Category: Kin

  • Ferments, Sessions three & four: Mud mephit slide, wake, fey chwinga

    Ferments, Sessions three & four: Mud mephit slide, wake, fey chwinga

    In session three the focus was on Keesrah. A duet session handled on Discord due to let turnout, session three was a fine example of the intent behind The Ferments campaign — always find a way to play D&D.

    Session four was held at Logan Brewing in Burien, as is typical. Keesrah and Guarese attended.

    What did the other characters do? We’ll use downtime to talk about the use of their homesteads as bastions, Xanathar’s downtime actions and/or improving their defenses for Militia Actions. And, due to player feedback we’re including traps in Militia Actions to embrace the case where a homestead may be solo or light on membership.

    The Ferments reading;

    Session three

    Keesrah heads into the scrub mountains for food to celebrate the visit of the liquor-creating family of halflings from downway. Her mom is on the trip.

    During this trip in horrific weather a mudslide forces a change in path, and eventually she is attacked by mud mephits. It’s a fierce encounter on the edge of failure. But together the two managed to hold off the mephits.

    Later in the trip home they notice a fox, Rennard. Using spellcraft, Keesrah learns that fox is the companion to Taier Henkel. Tier is missing, and presumed dead.

    Keesrah and her mother, Velthuria, need to cross the mudflow to return home. Using some craft, luck and Crow the Raven the two managed to safely cross the mud mephit slide. Keesrah is punched by a mud mephit swimming through the flow.

    After the flow and storm subsides Keesrah and Caile (the brother) head into the hills to talk to the Henkels and then the Drudzhars. One of these conversations goes much better than the other.

    As a sign of fellowship, and because of Caile, Taier’s memorial is to be held at the Trading Post — there’s also easy access to the liquors from the visiting family.

    The celebration goes well, except for the fight between Caile and Keesrah.

    Learned clues

    • Keesrah Maltunyn learned that the Henkel halflings get along with Clan Drudzhar.
    • Caile is friendly with both the Henkel halflings and Drudzhar.
    • Taier Henkel washed away in the mephit mudslide.
    • Keesrah rescued Taier’s fox Rennard.
    • Taier’s body was encased in mud by chwingas claiming he gave them a piece of his soul.
    • Chwingas released Taier when Guarase Spinebloom said he’d find them another bit of soul — maybe his.
    • Ken raiders with an ambush drake made their presence known. One donated its soul.
    • Guarase earned a Charm of Heroism granted by the semi–domesticated fey chwinga that now live in the Spinebloom’s rice marsh.

    Session four

    This was the first session featuring the Spinebloom homestead. It is a series of mostly underground dome structures in a desert environment. Many Spineblooms have some druidic magic and they use this and their traditional growing methods to have the least influence on the environment as possible.

    The same river that goes past the Maltunyn’s flows to the Spineblooms. Since The Ferments are infested with extreme elemental influences the desert and scrub mountains are close than is practical in a typical world.

    Keesrah and Caile travel along that river to try to find Taier’s remains. That journey includes meeting Guarase who helps them search. There is a mud casing hidden in the rice marsh the Spineblooms farm.

    Unfortunately there are also chwingas, little elemental sprites whose morality is not the same as humanity. These chwingas rescued Taier, but kept him cased as a way to protect him during the mephit mudslide.

    In order to get Taier free the chwingas demand another soul. Somewhat confused, Guarase agrees. Then the goliath figures out that they mean his soul.

    During this exchange the non-chwingas notice two advancing elves and an ambush drake. Keesrah sends Caile and Taier home.

    Guarase and Keesrah fend off the elves, while the drake and those elves destroy a third of the rice marsh including many chwingas. When one of the elves is dropped unconscious in the marsh a chwinga captures its soul.

    The elves also damage a Spinebloom home.

    Keesrah and Guarase learn of more threats to The Ferments, more friends that could be made and the challenges to come in a land that threatens their livelihood.

