Korolstead: Secrets of the Smoking Ruin (Jonstown Compendium)

[soltakss]

John Lawson has created a new Jonstown Compendium supplement.

Now available on DriveThruRPG:

The Smoking Ruin: Secrets of Korolstead

I hope you find it useful (and fun)!

 

What Korolstead has to offer the foolhardy and the unwary:

• New story seeds for visiting the Smoking Ruin
• Complete, wall-to-wall maps of the entire Ruin, including 44 full-color maps of over 20 unique locations
• Two new short scenarios to challenge players
• Two new factions to keep Vamargic and the players on their toes
• New friends, foes, and rogues to help or hinder the adventurers
• Five new minor cult descriptions
• New magic items
• New creatures, flora, and races
• Random encounter tables for all parts of the Ruin
• GM’s tools for generating loot, weapons, armor, medicine, and just about anything else you might find in a ruined city

This supplement is compatible with Chaosium’s Runequest: The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories.  Its contents is playable with expeditions before, during, or after running the official adventure.

 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/373384/The-Smoking-Ruin-Secrets-of-Korolsted

Edited October 9, 2021 by Nick Brooke
Title change

[jajagappa]

13 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Now available on DriveThruRPG:

The Smoking Ruin: Secrets of Korolstead

I hope you find it useful (and fun)!

Yay!  My player's characters are on their way there now, so perfect timing. 🙂

[PhilHibbs]

Is everything in the map pack? There's no PDF download on Drivethru, just a zip full of JPGs and a readme.txt.

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Is everything in the map pack?

No, there is also a PDF.

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

There's no PDF download on Drivethru

It should be back now.

John had to change the title.

 

[Puckohue]

With permission from the author I made an online generator for the encounter and treasure tables, for those who use them and want to save time. The output isn't pretty but it's quicker: https://chartopia.d12dev.com/collection/2088/

[soltakss]

19 hours ago, Puckohue said:

With permission from the author I made an online generator for the encounter and treasure tables, for those who use them and want to save time. The output isn't pretty but it's quicker: https://chartopia.d12dev.com/collection/2088/

Excellent, I love online tools, thanks for doing this and sharing it.

[Murf]

It mentions reestablishing the Koroltes Tribe and reviving the city as possible plot hooks. Anybody have some thougths on the the political ramifications with regards to the Grazzers or Argrath?

We did the official Smoling Ruins adventure but did not retrive the mirrior thanks to some ill-timed bad rolls. Plus our campaing is deciding on settling down and establihing ourselves as land owners. Would not mind some "Game of Thones" type of political intregue adventures? 

[jajagappa]

7 hours ago, Murf said:

It mentions reestablishing the Koroltes Tribe and reviving the city as possible plot hooks. Anybody have some thougths on the the political ramifications with regards to the Grazzers or Argrath?

From a Grazer standpoint, I could see two possibilities (could be more):

1) the Grazers settle it themselves. They do not want Orlanthi there, but see opportunity to control that point along the Dragonspine.

2) some Orlanthi try to reestablish the Koroltes tribe. The Feathered Horse Queen as Ernalda's representative is not necessarily averse to have another Husband-Protector. If they agree to provide tribute and fall under the command of the FHQ, then she may well agree (much to the consternation of sun-worshipping Grazer tribes). If they don't agree, then the FHQ will likely command their removal, and go to item 1) to secure the place against such.

Argrath might like allies there, and might try to push 2). This might tie into the FHQ's Marriage Contest. She won't let Argrath settle anyone there until they complete the First Trial of the Contest, whatever that might be.

[Murf]

13 hours ago, jajagappa said:

From a Grazer standpoint, I could see two possibilities (could be more):

1) the Grazers settle it themselves. They do not want Orlanthi there, but see opportunity to control that point along the Dragonspine.

2) some Orlanthi try to reestablish the Koroltes tribe. The Feathered Horse Queen as Ernalda's representative is not necessarily averse to have another Husband-Protector. If they agree to provide tribute and fall under the command of the FHQ, then she may well agree (much to the consternation of sun-worshipping Grazer tribes). If they don't agree, then the FHQ will likely command their removal, and go to item 1) to secure the place against such.

