Mislim da o ovome nikada ranije nisam pričao, ali Dungeons & Dragons su veoma bitan deo mog života.
Prve avanture vodio sam svojim vršnjacima još u četvrtom osnovne, premda ne koristeći D&D. Te prve avanture koje sam smišljao bile su napola board games zasnovane na "Gospodarima svemira".
Dungeons & Dragons počeo sam da igram '95. godine, u srednjoj školi - i od tada nisam prestajao. Od AD&D 2nd Edition, pa preko Skills & Powers, završio sam na Pathfinder-u - budući da sam sa prezirom odbacio D&D 4th Edition, baš kao većina pravih frpera.
Kao svi dobri masteri, imam svoj svet u kojem vodim igre i pričam priče, ali taj svet je tokom prethodnih tri-četiri godine bio u hibernaciji i tek sam ga skoro probudio, da bih ga prebacio u verziju 2.0.
Nadam se da ću za jedno dve nedelje završiti prevod na kojem radim i okupiti novu družinu koju ću upoznati sa Norgirom. Doduše, nedostaju mi igrači - ali navabiću ih.
Možda se pitate otkud sad ovo i zašto vam ovo pričam? Pa, iskren da budem, dosta dugo nisam ništa napisao za blog, a već imam neke crtice i opise grada u kojem će se avantura odvijati, tako da ću ga podeliti sa vama, kao potvrdu moje vrhunske geekavosti :)
Kaledun
Kaledun is a crumbling, sprawling, decadent, corrupt city, with history that stretches thousands of years - a city that outlived several empires which ruled it, and continues to exist in some kind of urban unlife. This is a dark place. Some of the city's most interesting locations are: Night Market, where you can haggle with Hags and deal with the Devils; Old Court, where vampires dance to the silent music and trade in blood and dreams; Slaveport, located at the confluence of two great rivers, where barges bearing fresh slave-meat from East and West unload their cargo; Nightingale Street, where you can find any and all pleasures known to man or dragon; Old Dungeon, located beneath ruins of Constabulary, filled with corpses when the Great Plague struck the city two hundred years ago; Troll Bridge, built by Trolls at the bequest of Lord Mayor hundred years ago, and in return they got the toll rights and land to build their slums across the Grat River; Lord's Castle, overlooking the rivers, but without any lord living in it for the last 90 years...
...The city is called Kaledun, and both legends and history claim that it has arisen from it's ashes 39 times. One of the city's nicknames is "Crossroads of Worlds". That is true both literally and metaphorically. At the streets of Kaledun you can encounter an Blood Elf from the far-away Crimson Empire, Dwarf from the fabled Orinor, devil-binder from the world of Golarion or Red Wizard from Toril. People come to Kaledun seeking all kinds of things: wealth, fame, drugs, sex, magic weapons, slaves, love potions... You can by anything and everything at one of the Kaledun's markets - if you're willing to pay the price. Empire after empire struggled to conquer the city, but all the empires which held it came to ruin in but few short centuries. Kaledun is now a free city, ruled by the Mayor and City Council...
...The large part of city's population is planetouched in some way. Half-fiends are numerous, as well as hagspawn. Half-vampires are less numerous away from the Vampire Court, but there are some, especially among halflings, who are favorite slave race for the city's upper class. Several dragons live in the city (in the human guise), so there are half-dragons as well...
...all of the five Elder Gods have their temples in the city, but Luna is most revered as the patron goddess of Kaledun... They are Elder Gods. They are tied to planet itself and they are not dependent on worshipers for power. They tend to appear in many guises and differently to different civilizations. There are many other distinct gods, but they are the gods of humanoids, Elves, Dwarfs etc. Some humans worship one of the myriad of "small gods". Those are gods of dell and glen, of forests and springs. For instance, there is a god of River Grath. He is known as Grath Wetbeard. On the surface of the river he is greater god, but his power is almost nonexistent at the distance of 5 miles from the river coast.
