Zafira Azul's page

The city is a strange place. There are almost unimaginable masses of people crowding out everything that is not people. They have built more buildings than you can count, of cut wood and cut stone and other things. Then they built a wall around the whole thing, to keep the jungle from creeping back inside. They can’t keep nature out entirely, of course. There is grass growing in places, moss on the roofs, rats in the gutters.

And you.

And the horse. Something has spooked it, and its spirit has broken free of the reins that hold it. Just as its body has. Hard hooves pound on the ground as it charges through the crowd. Men and women dive out of the way.

The young ones don’t. They are too focused by a brightly colored lizard, darting this way and that across the lane. The hooves will crush their little bones, but the man holding the reins has let go after being dragged along. You step in front of the children and raise your hand.

The horse rears up, hooves slashing the air inches from your face.

”Stop,” you say, but not just with words. With your spirit. ”There is nothing to be afraid of. Do not harm these children.”

And the horse’s eye meets yours. Its hooves hit the ground, and it stands, panting and trembling. The man gets back to his feet and catches up. He takes the reins, mumbling thanks to you, leading the horse away. You feel many, many eyes on you, wondering what this strange creature from the jungle is. There is fear, gratitude, curiosity.

A middle-aged halfling woman in a dark cloak approaches you. She offers a warm smile, and then beckons you to lean down.

“That was very brave,” she says. She lowers her eyes. “My name is Kora Whistlegap. My family needs the help of brave souls. Please come to the Rusty Pirate tonight at ten. I will make it worth your while.”

Yesterday was a huge waste of time. Two hours out of the city, because some trader saw an old man with a white beard and a pointed hat and you thought it might be Xerxes. Of course it wasn’t. Of course it was just some farmer. And now you’re here, mud on your boots, surrounded by trees and bushes and all the things that live in the trees and bushes, insects buzzing everywhere and this wagon being pulled along at a snail’s pace.

The eldest leads the ox, and the middle one follows, pushing the wheels out of ruts. The wagon groans under a load of red meat, that draws more flies than you ever imagined could be in one place. The youngest waves a palm frond to keep the flies off the meat.

The road is too narrow to pass, not without leaving the safety of the road. The jungle is thick, and it feels like even brushing against it to pass the wagon invites danger. And as if conjured by your thought, danger appears. Dropping from a tree limb, a cat of some kind lands on the wagon. It’s no house cat, but a creature of the jungle, as long as a man is tall.

It grabs a huge joint of beef in its teeth. The youngest farmer, heroically, moronically, swipes at it with the palm branch. He gets the creatures attention, and it coils. It springs.

And it hits an invisible barrier. You’ve never cast so quickly in your life, and it was just enough to stop the cat from bringing those claws to bear on the boy. You must have yelled the incantation, though, because the cat’s attention is on you now.

Fire! Force!

It is quick, and strong, and you tumble in the mud out of its way once before you can get the barrier up. Fire! Fire!

”It’s dead,” the eldest says. He helps you to your feet. ”Thank you, sir wizard.”

This morning, you venture to the market. You could take the farmer up on his offer of free prime steak, but they threw the cat on the wagon with the beef, and you don’t want to risk having cat for breakfast.

A middle-aged halfling woman in a dark cloak approaches you. She offers a warm smile, and then beckons you to lean down.

“I heard what you did on the East Road yesterday,” she says. She lowers her eyes. “My name is Kora Whistlegap. My family needs the help of brave souls. Please come to the Rusty Pirate tonight at ten. I will make it worth your while.”

”Blisker Tittertop? Master of the Guild? What were you thinking?” Your mother had gone on in that vein for longer than you imagined possible. There was a moment when you honestly thought she would disown you. Permanently. She didn’t raise thieves - and she did not have any interest in your explanation that your intent was never to steal anything.

In hindsight, you may have been better off letting her think you were stealing.

A week later, you still hear her voice, ringing in your ear. What were you thinking? That the Master of the Alchemist’s Guild was really the only gnome in Sasserine with more wealth than the Erkenwalds? That alchemical products were high profit, if you knew how to make them?

That nobody had ever successfully broken into the Alchemist’s Guildhall. That it would be an adventure. And now you’re paying the consequences. Which begs the question of who is paying for the ale you’re drinking, because the Erkenwald’s fortune is no longer at your disposal.

A middle-aged halfling woman in a dark cloak sits beside you.

“Allow me,” she says, placing a few silver coins on the bar. Each one stamped with the Alchemist’s Guild mark. She gives you an understanding smile. “My name is Kora Whistlegap. My family needs the help of brave souls. Please come to the Rusty Pirate tonight at ten. I will make it worth your while.”

Things grow fast in the tropics, and it seems like yesterday you were pulling vines off the shrine of Mayaheine because it was yesterday. But new vines have grown, slender things, but it won’t take long for their tendrils to dig in. This is your work. Tend to the shrine, train with weapons, perform whatever services the priest assigns you.

This is the price of your freedom, in this city that was unknown to you until you found yourself here two weeks ago. This may be - in some unfathomable way - the first step on your road to redemption. And it leaves you time to study. You pull the vines down, and sweep the floor of the shrine. Everything is in place. Everything is as it should be.

You turn towards the door to see a middle aged halfling woman in a dark cloak standing in the doorway. She steps inside, but after a few steps, it is clear she is not going to the altar. She is coming to speak with you. She beckons to you to lean down, so she can speak with you more easily.

“I understand you are a scholar as well as a warrior,” she says. She lowers her eyes. “My name is Kora Whistlegap. My family needs the help of wise souls. Please come to the Rusty Pirate tonight at ten. I will make it worth your while.”

