| History
of the RoachKings Campaign |
Notes
from the GM |
Lia
Date |
Adventure
/ Event |
Real
Date |
| 11339-'349 |
|
1983-'84 |
| 11350-'359 |
|
1985-'86 |
| 11359-'369 |
|
1989-'99 |
| 11369-'374 |
|
1999-
2002 |
| 11374 |
|
2003
- '07 |
| 11374 |
|
2007 |
| 11374 |
|
2007-'08 |
| 11374 |
|
10/2008
- 05/2009 |
| 11374 |
Chapter
9: The Fountain of Lamneth > > |
5/2009
- present |
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Notes
from the GM
In
the long narrative below, real dates are shown in blue
and game-world dates are in red.
This allows you to scan through the text for a particular
year, either for the players
or for the characters.
Only the first entry for each Lian year is highlighted.
An "R" next to a real date means the adventure
was played "retroactively" to a previous time
period of the characters'.
The
Cosmic Reset . . .
Some
time between 1999 - 2000, I decided to switch from the
DragonQuest™ RPG system to the GURPS®
RPG system. The "Point of Know Return"
scenario was NOT created for the purpose of switching
the campaign over to GURPS, but it facilitated
the change quite nicely. However, a few reluctant
players kept their characters defined under DQ rules,
so I simply ran a 2-system game for a while. This
page of the history documents adventures that took place
after I began the switch to the GURPS gaming
system.
In
another instance of karmic synergy, the players celebrated
20 years of gaming together during the session in which
the RKs finally returned to their home continent.
The
"Storm King Klaaxon" adventure would be the
last session played by Doug Miers as Ozone the Hawkman.
Given the fact that the RKs were in the midst of an
around-the-world adventure and the entire fellowship
was making their way home on Ozone's airship, I decided
that Ozone would "transcend" to a higher state
and become a hawkman demi-god of healing.
---
Charlie
|
Nearly
No Return . . .
After
flying west out to sea on Ozone's Airship just after their 30th
Anniversary festival in the spring of 11369, the RoachKings
sailed through the Point of Know Return and were not seen on
Lia for nearly 5 years.
RoachKings:
The Voyage Home [ 2003-2010 ]
Intrigue
in the Palmar [ 2003-'06 ]
Feib
11374 - Having journeyed through the Point of Know Return,
the RoachKings found themselves once again on the airship, sailing
westward among the clouds over the ocean of their home world.
They continued to do so for many days before Shady noticed a
small island far out to the south. He recruited a couple of
elven crew members, gave them shadow wings, and flew off to
investigate. They discovered a tribal society that was being
oppressed by a pair of shadow dragons. Shady & the elves
took out the dragons and discovered that their lair was, in
fact, a mithril mine. Needless to say, they established a RoachKing
claim on the ore.
Back
on the airship, the RKs continued to sail west until they reached
the shore of their home continent,
becoming the first people ever to sail completely around the
world of Lia.
However, there were some odd lingering effects of the voyage.
For instance, they and their world felt somehow "different"
now [Lia is now a GURPS
campaign setting.]
And then there was the fact that, even though they had sailed
around the world, they still did not know what lay on the other
side of Lia. Clearly,
there had been a long, strange trip in between, but none of
them could recall what had occurred over the past 5 years. It
was as if they had simply lost the time.
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[
06/28/2003 ] Eistun & the Dark Gnome War . .
.
The
RoachKings landed on their home continent at the river port
city of Eistun, in the Braish Barony called The Palmar. This
left them still across the entire breadth of the continent from
their castle on Pasadena Island. To the best of their knowledge,
their home still hovered high above the outer Bromar Sea, thousands
of miles to the west.
The
RoachKings knew of Palmar primarily as a land of horsemen. The
Braish warhorse breed is known to have originated there and
the Palmarans are renowned for the engineering & craftsmanship
of their chariots as well, as the RKs could see in the city’s
streets [the BMWs of chariots.] Salád once journeyed
to Palmar with Amblinon and they both obtained Palmaran steeds
there. However, the RKs noticed that their ships were not nearly
as advanced – quite primitive, in fact – and they
exhibited an intense prejudice against elves.
The
RKs also saw a man walk out into the street and use what was
essentially a small hand-held cannon to try and “teach
a lesson” to an obviously-wealthier man in a chariot.
