
Prosperum |

Welcome to Zoralon, a world of magic and mystery! With the fall of the imperial house, the world’s greatest empire has fallen under the sway of an enigmatic prophet, while off the coast the Free Isles remain a bastion of independent merchant princes unfettered by creed or crown.
You have been chosen by one such prince to explore Thalis, a perilous and frozen land far to the north, where tales tell of rivers that glitter with diamonds and hills that teem with mithril and gold… …and of monsters, evil, and a deathly frost that swallows all.
You will meet new allies, make new enemies, and discover a dark force that threatens to destroy not only Thalis, but all of Zoralon.
So I've been thinking of starting an online campaign for PF2e (combat on Foundry VTT, noncombat on the boards) and tried my hand at a custom setting. The goal was for it to be close enough in tone and style to Golarion that every class and (almost) every archetype could find a natural home, but not simply be a predictable Find-Replace job. It also had to be something one person could maintain.
I've got some ideas for where the campaign could go, but I don't want to fall into the trap of writing the players out of the story or putting tons of development into things they will never see, so they're still tentative at this point.
The general outline is a scouting mission to a hyperborean continent taken on behalf of a merchant house with ties to the government, with the other continent having a strong viking and fey theme while the merchant houses possess an early Renaissance Italy feel to them (I'd tell more, but I don't want to spoil anything).
I'd like to know if anyone is interested in the setting, as well as which parts of the setting seem like they'd be fun to adventure in and therefore worth developing more.
And if there's anything confusing about the setting, please let me know so I can fix the documents before we go live!
Continental Map (not to scale; represents about a quarter of the globe)
Local Map (of campaign start area)
Player introduction (Character creation information and basic setting assumptions)
Geography (brief primers on the regions depicted on the map, a la PC1 pgs 31-34)
Deities (note that demigods and demon lords aren't listed here to help avoid spoilers).
Languages
The Planes (very brief primer)
Ancestries
Classes

Oceanshieldwolf |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

Looks like you’ve made quite the start on your campaign world. And I see you’ve posted the work in progress asking for feedback and how much is too much for new players - I think you’ve hit just the right amount of beginner information apart from a couple things (see below) - you’ve summarised enough of the world to make it fairly simple to get a handle on the geography and major powers.
I think the thing that creates inertia for me is having to read through everything and then decide if it is for me. Personally I find established worlds (Greyhawk, Golarion etc) while often problematic in many ways, much easier to slot into because they have literal decades of player inhabitation, wikis, campaigns, adventure paths, iconics and NPCs - there’s a sense of community among the players, no matter how imagined. As a player, I’d be reaching out into the dark unknown when trying to create threads of verisimilitudinous narrative potential, or just adding fairly rote and generic tropes. So I guess…the more you can add the better! Or, be completely open to players populating your world for you, which depending on how proprietarial you are could be a two-edged sword.
As for your campaign world it seems to have been designed, as you say, to allow any PF2 option to be played within it, which I applaud. I guess I’m curious what it is about any extant campaign world that is already designed with adventures, and for adventures to easily slot into that makes all this necessary? Or to put it another way, what about your world sets it apart from others? Note that ultimately I would run most adventures in my own world if I felt the plot/adventures/story would really benefit from a particular world.
The main thing I’m missing as a player is actually two things: A) a real granular blurb from an actual represenative of our employer and a small rundown of the local settlement we are either meeting in or have just left if we are en route via ship - this would really set the scene, and even if there are terms and words we don’t understand it would whet our appetites and inspire us to get a sense of what to play and;
B) a short commonly understood potted history of the world. What great events do almost every inhabitant of the world understand to have happened, and when. Who defeated who where to make what like it is today? Which people left where to go whereelse, and why? I get a little of this from reading the geography/nations writeups, but it is all gleaned from here and there.
Anyway, I hope this all gives you something to think about and provokes some further development!
Sadly, I have no desire to interact with Foundry, so I’m not the target market.

