a large, island-dotted salt marsh.
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Post by geneweigel on May 18, 2016 13:38:11 GMT -5
The players never see this map because its only there for reference for me. Their maps are usually not accurate or artistic. Their version of reality is very limited and 3 dimensional.
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Post by Scott on May 18, 2016 14:29:14 GMT -5
Most of my map is theoretical, since the PCs have never been there. Anywhere the PCs haven't been could be subject to change.
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Post by Scott on Jun 9, 2016 13:51:59 GMT -5
The Wild/Barbarous Coast really is a great sandbox campaign setting: the fractured political states, the forests, the Pomarj, the Bright Desert across the Bay, and the Bay itself. It really would be a good project to develop it.
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 475
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Post by foster1941 on Jun 9, 2016 15:40:03 GMT -5
One change I've contemplated making to the Wild Coast for my campaigns is to make the humanoid takeover of the Pomarj a much more recent occurrence. In the official setting it happened more than 60 years in the past, almost a lifetime ago (approximately the same gap as from WWII to the present). I think it's much more interesting and vital if this is, instead, something that has just happened within the last few years, so that its immediate reverberations are still being felt through the region - the Wild Coast towns are full of refugees, there are exiles raising mercenary armies for a counter-invasion, the cities and mines are still being actively despoiled, there are still some beleaguered humans there holding onto castles and villages, there are still prisoners being held for ransom, and so on. At risk of bringing in real-world stuff, I have a picture of the Pomarj under the humanoids as something like Iraq and Syria under ISIS, and think that's a much more adventure-rich situation if it's something currently happening rather than something that happened in the human characters' grandparents' time and has had time to settle into a status quo.
So, in my Greyhawk, the humanoid conquest of the Pomarj will have occurred not in 513 but in the 560s - around the same time as the fall of Bone March, a bit before the Battle of Emridy Meadows. Would doing this would cause any unforseen-consequence damage to the setting that I'm overlooking?
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Post by Scott on Jun 9, 2016 17:06:35 GMT -5
It works. You could tie in the Scarlet Brotherhood. A few opportune assassinations of established human lords to facilitate the humanoid takeover, giving themselves a foothold on the Pomarj, and like the Nazis looking for Tannis, their agents are about looking for the lost Suel city.
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Post by geneweigel on Jun 9, 2016 17:22:50 GMT -5
The Greyhawk regions are huge so there is enough variance for inclusion of anything. When Gary said he would place B2 in the Pomarj that just fried my brain cells. I knew there was variance based on the details but a quick glance at the DARLENE map makes you picture a Sauron mountaintop. So that threw me off. I had the Pomarj's border as Shelob's lair but that wouldn't be likely in Greyhawk at least not specifically in broad daylight.
The border territory rule for the Darlene map is one in ten is a patrol in a wilderness. In the Pomarj's case its most likely the Keep on the Bordelands is surrounded in wilderness and exists as an exception. Which it should be or else it would be boring!
On the WOG map in times of warfare (which is continual for Celene and Ulek) every hex has monsters replaced by armed forces and times 2 the percentage chance for patrol. Each state most likely different except for race (a Suel-Oeridian combo with anti-demihuman feelings) then each is an equivalent barony with maybe an exiled Margrave/Marquis (Marquess?) over them all the lessers (thats a maybe). So all the "arms" of each of these are lost or are in Celene or Ulek in some form or another probably an easy run-in with the armed forces of Celene/Ulek. So I can imagine leftover "lord pretenders" who are humanoid allies in the Pomarj.
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 475
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Post by foster1941 on Jun 9, 2016 17:57:54 GMT -5
It works. You could tie in the Scarlet Brotherhood. A few opportune assassinations of established human lords to facilitate the humanoid takeover, giving themselves a foothold on the Pomarj, and like the Nazis looking for Tannis, their agents are about looking for the lost Suel city. Big yes to all of this! It occurs to me that the contrast between the conquest of the Pomarj and the Battle of Emridy Meadows helps demonstrate the difference between the lawful and chaotic evil approaches talked about in the other thread: in the one case it's a singular demoness raising an army and starting a ruckus but with no real organization or support it's fairly easily put down by the forces of good, while on the other side a carefully orchestrated and executed campaign of assassination and sabotage, followed by a quick, surprise invasion lands one of the richest areas on the map (a centrally located trading center dotted with gold and gem mines) in the hands of evil without the need for any direct extra-planar intervention. I know the Guide shows the Pomarj as chaotic evil, but since since it's occupied by goblins, orcs, and hobgoblins (all LE) under the secret leadership of the Scarlet Brotherhood (also LE), that makes more sense to me.
