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Who knows where the pursuit of profit will lead you?
BAZAAR FANTASIA Dungeon-Delving Commerce In Fantasy Early Modernity
OOC THREAD Relics of the Necrodynasty... after purification and censorship by the Church, were combined with techniques learned from fighting Demon magi, to create a new high age of magic. This magical revolution has allowed a technological and material level of wealth and commerce between the civilizations previously thought to be the sole province of the gods. In this world, Fantasia 800 A.D. (After Defeat of the Necrolord), dungeons from the fallen civilizations of the glorious past act as a driver of almost unlimited economic growth and competition between vast trade networks to become the princes of the new age.
Founded by human craftsmen in the Church Era , the Merchant Union grew on the wisdom of investments pooled from common tradesmen, now to the point of building their own cities within cities in every port they trade in.
Once an obscure dwarven patrician family, a new magic to extract gold, salt and fuel-oil from once inaccessible deposits has rocketed the Whiterock Clan into the highest stratosphere of wealth known to mortals, and into position as the Holy Emperor's favorite bank.
The Free City of Ko'Bol was founded on the principle that lizardman priests and dogman workers were alike in dignity and should be equal under the law. The city's merchant fleet, built on universal conscription funded by the merchant nobility, is a testament to that unity between the classes as it plies the Southern seas to tropical ports for exotic spices.
And then there is you! The independent merchant company, acquiring loot from dungeons to take to market for a tidy profit. Will you rise through the ranks of global trade under agricultural capitalism and become a merchant prince? Or will you vanish into legend, as a victim of the fading age of high fantasy?
Current Deadline: Turn 2, Saturday 29th
Trade Hubs
Fluminides: Ogre craftsmen and professionals attracted by the Union city-within-a-city, the source of most of the island's imports, are buying up as many ancient Titan Age artifacts as they can out of religious affinity for the Titans. Only a king could afford a Titanmade legendary relic, but any tat or pottery from the prehistoric past could find a a bourgeoise buyer out to make it their heirloom.
Venustus: The finest carpenters in the world, the Union woodworkers of Venustus, are hiring adventure professionals (Mages, Priests, Warriors, Thieves and Explorers) for a budding regional conflict with the lying knaves in Castalustra.
Castalustra: The finest brewers in the world, the Union beermakers of Castalustra, are hiring mercenaries for a budding regional conflict with the lying knaves in Venustus.
Pontepunkt: Usually the shepherds of the county come into the city during the winter to do labor. But a superstition about the Count being haunted by his late father is keeping them away. The Count requires outside labor, preferably from within the Empire or at least man (human/halfman), to assist his sculptor in the construction of a monument to his late, beloved father.
Slornaka: As a Union city, the merchants of Slornaka govern city regulations within the Horde, and in turn pay their tax not to the Emperor but to the Hordemaster. This year the Hordemaster has waived tax so that they make requisition stone to develop the city from a town in the swamp to a proper hub of international trade.
Flakkus: The Horde doesn't employ foreign mercenary troops, but sometimes professional warriors with dungeoneering experience are brought in as instructors in foreign tactics and specialized training. The Fourth Sublord seems to have something specific in mind but isn't showing his hand, the requisition doesn't specify.
Alfarmok: The institute is known for hiring adventurers to put through grisly tests with their inventions, but pay in rare magical ingredients and prototype magic-items. This time they've put the word out to the class of thieves.
Whiterock: The Whiterock clan has an open order for their semi-standardized uniforms, as their company is expanding faster than they can keep up with.
Lacaton: A day/night shift in the sulfur mines has been introduced, increasing demand for lamp and torch fuel.
Wauseel: A playwright in the resort town requires is auditioning acting troupes for residency a theater the city has agreed to construct.
Allheim: While most visit for the Imperial University, the King of Elves keeps his court here and the palace requires arms and armors to quickly raise up additional elven militia (something allowed within Imperial law under the human Emperor) for bandit suppression, with desperate gangs attracted to the greatly increased caravan traffic.
XaNaToth: The Beastman capital combines volcanic lime from their colony with foreign clay and local stone to create concrete, something that allowed them to throw up countless bunkers quickly during the wars with the Necrodynasty, Elves and Horde. Clay is a perpetual demand.
Eterano: While Garofano is a rising regional military power, Eterano is a site of great culture, having been a home to humans continuously since it was a remote outpost of the Necrodynasty behind enemy lines. Its history attracts artists and scholars, who in turn attract bars and coffeehouses. Fine coffee is an evergreen demand despite some local production.
Ft. Invincible: Dwarven intelligence operations aimed at the Horde require barber-surgeons who can work on a long-term contract due to sensitive information in the base.
Ko'Bol: Northern timbers, bettered suited for modern ships than tropical hardwood, are always in demand by the merchant-princes and popular navy of the Free City, but by supplying this demand you would be supporting a rival trade network dominating the Southern seas.
Al'Xa'Gn'Na: The colonial capital of the Beastman Empire on the peninsula requires mages to prevent the formation of "wild dungeons" in the high mana jungle soil. Traditionally trees, descended from those planted by the Druid-Kings with the seeds of the Garden of the Sun, use this mana for good. But the clearing of trees around the colonial complex for centuries means the rich soil is forming caves and attracting monsters. Because there is no dungeonlord to slay to resolve the problem, excavation combined with spellcraft is thought to be the only solution.
Sh'Al'Ma: Despite a ban by the city's lizardman priest-bureaucrats, there is a growing demand for transmogrifying potions among the beastman workers who actually harvest the valuable tropical trees. Foresters have been performing non-Saurian religious rituals in the jungle and on the tree plantations the serfs are so intermarried its hard to tell if someone has taken a shapeshifting drug or is just part pig-fox-rabbit by heritage.
Colosso: The militaristic society of Garofano Kingdom, a snappily dressed human imitation of the utilitarian military dictatorship of the dwarven Undermarch or the charismatic military dictatorship of the Horde, requires pastries and sweets due to a miscalculation by the general staff using their entire wheat and sugar surplus on stockpiling rations.
Westport: The dwarven craftsmen of Undermarch are a strong contender in the naval arms race to design the best new ships among the Southern lands, but due to military conscription (like the Horde and Kobol) they lack the raw manpower for dredging old hulls in the docks to convert into the new designs. Importing labor down South can be dificult but they require manual laborers and aren't in a position to be picky.
ZaNirHaXan: ZaNir has become incredibly wealthy now that the fruits of its volcanic soil can be sold to other nations outside the Beast Empire, and the flood of laborers and craftsmen developing and modernizing the fields require an influx of clothing.
Jiminisi: The imperial capital of Western Gekoumene demands priests, even being willing to welcome not just continental sun priests (who worship the same goddess at least) but alien religions as well. The child empress and her extended relations are desperate to find an exorcist to lift the curses and hauntings on the palace by the exiled court magician Chloros Domon (now living in dungeon 9).
Kyotokos: The Kyrigun (overlord), whose vast clan network keeps the other feudal lords in check and obedient to the weak emperor's taxes, has been growing in wealth and extravagance, their court growing to rival the splendor of the emperors. Demand is high for musicians and performers of all types, the more exotic or resplendent the better.
Polisan: The city, whose mine drives the Gekoumene empire's famous weapons production, is in demand for foreign mercenaries to liberate it from the loca patrimyo (feudal warlord in the Gekoumene system of warring clans). No other local lord can make a move without starting a feud between the different lord alliances, so foreigners are needed.
Other
Devil's Sea (Dungeon 6) Ascetics: The monastery ship studying the shipwreck graveyard require additional astrological and nautical navigation equipment to track the distortions the mana of the dungeon wreak on passing ships and even the visible night sky.
Settlements around The Chimera Pit (Dungeon 23): The restive dwarven miners, who operate under entirely freewheeling economic conditions but restrictions to cross-border goods/mail/travel, have received a writ from the relevant Sublord to bring in foreign coinage as first step to joining the shared continental economy.
Towns Around Southern Cloud Kingdom Coast: There's a demand in stringed instruments from the continent from the smallfolk (humans and halfmen mostly) who live among the giants and ogres, mostly keeping to themselves with a separate lyrical poetry and musical culture.
Beastman Colonies Around the Ziggurat (Dungeon 32): The garrison and small merchant class in the tropical peninsula demand steel and iron in great quantities.
Capital of Regia Margherita: The monarchy is constructing a new cathedral for the relocated Southern Patriarch of the Holy Church, and while willing to buy glass will pay far more for the services of skilled glassmakers to spin up the cottage industry in the South.
Port of Regia Rosario: The Rosarian navy requires manuals on shipbuilding, having failed to copy the unwritten guild techniques of Ko'Bol.
Goto's Land: The major planters, descended from the country's pioneers, demand household servants.
Capital of Magne Felidae: The only city of note in the underdeveloped country, Bok'Na demands cheap and shelf-stable beer, wine and liquor.
200 years ago the printing press rocked the Empire and increased the reach of the Imperial University over that of the Church, beginning the modern age of scientific reason applied to magic and dungeons. 800 years ago the Hero of Light, whose identity is still disputed, overthrew the Necrolord and saved the world from his endless and stagnant dream. 1,200 years ago the Necrolord, a mere charcoal burner on the Cloud Isles, uncovered the Command Slab from a pile of stones. Tens of thousands of years before that the Command Slab fell from the Tower of the Moon, when Dragons destroyed the world and ended the Golden Age of Elves and Men, created by the Moon and Sun Goddesses respectively.
For the past two centuries the Merchant's Union has exported manufactured goods from the Northern ports of the Holy Empire, forged in the Hero's aftermath by all the races who united against the Necrodynasty, to the volcanic tundra of the Hordelands East and the Cloud Isles now ruled by the giant races to the West, in exchange for raw materials and food stuffs to fuel the cities and workshops of the Empire.
In comparison the 2,000 year old republic of Ko'Bol, which seceded from the Beastman Empire during the twilight years of elven Druid-Kings ruling the continent, has only been allowed entry into the Far West islands of Gekoumene to trade there for sixty or so years. That feat was so impressive that the high priests of the Beastman Empire chose to at least pretend to recognize their independence, for now, and open the spice trade to the Free City's merchant fleet.
And if factories and pamphlets, spices and silks, were not enough to solidify this new Magical Era of modern wealth and magitechnology, for the past dozen or so years the Whiterock Clan has used new techniques of spellcraft to pull mountains of gold and salt from the depths of the Earth - meaning the banks of the Empire and the kingdoms within it have had the specie to lend more money to foreign markets - the Beastmen, the Horde, Gekoumene and others, than has ever existed before in recorded history.
But it is far from a new golden age. Progress proceeds apace with the chaos and disorder of wild mana. The relics of every previous age haunt the earth, twisting nature and ancient ruins to create dungeons that attract wild monsters and unleash buried terrors from the past. Only by breaching the final levels of these dungeons and removing objects of power contained within can restabilize the environmental mana and restore harmony.
At first this was a job for adventurers, half mercenary half crusader - rising to the task like the Hero had. But that was just the first six hundred years of dungeoneering, during the Church Era. The commercial and magical revolution has made dungeons and adventurers just more pieces of the world economy, the vast interconnected beast larger than a Titan and growing faster than a Dragon. By solving dungeons merchants not only keep caravan routes and shipping lanes open, they gain the loot needed to propel magical scholars and enteprising folk alike into the next age of knowledge and prosperity.
