The Empires

The Empires derivative common name for a fluid cultural area formally known as the Commonwealth
Characterised by ruins. People living out of the glory of the past, shattered by a tepid war to claim the seat of the Autarch. The succession war has carried on in its current state for generations, an amount of time so great that the common people don't think of it as a war, rather just the state of things.

The outside world knows them as mercenaries and adventurers. This blasted land produces them seemingly without end, the weary and the war-hungry, stumbling out of the dust looking for what they cannot find here.

There are more cities than this. The Great City was vast, stretching from horizon to horizon, so old that it's docks now sit far inland as the sea retreats from her. But this is some examples of her remnants.

The Empire and its neighbours

Link to the big version

Language
They speak a non-gendered language. This is cause for embarrassment when among foreign people, as they default to referring to everyone as women, and have great trouble differentiating gender linguistically. Possibly the source of the belief that Empiric mercenaries refer to everyone as women because of barbarian arrogance and a desire to demean other warriors as weak, but it's merely a matter of linguistic confusion.

Roads
There are extensive roads between the cities, but they are closed by order of the last Autarch. In disrepair and patrolled by ulans, who have royal writ to claim any belongings of trespassers). They are dangerous and avoided by all.

Ulans stalk the highways

Example City-States

Great Lady's house

White Ape City
Ruler: The Mighty Opener, Soul of Darkness,

If it were not redundant to call any city among the empires "ancient" White Ape City would earn that moniker. Temple city to the Great Lady Under Earth and at its highest peak her own residence and, by relation, entrance to the underworld.

Though not the most populous, it is opulent. Even modest citizens can live among the carven arches and endlessly repeating grotesques depicting scenes from the House of the Great Lady.

The city gains its name from the intelligent white gorillas that are allowed to lope around the city. They are considered to be guides to the underworld and contribute to the city's safety. Most people are hesitant to risk harming or angering them.

Carnifex
Ruler: The Carnifex
A cold and blasted hill, honeycombed with tunnels and cells. When the wind blows at the right angle and with enough spite it makes the city-hill moan with a thousand hopeless voices.

The wealthiest citizens live at the bottom of the hill in dark wooden houses, huddled together against the wind and noise. As you travel further and further up the mound they become poorer and poorer. The worst wretches live alongside the prisoners kept in the few functional cells left in the vast tunnels.

At the very top is the house of the carnifex and her apprentices. Masked and silent, she rules from on high. Her sword is the sum of the law, pray her masked agents do not take you in the night for breaking the unspoken law.

Gateway of Gods
Ruler: The Masterful Keeper of Gods

The twin rivers that flow through the Empires are the remit of The Flood-Storm, a god both OF and which IS the river system. The Flood-Storm ensures that the seasonal floods and other equally important river activities remain in place.

You will find the House of the Flood-Storm here, at Gateway of Gods, sitting atop the antiquated system of gates and channels that has the power to withhold and unleash the rivers. It's priesthood has evolved around its arcane operation, with the Keeper of Gods as its high priest, and bodily representative of the Flood-Storm when she is needed. At her command the waters were withheld and mountains flooded, thus both the White Tree Mire and Concourse of Copper was formed.

Gateway of Gods

The Gate of the Sun-Child
Ruler:  The Yellow Empress, the Power Perverse

The Gate of the Sun-Child is believed to be the closest point to the sun as it crosses the sky on its way to the underworld to determine the fate of the dead. At no other place is the Sun-Child's numinous power more apparent.

A caste of column builders call this city-state home. They mine the fine white stones from their quarries and fashion them into taller and taller pillars, upon which the wealthy clamber in order to be closer to the Sun-Child. Taller and taller columns require more and more advanced and elaborate constructions, all in order to prove the godliness of its owner and to allow them to look down upon others.

The construction of these pillars drives the city to expand and plunder.

City of the Emerald Throne
Ruler: The Amaranthine Vizier

Before the Gate of Gods redirected the Slow River, the Emerald Throne was home to only it's ruler and her staff. The great basalt ziggurat of the Emerald Throne is the seclusium of  The Amaranthine Vizier, who some suspect is THE Amaranthine Vizier, who advised the last Autarch and was suspected of being the true power behind the throne.

Since the arrival of the Slow River and its flood waters, others have come, flocking to live in the shadow of the ziggurat. Food is abundant and rival cities are fearful of the Vizier, who for now has seen fit to stay in her seclusium pursuing whatever it is brought him here to begin with.

Like this, but imagine cranes as well

Fort of the People at the Edge
Ruler:  The Manifold Gatherer

Sat on the edge of the Concourse of Copper, the starved river.

Once a vast port stretching for miles along its bank, now its inhabited area is largely confined to still operable loading cranes and the buttresses that once formed the solid walls of the river bank.

They maintain fields in the rich, damp soil of the riverbed, producing a vast surplus of food. In addition, they are the largest producer of Yellow Sun-Child, a thick, sometimes viscous, tea enjoyed by all levels of society. It numbs the senses and mouth, to which can be attributed the characteristic drawl and slow speech that foreigners associate so closely with the Empires.

