Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Wednesday Comics: DC, July 1984 (week 1)
Friday, March 28, 2025
[Greyhawk] North Province
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Art by Mihai Radu |
The Overking was traditionally appointed by vote of the magnates ruling the constituent territories of the Aedi. One of these was the region now called North Province which was held by House Naelax since the Great Kingdom's founding.
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Wednesday Comics: DC, June 1984 (week 4)
Monday, March 24, 2025
[Greyhawk] South Province
Under the enlightened rule of the Herzogin, Eliamund, South Province could reasonably boast to being the most cultured and genteel realm of the Aerdi. The first Aerdian university was founded with her encouragement and patronage. The poets and troubadours who were welcome at her court composed ballads of chivalry, romance, and courtly love that then spread throughout the Kingdom. Perhaps owing to a culture dating back to the realm of Flan queen Ehlissa, women enjoyed a greater role in South Kingdom than in the more patriarchal north.
In the North, legends painted Ehlissa as a wicked enchantress, cruel to her subjects. The Southron troubadours, however, sang of her as a wise and benevolent, an interpretation encouraged by Eliamund.
This bright age did not last. The Turmoil Between Crowns saw Eliamund forced from the throne. She lived out her remaining days in an abbey.
The South Province of 576 CY was not the land it once was. An ill-favored cousin of the Overking, Faastal, sat upon the ducal chair, a man incompetent as he was arrogant. He had been given a task that would have challenged someone of greater talents: to put down rebellion in the South and return the cities of the Iron League to royal control. Faastal crushed the people with taxes to fund his military blunders and dealt over-harshly with any dissent. His efforts only served to stoke the fires of rebellion he had been sent to quell.
For the rebel bands hiding in the forests and the towns barricaded against the Herzog's men, Eliamund became a symbol of their struggle and was given devotion like a saint or hero-god.
Friday, March 21, 2025
Greyhawk So Far
I've got more posts to come, but I figured it was a good time to put all the posts I've written so far together in one place:
The project idea (though it's perhaps become a bit less Medieval over time than I initially intended. It's still a large part, but not the sole focus).
And some real-world images for terrain inspiration.
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Wednesday Comics: DC, June 1984 (week 3)
Monday, March 17, 2025
24 Hours in Ancient China
I've recently been listening to the audiobook of 24 Hours in Ancient China: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There by Yijie Zhuang, part of the 24 Hours in Ancient History series that includes volumes of Rome, Athens, and Egypt by various authors. The conceit of the series is that in a succession of vignettes about various characters over a 24-hour period, something of the daily life of the time and place is revealed.
In this volume, the time and place is 17 CE, the fourth year of the reign of the usurper Wang Mang, which the book refers to as the Western Han dynasty, but Wikipedia frames as the brief Xin dynasty. In the space of 24 hrs we meet craftsmen and criminals, labors and scholars. Each vignette drops us into mundane drama of regular life--often which ends unresolved because the purpose of the series is instructive. Still, it's a conceit that delivers the information in a more entertaining way than a textbook approach would have.
Of particular interest to gamers might be the nocturnal larceny of the gang of tomb robbers led by a self-styled knight errant (youxia), the trials of the minor official maintaining a small, frontier fort in a time of increased Hun raids, the criminals being marched to a work camp, or former Imperial concubine exiled to superintend her Emperor's mausoleum.
It's a fascinating read. If the other volumes in the series are as good as this one, then I look forward to checking them out as well.