Prosperum |

I'm not wedded to using Foundry. I may have spent money on it, but I'm also aware of the sunk cost fallacy. If there's a simpler way to do combat that isn't pure Theater of the Mind (which tends to either shortchange or overpower rogues and battlefield control casters) I'm open to it.
If players want to contribute to worldbuilding, that's fantastic. Every little bit helps.
If they want to invent entire noble houses in, say, Zendani or Rivermeet (where the paragraphs you just read are literally the entirety of my thought process so far), they can, as long as they don't drastically alter the international political scene. The major players in Eredorn are more developed, but if they want to invent minor houses, guilds, and street gangs from scratch they absolutely can.
The main reason I'm not using Golarion is because there's no way for one person to be conversant with EVERY piece of official media regarding it, and I would never be able to shake the feeling of "doing it wrong" by, say, inventing demon lords or countries in Casmaron from scratch. I'd be second-guessing every decision and going back to the wiki every single session instead of just playing the game.
Thanks for your other suggestions. I suppose a brief précis of the starting city for session 0 would be in order. The first session was intended to be a meetup with the ship captain in a tavern, who would explain the mission and the PCs roles.
And a potted history isn't a bad idea, either.

Oceanshieldwolf |

@Prosperum -
* Maps: most of the games I am in here on the boards use Google Slides for maps. It has almost none of the functionality of Foundry or Roll20 or other VTTs but does allow for players to see the map and place and move their tokens. While no expert personally, I do understand the basics of setting up the map and creating the character icons so PM me if you need help.
* As for access to canon/content: the Pathfinder Wiki is populated with pages and pages and pages of content. It pretty much allows for all the players to be conversant with the milieu. I’m sure there are similar sites for Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms, though the former can be a bit hit and miss and the latter runs into definite “change by edition”. Essentially you are creating your own wiki, so no worried there…
* The meetup with the ship’s captain sounds good, and some level of motivation for each character (whether through their employer or employers) might help to start any threads of intrigue beyond the hyperborean exploration…
* Some players won’t need a shared understanding of the setting and are happy to just jump in. Others will need the whole-cloth to weave in and out of. I’m more in the middle - I can go with either, but am happiest with some understanding of the…playing area - with enough guidelines to work off. A sense of history helps with that - an understanding of great events or local history to riff off, root for, work against etc.

Oceanshieldwolf |

I'm a fan of Troma movies, so making a subrace of leshy that is the product of goblins' alchemical waste was a no-brainer.
And the "are the cat people cat-faced or people-faced" debate was settled with "¿por que no los dos?"
The Glimmer leshies do sound fun, both in the method of their creation and the possibilities of how they came to escape either their creators or who their creators sold them to.
And I applaud the Charismatic catfolk druids and the Intelligent Elven sorcerors. I homebrew many such substitutions - the concept of using different skills (and thus keying off different attributes) for Initiative pretty much makes such substitutions a no-brainer across the ruleset.

Oceanshieldwolf |

Oceanshieldwolf |

That is a good timeline to give players an idea of both recent and ancient history.
Does this mean that:
a) goblinkind only entered the world 250 years ago, and
b) hobgoblins then set up a despotate 5 years later, and
c) they were then functionally defeated 5 years after that in a process that corrupted the Kingdom of Karadol?

Prosperum |

Good catches. The hobgoblins are driven off in a strategic defeat that hobbles them beyond the point where they could mount another such assault, at least until the present. But they were not utterly destroyed, and the process of corruption that afflicted Karadol begins at that point but takes another decade to reach full flower.
But yes, goblinoids only entered the world within the last 250 years, meaning that many elves and a few very old dwarves remember a time before them, though to humans and halflings they seem to have been around forever and a day.

Oceanshieldwolf |

I’m not exactly reading through this exactingly, so apologies if I missed something:
Cornyria, as a former colony of Akarnennion, greatly resents the Akarnathi religion and as such tolerates wizards within its territory.
1. Are wizards persona non grata under Naralego? Or is this an old Akarnathi anathema? Have wizards always been distrusted in Akarnennion, or is the Preceptor….unwavering in his interpretations? Feels similar to the religious zealot who took over the capital city in the Game of Thrones TV show. Apologies, have not read those books…
2. What about Cornyria being a former colony makes them resent the religion of their former masters? I understand resenting the Akarnathi, but not the religion. Unless of course the two are fairly indistinguishable. I get that Akarnennion’s inception and rise were basically due to divine influence….

