Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 2 Jun 2002 to 3 Jun 2002 (#2002-145) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 04/06/2002, 17:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 7 messages totalling 411 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Map of Fort Doom (3) 2. The Hunting adventure I 3. The Hunting adventure II 4. The Hunting adventure III 5. Mystara Conversion to Gurps ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 11:48:56 +0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: Re: Map of Fort Doom Actually I could use a ready-made map myself, sice in a few days I propably will be DMing a game where two PCs infiltrate Fort Doom and try to assassinate/charm the army commander of late Baron von Hendricks (the PCs poisoned him). And I don't have the time right now to devise a good map. But I guess I'll have to wing it. Ville ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 02:20:05 -0500 From: Michael Stephan Subject: Re: Map of Fort Doom On a related note, I am GMing Red Arrow Black Shield, and in a couple of game weeks Darokin City will be under siege. Are there any maps of the city around that have more detail than the Gazetteer? Especially useful would be the warehouse district on the west side of the river. TIA. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ville V Lähde" To: Sent: Monday, June 03, 2002 3:48 AM Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] Map of Fort Doom > Actually I could use a ready-made map myself, sice in a few days I > propably will be DMing a game where two PCs infiltrate Fort Doom and try > to assassinate/charm the army commander of late Baron von Hendricks (the > PCs poisoned him). And I don't have the time right now to devise a good > map. But I guess I'll have to wing it. > > Ville > ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 13:09:19 +0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: The Hunting adventure I Specularum-series III: "Suffed heads and lethal weddings" by Ville Lähde This adventure was originally written in Finnish and published in the RPG zine Claymore, issue 4/94. As the two previous Specularum-series adventures, it was originally written as a generic adventure with only bracketed refrences to Mystara, but the intended location is still Specularum in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. Of course, this adventure can be also played separately, as there are no direct links with the others. The events of the adventure have been written quite lossely, so the DM must work a little to make is playable. The details of the NPCs haven't been included. The DM can draw them out to suit the levels of the PCs. General notes Unlike the two previous Specularum adventures, this one doesn't cause so visible and widespread turmoil in the city. The adventure is more closer to a small play or a detective story, with a small number of actors. The events centre around the Hunters' Guild, which I developed IMC for this adventure. But since Specularum is a hybrid of fictionary, fantastic and real-world elements, real-world counterparts wouldn't propably fit Karameikos well, so perhaps this idea could be useful even if you don't wish to use this adventure. The Hunters' Guild isn't a guild in the ordinary sense of the world (see the first adventure of the series). It is more like an administrative body that allocates professional hunting permits and oversees that the hunting quotas are not broken in the Duke's forests that surround the city. All of the lands around Specularum belong to the Duke, the nobles, and even perhaps some rich merchants. [Note: If the DM wishes the merhants to have such rights, then her/his Karameikos might be well on the way for social reform towards a more Darokinian model of society.] There are a lot of forests, and of course some of them are reserved for the personal use of the nobility, like the Duke's Park. But not all. In the remaining forests, hunters licensed by the Hunters' Guild masters can hunt, but they have to sell all of the game through the guild. Black market sales are punished harshly: the said person will lose all hunting privileges, his gear, he has to pay compensation to the guild (ten times the worth of the catch) and sometimes he has to do some unpaid work for the guild. This is the primary way that the guild controls the amount of hunting, but it has also an experienced guard of Rangers (human fighters with woodland skills, and some Callarii elves) who personally patrol the forests. In the forests further away the guild has no influence, and many independent hunters and trappers earn their living there, selling the meat and fur either to merhants or to local residents. Their biggest problem are the crown bailiffs who dislike mobile craftsmen, who are harder to tax. The most common animals that are hunted are deer, moose, rabbits, squirrels, boar, fox and various bird species. Wolves and bears are very rare in the vicinity of Specularum. Specularum is big enough to require control on hunting so that