[Urbis] Locations of the Cold Frontier - Canyon of Spiders, Bird Lakes, Giant Frog Swamp, and Bat Caves

Downriver of the Crystal Falls, numerous insects, large and small, congregate to feast on the plant and algae growths emerging from the mineral-rich waters of the canyon. These, in turn, are preyed upon by a multitude of spiders, some of which can reach the size of a large dog. Their nets cover the canyon walls, and anyone who gets entangled in them will quickly be swarmed by them. None of the spiders are intelligent.

These marshlands south of the volcano are fairly shallow and are subdivided into innumerable small lakes which are bordered by fairly low-growing vegetation. During the warmer seasons, large flocks of water fowl make their home here, preying on the numerous insects and fish and building their nests in the hedges.

The warm swamplands downriver from the First City Spa are home to a species of giant frogs. While they are not averse to make a snack of halfling-sized snack (they will leave larger creatures alone), their main problem is the noice they are making. Their croaking will thunder around the area, sounding like the call of a much larger creature. Sleep is next to impossible within this hex.

The small caves dotting the sides of this small canyon are used as refuge for a large number of bats who prey on the insects in the swamps to the south. Most of the caves are too small for a full-grown human. Still, for those who can gain access, large amounts of bat guano can be harvested for both alchemical and magical purposes.


Note: A list of all Urbis-related posts can be found here.

[Skyrim] Black Horse Dispatches 11 - Messages

Continued from Dispatch 10 - The Way of Shouting.

Before we reached Ivarstead, we saw a lone figure running up the 7,000 steps to High Hrothgar.

It was Lydia - alive and well, though a bit bruised.

"But... how?"

"Well, first I landed in a massive snowdrift and had to dig myself out...

...and when I had done that, a huge pile of dragon bones landed on top of me."

"Uhm..."

"Which pissed me off even more, since it meant that I couldn't carve that overgrown lizard's heart out for knocking me off the mountain. So the next time we fight one, save a piece for me!"

"...sure. Glad to have you back."

"See? He does care!" said Vrija from behind me. I gave her the Glare of Death, but it did nothing.

I was shivering heavily as we entered Ivarstead, and that the snowfall had turned to rain did not help. I wanted nothing more than warm myself by the inn's fireplace, but just before we reached it two strangely-garbed figures wearing bizarre and identical masks approached me.

"You there. You're the one they call Dragonborn?" Morrowind accent. Curious...

"The Greybeards seem to think so..."

"Then it is too late. The lie has already taken roots of the hearts of men. So we shall expose the falseness in their hearts by tearing out yours, Deceiver!"

I swear, I could hear the capital letter in "Deceiver".

"When Lord Miraak appears all shall bear witness! None shall stand to oppose him!"

With that, they started to throw bolts of fire around - from close range. And while I was too busy freezing to death to put up much of a fight, they were still facing three of the deadliest warriors I've known (and Vrija). A short time later, and their corpses presented yet more evidence that fanaticism doesn't compensate for combat experience, let alone brains.

They were indeed dunmer. And one of them had a note with them. But wasn't there something else I was supposed to do? Oh, right - get inside and not freeze to death.

As I sat down so close to the central fire as to be practically on top of it, I pulled out the note.

"Board the vessel Northern Maiden docked at Raven Rock. Take it to Windhelm, then begin your search. Kill the False Dragonborn known as Araneus Venator before he reaches Solstheim.

Return with word of your success, and Miraak shall be most pleased."

Well, well, well, now isn't that interesting. I only learned that I was a Dragonborn two days ago, when I absorbed that first dragon's soul near Whiterun. Which means that this "Miraak" either became supernaturally aware of this event and was capable of learning my own name at the same time, or that he knew that I was a Dragonborn before I did and kept careful track of my movement before I even reached Skyrim. And quite possibly both.

As the puddle of molten ice and snow forming around me began to cover more and more of the floor and earned me dirty looks from the barkeeper which I studiously ignored, I pondered the decision I had to make. Continue to Ustengrav to get that Horn for the Greybeards, or go to Solstheim and conduct an interview with this Miraak, quite possibly involving the Mace of Truth?

