Thule Island - Nations, History & Weather

Nations

Westernesse  - The Keltoi kingdom on Thule Island prior to the Imperial invasion. The Kingdom was somewhat analogous to a tiny version of Anglo-Saxon England with a pseudo-Celtic polytheism. The language of the Keltoi people is known as Cant. It has been adopted by beggars and thieves throughout the Empire.  The language of  built on Common Imperial, but contains numerous words from other, older languages. There is also a strong component of pseudo-sign language involved in communicating in Cant.

The Empire - A highly populated Empire analogous to the Holy Roman Empire in over-the-top style, religious fervor, zealous trade, and technological advancement. The Empire is a Monotheistic society that had a crusade to destroy the Keltoi culture and Old Faith on Thule Island over a century ago, a crusade that fractured the Empires own religion.

The language of the Empire is Imperial Common or common. The language is a hodge-podge of words from different languages making it easy to learn but complicated to master. There are two main strains of the Imperial Language, High Imperial (spoken by nobles and those trying to keep up appearances of such) and Low Imperial (spoken by the common folk). The speakers of one can easily understand the other although the social class of the speaker is usually obvious.

The Marches

Politically the island was declared a March. The March Lord answers only to the Emperor and has minimal tax requirements. This is intended to help the March Lord pacify the March as quickly as possible.

Recent History

All dates are rough and based on Year 0, the year the Lough (pronounced Law) crusade "conquered"  Thule island. Anything more detailed than that makes it harder to drop into a campaign setting. When in doubt about the different cultures case the GM should lean towards describing Keltoi as Celts and Lough worshipers as Medieval Germans.

The Seven Wizards

Worth a mention as their names are likely to pop-up in future blog posts and to allow GMs to use the names in their own games. The Seven Wizards are responsible for a number of lairs, and magical items, and possibly even spell names. At least three are currently liches, the others would all be over a century old and are probably dead. They are:

• Cholson the wicked
• Ee the Deadeyes
• Herland
• Oslof Firehammer
• Quays
• Rampier
• Tus

Shadowmen

The Shadowmen, aka Mole Men, or Chud are humanoids that live in the caverns below ground. They only come to the surface at night as the light appears to hurt their eyes. They raid the surface only rarely and capture people and livestock. In game terms the Shadowmen can be Grimlocks, Morlocks, Lovecraftian Ghast, or even Orcs. Whatever suits the campaign. The people of Thule Island call them Shadowmen and they are the boogeyman parents use to scare their children, except they are real. 

Geology/Geography

Thule Island is a semi-vertical limestone karst that has been weathered into karst towers. Ontop of the limestone karst is a thick layer of volcanic soil that has made the islands fertile and enabled more natural drainage than karst areas normally see. This limestone was punctured by a geothermal hot spot in the North which has resulted in a small volcano and geothermal hotsprings.

The limestone is riddled with tunnels. Legends say one could walk the entire way from the base of Fire Mt in the North to Broken Fang Mountain below ground the entire way. Problem is these caverns are filled with inhospitable nasties that spew up from time to time to attack the surface dwellers.

Thanks to Tour Guizhou (without permission) here is a nice bit on how Karst towers form. 

Weather

Weather is damp. Roll 1d4-2. The results (including negatives) move you up and down the weather possibilities for that season. Any results that lead off the Season should stop at the last result for that season.

Thule Island - Mini-sandbox

I was plugging away creating villages, and I like what I've done, but I'm not sure I like the look of the village maps. I somewhat followed the old Harn model which manages this look nicely but I feel mine a bit dry. I prefer the eagle-eye view showing somewhat 3d buildings that have more character. Besides the internet is filled with medieval city maps to pillage and use.

Also I decided that although it is useful to have villages ready to drop in anywhere I prefer a little context. It helps in writing and makes for a better product. So I decided I'd create a mini-sandbox. Something really small because sooner or later I'll get bored, and if not I can make a second mini-sandbox. Bite-sized chunks, that's the ticket.

