Hello dear reader, what a crazy couple
of weeks its been. The stomach flu hit our house, as well as several
of our friends', hard at the end of January leaving us reeling a bit
as February began. However, it is a brand new week and I am back at
the keyboard. As promised, I am beginning a weekly recap of our role
playing sessions.
We're all pretty big nerds here and
have been enjoying role-playing games for many, many years now. Over
the years, we've had friends come and go in our lives but they've
always shared in our love for a good time, a good character, and a
good story. Little wonder that, with so much of our lives wrapped up
in the love of stories, I choose to pursue a life of writing.
We play a couple of the bigger, staple
RPG games such as Dungeons and Dragons (3.5) and the Star Wars RPG,
both d20 system and published by Wizards of the Coast. We also
occasionally venture into other systems and games, though less so
these days. It seems we've found our comfortable style.
With the new year my wife Jen, our good
friend Bill, and I began a fresh D&D adventure in a new land.
Allow me to introduce the world and the player characters:
A great darkness has fallen over the
land of . The might and majesty of the former empire, a thriving
civilization that spanned the whole of the mainland and the islands
to the south, has expired. Extinguished in fire, conflict, and
disease.
The plague, violent and
indiscriminate, ravaged all peoples of the Empire, claiming 8 of 10
lives and left a crumbling, decaying world in its wake. Those few
that escaped this wasting disease found themselves in a constant
struggle for their very survival. These starving souls are prey for
the unchecked wild beasts and growing bands of marauders who kill,
plunder, and burn.
As much of the cultivated, civilized
knowledge had been lost with the deaths of those that horded it,
superstition has risen to predominance. Blindly, the denizens of this
wasteland attempt to hack a living out of what remains. The slender
thread of life hangs perilously in the fickle winds of fortune. Fear
of ill omens and curses drive many to shun the unknown as ancient
prejudices resurface. For many, the only law is that of the mob and
those that twist it to their advantage.
Far in the north, a day's travel
inland from the coast, lies the small village of Fowlglenn. Removed
from the influence of the empire and spared the great dying, these
farmers and herdsmen live a peaceful life. This is where Talys,
daughter of Arda, was raised. Born under the sign of a comet that
pierced the sky and steeped in mixed omens; her shock white hair, a
powerful presence beyond her stature, and her chosen companion in the
form of a serpent, Talys never quite fit amid the simple farmers.
Her father, a Walling (pronounced
Vailing) raider from the large island to the north, and her
mother, his stubborn conquest who refused to leave her land, reared
her and her two brothers in the relative peace of a simple life.
Never one for farming, Talys' father took to trapping, fur trade, and
keeping the herds safe from native predators.
Talys, the middle of the three
children, took after her father, joining him regularly on his hunting
trips and learning the ways of the sword. Her brothers, by
comparison, stayed home with their mother to tend to the land. As
such, when Talys came of age, her father passed his large, two handed
blade to her to carry.
Being of his Walling disposition and
her mother's stubbornness, she regularly challenged others of the
village to test her mettle. Quickly proving too much for the basic
broom stick combat shared among the villager youth, Talys yearned for
true tutelage. With her parent's blessing and a vague rumor of a
notable swordsman in the town of Woodwall to the south, Talys set out
to find her teacher and learn the ways of a sword master.
The cities can be a dangerous place
in the wake of the great dying, as Katan Roy discovered early. Born
wanting, Katan is of a slender frame and short stature at just under
five feet tall. Orphaned at a young age, the small red head had to
rely upon her own cunning and skill to survive. Rarely stealing
directly from pockets and never from those that had less than
herself, this young burglar took what she could to stave off
starvation.
Where her fingers are deft and
skilled, her eyes are less keen when it comes to discerning treasure
from trinket. Many times her bounty turns out to be nothing more than
common items; the brass buttons she snipped off a fine coat are
merely painted wooden toggles, that bronze bowl is simply a cheap
copper one, etc.
Avoiding the dangers of the cities
often left her in the wilds, discovering small tricks to keep herself
alive in the woods to the north. Food, shelter, water; Katan learned
quickly how to secure them all and became more accustomed to life on
the road than the town she was raised in.
Now, Katan travels from town to town
with her only companion, a small raccoon named Olly, looking for her
next score. With a light coin purse and rumbling belly, she finds
herself heading east to the town of Woodwall.
