Post-Game Report: A Sea of Troubles

This past Sunday, we continued our Warriors & Warlock campaign, using a freely-adapted version of Paizo's Children of the Void in the Second Darkness adventure path. Our regular cast:

Brother Gannon - Is he thief, monk--or both?
Renin - Mind-mage out to save the world who hates and fears him. Or something.
Zarac - He loves only gold...but he really likes his sword.

Things looked bleak for our heroes and their attempt to get in on the "skymetal rush" on Devil's Elbow Island after the fall of a star--and a resultant tsunami that wrecked Raedelsport's harbor. Luckily, a merchant-speculator, Tavrem Kalus, had come to their aid with an offer of passage on the only ship available--for a forty percent cut of the profits, naturally.

The party had dinner with Captain Djosspur Kray aboard his vessel, the Flying Cloud. Mainly, this was a chance for the Captain to grill the three on what their objectives on the Devil's Elbow were, and to deliver some exposition about the island's curse! Said curse involved a siren named Ysersei, and made its dread presence felt in the form of Brother Gannon's player's inability to pronounce the siren's name, even with the other players' couching.

The dinner was interrupted by the sound and smells of burning. Rushing up to the deck, they found black-clad saboteurs setting fire to the sails. Gannon dispatched one with a quickly thrown dagger. Renin mind-blasted one from the mast. Zarac rolled too low on initiative to do aught but shout encouragement.

Despite their style of dress, the saboteurs were no ninja. More like non-ja. They beat a haste retreat over the side of the ship. Quick thinking Renin telekinetically dipped a barrel in the ocean and used it to douse the sails. Gannon and Zarac apprehended the two fallen saboteurs--who were unconscious and didn't really put up a fight.

The Captain set his crew to repairing the sails, and gave the party leave to conduct the interrogations as they saw fit. Two captives meant two interrogations. Renin proceeded with mind-reading his captive. Zarac and Gannon planned to resort to "harsh interrogation techniques," but finding the W&W rules required a full day for really good torture, they decide just to Intimidate.

The two saboteurs sang the same song: the party's old nemesis, now supposed business partner, crime boss Clegg Haddo hired them to make sure no other ships got out of the harbor. The party at first takes this as a personal attack, but later decided it was just Haddo hedging his bets against everybody. As thanks for the information, the saboteurs get thrown overboard still tied.

The repairs were completed by dawn, and the Flying Cloud crossed the eighteen miles to the Devil's Elbow. The closer they got, the more nervous Captain Kray was. He found a good reason to be--as soon as they docked, they were approached by a ragged group coming out of the forest, asking passage back to Raedelsport. These few were all that's left of the mixed human and dwarven mercenaries hired by the Lord Mayor of Raedelsport to get the skymetal. The leader of the expedition, Urumdarru Goldhammer, told a story of strange, deadly creatures lurking in the forest, who passed on a horrifying contagion to men they killed.

Kray is ready to go now, for sure, but promises to pick the party back up in three days time. The three adventurers are left on the docks with the sea to their backs, and the foreboding forest in front of them.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Two Faiths

I've alluded to the predominant religions of Arn and western Erida in a couple of places before, but I'll present them here in more detail. The two faiths are related historically and tend to be able to co-exist without much conflict, though this varies with time and place. As with any widespread religion in the real world, they are understood and practiced in a variety of different ways by adherents in different areas, but the essential elements are presented here.

The Church of Ascension
When Ahzuran achieved apotheosis and became God-Emperor of Old Thystara, he set in motion drastic changes in the traditional religion of the empire. The old gods were no longer seen as the unknowable creators of all, but instead as beings in a higher state. With a living God-Emperor, it was natural that his cult would become preeminent, and the cults of the other gods suffered as a result. It's possible that sectarian violence might have ripped the empire apart, and it certainly weakened it, but its dissolution was forestalled by the establishment of the Concordant. This allowed the continued existence of the old cults with some modification under the authority of the new church.

Authority within the church is nominally centralized, at first in the person of the God-Emperor, then later in the Hierophant, who is taken to be Noble Ahzuran's representative on Earth. The size and complexity of this task for those of less than Ascended capabilities often makes the authority essentially ceremonial, however. The major cults of the old gods (Seiptis, Æternus, Illumé, etc.) and the Ascended which arose in Ahzuran's wake (Ffalstagg, Illyra, etc.) have seats on the governing counsel who advise (and elect) the Hierophant.

The principle doctrine of the Church of Ascension is that man may achieve apotheosis by following the ancient paths rediscovered by Ahzuran. Acension is achieved by deeds which may be beyond the power of many, but piety will at least guarantee the faithful who don't ascend a place in the afterlife ruled by their patron Immortal.

Clerics of the Church of Ascension, not only pursue the paths of Ascension themselves (for the greater glory of the Church, of course) but aid other adventurers in this quest. They play a role in helping the church hierarchy determine the fitness of new godlings or entities encountered to be added to the Annals of the Ascended for the purposes of recognition and veneration.

