Locations and Overview

The setting for this adventure is the Southern Ocean, specifically the western reaches of this ocean. The Western Ocean [for lack of a better name - hey: it's an accurate description at least!] lies west of the main continent. The mainland ends about 30 North, and directly south of the land (which extends, then, a couple thousand miles to the east) is this Southern Ocean.

The country dividing these two oceans is Vinar. Vinar is a peninsular, south of the inland sea where The Kingdom is (United Kingdom of Norfolk, Wessex and Suffolk, to the lawyers; The Kingdom to everyone else). The Kingdom is north and west of this inland sea - Vinar is to the south. Vinar itself is a mountainous land, with a range of very active volcanos down the far west coast, and a somewhat older range in the east. Between these ranges (that both run roughly north/south) is a high, dry plateau, mostly grasslands, famous for its cattle and horses. North and south of the highlands are fertile seacoasts, lands of hills and vines and olives and so on. Vinar as a whole is a united country in name, with a king - though in practice it is dominated by its great lords, with regional power bases. Culturally [since I am unimaginative and lazy and when in doubt, steal what I can from reality or elsewhere], Vinar is Iberian - mostly Spanish, probably some Portuguese in the south. So names in this area, and in the southern islands, tend to be Spanish in form.

Vinar, I say, is a peninsular, extending into the Western ocean, with the inland sea to the north [another thing I've never come up with a name for], and the Southern Ocean to the south. East of Vinar are a number of other countries, principalities, Duchies, the odd Kingdom - they have names like Ottovilla, Pallas, Olivo, etc. Directly south of the mainland, in this eastern direction, are a group of islands generally called the Shackled Islands - these are various sizes, some quite large, with varying degrees of civilization and political independence. They might be quite interesting, but that is not where this story is laid. South from these islands is the open ocean, for the most part. And east, rather east, is a long desert coast, that itself is interesting, but not part of this story.

Due south of Vinar, and to its west, are the islands we care about. Go far enough south south west, and you hit another continent, known, at least to clueless northerners, as the Jungle Continent. It is vast, mostly unexplored, and the northern parts, lying close to the equator, are very mountainous, volcanic and covered in jungle. It is indirectly relevant to our story, but we can leave it for now. Between this continent and Vinar lie a large number of islands. One is very large - 7-800 miles north to south, a few hundred miles wide, also volcanic and jungle covered - the equivalent, really of Chult in the Forgotten Realms. [Id say this is a strange coincidence that I invented this place and Ed Greenwood invented Chult, but since it is basically the Yucatan with the connections to the rest of north and south America submerged, coincidence might not be the word.] We will get there - though since someone else is doing the work of filling in Chult, I am quite happy to use what's in the book for this game.

The other islands are somewhat more important, at least in terms of defining what this part of the world works like. This entire area - from the Jungle Continent north to Vinar - is right on the edge of a couple plates: it is a ring of fire indeed. The continent, "Chult" and Vinar are all volcanically active - so are many of the islands between. And no surprise, then, that this whole spread of islands are called the Fire Islands. Within the Fire Islands, there are more divisions - people usually refer to four chains making up the Fire Islands:

The Barrier islands are the farthest west and north - they are smaller, scattered, forming a small crescent almost due west of Vinar. They are populated, but not heavily - many islands are either unpopulated, or left entirely to the natives, who have been living there for centuries, or millenia; areas that have been encroached by northerners or easterners are still small settlements, modest plantations, forts towns. Though like almost all of the Fire Islands, they are infested with pirates.

