It’s been a few days since that awful incident at the shack. They’d left some people dead, with just piles of stones on them and then moved on to the west. Crazy Rohan cast his lot with the escaped goliath Piyu. Teegan was not going to abandon her brother and Master Kellamon could be guilty too.
Estrella thought about leaving, but it would be her and Ashley in this rough wilderness. A glassblower and a messenger pigeon alone in the rough mountains of Western Kirtin would be doomed. She can repair things, but that isn’t useful if you don’t have things. Plus where would she go? How would she find it?
They’re on tight rations now. Finding forage for Teegan’s ram Ha-Lim isn’t easy. Fani’s finding more than enough fish for the meat eaters, but this is rough land. Moving through it is hard.
Ha-Lim slows them down. Everyone deals with it. He’s as much one of them as the rest. It’s an odd group. Two dogs, a terrier that never stops barking and a hound without a sent to follow. Ashley is her pigeon. He could find Korlott, Kirtin-in-the-Sky and home no matter where he is. He’s so smart. But if she sends him off to let the family know what’s happened he’s gone. The group is going to keep moving.
She’d never met a bonded ram before Ha-Lim. Then there’s the heron Fani. What a magnificent creature. It just soars and soars on those huge wings. Can I teach a heron messaging? That might be fun.
They’re also kind of lost – again. It’s easy to think “head west” and know that Sheljar is that way. The Land of Two Rivers is always fascinating, but constantly embroiled in internal strife. Sheljar never offered to help Kirtin, and only one trade family from Qin responded to requests for aid. Estrella doesn’t hate Sheljar for this, but she certainly isn’t excited about the Empire with its guilds, families, companies all competing for power.
“‘Strella, come here!” It’s Rohan. The boy is fascinating. He keeps learning how to apply these funky powers. She runs across the camp.
“What?”
“Look, look” and a he makes a flower unbloom. “Now watch” and it blooms again. He plucks it and puts it behind her ear.
“Get ready to move children,” Master Kellamon says with a smile. A tiny moment of pleasure is necessary. These kids have been away from home for about a week. “Fani indicates to Piyu that the Norther River Everflow is just over that rise and downslope. There’s a town there. We’ll be in the Sheljar Empire tonight. Once we get there we have the protection of the Emperor, but will need to find a guild or family to take us as members.”
Teegan asks, “Which guild is going to take us?”
“I do not know. There are guilds and families based on craft, or trade, or faith, or location. Piyu’s skills with Fani will likely get him attention. Sheljar City has need for birds. He’ll try to connect with a goliath family that raises waterfowl.”
Estrella is happy. Any decent village of Kin needs a messenger. She’s seen dogs do this, but really, nothing is better than a pigeon. She’d find a place, then she’d tell her parents where she was. Maybe Rohan would be in the same town.
The youngsters strike camp. Piyu returns with the weather above his head, another dry day with light clouds. It’s like that massive storm emptied all the waters from the skies. Kell likes that. They should be in that town tonight.
A crush of warhounds rage forward, backed by mastiffs with halfling riders. One flank is guarded towering Goliaths. That northern front is circled by eagles, hawks, ravens with a lower mega flock of smaller birds. The south is already falling back. There a tribe riding bison and elk is crushing the Kingdom of Azsel, but other tribes with their horse and sheep are fleeing. The Confederation of Crinth will lose more land and another tribe to the slavers, unless something changes.
One of the largest Goliaths ever known wades through the mess of bodies of both beast and man. He is Jerald. It is not his tribe that will fall today, but the tribe of his wife. Normally peaceful, he is enraged. His flightless axebeak is surrounded by pestering terriers. He cries out to Belsem as Tellanor falls. A greenish cloud of rot breaks forth from his hands and the little dogs perish. Several of the Halflings are in agony. Another cry and another cloud, more Azselites fall. Those not nearby see this cloud of poison spray and back away. Both sides retreat stunned, for this is new. A legend is born that day. The myths of magic awakened.
Campaign Premise
The World of the Everflow is an episodic campaign designed for drop-in play that will most often join a regular group, but that can also play independent sessions, while exploring a world where every thinking person has an animal companion that is both tool and beloved.