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Post by geneweigel on Jun 9, 2016 22:12:15 GMT -5
Heh, speaking of Celene, I was looking through some of my campaign notes the other day about Celene and some of it was translated with THE SILMARILLION for instance I have Melf AKA "Prince Brightflame" as he is called by the elves in ARTIFACT OF EVIL (1986) is written by me as "Rilruin" meaning "Brilliant Red Flame" in the language of the Eldar. Boy, what an asshole! Deep down I like the Tolkien style elves but I just tired of it after years of listening to the pretentiousness of it. That's why I started pumping my own "brand" of elves although I would allow all kinds of any fantasy race or background for a player and in turn support their background with NPCs.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jun 10, 2016 8:03:27 GMT -5
Don't feel too bad... back in the day, most of the elf players I knew either swiped Tolkien names (which I hated) or created them out of the SILMARILLION (a bit more tolerable). That list of prefixes and suffixes was just too tempting, and seemed ready made for D&D players of elves.
I see Enstad as a loose version of Camelot: white towers, elves in shining armor like knights, flying pennons, and the fantasy-element added in like griffon riders and the Staviary (the EGG-created word for stable-aviary). The description in ARTIFACT OF EVIL seems to be of this high, ideal courtly place. For naming conventions, we don't have much to go on... EGG seemed to go two ways on the elves... There are those Arthurian-sounding names like Yolande and Parseval, and then there are silly names like those taken from POPLOLLIES AND BELLIBONES.
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Post by Scott on Jun 10, 2016 8:57:18 GMT -5
I think we've all give in to the Tolkien temptation. My Tolkien inspiration waxes and wanes. It's pretty low right now.
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 475
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Post by foster1941 on Jun 10, 2016 11:52:00 GMT -5
I wish that as a kid I'd used The Silmarillion to create elf-names. As it was, I mostly lifted names out of the Terry Brooks Shannara books, which is totally embarrassing to look back on.
I like the idea of Celene as more of an Edmund-Spenser-Elizabethan view of Camelot than Tolkien, but also that the elves there are very haughty and aloof and unwelcoming of strangers (including, presumably, even non-Celene evles). One weird thing is that at least according to the 1983 Guide (not sure if this is one of the things that changed from the Folio) Celene actually has more humans than elves (20,000 vs 17,500 (9,500 gray elves + 8,000 wood elves)) but I imagine they're all effectively second-class citizens - farming peasants and foot soldiers in the military (consigned to miserable, endless warfare against humanoids in the Suss Forest) - and that the upper, and even middle, classes are entirely elfin. I wonder if the humans in Celene are even aware of much of the world outside their borders, or if they assume (having been told) that they're the only civilized humans and that humans everywhere else are all either primitive tribesmen (like those living in the Welkwood) or rapacious bandits and brigands (like those fighting alongside the humanoids in the Suss). Perhaps the humans in Celene are like the people in the movie The Village.
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Post by Scott on Jun 10, 2016 11:59:17 GMT -5
My assumption is they're mostly mercenaries, and a support network that sprung up around the mercenaries. But I agree with your thoughts on the character of the Celene elves, and the humans live in segregated communities.
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Post by geneweigel on Jun 10, 2016 12:01:49 GMT -5
The specific Greyhawky adventure with Melf was the rescue of Silverthorn (the character from AOE who was Melf's cousin who was actually Heidi Gygax's character that Luke Gygax mentioned this fact to me in 2009) from "Mauve Castle". So it was really whacky all around.
Mauve Castle that I did was still around when I rebooted the campaign with a different name of course. Not a Tolkien one either!
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Post by geneweigel on Jun 10, 2016 12:32:57 GMT -5
I recall something on the Celene map but I couldn't find it. It was on the back of the zoom in map. Here is the original (1986) 9 and then I did a cleaner version with a slight zoom in in 1989: This is written on the back: I don't know what I was smoking but it must have been pretty good.
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 475
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Post by foster1941 on Jun 10, 2016 12:48:13 GMT -5
Is there a canonical Gary-era name for the river that runs through the western part of Celene and joins up with the Jewel River in the Suss Forest?
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Post by Scott on Jun 10, 2016 12:53:22 GMT -5
Gene, I didn't know you had that in you.
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Post by Scott on Jun 10, 2016 12:56:46 GMT -5
Is there a canonical Gary-era name for the river that runs through the western part of Celene and joins up with the Jewel River in the Suss Forest? Not canonical, but my take: The Silverbed River (Celeradwin in Elvish) runs through the Kingdom of Celene and flows into the Jewel River. Both Enstad and Courwood are built on the banks of the Silverbed and the waters between them are navigable to large vessels, but smaller, shallow draft craft are required for the rest of the river. The Silverbed gets its name from the silver nuggets that wash down from deposits in the river’s headwaters in the Lortmil Mountains.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jun 10, 2016 13:54:18 GMT -5
According to ARTIFACT OF EVIL, at least some humans are part of Celene's courtly society (Ch. 11):
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Post by Scott on Jun 10, 2016 14:15:20 GMT -5
That would be your Aragorns, Gandalfs (kind of), i.e. your accomplished adventurers, plus nobles, and other assorted elf friends.
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