Oceanshieldwolf |

Reading a little further (Kingdom of Tomar) I’m getting a feel for the “magic is evil” vibes…
I’m most interested in information on the Kingdom of Karadol. Both Golarion (Cheliax) and the Midgard Campaign Setting (gnomish kingdom of Neimheim) have states that entered pacts with infernal powers, but I’m interested in your take. Thinking of submitting a Tiefling Summoner…

Prosperum |

The god Akarna initially supported Marathris's attempts to resurrect their father with arcane magic, and was the last of the First Ones to see the danger and bring his followers to safety. He blamed Himself exceedingly for the resulting cataclysm and proscribed arcane magic heavily in His Law of Justice.
While arcane magic is considered taboo in most nations where the First Ones are worshipped (and thus among most nations of the common races), heavy state repression is an Akarnennian trait, though the elven and dwarven nations take the taboo seriously enough to exile those who practice it.
Note that this prohibition does not apply to elementalist wizards and magi (who draw on the energies of the elemental planes rather than those used by Marathris), or sorcerers other than draconic or imperial sorcerers.
Bards, druids, kineticists, thaumaturgists, and even witches are accepted as part of the natural order, and wizards often attempt to disguise themselves as one of these other classes.
Summoners whose eidolon grants arcane spells (construct and dragon eidolons) are also unaffected, because the energy is mediated by an external power and thus qualitatively different from the energies Marathris attempted to use.
Obviously, though, being a demon or devil summoner raises eyebrows anywhere but Karadol, and it would be foolish to venture into the Akarnennian heartlands until you became powerful enough to repel the local constabulary.

Philo Pharynx |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

My character muse approves of your world. In a surprisingly quick turn, she came up with a stowaway leshy psychic.
What does one do when finding themselves with the corpse of a kobold psychic?
Apparently one enterprising goblin alchemist thought that it would be best to cut up it's brain and submerge it into an alchemical mix when creating a new leshy servant. The idea was to make something a little less stupid than the average. Perhaps one that could end up as a lab assistant.
Once the process was done, it should have resulted in it getting up and moving around. But it just lay there in it's jar. Seemingly alive, but utterly unresponsive. Disappointingly it was shelved for future analysis.
The experiment wasn't a failure, it just took longer to work than usual. Over the next few years a dreaming mind began to form in the jar of fermenting seaweed. This mind did have psychic abilities. It began scanning the minds of everybody in the area, picking up random bits of knowledge. Languages, concepts, all sorts of odd bits. At first each idea was separate, a confusing isolated concept. But as they collected, the mind began to see connections. Slowly a consciousness developed and these isolated parts became a whole.
But as the mind filled with knowledge, it found itself less able to read the thoughts of those around it. Eventually the sense dimmed to merely sensing the presence of minds nearby. But it had concepts to mull over and it could hear the comings and goings outside of it's window. (It's shelf was near the window to keep the experiment alive until the goblin could examine it.) This internal world was enough for a while, but it was beginning to reach the limits of it's internal life.
Keeping the window open was tempting to a nimble thief. (perhaps even a PC, which might change the next part) They took a number of things. Without alchemical knowledge, they didn't know what was valuable or not and took the jar of plant matter along with other odds and ends and some coin. And then the thief fled as he heard feet tromping up the stairs.
As he scrambled down the wall with his ill-gotten loot, he heard shouts from above and soon found vials of nasty alchemical creations raining down around him. The thief fled, but the cursing goblin and his burning cloak drew unwanted attention. Attention in the form of guardsmen.
Heading to the docks, the thief extinguished his cloak and hid in a pile of supplies to be loaded on a ship. When the sounds of pursuit dimmed, he escaped, not realizing that he left a sack behind. The bag was loaded into the hold with the other supplies.
While the sack and the hold were perfectly fine for what they did, neither allowed sunlight in. This was decidedly uncomfortable and so River emerged. The jar wasn't necessary anymore, but he took the sack and everything else in it as he went up onto the deck of the ship to seek the sun.
River of Thoughts
Leshy psychic 1 Subconscious: Precise discipline; Conscious: Unbound Step
Small, Leshy, Plant
Heritage seaweed leshy
Background magical experiment (senses)
Perception +4; darkvision, low-light vision, thoughtsense (imprecise) 30 feet
Languages Common, Draconic, Elven, Fey, Goblin
Deity Zethiss
Skills Academia Lore +6, Acrobatics +5, Arcana +6, Athletics +3, Crafting +6, Leshy Lore +6, Nature +4, Occultism +6, Religion +4, Society +6, Stealth +5, Thievery +5
Str +0, Dex +2, Con +2, Int +3, Wis +1, Cha +0
Items cold iron chunk, sack, 4 gp 9 sp, 9 cp
Thoughtsense (Imprecise) 30 Feet (illusion, mental, occult) The creature senses all non-mindless creatures at the listed range.
--------------------
AC 15 (16 w/ Mystic armor); Fort +5; Ref +5; Will +6
HP 16
--------------------
Speed 20 feet, swim 20 feet
Occult Psychic Spells DC 16, attack +6; 2 Focus Points 1st (1 slots) mystic armor, thoughtful gift[APG] Cantrips (1st) distortion lens[DA], mage hand, message, needle darts, phase bolt[DA], warp step[DA]
Ancestry Feats Leshy Lore[LOCG]
Skill Feats Additional Lore