Background
Twenty-one years ago the land of Kin (the people of love) had no magic. Then the Awakening happened. Borders changed as Kingdoms applied these new powers. Quests to discover how it happened, why it happened and what could be done to stop it or further it started. Adventurers young and old left their homes hopeful that they could apply these new, small spells and make names for themselves.
Kin is different now. Still bonded with beasts the people meet strangers with suspicion of odd powers. No one knows what else to expect. What more will happen to the world? Are more legends real?
Grand Conflicts
The Scholars are a secret society of empowered spell-casters who seem to have kept Kin from reaching its full potential. Who are they? Should they have this level of control?
Azsel continues on its expansionistic policy. They are fighting with the Crinth Confederation and threatened Kirtin enough that the century-long conflict with Daoud is put aside.
Two legendary peoples are invading the Western Wildes. The Kon are entering Sheljar in large numbers, leaving some behind. Over at the Cliffs of Galinor and at the Glass Tower the Ken are doing something. Why are the Ken and Kon returning to Kin?
Can you keep the Lorebook(s?) from getting into the wrong hands?
Facets
All thinking peoples have an animal companion
Low magic (Divine casters and arcane casters limited in different ways)
Sand Box play
Player agency helps create the world’s history.
Variant Rules
Mundane versions of partial casters. No Wizards or Warlocks. Cantrip for all.
Gritty realism – long rests require a place of sanctuary and 24 hours of light activity. A short rest is a typical night’s sleep.
One thing that I’ve found as a middle-age man with other hobbies and real-life concerns is that finding a regular group to play every single week is much more difficult than it was in my heyday of 1st edition AD&D during high school, college and the Army. The path I’ve chosen instead is an epic multi-path sandbox inspired campaign. There are multiple storylines being chased, characters that drop in and out of sessions and off-table action run via email, chat and twitter.
Altogether this results in a campaign that is similar to epic fiction (Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings). The party forms, breaks apart, reforms, expands, contracts as they attempt to make friends, make enemies, solve problems and help to create the world and story in which they play.
A selection of the characters participating in the Everflow campaign.
This is the tracking chart that I use to help track the various PCs. Experience points and gold are tracked by me until they are on the player’s own sheet. Once that happens I make the column blank, because I will not need that information while I create the next encounters and new paths for them to follow.
As I stated when first discussing this large group, episodic campaign, calendaring is also important. The group of three that are in Sheljar are two weeks “ahead” of the group that is at the caravansaray. Maurice is 3 days “behind” the group at the caravansaray. Mansaray and Shonie are semi-retired for real-life reasons. Shonie is now an NPC that group can use to help get intel, etc from Telse. Mansaray will either re-enter the campaign as a PC or an NPC reconnecting a current plot line that’s been abandoned.
Doing something like this creates more off-table work. Not only does the DM/GM need to create encounters, adventures and campaigns they need to use some kind of tracking sheet and calendar, and understand that the non-linear nature of the campaign means that players will forget things. Reminding them should be a bit more involved than a typical 5-10 minutes “in last session” verbal recap.
Provide the players with a digital recap, maps, images and other things that maintain a connection to the story that you are all telling together. Recognize that not every PC will be involved in every plot line. Maybe the hook doesn’t catch with them for either player or character reasons. Allow those players to know what plot line will be the focus of a session and they can either show or not. If they don’t show for story reasons (I haven’t encountered this yet) help them advance the plot hooks that they do like.
Don’t try to run a table session with more than 5 or 6 PCs. All the standard concerns about table time and organization return with that. Feel free to run a mini-session with just 2-3 PCs. They could be scouting an area, or doing a social tier with a local authority. These advance the story, but more importantly let your players know that you value their time. Those characters get rewarded with xp, gp, treasure. The players get rewarded with the entertainment of role-playing.
Be prepared for variable level encounters. With bounded accuracy this should not be as much of an issue as it would be in earlier editions of the game. Establish from the outset what the rules are about death, drop-in character creation, etc and work with your players to make certain that they are having fun with the system as it exists at your table both real-life and via digital communications. Feel free to grant xp for actions taken when the character acts in off-table activities.
