Destroyed Lunar colony in southern Zola Fel valley circa 1625?

[Ian Absentia]

5 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Depends on what priests arrived - Hon-eel is primarily found in Oraya and Tarsh.

The Grantland farmers were a mix...

In the interest of opening doors to opportunity (and heroic survival), it's reasonable to assume that some priests of Hon-Eel are among the resettled.  And though maize may not be the crop ordinarily favored among the Grantlanders, in a time of crisis, worshippers of Hon-Eel may be able to step to the fore and offer relief where other crops fail.

We should assume that water from the boggy Zola Fel has been available for controlled irrigation up to the Wind Stop, but c.1621-22 is locked up in snow and ice upriver.  And it's just too cold to support decent crops of any kind.  Following the Wind Stop, there's flooding down to the Great Bog, but the Grantlands are largely south of that, so...better off than Sun County?

Has anyone speculated on the productivity of fishing from either the Zola Fel or Corflu?

!i!

[MOB]

9 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

It's a shame they decided to turn on the Empire, hahaha

One thing that confused me about the Grantland farmers and the Windstop: why did they not use the Bless Maize rite taught by Hon Eel? There's no way there's a colony of farmers and no Hon Eel priests.

Even with Bless Maize, you're hardy likely to get a successful crop in what is, effectively, an endless winter. And even if you do:

Quote

With the Windstop came other terrors. Fertility blessings failed as animals and children began to die in the womb, gravely endangering their mothers as well. Out of the Great Bog came swarms of locusts, both normal-sized and giant. With them came gangs of ravenous wild trollkin, some even riding the huge flying insects. They swept through the farmlands, stripping all the vegetation in their path. In their wake came a plague of famished traskars and cliff toads, driven from their usual lairs by hunger.

And then after that, Governor Halcyon's soldiers will come and requisition anything edible anyway...

Quote

Even more disturbingly, chaos horrors emerged from a great eruption of sinkholes that appeared around the abandoned village of Rabbit Hat, formerly a center of the illicit hazia trade. As the fields dried up, more such holes began to appear all across Sun County [and probably the Grantlands too]. Investigating parties sent in by Vega Goldbreath found themselves in a dangerous and confusing network of excavated tubes, suggesting a widespread subterranean infiltration of the land by Krarsht, the Devouring Mother.

Meanwhile, on the river a strange sea-monster, its breath like a poisonous cold mist, wreaked havoc. To the Count’s vexation, the Great Ballista at Harpoon was useless, lacking arrows to slay it – these had all been expended in the Cradle debacle. Even Sor Eel’s soldiers couldn’t kill the monster. It eventually it made its way upriver to the Rubble, where it is said to have disappeared into the Puzzle Canal.

The leaders of Sun County were sorely pressed dealing with these calamities, but the real crisis lay in the dwindling supply of food. As even harsher measures were enacted against hoarding, people began to accuse their neighbours of being in league with Krarsht.

Meanwhile, in Pavis, there are scores of starving refugees congregating around the city's locked gates:

Quote

The new Lunar governor, Halcyon var Enkorth, had recently imposed a ruinous entry fee that few of the desperate farmfolk or stranded nomads could afford (and even then, once inside there was no guarantee they would be fed). In a gesture of benevolence, Count Solanthos personally paid to admit all needy solar worshippers, giving over his own gilded breastplate as surety until an equivalent sum in gold wheels could be levied from the people of the Suntown quarter.

The food situation inside New Pavis was dire, with the municipal granaries now all but empty. Even the Lunar soldiery were on short rations, though Halcyon var Enkorth was making a fortune selling barrels of “salted mock pork” of mysterious origin. Suntown residents had been forbidden from partaking of the tainted meat, but Thandren Clubfoot advised the count that the quarter’s own granary would soon be down to dust with the new influx of starving sun worshippers to feed.

Commonplace rune magic is just not going to be enough save the Grantlanders - or anyone else - in this crisis.

Edited August 16, 2020 by MOB

[jajagappa]

11 minutes ago, MOB said:

Commonplace rune magic is just not going to be enough save the Grantlanders - or anyone else - in this crisis.

