Hex Crawl 23 #172: Canyon of the Last Stand

Fourteen hexes north, two northwest of Alakran.

Beyond the eminence of Gagaz-Parku there is a remote and desolate valley that narrows with steep sides toward the Scarp. The canyon culminates in a boxed-in end, on whose floor is piled a mound of stones and earth, ten feet high and sixty feet broad, overgrown with the sparse weeds and short shrubs of those highlands.

This place is known in surrounding regions as the "Canyon of the Last Stand,"  but whose stand exactly? That is more of a mystery. Hero, tyrant, rebel company, defiant runaway bride ... all have their stories and legends. Curiosity is dampened by persistent tales of a curse on the mound, so that few have ventured there even to gawk at it.

The Band of Bronze found the answer based on two clues. One was part of the legend of the undead dragon "Dragotha" -- the heroes who slew him hacked off his wings in a battle near his lair, and he ran to the west "until he could run no more." Then he was slain.

The other is a strong clue if interpreted well. It is an older form of a well-known song of lament, a form taught to the armadillo bard Dasypus by the blind singer Ish Shamai, the relevant parts of which we can render here in a more 20th century mode of lamentation.

The men have chased me from my home, O lord

The men have chased me from my home, O lord

The men have chased me from my home, 

And wounded me that I might roam

And follow me to where I’m goin’, O lord

The mountains rise on my right hand, O lord

The mountains rise on my left hand, O lord

The mountains rise also behind

And here is where I make my stand

And there I see the killing band, O lord

The arrows fly so sharp and fierce, O lord

The arrows fly so sharp and fierce, O lord

The arrows fly so sharp and fierce

And still they cannot do their worst

Because I have no skin to pierce, O lord

The fire engulfs me from afar, O lord

The fire engulfs me from afar, O lord

The fire engulfs me from afar

And still it cannot leave a scar

Because I have no flesh to char, O lord

And now they strike me limb from limb, O lord

And now they strike me limb from limb, O lord

And now they strike me limb from limb

I cannot move, I cannot climb

But still I see and still I sing, O lord

And now they bear away my head, O lord

And now they bear away my head, O lord

And now they bear away my head, 

To stand as proof that I am dead

And finally my soul has fled, O lord

 

The mound in fact covers the bones of Dragotha's body; his skull is in the Governor's vault of Shasari and his hacked-off wings rest in his lair-tomb of old. Shargata's necromantic faction swore they possessed a recipe to make a dragon-slaying weapon for use against Razisiz. So the Band of Bronze faithfully collected the ingredients: the ancient text, the Regrets of Urrummittu, from that figure's shrine and tomb beneath Nathrak; the skull of the dracolich from the Governor's vault in Shasari; his wings from his lair itself; and finally, the bones, here. Only when they saw the dragon's whole skeleton, arranged by deceit into a "forge" for the weapon, assemble themselves and rise, did they grasp the horrible truth. The whole quest was a plot to raise Dragotha, powerful of body if bereft of soul, once more from the dead.  
 
The "curse" that peasants speak of, though, is but a superstition; or perhaps a presentiment of the dire events to follow here in the Urig year 7022. 

The Order of St. Hermas

So here are details on the secret society/level titles/ advancement costs hybrid I proposed earlier.

Click to enlarge

This will certainly work best if the Society is the only reliable source for all these goods and services, which adventurers in laxer worlds have come to rely upon as their birthright. Henchmen can be obtained elsewhere, but may not be loyal or brave in the heat of the moment, and may shun a boss under whom too many have failed to return. Banking and treasure identification can certainly be presented as precarious enterprises in a savage world. Clerics, prophets, or whoever do not usually offer their services for a fee.

The four branches are identified with the four iconic classes of D&D but can also substitute for their absence in a party. It is reasonable for a wizard to join the Sword path wanting henchmen as bodyguards, or for a cleric to serve as the party's money handler, joining the Pentacles.

Can you spot the third idea from AD&D this draws on? Yep, alignment language.

More on St. Hermas here.

The Fantastic Through Obscurity

Discussion on how to keep the fantastic in adventure gaming continues, with a renewed desire and specific tips. My further thoughts ...

In information security, the phrase "security through obscurity" is used to disparage the hope that vulnerabilities can be protected by keeping them secret. In their early stages of development, many game forms achieve a sense of wonder through obscurity. Magic: The Gathering, for example, initially provided this sense of wonder through opening packets of collectible cards and finding ones you'd never seen before ... or having them show up in your opponent's deck. Eventually, like many security-though-obscurity hopes, this was dashed through the posting of complete spoilers on the nascent Internet, and through the practice that rapidly developed (to Wizards of the Coast's great joy) of buying whole boxes of product in order to get a complete set. Within a few years it was a poor collectible card game whose manufacturer did not provide rarity symbols, checklists, and eventually complete spoilers and previews.

Was there an attempt to keep the fantastic around through obscurity in early D&D? It's hard to deny when reading the Gygaxian objurgations in AD&D to keep players' noses out of the Dungeon Master's Guide. But that is already late in the day. The time of wonder and fantasy is fading, and the desire to standardize the game deals the death blow; the secrets that used to be kept in the Dungeon Master's cranium are now holy writ. In this light the railing against players accessing the mass-produced secrets sold in Barnes and Noble sounds as hollow as Canute's commands against the tide.

In the age of the Internet spoiler the sense of wonder is even more crucially down to the individual game master. In the comments on Monsters & Manuals I made a point that bears expanding here.

1. When players are denied access to the rules that let them carry out mundane tasks at the starting level, this creates a denial of mastery. You can certainly play this way, with players issuing orders and seeing what happens, in a "fog of war" kind of way. But a lot of players are used to a certain level of rules mastery; a generation has grown up with console RPGs. You don't have to deny them this all the way.

2. Expanding what I've said about high level magic spells, denying knowledge of rules and techniques found at higher levels also helps create the sense of wonder. If the game was about kung fu, then not being able to read all about what a high level Taoist master can do would help achieve this.

3. The technique in Lamentations of providing no standardized monsters or magic items points the way to a game system where the rules of the mundane are known to the players, but the fantastic elements are an idiosyncratic revelation from game to game. Yes, creating the fantastic is hard individual work for the DM. But the alternative, especially with experienced games, is a group of players who ready the oil when they see a troll, who can find out exactly how much every gland in every dead monster corpse is worth, and for whom the only surprise is tactical, not strategic.

I have a few ideas of my own, both on how to make the hard work easier, and how to make the hard work mean more. Next post I'll try to articulate them more fully.