the game isn't overtaxed. So, most of the meat, fur and hides go to the richer families. The poorer people have to settle for beans. [Gees, to think that I'm a vegetarian…] As mentioned, the Hunters' Guild is led by a group of guild masters, each of whom has been entrusted with his own forests area. They have no apprentices or journeymen, they just grant hunting licenses to appilicants, who show their allegiance by wearing the symbol of the master. There are some tests that an applicant has to pass, but it is said that with a suitable bribe one is bound to do so. (In Specularum the Hunters' Guildhouse is by the Traders' Corridor, outside the city walls near the start of the Duke's Road.) The license allows the hunters to hunt a certain number of beasts of certain species a year, and all catches must be notified to the master. The master then reports the bulk amount that his hunters have hunted to the Guild council. Then then sell the catches through the Merhants' Guild. Naturally, the masters take their cut from the sales. How loyal the hunters are to the master is of course determined by how much the master exploits them. After the sales and the hunting reports the scribes of the guild report the situation to the Duke's Elvenguard. (If the DM wishes, there might be some corruption, master Hunters might bribe them into overlooking some excess hunting. But this might not sound so Elvenguardish.) The Duke also receives tribute from the Hunters' Guild for using his forests, as do the other nobles. Poaching is naturally forbidden and it is punished severely, but it doesn't stop some starving peasants or city labourers from trying. After all, Robin Hood's career started like this... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 13:10:39 +0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: The Hunting adventure II The Plot Guildmaster Boris is a greedy man, and he thinks he deserves a few extra gold pieces in his pocket. The money he takes from his licensed hunters isn't enough, so he has created a poaching scheme. However, he wishes to keep his hands clean, so he has camouflaged his crime as legal hunting. His trusted servant Volodnja has hired a few peasants to help him. Disguised as legal hunters they prowl the forests at night to hunt some extra. Note: Boris didn't have the guts to give the hunters fake hunter's symbols, so they are still operating under his banner, in the forests allocated to him. Boris's symbol is a yellow crossbow bolt in a green circle. Boris gets the furs, hides, heads and the best parts of the animals, and the peasants get to feed their families with the carcassed. This is no small payment for them, as they can sell the bones and the entrails on and get a handsome sum from their neighbours. Boris sells the hides, furs and meat in black market, mainly to rich foreigners in Foreign Quarter, chefs of rich houses, and leatherworkers of "questionable morals". The best heads he reserves to his friend Julian the Taxidermist (a very rare occupation). Julian's craft isn't exactly what you would call a booming industry. If someone orders a stuffed boar's head, he must get it soon. So Julian sends requests to Boris, who decreases the amount of hunting on the said animal species and sends his own men to do the job. Julian pays Boris well. Boris sends the guild council fake reports. [One possibility: What Boris doesn't know is that the peasants that he hired are residents of Marilenev, and both have some links with Lady Magda's trusted servents, links that stem from the old rebellion. Perhaps the peasants sell some of the meat to Lady's chef? If Lady Magda finds out about this, she doesn't care about breaking Duke's laws. Perhaps is things get tough, she might even offer her support to Boris, if she sees the man useful.] One other guildmaster, Vlad, suspects that Boris is up to something, but he cannot prove anything yet. (Boris's operation has been going on sor some time now, perhaps over a year.) He doesn't want to involve the guild council or the Elvenguard (yet), so he will try to blackmail Boris into giving him more votes in the meetings of the guildmasters. Vlad would like very much to increase the size of the forest area that is allocated to him. Perhaps he could force Boris to surrender some? Vlad's first hand, Poros, hires some "adventurers" to investigate Boris's affairs. However, right now Vlad has other matters in his mind, so he leaves the hired hands to do the investigations pretty much independently. You see, Vlad is getting married. By a trick of fate he has fallen in love with the daughter of Julian the Taxidermist, Mira. The union has been arranger a couple of years ago, long before Boris's operation started, and Julian is very happy indeed. The wedding will take place soon in Vlad's house. Vlad contacts the Church of Traladara and asks for a priest - and a goblet of sanctified wedding wine… Suggested events At the start, when Vlad has hired the independent investigators, Boris soon learns about it. He has an infliltrator in Vlad's house, one sent