So go, merchant-adventurer! From the dungeon to the dawn!
Game Start: A Summary
Turns and Orders
Each turn the characters and the NPC trade networks will try to acquire loot from dungeons (and other means differing from company to company) to bring to market for a profit. Payment can be more loot useful to the company, currency (to be elaborated on in play) or even land, titles and social influence. All of these will be tracked publicly for all player and npc merchants.
At the start of the turn the markets across the map will list loot in supply and loot in demand, but that doesn't mean you can't create demand in the right logical place for the right item at the right time. Major world events will be tracked as well to help with this.
Players may submit up to 200 words each turn to describe what dungeon they are going to delve and what market they are going to, in which order, what of their possessions are up for sale, and their general priorities and approach. There's a lot of leeway - for instance bringing goods to market outside of a known trade hub might be risky but if successful over time you might make that location a new center of trade outside of the cartel networks. Cooperating or sabotaging other players or independent NPC's is always possible but the three major trade networks will always be trying to screw you in some way.
Edit - new information: Each turn represents 3 months, or a quarter of the year. IC posts are encouraged and will lead to better (or at least better written) results as you give me more material to work with.
Please format your orders in a SV PM to me as Bazaar Fantasia: [Character Name/Company Name]
"The Glaze is wrong, if you hold it against the light you are able to see faint traces of the minerals use for the pigments…", Griseldis explained to the Ogre craftsman before her not unkindly, hoping that her neighbours own knowledge of the firing techniques would allow him to understand the point she was going for: "…which means that they weren't transmuted in the ovens completely, something that is more than atypical for Titanmade pottery. If you look at the teal colours and the bright orange on its lips, you will see that this was a high temperature fired product – but not high enough. If I were to wager a guess, I would judge it to be older than the early Necrodynasty, most likely an elven product and thus not without worth. But not what you are looking for of course. It's an easy to make mistake, both techniques need advanced mana architecture to raise temperatures high enough to melt these salts – it's just one step after and below the Titanmade pottery you were looking for."
Placing the light, flute-like object back onto the table, she gave the carpenter another smile: truly only in Fluminides were artefacts this old available even to the enthusiastic. She was quite sure that she had seen a smith who was able to buy carpets and coloured linen dating back to the height of the Necrondynasty just last week when she had been investing into new locks for the tower and between the fake, the real and the misattributed nearly everything could be found on the markets.
There had been those among the Consortium that had doubted the wisdom in leaving the Imperial University behind: but to find oneself in the midst of a great artefact rush was both captivating, worrying and simply one big chance for each and every Arcanist among them. Even as plans were drawn up, weather changes observed and magic tools readied – more than a fair share of their numbers spent day after day in the city, drifting in and out of markets, buildings old and new and marvelling at the bits of pieces of all ages that still made up the city of Fluminides – and did so ever more with each new or restored building crafted from the stones of old.
Things were hopeful, promising and ever so exciting: all at once.
Set off the firecrackers! Launch the racing boats! The Far Flying Xoch'fitlan has made port!
After seven months abroad, the Far Flying Xoch'fitlan, temple and trader both, is returning to port! Now it has returned on the grandest of days, the best of holidays, the Spring Festival! The old is gone like shedded skin, the new gleams like new scales under the sun! Eat and make merry, send your long gone forefathers all your well wishings!
And, where better else to do such a thing than the Far Flying Xoch'fitlan? They've opened their stores, the captain has thrown away his naval vestments for priestly garb. Along the docks they've set up great pouding drums, dog and cat, snake and bird, headed beastmen all pounding away as the great priest, Nan Kruk Drang, raises his ceremonial but well used sword towards heaven and salutes the Great Ancestors. In his deep, powerful, commanding voice, he bids the great serpents of yesteryear to hearken at the deeds of their descendants, and bestow their blessings on their bountiful endeavors.
This ceremony is concluded to a sword dance. As Nan Kruk Drang whirles around the platform set on the tallest deck of his ship, his fire breather bertheren spit long streams of flame to the sky, accompanied by the wild cheers of the crowd. He salutes the city one last time, bowing to the greatest temple, a stepped pyramid dominating the inner wall, and declares the ceremonies over. After a short while, he says, he will open the Far Flying Xoch'fitlan's inner temple for those who seek consolation, a personal offering, or curse removal. Meanwhile, he bids the crowd to enjoy the exotic produce of the human kingdoms in the north.
"Captain," his first mate, a fire breathing lizardman growls. "An excellent ceremony."
Nan Kruk Drang shrugs off his coat. "Always. Good omens coming in port," he replies.
"We've got a couple of prospects coming in," the first mate says, joining his captain as they descend the decks. The ship is abuzz with energy, casks and crates unloading, the homily quarters of hammocks, trash, and the daily refuse of shipmen being cleared up in syncronized dances of mops and rubbish bins. Soon, it'll be as venerable a temple as any other landlubber shrine. "A lot of warriors. A lot of priests, too. Some mages."
"Good." The Devil Sea! He is salivating with the thought of being the first to conquer a dungeon. What a thing to put him in the history books!
"Do you think it might be too soon? We're not adventurers. Well," said the first mate, "we are, but only merchant ones. It might be better to wait a little."
"If we wait," Nan Kruk Drang growled, "we'll lose everything. No, we have to do it right here and right now. We can't let this go, first mate. I know your concerns but the return more than plenty outweighs the risks."
Heldin Eisherz was a druid of many talents, from smiting foes with spearing roots to crafting living weapons. Unfortunately, even the most talented still need time to learn and grow, and she's just started her journey. While delving straight into the dungeon might seem a tempting move, and many young mages with similar ambitions to herself tend to do just that, it seemed like a mistake to her. In many countries the lands surrounding a dungeon are well explored, quite often even extremely settled, this is not true to Erlkonig where the land is still wild and free in vast stretches of the countryside. Where some parts of the forest haven't seen the likes of a sentient since the first Kings of the Forests planted them. Simply put there was still much to find and explore in these woods, and Eisherz was in the perfect druid to delve its depths.
Though those were the plans for later in the month, for now, she sat in her laboratory/home working on a few items commissioned by some adventurers passing through the town to get to the dungeon. It was a lucky find on her part, it was a fairly large group of new adventurers and they had enough funds to afford her prices. Her items might be expensive for beginner gear but it was quite fair considering their weapons would not need nearly the same amount of maintenance as a normal weapon would, saving them both money and space in their packs on maintenance gear.
Her humming held an almost mystical quality to it as she worked, its soft tones echoing across a room that looked more tree than a constructed room. As slim hands intertwined with green radiance ran over a branch, the druid's magic at work. The branch shifted and molded with each note of the humming and passing of the hands. Bark and tree flesh shivered as they flowed like water, extending a short but thick tree branch into the shaft of a spear, only missing its head. Glossy brown wood twisting, side branches receding into the main piece and curves straighten out into a picture-perfect line of wood. At the end of the shaft a socket sat, empty and waiting for the spearhead sitting beside it. A well-made but mundane piece of iron that slid into the socket easily, and just as easily was locked in the spear shaft grew over the base of the head and lashed itself across the spear's crossguard with an X-shaped set of wood. By the end of it, she held a well-crafted spear, with an iron point and a solid balance to it.
This was the last commission of the day, a warrior's spear to go along with a tower shield she had made for the woman earlier. A few more days of this and she should have the entire party's items completed. A couple of bows, a spear or two more, and one mage wanting a new staff, though the last one had no focus and it was up to the mage to actually make it good for casting magic. But once all of those were crafted, she could start working on the stuff she had planned for the next couple of months, with the occasional commission interrupting of course.
The first of which was to look into joining or forming an adventuring party, after all, she would need one if she wanted to get anywhere in the dungeon. As a mage, she had a lot of utility and power, but all that power didn't mean a thing in the face of a lucky dart trap or a heavy golem charge at an unlikely time. Taking that into account the minimum she would need was a good rogue and frontline combatant, people she could rely on to shore up her weaknesses.
The real issue is finding a party that fit her needs, that didn't already have a mage and was also one she would mesh well with. Each of these was a critical element, making for quite a difficult search in front of her. With the only real idea she has is to go and check in on a couple of inns near the dungeon, as they tended to be gathering points for the elven adventurers that were coming and going from the dungeon. For a multitude of reasons, from celebration, gossiping, or even quite often grieving. She might be able to find a party there that fits her criteria if she visits a few nights each month to ask around.
Luckily it shouldn't be too difficult to be in the area since she's planning to go out for a little adventuring herself, though not in the dungeon. Rather Eisherz is planning to look into the deeper forests of Erlkonig to find any plants, animals, or materials that might be of interest to her for future commissions or have some kind of potential in general. Every new item found is another potential path forward for her magic or business, while many would likely be dead-ends even the process of researching it would give her a great amount of experience in experimentation and testing new materials.
While exploring such forests would normally a brutal task, the primordial forests of Erlkonig were no joke even to experienced elven rangers, her nature as a druid made her uniquely suited for exploring those kinds of areas. Certainly still dangerous but not nearly as much as it would be for a mundane explorer. Making this venture even more tempting, as it increased the chance of discovering something that hasn't seen the light of day for years, decades, or perhaps even centuries. An enticing prospect for an ambitious young mage.
But enough idle thoughts and plans, she needed to clean her work place up and get ready for bed. She had a few more commissions to get done before she can even start on most of these plans…
Ahk Zhan Yuk, the proud descendant of the high scholars of old, rests wearily upon an old and rundown housing complex deeply settled within the slums of Za Nir Ha Xan. For generations have the remainders of his bloodlines been content to eke out an existence as simple vagabonds and bandits, forever seeking to hide the truth of their bloodline away from the government that wronged them.
His branch, and perhaps the last one left, of his fated dynasty once stood idle in the southern sea, relegated to the role of smugglers and privateers. That is, until Ahk Zhan Yuk was born.
The old lizardfolk remembers fondly those days as a youth, when he rallied his kin into a stalwart force in the shadows, having slew his own father in order to take from him his place as head of his criminal household. Since then he has gathered many kin from all across, branding them as brothers and sisters in their cause to reinstate their old truth, the one truth that could have determined the course of an entire empire.
The Bau Juxiyo, as his grandfather once recalled it to him, made supreme all beastmen who bore the heritage of dragons, from the ave folk of feather and beak to the slimy kin of amphibian similarity, and most especially the rest of scaled kind who possessed the most likeness with the ancient drakes. But their philosophy was deemed dangerous, as was ordered by those who sought to include those tainted foreigners, of elf and men, of the dogs and vermin who shared the name of beastfolk with their illustrious kin.
Of course, the fools of the empire could never silence those people with the vision undying, of the vision most truthful. And so Ahk Zhan Yuk finds himself here, destitute yet hungry for a new world order.
The children all laughed and ran, playing with one another with makeshift toys scavenged from the trash that flowed from the upper quarters of the city. This had been the happiest moment they've experienced in over months, maybe even years. No one had dared to have nurtured them prior, not here in the slums of Za Nir Ha Xan at least.
Until those "aunties and uncles", as the kids called them, appeared one day with promises of a new home filled with all they could ever desire, away from the hate and indifference cast upon them by the rest of society. The young ones didn't believed them at first, casually scoffing at their remarks similar to the fashion that those bitter and old folk of the area did. When they were presented with all the food, clothes, and even toys they could ever want, then they began singing a different tune.