If they do have a Hon-eel priestess, they might wish otherwise as I'm sure she'd not only suggest, but strongly advise Blood Sacrifice.  And it would probably work enough to warm a small plot and raise some food... and hungry folk demand more to stay alive... but who will be taken as offerings???  

[MOB]

3 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

We should assume that water from the boggy Zola Fel has been available for controlled irrigation up to the Wind Stop, but c.1621-22 is locked up in snow and ice upriver.

Yes. The river all but stops flowing. Parched fields that were once thick with golden corn lay dry and hard, and withered corpses of farm animals lay clustered around empty canals and wells, etc.

3 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Following the Wind Stop, there's flooding down to the Great Bog...

Yes, 

3 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

but the Grantlands are largely south of that, so...better off than Sun County?

Yes, but no. After the great inundation subsides, the Pavis County and Sun County sections of the river valley are left covered with a thick layer of fertile silt. Next year's harvest is a bumper one for the farmers there, especially in Sun County because the entire population gets mobilized into a Great Corvée to fix all the irrigation channels etc. The 1623-24 growing seasons are good in the Grantlands too, but they do not share the blessing of the silt from Zola Fel.

The Grantlands also has the problems of a declining security situation with emboldened nomads, and the increasingly rapacious greed of Governor Halycon. Although he has covetous eyes on the Lands of the Sun too, Halcyon's tax-gatherers and enforcers are politely but firmly escorted through Sun County by the count's Templars. The Grantlands is not a happy place to be.

Edited August 16, 2020 by MOB

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

If they do have a Hon-eel priestess, they might wish otherwise as I'm sure she'd not only suggest, but strongly advise Blood Sacrifice.  And it would probably work enough to warm a small plot and raise some food... and hungry folk demand more to stay alive... but who will be taken as offerings???  

What I would want at such a moment is a way to contact some ancestors so I can negotiate a new survival covenant. Luckily those tools are available locally but it means settlers can't really go home again. Which is a good epic to have. 

And if corn grows down there, what a miracle.

[Ian Absentia]

1 hour ago, MOB said:

Yes, but no. After the great inundation subsides, the Pavis County and Sun County sections of the river valley are left covered with a thick layer of fertile silt. Next year's harvest is a bumper one for the farmers there, especially in Sun County because the entire population gets mobilized into a Great Corvée to fix all the irrigation channels etc. The 1623-24 growing seasons are good in the Grantlands too, but they do not share the blessing of the silt from Zola Fel.

All things considered, I'll count this as a tally in the column for the conservation of wetlands and their ability to de-energise and retain the flow of water.  I doubt that's high on the list of the Grantlanders' priorities, though.  Still, gold stars for not "reclaiming" the Great Bog a decade earlier!  ⭐⭐⭐

!i!

Edited August 16, 2020 by Ian Absentia

[Stephen L]

18 hours ago, MOB said:

"Don Duras" from my as-yet-to-be-released (or even finished) Casino Town document

Well, that's a fantastic campaign idea.

But please, MOB, don't be distracted by forum posts *and finish the Casino Town Document* please!

Thanks,

Stephen.

[MOB]

4 hours ago, Stephen L said:

Well, that's a fantastic campaign idea.

Why thanks. I left out the final section of that campaign hook - here it is:

Onward to Prax!

What happens to our heroes after Raus lands them in Prax? Does Ronegarth still stand? Are there any Grantlands settlers left, or was the whole valley overrun by nomads? Where is his daughter, the Lady Jezra? What kind of reception will Raus receive at the Sun Dome Temple? Do they still have the Duke’s deeds and treasures, and recognize him for who he says he is? And then what happens when Raus gets to Pavis? – Lunar Prax is no more; there is a new power in land. Can Raus convince the White Bull of his claims, and can the heroes help him win back and hold his domain? All this (and more) must unfold in a later volume…

You know, it occurs to me that - just like how The Force Awakens shamelessly matches Star Wars: A New Hope beat-to-beat, having a band of mercenaries help Raus return to re-establish himself in Weis Domain is pretty much a reprise of RQ Classic's Borderlands. Not that this is a bad thing.