By combining story xp and encounter xp you increase the level advancement as well as help social and exploration tier PCs advance. The more players that you include, the more likely you are to interact with PCs that emphasize the different tiers.
Finally, you should probably already understand this, such a campaign requires more organization and isn’t right for casual play. But the payoff is the creation of a story that mimics multi-novel stories, and that’s a lot of fun.
It’s been eight days judging by the cycle of Feylf. Somehow Teegan and Rohan aren’t at Kirtin-in-the-Sky. They also aren’t on the road they expected to be on, some kind of rockfall blocked it and somehow Rohan convinced her that they should go on a path a bit to the west and across a valley. Prior to that rockfall they’d picked up a glassblower also on her way to Kirtin-in-the-Sky for the same service.
Now, they’d missed their reporting date. Runoffs power raging streams and rivers as they try to pick their way north. Little Estrella’s pigeon could get a message back to either her tiny village, EVEN SMALLER THAN KORLOTT, or to Kirtin-in-the-Sky, but the glassblower is scared. They aren’t along known routes, no pigeons or coursehounds have been seen in days.
Teegan isn’t willing to admit that she’s lost. Rohan insists that he knows if they “just find headwaters of Crinth they’ll be fine.” She doesn’t know to believe that he actually knows or if he’s adopted a war story as truth. The River Crinth divides the Confederation from Azsel. It rips through the edge of the Keltann Slope. If he’s right, and over that ridge or the next one, or the next one? they could catch up to the rest of their Year and Serve.
She doesn’t have any ideas. That pigeon, Chechu, will not be leaving Estrella’s shoulder. Ha-Lim is a better scout in this terrain than stupid little Alleway. Being 11 months older than these two is turning into a curse. Young enough she serves in the same year, but old enough she’s “in charge” of a glassblower and a goatherd.
Rough rocks and scrub pine are their other companions. Food continues to run low. They find some berries once-in-a-while, but something has to happen.
Now there are dark clouds in the sky and they’ll be three to the one leaky tent. It’s been a miserable trip and why would she listen to Rohan again, about anything?
Another cold damp night, but she has Ha-Lim. He is warm, even while wet. She lays against him, because his soul is warm. She needs the comfort of a partner, rather than dependents.
In the morning they have plenty of water, but little food.
Trudging through the mud will not be fun. They crest a ridge and see the River Crinth, the whole valley. They also see a sky of green and hail with winds and some sickening funnel cloud down on the plains of Crinth.
There are sparks and lights flying across the river. It’s bewildering.
A pack of dogs circle a hut. These are warhounds, not service dogs. Getting a count is improbable. There are also three halflings with them, again around the hut. The idiots aren’t going in, and there is a hail, in Summer. This isn’t a storm for anything but hunkering down.
“Hey, can we get in there?,” Rohan shouts, “It’s chilly and we can all share.”
A sharp whistle and two of those huge hounds flank a grizzly old halfling, probably the leader.
“The hut and everything in it is ours. Go away children. Go away, now.”
Teegan snickers. This old halfling is trying to boss Rohan and that’s never worked. Except the man hears the laugh, and a different sharp whistle sends those two dogs towards Teegan. Ha-Lim prepares to charge them.
“Are you blind? We’ll die out here in this crazy weather,” Rohan is livid. “There’s lightning and hail and a tornado. We need shelter.”
A dazzling spray of light showers from Rohan’s hands. The dogs stop moving, bewildered and unable to see. Their companion is also blinded.
“Kill them, or capture. I don’t care. Get Piyu too,” the leader shouts with his hands rubbing his eyes.
Ha-Lim rams right through one of those warhounds. It is knocked cold.
As the other dogs and halflings turn to face the kids the door to the hut collapses. A large boot sticking out into it for a moment. A club smashes down onto an unfortunate hound. A grey dog bursts out from the door as well. It pounces onto one of the black and brown beasts.
Estrella ducks behind some scrub. This is exactly why she didn’t want to go to war.