Though many were still reluctant to even interact with these strangers anymore than they did, there was one amongst the urchins who desired them, who yearned for the kindness they had given her, for even the slightest resemblance of a family.
"Wait!' Said An Ju Huang, her paced barely catching up with the leaving adults, "About what you said, about having a family, about leaving this place behind...!"
The young girl fell to her knees, softly crying as all those years of suffering began flooding her mind at the mention of leaving these slums, barely able to make so much as a whisper in continuation of her words.
"I want to go with you, I don't care where you take me or how far," She looked up, a face pleading for but a nugget of comfort, "Just promise that we'll be a family, like you said."
Kua Moi Yu, the leader who was sent out by Ahk Zhan Yuk, placed a gentle hand upon the cheek of the crying girl, lifting her head up high as she stared right into the face of her comforter.
"Oh child, hush now and listen," She said, with a kind and maternal aura just oozing from each one of her words, "There's no need to cry, we'll all be in a better place soon, far away from the fools of this country."
"All you have to do is this, remember the name of the Zar Abak, and we'll come for you when we're ready." With one last parting gift, Kua Moi Yu pulled from her pockets a pair of sweetened beetle shells, and as well a rough yet quaint-looking doll of a dragon.
"A little snack for you, to remember us by," She looked to the doll, staring intently before speaking once more, "And a little gift for us to remember you by."
And with that said, she and her retinue left the run down alley, not one looking back at the confused little girl who remained kneeling there on the ground.
An Ju Huang didn't understand, why couldn't they take her now, they said they would bring her in like family. Perhaps they lied to her, the thoughts ran in her head as they screamed and cried out for an answer.
They all seemed to be placated once the girl found herself looking towards the doll, something about it gave her a peace of mind, that indeed they would come back for her and take her far away from this wretched place. Whatever the case may be, An Ju Huang could only go back and remember tenderly the name they had told her.
@Simpli as Griseldis Ubbelohde the Elven Mage and the Rising Dawn Arcanist Consortium of Fulminides
The University trained elven mage, Griseldis Ubbelohde, impressed giant runepriestess Maeve Ruail-daughter, native religious authority of Fulminides, by disproving counterfeited evidence that a Southern con artist had used to falsely establish provenance city's titanstone directly to the Sky Titan rather than post-titanomachy rituals. This led to Maeve financing the Rising Dawn's expedition to Mt. Atlas, the only dungeon known to have been the air-aligned Titan's handiwork. The funds were used to hire three parties of adventurers to make the delve with the lab mages; a trio of ogre dandies under arms seeking adventure, a team of human and halfman miners from the island's coal region out for a better life for their families, and a priestess and apprentice from Maeve's order as insurance.
With the Titan priestess' chants, the whirlwind which blew all who dared climb Mt. Atlas off the narrow cliffs was briefly subdued - but only somewhat. The weight of three armored ogres let them brave the gale without being lifted off their feet, stamping iron spikes and a metal chain the miners used to guide themselves along digging foxholes and establishing a basecamp halfway up the mountain face. With the route established, the expedition proceeded, with Griseldis herself deploying Imperial combat magic to dispatch a pack of thunder-tigers in the caves dotting the mountainside while the ogres held their fangs and thunderbolts at bay.
At the top of the mountain the expedition are the first mortals to see the Titanmade monument of a air-kin holding a brush and palette, quite possibly the first to see it since it was documented by the Necromancer Vareoalis the Confessor eleven-hundred years ago. While much of the expedition's resources were spent establishing a reliable route up the elementally cursed mountain, the Rising Dawn Arcanists were able to dispatch the lesser cloud mephits guarding the first floor of the crypt, allowing their hired adventurers to loot the upper level. While most of the treasure was the simple unenchanted stone idols of zephyrs and candelabras created by wind and lightning from the mountainside, they did displays of ogre armor, not made by Titan magic but made in that first and most primal age of the world.
@Romulus as Valeria Ithoriel the Elven Warrior-Mage and the Golden Bough of Allheim
To the disdain of her brother, a captain in the royal Knights of the Silvery Moon, Valeria of House Ithoriel inserted herself in the middle of the kingdom's rearmament campaign. While the Golden Bough were far from a company of sellswords, their caravan was manned by elven retainers of the Ithoriel noble house and thus given first bid over the Merchant Union for the shipment of arms for his serene highness Regin II. After being outmaneuvered for the contract, no Union smiths would provide the weapons, but the Whiterock dwarves were happy to offload surplus from Undermarch to spite their human rivals. As wagons emptied of weapons in Allheim of weapons purchased on credit, the king's gold was spent on sundries to sell on the route back to Whiterock for the next arms shipment (such as disposable fairy lights from the University to illuminate the mines of Lacaton), quickly establishing the Golden Bough as the most active independents between Allheim and Whiterock. While the King's army would begin bandit extermination in summer, in the meantime merchants without their own dedicated caravans were at the mercy of highwaymen and skyrocketing prices for hired wagons and guards.
Lacking a magical laboratory or a background in smithing to copy and improve upon the foreign arms to go into business for herself, Valeria had to fall back on her training as a appraiser and one of the few mages trained in armored casting. If they could not create their own arms brand, the Bough would delve dungeons and sell the loot themselves directly to customers, with no pawnbroker or arms-maker intermediaries. In preparation for this endeavor, while fighting off bandits on the road and roaming the shops of Allheim seeking market niches yet unfilled, she forged a party of unlikely adventurers from the fringes of Dryadean society.
@Easter as Heldin Eisherz the Elven Mage and Goldener Wald of Erolkonig
Marvelous oddities and enchanted weapons and armor of elven wood made this village in the isolationist druidic nation of Erolkonig famous over the course of the season, through an odd story of a lost caravan of goblins stumbling upon their village, trading a meal for a few trinkets, and then telling the tale at the port of Colosso. Word reached the GEMS company of Westport, looking not for feats of magical carpentry but elven timber for the shipyards of Ko'Bol. Miscommunication and opportunists from the Southern Kingdoms poaching trees in the Erolkonig forest led its king (Mooselauf, referred to as the Elf-King, as opposed to the moon worshipping and human aligned King of Elves Regin II) to launch a retaliatory raid on Regia Garofano villages near the border, including dwarven canyon towns with separatist and pro-Undermarch sentiments.
But before the border conflict and the closure of the Southern route in and out of the kingdom, Eisherz was inundated with a swell (well a trickle) of travelers with fat purses seeking her wares. Goldeners Wald was now on a merchant route, if a small and out of the way and dangerous one, and passing wagons and professional couriers could carry her advertisement for adventurers to delve alongside.
Purchase orders interrupted her lonely journeys into the heart of the Elfwood to find novel herbs and fungi, but for the first time in her life bandits appeared on the fringes of Erolkonig, gaining her a scar and a newfound appreciation for alertness at all times in the presence of danger.
@Carol as Fif'do the Dogman Warrior and the Hi'Gid Company
The Hi'Gid Caravan of draft-dodging kobolds rolled through the Undermarch, intent on looting the depths of The Underground Citadel (Dungeon 30). The arid canyons of the surrounding area were home to a unique ecology of monsters, all of which seemingly had filled the empty lanes and squares of the sunken city. The expedition would dominate their season, but while camped out with the other ambitious and poor adventurers, the warrior and his family constructed an inn. With Fif'do's stonework and a wagonful of lifemates with few practical skills but all the energy of youth, they stuffed straw into mattresses, heated wellwater over fires for hot bathes, and generally worked their tails off convincing delvers fresh out the dungeon to put up their feet before the trek back to civilization.
When the expedition ended, the Hi'Gid sold the small inn to a dwarven food vendor before rolling on to Westport to offload their loot.
@Laplace as Nan Kruk Drang the Lizardman Priest and the Far Flying Xoch'Fitlan
The country town of MirTothXan, on the coast but lacking anything more than a pier, became host to the Far Flying Xoch'Fitlan and its veritable circus of religious performance during the seasonal Festival of Masks. With spring comes new life and the transmigration of souls into new bodies can mean anyone might be reborn as anything, on the path towards Saurian perfection as a Dragon. The festival, beloved by the Beastman underclass for its opportunity to disguise their identities and not have to kowtow to lizardmen, was a familiar favorite to a former provincial priest like Drang. Regardless of his personal attitudes about the orthodoxy of his faith one way or the other, his well practiced aura of peasant virtue endeared him to all social classes in his homeland.
It was in this way that he approached the merchants and craftsmen market town, where farmers would bring their produce to traders to trade with other towns and then the cities and so on. Because no town or market existed separate from faith in the Beastman Empire, the town was centered around the tomb of the lizard sage, Toth, for whom it was named. Convincing the town that foreign trade and visitors would mean money into the town for renovating the tomb and making it a prominent pilgrimage site, the priest and triad boss convinced the town to allow the merchants to lend the weavers the money to expand their workshops to allow the merchants to allow the town to bring in wool from the human Imperial city of Pontepunkt, the low lying and rainy home of so so many sheep. Of course he had come having already made the agreement with the large landholding farmers of Pontepunkt, and now he had the cooperation of the Beast coast mercers, accumulating a salary from one end and a rent on the shipments of cloth from the other.
Sailing the Xoch'Fitlan back towards the Holy Empire, the boss had his helmsman steer directly into the Devil's Sea, the floating graveyard of countless ships. Dispersing a whirlpool with a cursebreaking ritual, and at one point slapping a living dragonmast of an unmanned ghost ship with the power of the gods, he met with the Gekoumene monks whose hermitage-ship gave last rites to the shipwrecked dead in the calm center of the perpetual storm. There his crew navigated wrecked hauls for waterlogged cargo and he conferred with the sun monks, who were of a ascetic order of cartographers. He could not offer them the navigation instruments they required, but in their conversation as fellow men and women of the cloth, religious differences did not get in the way of intelligence gathering. Between his own experience with the golem-ship and their long term study of the magic storm, it would seem not unholy but an arcane curse of tremendous power and art thought lost before the current era of magical rediscovery. It was their mutual agreement that this spot of the ocean had been enchanted by an elven Druid-King in that era, for some unknown purpose they turn a section of the sea surface itself into a dungeon.
@Lord Necromancer as Fabius Julii the Human Warrior and the Platinum Order of Silver Veil, Magne Dryades
The Platinum Order mercenary company were able to gain a contract from the Lord Mayor of Lacaton to deal with the band of rebels holed up in the ancient Beastman Gristmill (Dungeon 21). Their pamphlets declared themselves the "True Kings", that all mortals were naturally royal and sovereign entities unto themselves not bound to divine bloodlines or mandates, and that the separation of the species was a plot to thwart social progress, and that if all the people were to unite a new Golden Age would dawn.
The land of the dungeon lay on the Dryadean side of the border, but fortunate for the Julii the King of Dryades was well into his bandit extermination campaign. Elven radicals consorting with humans to overthrow the Holy Emperor were not a political problem for him, but anything that threatened the highways and his own legitimacy as warden of these lands was. With these permissions the Platinum Order established a camp, which grew four sturdy stone walls by season's end, and set checkpoints around the wildflower fields.