The Impregnable City

Ruler: The Voluminous Shepherd, Eater of Hearts

Its name refers to the metaphorical nature of the city, rather than a measure of its assailability. Indeed, it has been taken and sacked many times since the beginning of the succession. Rather it is a statement regarding its origin as the necropolis of the Great City, which of course lies splintered every which way can be imagined.

Death can not be overcome, of which the residents are grimly aware. Their livelihoods are found in the acceptance and proper treatment of corpses. From all corners of the world people send their dead here. Great caravans arrive carrying dead kings from lands most people have never even heard of, all to be interred, burned, dismembered, preserved or otherwise attended by the citizens of the necropolis. Their knowledge of burial rites is immense and eerily up to date.

You can often spot the tell-tale rheumy eyes* of a member of the polis under foreign garb, just as they slip off the caravans and melt into the crypts and laboratories to report what they have learned. Ostensibly adding to their professional knowledge, but those ears can't help what else they may learn.

*Dark Water Corpse Dust, another source of wealth, is not good for the sinuses

Seven Orchard City
Ruler:  The Green Lion

Seven orchards for seven families. Not long ago it was simply Orchard City, and for miles at its approach you would be met with the sweet smell of pear blossoms, date palms row by row, tended by the armies of fieldhands.

Now there is little land left, the rows of trees are drowned in the White Tree Mire, a gift from the Gateway of Gods. As they give, they take away, or give so much you can take no more.


The Bear Tower
Ruler: The Unconquerable Monster, the Hidden Guest of the Bear Tower

The bear tower is a crumbling spire at the terminus of a meandering and shattered wall, at places scores of metres thick, clad in metal.

The Bear Tower itself takes in young children and raises them to become animal tamers. More than mere tricks, they can break any animal and produce extraordinary feats. At some point in life each tamer takes a lion or bear in marriage, after which they shun human lovers.

Under a member of the Bear Tower an animal will be tested and either broken or moulded into a focused machine, bent to whatever end it was intended for. Many die or are too wounded to continue and are thrown from the tower to be collected by the people living in the shacks and shanties below.

The Ven visit the House Absolute with diplomatic gifts of laser guns

The House Absolute
The seat of governance. Its palatial gardens are of such arcane and perfect design that those searching for it uninvited are unlikely to stumble across it.

Since the succession crisis the halls of the House Absolute have been a petty game of intrigue and jockeying for position. The rulers of the cities come in and out of favour among the courtiers, find themselves invited to the garden parties and dances less and less often.

Somewhere in it's halls is kept the Iron Sceptre of governance, left carelessly on the throne. No one would think to take it by force, only a man who believes he is Autarch, and with the will to make others believe it, can even find it. None so far have done so, regardless of their bombastic claims otherwise.



















Neighbours

Yongardy

A vibrant port city, teeming with humanity. Famous for its judicial system (fairest in all the lands) and being the place to stop for any respectable trade ship darting along the Friendly coast between it's grim storms and spasmodic squalls. Its enormous fortified harbour is a joyous sight, and the last one they will see in a good while for those headed north. No major ports exist in the Empires, where the coast has retreated from the ancient cities and been left to rough border towns to handle. And further, Calipyg's ports are strictly regulated by their mushroom overlords, each barrel and hold inspected and logged on entry and exit. Such a burden of time has meant that most skip it's once bustling waters and continue onto the frozen spires of Vornheim beyond the mountains.

Trade has made it rich, but it's cavalry has made it safe. The city sits in the corridor between the Yellow Kingdoms and the Empires, a plain occupied by nomadic Grass tribes (a rough and violent people), kept in check by decree of the governor and the court of directors. Dragoons are sent out regularly to pillage and burn the roving villages to keep them fearful and to ensure they never grow numerous enough to threaten the Fairest City.

Latter Kairnlaw (revised and expanded)

The Kairns came to the Kairnlaw in two major waves of migration separated by an interval of about four hundred years. It was the northwest corner of the continent that received both influxes, for east of the Ikon Mountains luxuriant grasslands stretch practically unbroken for three hundred leagues to the coast. This gently rolling land, thickly braided with rivers, is the realm called Prior Kairnlaw. It is superlative grazing land. The Kairns who held it first were loath to share it with their late-coming cousins, and indeed, did not do so, for their cousins—more numerous and hungrier than they—drove them out of it, and into the western plateaus, the colder, rockier, more arid half of the continent known today as Latter Kairnlaw.

Kine Gather lies in Latter Kairnlaw not far from the Bone Axe Mountains, a northern branching of the Ikons. Like its sister-cities of this area—White Lick, Crossgulch, Bailey’s Yards—it grew from a cattle market on a river, a rough-and-ready sort of place where stock could be auctioned and shipped by enterprising men unwilling to endure tedious inquiries into their herds’ provenance or prior ownership. And, again like their neighbours, Kine Gather’s citizens retain even in the moderate prosperity they currently enjoy all the predilections of their city’s founders: raiding, cattle-rustling, passionate quarrels over boundaries, and blood-feuds.