Three of the six opposing dogs are down and out. Two more are blinded. One of the halflings is blind as well. The other two point their drawn short swords at the three children of Kirtin.
“Do you surrender?” Master Kellamon Scoques Lady Harsop steps from the hut. A whip and Bastos at his side. That whip disarms one of the hunters.
Estrella shouts yes. The leader of these hunters screams “No.”
A bit drunk on this unknown power Rohan screams “then die.” Three missiles of light and force shoot from his hands. The blinded dogs both take one, the leader the other. Rohan’s pike is lying on the ground now. This arcane power shooting forth is intoxicating. And the human child disappears.
Piyu clubs one of those swordsman with that board from the floor of the hut. It splits in half over the woman’s head. Rohan throws her hammer at a dog trying to take out Ha-Lim. The children, the escaped slave and the Master are dominant.
“Now?” Master Scoques asks.
“Yes.” Two swords drop, with a soft whistle that calls the remaining dog back to the hunters.
“Then leave. Leave forever. Piyu is free. Tell the Ranch that you never found us. Because if I return and point out that you were trying to take me, you are dead. You have no shelter from the storm. You do not deserve it.”
As they walk away Piyu calls to his heron, who swoops down and plucks the eyes from the leader. Piyu follows that up with a giant rock into the little halfling’s back. That leader is crushed under the weight of a stone that a nine-plus foot mammoth of a kin can hurl.
The other sprints off towards a tornado and a war fought between things that can control fire and lightning, kind of like what Rohan just did. Rohan is still gone.
Master Scoques takes charge. “Find that boy.” He points to Teegan. “Behind the bush, get over here so we know everyone is safe. And Piyu, you’ve just made our future. It’s not one I wanted, but it’s one I’m willing to take.”
Teegan is confused. How can she find Rohan. He did that thing and poof. Stupid little Alleway is sitting, as he does when he wants a treat. But the terrier looks up and then sniffs in circles, and then looks up at the same spot and then circles. This act is repeated a few more times.
“Alleway come!” He does not. He stares at a space about 5 feet up in the air, and then leaps up. Rohan pops into sight, right there, with his damn dog in his hands.
Raucous laughter comes from the teen. “I did that! I did that! I think I can do it again!”
“Boy, you will not. We’re all in quite a bit of trouble now,” Kellamon is used to leadership. “As soon as this storm passes we need to go. Two hunters died at our hands. I won’t be accepted in Crinth. Piyu cannot go back to Azsel and our Ranch. You three are clearly not where you are supposed to be, so you’re coming.”
This slaver’s speech is correct, yet disturbing. While Kirtin and Azsel are at war, there is little that can help the three teens away from their society. Rohan is partially to blame, and if Azsel demands him there are those in Kirtin that would turn him over rather than start a hot war.
“We shall, but where,” she decides for all three.
At the same time Rohan chuckles, “I go where I want.”
Estrella is calm, cowardly and absolutely fascinated by what Rohan has done. It is beyond the powers she’s seen in her little village. This thing can be used to hold the Slope, or free slaves, or whatever. She’ll follow Rohan, because he has power, if not authority.
“If you come with us, boy, you will be a free man. If not, you will be at the whim of those hunters’ family. We’re going to Sheljar. It does not allow recapture. Piyu will be free. You will be free. The girls will be free. And I’ll be able tell my family I’m alive, but gone.”
“How far?”
“Young lady, it should be about two weeks journey through these mountains to the west. Fani and Piyu can find us fish. It will be hard, but we’ll live.”
Piyu nods his head and enters the shed. “Come, come. This storm will be over soon.” A small cloud above his head disappears and three of the moons appear in their phases. The Dragon is hinted by a dark splotch.
When the teens enter the hut, it is quite crowded. A ram, a terrier, a pigeon, a heron, a warhound, a goliath, a halfling and the human teens isn’t much space in this outbuilding. But it is warm. Kellamon has food. There are introductions broken up by thunder and the scream of fierce winds, maybe even screams from the battle down along Crinth. It doesn’t stop with the storm, but accelerates and worsens.