The Pirate Islands are located east of the Barriers and "Chult", directly south of the western part of Vinar. They have earned their name. Someday I will attempt a history of these places - the gist of it is that for the last century or two, these southern islands have been doing booming business in spices, coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco; there are also large gold, silver, diamond mines on "Chult" and the Jungle Continent. All these goods, so valued in the north (and the east, where several large cities and kingdoms thrive as well) need to be transported, and the ships transporting them make fine targets. Pirates have thrived in these islands, and have given them their name. The actual vehemence of the pirate enterprises may wax and wane, along with their level of political organization - but they are a constant presence. They are not the only presence - countries, like Vinar and Pallas and the Kingdom make claims on some of these islands, maintain fleets of official vessels and try to uphold the law - but none of these forces can eradicate the pirates, and most of them have long since stopped trying, completely. Pirates work with "legal" forces in various ways, making deals, striking alliances - it is all gray.

There are three or four islands here that are worth mentioning. First - San Marcos - this is located directly east of "Chult", and it is the closest thing to a complete pirate haven. The city of San Marcos is virtually run by pirates, a pirate council, which maintains peace on this island, and deals, almost like a government, with the outside world. Second, Isadore - this island is directly east of San Marcos, and is the closest thing to a stable law abiding place. It is owned by Vinar, specifically, the Count of Isadore, who in fact appoints a governor to run the place. The current count is named Govina, and stays int he Vinari capital enjoying his wine; the governor is named Falconi, and is a fairly competent and respected man. His power is concentrated in the northwestern part of the island, around the city of Porto Ringo; the larger city of Isadore, in the south east, is mostly run by a council of lords, appointed by the governor, or local merchants, or guilds, or the church. This island is fairly stable, but all this country is wild, and there are plenty of places along its coast for pirates to hide in. Third, is Barracuda Island, south of Isadore - it was once like San Marcos, a pirate city, though for a while it fell under the power of one pirate Madame LeTour - she provoked a war among the pirates and was chased off, leaving the island under the uneasy influence of Isadore and barely hidden pirate captains.

Finally, far south, directly east of the Jungle Continent, are the Forbidden Islands - so called because they have probably the most active volcanos of this very volcanic region. They lie near the equator, are covered in jungle, and have an evil reputation as the center of much of the slave trade, which unfortunately flourishes throughout the Southern Ocean.

And that is that. Here is a map, or the sketch of a map. The colors represent at least rough outlines of terrain and some of the civilization: brown and orange represent mountains and hills. Blues are usually rivers. Pink is for political boundaries. Yellow are trade routes, by land or sea. Red dots are cities and towns (though they are rather imperfectly marked.) All of this is bounded in the south by the equator, more or less; I think the northern edge of the map is around 35 degrees north.

Early Thoughts on New Campaign

I have to start with an apology. I started out the year full of ambition - full of gaming plans, ideas, hopes - both for playing and for writing. Instead? well - tell the truth, I haven't been all that far off in the real world. We have managed to play - not as steadily as we'd like, but close to what we managed at the end of last year. I've run - the fire giant lair, anyway. Ive been plugging away at developing other campaigns, and developing the world. A lot of that can end up in stories, instead of games - but that's fine. So the beginning of the list has gone all right. But the bottom - blogging? audio-visual? no nothing like that; the opposite of it. And that tends to undermine some of the things I have done - it is fine to work on building adventures and writing stories, but if I never get them even finished enough to put on blog, where does that leave me?

So - sorry about all that. And now, let's start trying to fix it. Let's start by thinking about a new campaign.

With Tomb of Annihilation coming in the fall, with its lost world setting - it is tempting to start setting up a new campaign, that can get us there. The book/adventure path is set in Chult, the jungle island south of the Forgotten Realms usual settings - which for once is almost perfectly congruent with our home brewed world. And perfectly congruent with the ideas I have had for adventures. I have been jonesing for pirates for a while - in the past, I tended to set those stories in the north, up with Lenay and Bayport and such. Thats good, but you want buried treasure and shipwrecks and pirate towns and maroons, and that stuff tends to work better when people don't freeze to death after 15 minutes in the water. So tropics, you know. I'd never worked much on the southern parts of my world in the past - the last couple years, I have. Last fall I used the south seas as setting for another stab at Nanowrimo - hitting my marks even! (though not coming close to the end of a story). It's been in my mind for a while, and an official adventurer path is perfect.

