Blazing Sands campaign diary #2 - why'd it have to be snakes?

So continues my latest Pathfinder campaign based on Arabian fantasy. 

So, yeah, our undercover heroes had made a fair blunder by pretending to be overt racists, and now the city guard were involved. If Younis had removed his human disguise, the captain would have recognised him and they'd have probably got away with it (Younis having once served under him). As it was, the three were escorted out of the opium den and banned for life. Of course, there was still the matter of this possibly being the meeting place of the Black Viper, so naturally they spent the day scoping the place out. Coming up empty handed, they called it a night, Razeem and Younis going to visit the scholar Dabir who was translating the words on the sandstone. When they arrived they found Dabir fucked up, his falcon nuzzling him. He'd been attacked by a group of humans who had wanted the information on the tablet. Basically, through hasty translation, the tablet tells of the location of a legendary lost city of Kafib that vanished three thousand years ago. There were rumours the sultan had gained access to a genie and grew greedy and tyrannical. Nothing else is known. Not only that, they were looking for the whereabouts of a genie binder - an insanely rare kind of magician. Dabir knew of one in the Ivory City - one who had escaped the same cult as the PCs Razeem and Amir.

Cut to later and the players were on their way across the desert to hunt these guys. On their way they ran into some giant scorpions and a group of serpentfolk slavers, who had slaughtered a bunch of nomadic Sunriders. Only one remained alive, but was too frightened to act. Within a giant dragon skull cowered a group of manacled slaves. The players made short work of three of the serpentfolk (a fireball did it) and when the last wanted to parlay (two PCs can speak Aklo) Amir simply skewered her face with his glaive, leading to some nice morality roleplay between the group.

They were led by Kiri the sunrider to their camp in a ruin before the Sunriders, impressed with their handling of the serpentfolk, began leading them to their next destination: The Ivory City.

D20 fantasy political regimes

1. Warlockracy - governed by elite magic users. Non magic users tend to be poorer with low prospects.

2. Drakism - taxes are collected solely for a non-ruling dragon to stop it from destroying the city.

3. Hauntocracy - governed by ghosts of previous living leaders.

4. Delverism - only adventurers are able to vote or lead

5. Shamanism - governed by a shamanic psychopomp

6. Corpsocracy - only the dead have the ability to vote. Often overseen by a necromancer

7. Magi democracy - a random person is chosen to govern annually by a mysterious floating eye.

8. Golemonarchy - the monarch is a magical construct with sentience.

9. Doomocracy - government controlled by those most able to see into the future

10. Vancian communism - an equal society where people forget about their tyrannical ruler every morning.

11. Equinism - only horse owners can be part of government. Centaurs are revered.

12. Hydrocracy - usually in desert locations. The ones with the most access to water can rule.

13. Underocracy - people living underground are governed by unseen surface rulers, usually by letter or magical means.

14. Aviocracy - only winged people can govern. Non winged people live in sky slums.

15. Goblinism - ruled by the high Gob, the one who smells worst and has the wickedest laugh.

16. Infernalism - governed by the high priest who serves a patron demon. Eventually the demon devours the priest and a new ruler is selected.

17. Killocracy - once every ten years everyone who wants to rule is let out onto the wilderness and have 10 days to survive. The remaining person becomes the ruler.

18. Bluffism - only liars may rule, anyone found to be telling the truth is exiled.

19. Arboreal monarchy - the Gunto tree produces new green monarchs who die in 120 years in an event called the Withering.

20. Foolocracy - only the biggest village idiot is able to rule

Introducing Fortressmaze, the evolving dungeon project

It's coming up to nine years of Trollish Delver so I wanted to do something to celebrate. I'm kicking off a new blog project that may one day make it into print - an evolving megadungeon called Fortressmaze. This is basically an open source dungeon and I'll be asking you guys to get involved in its creation - from its history and internal geography to its inhabitants. I want Fortressmaze to become this living, breathing entity that can be plugged into your OSR game, with stats created for Swords & Wizardry.

What we currently know about Fortressmaze

- it's a structure that has yet to be mapped beyond the first ten floors. There are theories that it spans for hundreds, if not thousands of miles

- some magical scholars believe a dungeon of such magnitude is able to break through into other planes of existence

- there are villages and cities contained within, with their own governments and factions, mostly run by monstrous humanoids

- it has entrances around the world, and perhaps on other worlds

- the prevailing theory is that it was forged by a god to protect something of extreme value, perhaps something that could cause a paradigm shift

Look out for future Fortressmaze updates and polls on Google Plus to help create this massive dungeon.