Prosperum |

Quite interesting. Any idea when you'll start recruiting?
I'll need to finalize the player questionnaire first, as well as finish writing the outline for the campaign, which I've kept deliberately vague to leave room for improvising off the character backstories.
There's no firm deadline, but I'd be surprised if the game wasn't fully up and running by spring.

Prosperum |

I guess I’m curious what it is about any extant campaign world that is already designed with adventures, and for adventures to easily slot into that makes all this necessary?
I just realized I never answered this question.
A big reason I'm doing this rather than use Golarion is because the effort required to create a world from scratch causes it to stick in your brain the way someone else's world never really does. When I have an idea, I not only immediately know which Google Doc to go to, but which obscure paragraphs in other docs now need to be changed to update everything and keep the canon straight.

Oceanshieldwolf |

Oceanshieldwolf wrote:I guess I’m curious what it is about any extant campaign world that is already designed with adventures, and for adventures to easily slot into that makes all this necessary?I just realized I never answered this question.
A big reason I'm doing this rather than use Golarion is because the effort required to create a world from scratch causes it to stick in your brain the way someone else's world never really does. When I have an idea, I not only immediately know which Google Doc to go to, but which obscure paragraphs in other docs now need to be changed to update everything and keep the canon straight.
Yep, that all makes sense.
The only other feedback I would give is that I would call your “Geography” doc “States and Powers” or “Political/Regional” or “Nations and States” for while they do detail a bit of physical geography in each area they seem to be more…about kingdoms, nations and states.

Prosperum |

Is there anything about this player questionnaire that's unclear, confusing, or otherwise inappropriate?
And more importantly, is there anything missing that anyone thinks I should add?

Oceanshieldwolf |

I don’t particularly like thinking too far ahead buildwise, but your last questions seem innocuous enough. Apart from that, it all looks ok. Maaaaybe something about how much you want the GM to push things like 0 - “hold my hand all the way to school” all the way to 10 - “don’t even think about nudging us toward that secret door or I’m out, I don’t care if I’m the last active player and all the skill party members have been botted the last 8 months, 3 weeks, 4 days and 2 hours 28 seconds.”

Prosperum |

With the questions about day and time, are you thinking of realtiming this? I'm pretty busy with six games every two weeks, weekly movies night, a full-time job, and caretaking my elderly mother.
I haven't decided yet. I'm leaning towards it at least for combat encounters simply because that's the only way I could integrate Foundry (short of leaving my computer open for the entire week), which I'm leaning towards because there isn't really any way to do fog of war or lighting on Google Slides.
Plus when people have all week to take their turns they tend to become superhumanly savvy tacticians for some reason.
But if I have to drop it to find enough players, I'll drop it. We'll see how the recruitment thread goes. And for noncombat scenes that take place on the boards I could care less regardless, as long as nobody is feeling left out due to spotlight hogging.