Ultimately, it was no contest. "Interview with a dragon" will beat "interview with some deranged sorcerer" any day of the week.

Fredas, 22nd of Last Seed, 4E 201.

According to what the Greybeards told me, Ustengrav was northeast of Morthal, where the swamps of the region meed the hills west of Dawnstar. Looking at my map, I could either return to Whiterun and follow the road north, or travel into the direction of Windhelm and then move up the river Yorgrim. The latter would lead me through Stormcloak-held territory - probably a bad idea at the moment, as I was still wearing the light imperial armor I had taken from Helgen. I needed to replace that at the earliest opportunity...

As I stepped out the inn, I encountered a courier who handed me a letter - allegedly from "Siddgeir, Jarl of Falkreath" who claimed that my "reputation" had attracted his notice, and invited me to visit him if I was "interested in becoming Thane of Falkreath". The letter also insinuated that "a choice parcel of land" would be available for purchase if my "services would prove useful" to him.

Well, far be it for me to speculate on the Jarl's character. But, well, back when High Rock was about a hundred thousand independent principalities, sending such letters to rich people in Cyrodiil who were greedy for some aristocratic title were a major industry. Just allow these merchants and shopkeepers to pay you large sums of money for some petty noble title, and you have enough funds for throwing the next sybaritic orgy or two, while the merchants could brag about their new title to all their friends while becoming the laughing stock of the actual Cyrodiilic aristocracy. Even after the Warp in the West,when there were only five kingdoms left, this scam didn't stop - the only thing that changed was that the kingdoms the letters were allegedly from were as fictional as the titles themselves.

Anyway, the Courier.

"Listen, this is important. Do you go to Cyrodiil? Maybe even to the Imperial City?"

"Mister, if I get paid enough, I will go anywhere in Tamriel."

"Good." I stuffed my notes of the last four days into a watertight bag, and pressed it into his hands.

"Take this to the offices of the Black Horse Courier, Market District, Imperial City on the fastest way possible. Give this to the hands of editor Dro'Bassa only. Do this, and he will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Tell the furry bastard I said so."

"You said so? Well, who in Oblivion are you?"

"I am Araneus Venator, the best damn writer his rag has. I've seen the first dragon to rise, and the first dragon to fall, and once this hits the press, everyone will want to read about it. Now run, little man, as if all the dragons in Skyrim are bearing down on you!"

Continued in Dispatch 12 - Tears of a Clown.

My Gaming Projects, Part III: The Arcana Wiki

"The Wikipedia - written by gamers, for gamers!"

That was the basic idea when I created the Arcana Wiki six years ago, and that remains the goal to this day. As any veteran game master or teller of stories knows, pretty much anything can serve as an inspiration for stories if you just look at it from the right angle. The trick is then to find the right inspiration for your current needs and start thinking in the right directions. Streams of high-inspiration material like the Suppressed Transmissions Community are useful, but the posts soon vanish into the archives and are forgotten by most readers. Therefore, trying to sort all this inspirational stuff into a wiki only made sense - it would allow proper indexing, cross-referencing, and brainstorming among its readers.

Most entries in the Arcana Wiki have a fairly standard layout. A good example of this is the entry for the Kowloon Walled City, a former slum region in Hong Kong.

As you can see, this page includes a hierarchical navigation bar, which shows that the Kowloon Walled City is within Hong Kong, which is within China, which is within the "Countries" hierarchy, which in turn is within the "Places" hierarchy. Not all pages of the Arcana Wiki - 4380 pages as of this writing - are included in such a hierarchy, but it does making navigation easier.

Though some pages (see the "Love Potion" entry for an example) start with an inspirational quote, most will start with a "Basic Information" section which tries to explain the basic concept of the entry in a fairly factual manner (though not usually as dry as the Wikipedia, and we don't concern ourselves with citations as much, either).

