Ranger of the North

I've an idea for a novel, and I want to create a world for it that is D&Dish, but more flavorful and atmospheric.

Its about the heroine the Ranger of the North defeating the Prince of the East and his many minions and dukes and so on.

In good heroic fashion, the Ranger is a deadly shot with a bow, and good with other weapons as well.

The Dukes and Minions of the Dark Lord...

1. The Singers are eerily happy and cheerful worshippers of Moloch. Imagine a cross between oh, the Hari Krishnas and the Manson Family.

"Today is a glorious day merchant, we've come to extend to you the blessings of Moloch. Now give us your child so that we may toss it into a fire." The smiling Singer said while behind her the backup 'Chorus' of unsmiling brutes with their hands on their swords waited.

2. Sormak the Shadow: He was a minor servant of the Last Dark Lord, but when the LDL was thrown down, and took his own life rather than face justice, he was such a minor fry that he got away. Since then, he's developed more power as a Dark Wizard. He is a True Wizard, unlike many enchanters and sorcerers, and a being of great and dreadful power.

He is also a traitor to the High King of the Stars having delivered members of his clan to the LDL in exchange for tokens and safety.

One of his preferred spells is Lay Waste, by which he summons a plague or some other form of diffuse destruction to destroy a province or small nation.

3. Mercenary Trolls: These creatures are very durable, hate-filled, can spit toxic venom, or rip with their claws. Many of them have been to schools which teach basic combat. They hate sunlight, and hide under bridges or in basements. They rob and loot sporadically on their own, but for pay they will harrass and attack more regularly.

The trolls could made more interesting, perhaps, if they were paid something specific.

I never liked the idea of lawless monster raiders - orcs, for example, of the D&D variety - paid in the coin of the realm. What do they do with it, make coinmail? Walk down to the local market and buy basil for their evening soups?

Perhaps a more sinister version of "the Oompa-Loompas are paid in cocoa beans, of course!"

4. Were-bats: They look normal, shop in your store, sometimes eat at your table on High Holy Days, and yet, when the moon is full, the madness descends on them. They start screeching, and bellowing, nonsensical words bubble from their throats, and then the Change begins.

Human/Man-Bat/Giant Bat are the three forms.

They are aggressively berserk, and under the moon's influence, their relatively normal personality flips to bloodthirsty sociopathic. The Change can also be brought on by sufficient anger, or by sufficient quantities of the stone 'selenite' (its a real stone).

Selenite is white and glossy.

Their bite inflicts madness for the first month, and then the Change, and then a reversion back to something like sanity. However, the longer someone is a Were-bat the more sensitive they are to the moon. Someone who's managed to be a surviving were-bat for a decade can probably Change on any night with a clear sky.

Wodium's question:

One answer is that there are wandering tinkers who secretly deal with the monsters.

"No, no, I would never sell the orcs weapons even if they paid me three times what they were worth."

Another answer is 'slave children'. The trolls don't breed, but they can transform human children into young trolls with certain procedures. This is not generally known.

And yes, this world is pretty dark in spots.

Some foreigners (who have no liking for the Prince or the Ranger) practise Wyvern Magic. This magic works best with a willing subject (often bought by lies or by threats and promised payments to family). The subject is magicked, and some sort of trigger event shortly thereafter unleashes the Wyvern.

Unleashing means the skin and skull of the subject is ripped aside, and out of the tattered bits steps the Wyvern.

The Wyvern is the size of the human in mass, but taller. It is a berserk monster that kills the first thing it meets, and then continues on until its stopped.

Some homegrown mages have also experimented with such magics, but its really more common among the foreigners.

Eric, I think Scott has a point. Most shop keepers would probably reach for the double barrel 12 gauge that they keep under the counter if a troll came in. Probably better that they get paid in some rare delicacy. A common practice when walking through their territory is to keep a bag of said rare delicacy on you. If the trolls attack, you throw the bag of said rare delicacy, and run the other way. The trolls quickly lose all interest in you. Perhaps the rare delicacy is some manner of drug or something. A plant that has psychoactive effects on the trolls. They can't easily obtain it, because it only grows in well-lit, hard to reach areas. Something along those lines, anyway.

Hey, dropping by again (not (yet) playing again).

The singers are creepy. Certainly in the example you gave. It gives me the shivers. Good work!

