Tag: Everflow

  • The Everflow, a gift from the gods

    The Everflow, a gift from the gods

    The Font of Two Paths, the Two-Headed Spring, Pool of Life, Lake of Wonder — the Everflow. This supernatural gift from Quar is the result of the last action of gods who turned their backs on Kin. The Lake of Wonder has two exits, a thing that shouldn’t ever, ever happen when making maps. This wasn’t because of Quar, but instead due to the people who wanted to spread these waters as far as possible. The Font of Two Paths is as much a study of Quar as it is of the ingenuity of his church.

    Telse and its immediate surroundings.
    Map developed using the beta of Hex All Things by Fantastic Maps

    In the land of Kin the time of creation of the Everflow started one of the popular calendars. This day is known, only due to the Church of Quar (in actuality it is the date when the first Bishop took the Church from religion to merchant guild and non-national power).

    The modern era, 21-26 Post Awakening (PA), the Everflow has a few mechanical benefits. This is true in a world where common magic is merely cantrips and the kinship between beasts. A vial of Everflow, attainable in many markets in Telse and through the rest of Kin only at the Church of Quar, works as three uses of a Potion of Healing. In this world it takes only a Bonus Action to consume a use. Taking all three at once is an Action, and also removes a level of Exhaustion. Again, magic is quite rare, so this healing power has created the potency and power of the Church, which profits off of controlling the Source.

    This post is an entry in the Blog Carnival, a group of blogs who share content inspired by the same prompt for a month. This month’s host is Sea of Stars.

    Make up new items or stat up those from myth, describe places where lost items can be found or quests set by the gods for those who wish to “borrow” item for an important task, what artifacts would your campaign villain seek?  What is the craftsman of the gods working on?

    The Third Celestial Armory is their own entry into the Blog Carnival.

    When the Western Wildes were controlled by the Empire of Sheljar the Church’s influence was so strong that Telse remained a mostly-independent city, though the defenses of Telse and Upper Telse were provided by Sheljar as the mighty empire controlled all lands around the lake town.

    This power dynamic shifted at the Fall of Sheljar. As the Necromancer took power in the bog city the other cities in the west earned their freedoms, for the most part.

    Telse, Mira, Qin and the other cities near the Everflow and its two rivers.
    • Sheljar then sat empty as people fled the Tunneling Nightmares and the Night Peoples.
    • Mira is a port city in the north, with some influence over Fort Ooshar.
    • Qin is the city of guilds in the south.
    • The Ferments are a region of hot springs, alcohol, homesteads, and vibrant independence.
    • Bell’an’aur is the community of mines and glass blowing.

    But Telse and Upper Telse remain influential. Bishop Ollium maintains power through the wealth of the church — both in the masses of gold and the healing powers of the Everflow. His church-shops are scattered in all kingdoms (Crinth, Azsel, Kirtin, Daoud, and even Mehmd in the dry east). Though smaller than Qin and Mira, Telse’s gift from the gods, an everflowing fountain of healing water that fills a lake with large locks controlling outflow towards both Mira and Qin.

    This gift changed the world. Due to the corruption inherent in the People of Love (humans, halflings, goliaths — the Kin) a gift of healing created a church more powerful than nations, able to control who lives and dies, able to topple dynasties.

    In times legendary, Quar expected his gift to be a lasting connection created through generous health, as the Font never runs dry everyone would benefit. The flawed god of life did not expect the flaws of man to control this ability.

    Other worlds may have mighty boons from the divine that shake the land, or summon kaiju, or protect cities. In the World of the Everflow the minor gift of healing created a non-national empire, a form of currency, and a town that now has a large refugee populace fleeing the Fall of Sheljar or the cursed magicks now entering the Western Wildes — and dragons.

    No matter how large or small an artifact of the gods is it will change your world. The Waters of the Everflow did so much more than a god intended.

  • Creating a new world

    Creating a new world

    It comes with just a single question. What if? What if I started a new blog? What if we talked about fantasy fiction? What if the stories told coincided with a role-playing game? What if I set myself back two decades and cracked open Dungeons & Dragons again?

    bard-dave
    Every storyteller needs their tools – a good mug, a notebook (or netbook), a satchel for tokens and memories and a block of cheese maybe some sausage, and a trusty sword.