Most Latter-Kairns share these traits, and this is understandable. Their sparse-grown, harsh-wintered terrain compels their herdsmen to arduous seasonal pilgrimages to keep their animals in pasture. Only the hostility of that land to any other economy—combined with what might be called a very stubborn cultural spirit—keeps them at their historic trade. And yet, for all their pains, they can expect to raise only maculate hornbow and dwarf-ox with any success, while in Prior Kairnlaw both these breeds thrive and four others besides: palomino hornbow, crucicorn, plodd and jabóbo (of which last, more presently). If scarcity alone had not made cattle thieves of the Latter-Kairns, their enduringly bitter sense of dispossession would have done it. Inevitably they have robbed one another, but they have always preferred the richer plunder and the prestige among their fellows to be won by raiding their homeland’s usurpers.

Nift the Lean

The Greater and Lesser Kairnlaws may claim to have many differences, but religion is not one of them. A pragmatic people, they always know what God to speak to for every eventuality. They're not so arrogant to assume that any one being can solve all their problems, so much so that even converts to Vorn or Qadhi will be sure to stay on good terms with the local Gods. It would be a very brave citizen of the Kairnlaw  who would go on a journey without a quick word to The Bartlet, or visit his mistress without an offering to Judith.

Holy men of the Kairnlaw are bottomless fonts of knowledge regarding who to appeal to at any specific time. They are one of the few people who are equally welcome in Greater and Lesser, respected for their deep knowledge and god-given skills.

Gods of the Kairnlaw

To gain the ability to meaningfully interact with the Kairnic pantheon one must demonstrate intimate knowledge of their vast family. Every time the player creates a fully realised god for the pantheon they have a 50% chance of gaining the right to ask one favour per day. To use said favour they must complete the appropriate invocation.

Loose these powers if on water (temporary), since the gods avert their eyes.

Our Lady Judith, Sister in Sin, patron of cheating husbands.

Many a man has offered up a prayer to her while creeping out a forbidden paramour's window. However her attention is fickle and she is prone to allowing them to be caught by enraged husbands and vengeful wives. In polite circles a wayward husband is said to be "visiting Aunt Judith"

Invocation: Burn a small amount of your pubic hair. One strand would do.

Gift: Those who have talked to Judith can lie utterly believably to women, getting them to believe the most ridiculous things. However 1 in 6 times it will be an embarrassingly awful lie and get you immediately caught out.

The Bartlet, patron of sore feet and wasted journeys.

No one is quite sure why The Bartlet is named so but they continue to put up a prayer to them whenever they set out their door. The Bartlet is typically pictured as an anthropomorphic cat with a permanent look of disappointment, sitting by the roadside. These images are almost exclusively found in remote roadside inns.

Invocation: Throwing a shoe over your left shoulder while offering up a prayer.

Gift: Ensure an unpleasant journey on a chosen party, unwanted pursuers perhaps. This help is oblique: sore feet slowing them down ever so slightly, taking a marginally longer route. 1 in 6 chance it helps enough to make a difference.

Darrow, god of fish suppers.

Fish for breakfast, 
fish for tea,
fish for you and
fish for me! 

A variation on the rhyme is heard on the way home from the harbour, sung with no great gusto. Children sick of the fish they've been gutting all season often don't appreciate the gift that Darrow and their mothers have waiting for them at home.

Invocation: Singing or humming Darrows rhyme while preparing your fishy supper.

Gift: Can prepare even the most foul and rotten fish, turning it into a barely tolerable meal.

The Turnsmith, God of shoe repair and thresholds.

Nemesis of The Bartlet, The Turnsmith is often depicted quietly fixing shoes just inside the door of his house or chasing cats out of his workshop. In Kairnish society cats are considered to be lazy and pessimistic, traits which can rub off wherever they sleep. Cats almost exclusively live outside in Kairnish society, and are most certainly not allowed to sleep where people work.

Many small industries operate from the home. These are advertised by performing the trade by the open door to your house. Thus The Turnsmith is often associated with cottage industry.

Invocation: Leaving a small amount of leftover material from the repair by someone's front door at the earliest possible opportunity. Not doing so will see your work undone.

Gift: Can perform small repairs on mundane items and always seems to have a needle and thread handy.

Lusta-Fi, god of goatherds and lazy boys.

The Kairnlaw has innumerable gods dedicated to every possible aspect of livestock care. Understandable for a people who derive the vast majority of their food and wealth from their panoply of domesticated creatures.

Lusta-Fi looks after the young ones, who are traditionally set to watching the goats, the least important and most annoying of herds. While they sleep or play, Lusta-Fi is said to be keeping an eye on the herd. You'll often hear parents chiding their boys for letting Lusta-Fi watch the goats, that they told them not to listen to him.

Invocation: Build a small pile of rocks, a few inches high or more, on top of a small denomination coin or sweet treat. Then paint a pair of eyes on it facing what you want watched. The offering will be gone when you return, and the eyes will be closed.

Gift: They can leave one mundane situation per day and it'll be fine while they attend to other things. The situation must be low stakes (such as watching a herd, a small child, or a boiling kettle) and not require great intervention to be okay. He would not prevent the goats being stolen, but he could prevent them from walking off a cliff.

The Augot, god of drowning, broken fishing lines and loneliness.

No gods hold sway over the oceon, if one believes the Kairn. Indeed, they do not rule but some live there, such as Augot, spurned lover of Judith. Once he was the god of brotherly love but that all changed when She chased him into the sea. Now he may not break the surface out of fear of Judith getting her hands on him.

