Wilderness again!

This Is The Place!

Tomorrow at 4:20 AM we (my girlfriend and I) will head to some not-so-big mountains here in Poland. Except usual Underworld Day (another Tomb Day to be more precise :D), scheduled for tomorrow, there will be no new posts this week.

I hope that we'll survive this trip and that I will find some inspiration for new gaming stuff and music. I also plan to make shitloads of photos but I'll post them in the future, when I'll end my Underworld Day series and start something new.

Thanks to all buyers of Towers of Krshal, because you funded this trip!

Charon Prime - Unnamed World

He Was The Man.

Do you remember this post by Blair? It has a really big impact on me, especially that I've used his "method" in 1997-1999 and later forgotten about it. Now I plan to use it in Charon Prime.

Unnamed World is very old, much older than human civilization. Probably there is only one human city, the Citadel of Rust. Except this metropolis, there are only few inhabited outposts, which farthest is about 200km away from the city. Rest of the world remains unexplored, unknown and unmapped and fact that humans live on Charon Prime for over 2000 years means nothing.

As Blair stated in his post - PCs will be the ones who will name the places. In addition, if there will be other groups of adventurers (NPCs), it's highly possible that their names will be totally different from the names given by player characters.

Finally, something more creative - fate of NPC adventurers. If Referee has no ideas for handling groups of non-player expeditions in the dangerous world of Charon Prime, he may roll a dice and pick appropriate result from below:

1-5: They disappeared without a trace. No one knows what happened to them.

6-8: They are all dead. Someone has found shattered bones and tattered clothes.

9-10: Only one member of expedition has returned. He is now half-mad and constantly babbles about "crustacean nightmares".

11-13: Some of them returned but they are somehow "changed" - they became grim, silent and generally strange. I'm tellin' ya, things will get really ugly if they don't disappear...

14-17: Some of them returned but they haven't found anything.

18: They returned with some strange alien artifact. I hope that it will not bring destruction to the city.

19: They returned without any treasures, but I've heard that they have mapped solid portion of the world (direction dice) of the Citadel.

20: They returned with lots of treasure!

At last!

This is the place where I'm going today!

Time for some vacation. Despite shitty weather I'm heading to the "wilderness" to rest from the big cities, walk, splash in the lake (I live for 28 years by the sea and still can't swim!) and enjoy the brew. I should be back in a week or so. I have one or two posts scheduled for this time (Underworld Day and maybe something more) and meanwhile I present you small random table.

Things in the lake (roll 1d10):

1. Giant blind fish, escaped from some underground river or lake. Big enough to sink a yacht or swallow a man whole. It can be encountered only during nights.
2. 2d6 animated corpses of drowned men and women. They lurk in the shallow water just beneath the surface.
3. Giant electric eel (18 feet long). It's intelligent and can speak (but it's rather hard to understand him if not submerged in the water).
4. Sunken barrel, full of pickled cucumbers or sauerkraut (50% chance for each).
5. Very old fishing nets, slightly magical. Water wraith is trapped in them.
6. 3 feet long Opal Crayfish. Has poisonous bite (save or be unable to breathe air for 1d6+2 hours) but its carapace is worth 348 gp.
7. Pack of 2d12 brown-skinned toadmen fighting 3d8 green-skinned frogmen. Both sides are armed with primitive weapons. Toadmen are led by l4 fighting man (fighting toad?) and leader of frogmen is l3 magic user.
8. Giant leech, capable to suck all blood from human in mere seconds.
9. Sunken barrel, full of rotten, toxic fungi. There is a huge emerald hidden inside the barrel (it's worth2366 gp).
10. Giant swamp octopus hidden under a really big, green rock. In fact, rock is a huge gold nugget covered with fossilized goo. It's worth over 20000 gp but it's really very heavy (over one ton) and octopus is very powerful and deadly opponent (and it will defend its home).

Underworld Wilderness

As the Ortix is completely tectonically inactive (this causes the absence of earthquakes an on the whole surface of the planet there is only one active volcano; moreover - it was artificially created), its interior is full of huge cave complexes. One of them is the Underworld Kingdom - an indefinitly vast network of underground caves, so large that traveling through them takes days if not weeks. In some of these caves, often covered with phosphorescent mushrooms and other strange strange vegetation, one can find old and new traces of humans existence (and other races, such as goblins and Ho-Ru the Black Lizardmen). Moreover - inhabited settlements can also be found there.

I called these places simply the "underworld wilderness". They will be mapped on standard wilderness hexagonal maps and travel through them is no different from the surface travels (except the fact that most of the underworld is much more dangerous than even the worst areas beneath the light of the Cold Star). In addition to the great caves, the underworld is dotted with smaller caves and tunnels sometimes connected into a real labirynthe of structures.

Of course, in addition to the great caves, the underworld is dotted with smaller caves and tunnels, sometimes connected into a real labyrinthine structures. this type of space can be regarded asa typical dungeon and their maps - mainly due to an entirely diffrenet scale - will be classic dungeon maps.

Sample (most important) areas of the Underworld Wilderness:

• Great Cave of Ghohk – part of the Underworld that is inhabited by humans;
• Underground Sea – forgotten and (almost) dead place, once inhabited by Ho-Ru;
• Jungle Caves – lightened by mysterious glowing crystals, still populated by prehistoric beasts and monsters;
• Silver Dome – very big, deeply situated cavern, guarded by Portal Fortress. Beware the dragons!