Incidentally, the blue links refer to existing Arcana Wiki entries, while the red links refer to entries which do not exist yet - a good place to get started when writing new stuff!

This includes a short "Sources" section with links where readers can get more information. Often this will only mean the relevant Wikipedia entry, but frequently contributors came across other interesting links that would contribute to the reader's understanding - and inspiration.

Below that, there is a "Game and Story Use" section where both the creator of the entry and others can add their own story ideas in the form of bullet points. The formatting is intentionally looser here, as the ideas can be highly subjective and idiosyncratic - in fact, this part was inspired by the TV Tropes Wiki, which uses the same format when discussing tropes. If someone wants to elaborate on another idea or add variants, they can do that via higher-order bullet points, which can get some lengthy discussions going.

This is the basic formatting for most Arcana Wiki entries. So, what subjects does the wiki cover?

Plenty. While it is nowhere near as exhaustive as the Wikipedia (and how could it be, considering it doesn't have the latter's zillion contributors?), some of the highlights include a Geography section listing real world locations around the world, famous real-world People, Mythological Creatures, a List of Mythologies (which admittedly needs some work, but it does include a basic page for the Cthulhu Mythos), Organizations, sections on Science, Technology, and Magic, a Tropes section loosely based on the aforementioned TV Tropes Wiki, and a Historical Timeline which, especially in newer years, links to all sorts of fascinating news stories (which use a slightly different formatting than the standard entries described above). There are also some tools which use random wiki entries to generate ideas - like the Random Adventure Seeds (which pick three random entries for adventure inspiration), or the Random Nations Generator (I've used the latter to generate villages for my Cold Frontier campaign - see here, here, and here for examples).

But while there is a fair amount of decent material on the wiki, most of the contributions came from a very small number of people. And I'd like to change that - which is where you come in.

The Arcana Wiki needs more contributors on just about any conceivable subject imaginable - and everyone is an expert on something that can be used for gaming. Do you know a lot about fantastic or cryptozoological creatures? Write it up. Do you know about really strange places in or near your hometown? Write it up. Do you have some favorite conspiracy theories? Write them up. Have you studied some particularly fascinating periods of history? Write them up. Inspiration is everywhere, and the goal of the Arcana Wiki is to find it and make it accessible to everyone.

But how do you get started? Well, first of all you need to register - in the beginning I allowed anonymous edits, but sadly the wiki eventually attracted sufficient spammers to force me disable that option. You can register via the link at the top and right.

After that, all you need to do is to click on the edit button at the bottom of the page and start editing.

I would recommend starting small - go to existing pages first and add some gaming ideas of your own. The wiki code is fairly easy to understand - for example, the "Game and Story Use" section of the Kowloon Walled City entry looks like this:

The main code to remember here is:

• Lines starting with "* " are bullet points, and if the "*" is moved further to the right (for example, " * ", these are turned into
• higher-level bullet points.
• Words in //double slashes// are turned into italics.
• Words wrapped in **double asterixes** are written bold.
• Worlds written in [[[triple square brackets]]] are links to other Arcana Wiki entries.
• Words written in single [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_brackets#Square_brackets square brackets] with URLs are links to external (non-Arcana Wiki) pages.

 After a while, you will probably click on one of the red links, which will bring you to a page like this:

Click on the link, and a new page will be generated based on a template of your choosing (the "standard" template is the default, but there are also templates for news stories, calendar entries, and so forth) - you only need to fill in the details and save the results.

After that, the next step is to read the following essays at the wiki:

• What To Add To The Arcana Wiki
• What The Arcana Wiki Is Not 
• Arcana Wiki Style Guide 

Furthermore, the wiki has its own forum on which you can ask questions if anything is unclear.


That's it - for now! I hope to see you there, and I will be looking forward to your contributions.

Running the Forgotten Realms as a Superhero Campaign

It has often been remarked that high-level D&D campaigns often approach superhero campaigns in power level and scope - the PCs can mow down lesser mooks in large numbers, and the threats they face are often world-shattering, and essentially unstoppable by less experienced characters.