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  • Ferments, Session one: Smog buggy and fire snakes

    Ferments, Session one: Smog buggy and fire snakes

    The East marched on West Thundermoon Trading Post.

    Wrapping up a typical day, Keesrah noticed a thick, acrid cloud coming from the east. At the same time a not-unusual goliath walked up the packed dirt road from the south.

    The goliath, Guarase Spinebloom, reached the gates of the wooden palisade enclosure a few minutes before the smog buggy. Keesrah starts closing the doors.

    The smog buggy encounter was one of three random encounters rolled by the three players taking part in today's session.

    In a thick accent, the boss of the smog buggy, a goblin with driver and second passenger, demands/requests entry to escape “fire snakes.”

    Keesrah messages her mother. This takes nearly a minute because it is the spell. She opens the gate and lets the rancid smoke engulfed clackety buggy into the trading post.

    Mere feet behind them are fire snakes.

    This was not a euphemism. They are snakes, made of fire.

    Fire snakes were also rolled on the random encounter chart.

    The fight is swift with another Trading Post visitor, a halfling with six tiny terrier companions, Luke with a silent and non-appearing q in his name. Luke is a cleric and joins in the defense. He was picking up farm implements from Keesrah’s father, a smith whose forge burns over an open lava seam.

    Luke, Keesrah and Guarase try to defend these goblins. They have difficulty conversing with the goblins. Though the goblins know common (Telsian as we’re using cultures not languages)the two dialects known aren’t similar between the Ferments-born and the Essians (goblin born).

    A unique use of Create Water by Luke reduces the fire snake effectiveness for a round, while also limiting the spread of fire in the walls.

    During the fight the fire snakes kill one of the goblin minions and damage everyone, as well as a bit of the palisade. It’s a win, but with a hefty loss.

    A mistake the DM, me, made was having four fire snakes. Standard fire snakes have too many hit points for three 1st level characters, even with their allies.
As soon as I realized the error I dropped them to 13 or 14 HP. That meant the fight was very difficult, but not a campaign ender.

    A morale roll means that the smog buggy driver will likely never leave the trading post again. Their best friend is gone, burnt. Malk, the goblin boss needs to repair their buggy, which is also crispy, and find a crew and find the resources to use as fuel. The goblins normally use tar trees, but outside of Essia those are extremely rare.

    Malk and Keesrah’s father talk about the possibility of using lava to fuel the smog buggy.

    After a bit of rest, and setting up a guard by Keesrah’s family the group tries to recover. They talk a bit.

    Looking around the Post they notice the overflight of dozens of hunting birds. The Maltunyn family rivals up in the hills almost always bond with birds. At a heightened alert, the group of Luke, Guarase and Keesrah notice that one of the smaller doors out to the game trails is open. Keesrah’s younger brother is gone.

    The overflight was the third random encounter rolled.

    Key learnings (SlyFlourish would call these secrets).

    • Goblins are searching The Ferments for a resource that can fuel their smog-tek.
    • Fire snakes are now aggressive, rather than passive. They will chase outsiders in the area.
    • Keesrah’s brother snuck out at night. That raised an alert from the adversarial clan nearby.
    • Community helps community. No matter the challenge and the danger.

    This was the first session of The Ferments, an East Marches Campaign set in the World of the Everflow.

    It is an experiment in using random encounters, defensible places, and a West Marches style to talk about community, control of knowledge and love of pets.

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  • The Ferments: A campaign one sheet

    The Ferments: A campaign one sheet

    The Ferments are a rough land of geysers, lava flows, fast glaciers, waterfalls, hot springs, tornadoes, earthquakes — the raw power of the world. From this land the best alcohols of the Six Kingdoms come. The peoples of the Ferments are dispersed, spread over the many miles with four main towns. They generally live in defensible homesteads interacting when they need goods or during festivals.