The gods are known for their narrow sight which may account for The Augot's new portfolio. Desperately lonely, this god of fraternal love drags fishermen to their deaths in a desperate bid to find company.

Invocation: You must speak into a body of salt water for no less than ten minutes in a friendly manner (a large bowl will do). Keep it light.

Gift: Though the gods lose sight of you over water The Augot can still pull you down. If he is placated before a sea voyage you may ignore the first mishap that afflicts you.

Vockachella, goddess of hunger and children

"I'm so hungry I could eat my husband!" you'll hear the herdswives exclaim as they sit down to another slim meal. The story of Vockachella is a reminder for all good husbands to provide their families with the milk and meat of the herd and to treat them with a gentle hand.

Violent or lackadaisical herdsmen will often find their lives unravelling, piece by piece.  

Invocation: Spit milk in the target's face (this is a dire insult in Kairn society)

Gift: For each favour the gods owe you, you may cause the target to fail at an action.

Destur, god of traditions and failed hunts

The Kairn rarely hunt for food, they consider it to be beneath them. The civilised man has his meat quietly sitting in his grasslands waiting to be eaten. However hunting is still required when a white ape tribe descends from the mountains, or a panther wanders too far from the shade of the Fern Court. 

Destur would disagree with this. His remit is of consistency and cultural bureaucracy. In his eyes everything is judged by how it relates to proper Kairn values, and hunting is not one of them. To spare you from the shame of eating filthy wild creatures he ensures you never find them.

Invocation: Snap an arrow over your knee and with it cut the hand that will slay the beast

Gift: Once Destur is tricked into believing the hunt has already failed you are free to pursue your quarry without interference. The hunter whos hand was cut may reroll one bushcraft test per caster's level.

Calendar of Vornheim and the Kairnlaw

The calendar observed by Vornheim and the Kairnlaw consists of 18 months of 20 days each, with 5 days left over.

The 5  "Lost Days" are considered unlucky and people do very little. Work will be cancelled, theatres will shut and battles will be re-scheduled. Foreign visitors would be shocked at how fervently the citizens of Vornheim shut themselves away and avoid eye contact or even basic acknowledgement of anyone. On these days the herds of the Kairnlaws govern themselves.

Both Vornheim and the Kairnlaw claim the origins of the calendar as their own but less politically minded scholars look to the distant Empires and note the convenient similarities.

The month is marked by a number and a symbol, ensuring even the lowliest unwashed mass keeps good time. When discussing the date they would say "1 Crow", "2 Pigs", "5 Soldiers", and so on. Each month has folk associations that can vary from place to place, superstitions and observances specific to certain people. Where there are agreed upon elements they have been noted.

The 5 Lost Days don't have names or numbers and people try their hardest to ignore them. Fortunately both peoples are painfully superstitious so they don't spend much energy questioning the reasoning behind it.

Seasons

In the tundra and steppes there's not much subtlety to their seasons. They have brief scorching summers followed by interminable autumns and a capricious winter. Spring barely registers as the winter falls like a loosed curtain. Only the herdsmen of the Kairnlaw differentiate it from Father Summer as their herds grow.


Spring

• Crown (this is depicted as a royal crown in Vornheim and a heavily pregnant cow in the Kairnlaw)
• Cottage

Summer

• Tower (a proud tower in Vornheim, it is considered in a negative and somewhat pompous light in the Kairnlaw)
• Rut
• Pig
• Soldier

Autumn

• Crow
• Moth
• Lover
• Bear
• Death's Head
• Stick
• Beast (the beast depicted is unrecognisable as anything. It has legs and arms, maybe a head. The odd thing is that everyone agrees on how it looks)
• Lunatic (Since the 476th cycle this has been a rough depiction of Lord Zyklon, the mad old Duke of Vornheim)

Winter

• Finger
• Toe
• Mountain
• Wolf (both nations agree this is an ominous month, both for its associations and as the last month before the Lost Days)

Years

Years work in cycles, batches of years of variable length (typically between 27 and 56 years long) that can tick over at any point in the appropriate year. They are measured by astrologers and other interested parties, though some suspect that they choose new cycles based on when a national holiday is needed. 

The details of the system are so awfully dull and, as is generally opined, a waste of time that very few people outside of dedicated historical societies bother to pay much attention to it. If it weren't for the holidays involved people would likely forget they existed entirely. Both the Kairnlaw and Vornheim agree that we are currently on the 478th cycle, though what they have been counting from is hotly debated amongst those with little better to do.

The Pettiest Gods

The Greater and Lesser Kairnlaws may claim to have many differences, but religion is not one of them. A pragmatic people, they always know what God to speak to for every eventuality. They're not so arrogant to assume that any one being can solve all their problems, so much so that even converts to Vorn or Qadhi will be sure to stay on good terms with the local Gods. It would be a very brave citizen of the Kairnlaw  who would go on a journey without a quick word to The Bartlet, or visit his mistress without an offering to Judith.

Clerics of the Kairnlaw are bottomless fonts of knowledge regarding who to appeal to at any specific time. They are one of the few people who are equally welcome in Greater and Lesser, respected for their deep knowledge and god-given skills.