Prosperum |

A teaser for the first session...
The ads had been plastered all over town, particularly by the docks, their professional print and ubiquity trumpeting their backing by serious people with serious money.
“House Dandolon seeking able-bodied crew for survey expedition to far north. Traveling by sail on Hellion’s Cry. Wilderness or nautical experience preferred, combat experience required. 5 gold signing bonus, 500 gold on completion. Leaves: 1-15-870, return expected: late 871. See Captain Ferrino at the Pink Conch, 8pm, 1-9-870”
Each ad had contained a small map pointing to a tavern at the edge of the red-light district, near the catfolk quarter. After sundown, it became a rough part of town, and you had kept a tight grip on your belongings and tried to look fierce as you strode the darkening streets.
After passing well beyond the district’s main hubs of activity (as well as most potential customers), you eventually arrive at a modest two-story wooden building with a wraparound stone patio outfitted with wooden tables designed for outdoor dining. They stand empty, as the only light source for quite a distance is the feeble light emanating from the large glass window, through which you can spy a booth and a few small tables, only one of which is lit.
The occasional yowls off in the distance inform you that you are nearly to catfolk territory, and the design of the building and its distance from any other structure tells you this was clearly once the house of someone who valued their privacy but left when the old shantytown further down the street became home to prowling, yowling Amurri. Whoever thought this would be a good place to open a tavern is utterly incompetent at business.
Upon entering the building, you discover the place to be plain but clean. Seventy feet by forty, the main room hosts a half dozen round dining tables lit by mica chips of everlight occupying the left side of the room, while the right remains largely open space, save for two booths—a large, somewhat lit one along the south wall, and a smaller, barely lit alcove in the southeast corner in which a rough, gruff human man lies sprawled in a stupor upon the cushions. An everlight was obviously once mounted in the ceiling over the right side of the room, but its fixture now lies vacant, leaving the small dance floor in gloom. An oaken bar stretches for twenty feet along the northeast wall beside a side exit, and in the northwest corner two wooden doors lie wreathed in shadow.
The staff consists entirely of women. Anywhere else, they would be stunning beyond compare, but by the standards of the Free Isles they are merely somewhat above average. Their tight clothing and improbable (possibly even alchemically-enhanced) figures make you question if “tavern” is indeed the proper description of the Pink Conch’s business model. One is mopping the floor, another is dusting the tables, two are chatting with each other in low voices across the bar, and the last is standing attentively next to the only sober customers in the room. One is a human male of approximately thirty-five years of age whose choice of hat and air of command indicate he is the Captain Ferrino whom you seek. Scattered around the booth are a small cluster of curious characters you can only assume are fellow would-be crewmen.
“It’s five after, I reckon that’s the last one,” Captain Ferrino booms out as you round the corner, nodding in your direction. His voice is a sonorous baritone perfect for being heard over howling winds. He turns to the server and smiles. “I’ll have a bowl of potato soup and a mug of dwarven stout.”
He smiles at the server and informs you that her name is Jenissa. He motions you into the booth, and you take a seat as the other respondents place their orders. When she reaches you, you tell her…
[What do you order?]
She nods cheerfully and saunters away, stepping through one of the doors in the corner that presumably lead to the kitchen. The raven-haired member of her crew continues her steady progress with the mop.
Ferrino levels a penetrating gaze on each of you in turn before beginning.
“For hundreds of years, tales have told of a land far to the north where rivers glitter with precious stones and the hills teem with mithril and gold… A land known by the name of Thalis.”
He pauses and smirks.
“I know what you’re thinking: if it were true somebody would have stripped it bare by now. Or my flea-bitten plebeian arse would have at least heard of the damned place by now.”
He leans forward and continues.
“The reason nobody has ever settled the place to plunder it properly is because all who have tried it have died.”
He allows the silence to hang a beat too long before resuming.
“The problem is the virloga. A primitive race of orca-men, they patrol the iceberg-choked waters around Thalis and, with their sharp spears and their shamans’ command of wind and wave, destroy anyone who dares approach.”