The dungeon expedition posed a genuine threat - military companies had a poor track record inside dungeons and adventurers possessed specialized skills. Inside the gigantic windmill, Fabius' halberd found home in the guts of dire-maggots feasting on mouldering flour from tens of thousands of years ago in the age of Dragons. A capable captain of soldiers, none the less he was unable to protect his men on the trail deeper into the dungeon that required traversing the moving cogs and gears. After a man was crushed to death and another lost his leg, he ordered their retreat and continued alone.
Reaching the lower levels, where a underground river fed additional power to the mill that once fed a dragon with bread made from ground up beasts and men, Fabius encountered the lord of the dungeon. The cowardly rebels, academics with few obvious fighters or battle-mages among them, were sheltering in the nest of a gorgon. The snakehaired beast was unusually capable of speech and reason even for an intelligent monster, and in its loneliness had accepted the company of the foolhardy youths. Drawn in by its voice, only the persistent interruptions of the rebel leader broke him from the spell of what the knight quickly realized was a siren. Grabbing the mouthy revolutionary, Fabius ran; living to regroup and find a way to conquer the dungeon another day.
@Magus Explorator as Marcolo Pollo the Human Explorer of Marcolo's Baubles and Bludgeons, Regia Rosario
Marcolo's B&B was in need of clients. As the new lord of his Rosarian noble house he was welcomed in the Fuschia palace with a warm reception by those who loved and hated his late parents. Listening to those people and their boring stories, tolerating the outrageous eccentricities only the wealthy could afford, he left his debut in the court with a list of clients for custom objects of enchantment and artifice. All were eager to hear of his exploits as an adventurer and of his next dungeoneering expedition…
The Enlightened acquired a new illuminated manuscript detailing the anatomy of all the major races. The Necrodynasty had produced countless treatises on the forms of Men, humans and halfmen, but had disdain for the "crude" forms of the other mortals of Fantasia. A comparative work on all the known peoples had not been matched in quality since the Yellow-Gecko Emperor's Canon of Anatomy. The specialists who produced this new "Anatomie" had to be cut loose and left in the dark, but the knowledge gained was well worth it.
@LazyHedonist as Owen Spark the Gnome Mage and the GEMS company of Undermarch
Gnomish Enchantments and Magical Supplies tried their hand at the Undermarch's own sealed dungeon, the Holy Oak (dungeon 31). Planted in the age of Druids several thousand years ago, none of the legendary named Druid-Kings could be assuredly attached to it. Surely there was some trick to its opening, any mage with knowledge of mana could tell as much, but it was quite possible that low surrounding mana had kept it completely dormant until the recent century until the natural movement of leylines over time restored its power.
Where this magical engineering approach failed to find flaws in the construction of the spells around the dungeon, it did establish the tree had a gravity to itself, pulling or repelling objects thrown over it depending on orbits of mana radiating around the branches. Combined with an ethnographical study of the region and its surviving primary sources from as old as possible, runes left by some of the oldest dwarven antecedents of Undermarch, Sparks established a theory, which he soon tested. Bringing a simple spear made from a branch of holly, important in druidic rites, the mage threw the spear up towards the massive tree while reciting an elven battle poem about the chariots of the dead. The combination conjured the mystic tree's gravity to pull the spear into an arc over its tremendous height, landing on the other side and splitting the tree open along the spear's own shadow. The dungeon was constructed because of some ancient battle, though for what purpose remained unclear, and the Druid-King who made it was certainly Spear Maiden Waldagaiz, general of the druids.
With little of the spring season remaining, GEMS had no success in breaching beyond the upper level, blocked in every passage by living machinery of stageplay and theatrics - props and set dressing of ingenious mechanism animated from the wood of the tree, telling the first act of the opera that was the life of Waldagaiz and her greatest battle.
@MurderChicken as Ahk Zan Yuk the Lizardman Explorer and the Zar Abak Clan of Za Nir Ha Xan
The clannish and secretive Zar Abak clan, jealous protectors of their divine Saurian lineage despite no official posts or temples under their family's name, had the love of the people of the slums in the capital. By requesting permission to settle the desert they were volunteering to go away and stop being a headache for the bureaucracy. Saving an execution at least. Paying hired caravans to carry the family Southwest into the great desert used up most of the coin the family had saved from the donations of frogmen, tortoisemen and other reptoids sometimes forgotten by their lizardman superiors despite being closer to the Dragon ancestors than the other Beasts. But between the desert and the coast there was tale of a place, now uninhabited, where the sands gave way and bloomed into fragrant flowers. It was this way that they established a farming settlement at Ga'x'Tak ("Saltpan") in the mana-rich land around Dungeon 12, the Lavender Mound (suggestive yes, but shorter than the full name).
Able to trust his family to carry on the work of building the settlement and clearing fields of lavender in order to plant coffee and linen bought on credit, the penniless sect leader purchased a one man ride on a bumpy wagon going the rest of the way to the coast. There he went on his adventure over the sea, where he ultimately ended the season in Jiminisi, the imperial capital (as opposed to the overlord's capital) of Gekoumene.
@NSchwerte as Despecho Bloodyfingers the Halfman Warrior and the Hades Company of Alfarmok
Sensing blood in the water with the Undermarch's need for the services of a discrete and seasoned surgeon, Bloodyfingers and the Hades set sail for Regia Rosaria. The Rosarian court at Ginocchi had been hosting Hordmaster Zamzug's daughter, Hordecaptain Hiss, as a stratagem in the ongoing military arms race in the South. While not given an introduction at the Fuschia Palace, the salons of the capital provided ample opportunity for Despecho to rub elbows with the elite. While he found potential clients for a well educated foreign doctor, the presence of the Horde princess foiled his attempts to insert himself as an intermediary between Rosarian nobles and the Horde. Instead, the Necrodynast descendant found himself corned by Captain Hiss and her entourage in a dark room while at a party at the Rosarian treasury minister's villa. There she intimated government knowledge of his heritage and activities as a citizen of the Hordelands, and attempted to recruit him as an intelligence asset.
Following the disconcerting showdown with a shadowy operator beyond his own level, the captain of the Hades finagled himself into a short term contract as a visiting doctor for the prisoners shackled in the oubliette of the Basteano, the kingdom's prison for dissidents and counterfeiters. There he encountered just what he was looking for, a non-Horde-connected man of medicine he could pass off as an independent professional to the Undermarch intelligence officers at Fort Invincible. The doctor, a Beastman (a frog-rat man) named Ga'Chuk the Bonesetter, had been arrested for graverobbing for his anatomical research. The surgeon claimed to have been providing cadavers and sharing his research with a secretive group of experimeters operating within the Kingdom. In chains and lacking any friends or options, the Bonesetter played the part for Despecho perfectly, passing the standards of the recruiters at Fort Invicible and serving as his halfling benefactor's backchannel introduction to the dwarven spymasters.
@Always Watching as Gia Mentik the Goblin Chef and Stuffit Down Foods of the Hordelands
The Mentik company created a caravan route across the Horde's volcanic mountainous borders to trade Horde chits for Strathammer copper coins in order to trade for much much more Horde chits from Dwarven citizens of the Hordelands desperate to purchase Dwarven goods now that international trade (but not emigration) had been opened by Hordemaster Rakka Zamzug. It also traveled down South, met a woodwarping witch, bypassed Gotoland tariffs by trailing halfmen dog-riders through the Erolkonig, and incidentally started an international incident on their way to Colosso. But more importantly, they delved the Chimera Pit (Dungeon 23).
The Dungeon had been discovered recently when a shaft sunken by dwarven miners in the mountains around Northlake province, in the Dwarven region on the wrong side of the manned fortifications and volcanos sealing off the Hordelands, became a neverending source of freakish hybrid creatures that completely flooded the rest of the Underlake Clan tin mine. The mine itself had become the dungeon and was difficult space to fight in for some of the troll and orc members of the Stuffit Down mercenaries, but between goblin and gremlin daggers and the boss' meals and drinks of healing and protection, they were able to clear out the upper mine area. The shaft from which the creatures were emanating was guarded by the fiercest of them all, a hybrid of four common Hordish monsters - the lower half of a giant spider, the head of a dire wolf, the flying wings of a giant bat, and the amorphous qualities of an ooze. Some intelligent hand controlling the creature had made it seal off all other routes to the shaft but that leading through a massive natural cavern in which it was able to use its flight and size. But even clinging to the ledges around a massive pit, space for the entire mercenary company to fan out and work together as on the battlefield allowed them to bring down the beast. While hauling it with grapnels and hookdarts (if they lost its rare meat they would be the ones Gia put in the pot for dinner), they heard an unseen voice speak unmistakably in the words of Necromancy, words that rattled the batwolfspiderooze back to motion before the Horders bashed its head again.
Delving down into a Necromancer's lair, even if they were all dead, even if it couldn't have been an actual necromancer animating the chimeras - actually golems made of piecemeal monster parts - was beyond a humble chef's paygrade. The Horde authorities begrudgingly sent a message to the human Holy Church and while Angus Underlake refused to pay the reward, the haul of monster parts easily carried the company on its journey. Of course not many chefs could feed taxidermied limbs filled with formaldehyde and other foulest necromancy to the peacockish human soldiers of Colosso in Regia Garofano, but Chef Mentik kept the choices limbs and fangs as loot while removing precious and delicious organs, washing them thoroughly in acid from the ooze (half digesting them really), and then using the deliciously souvided sweetmeats in his famous blood n bone pies, fitting pudding for the supposed greatest army of the South.
@Salbazier as Zento Ixa the Human Warrior and the Sazanka Trading Company of Gekoumene
The wandering ronin turned enthusiastic evangelist of tea Zento Ixa opened his shop in Fulminides among all the other foreigners brought in by the Union's maritime route, cutting out the middleman with his own ship. His company of samurai stuck out like sore thumbs, given his kingdom's isolationism, and attracted Cloud-Islanders and continentals alike. The powdered tea made from the young green leaves of the plant, so favored in Zento's homeland, was not well suited to the palette of the people of the rainy island. But he had plans for that.
In the meantime on the margins of his lifelong quest for new varieties of tea, the Sazanka sailed the southern coast of the Cloud Kingdom, answers the call of the smallfolk of the Three Rivers region in a backwards way. The folk musicians had desired new and exotic stringed instruments, but instead of bringing those to these notable entertainers he brought them to to the instruments - taking them to the court of the Kyrigun - the warlord of Gekoumene and de facto ruler during the weakness of the imperial court. The Kyrigun's ever growing wealth meant increasing decadence at the court in Kyotokos, and the foreign musicians were well received - the mix of human/halfman and Titanspawn culture having produced a musical genre not known anywhere else in Fantasia.
@averagename as Crassus Brokta the Human Explorer and the Honorable Fulminides Trade Company
Lizardman governor Ahk Ben Sar consented to the Honorable Fulminides Trade Company building a factory in his city, providing work for beastman locals in the remote border province in the ring of jungle separating the Beastman desert from the forests and hills of the Holy Empire. These factories were not workshops really but sorting houses where beastman locals acted as longshoremen and warehouse workers, and the lizardfolk officers of the court as security to deter those who would steal from the tables of valuable trade goods. Day and night small and delicate packages from the Cloud Kingdom (much of it from the continent actually, purchased straight from the Merchant Union town in Fulminides and then just resold at a ridiculous premium there in the sticks away from a Union outpost) were imported and bulk shipments of pepper, coffee, spices and indigo were exported.