Session Notes: The Shield of Kirtin (Paladin) player is out for this session on no notice. As is practice the only way that PC would perish is through an absurd TPK. There’s a near-zero chance of that. Present were the Goliath Commoner (Tinker) and the Human Mundane Ranger from coastal Daoud. Both are 1st time table-top role-players.
The Three last were in the ruins of a farmhouse in the Stench of Sheljar. At night they’d faced a few skeletons and zombies that rose from a bog and into the crumbling home where the Three took refuge. It was on the edge of these Sheljar lands. In the morning they work their way into a city that has been destroyed.
Abandoned homes and shops line the improved roads. There are pits of acid, pockmarks from various bolts, fire damage throughout. Few skeletons are about and everything stinks. The bog land and little islands have bridges connecting paths and larger spots of firm ground tend to have docks and piers.
Caution takes the group as they wander through this abandoned place. They know there may be skeletons and zombies. As they follow a main path they start to here a loud noise. It is a chink-chink-chink KACHUNK thing, clearly mechanical. Not knowing where to look they try to get closer to this, winding through large paths and small roads from stable ground to stable ground.
Reaching a structure with a kind of permanence in this forsaken place they investigate. The ground floor is former in, with tables in disrepair, but some level of cleanliness that is surprising here. The Shield stays in this space with his faithful horse. The other two checkout the kitch…
Everyone but the animal companions are on their asses. The Tinker rushes to a window with a view to that part of the world and sees a volcanic eruption. A huge cloud is forming with its rain of rocks and ash to come. The chink-chink-chink KACHUNK noise stops.
The Ranger gets a view towards the noise and there is a fire beyond a building across the way, and then streaming out of a passage are a set of humanoids setting up a bucket brigade. They are of varied sizes, with the largest making her Goliath friend seem a bit small. Their bucket brigade slows downs every time the smaller humanoids get one of these huge barrels of water. Eventually they leave and a couple more of the immense, tusked creatures can enter the line.
The sky falls dark and towards one of the branches of the river there is a waterfall like noise. One of the large creatures gets swept away, the Three move to the second floor. They can’t see the other group now. The slush grey river is a horizontal water fall, but that fire is out.
An hour later, as the river dies down to a rapids rather than horizontal waterfall, the chink-chink-chink KACHUNK sound returns. Beyond the building they start to see a bladder-like structure appear. It is ribbed. It continues to rise with a rib filling at every KACHUNK. Twelve times that KACHUNK sounds and then a huge ship hangs underneath the ribbed bladder. Dozens of those various humanoids board.
A ladder is thrown down to three of the largest types with two climbing up to the safety of their vessel. The last falls when two rungs fail. He is left behind.
The Three are cautious with the river and it is late in the evening. They settle in, keeping watch towards that lost soul. A few times in the evening they hear a clash of weapons. After those moments they see brighter fires.
In the morning the Tinker and Ranger cross the river to investigate, leaving the horse and Shield behind, in safety. Crossing this river, since the bridge was washed away, is difficult enough without armor.
They sneak around the warehouse-like structure that blocked the view. A Large frightened creature with a repeating heavy crossbow as large as a siege engine opens fire on the group. They weren’t sneaky enough. The Ranger orders her panther to attack as she tries to use piles of rubble for some cover. The Goliath takes cover and tries to fire back.
Session note: this was a couple weeks ago, so the pbp of the battle is impossible to recreate. Here’s the quick version.
They survive, but cannot take this creature alive, because the panther’s last command was to attack. It makes a killing blow on a critical. There will be no interrogation. They make it back to the Shield and let him know that they saw a couple other of those vessels leave. They also have a nicer map than the one they scrounged earlier. Those vessels they see seem to be leaving from spots marked on the map.
The statue in the harbor looks like the smallest of the creatures they saw. The Tinker thinks that those creatures, and that stature, all look like what the god Nok is reputed to look like.
tight rations now. Finding forage for Teegan’s ram Ha-Lim isn’t easy. Fani’s finding more than enough fish for the meat eaters, but this is rough land. Moving through it is hard.