The server, together with one of her friends, both struggling to hide their interest in the conversation, return with pewter platters bearing booze. While not cold per se, it is at least cooler than the surrounding room.
“Your food will be ready any minute now,” Jenissa says, and returns to the kitchen with her coworker in tow. Meanwhile, the one with the mop is getting uncomfortably close to the drunkard lying passed out in the alcove.
As they stride off, Captain Ferrino takes an exploratory sip, finds its strength to his liking, and motions the rest of you to your drinks as he resumes his tale.
“So, if these fearsome orca-men chase off or kill anyone who tries to get close, how do we know anything about the interior? Good question! The answer is that once every hundred years, in the months when spring changes to summer, the warriors and shamans of the virlogan people seemed to migrate somewhere. We don’t know where—no one has ever seen it, wherever it is—and they apparently left the females and pups behind, along with a reduced guard that is rarely if ever seen above the surface and which can be bypassed on a small ship.”
He takes another sip.
“This absence lasts for roughly a season, and it just so happens to be the season when the ice at the southern tip of the island is thin enough for wooden ships to brave it. It’s enough time to traverse the coast or even venture inland for brief stints, but never enough to perform a proper survey, let alone dig a proper mine. The creatures were always back by the autumn equinox, and the Evil Ones take whoever was foolish enough to stay. Anyone who hadn’t set off for home by the first day of the ninth month was never heard from again.”
He leaned back, causing the red leather cushions of the booth to squeak.
“Almost everything we know about Thalis comes from the writings of ibn Rashad, sha’ir and chronicler from Abu Samsa, who visited there two hundred years ago and brought back a diamond the size of a child’s fist and a nugget of mithril weighing almost forty pounds. The current sultan, Haddesh, wears crown jewels made from those finds to this very day.”
He pauses for effect, amused by the amazement on your faces.
“Last year, unseasonal cyclones made it too dangerous for anyone to approach the island over the spring or summer. Daredevil explorers the world over despaired as they lost the one chance in their lifetime of striking it rich before the virloga returned.”
Then Ferrino leans forward, a strange expression on his face.
“Except they never did.”
He pauses for a solid seven seconds, letting this revelation sink in. As you all lean forward, hanging on his every word, he smiles.
“It’s been over three months, and not only have they not returned, but there’s been no sign of any of them. No reserves, no females, no pups.”
“This presents an unbelievable opportunity, if things are what they seem. Mithril is much, much stronger per unit weight than almost any other metal, so siege cannons casted from it could withstand powder loads and grain sizes no other metal can match. Of course, no one has ever collected enough mithril in one place to cast an entire siege cannon from it before, let alone a fleet of them. If House Dandolon could do so, the Forgewrights could craft weapons capable of punching through the walls of Nendasta like a hot knife through butter. Those bastards would never think of attacking us then.”
The mere mention of the rival island’s capital city makes Perrino’s lip curl in distaste.
“Of course, that’s putting the cart before the horse. The best diviners at the Scrivener’s Collegium have been investigating for weeks, and although we can’t be sure where the virloga are, we know they’re gone and have no indications that they will return.”
“Now, I’m sure that anybody who could walk the streets when the Thief Takers are out and about and not get mugged is either very tough or very lucky, both of which would serve us well if we were to employ you. However, out of operational concerns, I will need to know which is which before I hire you. So, starting on the left and going clockwise, I want each of you to tell me your name and explain why you think you’re qualified to come… on… the…”
As he was speaking, the raven-haired girl had finally run out of floor not blocked by the drunkard, and had reluctantly tapped him awake. A muffled back and forth carried on for several seconds until the server drew herself up and said haughtily, “Vanira isn’t working tonight, and I don’t do that sort of thing.” As Perrino trailed off, she turned around and made to leave. Angered, the drunk staggers to his feet and grabs her around the waist, causing her to shriek…
To be continued...

Erryll Reyven |

Updated the questionnaire significantly
Just a thought Prosperus, but you could actually aggregate all of these links into your Profile info, for the moment, at least until you had a Game Info tab ready for the actual campaign,
Wanted to through that out there because eventually there will be enough posts here that both new & old players will want to be able to take everything in at a glance.
Awesome work btw