4 hours ago, Stephen L said:

But please, MOB, don't be distracted by forum posts *and finish the Casino Town Document* please!

I would love to. In the meantime there's more snippets from that document in the Casino Town Rumours [WIP] thread.

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by MOB

[Ian Absentia]

10 hours ago, MOB said:

Onward to Prax!

What happens to our heroes after Raus lands them in Prax? Does Ronegarth still stand? Are there any Grantlands settlers left, or was the whole valley overrun by nomads? Where is his daughter, the Lady Jezra? What kind of reception will Raus receive at the Sun Dome Temple? Do they still have the Duke’s deeds and treasures, and recognize him for who he says he is?...

Hunh, lookee what I found here in Plunder, p.24 on the Gems/Jewelry Table:

01  Costume jewelry that serves as a deed  64L

Looks like maybe someone's right to resettle might be up for grabs.  I wonder how that got out of the Sun Dome vaults?  Now we have the plot to The Maltese Falcon brewing.

!i!

[P.S.  Jezra is definitely the true identity of "Muriah" -- that's where she can be found.]

Edited August 16, 2020 by Ian Absentia

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Ian Absentia said:

Jezra is definitely the true identity of "Muriah" -- that's where she can be found

In the rumor categorization, I give that a (B) - basically true but with a substantially false component.  Up to the GM to decide what is what out of that!

Edited August 16, 2020 by jajagappa

[Ian Absentia]

53 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

In the rumor categorization, I give that a (B) - basically true but with a substantially false component.  Up to the GM to decide what is what out of that!

I dunno, man, she keeps "disappearing" a little too conveniently.  It's certainly my best contender for the Your Dumbest Theory thread. 

!i!

Edited August 17, 2020 by Ian Absentia

[MOB]

53 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

Hunh, lookee what I found here in Plunder, p.24 on the Gems/Jewelry Table:

01  Costume jewelry that serves as a deed  64L

Looks like maybe someone's right to resettle might be up for grabs.  I wonder how that got out of the Sun Dome vaults?  Now we have the plot to The Maltese Falcon brewing.

The plot thickens. Raus would swear by his ancestors that the valuables he deposited at the Sun Dome Temple did not include trade junk. Someone, somewhere along the line, has done the old switcheroo!

[jajagappa]

10 hours ago, MOB said:

The plot thickens. Raus would swear by his ancestors that the valuables he deposited at the Sun Dome Temple did not include trade junk. Someone, somewhere along the line, has done the old switcheroo!

Now that you mention it, the Sun County Militia does recall a mysterious young woman, an envoy from the Paps, who came with an odd escort of newtlings to visit Vega Goldbreath...

[Nick Brooke]

On 8/17/2020 at 2:46 AM, MOB said:

Raus would swear by his ancestors that the valuables he deposited at the Sun Dome Temple did not include trade junk.

The silly old fool! Those are the title deeds to an impounded trade junk from Kralorela and its full cargo hold, last seen in lockdown at the secret Lunar naval base near Corflu. How Duke Raus came to own that, we may never know...

[Minlister]

And what about these rumors of a ghost ship sailing up the Zola Fel? 

A ghost ship in the shape of giant craddle...

It is really true that nothing ever comes back from Magasta's Pool? Not even to fight in the Herowars?

[Garrik]

On 8/12/2020 at 7:16 PM, Minlister said:

@seasparrow

An excellent scenario for the grantlands was published in the Zin Letters. Obviously, I don't think you can find it now ..

The Zin Letters #4 with the Grantlands scenario is available at:
https://kalikos.org/julkaisut/zin-letters/
Just order it directly from the webmaster at info@kalikos.org.

If they've sold it out, I've got several extra copies. You can message me.

[CharloixBrooKiller]

FWIIW, I enjoyed reading this thread. Have not played RQ in generations but decided to 'check in' on how it's going.

I had the distinction of being the character Daine from the original Borderlands pack.  And the pleasure of sitting around the author's kitchen table naming newtlings on night.  Nice to see folks building on the campaign.