The Hollow Man (Inactive)

Game Master trux

Uh guys?

Uh guys?

yes?

Look at the map (^___^)

There's no river from Bard's Gate to Endhome!

not really a problem. I probably won't be coming from Bards. Mak here probably hasn't been back since he ran away years ago.

Actually I can't zoom the map on my tablet, so I can't read the names. When I get to a pc I'll see. That's why I asked how we are travelling.

Well Karl will arrive on a trade caravan, on which he acted as a guard.

Looking for a hook.

Uh oh I was really aiming for legibility on mobile...

I'll up the resolution can you check if that does the trick when you get a chance?

you mean this map, right?

Yeah, that's the highest resolution I can manage.

As for the hook, when I look at the excellent backstories you guys have written, it's all there. You're exploding with hooks. This really couldn't be more perfect if we planned it. It's total kismet.

I think it's because you guys were patient enough to have that long dialogue with me and reach an understanding about the tone of the setting and campaign. I don't think the average PbP'er is necessarily looking to invest the attention and creativity that you guys have here and I bet this turns out pretty awesome as a result.

I think almost every character has a built in reason they would want to visit Endhome.

Check out Okrin:

So we have a monk affiliated with the High Sanctum of the Scroll, Bard's Gate's Temple of Yenomesh, God of Glyphs and Writing. His life long goal is to find a rare scroll or tome significant enough to grant him access to the locked Library in the Sanctum.

He is also an aspiring arcanist.

Endhome has this Wizard's Academy!

Ok if I save the image, which I have, it works on the tablet. Nice map BTW.

Thanks, I'm gonna keep plugging away at it a day at a time.

The northwest and southeast are 90% done, the northeast is about 60% and the southwest is barely started.

What's the scale?

Check it out with the hex grid overlayed.

6 mile hexes.

Awesome. Very old school.

Morrigan has a nice reason for heading towards Endhome. It's probably the biggest center of Freya worship on the continent. Maybe come up with a tie-in for Cian somehow?

Maybe there are other Tuath living there (displaced or simply migrated? urbanized or living in the wild?) and Cian wants to inspire them to repatriate as the Quail Valley settlements encroach on his ancestral homeland?

Just spit balling ideas to get the ball rolling.

We totally don't need to do anything this elaborate if you guys don't want either. I'm happy to just jump into gameplay on the road with no explanation. I'm just trying to make a space for you to narrate how you came to be together, if you want to.

Perhaps they have not been coming to the summer gatherings? Very important event and no one misses. The high king has to do his duty with the queen and all that.

Quick Question:
Karl, is your master still alive? what's the most recent story there?

My first master is, and is a respected wizard in bardsgate, my second master...I haven't decided yet. I'm tending towards yes, he is still alive, but is not around at the moment.

So you might be up to your own devices at the wizard academy? or would you prefer to be traveling as a guard earning "real-world" experience?

Definitely seeking real world experiences. With his chaotic outlook, set lessons would bore him.

So maybe the caravan we were all wound up with has just arrived at the city gates?
There's got to be a wizard bar in there somewhere. More friendly to magic users like.... well most of us. Monks are pretty damn magical, though.
Objective One :: Locate friendly bar for sparkly folk.

Done. Karl and Makirut arrive with a trade caravan from bards gate.

Well that could work. Mak would have joined you at some point along the trade route, maybe at a hamlet trading post or tavern along the road.
Call it the Winking Demon Alehouse or something.

Here, if you like. we can get our heads together about either three people we met in the caravan or three interesting things that happened. Any ideas?

So maybe the caravan we were all wound up with has just arrived at the city gates?

There's got to be a wizard bar in there somewhere. More friendly to magic users like.... well most of us. Monks are pretty damn magical, though.
Objective One :: Locate friendly bar for sparkly folk.

There's a bar like that in Bard's Gate.

Well that could work. Mak would have joined you at some point along the trade route, maybe at a hamlet trading post or tavern along the road.

Call it the Winking Demon Alehouse or something.

** spoiler omitted **

Here, if you like. we can get our heads together about either three people we met in the caravan or three interesting things that happened. Any ideas?

There's a fortified inn called the King's Road Inn, in Hex 2416, but that would be a slightly late point for Mak to join, I had an adventure planned for earlier on the road (the prequel that I had you all level down for.)

As for bouncing around the Lyre Valley, I knew you had headed up there and found your mother as a lad but I didn't know you had stayed. It's a bit of a curve ball but we can make it work somehow. Were you living with orcs then?

There is one settlement, Taverlan, a mining town, but they are in serious decline since Bard's Gate start importing precious mettles from the Dwarves. There is also one logging camp and life there is similarly cheap.

There is a citadel manned by griffon riding knights from Bard's Gate called Lyr Guard (first line of defense for the city).