...there's a prominent Hag in the community, sort of unofficial leader of Hag Market, called Baba Svetlana. She's 900 years old and rather uninterested in good or evil. She trades equally with heaven and hell and nobility often buys from her. She sells, among other things, used wishes, one night stand frog princes, slightly rotten pumpkin coaches and awakened mice bodyguards...
...There are several "subraces" of Mice: Field Mice, they are mostly fighters; White Mice, mostly wizards; Forest Mice, rangers and Church Mice, clerics - obviously. In addition to awakened mice Svetlana awoke some hamsters as well, but it turned out that hamsters for some reason prefer to become paladins. The Hag forgot about her creations one time several hundreds of years ago, so there's a numerous community of small awakened animals in the city...
...Hag Market is one of five markets in the part of Kaledun called the Old City. The others are: Peasant Market, near the Sunrise Gate (which looks to the south, in fact, not east); Slave Market, near the port; Castle Market (defunct), near the Lord's Castle and Cattle Market, near the Sunset Gate (which looks to the north, obviously). If you need to buy flower, eggs or jam, you go to the Peasant Market; if you want to buy a broken dream, discarded wish, magic sword or slightly-used soul, you go to the Hag Market. Not every seller there is Hag; there are angels down on their luck, selling their feathers one by one and looking for a quick fix, dwarfs selling and buying weapons, members of Golem Syndicate looking for work... anyway, Svetlana is little above it all. She's old enough not to have to work and equally old to acquire a cynical view on both good and evil, so she drifted towards neutrality. If she's the owner of your character's contract, she would use him mostly as a messenger or a spy. These days Svetlana mostly trades in information, but she's always interested in some new magic item (or old and powerful), piece of property in the city or on some plane - and her not so secret passion is collecting (and reading) love novels.
There are other possibilities as well. Several elder fay have their stalls at the market or shops around the market square, as well as alu-fiend twins, Mayala and Nayala. These sorceresses mostly deal in poisons and potions...
In this campaign monks are found only in the East, in the subjugated nations of the Sultanate of Tamur. In the West, monks are cloistered clerics, specialized in different aspects of clerical life, so there are military orders, healing orders, fiend-fighting orders...
Languages: There are 27 human ethnic groups living in Kaledun District (territory controlled by the city; in earlier times it was called Kaledun Principality), and all of them speak their own language. In city itself almost everyone speak Trader's Tongue, my world's version of Common, as well as languages of Overduchy of Hohenbaurg and Sultanate of Tamur - most powerful neighbors, who in one time or the other controlled Kaledun. Before humans settled in what is now Kaledun District, local population consisted of tribes of Lizardfolk and Lupins, so their languages can be heard in the streets of Kaledun. Lizardfolk's language is most spoken near the harbor, where city's lizardfolk mostly dwell and work, and the language of lupin's is most spoken in the vicinity of Peasant and Cattle markets. Enslaved and abused Halflings of Kaledun speak their own language and some of them speak Old Tongue as well, the language of their vampiric masters.
Think of Hohenburg as Germany meets Netherlands and Sultanate as Turkey meets Persia meets Arabia.
There's a region in Hohenburg where Ghost Elves might live. Misty Forest, surrounding Black Mountains. Black Mountains are major dwarf stronghold in this part of the continent and they are autonomous from the Overduchy of Hohenburg, although they have longstanding business relationship with it. They provide mercenaries equipped with firearms, banking services and stonemasons for most of the countries in the region.
(house rules): spontaneous casters use spell points; warlocks must have a pact with a supernatural entity, much as sorcerers have bloodlines; wizards and some other arcane casters can take Ritual Caster feat and gain ability to participate in rituals and cast them (example of rituals: Extra Familiar, Improve Familiar I-IX, Obtain Familiar, Obtain Minion, Obtain Improved Familiar, Create Pact, Trade Soul...)
