#RPGaDay2025 - Day 5 - Ancient

Day 5 of #RPGaDay , and it's another one to make me grateful that I always start early, because this one stumped me almost as much as #4, "Ancient."

I can honestly say that with the exception of my Adventures in Gulluvia campaign, everything I've run has taken place on my own homebrewed world, and even Gulluvia gets a retroactive asterisk to it.  

The world evolved once the players moved from the Temple of Elemental Evil and travelled directly to... Shadowdale?  The high school campaign was a collection of modules I bought, Dungeon Magazine scenarios, and random stuff I made up.  

As the years progressed and the campaign expanded, I went from localized maps, to randomly generated wilderness maps using charts in the 1st Edition DMG, to finally converting everything to an actually Earth-based game, highly influenced by the Epic of Aerth for Dangerous Journeys.

After 35 years, I'm essentially caught up with some interpretation of the actual plays from the many campaigns, and I've been slowly focused on the Georic Gazetteer, my country-by-country excerpts in the voice a biased travelogue. 

Using the Epic of Aerth's format, and hopefully a more personalized tone, some of my nations were easy to set up, some I need to make more than a name, and others I keep pushing back, procrastinating, because of the desire to make them as detailed and perfect as they deserve. 

One thing that plagues a lot of the peripheral nations is ancient history.  Why is the culture like it is, how was it affected by not one, but two European-influenced empires, and what has changed with the collapse of each empire, back to the current status quo?  

The Kingdom of Crosedes, most notably the Barony of Dechie, has significant importance in many of the campaigns I ran.  

It took me four years from my last Actual Play posted, to create that gazetteer entry.   I tried to tie in a lot of loose ends and narratives in the actual plays, but it was RPG Blog Carnival that started me connecting the ancient times to the modern.

The carnival is simply a community working on a single topic for the month, then everyone sharing their work.  Some of the work provided is quite impressive.  

I've only ever done one month: The fun-sounding, "What will your PCs find if they just start digging"  

There fore I attempted to explain the foundation ruins that remained under the Temple of Alasku, a location I've used at least three times in over 30 years, and 200 years of campaign time. 

Spoilers:  It's not a village like most thought, it was an above ground temple, done in a particular infamous style. 

I didn't even go into full detail such as "Where did the Dragon-Men Elementalists go?"  "Who conquered the dungeon first?" "When did the lizard men take over the the area?  Did they help with eradicating the Dragon-Men?  Are they abandoned Dragon-Men offspring, generations later?  

It's important to ask these questions and set-up and a logical background, or a semi-logical progression of events, even if your players never see it. 

When I wrote this up a week early, the August topic for the RPG Blog Carnival was to be determined.    I am tempted to return to it in November for "Why my party so weird?"  

(RPG Blog Carnival) What is Above the Temple of Alasku?

Somewhere in the Dechie Baronial Library, is a short journal of one Ashe Winnebago, an elf, a hated race at the time of his writings.  Around the year 1069, Ashe was trying to earn some coin between adventures and acquired a number of journals and maps related to a Temple of Alasku.  

With his trusted group unavailable, he assembled a rag-tag group of adventurers to plunder its riches.  They were largely successful.  Rescuing some notable persons who would prove instrumental to not only the group, but the entire Kingdom of Crosedes, and the ancient structure which was the Ferasean Empire.  

There are two interesting passages.

"Less than an hour after breakfast, the party arrived at what remained of the ancient village of Alasku. A few foundation stones could be found if you ripped out the underbrush.

Only one notable structure was stilling standing, a small stone hovel.  Its entrance was only blocked by a small (3-foot high) boulder."

While they moved the boulder and investigate the underground temple, the party cleric, Echelon, chose to stay above with the menagerie of animals he travelled with.  He with the help of the local orphan boy, Timmy, tended to the animals and relaxed on the foundations of other buildings in the village surrounding the temple.

On the second day of the adventure: 

"Later in the afternoon, Timmy was quietly playing, digging up rocks and stacking them further around the hovel, when he froze in terror.  Three wolves were working their way to the camp!!!"

The initial overview of the site and nine-year-old Timmy's natural inclination to play with rocks were never followed up with the arrival of the wolves, and the mixing of multiple potions.  

But Ashe Winnebago's had a few falsehoods.  While the cleric and the young boy rested on the overgrown foundation stones, it wasn't for the village.  They underestimated the size and prowess of the temple, when it was still above ground.  

Timmy was well on his way to discovering an elaborate granite floor, covered by decades upon decades of moss and detritus. Well-calcified bodies of monks in a cavern below, and a ghoul-infested crypt were the only obvious remaining signs of a temple below.  Above was an ornate smaller temple, where the original staircase was hidden behind the sanctuary.  But what was it ? 