    Campaign Premise

    Our eventual heroes start out as the primary defender of a homestead. They know how to contact other homesteads for help when needed, but mostly they are on their own hoping to remain safe from a world where dragons came real, magic became powerful and kaiju returned.

    Grand Conflicts

    Elementals burst from the land, stronger than before and with a hungry intelligence that threatens the land. Outsiders fleeing the wars of Six Kingdoms come for safe harbor. Dragons and their Ken continue to search for more scholars.

    Photo of a hot spring and geyser with a foreground of rough reds, the pool of water and a cliff in the background
    Photo by Laura Paredis on Pexels.com

    Each homestead has a book, collection of scrolls or other devices that helps them control an element (earth, air, fire, water) or paraelemental (smoke, magma, dust, ice, steam, mud, etc). These start out with each PC knowing Elementalism, limited by their choice of element. Each was passed down since the time of Gallinor, before the time of dragons.

    Factions

    Every player will create either an ally or adversary family besides their own. They may also have a connection to one of the families (not all families share blood-ties) of other characters.

    Adversaries

    Allies

    Rumors

    This section will fill over time.

    Animated gif of a blue-green wyvern overlooking a river
    • Kaiju roam as in the time of Gallinor — some even are ridden. Word is they come from the Kirtin-in-the-Sky and the Cliffs of Gallinor.

    Facets

    • Exploring the zero-to-hero tropes, friendship with animals, and who gets to control knowledge.
    • Defending your people.
    • Inverted West Marches.
      • Enemy generally comes to you. Though you may sallly in order to obtain resources.
      • Episodic – attend when you can.
    • Sessions are 3 hours, with each story completed in one session.
      • Characters will level up every 3 sessions.
    • Recaps will be posted to Full Moon Storytelling.

    Variant Rules

    • Wizards of the Coast’s 2024 D&D is the baseline
      • Monsters may come from Black Flag, A5E, 5.1 and 5.2 products.
      • Player options must be consistent within the ruleset (i.e. if you play a Mechanist all options should be from Tales of the Valiant for that character).
      • There is a campaign set up on DnD Beyond. Email me to get an invite.
      • Start at 1st level.
      • Use point buy or standard array for starting attributes. If you want something random, the redrick roller gives random point-buy-valid stats.
    • Playable races are Human, Hin(what they call themselves)/Halfling, or Goliath.
    • There are several custom backgrounds and tools available. We will use cultures, not languages. Common is the Western Wildes. Other cultures are;
    • Heroic Inspiration will exist as a shared dice pool that is a maximum of 2+ the number of PCs that day.
      • In addition to the normal ways to award Heroic Inspiration it will be awarded for playing to Short Form Personality.
    • Each PC manages a Homestead (Bastion from 5e 2024) that starts with no Special Buildings.
    • Each session will offer the opportunity for a short rest. Long rests are between sessions.

    Practicum

    Sessions are on Sundays from 1-4 when my main campaign isn’t being played. We’ll meet at Logan Brewing, usually. I’m willing to do duet play outside of that timeline as well.

    Each character should be built in a session zero discussing their personality, homestead, allies/adversaries and key abilities.

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  • Inspiration is everywhere: Floating islands

    Inspiration is everywhere: Floating islands

    Creating memorable scenes and adventures is easier when fantastic elements are included. Many of these fantastic elements can simply be things from the real world, but amplified or expanded. In this case we’ll walk through the concept of floating islands and make those even more mythical.

    First off, yes, floating islands are real. In Lake Chippewa one is large enough it has to be pushed by motor boats so it doesn’t damage bridges.

    A floating island that drifts about on a lake or sea is already pretty fantastic. How can we up the fantasy to make it more memorable in D&D when the players are getting together every few weeks?

    This example is going to be for Sheljar, the bog-city once ruled by an intending-to-be-good necromancer, but could apply anywhere. Sheljar is a city of 100s of islands.

    Simple map of 100s of islands in a sea with a large waterfall in the south and mountains to the south and south east.

    What if a few of those islands floated like the bog-island of Chippewa?

