In the spring of 1997, Rich Staats posted a request for players to rec.games.frp.annouce. I answered it, and in late June, we played our first session. This is the summary of the important information, people, names, and events we've encountered thus far in the campaign.
This is a link to Rich Staats' (the GM) home pages. This contains lots of background on the campaign world.
The seasons are: Sea, Fire, Earth, Dark, Storm, and the Sacred Time All the seasons (except the Sacred Time) have eight weeks which are: Disorder, Harmony, Death, Fertility, Stasis, Movement, Illusion, and Truth.
The Sacred Time is two weeks without further designation.
Each week in a regular season has the following seven days: Freezeday, Waterday, Clayday, Windsday, Fireday, Wildday and Godday.
There is a full moon every Wildday.
The Red moon is not visible during the Sacred Time when the other gods and goddesses recount their acts in the heavens. It is rumored there are other moons, but this is surely madness.
The Overmen - A race of men bred to be supermen. They are 7' tall on average with black, tightly stretched skin and double thumbs. They use fierce warbeasts as mounts.
Brothers of Balance - Formed after the war against the Lunar Empire from the Balance Cult and the White Wanderers. They are the personal representatives of Mung, the Overlord's spiritual advisor.
Morakanth - A race of large tapir-like beings, who are known slavers. They created the slave collar Drew wore for a time.
Agar Agan - A troll goddess (of the surface?) and of insects.
Law trolls - Large creatures that use radar for vision.
The ring inscription, also found on the tree near Veldman's Needles. This bit also seems to be tied to the symbol of the 7 pointed star and Vine the devil:
The world in dormant state doth lie our forces range the lands under sky We shall the Old Ones unbind...
The vision Quera and Cardhu received from the baboon spirit:
I am Adon the Elder. A great disturbance has arisen in the spirit world. Let this vision guide you. Many foul creatures have been released. You carry bad mojo -- my tribe will defend you until destroyed it is. Never ending, it brings the minions of Agar Agan in the hut. Without fear, one must step with and cut the never ending without. The Bad mojo still lives and must be confronted in the place the mean defiled with the stolen weapons of the warrior -- cloth, sword, and gem
A dream everyone experienced while in Gebnick Glade:.
Paddling with one oar, an empty nest, a burning oak.
The scroll revealed by the destruction of the portrait of vine has several layers of writing and symbols on it:
The conjunction as described by Tarkis:
A conjunction of the stars Acos and Thunston will occur when the storm gods go strong, and movement and earth are conjoined. The powers released will be on the same order as those that formed Veldman's Needles in the first place.
Styles companions were: Kaliban Keen-Eye, Grantile and "the Gremlin." There are many tales of these noble heroes. Supposedly, in addition to stealing the Eye of Og, they slew the vile seven eyed oracle of Ochamham and assembled an Artifact of surpassing power following the words of Saint Acheron (who dates from the very first annals of man in Zhalindor --- Eric the Pious has only seen documents mentioning documents actually written by Acheron).
The Gremlin was the greatest thief know to history when he lived. He was clever as a serpent and originally from Ochamham. It is legended that he was ever playing tricks on Grantile, and that his final trick was to trap Grantile to be the king of an underwater kingdom, unable to flee or die. Bah, of course such rumors are only the ramblings of infirm minds. :-) Kaliban Keen-Eye supposedly became the king of the beastmen. Of course, that would make him quite old since the exploits of Style and Kaliban Keen-Eye occurred in the third age of man.
The ages of man were: First Home (Creation to the migration from Palmalta), the Timerian Empire (from the founding of the Timerian Empire to its first fall), the Great Northern Empire (from the time of the founding of the Temple of Eldar to the destruction of the empire), and the Years of the Overlord (what the party is using now). The years between each of these epochs are sketchy and poorly recorded, but there are surviving records from *within* these epochs by the historians of the various ages.
The Dragon-Newts may have a better reckoning of all these things, but their ways are strange to men.