So what now? We've started the process, putting together ideas for what to play, for characters - I have been working over the setting, filling it in, trying to make the whole Southern Ocean feel real. So what I am going to try to do here, now, is start putting these things up, where we can use them as resources.

(Though doing so points out the fact that I have never actually put together any kind of document on the rest of the world, that any other person could use. I've been building this world for 35 years - I should share some of it.)

Anyway. Start here - the general idea of the campaign is this: Characters go south, into the islands south of the mainland, west of the southern ocean. These islands are tropical - running roughly 30˚N to 10˚N (there is a vast continent, full of jungles and mountains south of the islands) - most volcanic, some of them still active. In the middle of this - extending north from the southern continent - is a big island that is almost identical to Chult - jungles, volcanos, lost and mysterious interior, etc. The idea is, the Characters come into this area, for whatever their reasons. Whatever their purposes, they are somehow washed up in an archipelago west of this Chult-like island. Maybe they are shipwrecked - maybe they have been shanghaied, who knows - they have to work their way across these islands, then over to "Chult" in time to start the official adventure path.

I'll come back to this. Thoughts on who the characters are, details about the setting, and so on. But I want to get it started and I want to start writing about it as we go.

You Are Here

Today I want to recap the situation of the adventure, and add in some of the background we glossed over.

You are, currently, on top of the hill above the mine, having just finished off the hill giant that was lurking up there. You have come back to the mine looking for Black Bart (or Black Bertrand - different people have used both names). He is a notorious highwayman who recently robbed the stage, and killed Trevor McGuffin, a wizard from a good family. His family rewarded you for returning a magical dagger (a family heirloom, worth more to them than its value), and offered a reward of 500 Pounds (GP) if you can get Black Bart. [No matter what I said up there, that's what they offered you.] They only offer this to you - they tell you this is between you and them, because you have proved your trustworthiness by returning the dagger. Meanwhile, there is a public reward of another 500 pounds for Black Bertrand (who is the same person the man who robbed the stage these weeks back), dead or alive. The law hints they'd rather have him alive; the family does not care - if he hangs or takes a sword, it's all the same to them. They also tell you that if you find anything else belonging to Trevor, you can keep it - they tried to stop him from going off to be a magician, but he didn't listen, and look what it got him.

Also, while you were in town, Sister Claire declared that since she had enough money, she was going home. Presumably you urged her to stay and get Black Bart, but she was insistent. However when she tried to find a boat to sail to Sidney, you found out that the last boat to leave harbor, the Beauclair, was taken by pirates. The crew and passengers slaughtered, according to the 2 survivors who came in, though it's not clear if they actually saw this. This is the closest the big pirate ships have come to the coast and all the other sailors are keeping to port until someone finds them. That is the responsibility of the king and his men, everyone says, but the king (or the regent) doesn't seem interested in the pirates. Much dissatisfaction in Whelker's Deep. This keeps Claire around, though she is dropping hints that she might head off cross country after all at some point.

You decided to look for Black Bart up at the mine, since that is where you found the dagger and so on. You hire 2 more men to come along, Angus and Bill - [if you have backstories for them, we should add them.]

You head out - on the way you meet 2 men who tell you Black Bart is definitely not in Clamdigger Cove - they have just been therem half thinking of the reward themselves... So you cut cros country, on a path Angus knew, to the mine.

And so - at the present moment - you are on top of the hill with a dead Hill Giant on your hands. Up here above the river, you are in moorland - hills, large, flattish ridges, all bare, covered ingrass, some shrubbery, a very few trees. This rises as you move inland from the sea - the hills in the distance get higher. There are small streams running here and there - and of course the larger river valley below you. Up here, you can see the undulations of the land. And you might also see something like smoke from half a mile or so away on the moor.