The Gath of Burl

The Gath of Burl were spoken to life by the Ochre Wizards from words shaped like white string. They are human in appearance, with yellowed eyes and bat-like ears and their voices are like the ancient songs sung by dwellers of underworld.

The Gath of Burl are twenty in number, and none have yet perished. When they sleep, they slumber between the words of magical tomes. In the morning they lick the dust from old shelves and hum the somber melody of Yoharneth-Lahai, the god of little dreams and fancies.

Starting specialisms:
- Magical texts (Wits)
- Hearing (Wits)
- Singing (Ego)


Starting equipment:
- 1d6 shards
- Tome of Threading
- Marble eye

Ability:
Bookwalker - Gath can disappear into the pages of a book, where they can live quite happily and age at half the normal pace. While in a book they can completely read it in 10 minutes.

Blazing Sands campaign diary #1: Pretty racist

We've just concluded the first session of the new Pathfinder campaign I'm running called Blazing Sands. You can find background information here, but it's in the style of Arabian Nights.

The action kicked off with our heroes: Amir (Human Lore Warden), Younis (Elf Arcane Illusionist) and Razeem (Human Shaman) were on patrol in the spice district of the Grand Bazaar, when they came across a group of thugs racially attacking an orcish merchant. Words didn't seem to be working - the thugs were headstrong - so it came to a short scuffle which ended with two unconscious, one dead and two best up and surrendering.

After being carted back to the cells the PCs reported to Harun, the Sultan. Shortly after, an old man in rags burst in carrying a sandstone tablet with strange text on it. The man changed his visage to be Vizier Shar, who had been given the tablet by a desperate man who was apparently murdered by a dark spirit moments later. Younis determined that the stone was probably a couple of centuries old, but decided to find a scholar of ancient history for more information, taking a charcoal rubbing rather than the actual stone. At the Al Bidar college they found Daniel, who excitedly revealed it was written in Minean, a language not spoken for 3000 years. He said he needed a few days to translate.

The PCs continued their patrol, focusing on the meat district where the orcs often gathered. After some investigation, they found rumours that thugs had been attacking orcs, elves and halflings because they were emboldened by the apparent revel group The Black Viper.

On returning to the palace, they met with the jailer Maxima, a bloke built like a bear, who had been brutally interrogating the arrested thugs. He revealed a possible location of a Black Viper meeting place - Rhazza's opium den. They went and decided to disguise as civilians, and Younis as a human using illusion. The plan was to go in and act like racists in order to attract the attention of any Black Viper members. After insulting Rhazza, the half elf, they bought a room in the den and waited, the shaman sending out his scorpion, Anubis (who I gave a Birmingham accent, much to the dislike of the player) to scope the place out. Younis started to stumble into rooms, throwing around slurs like 'filthblood' to try and guage reactions from the humans there. This didn't exactly work out, as the session ended with Rhazza and a retinue of guards appearing in the tent.

The state of Quill in 2018

Quill: a letter-writing roleplaying game for a single player had a great 2017, winning an Indie RPG Award for best free game and growing with new supplements and contracts for translations.

I wanted to give a state of play for the game and what's coming in the future. 

Official supplements

- Quill: Love Letters - exactly what it says on the tin. Scenarios themed around love.

- Quill: Shadow and Ink - a Lovecraftian campaign about an evil family legacy. 

- Quill: White Box - brings Quill into a fantasy world. Create a class and go on adventures.

Third party supplements

- Quill: Coal and Parchment - based on Derek Kamal's Homes universe. 

- Quill Quest: The Warlord's Downfall - a campaign where you must recruit adventurers to save your kingdom. Written by Tim Snider of Cryptworld fame.

The future

For the time being, I'm not planning any new supplements until maybe Q4 due to another gaming obligation, but that's not to say that Quill will be dormant. There will be a printed German version out potentially this year, and I'll be creating an official printed English version. 

There's a really interesting project going on behind the scenes designed for an educational setting based on US political history, but I'll say no more on that for the moment. 

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded and donated to Quill. I never thought that it would become as popular as it has done, with the original game a platinum seller on Drivethrurpg.