As an expert in quality goods, Crassus Brokta could not be fooled by counterpart spices from the governor or the chief inspector or the small local middleclass of beastmen merchants living under the lizard priest-gentry. And, in the godforsaken swamp so close to secessionist catfolk in Felidae who had converted to the human sun religion long ago, cultural offense and lack of any local knowledge didn't impede the brash and vulgar explorer. Having gone into stupendous debt filling his haul with goods for bribes, his gamble paid off with the permanent trade outpost.
The Underground Citadel
Fif'do and Marcolo weren't unlikely companions at all. Despite one being a commoner from a (theoretically, on paper) egalitarian republic and one a noble scion, both were scoundrels by the standards of their societies, shirkers of responsibility. And both were daring.
In the sunken city, the dogman warrior wondered why all the statues were in pieces to avoid any identification and the human treasure hunter found the completely alien writing on the lead coins baffling. The two paired up with a temporary alliance, Fif'do keeping indigenous monsters (an akheg) and dire-beasts (giant frogs) off Marcolo's back while he traced archaeological styles to establish eras to lead them in the direction of some rosetta stone or identifying marker. The path led them beyond the empty avenues and buildings, well tread by adventurers, and down into a second layer of city, built not as underground tunnels but upside down attached to the floor of the first. In the ceiling of an inverted vault they encountered the true guardians left by the citadel's creators, not just wild beasts. In the dusty, dry catacombs were monstrous crustaceans, armored in the gold and jewels of their long gone masters. Beating a hasty retreat after Marcolo grabbed the most valuable looking object he saw amidst the loose treasure, their way back up into the citadel was blocked by a lobster with a beautiful bust statue of a conquering goddess or warrior woman encrusted by tarnished silver to its tail. The maiden-mussel almost ate Marcolo, but with that distraction the dogman was able to strike the fatal blow right between its eyes.
The two parted ways once back safely to surface, Marcolo having kept the tablet he found amidst the treasure under his shirt and Fif'do having improbably held on to the statue from the lobster's tail while the rest of the body crashed down to the floor of the inverted treasury.
Lux Brigantes
Nothing if not ambitious, Ahk Zan Yuk had intended to delve at least cursorily both the Devil's Sea before the great lighthouse at Lux Brigantes, but while swabbing the deck of a fishing boat willing to take him on for free in exchange for labor he was captured by pirates, the legendary Wa'zo'ku - renegade beastmen who lived in small islands off of the main Gekoumene islands and spoke the Gekoumene language after killing their lizardman naval officers centuries before. Leaving the fishers in peace they kidnapped him. The cult leader feared for his life, tied up he needed an opportunity to isolate one of the pirates and mesmerize them into freeing him, but with so many it would mean his certain death.
By heaven's providence, Zento Ixa's Sazanka sighted the known rapscallions and gave chase. Perhaps the gods, whichever of them, had decided the two farmers needed to meet. But it certainly helped that the Gekoumene warrior had a company of fellow ronin who sailed with him on his merchant ventures.
Liberated, Zan Yuk traveled with his savior the rest of the way. Having mostly the training of a priest, along with the covert skills befitting a sinister sect leader, the lizardman helped the cocky swordsman display the discipline and patience required to bypass the first test of faith. Entering the gateway through the Hero (as depicted as a human)'s ear, within the bronze colossus holy magics sealed each chamber between the winding passages down through the belly of the metal giant carrying the perpetual divine torch which guided ships through the Western ocean. Yuk didn't know scripture, but he knew when to bow his head in the presence of the divine, saving Ixa's when a divine wind cut through the chamber, at the level to douse the flames of the candles in the room without harming the wicks.
Foraging the passages near where a hole had developed to the outside life carried on the sea air and highest waves, the two took their bounty and left while counting themselves lucky. Ixa kept the seed material for his small shipboard farm, while giving Zan Yuk to take the fruits and flowers to sell on to Gekoumene.
Company Tracker, Turn: 1 - Rising Dawn Arcanist Consortium : Moderate fortune in Cloud Kingdom silver coins after bursting the Titanmade ornament bubble and paying off debts. Hoard of Ogre-made Titan Age "Giant Slayer" armor from the Titanomachy, difficult to move. - Marcolo's Baubles and Bludgeons : List of wealthy clients, Anatomie Manual, Druid-Age engraving of unknown origin suggesting a possible lost civilization of merpeople. - The Platinum Order : Detained the leader of the True Kings, Lucius the Tall who claims to be the illegitimate son of the Holy Emperor, Klelius of Prohaemun. Leasehold of the area around the Gristmill and first steps towards a castle. - Far Flying Xoch'fitlan : Steady income from the textile operation at Mir'Toth'Xan, valuable intelligence about the Devil's Sea dungeon, and looted dragonsugar from shipwrecked cargo (made with direbee honey in the beastman empire, stopped being produced decades ago due to its narcotic properties, not precious by weight but valuable in bulk). - Sazanka Trading Company : Small but steady income from teahouse in Fulminides, small fortune from bringing fiddlers to the Kyrigun, now growing a patch of algae in his shipboard farm's pond that converts any water to holy water over time without need of a priest. - Stuffit Down Foods : hide/bone/muscle of golemized Horde monsters, a small fortune in Horde chits, and a moderate fortune in Undermarch platinum coins, a spiderwolf golem not because it will breed (it won't) but as a pet. - Hi'Gid (Spiral Journey) : Bag of assorted currencies, Druid-age goddess/hero bust of unknown origin - Hades Company : Connections with Horde princess Hiss, connections with Undermarch intelligence corps, bag of Undermarch platinum coin and promise of more if he keeps his mouth shut, small but steady income as a doctor to the Rosarian nobility. - Goldener Wald : Small fortune from artisan shop now interrupted by war, Decima the Human Warrior and Estellel the Halfing Thief. - Golden Bough : Steady income from caravan route, in-house adventuring companions of Valeria complimenting her defense/support role (feel free to invent three characters with basic non-customized classes). - GEMS : Druid age enchanted gnomish carpentry tools, ancient even when the Holy Oak dungeon was constructed, presumably left in the upper floors by the workmen. Active clay pit in Hammerstettin. Steady income of beastman electrum coins from the clay trade with Xa'Na'Toth. Headquarters in Westport improved over the season. - Zar Abak : Farm settlement of Ga'x'Tak. Bag of jade Gekoumene coins from selling sunblessed gull eggs to the Imperial chef, glowing ink made from a jellyfish radiating divine aura which he kept rather than sold. - Honorable Fulminides Trading Company : Steady profit from trade and a steady supply of Beastman goods (think porcelain, silk, coffee, indigo etc) that could be worth a fortune if diverted to the right buyer at the right time, trade outpost in Mox'Ja. - Merchant Union : The Union purchased death row convicts from the Holy Empire to sort out the Alfarmok Institute of Magic's problem with The Trollcrusher proving grounds. In the process they discovered the entire operation had been sabotaged, perhaps for decades, by an intelligent monster capable of taking the shape of goblins, and wolves, and anything inbetween - the Barghest. The creature escaped into the lower layers but the Horde military training program was salvaged and the Union was rewarded with a new gremlin-designed wagon wheel. The highwaywoman Joan of Castalustra survived with a full pardon and a bag of gold. - Free City of Ko'Bol : Made a play in the Gekoumene city of Polisan, driving out the local lord and allowing the rival coalition on the northern island to seize the mine, deepening kobols hold on the city - Whiterock Clan : An accident in the magical laboratory at Whiterock led to roasting coffee beams while attempting to reduce the mass and weight of ground coffee. The new invention of powdered coffee, ready to mix with hot water or milk and drink, was quickly adopted in the cafes of Eterano. - Seal of Seimon: This magical order of Abe Seimon, the new court magician of the Gekoumene imperial court (as opposed to the Kyrigun's court), answered Al'Xa'Gn'Na's call - travelling to the tropical Beastman colony to resolve the wild-dungeon problem by collecting mana-charged seeds of soil in glass terrariums and taking them away for an unknown purpose.
New Trade Route Hubs - Mox'Ja: Home to the new HTC "trade factory" settlement.
Ga'x'Tak: New irrigation farming settlement planting coffee and linen formed in the fertile land in the middle of the desert nourished by the mana of the Lavender Hill (Dungeon 12).
Mir'Toth'Xan: Hired caravan and ship traffic connected the Beastman capital to this coastal port to the new Western trade network between Cloud Kingdom and Gekoumene. Wool from Pontepunkt now flowed to workshops there as Imperial cloth merchants invested in new looms through an intermediary from the Saurian cleric-gentry.
Hammerstettin: Traders put this elf village in the dwarven controlled Magne Gnomus on the map for its active clay pit.
Silver Veil: The Platinum Order, a mercenary band, extended their area of patrol from this regional city of Magne Dryades to the lawless area (which has been a concern in recent years to the human imperial port of Lacaton in Magne Vitruvum) in the tulip fields around The Gristmill (Dungeon 21).
Goldener Wald: Nearest village to the dungeon of the Mad Mage, made doubly famous for the workshop of the Witch of the Woods, Heldin Eisherz.
Ginnochi: Capital of Regia Rosario, romantic town of terraced vineyards over a deepwater port fully enclosed by natural harbors.
Northlake: Regional center of mining settlements around Dungeon 23 (Chimera Pit). Dwarven majority, Uzdrung in Hordespeak. Trade with Strathammer, previously banned, had recently been reopened as part of the Hordemaster's embrace of the merchant economy.
Prohaemun: Human region, cut off from the main human kingdom of the empire, divided between the dwarven and elven kingdoms of the Holy Empire as a matter of politics. Homeland of the current Holy Emperor, Klelius.
Afterthoughts
I love expanding this world but keeping track of all these details (for instance i defined what each nations coins are made of, not in a central document but while writing different parts of the update) is a lot of work so I'm going to be closing recruitment for now. It may take me a while to update the thread titles and things both for that and other update stuff, but that all will get done in the next few days. I'm provisionally setting the deadline for Tuesday March 26th, but again I won't get around to updating it on all the threads just yet.
This is a lot of work and rather than further elide detail, which is already pretty streamlined as it is, I think I will experiment with breaking the update up over a longer period next time? Or maybe recruit a co-gm? I don't know yet. But I had a lot of fun and I will thank everyone for making this the first game I've ran where everyones orders were on time, even people who had extenuating circumstances. I'm taking a break tonight but I'll be checking the discord tomorrow and the next day.
A sudden swelling in the surrounding pressure, a sudden fall of temperature – there was little to no warning to the gale that hit the group all of sudden, a mighty magical wind impacting the slow moving group, nearly tearing one of the human miners out of her half-hole, if not for the firm arm of one of the young ogre nobleman grasping her leg and stopping her from getting flung off the mountain. Even with the calming chants of the Priestess Griseldis found it more than lucky that none of their number had perished on the path to the dungeon on something as simple – and critical – as a supply run. The fruits and hard tacks that the miner had been carrying were half spilled, carried down the slopes and falling down the cliffs of the mountain, even as she woman bit down shock, fear and half shed tears, hunching together in the deceptive safety of the little holes she and her group had dug on the way up.
"There was a thunder-tiger cave around three more holes forward, we should be able to follow the chain there safely.", she instructed softly, even if she was the leader of this expedition, adventurers were a prickly bunch at times and wording her instructions as offers seemed to have a calming effect on this gaggle: especially after she unleashed her magic upon the prior inhabitants of the cave.