So... why not run such campaigns as superhero campaigns in the first place? The Forgotten Realms, in particular, seem well suited for such a campaign, as it is positively awash with high-level characters and threats.

There would have to be some changes in gameplay, of course. First of all, the usual profit motive - "kill monsters and take their stuff" - would have to be deemphasized. The PCs aren't roving murderhobos, they are heroes and protectors! If you use some iteration of D&D, it makes sense to just give the PCs some "level-appropriate" funds to get magic items and gear, while assuming that any stuff they find during actual play (apart from unique artifacts) is spent on research/home base/lifestyle/parties and so on. That will hopefully help the players to get into the proper frame of mind. If you are using a different system, assume the PCs can get "mundane" gear and pay for especially fancy stuff or prominent magic items with character points (or whatever the system uses).

Then you have to give some thought to the character's "home base". While there are "roving superheroes" who travel the world, most of them tend to stay close to a particular region. What would Batman be without Gotham City? For the Forgotten Realms, you can either pick a particular region (the Silver Marches, the Moonsea, and so forth), or a particular city - and there is no shortage of cities in the Realms with detailed city plans (although few can approach Waterdeep, which holds the same spot as New York City in the Marvel universe). And just like superheroes, heroic adventurers will often have rather ambivalent relationships with the local authorities. They may well be feted when they thwart the latest threat to the region, but the authorities are also too aware that the heroes aren't really under their control, and that they would have difficulties stopping them, should the need arise...

Secret identities probably won't translate very well, since adventurers are generally assumed to be famous - though the odd "mysterious masked wizard" is certainly appropriate. Do encourage the players to come up with interesting nicknames, as well as a good name for their group as a whole (which also is tradition in the Forgotten Realms).

Then it's only a matter of having Bad Guys show up in their territory and be up to no good - and here is where the richness of the Forgotten Realms setting really shines. The Red Wizards of Thay! The Zhentarim! The Dragon Cult and the Kraken Society! The Empire of Shade! Add to that various powerful monsters, both organized and unorganized, and you will be able to copy most comics plots with ease. Even tales of Science Gone Wrong can simply be converted into Magic Gone Wrong.

And it is easy to increase the power level further, leading to continent- or even world-spanning team ups, with the heroes standing side by side with NPCs like Elminster and the Simbul, creating their own equivalent of the Justice League and the Avengers to deal with world-shaking threats...

Your thoughts?

[Urbis] Locations of the Cold Frontier - Wind Flute, Beaver Colony, Blighted Grass, and Ancient Terraces

In this particularly windy stretch of canyon the explorers can frequently hear a deep, fluting sound. They will eventually discover that someone, presumably of the Old Native civilization, carved out a rock spire with a series of hollow "pipes" through which the wind can blow and emit eerie music. Air- and wind-based magics are more effective here.

While the river banks of the southern grasslands are frequently dotted by trees, in this area the forest is particularly expansive. This region has been home to an extended family of beavers for many generations, who have altered the river into a series of lakes thanks to large and extensive dams. To make the river navigable by rafts, the dams (and likely the beavers) will have to be removed.

The grasses and shrubs growing on the northwestern slopes of the volcano seem to be afflicted with some kind of disease - they will have innumerable brown spots on any greenery, as well as any flowers. This seems to be caused by the local soil in some way - removing the plants and replanting them elsewhere will gradually cause the brown spots to vanish.

The southern slopes of the volcano are separated into innumerable small terraces which were artificially constructed with stones. They were once used for agriculture, and small amounts of wild rice can still be found in odd corners. However, most of the irrigation network is now in ruins, broken apart by small rivulets streaming from the numerous small geysers and hot springs. Many of the terraces have degenerated into swamps, full of stinging insects.