There's a group of rangers from Bard's Gate called the Longhunters (keeping tabs on the gnolls and orcs)

and a group of elven rangers from Caer Myrrdin called the Seekers of Twilight (keeping tabs on the Longhunter's and the Lyr Guard. They are preservationist.)

Any of those places would enjoy a good orcish horror/folk-tale. You can't exactly bump around from one to the next very easily though keep in mind. Check out VotS gameplay for a taste of what travel is like in the area, they pretty much don't go a day without a CR 6 - CR 8 encounter.

But I can easily see Mak tagging along with rangers, staying for a spell when he likes a place, joining the next patrol of knights when they pass through, etc.

Man that's pretty cool Mak.

Done. Karl and Makirut arrive with a trade caravan from bards gate.

Gotta be the road. I have a little adventure planned for the road.

Ok then. Mak and karl are traveling with a caravan on the road, enjoying the fresh air.
Btw what is the climate like, cool or warm. And what season is it.

It's fall, climate kind of like oregon/northern california/washington state.

Cian might be trying to get Morrigan's help with the absent tribesmen. Clerics and bards do most of the legal stuff while paladins enforce the god's will. Besides it's an affront to all gods and goddesses. The goddess selects the new queen for each year and I don't doubt freya would be important in there somewhere.

Ok, great. Good stuff Cian.

Karl the prequel adventure I had set-up kind of presumed a party traveling alone but I'm sure I can tweak to make it a journey by caravan if that's key for you.

Merchant caravans certainly do use this road, and accompanying one is the primary method of travel for non-adventuring sorts.

Motivation for adventurers to travel without a caravan would be the infrequency of caravans, cost to join one (a family wanting to move to a different city would save for years to join a caravan). Most people just live out their years in the city where they are born.

I figure Mak ran into his momma's tribe and (twist) he wound up being enslaved for a year or two. It wasnt exactly the warm welcome he hoped for.

The ranger group sounds good, but how would it work if he apprenticed to a travelling merchant and bounced aroun withdifferent caravans. Maybe he traded with the human barbarian tribes?
Tell me what works for you brother/sister!

Basically, the thing to understand... this campaign map is going to be home to our adventures all the way through higher levels. The world doesn't artificially scale with you as you level. So a lot of the areas on the map are no good for low-levels and backstories.

Like, you wouldn't give a 1st level middle-earth PC a backstory that took him through Mordor for example. (Bad example because middle earth is low enough power level that this would actually be more feasible than having a character in the Lost Lands that had traversed the wilderness around Rappan Athuk before 1st level. But you get the idea I hope.)

Of course this is not a setting as familiar to all of us as Middle Earth or Golarion is, and I don't have a players guide to hand you. That's why I'm working hard on the wiki (big thanks to Makirut for the help here) .

Bard's Gate has been useful as the default "spawn" point for new PC's. Other locations are suitable of course but some consideration has to be given to the setting to see if it makes sense.

The fun part will be discovering the setting through play. The world itself hasn't been published yet, but I merged content from some of their choicest adventures and packed them into this hex map to make for a thoroughly detailed region to set a campaign in.

Okay, thanks for the mordor analogy, that clearly establishes the life is cheap element.
If it makes it easier, lets say Mak made it back to bards gate after running away from the nice orphanage. He can join at Bards this way.

Curious, given the cheapness of life, would the slavery thing square in the region?

I figure Mak ran into his momma's tribe and (twist) he wound up being enslaved for a year or two. It wasnt exactly the warm welcome he hoped for.

The ranger group sounds good, but how would it work if he apprenticed to a travelling merchant and bounced aroun withdifferent caravans. Maybe he traded with the human barbarian tribes?
Tell me what works for you brother/sister!

Apprenticed with a travelling merchant sounds like a nice tie to Karl Chillstrike, but it wouldn't take you near the Lyre Valley.

You see the two big roads on the map, brown one going east-west and purple one going north-south? That's basically where your major merchant caravans go.

The dotted lines are smaller roads and trails that some merchants use as short-cuts or to make pitstops. For example Crimmor is the best place to get wagon wheels made and repaired.

Keelboats run supplies up and down the rivers too.

--
Edit:

Barbarian tribes are conspicuously missing from the literature I have on the setting. The closest thing I have is the Tuath community that Cian created.

Barbarian PC's in my tabletop games in the setting have mostly hailed from the implied Northlands region (850+ page hardcover forthcoming in a year!).

We need something though, we can't have a sandbox setting with no barbarian tribes ;)

I will look at my raging swan press pdf's, I think they have something we can shoehorn in.