I like 6-mile hexes, and they can be chock full of encounters as the hex of Manhattan sort of shows. So I put together an island comprised of 4 partial hexes. That allows one to travel on foot about the island without days and days of wandering around. Being a small island a GM could easily drop the thing onto their own map with ease. It all seemed good.

I also thought an example of a sandbox might be a good idea. So for the rest of March I'll be documenting Thule Island. The elevator speech is as follows:

What if the Holy Roman Empire conquered Middle Earth after the fall of Sauron and unwittingly enabled his return to power, except instead of Sauron we have unholy, slimy, tentacled, demonic, mutating, Lovecraftian, Chaos of the sort Warhammer players would be familiar with and instead of the semi-benign corruption of Medieval Catholocism of the Holy Roman Empire we have a far more bloodthirst, and fracturing, monotheistic religion.

As far as Appendix N is concerned its a mix of J.R.R. Tolkien, Karl Edward Wagner, R.E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft.

Best of the Web - Collaborative Dungeons and worlds

MSJX has a a couple of post called CollaboDungeon 01! and CollaboDungeon 02 in which he provides a map and challenges/allows others to populate it. I really like this idea as it is nice to see how different folks might handle similar problems/challenges in the map. With the repetition of room descriptions that is likely to happen a GM could populate the dungeon and then restock it for an adventure a  year later. I also like the size of the dungeons so far, allowing a GM to make them stand-alone or sub-levels in a dungeon.

Wanderer Bill has a post called A free and open source setting for role playing games? in which he postulates a true collaborative creation of a setting with rules folks have to follow. It is an interesting idea, Tenkar did something similar with Tenkar's Landing Crowdsourced Sandbox Setting has Over 90 Community Members. I like the idea but would prefer something along the lines of the Dungeon Collaboration above, that is one person comes up with the map and maybe the major religions and others then populate the thing. This would then provide multiple versions of the setting that are each consistent but not necessarily consistent with each other. Also making it Public Domain would allow anyone to plop their 1-page dungeon in the hex south of the big city.

Found in a Box in Storage: Part 3 - Cities

And some cities. First Konyanople which was to be the hub of the action (thus the detail). Apparently judging by the Heraldry I was a fan of Becks Beer at the time.

Then we have Kralor and Geldorn which look like they are basically the same city re-drawn. I don't know which came first.

Found in a Box in Storage: Part 2 - Cults

And then the religions/Cults.

Found in a Box in Storage: Part 1 - Kingdoms, History, and Economics

Back in the day I GM'd on Harn a lot. I used AD&D, modified RuneQuest, Harnmaster, and Modified RuneQuest again. I loved the setting, but at some point I seem to have created my own setting. I don't think I ever actually used the setting but I found my notes in a box and figured I'd post them.

Note the art is copied from Sergio Aragones Groo the Wanderer, and some I'm not sure where I copied it from but it's not mine.  I found it interesting, maybe someone else will. Anyway it's all Public Domain if anyone wants it. Good luck reading my horrible scrawl.

Battle Mage Brewing Company

Not a lot of people know it but Northern San Diego County is full of microbreweries. I've heard they might even be the microbrew capital of the world in numbers. I'm not sure why. Microbreweries love IPAs and Ales and I'm a lager fan yet still I enjoy going from brewery to brewery as much as the next guy. Stone Brewery gets all the love but when we went out drinking the other night we went to one I hadn't heard of. Battle Mage Brewing company.

The place is small and serves a full of fantasy art, swords and helmets on the walls. One wall has Magic the Gathering cards (I think) and another has Character sheets for dead 5E characters. There is a fantasy map on one wall  (I wish the website included some images of the place). In the corner is a small room, with the door open, that had a game of D&D running.

It was an interesting combination to be sure. I'm not sure the noise and proximity of beer would be conducive to playing or DM'ing but it sounds like they have open tables on Mon & Tues so I might just have to give it a try.