Note: A list of all Urbis-related posts can be found here

[Urbis] Locations of the Cold Frontier - Ancient Memorial, Elder Tree, Fog Canyon, and Spire City Ruins

This otherwise flat area is criss-crossed by numerous small ridges which rise one yard above the plains. Their width varies from 10 to 30 yards. While they are as overgrown with grass as anything else in the region, digging will eventually reveal strong, thick stone of a type inappropriate to the region, and closer analysis will confirm that the stone was magically created. When viewed from high, an 800 yards-wide side profile of an elven head can be seen, in an art style that can best be described as "classical". It is surrounded by an inscription in the letters of the First City which reads: "To the magelord-governeur Nyros, in the fifth year of his reign. May he lead us to limitless glories." Incidentally, after he successfully activated the God Chamber at the heart of the continent, Nyros became the God of disease, survival of the fittest, and self-elevation, so at least the "glory" part worked out...

A vast tree, a conifer of an unknown species more than 200 yards in height, grows on these plains close to the Tribal Meet. Its vast network of roots hides innumerable small hollows carved out of the earth, some of which have been decorated as kivas, as communing with spirits is easier here. Unfortunately, the Wendigo Cultists know this as well, and have hidden one of their altars here. When not in use, the entrance to the small cave is hidden by magically conjured earth, and only a careful search will reveal this.

Numerous rivulets from the Burning Hills to the east stream down the canyon walls here. As they fall, they transform into a near-permanent fog that somehow covers the entire canyon along an 8 mile stretch. Echoes distort here, and the explorers get the feeling that they are constantly being watched as long as they stay here. A very through search, possibly supported by vision-enhanced magic, will reveal a cave complex with another wendigo altar.

Where the two northern river canyons meet, the Old Native civilization built a city into the canyon walls. Wide roads - frequently carved into the canyon walls - wind down the northern, western, and eastern sides of the canyons. They meet via magically created stone bridges (still home to guardian spirits preventing their collapse) at a central rock spire which was transformed into a fortress. The lower levels of the fortress have been sealed off and still contain Old Native treasures, though also a number of ghouls left from the Great Darkness. The top of the old fortress currently houses a spire drake. The northern Elk Tribe occasionally passes through this fortress when they move their herds to different pastures.

Note: A list of all Urbis-related posts can be found here.

[Urbis] Locations of the Cold Frontier - Whipgrass, Zone of Silence, Gopher Mounds, and Eye Botfly Swamp

Here the grasses of the southern plains grow especially tall. And hidden amidst the ordinary longgrass are patches of whipgrass. These grasses have razor-sharp edges and will attempt to wrap themselves around any creature that approaches them, using their blood as fertilizer.

This part of the Northern Wastelands was once the site of another titanic battle between the Mothmen and the Xill. As a result of the weapons unleashed here, there is an area approximately 2 miles in diameter where no divinations, no telepathy, and no communication spells will work. Furthermore, nothing can produce sounds here. There is an old, half-ruined First City facility close to the center which was used for clandestine meetings, as well as the most secret plannings when the First City colony was at war with its mother country. Excavating the site in depth will reveal a number of small glass slabs which are pressure-sensitive - their surface will turn white at points where pressure is exerted. This will fade over the course of a few minutes - faster if the slab is shaken. These were used to communicate between people who met there (since verbal communication would, of course, be impossible).

The fairly flat valleys between the hills in this region are filled with innumerable small mounds, which are up to 2 yards high and 10 yards wide. They are so abundant, with one placed next to the other, that it is hard to believe that they have a natural origin - and indeed they don't, as they are the work of innumerable generations of fey gophers who have created these mounds as their nests. The gophers are quite shy and will avoid strangers, though some of them do speak the language of the Coastal Tribes. They are not very bright, however.

This swamp area is inhabited by a particularly nasty variety of botfly - these insects have specialized in injecting their immature larvae into the eyes of mammals, where they will grow and eventually hatch, with predictable results for the afflicted eye. The nearby Inland Tribes know enough to stay away from these swamps, but their shamans know a herbal cure which will cause the larvae to die. If applied early this will prevent permanent damage, although the eye will be blind for a few days.

Note: A list of all Urbis-related posts can be found here.