Prior the "Great Ancien Empire" of Feraso, which united the continent, the Kingdom of Crosedes was a makeshift collection of lords, vassals, and tribes of distant Keltic heritage.  The first temple for Alasku was established by these people, and if the party had investigated the grounds further, the standing stones for it would have been discovered over a small hill 1000 yards from the site of the "new temple."

At an undetermined time, the religious services were moved to the assumed location and a village sprang up.  When the Ferasean Empire finally reached this land, and entities such as the Duchy of Ferrand were formed, the native population adopted some of the religious tenants of the state religion of Akana, and were largely left alone from the proselytizing of the invaders. 

At some point prior to maps published in 526, the construction of a formal Akana-styled stone structure and the barbarian incursions,  Dragonmen Elementalists took hold in the area, and a temple mirroring the Temple of Elemental Evil was built.  

Again, the alleged village was actually part of the sanctuary.  There is little documentation regarding the temple getting razed, but it could be assumed during the unification of the Kingdom of Crosedes under Kings Cesmir I & II, circa 850-890.  The lower level of the temple survived behind a secret door, and collapsed upon itself when the building was torn down.  The "evil" village was destroyed, and it's remnants left to fester, while the forces established the village of Eding along the river.  

Where the stones ended up is a mystery, but it would not be surprising if they were used in the Castle in the Moors, a few miles away, possibly for the larger buildings in the town, such as the Green Griffon (formerly Blue Wizard), or simply sunk into the ground.  

As time passed, the stairwell was re-discovered, and the dungeon was used by multiple groups..  Bugbear tribes, Lizardmen outposts, and many groups of brigands called the well-sealed dungeon home.  During Ashe Winnebago's writings, the complex was shared by Bugbear slavers and an elite remnant of the "Dread Lord" himself, the future King Cervinal II of Crosedes.  The adventurers eliminated the bugbears, plus the normal dungeon threats, but left the Dread Lord's operations relatively intact, including letter "Lady Thaisa" the Dread Lord's daughter (and future Duchess of Hydincall and Queen Mum to King Celowin V).

Once the Dread Lord usurped power from his brother, the temple site was abandoned, but after the Battle of Apotheosis in 1073, rag-tag bands of brigands and goblins hid there for safety, and ultimately set up operations.  Both groups were smart to not engage the battle-hardened residents of Eding (now Dechie), until attempts to rehabilitate the Castle in the Moors brought the temple of the Baron and the King.  

As of the current year (1150?), the status of the temple has become a mystery yet again.  It could be brigands, ne'er do wells, humanoids bands (lizardmen or bugbears), or perhaps the descendants of the original elementalists have returned to bring their temple to its previous glory... 

DM Notes: After the excitement of #RPGaDay, I was enticed to continue the theme of community-based blogging by dipping my toe in the RPG Blog Carnival The theme for the RPG Blog Carnival for September was Anthropology and Archaeology

I was enamored with the first sample question, "What might player-characters find it they just start digging?"  The Temple of Alasku was my first thought, and I proceeded to start a treatise from a "Student of History, Cartography, and Antiquity" at the University of Feraso-Chocin, the the Kingdom of Ras-Prythax.    While Ebbo Palme's writings to his advisor, Galwin Kalbach detailed the reasons why he chose the Temple as his subject matter, as well as the early steps of investigating the village/interviewing the locals, I simply ran out of steam and motivation to complete it for the September RPG Blog Carnival.  I may be the only person still interested, but I felt it appropriate to make some sort of write-up on the hidden history of the site.

Thankfully, the Halloween/horror aspects for this month means I'll be skipping October, but I will keep an eye out for topics each month.  

For reference, the adventure is question is the Temple of Alasku, episode 3  (1999) of the Ballad of the Pigeon God Campaign.   I orginally ran by self-stocked version from the 1st Edition DMG in 1993 (with a group run by a character named Cesmir, and revisited it during my army game in 1995.

The actual dealings with Alasku from the early games, and some ret-conning how it got restocked can be discovered reading episodes #80 and above of the Lost Dispatches of Feraso.  Later episodes explain just how Ashe Winnebago got his hands on the books and maps to begin with.  

(RPG Blog Caravan) Piecing Together an Ancient Campaign

Fresh off the heels of #RPGaDay, and having been reminded of the RPG Blog Caravan's existence, I decided to take a crack at the topic for September 2023, "Archaeology and Anthropology."

The carnival itself is a great concept, but as I worked on my idea, this simply snowballed into complexity, nearing ridiculousness.  My own experience might explain why a number of the entries I've read over the years were full of "intelligentsia and pompousness."

As I continue to rework my topic into something as simple as what was suggested, I began delving into something even more ridiculous:  Assembling the actual plays of years gone by.  