She turns to leave, and you see the priest standing in the doorway. She thanks him and he nods. He looks at you, and nods his approval. Perhaps this is the first step.

Your hand shakes a little. It hurts, but it hurts less than yesterday, and you can almost fully extend your fingers. The bruise has faded from midnight purple to a mottled green, with strings of dark blue. Nothing broken, then, which is more than Dante Tucker can say. He will surely order your death, but it may be weeks before he can speak. You felt bone breaking on the first punch. The second and the third made absolutely sure he got the message. You were no longer one of Tucker’s Kobolds.

The children run and scream and laugh and play. The nuns of Pelor that run the Dawnlight orphanage are, for the most part, kind. They are firm with the children, but never malicious. And none of these children are here because they came from someplace happy and safe. Why Tucker wanted to burn down an orphanage is a mystery, but you couldn’t do it. If you had been to a place like this, instead of falling in with thugs and thieves when you were a kid, who knows what you could have been?

Of course, with no boss to answer to, and no familiarity with life as an honest citizen, you find yourself something of a (grown) orphan yourself - adrift in the world with nothing to fill your time.

One of the nuns comes into the yard and points to you. The child she was with is no child, but a middle-aged halfling woman in a dark cloak approaches you. She offers a sly smile and takes a furtive glance around.

“So you’re the one who broke your boss’s jaw rather than burn this place,” she says softly, and smiles. “My name is Kora Whistlegap. My family needs the help of wise souls. Please come to the Rusty Pirate tonight at ten. I will make it worth your while.”

This game will be run using Legend in the Mist which is a rules light, narrative-forward, player-facing game not quite released. The link is to a demo, and the full ruleset will be available (I hope) in the next few months. It is simple enough that it can be easily taught. It is also simple enough that those desiring High Crunch will be sickened, possibly even nauseated.

Two things the system asks for: a certain amount of trust, and a certain amount of collaboration.

Trust that I'm not trying to beat you. I'm you're biggest fan. If I'm making things hard for your characters, it's in the service of telling a better story.

Collaboration, in that I'm hoping you are trying to tell a better story too, and not just trying to 'beat the game.' If you're that kind of player, go away.

We are going to call this Savage Tide, but with the understanding that I'm making some heavy revisions. There are places where I find it stupidly railroady, places where it's tedious, places where I want to claw my eyes out. And it's STILL probably my favorite AP. So, I'm going to try to fix the bits I don't like, and add some stuff I do like, and adapt it to a rule system with a radically different set of assumptions.

Two things I will say in advance: D&D/PF work on accumulation of xp, and there is a LOT of content (combat-heavy crawls) that exists to grant XP. I'm cutting all that, and sticking with what's important to move the story.

Second, railroading: APs are paths, so there's necessarily going to be a direction they want you to go. Savage Tide gets real railroady in places. I am going to sandbox it as much as possible, but I am working on the assumption that this AP is what we want to do, so we are going to be trying to pursue the main storyline. That said, if the players go in a 100% different direction on day one, I'm not going to force it.

The AP is set in Greyhawk, and my familiarity with Greyhawk is so-so at best. That said, the starting city presented in the Player's Guide is so well done, I don't want to mess with it, so we are sticking with it. It is going to be low-canon Greyhawk, though. Either we will have a player with an encyclopedic knowledge of Greyhawk who we can refer to for all sorts of questions of obscure lore that are way outside the scope of the AP, or we can wiki it, or just make it up. It is OUR Greyhawk, after all.

To begin with, each character has four themes. (if you have the preview, and wish to use the themebooks, confine yourself to the origin themes for now. There will be plenty of opportunity to develop.)

A THEME is a tag that describes a major aspect of your hero such as their temperament, backstory, or abilities, such as always attentive, goat herder of Milkrest, or gifted archer.

Each theme should have additional TAGS attached to it, representing its minor, related, or secondary aspects. Usually, a newly-created theme
has two more power tags (positive) and one weakness tag (negative).
Each theme also includes a QUEST, a goal or personal journey of your Hero that is related to this theme.

Tags are short descriptors (usually 1-3 words) that define important details about your Hero. They can describe almost anything including abilities, background, items, beings, resources, mental faculties, relationships, style, and more, as well as weaknesses, limitations, and flaws.

Your power tags should be useful. Ask yourself: "What kind of actions would this tag support?"

Your weakness tags should be limiting. Ask yourself: "What kind of actions would this tag hinder?" or "How or when would it cause problems for my Hero?"

Tags like clever or wizard or rich are broad, meaning they can be used in a wide variety of situations and actions. Because of this, they usually require an extra action to use. Specific tags like whirlwind slash or sleeping spell can be used directly, but only in appropriate situations, so they are more focused and reliable. Try to have a balance of broad, specific, and somewhere-in-between tags.

Your Quests should be clear. Most Quests fall into one or more of these categories:
• Your Wish: Something you long for or aspire to
• Your Truth: A statement you believe in and want to uphold
• Your Home: Something you endeavor regularly to preserve
• Your Question: Something you yearn to know above all
Ask yourself: "What could be a Milestone for this Quest?" and "What kind of actions would be considered Abandoning this Quest?"

You and the Narrator must have an understanding about your tags and Quests. What they represent and when and how they can be used. Agree in advance on what each means. Talk about which tags are directly helpful to an action and which are only relevant in an indirect or roundabout way. This will be important during play.

If you are interested, but feel completely lost by this, ask me questions! I am happy to help!