Honour the Gods
Cleric Level 1
Duration: As per god
Range: As per god

The Kairnish cleric can use this spell to honour one of their pantheon. Typically this will include specific prayers, small rituals and minor sacrifices, but after they are performed their desired patron will make their gifts available to the supplicant.

Our Lady Judith, Sister in Sin, patron of cheating husbands. Many a man has offered up a prayer to her while creeping out a forbidden paramour's window. However her attention is fickle and she is prone to allowing them to be caught by enraged husbands and vengeful wives. In polite circles a wayward husband is said to be "visiting Aunt Judith"

Invocation: Burn a small amount of your pubic hair. One strand would do.

Clerics in tune with the emanations of Judith can lie utterly believably to women, getting them to believe the most ridiculous things. However 1 in 6 times it will be an embarrassingly awful lie and get you immediately caught out.

The Bartlet, patron of sore feet and wasted journeys. No one is quite sure why The Bartlet is named so but they continue to put up a prayer to them whenever they set out their door. The Bartlet is typically pictured as an anthropomorphic cat with a permanent look of disappointment, sitting by the roadside. These images are almost exclusively found in remote roadside inns.

Invocation: Throwing a shoe over your left shoulder while offering up a prayer.

Clerics invoking The Bartlet can ensure an unpleasant journey on a chosen party, unwanted pursuers perhaps. This help is oblique: sore feet slowing them down ever so slightly, taking a marginally longer route. 1 in 6 chance it helps enough to make a difference.

Darrow, god of fish suppers.
Fish for breakfast, 
fish for tea,
fish for you and
fish for me! 

A variation on the rhyme is heard on the way home from the harbour, sung with no great gusto. Children sick of the fish they've been gutting all season often don't appreciate the gift that Darrow and their mothers have waiting for them at home.

Invocation: Singing or humming Darrows rhyme while preparing your fishy supper.

Clerics channelling the spirit of Darrow can prepare even the most foul and rotten fish, turning it into a barely tolerable meal.

The Turnsmith, God of shoe repair and thresholds.

Nemesis of The Bartlet, The Turnsmith is often depicted quietly fixing shoes just inside the door of his house or chasing cats out of his workshop. In Kairnish society cats are considered to be lazy and pessimistic, traits which can rub off wherever they sleep. Cats almost exclusively live outside in Kairnish society, and are most certainly not allowed to sleep where people work.

Many small industries operate from the home. These are advertised by performing the trade by the open door to your house. Thus The Turnsmith is often associated with cottage industry.

Invocation: Leaving a small amount of leftover material from the repair by someone's front door at the earliest possible opportunity. Not doing so will see your work undone.

Clerics channelling this patron can perform small repairs on mundane items and always seems to have a needle and thread handy.

Lusta-Fi, god of goatherds and lazy boys.

The Kairnlaw has innumerable gods dedicated to every possible aspect of livestock care. Understandable for a people who derive the vast majority of their food and wealth from their panoply of domesticated creatures.

Lusta-Fi looks after the young ones, who are traditionally set to watching the goats, the least important and most annoying of herds. While they sleep or play, Lusta-Fi is said to be keeping an eye on the herd. You'll often hear parents chiding their boys for letting Lusta-Fi watch the goats, that they told them not to listen to him.

Invocation: Build a small pile of rocks, a few inches high or more, on top of a small denomination coin or sweet treat. Then paint a pair of eyes on it facing what you want watched. The offering will be gone when you return, and the eyes will be closed.

Clerics call on Lusta-Fi to keep an eye on things. They can leave one mundane situation per day and it'll be fine while they attend to other things. The situation must be low stakes (such as watching a herd, a small child, or a boiling kettle) and not require great intervention to be okay. He would not prevent the goats being stolen, but he could prevent them from walking off a cliff.

You may have guessed that I have a new red pen

You'd be surprised at how many people have accused me of being disturbed after viewing my handwriting over the years. They claim it's indicative of latent psychosis, I claim it's endearingly ham fisted.

Either way, have a half baked idea I drew as a break from writing about ooglies and giant lizards.

Anatomy of Weird

WARNING: rambling, humour, teaching your granny how to suck eggs

So what is the weird? We're using "weird" in the sense used for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar games: an undermining of expectations and the stretching of boundaries. 

What's comedy? The core of comedy is the mechanical encrusted upon the living, the unexpected appearing beside the expected, the improper with the proper.  And we laugh. 

It's no coincidence that Raggi's games swing between funny and horrifying so easily, it's because they're almost the same thing. Comedy merely tickles, while weird pins you down until you start to cry.

The weird can be made with a simple formula:

Take a situation or object, as mundane and everyday as possible. Twist it. 

That's the basic set-up and would be enough for the most part. But there's so much to make it more than a cheap thrill.

Let's use an example. If we look at Death Love Doom the weird is produced by undermining the concept of love and familial relations, knocking it 90° into horrific and metaphorical territory (in Raggi-ist Russia foetus abort YOU, and don't forget sexually violent grannies) and pushing people's boundaries of taste. Nothing goes so far it becomes so strange as to put us into auto-pilot "oh look, another thing" mode, everything is built from perversions of our typical daily experience. Only the mundane is scary or funny. There's a reason that every good horror antagonist is essentially human.