Argrath might like allies there, and might try to push 2). This might tie into the FHQ's Marriage Contest. She won't let Argrath settle anyone there until they complete the First Trial of the Contest, whatever that might be.

Thanks for the reply,

I like all the points but specially Korolstead becoming a pawn in the political battle Argrath and the FHQ's courtship. Both sides wanting it to show up the other but neither side can risk getting into a war over it. Argrath wants to have a lodgment in Grazzer's territory and securing the passage way over the mountains. FHQ wants to prevent that and secure her flank along with the possiblity of opening a direct trade route to Sartar and a shorter fiver route to the Holy Country.

Circumstans could even work out that the Korolites become a nutrial buffer state (If one side can't have it then neither side should.) Kind like the Cassablanca of Dragon Pass.

Meanwhile the Empire wants to stir trouble between both to thwart Argrath from becoming KoD. Cementing the alliance with his marriage to the FHQ will give Argrath a real opertunity to invade Tarsh.

I can see the the title of the book; "King of Korolstade: or how a new tribe held the fate of Dragon Pass in it hands. 

Interesting possiblities.

[dumuzid]

On 3/7/2023 at 11:23 AM, Murf said:

It mentions reestablishing the Koroltes Tribe and reviving the city as possible plot hooks. Anybody have some thougths on the the political ramifications with regards to the Grazzers or Argrath?

We did the official Smoling Ruins adventure but did not retrive the mirrior thanks to some ill-timed bad rolls. Plus our campaing is deciding on settling down and establihing ourselves as land owners. Would not mind some "Game of Thones" type of political intregue adventures? 

 

When my group played the Smoking Ruins adventure we managed to retrieve the mirror, but were defeated and driven from the ruins by Vamargic when we tried to confront him on our first visit.

Rather than let that lie, we spent the rest of the in-game year traveling around southern Dragon Pass recruiting a Unity Army, doing a seasons long this-world heroquest of Only Old One, Heort et. al. gathering the last army of the living to fight Wakboth's Chaos horde.  The coalition army we brought to the Smoking Ruins in Storm 1626 was composed of Colymar Orlanthi, Old Tarsh warrior women, Shadow Plateau dark trolls, the Lost Valley trollkin, Beast Valley beastfolk, and Clearwine aldryami.  Vamargic mustered all his enslaved spirits and animated skeletons, and called in Tusk Rider allies too.  Mounted Grazer warriors from the Four Gifts tribe arrived to help us without being asked, claiming that 'their ancestors told them to come help us fight.'  The dragonewts did not send warriors, but a dream dragon did help supply the means to break the curses laid on the ruins.

We won the battle, Vamargic and the trapped troll spirits were freed to enter the Underworld, and the peoples who'd come together to form the Unity Army each left behind some of their own to settle the place, instantly creating an extremely heterogenous new community with humans, trolls, elves, satyrs etc. all living side by side.  The settlement we founded was not a direct continuation of Korolstead or the Koroltes Tribe, though the spirit of old Korol Kanderos did give us his blessing.  In structure it was a lot more like a First Age Esrolian city-state, ruled by a city ring dominated by a husband-protector king in charge of security and an earth priestess in charge of most property.  Our first Sacred Time community heroquest was The Wooing of Esrola, and successfully completing it magically prepared the valley floor for new agriculture and restored much of the physical ruins with new construction in obsidian.  More and more self-consciously we were building the settlement into a little piece of Silver Age Esrolia, somehow revived in Third Age Dragon Pass.

The first big diplomatic question of the first year after the founding was the new city's position versus the Grazelands.  We resolved the issue through our king marrying one of the daughters of the neighboring Four Gifts tribe's chief, in a ceremony presided over by the Feathered Horse Queen herself at the Korolstead earth temple.  The new city became an ally rather than a subject or tributary of the Grazelanders.  To prove our worth as allies we went north with the FHQ's armies that summer to raid Tarsh. When the game ended in Fire 1628 our city was growing steadily with Sartarite and Esrolian immigrants, and seemed poised to become a major economic center at the juncture of multiple revived trade routes.  We ended up playing a pivotal role in a version of the Battle of Heroes in the climax of the campaign, which ended with Fazzur becoming King of Tarsh while offering our king the Shadow Tribute, renewing the mythic pacts between the Heortlings and the Only Old one.