there by the resourceful Volodnja. Boris is likely to send Volodnja to scare away the investigators, or hurt them if necessary. Boris isn't a big villain, so he won't try to kill them outright. However, Volodnja might get more rough, since he doesn't have so much scruples. Another possibility is that Boris demands Julian to blackmail Vlad. Boris thinks that Julian should threaten to cancel the marriage if Vlad won't back down and forget his suspicions. But the thing is, that Julian has a lot at stake in the form of the dowry, so his loyalties might be a bit shifty. The weighing between friendship/complicity with Boris, and economic security and happiness of his daughter could end up any way. Then again Vlad can start threatening Julian, or raise his share in the profits. Mira is totally unaware of his father's shady dealings, although she has noticed the increased influx of funds to the Taxidermist's shop. If Mira finds out that she is being used as a pawn, she will be outraged and rebellious. She is a young woman of strong character, fiery temper and sharp mind. If Julian tried to call of the wedding, Mira is very likely to elope and seek sanctuary with his husband to be. A more dramatic possibility is that Boris orders Volodnja to kidnap Mira and use her as a hostage to blackmail both Julian and Vlad. Perhaps the best way to use this adventure scheme is to escalate the situation little by little, making the protagonists spiral towards violence. In the end Boris will become desperate (after, for example, the adventurers have rescued Mira), and he will try to assassinate Vlad. He sends Volodnja to poison the wedding wine. If Julian and Boris are still friends, a dose of antidote will be slipped in Mira's breakfast, otherwise she is in danger too. Thus the wedding will still go on, and Vlad's estate will be transferred to Mira, that is her father, after his death. The poison takes effect after a few hours, unless those damn inconvenient "neutralise poison" spells spoil everyhting once again. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 13:11:26 +0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: The Hunting adventure III Additional possibilities The DM shouldn't forget the Elvenguard or the Guild Rangers. The Guild Rangers watch that the regulations are adhered to, and the Elvenguard is looking after Duke's property. IMC I used an Elvenguard captain Tenil, who was in charge of patrolling the area where Boris's operation was going on. It is likely that such a person eventually notices the dwindling game stock in the area. Tenil was an honest official who could not be bribed, and he obeyed only those orders which came through the chain of command. This kind of an actor could be "the stranger who walks into the room, holding a gun", in the words of Dashiel Hammet - or the copper saying "Now then, now then! What is all this then", in the words of Monty Python. If the DM likes chaotic situations and totally unconnected factors, a suggestion: One mage apprentice in the city, Kiril, has found a rich patch of herbs in Boris's forest. Gathering and processing herbs is done under the Herbalist Guild, and they keep the prices up. But nobody else seems to know about this herb patch, and Kiril has decided to take advantage of it. With a few selected friends from the street he gathers herbs during the night and sells them to other students so that they can practice their experiments a few extra times (in the Magician Guild the students are allocated only a limited amount of reagents, so they can't keep omn repeating their experiments). Another possibility for DMs who like higher fantasy: Boris's operation is taking a toll on the people of the forest. The forestfolk near Specularum have hard time as it is, but this is too much. Perhaps the fey folk or an old druid decides to intervene… NPCs: BORIS, 36 years, poxmarked face, a raven-black hair He is a strong and impressive man, but by no means a charming one. He makes people obey him by sheer intimidation. Julian is actually his only real friend, and even him more from the force of habit than real feeling. Boris loves meat, especially strongly spiced kindey, heart and liver. He despised the bureucrats of the Guildhouse and trusts only Volodnja. Skills and abilities: tracking, sharp shoot with a longbow, skinning, bargaining VOLODNJA: 25 years, narrow face, high and pointed cheeks and a sharp jaw, very unclean He is more a criminal and a thug than a hunter, even though he belongs to the guild. He has a checkered past: smuggling, extortion, gambling, even contract killing. His face is always badly shaven, and his blond hair is tangled and dirty. Volodnja is very unlikely to betray Boris, even though he steals from him all the time. Boris doesn't have a clue. Skills and abilities: Stealth, short sword, poisons, blackjack, streetwise VLAD: 30 years, brown hair and mustache, tall and lean, very clean, always dresses in dark green He is a much nicer man than he'd like to admit. Even though he is capable of using extortion to increase hi own