May be a bit of a misunderstanding here. In most campaign worlds I have been in, it is possible to travel with a trade caravan as a temporary guard, basically pay is food and companionship. Your trustworthiness is based on word of mouth or a patron of some sort who vouches for you. You certainly do not pay the merchant for the privilege of guarding him.

How about this. Karl knows makirut (who he calls mak: sounds like mack) from when he was in the orphanage. Karl is a bit of a rebel, and he found the kids at the orphanage more likable than his family. Karl's master wants him to carry a message to a mage in endshome, or that inn along the road which might be better, and put in a word to a caravan master. Mak, who karl had kept in touch with, came with him.

we could have just given the message to it's recipient at that inn, and now be at loose ends. We may have had to wait for a few days to deliver it, so the caravan has gone on its way. The others could join us there.

Gaming cliche attained. We all meet in an inn.

Assuming that's ok with everyone of course.

@ GRIMMY
I'd love to cling to the "enslaved by my own mother" thing, and the "bounced around with rangers/Longhunters who freed me" sounds cool.
the Longhunters would have taken me back to Bards, yes? that's fine.

@KARL
Makirut would have been a rebel at Oghma's Songschool as well - he never learned to play any instruments well.
*grumble grumble* half-orc got the short end of the stick *grumble*

Maybe he and his gang of vagabond orphan brats snuck in to play in the Pench family garden one day? That would be hard to forget.
...
Years later, lo' and behold, he reconnects with Karl in Bards and they decide to travel together for a while.

@ all
"hey this brother Okrin wants to go east, too."
"hey these two look like they'd be good in the wilderness"
badda bing, badda boom: "Highway to Endhome" plays in background.

tavern or no tavern, we can make this work.
Okrin, what do you think about all this?

Yes!
Snuck into the pench garden, and ate raspberry tarts and apple cider given to us by the cook, who was a good sort. And snuck out again. Or chased out by the summoned watch, who basically let you go as it was a great laugh for them, seeing the stuffy, penny pinching, pench family in those straights.

Okay, thanks for the mordor analogy, that clearly establishes the life is cheap element.

If it makes it easier, lets say Mak made it back to bards gate after running away from the nice orphanage. He can join at Bards this way.

Curious, given the cheapness of life, would the slavery thing square in the region?

Yeah, wilds immediately around Rappan Athuk are like Mordor bad (but it's not a perfect analogy because you mostly have to go underground to get to really terribad stuff. So merchants can at least pass through this region but they are well-guarded, and they don't leave the road (just straight through, do not pass go style). Even on the road around here is about EL 5+, leaving the road at all is definitely EL 6+ with pockets of ZOMGWTFBBQ. Going underground is like EL 6-27?

Lyre Valley is probably something like being north of the wall in Game of Thrones. Adventuring parties probably won't want to just mosey about up there exploring until level 6+. The Valley of the Shrines party are up there now and level 3, but they have a clear specific mission with a clear route, get in and get out and go straight back home. Spend too much time up here and a random encounter check will eventually yield 3 Wyverns, a Young Adult Black Dragon, or a Beholder.

Everything you said about hanging out in Lyre Valley still works. It's very evocative. Mak could have easily made a name for himself among the rangers and Lyre Guard. Maybe he hitches rides around with them when they patrol. All that's up there though is one destitute mining town, one logging camp, the Citadel of Griffons, and the rangers. The dwarven halls of Silverhelm are sealed.

The only slavers I can think of are the Drow.

May be a bit of a misunderstanding here. In most campaign worlds I have been in, it is possible to travel with a trade caravan as a temporary guard, basically pay is food and companionship. Your trustworthiness is based on word of mouth or a patron of some sort who vouches for you. You certainly do not pay the merchant for the privilege of guarding him.

Yeah I think it's fairly similar here. Most of the merchant caravans from Reme to Endhome are guarded by Westmarch forces, Knight's and Military. The ones that range further afield to distant lands have private guard forces, some of them as low as level 1 NPC's. In either case it's a full-time occupation I would think. I don't object at all to special arrangements like you described though. In the case of Karl it especially makes sense that he would have the right contacts to do some freelancing as a caravan guard. It stymie's the first adventure I had planned for you guys but if guarding a caravan strongly appeals to you I will scrap that adventure and come up with something else.

Edit:
When I mentioned paying I was talking about folks who want to attach themselves to caravans for safety on the road.

Makirut wrote:

Okay, thanks for the mordor analogy, that clearly establishes the life is cheap element.

If it makes it easier, lets say Mak made it back to bards gate after running away from the nice orphanage. He can join at Bards this way.

Curious, given the cheapness of life, would the slavery thing square in the region?

...

The only slavers I can think of are the Drow.

I've just assumed that the orc tribes have been keeping slaves for sacrifices, bullying, and labor. Happy to retcon this to "Makirut was treated like a slave" or whatever fits this setting best.