About a decade into gamemastering, I realized that not only were player journals/notes helpful, but a party journal, with a rotation of unreliable character writers essential for continuity and attention spans.  beginning with portions of my AD&D 2E "Ballad of the Pigeon God" game, and moving forward, either written journals or recorded sessions were kept.  Using the blog as a clearing house for those campaigns, I've managed to keep continuity, with limited canonical rewrites.   However, a large portion of the early years, which I'll denote as the "High School game" and the "Army game" were fading memories, even though they forged the basis of future campaigns.  

When I set up my "World of Georic" homebrew campaign, it was a mis-mash of anything I had on a high school kid's budget.  Campaign worlds were raided for ideas, adventures from Dungeon Magazine dropped in random locations, followed by an assortment of modules that paid attention to the appropriate party level than the appropriateness within the campaign.  Still, as teenagers we rarely cared.  

But to complete the narrative history of all my games (roughly 1990-present), I needed to piecemeal information together.  Heck, some of the players relied on their character nicknames so much (Drunken Warrior/Stupid Ranger), that names were lost for all eternity.  

To abate these problems, I established the campaign would be told through the second-hand eyes of a completely fictional narrator.  Elsderth Millbottom was a scribe, formerly in the employ of the Viscount of Verbobonc, who corresponding one-way with his experiences traveling the World of Georic.  It just happened that these "Lost Dispatches" dealt with indirect run-ins after-the-fact of a certain Talanth Blackash and his adventuring party of fools and miscreants.  

But rebuilding the events of the campaign, plus all the magic items would prove a chore, especially since I no longer owned most of the products I ran almost 30 years ago.

Ned Overland, the one character connecting two campaigns, decades apart in-game.

For my greatest feat, I would need to work things into a completely new campaign map.  As I mentioned, I had little care of a group tackling the Temple of Elemental, then moving over hill and dale to have adventures around Shadowdale.  The first actual map of the greater realm wasn't realized for five years, and since then, I've adopted the Epic of Aerth setting for Dangerous Journeys as the fantasy-Earth equivalent to base things off of. 

So how does one do this?  Here's a few avenues: 

Re-purchasing your museum collection:  Thanks to DriveThruRPG, I started buying the pdfs of those old module I know I used.  T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil and FRE1 Shadowdale were two of the big items that started the run.  I now have digital copies of some classic (and not so classic) adventures if someone ever wants to play. 

The museum always kept a small collection at all times:  Luckily, I still own a decent collection, particularly of items from my teens which I attached a certain sentimental value.  I still have a good pile of AD&D and BECMI D&D adventures and many were used in that first decade.  

If the British Museum is all cultural plunder, why shouldn't my project have some?:  While I'm equating dubious sources of pdfs to hundreds of years of archeological pillaging, and there should be no excuse for pirating, some things I used back in the were just not available digitally, at least legit during my research six years ago.  I may or may not have acquired items through less than reputable sources, half of which no longer exist, the other half, well...  

Oral History is like mouthwash, it fades over time:  After playing for 25-30, even the most enthused players' recollections falter.  Names forgotten, memories evolved,  actions from one campaign blurred over to a completely different game (that wasn't even mine).  My players barely remember what happened last week... with notes!  Discerning the diamonds from the coal from the culm takes some work.  

Categorizing the plunder: Why did I want actual copies of the material?  For a classic FRPG where treasure and magic items affected XP.  This old-school system was rife with inequality, which in the re-accounting was quite apparent, as the magic-user, Thendara (aka "The Busty Mage") accumulated an arsenal, and was the only character to reach Name Level.   Heck, in my story, Elsderth "Greyhawk" Millbottom does a good job obtaining a nice collection from all the after-effects, leftovers, and missed treasures as he came upon the aftermath. 

When in doubt, wing it:  Even with a reconstructed library to work with, a combination of a teenager's early campaign world mixed with a new campaign map forced the creation of a lot of continuity flavor text.  Fan-hosted Greyhawk maps and material were mined with ruthless aggression to flesh out the narrator's backstory, the Viscounty of Verbobonc, and many of the other dominions within Ras-Prythax. While it was the focus of my high school game, I only returned to Ras-Prythax, my version of the Holy Roman Empire for one story, so nothing ever got fleshed out. 

Most of the details I would have missed in high school and the army were also filled in using random generators, like the Fantasy Name Generator.

Elsderth, our unreliable narrator, only dreamt Talanth suffered for his crimes

Still, 99 episodes recreating two major campaigns and a host of smaller forays in my first 8 years of GMing wasn't bad.  Heck, I even tied in the "College Game" (Ballad of the Pigeon God), and that is my motivation for the "real" article I'm compiling.