power, he'd never hurt the guild itself, and he wouldn't break the Duke's laws the way Boris does. He treats his hunters very well, and he would be a tender and loving husband. Skills and abilities: good shot with a crossbow, traps and snares, tracking, leadership POROS: 23 years, slim, vigorous, long blond hair tied to a topknot He is a Guild Hunter to the bone. He respects the hunting quotas and other regulations even more than his beloved master. Vlad knows this and keeps his own shady plans to himself. Otherwise Poros is very reliable. Poros hopes to be the godfather of the first child of Vlad and Mira. He isn't a follower of the Church of Traladara, he worships the spirits of the woods and the "totem" of the Deer. This was taught to him by an old druid who lived in his childhood village near Treshold. Poros knows very well that he is a rarity in a large city. Skills and abilities: Debate, tracking, axe, crossbow, first aid JULIAN: 45 years, slightly fat, short He is the archetypal craftsman, who is extremely proud of the quality of his work. He took part in the criminal operation only to ensure a safe future for Mira and himself, and mostly out of fear of Boris. Now he'd actually like to leave the whole thing, even though he still thinks Boris is his friend. He is a shy, timid, man, who speaks with a hushed voice. Skills and abilities: skinning, embalming, taxidermy, cooking KIRIL: 20 years, unclean He is a fink. He smells of sweat and dried herbs all the time, and dresses in a patched-up red cape. He is a lousy student with very little talent for magic, and he wastes his money on gambling and prostitutes. Teldon has given Kiril several warnings for bad behaviour, but Kiril jus won't learn. Whatever happens, Kiril is bound to be expelled and he will become a dangerous criminal, especially if he manages to learn a couple of offensive spells. What about the PCs? Like the previous Specularum adventures, this one too can be used in various ways. Of course the ideal position for them is to be employed by Vlad, but of course they could be also on Boris's payroll, or part of the Ranger corps. New characters are also easy to introduce to the group during this adventure. IMC a mage was an accomplice of Kiril, another came to the group through the Ranger corps. (Two PCs had been killed by the doppleganger in the previous adventure.) Happy hunting. And keep your heads on your shoulders, so they don't end up on somebody's wall... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 07:29:48 -0400 From: Charles White Subject: Re: Mystara Conversion to Gurps H Havard, I have taken a look at the conversions that you have done and that were = posted on the official Mystara site. They were quite helpful. Any other = conversions or other mystara or generic D&D monsters that you have = converted that aren't on the site would be helpful. Also, if you have = any conversions of the key figures in Karameikos or if anyone does, that = would also be great. Feel free to email me direct or post the info. How = did you convert the races? Charles=20 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 12:48:39 -0400 From: Geoff Gander Subject: Re: Map of Fort Doom > > On a related note, I am GMing Red Arrow Black Shield, and in a couple of > game weeks Darokin City will be under siege. Are there any maps of the city > around that have more detail than the Gazetteer? Especially useful would > be the warehouse district on the west side of the river. Not that I'm aware of. I did a brief writeup about it in my online campaign journal, but it's IMC. I have the west end as being the more unfashionable side of the city, where the criminals and other lowlife hang out. There was, IIRC, a reference in the Darokin GAZ, to the effect that the west end was not officially part of the city, and so the city guard didn't go there as often. I extrapolated this, and made it into a place where the city guard retreats over the bridges at dusk, and doesn't let anyone cross into the eastern side until dawn. In the west end, there are any number of gambling houses, brothels, drug dens, and places where you can buy things "off the cart" as it were. :-) Of course, the thieves guilds are more powerful here, and rumour has it that there has been a tacit agreement of sorts between the guilds and the city government proper, such that, as long as the city guard don't pry too closely into affairs in the west end, the crime bosses will do what they can to limit crime in the east. The well-to-do crowd of Darokin City also come to the west end to let their hair down in private (in exclusive, private clubs, of course), and you could probably guess what goes on there... Hope this helps, Geoff -- Geoff Gander, BA 97, MPA 02 Carnifex Loremaster/Mad Roleplayer Master of the Elemental Plane of Bureaucracy au998@freenet.carleton.ca : www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/2091 ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 2 Jun 2002 to 3 Jun 2002 (#2002-145) **************************************************************