The Pools of the Moon - They're some sort of magical pool. One is located in the fallen High Temple of Lopnel. They represent a way to get rid of the Eye of Og.
Lopnel was a mighty religion when the Great Northern Empire (Lei Po) was defeated. After the high temple was razed by the Lunars, the religion fell into bad times. The paladins of Lopnel were once the scourge of evil; now, there are none of them. There are followers of Lopnel amongst the Shastan (Great Waste) barbarians.
Lopnel holds that it is the duty of the warriors to protect the remainder of society, no matter what the cost. Warrior-hood is the highest honor, and the greatest accomplishment of a worshipper is to die valiantly in battle. Lopnel promotes intelligent tactics over mindless assaults though. Worshippers of Lopnel are expected to gather followers and build shrines in his honor. (OOC: you can view this as the same requirement a paladin has.) Any evil is all evil. There is no such thing as either a minor slight or an incidental evil. If actions violate the Lopnel's sense of ethics then it is evil and must be eradicated. Extreme measures are sometimes required. FREX, if someone of little consequence is taken hostage, a follower of Lopnel might sink a crossbow bolt through the hostage's chest to "resolve the hostage situation," and then, the terrorist could be dealt with without worrying about the hostages. A follower of Lopnel can be sensible though. If attacking the evil is likely to destroy the follower of Lopnel then the Lopnel warrior would be encouraged to show patience. Patience is inversely proportional to the amount of effect the Lopnel warrior is expected to have against the evil. If the Lopnel warrior would be able to destroy the ultimate evil by giving his own life, this would be viewed as appropriate. LT Ripley in the Aliens movies probably worships Lopnel. :-)
Lopnel was worshipped through extremely realistic combat training. Any blood or bloody rags were collected up and offered up on an altar dedicated to Lopnel. A grand battle on Lopnel's holy day is most appropriate.
Holy days of Lopnel are: Clayday, Fire Season, Fertility Week and Windsday, Death Week, Storm Season.
The Lunar empire is physically far removed from Tumeria, and the Great Waste and the Prax stand between the empire and the kingdom. The Lunars weren't defeated all that long ago as Zhalindorian history goes, 2050 YOL time frame. The Great Waste was once the Great Northern Empire which the party knows was called Lei Po by its inhabitants. The party also knows that Eldar and other gods of the Void were worshipped in Lei Po. Corlis' religious teachings tell him this moral decay was the downfall of the Great Northern Empire, and the warriors of Lopnel wiped the scourge from the land. How exactly the forested and fruitful area of Lei Po became a desert and scrub land is a little vague, but the faithful of Lopnel hold that Lopnel struck a bargain with the gods of nature to further punish the denizens of the Great Northern Empire and even withheld rain from them. Another scroll the party recovered indicated the directional relationship between: Traagor, the Temple of Eldar, Cal Teegor, and Arendur. The party as a whole knows very little or nothing about most of these places, but you do know that they are all features of the Great Waste. The party can guess that the Temple is just what it sounds like. Traagor was referred to as "glorious" or "grand" in the scroll that the party has. All can be assumed to be vile and deadly places, not locations for the faint of heart to confront. :-) Also, it is not certain how many of them still exist. The Great Northern Empire was destroyed *before* Year One of the Overlord; so, these places have not existed as political entities for at least two millennia. But, recall the words of the great master, "that which for nameless eons lies where even death may die." There may be "things" which still exist in these places if not original denizens. Eric the Pious mentioned in some of his conversation with Rayward while talking about the picture the party had of the sword, cloth and gem that Traagor was the capitol of Lei Po. Cardhu, Vochma, Drew and Quera have heard the following rumors and legends about the Great Waste (GW) from travelers there. (Most of these are 3+ pitchers of ale stories --- you've been warned. ;-) )
WAY out of date.
This section contains the section logs I've written for the campaign, organized by session.