Thankfully they had spent the last days expanding the shelter holes along the path and further fixating any of the iron stakes that were threatening to break out of the rockface, meaning that the whole path was now lined with firm iron chains that allowed the climber to hold onto something when the gale winds picked up once more. Not that this had helped much when they went downward…
It had been a tight thing, and she could still feel an undercurrent of tension from the moment they had nearly lost Diarmuid and Áine, the two dandies looking as if they were one private room away from celebrating the fact they hadn't tumbled down the cliffs with the most interesting fiends of our first little adventure. Griseldis could of course have returned to the city, the caravan was waiting at the feet of the mountain side, her apprentices and staff having set down their base camp far below the raging winds and she would only have had to decide that it was time to return to the city together and close themselves off into their tower to peer over the first finds. But what they had found so far was interesting – but not what she had been seeking.
Sure, she would sent what they had found to the laboratory, before seeing if it could be turned into silver for further and deeper expeditions, but right now they had a foothold on this dungeon, for the first time in a millennia mortals were traversing these halls and it would be a waste to stop now. Of course she had little illusions that they would be able to claim the whole thing for themselves – after all there were other adventurers and the path they had blazed would be open to anyone else that came after them. Staying on side allowed her a greater control of where things would go. One way or another…
As she walked Eisherz traced a finger over the scar running across her stomach, a gift from one of the far too common "bandits" running around the forests in her homeland. The recollection of the event was certainly unpleasant, while she had suffered only a single injury and the wound was itself fairly shallow and her healing magic had sealed it quickly, it had still been a painful reminder that even druids needed to be wary of the forest, there were unnatural things that could be more dangerous than any predator.
After a moment she shook herself out of her funk, instead turning back towards her new companions. The surprisingly tall human, just a inch or two taller than herself, had been an interesting companion so far, bulky and strong the woman was the spitting image of an armored warrior. Which fit with her use of a spear and shield, with a backup shortsword, to keep beasts locked at a distance while magic and ranged damage is dealt. The woman's flowing blond locks, in a seemingly wild state most of the time, made for a striking image no matter the situation as well.
While the druid's shorter companion was equally as interesting, even if she wasn't appearance-wise, dressed in fairly normal clothes the halfling didn't stand out much past being pretty. But behind this mask of normalcy was a keen mind for traps, finding weaknesses, and social manipulation. Making her a perfect thief, though it also led to Eisherz keeping a keen eye on Estellel. But she hasn't proven herself a bad pick so far, so Eisherz was happy to keep working with the thief.
Currently the small party was making their way to the dungeon, looking to go for a short dive. Delving into the dungeon for a day or two should give their new party some much needed teamwork experience, after all even if all of them are competent that doesn't mean they'll fight together effectively right off the bat. No, better to get some experience fighting together in easier areas of the dungeon. Though, hopefully this bit of adventuring ended without any scars like last time's, Eisherz prefered not being riddled with battle scars thank you very much.
Buried Citadel @Romulus as Valeria Ithoriel the Elven Warrior-Mage and the Golden Bough of Allheim
Defender, Leader, Protective Magic, Offensive Magic
Steady income from caravan route, in-house adventuring companions of Valeria (Yelren the Warrior, Nerilee the Thief, and Mialynn the Priestess), a small fortune in KoBol ducats after paying debts, the legendary moongraced Shield of Nautilus with magical protection against all elements
The Golden Bough expanded its caravan route in the summer months, regularly circulating the imperial highways from Whiterock to Castalustra. Word of closed borders and any human caught with cut timbers being cut down in Erlkonig pushed Ithoriel to seek a sea route for her goal of filling the order of the Free City of Ko'Bol for enough planks to put a new warfleet to sea amid tensions in the South. With that in mind the company went into debt purchasing northern wood on its way to be turned into furniture and weapons by the esteemed carpenters' guild of Venustus, as well as raising a mercenary regiment from every shiftless sellsword in the region along the way to Castalustra. In the meantime the blockade of trade, including their purchase order for the timbers, drew Ko'Bol into the Southern conflict on the side of Garofano, the heretical beastmen's ruling Council of 30 siding with the warrior-prince Simone Skorza of the Carnation Kingdom.
Having deprived the Venustans of their revenue stream for the season and not delivered the adventurers they had hoped to send as a decapitating strike in the merchants war with their Union counterparts, the Castalustrans paid the Bough the finders fee for the mercenaries and put them all aboard Union ships - Ithoriel and her lumber headed South to Ko'Bol by sea and the mercenaries to engage in piracy around Venustus until their guildmasters capitulated to those of the beer brewers. No wonder the Whiterock Clan had not impeded in the Golden Bough's activities within their own backyard; through convenience rather than malicious intent the elf had made sure the Union's internal conflict would draw blood.
Ashore and well-compensated in Ko'Bol, Valeria and her House Ithoriel retainers had left their caravan in the North to continue earning but made it to their chosen dungeon with little difficulty - bandits were enlisting in the armies of the region after all. Neither Marcolo's Baubles nor the Hi'Gid had publicized their defeat of the maiden-mussel, but neither was it the traditionally intelligent creature or spirit that would be at the heart of a mana-active dungeon. Bolstered by Mialynn's healing, Yelren hacked through lesser crustaceans and shrimp hiding in treasure chests and pantries while Nerilee cracked safes and mapped a safe route through the upside down city, under Valeria's leadership.
Going over already delved dungeon for weeks, eventually they finally strung a ropeladder and climbed down through the inverted vault that Marcolo and Fif'do had discovered, deeper into what had once been the palace and spires of the citadel. The moonsilver lock guarding the palace interior laborious rather than dangerous to overcome - once they found the three royal crests that had been scattered in the ancient battle across the city, it opened to reveal a veritable tomb. The city's population, fishtailed merfolk, had once lived at a subjective positioning in the vast water-filled caverns; which had once been connected to the Inner Sea. Living in a three-dimensional environment they had built their cellars closest to the dangers of the surface. When the dwarven invaders came, they drained the city chamber by chamber with methodical engineering under constant fire. No remains had been found because they had evacuated into the holdfast at the bottom (their top) of the fortress.
These skeletal mermaids were too big of a find for the Golden Bough to monopolize, but the entire reason why scavengers were able to come in behind them was the incredible find that disconnected the dungeon's mana circuit - a legendary object blessed by the Moon goddess herself, a shield bearing the apparent royal crest of these extinct people.
Mt. Atlas @Simpli as Griseldis Ubbelohde the Elven Mage and the Rising Dawn Arcanist Consortium of Fulminides
Offensive magic, mana sense, riddles and puzzles, spellcraft
Appraiser, caravan, laboratory Small fortune completely gone after hiring multiple adventuring parties, giant-killing armors that weren't donated dissected by the lab to produce new reproducible Giant's Step cantrip increasing reach - a patented enchantment in the Empire at least that could put on all sorts of manufactured goods, legendary loot - The Cloud-Painter's Brush, a titan-made tool of the air elemental painter that was the Sky Titan's lover. At large scale it can change the pigment of a mountain at small scale it can create living paintings the size of a human or a horse.
The Rising Dawn funded a temporary base in the front halls of the tomb on the peak of Mt. Atlas, the state-sponsored Titan Cult of the Cloud Kingdom donating to the construction of stairs and shrines along the fraught path shielded from the elemental wind curse by the expedition in the spring. Keeping lightning aspected monsters from the mountain out with a palisade, and setting up a field hospital inside the shelter of the marble mausoleum, head-mage Griseldis led the summer campaign to clear the dungeon with a cautious, thorough approach. Despite her own coolness under pressure as a combat mage, she hired professional adventurers rather than attempting to cut costs by leading workmen and hired swords without their own initiative or dungeon-experience, relying on professionals with mixed party composition to combat the small army of wind elementals guarding whoever or whatever the great Sky Titan had cared to build such a magnificent resting place for.
Smallfolk adventurers, Cloudlandish humans and halfmen whose ancestors came in the great crusade to end the Necrolord's evil reign, charted the many lethal empty shafts dotting the tomb, vertical deathpits as good as stairways to the golden armored wind spirits who flew as easy as the breeze. A giant warrior led the extermination team, Griseldis and the Dawn mages providing using sorcerous attack of the opposing earth-alignment to weigh down the walking whirlwinds with dirt and bricks while the hulking spearman and his mix-matched companions pushed the pike battles further and further to the center of the burial complex.
Even with supply lines established and zones the entire front section cleared, the central burial chamber was a deathtrap, surrounded by shafts from every part of the dungeon, allowing reinforcements to pour in on all sides of the circular chamber. The assembled adventurers could only defend the Rising Dawn investigation of the Titan-touched site for minutes, not hours. The chamber's defenses was not a dungeonlord, an archenemy fed by the mana of the site, but a mythic spell. The open air central chamber, at the center of which was a great stone crypt with a statue of the interred elemental carved into the lid, was under a gravity spell, befitting the Titan who created the very atmosphere. Anyone with a mana sense almost drowned in the level of power radiating from it, preventing any but an unlucky thief from being "falling" upward into the night sky never to be seen again.
With a scarce thirty minutes to unweave the curse before their position would be overwhelmed by the enemy, the Rising Dawn mages spent fifteen starting the counterspell before the lines of power Griseldis could see in her mind clicked and she made an intuitive, and literal leap. Casting float on herself and the giant leading the defenses, they bounced through the antigravity zone and, with her insistent instruction, they smashed the likeness of the Sky Titan's favorite on the face of the crypt, disconnecting the mana circuit at the heart of the entire dungeon and powering down the gravity curse.
After that, the air elementals, who had smashed through the disorganized defenses and had been about to slaughter the excavation team, lost morale and were pushed back. They would retreat to places only they could reach, allowing the rest of the tombrobbing to proceed at a normal pace over the summer days.
@Easter as Heldin Eisherz the Elven Mage and Goldener Wald of Erolkonig
Artisan - makes things out of elf wood, caravan, lab
Large fortune from artisan shop turned to armory, select herbs/flowers/mushrooms skimmed off the top of profits useful for medicine or magical rituals, Decima the Human Warrior and Estellel the Halfing Thief. A wagonload of kegs of Might potion from the Mage Tower.
With Garofano and Erlkonig both closing their borders for the actual campaign season of war in the summer, the Eisherz Workshop was better positioned than most, as an indigenous weapons manufacturer. Amid cajoling Elf-King Mooselelaus' young (by elven standards) bravos to upgrade from homemade longbows to powerful compound bows of living wood, a delegation of Horde officers and priests were ushered through border defenses by a Knight of the Stag - the greenskinned military nation having agreed to provide assistance to the small elven kingdom as part of its Southern strategy in courting Garofano's rival, Rosaria. Selling livewood ornaments (and one particularly monstrous club) to rich orc and hobgoblin officials certainly gained more liquid capital in the form of Horde chits than the assortments of medicinal herbs, magic components and prized game and vegetables the elven families of the forests were able to provide.
Perhaps, inevitably, the movement of Horde special forces into Erlkonig led to Undermarch lending a regiment of its finely tuned regular troops to Regia Garofano, as the dwarves and orcs danced their dance of intrigue over the future of the South.