So now to better illustrate how funny this is I'll recreate Death Love Doom in the medium of jokes:

"What's the difference between zits and a Catholic priest? Zits wait until a kid's 13 before it comes on his face."

See? In fairness both the adventure and the joke picked children to get a cheap emotional response but that's not to say it wasn't good value for money. You shouldn't abuse it too much and should occasionally go for higher hanging fruit or else it loses all impact, but it would be a waste not to grab for the low stuff on occasion. 

Before I go further I must curtail any possibility of this turning into a review of Death Love Doom. I liked it, I agree with everything it stands for, done.

Okay. Onwards.

So why am I talking about abusing weird? Well because I've been working non-stop on a weird zine and a weird Dead City of Duven'Ku and ran a weird The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time. All these elements came together as I butted up against another roadblock in building my vision of this horrible city: there is only so much boundary pushing horror you can sling at the players before it stops being subversive and becomes normal. Un-undermined normal isn't weird! 

Oppressive horribleness would have to take the occasional break to recharge the player's terror. Could comedy help us? What if there was the occasional dick monster or bumbling lich official? It still maintains the weird. Switching to comedy from weird is just like switching to your left hand when the right's tired. They do it in cinema all the time.

We need breaks from the horror, and a mega-dungeon doesn't allow for that. Raggi's adventures have worked so well because they are short, the terror will end and the world will settle back to how it was. If it was that way all the time then there would be no weird, just a continuation of a strange normality. This is why the Dead City of Duven'Ku is so hard. The players will switch to auto-pilot, they'll not bat an eye-lid at gutting the ghoul child to retrieve their ring, they won't care that their rations turn to blood in their mouths.

This led me to another thought: Sigil. Sigil, the central town of the Planescape D&D setting managed to run a line close to what would be needed by the Dead City. It was exceedingly strange but had a strong human element. We were grounded and had others to stand alongside us in our confusion in the face of the unknown.

Does Duven'Ku needs to be a functioning city with a human element?

Easy enough. Duven'Ku has themes in place already, themes we've learnt from the Death **** Doom adventures and Green Devil Face zine.

• Infanticide
• Destructive love
• Sexual violence
• Emotional distance
• Shame
• Punishment for wrongdoing
• Betrayal of those close to you
• Typical undead-ly stuff
• Self hatred

One questions how a society like this kept itself together, but that's the challenge. The Aztecs were pretty full on and they did well for a long time. Sigil was insane and that worked well enough. Can we do this again for an undead city? On one side we have a crazy fun-house, breeding detachment and familiarity. On the other we've built just another boring fantasy city supplement with humans replaced with zombies.

Now to tie this rambling essay together. The city must be weird, it must be the weirdest. There is no break from the normal so we need to wander into (dark, dark, barely even there) comedy to look for the players' psychic breaks. We need to nail the theme, nail it hard so there is a definite "Duven'Ku normal".

Next I might have to start making the physical thing and see how it works, planning is an endless process otherwise. As ever, opinions are welcome in this matter.

Ruminating on dead places

We're in a city full of towering blocks of buildings, massive tombstones on the grave of the Dead God. The streets are narrow and hold a heavy silence lifted only by the shuffling of dessicated feet. Everything looms. Before you your breath freezes in the air, the only sign of life this place has seen in centuries. A valuable commodity for the factions still skulking about.

The king, who hasn't moved in centuries, contemplating his next move while his court waits and plots.

The priests, who undermine the city with the raised dead of the cities past. They will find a way out.

The general, freshly returned from confinement in the Death Frost mountain. In his memories this city never died.

The dwindling population of ghouls packing out the slum. Never truly dying yet possessed by a fierce hunger. The strongest force the weakest to breed, feeding off their young.



Why would the players wander through this progression of awful things? What do they have to gain by entering each and every building in this city? Why, to kill death of course. But we don't have to turn over every stone for that. Broad strokes will serve, they'll fill in the gaps and let us know when something awful needs our attention. Here we find a trap, an encounter, an interesting thing. We know how they link together, we track a rough trajectory and ignore the nuts and bolts. A city isn't packed to the rafters with pertinent content, a city is a series of events, a flowchart or pain that can be created on the fly and run from a huge list of interesting things, small vignettes of soul-rending horror.

It may not be a priority to make deeply simulated structures for every inch. It might just be enough for us to know that the Duven'Ku live in towering stone buildings, one on top of the other in warren-like apartments, life imitating death. Packed in tight.

All we need to build are the choke points, be they physical or plot related. The gates, the monuments and landmarks, ruined buildings that block the way (there was a war!). The building that holds the skeleton whose hand has been carved just so and opens the gate to the sewer, the ghoul king, the Sleeping Queen's wig, the emerald studded maguffin! The players progress through them getting closer to the core of this place. Or dead.

Curated hubs with meandering random encounters connecting them.


As for Duven'Ku himself, the players don't know what will happen by killing him. Or even if they can. To make it even more fun, neither should the GM. Generate that bad-boy. Reach for a table full of interesting possible results of finding Duven'Ku. Maybe he really is dead. It would make sense after all. Maybe he's withered and weak, maybe he's a mindless ball of energy, maybe he turns you inside out, maybe he's not even here?