The only problem was that the device blew up in his hands, severely
injuring him. The presence of gunpowder technology in the streets
of a Braish city was concerning, and what it could do to a class
struggle that seemed about to boil over didn’t bode well
either. As they got a meal and gathered news, the RKs found
out that the gunpowder & weapon had been taken in the war
from some of the “dark gnomes” up north. It seemed
that the local gentry did’t think much of this “new
manna-free magic” and felt it would come & go quickly,
like any fad.
The
RoachKings wanted to know more about where this technology came
from, so they got involved in the Palmarans’ so-called
“Dark Gnome War” in the hills north of Einstun.
There, they fought artificially animated undead gnomes dropping
primitive explosives from steam-driven dirigibles. Once Salád
brought one down, the airships were seen to be massively over-complicated,
as would be expected with gnomes. When the RKs traced the airships
back to their origin, they discovered a hilltop compound where
the gnomes launched the airships from an airfield hidden by
illusion. Inside the compound, the RKs found an abominable laboratory
where a gnomish “mad scientist” created the undead
golems. The lab was silent & not in use, but they found
equipment and notes & diagrams showing how to sew together
the parts of dead bodies, inject a complex formula, encase the
body in another complex fluid, and then send a high-voltage
electrical current through it to bring it to life. The lab included
a large Jacob’s Ladder contraption (over-thought as usual
by the gnomes) to send the current of lightning strikes through
the mechanism.
When they caught up with the gnome leader, he didn’t seem
to have much in the way of answers, except that he had gotten
his technical information from someone representing “the
League,” a group of powerful beings from “across
the ocean.” Upon further exploration into the compound,
the RoachKings encountered a group of elemental meta-beings
who caused them much havoc & then escaped. Could this be
the League? The assumption left to the RKs was that these quasi-elementals
had given the gnomes steam power, gunpowder & explosives,
and the technology to create undead without magic. But for what
purpose and for what in return?
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[
07/07/2004 ] The Storm King Klaaxon . . .
Feib
11374 - After returning to Eistun for supplies, the RKs
sailed south by southwest across the Palmaran plains & through
the lands of the Helfindians, the native half-elvish tribes.
As they neared the Marben hills on their left, they noticed
to the right some smoke rising from a tall rock formation on
the distant plain, so they investigated. There, they encountered
a medicine woman named Singing Wolf, who had just taken over
as chief medicine woman of the entire 7 Tribes because her grandmother
had died. In fact, she told the RKs that they were the fulfillment
of a vision her grandmother had told her about. After joining
the gathered chiefs & warriors at a council, the RKs learned
that the Helfindians were threatened by the expanding Palmarans
and their new “boom sticks.” They wanted to migrate
into lands to the south, but there was a conflict with the “Storm
King of Ice Mountain” at the top of a glaciered peak in
the Marben Hills. The Storm King’s giant owls prowled
those lands hunting big game & the Helfindian chiefs feared
their people could not survive there. They had sent a war party
to go up the mountain, but none had returned.
The
RKs agreed to attempt to deal with the Storm King for the Helfindians.
One of their warriors, Standing Bear, joined the RoachKings
for this quest. Ozone sailed his airship as far up into the
blustering winds at he top of the mountains as he could and
then tethered it off. The RKs flew on, eventually encountering
several giant owls. Ozone flew onto the back of one owl, which
turned its head around 180-degrees and asked him why he was
doing that. Ozone, who speaks bird languages, explained that
as a kindred spirit, he wished to speak with the owl’s
master. The owl agreed and took the RKs up above the wind &
clouds to an ice tower, where they bantered with a frost giant.
When the frost giant needed authority from his master, he let
the RKs’ voices carry up to the highest mountain on the
winds. Their answer came as a thunder on the winds also. They
had made an agreement for the Helfindians to provide a certain
amount of game at certain agreed-upon locations for the owls.
In return, the owls would not attack Helfindians or their livestock.
The RKs returned to the gathering of Helfindian chiefs and the
news was well-received. A celebration ensued. Before leaving
the next day, Ozone placed a teleport runestick in Singing Wolf’s
cave in the tall rock formation.
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[
late 2005 (ScreenMonkey) ] Into Phort Santonio
. . .