Sormak is interesting. His character is nicely worked out. A sneaky backstabber. How did he become a Dark Wizard, what does true Wizard mean? Did/does he get his power from a certain pact he had to make or something?

Scott has a point about the trolls, yet if they like shiny things, coins would make sense, as would jewels, necklaces, ...

The were-bats sound a bit like vampires to me. Also I think a term like were-bats is a bit bland. They could have some other cool name that a local culture would give them.

The Wyvern magic is strange and weird. Though it could link to kamikaze's or suicide bombers who will give their life in battle for the promise of ... or by loyalty and honor. It could be a bit less different and linked to the Moloch service. Like "If you want to spare your child we'll need your life, but more so, you'll need to take other lives too." (just brainstorming) I'm just a bit afraid that it will become overload if you have so many different sorts of things in one book. Yet on it's own, it's certainly a good idea.

But more important, what is the heroine doing. What's her motivation, what are her heroic deeds? Is she some kind of Robin Hood, or a masked avenger or just someone who wants to destroy the prince. If so, why does she want to destroy the prince? Did they take her son to sacrifice?

Just some thoughts. It looks interesting.

Nikolaj

I'm thinking the format of the book would be a bit episodic. She goes to a region, crosses swords with the local Bad Guys, and gets in a fight with them, and then moves on. There would be an overarching plot connecting all this, but it'd be much more short stories.

I could have the Wyvern Mages claim they serve the Dark Star who is the True King of the Stars (they say), but the Dark Star is really Moloch. So, it'd be two different cults worshipping Moloch. But you have to become a really high level WM to learn the truth.

I think True Wizard means able to do magics above a certain bias level due to a genetic marker that shows you have the blood of Atlantaen royalty somewhere in your ancestry. Say 6@1 and higher must be descendants of Atlantaen royalty. This would be a powerblock.

Mages and enchanters and sorcerers all go to their schools, and they are taught that you can't do magic without such schooling. And most people believe this. Its not true. There is no powerblock against less than 6@1 magic by anyone.

When someone engages in magic that is not an accredited mage, they are accused of shamanry, charlatanism, witchery, or infernalism. Frequently, they find themselves harrassed and even injured, or prosecuted.

High level schooled mages know better, but they see no reason to 'let the peasants do magic'. 'Why if some plowman thought he could do magic, he would think himself the equal of us, and he'd demand we listen to him. Quelle horror.'

Mage--Details, details, details. Mages don't carry spellbooks. There four assistants tote large duffel bags full of spellbooks, if you can get the mage to leave his tower where he has a very large library. The typical spell takes twenty pages of instructions to complete, most involving chalk and esoteric calculations.

Enchanter--Quicker and simpler. Enchanters change the perception of things. They make the ugly beautiful, the beautiful tawdry, the graceless full of glory. Their magic is frequently used against crowds. Such magic can affect the world of matter as a person has a far better chance of leaping from building to building across an alley if they believe they can, and if their body cooperates fully.

Sorcery--Communing with spirits, and changing bodies. The sorcerer may summon a sprite to do some task such as freeze off a wart, or alter some DNA.

Shamanry--Not practised. Derogatory term meaning 'commune with simple-minded nature spirits using blood magic'.

Charlatanism--fakery. Not real magic.

Witchery--Derogatory. 'Old wives tales and peasant superstitions for woman with no power'. Witchery is practised by many, but quietly.

Infernalism--communing with the spirits of the Shadow to do their will and your own. This carries the penalty of beheading, and then the body is burnt and the ashes scattered. This is not commonly practised as such, although one could say that WM and the Singers are such, but they are not seen that way.

Were-bats--Moonbats?

Everyone seems to agree with Scott on giving the Mercenary Trolls something to be paid with. We have as follows:
1. Coins for tinkers
2. Slave children to be transformed by sorcery into trolls.
3. Herbal drugs or Mushroom drugs.
4. Shiny stuff, jewels, gems

The heroine is motivated by love of her country, its traditions, and its people. She sees the Prince sinking them into drudgery and slavery and dark practises and she hates this, although she mostly doesn't hate him.

Sorta Robin Hood would be good.

Third post.

Mages construct artificial rules, and a system of them, and then activate it with a burst of Power.

'In the space defined by the following formula....all objects defined by this formula....will have gravity reduced by this formula's percentage....'. Thats part of a spell for Zero Gravity Superleap spell.

Mages have three times the chance of botching, but the extra two-thirds must go to bystanders and not the mage.