All this for a little necklace!

The Dead City

What is a dungeon? A series of events with a predictable progression. Typically a fun-house of horror and pain. But is the dungeon aesthetic inseparable from the experience? I think plenty of people have proven that it isn't, and this got me thinking: my players are aware of an item that cannot be destroyed because it is part of a god, they hate said item so much that they are planning to go and kill the god. Specifically, Duven'Ku and the Necklace of the Sleeping Queen.

Of all the horrible things I've done to my players, Death Love Doom struck a cord, thanks +James Raggi. One player retired his character to a monastic life and took a break from gaming because of that session, which I consider a great success. The surviving character hasn't forgotten the almost-TPK that cracking open the necklace caused, and has left a search for the creature on a low simmer ever since.


So, killing gods it is. A dead god of the dead, in a dead city in a dead land. We know his city is at the bottom of a canyon, we know it's dormant or at least incapable of projecting its malignant nastiness any more. Let's assume it has been sealed up as a result of a bitter war or some sort, a war that Duven'Ku got the short end of. The city is sealed, to a degree, and probably large since Duven'Ku was a three-in-one religion/magic-tradition/state. Let's also assume that Duven'Ku resides there, Cthulhu style.

Replace the sand with snow and you're there

Now with these assumptions and requirements we throw them in a bag and shake them up and out pops a mega-dungeon. A sprawling city-scape of the dead city of Duven'Ku with a god at its unbeating heart. Instead of levels we have buildings and neighbourhoods, instead of goblins we have Ancient Obscenities of a dead race of men, instead of treasure we have certain doom. All good so far. The players are motivated to go there and I see no reason to make it more tempting. This is the worst place for anyone to go, chances are they aren't coming back.


The issue with a city is that it is far easier to meander about than in an underground complex. A simple approach would be to roughly map the city, set up distinct districts, and then maybe create an enormous random table for generating buildings within that area. A random building for each "room", which you fill in on the map "here is event #24, it will always be here from now on". Each area will have its own flavour and grow over time as they are explored.

I really like this idea myself, but the execution is going to be another thing altogether. The map has been a right pickle so far, my room is full of abandoned attempts, and writing hundreds of interesting encounters is going to be a stretch to say the least.

This will be an ongoing project, since my players are set on going there eventually anyway. Hopefully it will develop into something usable and scalable.

Fingers crossed.

The Campaign Map

I think the campaign map is finally finished, at least in regards to towns and the general geography of the place. Ever since looking up some 16th century maps of Sweden I've been assuming there are exactly as many rickety roads and villages as I care to fit into every square inch of the place. It seems humans will live just about anywhere, making little communes within spitting distance of the last one. No respect for neat and tidy maps, damn them. So I've taken to marking down only the villages that are interesting or important enough to remember plus the main connecting roads. These main, red, roads are of the level at which I imagine a wealthy gentleman could ride his coach down without spilling his drink every few seconds.

Bigger version.

As for scale, it's about 5 miles per hex but I'm not too concerned with physical distance. Most movement so far has been thought of in terms of "how many hexes can we cover in a day?" Knowing that Kildear is 2 days from Vornheim is more useful than knowing it's 30 miles away.

Using this thing is going to be intimidating for me. So far my only stab at hexcrawls is the little journey from Gaxen Kane (no relation, I just liked the name) to the Slaughtergrid. It was a fun little hunt where the players didn't know the exact spot, just a general direction and rumour it was out there and full of gold. They ended up getting some rough ideas from locals, guessing, and beseeching a fickle god whose answers were 50/50 at best. After some tumbles with the local wildlife and indigenous tribes they ended up at their destination and we all had a jolly old time.

But by the gods, it's terrifying going all free-wheely hexcrawly on these things.

I decided I'd use random encounters to flesh out the map, ensuring the players really feel the world by living it (or dying to it, either's good). For example, until the session to find the Slaughtergrid we didn't know where the Silver Tower or Gold Citadel were, or even if they existed. I'd fashioned a big fat encounter table (using the one Slaughtergrid already provided and adding a bunch of other stuff) and just ran the session with it until the dungeon location got rolled up. I had plenty of material in there to occupy an evening, and if the dungeon turned up in the first roll we could just dive right in an do that sweet dungeon thing.

Things that are now true:

1. Burke Birds live here, are arseholes, and should not be underestimated.
2. Banth are hunted by the Gold Citadel.
3. The Gold Citadel are a thing.
4. They burnt down the Silver Tower.
5. A serial killer is killing all the anchorites in the area. She's pretty okay though, gives good directions.
6. Mudmen.

Points that arose:

All things that could just as well have not existed if it weren't for the roll of a die. Does that make them less interesting than a curated progression? 

The Gold Citadel popped into existence purely out of the juxtaposition of encounters and the particular way the players approached it. The Citadel could well exist in an entirely different form had it gone otherwise. The Duchess is pickled because it made sense at the time. And is true.

It would be cool and impractical to have a bunch of dungeons scattered around that the players know about and can go to. Improvising or memorising any one of those locations at a random point would be tough. Is it worth the actual freedom when an illusion of freedom is just as fun?

