The Hiding of Sasserine (SPOILERS?)

[GVDammerung]

Among the Greyhawk cognescenti there have been something of an uproar over the "hiding" of Sasserine by the Sea Princes. I wish to suggest this is a vast overreaction. I believe I know how they did it.

If the active agent were said to be, not the Sea Princes, but the Scarlet Brotherhood, the problem would largely disappear. I suggest this is precisely what accounts for the hiding of Sasserine -

The Sea Princes were able to "hide" Sasserine with the conivance of the Scarlet Brotherhood. Consider:

1) Generally, the SB had people in place throughout the Flanaess and might have had "spies" who could have a) "infiltrated cartographer guilds and libraries," and b) "bought off or murdered" ship captains;

2) The SB overthrew the Sea Princes in a night during the Greyhawk Wars, suggesting they had for some long period positioned people in deep cover positions throughout the Hold of the Sea Princes and had an obvious long term interest and plan for the area;

3) The SB presents itself in an open and friendly way in Sasserine (Dungeon 139 at p. 51) but also maintains a secret presence (Dungeon 139 at p. 53 (House of Violets entry)).

That the SB might have cooperated with the Sea Princes to "hide" Sasserine, to save it for itself and the Sea Princes, who would be overthrown, is not unreasonable. Under this theory all goes according to Brotherhood plan, more or less - the Hold is overthrown and the SB now looks to Sasserine, the more so since operations in the Hold have hit a rough patch.

I suggest this will be revealed to be the story behind the "hiding" of Sasserine. Not so far fetched after all, I think.

[waltero]

Their plan was so clever as to even fool the staff of Dungeon. JJacobs has said elsewhere on the boards that the four-part map in Dungeon last year has Sasserine in the wrong location vis-a-vis Cauldron.

[GVDammerung]

waltero wrote:

Their plan was so clever as to even fool the staff of Dungeon. JJacobs has said elsewhere on the boards that the four-part map in Dungeon last year has Sasserine in the wrong location vis-a-vis Cauldron.

Yes. By 80 miles. North as it happens. Which correction addresses not at all the point that having the Sea Princes, without further explaination "hide" Sasserine makes little sense in terms of the Sea Princes' abilities as spelled out within the Greyhawk campaign. Simply put, they do not have the ability.

The solution is then one of three alternatives -

1) Paizo didn't do its homework, favored by the majority of GHers, it seems;
2) The Sea Princes have heretofore unknown capabilities; in which case it would be useful to have such explained; or
3) There is an external agency involved, my preferred explaination.

While my Scarlet Brotherhood (see Op) hypothesis is not the only possible external agency, it is the one that makes simplest sense to me. Perhaps there is another? I'd be interested in the details. So far, I've seen or heard nothing better.

[James Jacobs]

In hindsight, it probably would have been better to simply not try to explain why Sasserine didn't appear on any maps of Greyhawk until recently, but I felt it was better to throw something out there to explain things. At the time, people seemed to be pretty concerned about why "no one knew" about Sasserine.

In any event, the exact method by which Sasserine was hidden away by the Sea Princes is kept fairly vague. It certainly makes sense to me that an external agency played a major role in making it happen, but since Sasserine's a backdrop for Savage Tide and not a hard-core Greyhawk expansion, that bit of fringe information is not dwelt upon.

If the concept of the Sea Princes hiding away Sasserine causes more problems than it solves, it's probably best to toss that bit out entirely. It's close enough to the edge of the map that it's all good... and in any case, the assumption that there aren't MORE thngs at the edges of the map is, in my opinion, contrary to the spirit of the setting in the first place.

[Shroomy]

As someone whose knowledge of Greyhawk canon approaches zero (if it isn't in the LGG, on Wikipedia, or included in a Dungeon adventure, I don't know it), I thought the sudden appearance of Sasserine and Cauldron as presented in Issue 139 made a lot of sense, :)

[Peruhain of Brithondy]

Chacun a son gout.

I guess I was one of those who felt the hiding of Sasserine was a touch far-fetched, partly because I'm not sure why it's necessary--Sasserine is just another one of those faraway and mysterious places that ships from the Flanaess visit now and then, and sailors tell sea-stories about in the alehouses of Hardby and Gradsul. Who knows if it really exists or not, outside the imagination of a few ale-sodden sailors? A few ship captains have the place on their charts, but it's too remote and too small for most rulers in the Flanaess to take note of.

Sasserine is remote, but it's also close enough that it would be hard to keep secret. With at least occasional expeditions launched from Keoland to the Amedio Jungle region (Matreyus Expedition, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan), it seems like more than a few assassinations and purloinings of charts would need to happen to make a city of 15,000 located a few hundred miles from Gradsul, and clearly visible from the sea if the artwork is to be trusted, disappear. Maybe if someone cast a giant illusionary effect to hide the city and scare ships away, the plan might work.

So if I run STAP in Greyhawk (which I may not do), Sasserine will not have been hidden by the agency of any particular group, but it's existence will be obscure knowledge for residents of the Flanaess, DC 25 on bardic knowledge unless you're from the Hold of the Sea Princes or the Scarlet Brotherhood, maybe DC 20 if you're from Gradsul.

[James Jacobs]

Giant illusions to cover an entire city seems WAY over the top for Greyhawk. My advice: just ignore the whole "hidden city" thing, or even better, have it happen but not work. Sure, they erased Sasserine from some maps, but everyone knows it was there anyway.

In any event, Sasserine being hidden or not doesn't impact the Savage Tide Adventure Path in any real way. So either choice works.