Tower of the Mad Mage
The Tower of the Mad Mage crackled with raw power, a force beyond mana, a physical presence ordinary animals could sense and run away from like birds and dogs before an earthquake. The source of lightning strikes and wild monster attacks on garrisons and magic-shops across the Eastern half of the Elf-King's forest, Vortigess dwelled at the top of the tower - fueling her experiments with the mana of the Gutseiric Mana Line for decades before its discovery by gremlins of the Alfarmok Institute of Magic. It was because of her that Goldener Wald had been so isolated and ungoverned by Mooselaus and his Stag-Knights, and it would continue to be a source of instability in the region until conquered.
But for the summer of 800 AD, Heldin and her two companions began to cautiously delve the bottom floor and its surrounds, farthest from the sorceress herself. Monstrous machinery had been constructed with the abundant mana to protect the experiments going on in the ancient, once abandoned tower. The adventurers fought Monster Doors, a new addition to the dungeoneer beastiary, and were awed by the cyclopean scale of everything inside. Nothing was built for humans or elves, even ogres and giants would have to stretch and scramble to climb the stairs and reach the gate latches. The lower levels, at least, had been renovated to better suit a gargantuan protector - the Minotaur. While they were plundering an elaborate glass distillation setup the size of a pub, drawing mana from the ground and concentrating into potion, the patrolling bull-headed colossus found them.
Fleeing beneath its legs they led it on a chase through the workshop, past fanged one-eyed walls and doors they had already eliminated. The Minotaur could not be set off their trail and tore through half a mile of copper tubing searching for them in. If they wanted to carry their prize out, they would have to slay it! With the hulk covered in alchemical fluids from the destruction it had wrought, the druid and her party finally made their stand. Flaming arrows set it alight, the halfling thief pulled the ghastly tendon-based mechanism to sink the jaws of one of the dead monster walls to trap the beast, and then - with it kneeled and its heart finally in range, the blonde warrior was able to drive her spear through the creature's heart. It would not follow them out of the tower, it would not destroy their village. They left the still very active dungeon with their loot.
@Carol as Fif'do the Dogman Warrior and the Hi'Gid Company
Mason, caravan, family (lovers)
- Hi'Gid (Spiral Journey) : Bag of assorted currencies, Druid-age goddess/hero bust of unknown origin, the world's fastest ship
& @NSchwerte as Despecho Bloodyfingers the Halfman Warrior and the Hades Company of Alfarmok
Professional - surgeon, secret society of necroloyalist exiles, ship - the hades an orcish ship named after a necrodynasty capital ship
- Hades Company : Strained relationship with Horde princess Hiss, connections with Undermarch intelligence corps, bag of Undermarch platinum coin and promise of more if he keeps his mouth shut, small but steady income as a doctor to the Rosarian nobility, officially a captain in the Rose Navy after securing them the Undermarch ship blueprints
Unable to afford a ship and crew, but seeking to take their wagons wherever the wind would carry them, the Hi'Gid Spiral Company of Ko'Bold masons and adventurers took what work Westport had for them - which was backbreaking hull-raising knee-deep in water in the dwarven military dockyards of the Inner Sea port city. Just as in Fort Invincible, Undermarch Naval Intelligence essentially ran the city, the way Army Intelligence policed the borders and interior and the General Staff led them all. Thus, when Despecho Bloodyfingers, a halfman they had done business with before, said he had the solution to their labor shortage, they listened.
Soon the wandering dogmen were joined by Rosarian beggars, convicts, farmers sons and anyone else who was too seasick or tall to serve in the human nation's burgeoning navy. Queen Aurora and her war minister made a royal visit to the docks, before being ushered into a carriage by the dwarven spymasters to discuss shared blueprints for shared labor.
The work of raising the New Model Fleet, the most advanced in the South (and perhaps the world?), was backbreaking and the pay the humans-in-bulk were given was far less than what the kobolds had been promised per head. Seizing on the moment, and with the help of the secret admirer who gave them copies of keys and scrolls of sleep to use on guards (an admirer Bloodyfingers would later come to suspect was the Horde princess Hiss, embedded as she was in the Rose Court as an enemy of Undermarch), the Hi'Gid prepared a workers revolt.
At the end of summer, with the fleet sea-worthy but unfinished, the workers rioted, robbing the harbor of every bit of cargo and holding the harbormaster ransom. Bravely choosing to distract the dwarves while the human mob fled the city in every direction, the kobold adventurers and a ragged crew of nauseated and poorly fitting navy washouts lit out with the best ship in the fleet - the New Model flagship the dwarves called Terror; flying faster than any other ship in the South without its arbalests and marines installed yet. And the prow the kobolds installed the strange bust from an unknown civilization Fif'do had acquired in the Buried Citadel.
@Magus Explorator as Marcolo Pollo the Human Explorer of Marcolo's Baubles and Bludgeons, Regia Rosario
Appraiser, lab, secret society - the enlightened
- Marcolo's Baubles and Bludgeons : List of wealthy Rosarian clients/Horde mage clients/Beastman planter clients, a large estate in Dryades with all the privileges that entails
House Pollo was ascending with the martial fevor of the Southern kingdoms, Marcolo conscripted as undersecretary of the Navy by his family's friends at court. In that position of handling purchasing orders for anything the Rose Navy required that couldn't be made at Ginocchi, his private list of potential customers grew to include contacts in Alfarmok and Al'Xa'G'Na. Most importantly it increased the reach of The Enlightened. Intriguing figures that made their way through the Ginnochi harbor, yet not part of the Pollo family clique at court, found themselves anonymously invited to his secret salons. There the gathered inquisitive minds of the Kingdom, including a masked prince Francesco (Queen Aurora's beloved and overly-sheltered only child) discussed the Mermaid Plate and the Anatomie.
The complete manual of all the biology of the living peoples of Fantasia was amended with a small appendix on the extinct race of mermaids that the Druid-Kings and the ancestors of Undermarch had wiped out - the Tritons. The plate was a look into their language and their great city, Nautilus, which had been drained by the dwarves and left for a millennia to dry and become the Buried Citadel. The physiology was mostly derived from skeletons that emerged in markets with the closure of the dungeon by a band of Northern adventurers.
Knowledge of a lost Moon-worshipping (like the high elves of Dryades and all elves before the Druids) race led the Great Oracle of Silver Veil - most respected teacher of the Moon Goddess Seph's mysteries - to send agents in secret to purchase both the Anatomie and the Plate as a bundle. The Union and Whiterock had generated much gold and silver in the Empire, but for great treasures or services land or rent-generating offices were still the most common form of payment at this stage of the Magical-Industrial Revolution. A feudal estate in Dryades, generating revenue yearly and extending any holders influence into provincial politics up North, was traded to the Society of the Enlightened (or, more accurately, to Marcolo).
The Devil's Sea @Laplace as Nan Kruk Drang the Lizardman Priest and the Far Flying Xoch'Fitlan
Mesmerizing lizardman, professional priest, ship, family
- Far Flying Xoch'fitlan : Steady income from the textile operation at Mir'Toth'Xan and a Far Flying Company hq there expanding into the magic industry after selling the dragonsugar to the priesthood for safekeeping, legendary Sun-Cow capable of providing divine and radiant milk, meat, and hair without being harmed
Hiring the services of a second Beastman ship, the junk of a wolfwoman captain named To'Ha One-Leg, Cleric Drang set forth to solve the mystery of the Devil's Sea he had explored with the help of the Gekoumene ascetics. The mission brought along his nephew, Nan Kruk Zaum, a Beastmage (a form of magic mimicking the spell-like abilities of monsters, and thus more compatible with the orthodox Saurian faith than other forms of sorcery), as well as compasses and nautical clocks for the Zonchiskti monks to work with.
With three blessed ships and the Flying Xoch'Fitlan's expert crew attached among them to assist the privateers and monks, fishing expeditions in the central calm at the heart of the ship's graveyard and eternal storm could commence. At all times one ship would play the bait, drawing the living dragonplowed longships away while one sank down nets and a third played catcher, holding back the endless crawling swarm of humanoid guardians forming from the planks and sails of the wrecks. Sunken chests and barrels of increasing value were pulled up - gold and silver, jewels and enchanted weapons, mysterious potions and talismans. Drang's trusted lieutenant and the One-Leg's junk were at shift trawling when finally it seemed the bottom of the sunken trove was reached, the heaviest pull on the line yet. A golden glaw emanated from the depths as straining backs of badger, wolf and lizard alike pulled the chains on the pulley the Zonchisti had helpfully attached. The Xoch'Fitlan and Drang were there as catcher, warding off junk golems, but the high priest himself was in the rigging overseeing the junk's work. Before the bubbling cargo could finally be freed from the top layer of the sea, above its radiant glow a teleportation spell from the mythic era crackled and then boomed like thunder.
A giant raven had appeared and spoke in a magical tongue comprehensible to all. "I am the watcher, the familiar watching my witch-queen's prized possessions. These are the treasures well stolen from gods and monsters by the Druid-King Barobouda the Crow. Barobouda the cunning one, boldest of the Druids. You will not steal what has already been stolen."
The long gone elven sorceress' spirit guardian smashed the junk in two with giant talons, but even buffeted by the flapping of its great wings, Drang hanging from his ship's mast alongside saw his opportunity to save the greatest prize of all. Directing the Xoch'Fitlan to retrieve the sinking chain and its prize, he lept into the churning sea and saved as many as he could; his badgerman first mate already carrying captain One Leg away from the wreck he was on.
With Zaum holding off the spirit raven with acid breath and prismatic spray, the Xoch'Fitlan was able to bring the golden treasure to the surface - one of the human goddess' sun-cows - the thief hero of the Druid Kings had stolen from the Sun herself. It chewed its cud unpreturbed, as if it had not spent over a thousand years underwater. As soon as the groaning crew were able to bring it aboard, the Raven shrieked and disappeared as fast as it had appeared. Baroubuda's spell had been broken.
The rest of the treasure had rejoined the sea permanently, no longer held in a magic bubble and giant clamshell in the Druid Queen's hidden treasury below the waves. But with Drang's healing, half the junk's crew survived and with a such a legendary prize, paying off the wolfcaptain or hiring her on permanently was of no concern to the lizardman.
@Always Watching as Gia Mentik the Goblin Chef and Stuffit Down Foods of the Hordelands
Rancher, caravan, men at arms
- Stuffit Down Foods : hide/bone/muscle of golemized Horde monsters, a small fortune in Horde chits, small fortune in Imperial gold coin, a spiderwolf golem not because it will breed (it won't) but as a pet, Southern cuisine, samples of mind controlling sap and food that transforms its eaters into pigs, fiddle of infectious dance
&
The Babbling Spire
Hostilities opening on the Erlkonig-Carnation Kingdom border left Mentik and his diverse company of greenskins stranded for the several weeks of summer after they departed the Undermarch. The dwarven coins spent well enough in the neighboring human kingdom, allowing them to spend the time in Colosso sampling Southern human cusine and acquiring delicacies such as olive oil, volcanic salt, and tomato and other nightshades; as well as lots and lots of distilled wine. But when news hit that Horde warg-riders and troll commandos were spotted in the elven forests, an angry mob of humans drove them out of the city. Despite closed borders on both sides, Erlkonig border guards were eager to assist them in breaking through the lines of skirmish, on the long trail from the South to the continental West.