    Rather than be moved by motorboat, they were moved by water elementals during the Age of Myths. The largest of these, Reylerel, at the time was the home of a power school of mages that integrated water, animals that live in and along water, and the peoples.

    As the Age was crashing they attempted to flee the city. The school wanted to isolate itself from the riots, to hide the dolphins, elementals, beaver and ducks that worked together to help the Kin survive. Reylerel went adrift, into the Sea of Sheljar.

    Now, thousands of years later the Free City of Sheljar is no longer ruled by the Necromancer. It is regrowing, discovering some of its influence from the Age of Myths. This bog-city isn’t a city of fog and depression, but a city of hope and humanity integrating gobkon teknology, love of animals and the lost magics.

    The leadership knows this is possible. Myth said it happened before, and drifting towards them is the Floating Island of Reylerel. At sea it moves with the swells and storms. The towers and buildings are rundown. Someone is going to need to go to Reylerel and find a way to prevent it from crashing into the docks.

    And that’s how you take a small trending topic on the internet and turn it into an adventure.

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  • Adapting Genoan revolutionary lunches to fantasy third places

    Adapting Genoan revolutionary lunches to fantasy third places

    During the Age of Revolutions the leaders who wanted liberalization and democracy in Genoa had no idea how to govern. They were a bit idealistic. They struggled to get the various classes of this significant mercantile kingdom to get along.

    This all comes up in a recent Nerd Farmer podcast featuring Nathan Perl-Rosenthal. And it’s going to inspire a new third-place tradition in my Dungeons & Dragons world.

    By Aldan-2 – {{[1]}}{{[2]}}, CC BY-SA 4.0

    One of the ways the Genoan revolutionaries tried to create cross-class conversations was by mandating public lunches be held on the streets before festivals. These lunches would be funded by the elites, had limitations on the number of courses and were intended to inspire conversation before the entire group proceeded together towards a town square for fest time.

    This attempt at a third place being a space in time rather than a physical building intrigues me. That porch was only a third place during the luncheon, roughly every two weeks. It didn’t work.

    This is a fantasy blog, mostly about a fantasy world where dragons and magic are real. Let’s make the Genoa public luncheons real.

    My world has a naval empire, which makes this easy. But it is rather hierarchical and centered on the influence of the navy as sailor-citizens with power and influence. It is expansionist. Daoud won the war with Kirtin twice, and just lost their hold on Kirtin-on-the-Lake, the winter capital of Kirtin.

    Douad’s fleets sail the seas trading goods, conquering territory and bring their wealth back to the homeland.

    Daoud is the southern nation and controls the Green Isles in the Southeast.

    This is where the lunchtime third places come in!

    These now-wealthy sailors, officers and captains are required, by the Admiralty of the Land, upon returning to port to share their wealth and throw a party in the neighborhood from which they came.

    They lunch and fest together, with the Admiralty and Royalty surprising random porches with visits.

    This now ingrained tradition started because when the first ships came back with massive wealth they were seen as a threat to the non-sailing gentry. So that leadership in a form of taxation started the luncheon program. This kept the peasants that didn’t sail happy with the leadership and that joy spread.

    These lunches are simple fare — three courses, one which must always be from the land the ship just visited. There’s always a flatbread, that was originally simple but is now treated as a complex way to serve a fourth course that is not in violation of the edict. There is wine and coffee, tea and liquor.

    There is joy.

    Then there’s the party, always in sight of the harbor with the ships lit and glowing at mast and crossbeam. There are flags and fireworks (the best ships travel with Sparklers). These parties are on a time limit. They start within two sunrises of the ship’s return. They end the next morning.

    And everyone participates. The paupers, urchins and sweeps know that when a ship returns they will eat well for at least a day, often two. The displays of wealth are ostentatious and the people are happy. These aren’t circuses, nor taxes. It’s Daoudian Luncheon — one of the two third places in the culture. The ships are the other third place.

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