March
11374 - The RoachKings then continued on their way, sailing
past the Marben Hills and along the Früzenhüt River,
which flows southwest out of the hills and runs to the Sanguire
Sea at Phort Santonio. As they flew along the river, Kendril
remembered a particular root that grows in the hilly country
to the southeast, just beyond the river on the south side of
the Marben Hills. Kendril, Shady, By-Tor, Draken & Standing
Bear flew off on a small side-trip to gather some of this "Tryddis
Root" and got involved in investigating an accident that
happened in a wizard’s tower. By the time they were finished,
they had saved the hobbit town of Tukville and once again, the
RKs were being sung as heroes. Ah well, another day in the life
of a RoachKing, eh? They then caught up with the airship and
traveled on to Phort Santonio.
Phort
Santonio is the south westernmost outpost of the Braish Barony
of Palmar. This port city was once a frontier fort & it
has retained its vertical-pole construction, but it has become
a bustling trade hub where goods from all over the southern
half of the world first hit the Braish market. [This means “middle-eastern”
& oriental goods and those from “Latin American”
cultures, as well as “western European.”] The “boom
sticks” feared by the Helfindians are present here also,
but the class struggle doesn’t seem to be as prevalent.
People are far more polarized either for or against expansion
into Helfindian territories than about your family’s historical
social standing. It seems out here, it’s what you make
of yourself that’s important, not who you were born.
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When
the RoachKings first arrived in Phort Santonio, the “Gubnor”
(governor,) Jebediah Sage, sent for them to join him at his
mansion. They obliged him & flew over the walls of the “Old
Fort” into the courtyard of what is now the governmental
center of the city. Gubnor Sage calmed the edgy palace guards
& invited the RKs in for dinner, after which he made them
a proposition. He needed someone to repair an important but
secret facility on a small island just off the coast. This meant
placing a rare gem on a pedestal at the center of a large ring
of monolithic stones. The job required more discretion &
stealth than he believed he could expect from members of his
own forces, so he took advantage of the situation when he heard
the RoachKings were passing through town. Shady, By-Tor &
Draken took the job and completed it in an evening’s work,
easily handling an ambush by some stone golems that had sonic
blasting abilities. All the RKs benefited from the deal; they
each acquired a small crystal of the rare mineral “psionicite”
for their mind protection circlets (giving triple their normal
range to all psionic elements of the circlet.)
Since
the next leg of their long journey home was to cross the Sea
of Sanguire, the RoachKings gathered supplies for the trip and
enjoyed the luxuries of landfall while they could. They were
in no particular hurry, but in the course of mingling with the
locals, they learned something that gave them cause for urgency.
The news had reached Phort Santonio recently that in just the
past couple of months, 2 hurricanes had hit the port town of
Orleon on the far shore of the Sea of Sanguire. The Palmarans,
like most Braish people apparently, seemed to be taking the
news in stride, believing that the gods had clearly shown their
wrath at the Llofallians’ extravagant use of magic. The
fact that the hurricanes entered into the Sanguire Sea showed
any Braish citizen without a doubt that the gods are more powerful
than those frail Wizards in their lofty towers at Trimon. Most
people in Phort Santonio, although they are more pioneer-spirited
than their Palmaran kin in the northeastern city of Einstun.,
still hold dear their moral belief that the use of magic for
earthly purposes is evil. The general feeling about the hurricanes,
therefore, was “they got what they deserved.”
Of
course, this didn’t sit well with Ozone (or any other
RK, for that matter.) The rank-13 healer immediately ordered
that all the cargo space on his airship be stocked with food,
blankets & other essentials for a quick flight to Orleon
to offer aid to those affected by the storms. He then began
to bless and enchant the supplies, investing them with magical
healing properties. He gave the other RKs just a few hours to
collect their needs and be aboard for take off.
Something
else the RKs heard in the taverns & marketplaces of Phort
Santonio was that these hurricanes had created even more buzz
about the Rainbow Tide festival than the full-moon solstice.
No human had heard of a hurricane entering the Sea of Sanguire
in their lifetime, or even that of their grandfathers. According
to the elves, such storms were more common in ages past, but
none had struck for several centuries. The fact that 2 powerful
hurricanes had hit the same town in the past 2 months had piqued
the interest of sages & weather watchers from around the
world. Many believed an answer to this mystery might be found
by performing the right rituals in the right place at the right
time, which (of course) meant at the Rainbow Tide on So ‘Gapa
‘Lagos.