Oh no, keep it brother. I didn't know you were asking about that aspect of your backstory specifically.

No the way you wrote those orcs is totally fine (and thanks for doing it.) Hope you have been sharing with Grokar, does he know how to get to your wiki entries? I still haven't made a map to navigate that stuff.

haven't heard from him in a while. he sounded busy.
linked him the page and shared the "secret" but haven't checked back to see if he has made any edits.

Which is his Obsidian username by the way?

How about this. Karl knows makirut (who he calls mak: sounds like mack) from when he was in the orphanage. Karl is a bit of a rebel, and he found the kids at the orphanage more likable than his family. Karl's master wants him to carry a message to a mage in endshome, or that inn along the road which might be better, and put in a word to a caravan master. Mak, who karl had kept in touch with, came with him.

we could have just given the message to it's recipient at that inn, and now be at loose ends. We may have had to wait for a few days to deliver it, so the caravan has gone on its way. The others could join us there.

Gaming cliche attained. We all meet in an inn.

Assuming that's ok with everyone of course.

Oh that is an excellent idea, except the little pre-adventure I wanted to run is on the road from Bard's Gate quite a ways west of that Inn... If we cut-scene to the Inn which is just outside Endhome, we bypass that adventure.

Hmm... maybe this pre-adventure idea is causing more trouble than it's worth.

haven't heard from him in a while. he sounded busy.

linked him the page and shared the "secret" but haven't checked back to see if he has made any edits.

Which is his Obsidian username by the way?

Uhmmm.... I think he is Kios but I'm not sure. He is one of the ones that joined but never made a character profile.

A reasonably well traveled route would have several inns or stop points allong it's route. It makes sense for enterprising types to do this. A caravan of wagons, of unsprnged medieval type, is lucky to go 12 miles a day, more modern ones double that. Regular, known campsites would attract these inns. A safe place to camp in a dangerous area would be welcome. A place to exchange horses/oxen, with a stockade. Especially if it is as dangerous as you say.

Just place one of these spots near to where you want. Heck if you don't like it, it could be destroyed by an orc raid later.

A reasonably well traveled route would have several inns or stop points allong it's route. It makes sense for enterprising types to do this. A caravan of wagons, of unsprnged medieval type, is lucky to go 12 miles a day, more modern ones double that. Regular, known campsites would attract these inns. A safe place to camp in a dangerous area would be welcome. A place to exchange horses/oxen, with a stockade. Especially if it is as dangerous as you say.

Just place one of these spots near to where you want. Heck if you don't like it, it could be destroyed by an orc raid later.

aw c'mon, we can start from Bards. why not?

Oh, ok. No objections.

Look I'm not strong enough in any academic area to run a truly simulationist game.

The caravans in my game manage 18 miles a day (3 hexes) for convenience.

Those little tent icons spaced every three hexes along the tradeway are what you'll hear the other PC's referring to as the Waystations. They're simple stockades, normally unmanned, with raised platforms beside the gates in various states of disrepair. They were constructed by the Grand Duchy of Waymarch to facilitate safe travel on the tradeway for merchants. It's just a big, open-air, stockaded area big enough to fit several wagons. It's not even manned routinely, but Sheriff's patrols and Knights from Waymarch ride up and down the road and are frequently present. The merchant caravans you see typically have wagons with special sort of crenellated platforms on their roofs to help make the Waystations more defensible.

Why aren't there any enterprising innkeepers setting up shop at these points? I don't know. Maybe they just aren't that enterprising? It could be that the publisher didn't consider it, and it just didn't strike me as jarring enough an omission for me to want to change it. Could I now, sure, but the way it feels as-is already feels pretty right to me, and I don't want PC's on their return trip from the Sirgewood passing an Inn that wasn't there two days ago when they last traversed that stretch of road.

Now like I said, I'm only 60% done with the north-eastern quadrant of the map. There are some small roads and some sites I haven't drawn in yet, but... I can tell you now that the only inn on the King's Road (the portion of the tradeway that lies between Bard's Gate and Endhome) is the King's Inn. I mentioned the location of that Inn to you earlier, Hex 2416. That is actually 18 miles west of where the published material had placed it. I wanted it to be more of a stopping point instead of being immediately outside the city gates. I was probably thinking along some similar lines to you there, Chillblame.

So you see, I'm open to suggestions but not to the point that an inn is going to appear where you'd like it to be just because it makes sense for it to be there. I am running published material here but not entirely unmodified. I want the world to feel real and if some aspect is breaking verisimilitude for you I do want to hear about it. For example I dramatically reduced the frequency of random encounter checks because a player I have major respect for mentioned that things being the way they were kind of begged the question of how anyone ever travelled at all without leveling up several times!