Received by Queen Ai'Shah in Magna Felidae, the catman capital of Bok'Na was easily the most friendly to Horde citizens of all of the human-led Holy Empire. Garofanese wine would be watered down and stretched thin to last the poor nation's state-run taverns for the rest of the year. Turning a cart-sized pile of dwarven platinum into a chest-sized pile of human gold was far from ideal, but they had acquired cultivars of tomato and related cooking herbs in Garofano and the gratitude of the impoverished cat kingdom with the wine. A wing of the queen's rough-hewn stone palace served as their headquarters for the rest of the summer.
A nation largely of self-employed loggers and harvesters of the giant redwoods and wild rubber, Felidae had its share of adventurers looking for a better life, or at least a short and exciting one. Mentik had no shortage of volunteers and secured the temporary assistance of a University mage with a failing potion shop and a band of lightfooted axemen. Stuffit Down company was ready to delve the Babbling Spire for new ingredients.
As much living tree as stone in its construction, the tower was not particularly tall or majestic but was a fantastical thing, created by the psionically compelling voice of the Siren-Wyvern back in the age when dragons still terrorized Fantasia. The locals were invaluable in getting a ground-level opening to appear at all, emulating the birdsong coming from spots in the exterior wall until a call and response was established. When one catman whistled incorrectly, ants the size of dogs poured from the tree and the Horde mercenaries were forced to dispatch them, finding their insides quite acid and untasty. But when the song-key was cracked and the right final note struck after repeating the entire sequence, roots parted to usher them inwards.
Mentik took immediate note that the ants, which toiled all around them without much notice when they didn't step off the path of colored stones, fed on the sap of the tree-like interior. Testing it on a particularly robust orc resulted in the man joining the ants in their toil. Were the trees controlling the ants the same way the dragon had once controlled man, beast and tree to build the spire? Hacking into the trees for sap was rewarding but could turn the entire hive against them. A sample would have to do for now.
In the meantime the path led them to a lavish feast, a banquet hall with hot food just waiting for them and instruments playing themselves to provide accompanying song. Even with appropriate caution, at first the trap was amusing - with Gia having to feed a cursebreaking stew to the catman mage after they tried a particularly tasty looking pie. But soon the self-playing fiddle began overpowering all the other music and they found themselves dancing uncontrollably, unable to defend themselves as dryads emerged from the upper levels to deal with them. Unable to cure the whole company, Mentik did what he could and took the fiddle himself while hopped up on his herbal concoctions of magic defense. Awkwardly wrestling its movements he led the expedition on a fighting retreat back out of the spire.
The magic fiddle, while not made from something legendary like dragonscale, was a nice find.
@MurderChicken as Ahk Zan Yuk the Lizardman Explorer and the Zar Abak Clan of Za Nir Ha Xan
leader, faith healing, mana sense, stealth
farmer/rancher, secret society, family Zar Abak : Large cult agrarian commune of Ga'x'Tak. Bag of jade Gekoumene coins from selling sunblessed gull eggs to the Imperial chef, glowing ink made from a jellyfish radiating divine aura which he kept rather than sold, small but steady income from the Empress
& Lavender Grows in the Desert
In the desert, summer was the dry season and agricultural workers who had been employed by the priestly lizard caste in summer were left idle, with many migrating to the cities for work. Among beastfolk, the Zar Abak's supremacist solidarity with reptiles and amphibians led many frog and snakemen to settle in their commune and tend the livestock while the lord's own relatives focused on cult work. However it also caused riots, with mammalian beastfolk rightly recognizing that the strange Abak clan were not under the protection of the Empress or the non-lizard janissary class of armed slaves. Landless third class citizens took their revenge throwing stones and setting outlying farm buildings ablaze. But isolation only strengthened indoctrination, and by the end of summer the more talented of the new recruits would be novice priests, instructed by the clan patriarch himself.
Back from his journey to Gekoumene, with exciting tales of being kidnapped by pirates, he had attracted the attention of the Gekoumene sorcerous order - the Seal of Seimon - which had been active in the Beast Empire already. His clan's tilling of the mana-infused soil around the old Druid Mound, infusing the desert with the soil to spread the rolling green grass and wild lavender that marked the dungeon, was similar to their own experiments with "dungeon seeds", bottled concentrations of mana in the soil that had tried to form a new dungeon outside of a Beastman city.
With their assistance the process of greening the desert expanded, and a token amount of funding came from the court in XaNaToth that promised as much scrutiny from jealous high priests as did it end the attacks by peasants. Before they left at season's end, the Seal mage and her assistants warned him of what would lie in wait inside the dungeon: The Druid-Kings had developed, in a more wild and natural form, the prototypes of necromancy. They would make ordinary objects come alive temporarily over and over again with enchantments rather than create eternal and obedient golems, would conjure imps from the netherworld rather than bring proper demons into the world, and could obtain the voluntary service of mortals after dead as ghosts and spirit-warriors. Ariowistus the Sage, the Druid-King of the mound, could have left all or any of these to protect whatever it was - tomb, vault, prison, sanctuary.
@Lord Necromancer as Fabius Julii the Human Warrior and the Platinum Order of Silver Veil, Magne Dryades
Heavy weapon (halberd), leader, packmule, spellcraft
Mason, Men at arms, family
Tolled dungeon and village bringing in seasonal revenue in spring/summer, men-at-arms paid and fed for the rest of the year, governorship of Prohaemun. Dungeon growth kept in check currently.
The summer months brought adventurers to the tolled ancient Beast Empire Gristmill, and the Platinum Order now had revenue to maintain and expand its small keep into a village, bringing on a family and a few couples eager to separate dungeon looters from their coin. Seeking to secure his tenuous lease on the territory with heroic deeds (and to make a fortune as a mercenary), Fabius involved his company in the defense of Venustus from Castalustran freebooters. Fighting at sea was hardly ideal for a knight used to mounted and glorious combat, but it was the first provincial vendetta to go so large in the usually peaceful Empire in decades.
Riches the job did not bring, though his men were paid off for the fighting season well, and neither was their freehold further legitimized. Instead, the Julii nobleman found himself used as a catspaw of the Emperor; who came in personal retinue to retrieve his rebellious bastard son the Order had captured in the dungeon. The just reward was an attack, but not one poised at him. Emperor Klelius; perhaps seeking to strengthen human rule over his home county of Prohaemun on the borders of Dryades, Gnomus and Vitrivuvum; used his legal power to appoint Fabius with the non-hereditary governorship of the small but wealthy province. It wasn't a rent-generating noble estate but a duty from one's Emperor, however many had enriched themselves from such a duty by adjusting local laws in the favor of their own businesses. If he was clever he would make a profit, if not it would be a burden.
Order of the Grypon & The Chimera Pit
Following Stuffit Down Foods' discovery of a Necromancer's workshop in the dwarven tunnels of the border region, the Horde allowed the Imperial Holy Church to send crusaders to sanctify it. The Order of the Gryphon, crusading Imperial paladins, locked down the tunnels through force of arms and holy seals against necromancy before proceeding to destroy the profane chimeric flesh-golems within in a grueling campaign throughout the summer months. In the end the dungeon was cleared, with its chief inhabit brought out in blessed silver chains. The dungeonlord was a more conventional golem made of nonliving components, but it was the spitting image of the Necrolord's chief golemologist - Byblis the Dollmaker. Her "Dress Up Doll" was a recreation of herself and her own mind, once serving as assistant in her workshop - which had been in those tunnels. While an abomination could not be allowed to exist, the Church did not seem immediately eager to give up on questioning a golem with potentially immense lost knowledge of the Necrodynasty; including perhaps the lairs left by other Necromancers' before the united peoples of Fantasia had put them to their final deaths. And so Doll-Byblis, appearing curious if not defiant, was taken away by high human and halfman clerics to the church headquarters in the Imperial Capital of Albesta.
Mana unstable - new dungeons forming/reactivating.
Her breathing went from controlled little drags to a greedy little gasp as the last of the air elementals pulled back into the adjoining tunnels – or fell to the magic and sword of her followers and the adventurers they had hired. The Central Burial chamber, for the first time in a small eternity, fell silent. The angry howling of the winds had died down and the war cries of the adventurers and halfmen had carried the victory and now gave way to the exhaustion after the battle. From her newfound perch, in the centre of the chamber and next to the smashed work of art that had graced the sarcophagus she could only feel a deep sense of accomplishment…
…and a hint of sadness as she looked at the cracked stone, reached out and traced the masterfully shaped features and lines that had given the face a weightless and ageless beauty that delighted the heart - but was still used as corner stone of the tombs defence. The magic was old and potent and the artistry that had went into it was not marred by time – only by the battle that had raged as the gathered adventurers she had hired, had pushed their way into these halls by pike and fireball alike.
There had been voices – among her own students – who questioned spending what reserves they had been able to accumulate in cash for adventuring groups that came with experience and a matching price tag. But standing here? She could only look over the assembled adventurers with vindication as the sunlight filled the once more peaceful chamber with warmth and light: another deathtrap of this place turned into a piece of beauty: and a subject of further sturdy.
Already Griseldis mind was racing: the magic that had been cast here was both powerful enough to compel the wind elementals to continue guarding it for millennia – and power a spell that not merely propped things away, but actually turned the forces of gravity on their head. Even smashed in as it was there was much to learn – much to comprehend…and if it was possible: much to learn that we could use for projects to come.
And so, even with the exhaustion burning in her veins and the faint tingling of her own unleashed mana still crackling through the air - Griseldis closed her eyes with delight and enjoyed the rays of the sun on her skin…
…as her acolytes and adventurers began to tear through the untouched burial goods, treasures and whatever the wind elementals had gathered and placed here in millennia past.
In primordial times, great dragons hoarded gold, silver, palladium, jade, amythests, sapphires, ivories, emeralds, and other such products. The heretic outsiders would oft seek to slay such grand personages, turning them to fund their barbarian kingdoms. The stories of the wealth of the great dragons were similarly grand, yet in modern times, the wealth of a moderately prosperous merchant exceeded them many times over, yet that merchant could not be assured that they could feel the metal in their hand.
Wealth, instead, as Nan Kruk Drang's grandfather taught him (his mother and father passing when he was yet young, the ill slings and turns of fortune) is best expressed as a vast, supernuminous body. One who decorates their body with piercing made of precious metals, who wears the finest silks, squanders their patronage. It is enough, his grandfather opined, to own shares in every merchant venture, to have a stake in every ship, and to feel the wealth accumulating in ledgers.
Of course, the old fogey was quite mad. Wise, of course, but quite mad. After all, the laity expected that their spiritual superiors dress the part. That is why Nan Kruk Drang spent a great amount of money, even liquidating some stakes of familial holdings, to outfit his officers in flashy armor. He could feel his grandfather spitting fury at him from beyond the grave, but by Nan Kruk Drang's measure, he more than made up for it with his latest venture.
He should really commission some tapestries about it. There are some good weavers, even in the land of the humans. Although, he thought, that might make him a little too foreign… Well, if he hung one up at the captains quarters on the Xoch'fitlan, that might work, but that would just be vain. He is a priest, after all.
His desk was made of heavy maple, and it was quite ruined with ink and knife marks. It used to make up the hulls of the previous Xoch'fitlan, before it was attacked by an ocean leviathan. His predecessors were also literate, and thus it was stained with ink. They etched their names onto it like a totem, and on some of his more rebellious moods, Nan Kruk Drang felt that that desk called to him more than the totemic dragon shaped prow.
Ah, well. There was always more work to do. Signing papers and writing deeds and oaths, it is like he never finished his apprenticeship!