    What if the themes were strong adult subject matter that made for gritty tales of life, death and heroism? What if magic was real? And the gods could talk, but then they stopped?

    What if the continents were small, the peoples plentiful and not all human? What if humans didn’t believe in magic because it had disappeared in the only continent they know? How about making it so they are defined more by their cultures than by their phenotype?

    Have they stopped believing in themselves, in their gods? Do they see good and evil? How?

    Is there slavery? Why? Is there nobility? Can someone be both?

    These questions and the cascade of answers start to form more questions. It’s a nearly infinite series of responses. World building, particularly the creation of a world that breathes, is hard. Crafting a world-space that can withstand episodic gaming is harder.

    Take chunks at a time. That’s what Full Moon Storytelling will be. Small chunks of content for use in a campaign setting, built around a custom set of rules adapted from 5th edition D&D, but with accompanying tales. If the setting says “The Necromancer is just someone trying to be good” there will be a story that explains how that happened.

    As The Worthing Saga took a novella and broke out portions into branch stories, Full Moon Storytelling takes a campaign setting, rule set and crafts micro-fiction, short stories, plotless narrations and episodic adventures within the World of the Everflow.

    Maybe that’s where we start, not with a character, but with a story about a fountain that flows from a cliff and diverts along two paths – the Font of Two Paths, the Two-Headed Spring, Pool of Life, Lake of Wonder. The Everflow influences the western peninsula of Kin, is clearly unnatural and …

    This is Full Moon Storytelling. It’s a way to share writing, writing process and to think aloud, while words spring forth from tiny digits. Things will happen live, in front of you. Process will be as important as output. Creation is play. Come, join me at this fire under a full moon with clear sky as we look up through trees staring towards the open world of wonder, knowing that behind those trees at your back is whatever reality you can imagine.

    Fediverse Reactions
  • Telse and the region of The Everflow

    Telse and the region of The Everflow

    I’ve had the great pleasure of playing with the alpha test of Fantastic Maps #HexAllTheThings. If you want to break the tool sign up here. The first thing I did to break it was make a larger than expected map of the Western Wildes, or those cities and towns that are primarily influenced by The Everflow.

    Telse, Mira, Qin and the other cities near the Everflow and its two rivers.
    Telse, Mira, Qin and the other cities near the Everflow and its two rivers.

    This image doesn’t include the Fog of War functions, nor the ability to see descriptions as part of the labels as the web version does. Thankfully for me, the region is temperate and mostly green trees. So the earliest of releases looks like what I want the area to look like.

    You can see the North River and South River coming out from the Font of Two Paths. There is also the devastation at the Ruins of Sheljar. That city didn’t handle the Awakening well. Though it’s only been 21 years the influx of cantrips into this city in the swamps lead to fighting and destruction. The area has been abandoned as many of the bridges, dikes and other bulwarks were destroyed. There are also now massive waves pounding the shores of Sheljar Bay.

    Those that followed the story of The Five will see the Glass Tower and the encampment where the Cult of Nak took residence. I used regional shading there to show areas that were effected by the volcano that Scholar Cortez set off. Along the road is the West Gate where Obsondites took over. There is regional shading there as well.

    Mira and Qin get some attention, but since their outlying communities are not common knowledge to the people of Telse they get no labels. Three of The Five are from Telse and its environs. Shonee grew up in the town itself. Aamar spent some time in the uplands discovering his faith. Mo hails from Fort Ooshar, a former Sheljar tax collecting town that Telse now controls so that their goods can get to Mira unmolested.

    Qin is defined by it’s massive harbor, the lighthouse and the Cannons of Qin. Those two towers at the mouth of the bay prevent attack from the sea. The road through the uplands is hard travel, and many will take the South River upstream on pole and paddle.

    Mira has more outlying towns and towers. With it being much closer to the River Crinth it has to use more of its might to prevent invasion and refugees from the Crinth/Azsel wars. There’s also an odd peninsula that I made just to test out how the automatic shorelines worked.

    These are fairly simple maps at this point. I used a scale of 24 miles across, because I wanted a moderate day of travel per hex. The scale change and actual gaming forced changes from my first hand drawn map. I’ve now started working on two other regions where other characters originate. Gate (Samul, Behn) is nearly done. The lakes along Crinth where Mansaray is from are still being developed, and may need to wait for more features.