Put me in the camp of those who have no trouble with "monsters" wanting gold. Coin of the realm is not different from any other gold coin, but that the government has certified it to be of a guaranteed weight and purity; that would make it more desireable in the minds of some monsters, because you knew it wasn't gold over lead or gold mixed with tin or something like that.

So, it'd be two different cults worshipping Moloch. But you have to become a really high level WM to learn the truth.

Why would high level Wyvern Mages know this? I don't see the advantage to Moloch to have the top people in his secret order know that they work for him instead of the good guys they always thought they were serving. There would be significant risk that some high level mage would revolt against this if he discovered it, or even that one would let slip bits of suggestion to others once he knows the secret.

Say 6@1 and higher must be descendants of Atlantaen royalty. This would be a powerblock.

That seems more trouble than necessary to me. Rather, make the bias 6@10 (or maybe 6@19 for a curve of 25) and declare that Atlantis is/was in a related universe, so that Atlantleans (and their descendants) are not indigs, and so are bound by the curve but not the level.

Your description of the heroine strikes me more along the lines of that French heroine whose name has slipped my mind at the moment, acting for God and country against the authorities.

Mages have three times the chance of botching, but the extra two-thirds must go to bystanders and not the mage.

This strikes me odd, because it seems that mage spells are so highly complex already that they're going to be bonused to no-fail spells--and three times one tenth of no chance to fail is no chance to botch.

You might do better with a "low success side-effects" rule--that is, any roll of 10% or less which would be a success (as all of them probably are) succeeds but also has negative side effects which impact innocent bystanders. It's a matter of the "low success level" meaning a failure to control all of the tremendous power released, and so some of it leaks into various chaotic outcomes. You might also tie it to a GE roll, such that sometimes those chaotic outcomes are beneficial and sometimes they are detrimental, and sometimes they're just chaotic.

Gee, I like that so much I wish I'd put it in the rules as a general option. But really, it's only appropriate for high-magic worlds--too many worlds offer so low a chance of success particularly to students that the bottom ten percent represents near a third of all successful castings.

--M. J. Young

Gee, I like that so much I wish I'd put it in the rules as a general option. But really, it's only appropriate for high-magic worlds--too many worlds offer so low a chance of success particularly to students that the bottom ten percent represents near a third of all successful castings.

Which would teach versers the error of trying to use those high-power spells from high-bias worlds in, for example, Nagaworld.

What sit-mod benefit would you consider appropriate compensation for this limitation? Surely not more than +10, because of the maths, but you'd want it to be worthwhile. I suppose it depends on how skewed the GE roll ends up being.

I was thinking of it as just "the way it works" in that particular world. Remember, there's supposed to be a relative success reading on all skills, and mag skills (and especially arcane mag skills) are very much about whether you can control supernatural energy and focus it where you want. So rolls from 11 to 20 are weak successes, and rolls from 1 to 10 are even weaker successes in which there is leakage.

But I can see giving someone +5 for including that unpredictable element at the bottom end, particularly if they did it consistently--such as if we're talking about an entire school of magic that teaches skills in a way that increases the probability of success by increasing the possibility of leakage.

--M. J. Young

Regions of the League of States:

1. Northern Colony

This land was recently taken from a former Dark Lord of a foreign power. Its where the Ranger of the North comes from.

The Viceroy of this land is corrupt.

2. The Westerly Isles

The dominant class are the petit dukes, or dukelings, each of whom is convinced they are the greatest thing since Gilgamesh. The petit dukes are undead spectres clad in robes and silver masks. They've been 'living' for five hundred years, and their interests and expectations vary from the living. They're somewhat flaky that way.

The Viceroy is a time-travelling bone golem who KNOWS he's going to live as he's seen his history, and so he's undefeatable. However, he's been forced on teh defensive by proxy agents of the dukelings who are supposed to be working for him, but are actually conspiring against him. He is fairly popular with the ordinary folk who generally hate their dukelings.

3. The Northern Barbarians live outside the reach of the Prince of the East or of anyone but themselves. The last time the League went to war with them over three hundred years ago, they burnt the capital city of the League to the ground.

The NB are extremely polite and civil until you invade, and then its all bets are off. They spend most of their time sitting around in their longhouses getting drunk and telling each other stories.

4. The Capital City of the Prince of the East is like many other Dark Empires a place where the elite live on another level and crush the normal people beneath them.

MORE LATER....