Could an entire area be built by a suitably vast encounter table? Could I make a 100 entry monstrosity and run a whole campaign off it? If each result was suitably worthy, i.e. equivalent to a room in a dungeon, I don't see why not. 

Can you make 100 encounters in one go that are interesting enough and cogent enough to not feel like you're playing through a list of cool stuff with a dungeon or town at the end?

How cool would it have to be to be forgiven?

All these need answering before the players crawl back out of the lady-robot with their oodles of gold and dead comrades. We'll see how it goes!

                                            

As a side note, a distraction from doing more useful things, I made a full blown earth-scale world map. The above map fits inside the tiny red square in the top right. It's not set yet as I'm not entirely clear what I want from the larger world. I made it primarily to help me think about what to do when the current map runs thin and to test out some ways of generating nice coastlines and fitting them together. I think it came out okay.

The Gold Citadel/The Silver Tower

Knights of the Gold Citadel are in constant search of new and exciting game.

The Gold Citadel

The Gold Citadel was built by Duchess Florka Haugen-Castellan as a menagerie and museum for her extensive collection of living and dead hunting trophies from around the world. The continued accumulation by her and her family demanded expansions and so the modest keep has become a sprawling complex of towers, halls and galleries spreading up the mountainside.

Duchess Florka in her pickle jar.

Upon her death at the tentacles of a particularly large sand-kraken she was preserved, as per her wishes, in a class cabinet full of fine white wine form her own vineyard. Her great-great-etc. grand children still parade their prizes past her and her case in the great hall and often share a quiet word with her. Grandmother Florka's hunting advice was always the best.






 Florka's family have continued to occupy the retreat, on down the line. In order to secure a female heir to the duchy pregnant princesses hunt the local banth and eat their fresh hearts, well known for its feminine humors. Alone, on horse back, and with nothing other than a banth pike they will scour the foothills for a solitary male. Giving birth while on this hunt is considered terribly lucky, it's not uncommon for the princess to take extra time so as to  increase her chance of birthing in the wild.

Prince Qadir Haugen-Castellan looking pensive

Knights of the Gold Citadel are hunters first and foremost, but a delicate pallate is just as admired as a strong spear arm and cunning eye. Journeyman knights live as gastronomic tourists, traveling the breadth of the world looking for rare and exotic dining experiences which they dutifully record and rate. No animal is too fierce nor vegetable too remote for them to track down, consume and critique; they value raw and cooked texture, serving suggestions, tracking pleasure, risk/taste analysis, complementary dishes, lairing habits, over-all preparation experience and pelt presentability, to name a few. Special merit is awarded those brave knights who go to the trouble of bringing back live specimens for the menagerie and attached kitchens.

The notebooks of journeyman knights are highly valued by restauranteurs and chefs. They would likely pay exceedingly well for them, no questions asked.



The male knights are made up of the husbands and brothers of the princesses. The brothers are forbidden to marry and so tend towards an itinerant life. If encountering a Knight of the Gold Citadel abroad it will most likely be one of these Princes.

Every year around midwinter select members of the zoo are boiled alive inside a huge copper mold, forcing them into an amalgamated human shape made up of all manner of exotic animals. The multifarious meat loaf is then served to the royal court to guarantee a year of prosperity and lucky hunting. The tributary villages are often gifted the generous table scraps, making the bleak months something to look forward to for the younger peasants who chase each other through the fields dressed in the mysterious jellied pelts found in their meals.

(left to right) Princesses Tasin & Aafreeda Haugen-Castellan

Item: Haugen-Castellan Annual Dining Guide #467
Description: A weather proof illuminated book for the chef on the go. Inside you find hundreds of illustrated recipes for a staggering array of animals, most of which you've never seen before or thought were purely mythical.
Effect: 50% chance to have information on cooking at least one edible dish with whatever animal you have in front of you, no matter how outrageously poisonous it may be.

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The Silver Tower

The Silver Tower was built by Agerun the Progenitor (or more accurately by Agerun the Progenitor's various custom built chimeric crimes against nature) as a sardonic mirror of the Citadel. Previously he had held apartments in the Gold Citadel's unparalleled menagerie but had fallen out with the Duchess after the accidental death of Princess Trudel Haugen-Castellan to an experimental pan-dimensional banth/human hybrid. She had commissioned him to build a suitably cunning prey so he had smartly used Trudel's own blood to form the human aspect of the chimera, what could stand to outsmart the hunter but the hunter herself! Plus a very large banth, of course.

Unfortunately it was not to be, as upon releasing it from its plasmic womb to show the princess its progress the creature dissolved into 8 different yet perfect past versions of the young noble and tore her to pieces on the spot. After watching the rapidly discombobulating chimeric children fleeing the citadel with various royal vital organs in tow the wizard wisely decided his time at the zoo was over.

He had already left with his most mobile pets and started to build his seclusium on the far side of Loch Doldrum when the remaining princesses had finished hunting down their doppelganger sisters and resolved to kill the corpulent mage.

In some weeks they tracked him down through his obfuscations and trickeries and toppled the tower into the loch and put his aberrations to the torch. The knights and their militia never found the Progenitor's body so they hunt him still. No one knows better than a hunter the danger of a wounded animal.