[erian_7]

It's worked out for me in Mystara as I replaced the Sea Princes with the Empire of Thyatis. The 600 year old Imperials are definitely powerful enough to make Sasserine difficult to find, and it's over 1600 miles from the mainland to Sasserine (on the continent of Davania)...

[J PAslawski]

I thought the whole- hidden city bit was kinda lame. I mean, here is a wealthy city with ties to several major gods. where are the trading companies getting their goods from? where do they sell theirs? you can't hide a town without a quarentine. I could see people spreading rumors that the city was recently destroyed by plague, or that some horrible beast was prowling the waters near the trade routes- so only the craziest sailors risk it.

[Stebehil]

The good old rumour machine is probably the best idea: Sailors are a superstitious lot (probably rightly, with all the sea monsters...), and if it is told often enough that there is a disease in that city, or some nefarious supernatural plots going on (sailors disappearing, whole ships lost to monsters), then average sailors won´t come close to the "cursed city". Thus the Sea Princes might get exclusive trading territories, and the SB might just exploit this. Don´t underestimate the power of rumours, especially if solid news are difficult to come by.

Stefan

[Brock Collins]

I may be mistaken, but isn't there a city on the Chultan Peninsula in the Forgotten Realms that was, until very recently, hidden from general view by massive illusion spells?

I haven't kept up with the history of Greyhawk, but because of this Chultan city I didn't bat an eye when I read that Sesserine was hidden. It adds a sort of mystique to the place that's good for ambiance.

FWIW, I also agree that, by the maps, Sessarine is so far away that it might as well be a figment of the imagination except to the Scarlet B'hood and the Sea Princes.

[Lilith]

Brock Collins wrote:

I may be mistaken, but isn't there a city on the Chultan Peninsula in the Forgotten Realms that was, until very recently, hidden from general view by massive illusion spells?

Mezro, I think.

Somethink that might be a good "flavor" intro, is having a map that does show the location of Sasserine, but only when the map is held under the light of the moon (or the sun), or during a Holy Day of Wee Jas. Who knows what other locations might be revealed on such a map?

[J PAslawski]

illusions are one thing- mouths are another. merchents WANT people to be able to come to their town- so having it hidden won't work really believibly. also- there have been some changes in the church heirarchy right? - how do these people know about sasserine.

" And in closing my children, let us pray for brother Timothy, who will be leading the congregation of our sister church in the city whose name and location are unknown"

[erian_7]

Keep in mind the mercantile, clerical, and government entities have been spending the last ten years rebuilding. Before that time, there wasn't a lot of trading (for instance) in the city.

[James Jacobs]

One thing to keep in mind is that while Sasserine was under the rule of the Sea Princes... it was NOT a healthy city. Its resources were more or less savaged and stolen by the Sea Princes (and probably behind the scenes by the Scarlet Brotherhood). What merchants DID exist in the city more or less existed to serve the overlords of the city. Which meant a lot of Sasserine's citizens ate stale bread and tepid swamp water for several generations.

[J PAslawski]

But you can't forget that churches have chains of command- and magic. Communications are going to be happening so ofter that at least to those churches- the city will be known and one of those gods is known as "the wanderer" something tells me that he might put Sasserine on the maps his priests make. Unless all the churches on the city were bought off...

[GVDammerung]

Over on the Canonfire GH messages boards, this topic is being hotly discussed and I want to share what I think is THE best solution to "hiding" Sasserine I've seen. The poster is Prochytes and, in a nut shell, he suggests Sasserine was hidden by the use of epic truename magic from Wotc's Tome of Magic. Here is the relevant parts of his post from Canonfire:

***Two riffs on the "hiding of Sasserine":

1. The Sea Prince of old was not trying to "hide" Sasserine. He was trying to "unname" it. The city had incurred his displeasure, so he actualized his wrath by striking out written references to it. I am envisaging a procedure here something like the Roman damnatio memoriae or the following bit from the wonderful catalogue of the winds of the desert in The English Patient:

Quote:
"There is also the ------, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it."
. . .

2. A more grandiloquent take on this is that the effacement of Sasserine's name from written sources was a necessary ritual preliminary to an epic spell aimed at deleting Sasserine's Truename from the Language Primaeval. The Sea Prince (still angry at the city but, in this scenario, probably a real nutjob) was intent upon erasing the town from reality overnight. This enterprise failed, of course, but a garbled version of what he was about entered the folk-lore. Hence, again, the current orthodoxy.

A nice twist on this could be that, with the right caster, the spell might actually have worked - and the fragmentary notes for it are still somewhere in the Hold of the Sea Princes. Something for one's Sasserine PCs to face when they finish the Adventure Path and go Epic, perhaps... ***

IMC, I'm adopting this as the cleanest fit with the text, absent further revelations in the AP.

[Heathansson]

That's cool as all getout.

[James Jacobs]

Unnaming Sasserine is an excellent fit, and certainly meshes nearly perfectly with what I was going for in the backdrop.

And again, the Hiding/Unnaming of Sasserine is a minor element that doesn't impact the Savage Tide arc, so nothing done with this will impact the campaign's plot in any way.

[Hideously Deformed]

James Jacobs wrote:

And again, the Hiding/Unnaming of Sasserine is a minor element that doesn't impact the Savage Tide arc, so nothing done with this will impact the campaign's plot in any way.

Hunh. It's almost like you're saying that the hiding of Sassarine is a MINOR ELEMENT (hint hint) that does NOT IMPACT (wink wink) the Savage Tide arc. Oh well, I guess we can't drop the issue, and *must* beat this dead horse to a pulp (nudge nudge).