The Issian Church
Over a century after Ahzuran moved beyond this plane, leaving his empire and church in the hands of mortals, a Thystaran man named Issus claimed to have a revelation. Issus proclaimed that, in a vision, Ahzuran and other great Immortals had shown him the truth--that Ascension was a state all men deserved. However, the arduous paths to Ascension, achievable only by a few, were not the true way this was meant to be done. Ascension only worked because the one true god, the solitary and increate Source of All, had made the multiverse in that way. Ascension wasn't godhood--just one a step closer to communion with the godhead. With faith and adherence to moral teaching, anyone could achieve that state--and more--upon death. The "gods" of the Church of Ascension, and the ancient cults, were re-conceived as saints, who were not to be worshipped, but venerated for the lessons they taught man through their life and travails, and the intercession in worldly events they might provide.

Issus is said to have been martyred (though the details of this is one of the church's mysteries) and to have ascended beyond any other. His teaching were popular and spread among the poor and disenfranchised of the Thystaran Empire. The nascent religion was unable to gain a significant foothold within the halls of power, and remains a small cult in its native land to this day.  In the more rural colonies and provinces, the Issian faith proved more popular, particularly as the Empire began to decay. After the Empire's fall, Issianism became the preeminent religion of Western Erida--particularly in Llys and Staark.

The Issian Church is much less hierarchical than the Church of Ascension. Each Issian state had its own autocephalous hierarchy, but all recognized each other. This changed with the diabolic transformation of the Llysan branch of the church. The Issian Church of Llys transplanted to Arn is even less heirarchial with individual church's essentially asserting independence, though they tend to cooperate with each other.

Clerics in the Issian Church are interested in helping the poor and downtrodden as mandated by their belief (particularly those suffering under the yolk of evil (i.e. rebellious) ascended), and in expanding the temporal power of their church, both by proselytizing to the unfaithful, and filling the church coffers with treasure.

Stuck in Medieval with You

I may ramble a bit here as the argument is still forming...

I've been thinking of late about fantasy, both as a literary and rpg genre, and whether there's room for old school-style adventuring outside the bounds of "medieval fantasy."

Obviously, I don't mean the literal, real-world European Middle Ages, but stories with a technology level somewhere between the Iron Age and the Renaissance. Sure, at least on the blogosphere, there's been an emergence of science fantasy, mixing remnant super-science with more primitive technology. Some of these baroque worlds are pretty divergent from real world analogs. There's a definite sort of Heavy Metal dream-logic feel to some, which tosses all sorts of technological assumptions out the window. Still, even in these worlds, one gets the feeling there's a fair number of swords being swung.

I don't think the issue comes down just the firearms, though maybe that's a bigger deal than I'm allowing. Is there any reason dungeon-delving couldn't be accomplished with more "modern" weapons? Would there presence drastically alter the mood?

There's the subgenre of urban fantasy, which may be underrepresented in rpgs, but does exist. Urban fantasy, though, rooted in bringing fantasy to the familiar, doesn't really capture the unknowable aspect that underpins a lot of pulp fantasy. Too much unknown in an urban fantasy setting, and its likely to veer into more of a horror mode.

Then there's fantasy in sort of Victorian-esque settings--what's often called steampunk--a term which really seems to easier to apply as a certain sort of visual aesthetic than literary genre. Some of works often placed in this category, like China Mieville's Bas-Lag stories, and the works of Stephen Hunt take place in full-fledged "secondary worlds," not the usual alternate histories. Mieville's work in particular, could no doubt serve as inspiration for a dungeoneering-based rpg (there are even D&D-style adventurers making an appearance in Perdido Street Station), but is there an rpg work in this direction yet?

Heading across the Atlantic would give us Western (meaning the genre, of course) fantasy. Stephen King's Dark Tower series is even an example of secondary world (epic) Western fantasy, to contrast with the more common alternate history fantasy of, say, Deadlands. There was a d20 supplement or two that grafted elves and dwarves into the Old West, which seems to a surefire way to suck any "unknowability" or "weird" out of the setting with the leech of predictability.

That's been precisely the problem with a lot of fantasy space opera/fantasy-space. We get Dragonstar instead of Starlin's Dreadstar. Really, no works have given us weird space fantasy, or dungeon (asteroid?)-delving space fantasy, as far as I know.

So fantasy with firearms is clearly do-able, but its tougher to find those fantasies combined with a world designed for pulp fantasy--picaresque, secondary world settings, with elements of weird, and the unknown/unknowable. I'm not convinced this can't be done, though.

It seems to me what you need is a setting that is removed enough for our time to have been mythologized a bit, much in the same way that the pre-modern world has been. You could set a dungeon-delving campaign in an alternate 1960s, but then you would get urban fantasy (of a sort) not pulp fantasy. The Old West and Victorian England, are definitely mythologized enough, but probably so are the Roaring Twenties and the Napoleonic era, and others. The future is--ironically--pretty mythologized too, but set things too near-future and you're in urban fantasyland.

While traditional fantasy will always have a preeminent place in my heart, I can't help but think that these other eras can be mined for new settings to expand the vistas of fantasy gaming. I'm not sure adventurers should be confine to a technological level that's largely a historical artifact of the fantasy genre's evolution.

I'm gonna think more about that.